Naxx Quick (Almost) Clear

Last night, the Silver Team went back into Naxxramas with a goal of clearing all four quarters in our allotted time. And we accomplished our goal. And even got in two shots on Sapphiron before having to call it for the night. We had a couple of new people with us, so it was awesome to see so many one shots on the night where we gave just the shortest description of each fight. I'm confident tonight we'll quickly clear the Sanctum, Sapph and Kel'Thuzad, and then we'll have some fun on Malygos (a fight I have not yet seen).

Last night, out of the few upgrades available to me in Naxxramas, I got two! First, the Tier 7 shoulderpads dropped from Loatheb (leaving just two upgrades in the game, one drops from Malygos (Heroic) and the other are the Tier 7.5). I also found the amazing Blade of Dormant Memories from Patchwerk. After quickly enchanting the weapon with +50 spellpower, my shoulderpads with the exalted Hodir enchant, and throwing a +16 hit rating gem in, I still dropped due to losing 34 hit on my weapon. Hopefully The Soulblade doesn't drop from Kel'Thuzad tonight because it'd be tough for me to take it over someone else who didn't get the Blade last night. Plus, the Soulblade is a bit more healy with the spirit, but +461 damage is a huge upgrade.

Speaking of damage, after killing 13 bosses, tons of trash, and two tries on Sapphiron last night, I basically tied with the ret Paladin in our group. I output 16.2m damage whereas he had 16.1m. It's pretty funny to see how close we got after all the bosses. For the full run, I averaged 2426 DPS, our Ret Pally 2394 DPS, our Death Knight 2276 DPS and our Hunter output 2241 DPS. We absolutely tore the place apart. Including achieving Arachnophobia without really trying that hard. Though we did have some big AOE pulls, we could have done it quicker.

Naxxramas (10) Clear!

In just three short weeks (5 days entering Naxxramas), the Silver/Gold Team has cleared Naxxramas. Last night, after quickly clearing the Military Quarter, we hit up Sapphiron for the first time and took him down in 4 attempts. The first couple were us learning the fight, the third was a freak accident where Sapphiron cleaved/swiped just as we engaged and took out our healers, and on the fourth, he was down. Quite an accomplishment as we had heard of other groups of good players from other guilds taking up to 20 tries to learn him in his entirety and take him out.

After that, we quickly hit up Kel'Thuzad and had him under 5% before a freak accident where our tank got frozen which ended up in a wipe as he also had the three Anub'Rekhan looking beetles on him and they couldn't be controlled in time. The second time around though, he posed no issue as we disposed of him very quickly.

Our raid leader/main tank now has the Malygos key and I'm looking forward to the Eye of Eternity. Before Naxx last night, we quickly took out Sartharion with 9 players (just 2 healers) and I'm thinking with a third healer we could tackle one or two drakes up for the fight. The encouraging thing about last night is we have found a good healer replacement for a priest that had to leave for her guild runs, so we're set there and also, during Sartharion, I didn't see anyone get hit by the lava waves, so our coordination is doing quite well (as we could also see with only 3 (real) tries at Sapphiron).

With the recent addition of my Plush Sash of Guzbah, I felt my DPS increase a little last night as I averaged 2400 DPS on Sartharion, 2900 on Instructor Razuvious (I believe this is from the Living Bombs detonating on the two mind controlled mobs), 2460 DPS on the Four Horsemen, and 2730 DPS on Kel'Thuzad (again, probably from Living Bomb detonating on the three beetles that were within range).

With regards to loot, nothing really dropped for me last night. We saw a lot of healy plate items, and there was the T7 gloves which went to the lovely healy tree, Vetarra. Right now, the two piece Tier 7 bonus is doing quite well for me as I usually don't have mana issues, so I can use my mana gems as an extra damage boost (I just have to watch out though because my trinket shares the same cool down, so while I could use the mana gem while my trinket is used, I can't get the spell damage bonus from it while the trinket is in use). So right now I'm not looking for huge Tier 7 upgrades, but I'm looking to get another piece so if I replace my chest piece (hopefully I can get the Gown of Blaumeux off the Four Horsemen at some point), I can retain my 2 piece bonus. Though, from my spreadsheet, the Tier 7 helm, shoulders, and gloves are all better than what I'm currently using, so if I could piece together two more pieces for the 4 piece bonus, I'd be more than happy to have 5% extra crit damage.

Silver Team, Take Three

What was supposed to be a quick, two hour pre-clear for Sunday's longer raid turned into a fun four hour three wing clear, including a new wing clear, the Construct Quarter. All that's left for Sunday is the Military Quarter and then Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad. After quickly blowing through the Arachnid Quarter and the Plauge Quarter, we ran into some troubles on Globbulus (more learning the fight than anything) and on our 4th (maybe 5th) attempt we got him down - almost had him on the second to last attempt, but our DPS was just a little behind.

Only one item dropped on my upgrades list, the Tier 7 shoulders, but I lost a roll to the rogue in our group, and I just hope he can use them (I think he may be swapping them in and out on trash/boss fights). I guess we just need more people to realize that not all Tier 7 pieces are better than items found in heroics just because they're Tier 7. So while the rogue might use them on bosses only, it's a significant upgrade for me and with the gloves, which I hope to get soon from Obsidian Sanctum, I'd almost have the 5% increased crit damage, which, since I crit almost 50% of the time, is a huge DPS boost. With a 310% crit modifier on Frostfire Bolts, I'm not sure if the increased 5% goes before or after the 310% crit modifier, but either way, it's a large DPS boost, but I'm still two pieces away.

On another note, man is Loatheb fun. I got in about 25k damage before getting my buff from the spore and I didn't lose the buff for the duration of the fight. What's that mean to me? Oh, just 90% Frostfire Bolt crits. Hot Streak here, Hot Streak there, Hot Streaks everywhere! It's a great fight (though the healers seem to think otherwise).

But all in all, great progress for the Silver Team, we might have a full clear on Sunday should we master Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad which would put our clearing of Naxxramas at three weeks. Not too bad, considering we're still switching people out at times and we don't have a set 10 man group every day yet.

On a final note, yay for mage DPS. The following chart is my damage done for all bosses in Naxx tonight while clearing the three quarters.

Silver Team Continued...

We headed back into Naxxramas for a quick run tonight - starting from scratch due to the holidays, and we quickly blew through the Arachnid Wing and then went over to the Plague Quarter where we had to learn Loatheb as most of us had not seen him before. We had one wipe while we quickly learned the fight; the three seconds of healing, the spores, etc. But after one wipe, we quickly got him down and I got to have a lot of fun with the spores:


My Frostfire Bolts crit 70% of the time on the fight and I was able to put up 3929 DPS :) And that was without my Flask of the Frost Wyrm as we had 45 minutes to go in the night and I didn't want to use a 2 hour flask.

But after the Plague Quarter, we once again hit up the Military Quarter and quickly blew through the Instructor and Gothik. Emboldened by our victory over Loatheb, we continued to the Four Horsemen. Again, it was a learning experience, and we wiped twice as we learned the fight, but we easily took them down on our third attempt and we should now be able to clear those three wings without any issues in the future.

Overall, a great night. Two more wings cleared, one more to go before we can hit Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad. Plus, the trinket I lusted after dropped for the second week in a row and it is finally mine, Embrace of the Spider. The Grieving Spellblade also dropped, but it went to Eirama who was much deserving of it. Hopefully next week, it or the Blade of Dormant Memories will drop. Then all I'm really looking for is Tier 7 items and loot from the last two bosses.

Silver Team Naxx

The Gold Team has apparently been rechristened the Silver Team and last week, we took our first steps inside of Naxxramas. Our goal was to clear the Spider Wing, hit up Patchwerk and then try Grobbulus on Wednesday. We quickly cleared the Spider Wing and took down Patchwerk after a couple tries (we had to learn those hateful strikes) and we went on to Grobbulus. We had just one try on him before our healer had to bail, so we were stuck trying to 9 man the place and it just wouldn't work. So we thought we could go hit up Instructor Razuvious, but we had issues with just two healers and we eventually called it a night.

We reconvened at 4pm on Sunday, ready to go. First things first though, the Obsidian Sanctum had to be cleared. Easy peasy, one shot Sartharion. Maybe next time we can leave a drake up. Who knows?

So after the Sanctum, we headed back to Naxx with an eye on the Military Quarter, Razuvious was a pushover with three healers, and we went on to Gothik. The weekend before, I had joined a quasi-guild/PUG team in Naxx and we were unable to get anywhere on Gothik. This time, with two awesome tanks and amazing healers, we one shot Gothik and had absolutely no issues. We decided to save the Four Horsemen for another time and went back to the Plague Wing.

Noth was pretty damn easy and we made quick work of him and went on to Vetarra's favorite fight in the game, Heigan the Unclean. We took a shot at him to let the team learn the Heigan dance and then had to take another shot at him after losing some healers before we finally got him down. However, we did it in a very unconventional way. After losing two healers to the dance, along with our two hunters, it was just me and a healer up on the platform, a shaman, pally, druid, and warrior down on Heigan. So yeah, we 6 manned him. Not that tough really, the only issue we had was people lagging and getting stuck during the dance. I'm really not sure how that happens, it's a fairly simple dance, but it did happen, though we managed to bring him down.

After that, we lost a couple of players and had to call it a night. We did a quick Utgarde Keep run afterward, and now I stand just 5 emblems short of my Heroes Frostfire Robe. My gloves didn't drop in the Sanctum, but we'll be doing that weekly and hopefully I can pick them up in there. I really need that two piece set bonus, it's just too sweet to not utilize - Improved Mana Gems.

For our first week in Naxxramas, we did pretty well. I believe next week we are not raiding due to the Holidays, but after that, I believe we're getting our DPS Pally and our Death Knight to join in. Then we will be bringing Dylana in for heals and we should have a pretty solid team and we should be getting close to clearing the place sometime soon in the new year. Then it's just a matter of finding another team to join up with for some fun 25 man raids.

All in all, a great start and even though there's really not that much gear in there for me to upgrade to, I love running the place and learning the new fights that I didn't get a chance to run even though I had hit up Naxx a couple of times in the Burning Crusade.

On a side note, Saturday, I hit exalted with both the Argent Crusade and the Oracles. Bringing my exalted factions up to 29 and also earning me the title 'The Argent Champion.' Right now I'm wearing my Wyrmrest Accord tabard in the heroics and I'm looking forward to some Sandals of Crimson Fury and a nice new mount - Reins of the Red Drake.