Force Recon of Argent Dawn

Force Recon Takes on Djinns, Dragons, Demons and Wins!

Koriander — Wed, 11 May 2011 15:19:50 -0000

Posted 05/11/2011 10:19 AM by Koriander.

I am still working on the Wrath Raiding Wrap-Up will posted it as soon as I'm done. Until then, there is more exciting news on the FR Cataclysm Raiding.

The Set Team has been working hard on additional bosses and I'm very excited to report that we have defeated a new boss for each raid week of the last 4 raid weeks! That is 4 bosses in 4 weeks! Excellent work and a big congrats to everyone who's participated - Nestra, Nathelien, Terreis, Falarelle, Koriander, Narlexia, Valasca, Mcsquizzie, Dakoran, Caritheri, Brenda/Aridonna!

We are now 7 of 12 for this tier of raiding in Normal Mode!

Now, let's talk a bit about how we got there.

First up is the Conclave of the Winds Encounter. This is an interesting encounter with 3 enemies standing on 3 different platforms. Each of the bosses has different abilities, and must all die within 1 minute of each other. It is interesting in that you cannot see at all what is happening on the other platforms and we have to have a lot of trust in our teammates to keep it together or to let us know if they need something.

It wasn't uncommon for us to hear a lot of, "I just fell off!", "I didn't jump in time!" and "I missed the platform!" It's also good to note that for the most part, everyone but Narlexia, is jumping between platforms during the encounter to be on other platforms at specific times, timed to the boss abilities and changes.

This one required a lot of movement and different types of raid work depending on what platform you were on and depending on which phase was occurring.

Here's a picture of us on Apr 17th, 2011, by one of the corpses of one of the djinn on the center platform. You can even see one of our future targets, Al'Akir, in the background:

Next up, we returned to Blackwing Descent to hunt down our next target, Maloriak. There is one side "boss" after Magmaw and Omnotron before getting to Maloriak's area. It is reported to be the most dangerous encounter and supposedly has killed more people than anything else in raids in WoW, This is the new elevator boss, the BWD Elevator!!! It really is only at the top level for a second. If you're not moving on it right away, the floor literally drops out from under you and you come crashing to a halt at the bottom, where either your friends are attempting to rez you, or are laughing at your expense....Or sometimes both....

I must admit, we have not all escaped this side boss unscathed, but we won't name any names here....(especially those who think they have a fool proof way to make it down....until the other unbeatable boss, Lag, kills them.)

The first part of Maloriak himself reminds me a bit of the potions boss in Shadowfang Keep. He has different color potions that he throws into a cauldron in the back of the room. Depending on which potion is used, the raid had to do slightly different things. In addition, all through these potions phases, he casts Arcane Storms which do a TON of raid damage and must be interrupted, AND he also summons adds. The adds are summoned by a cast, which can be interrupted. There are a total of 18 adds, generally released 3 at a time. Each add has a buff that reduces damages to the other adds near them so if too many are up, they cannot be killed easily until Maloriak utilizes a "Green" potion which temporarily removes this buff.

Controlling these adds is similar to the dragonhawk boss in ZA and the panther boss in ZG, in that when a specific later phase hits (when Maloriak gets to 25% health), all the remaining adds are released in addition to 2 "Prime Subjects". It is generally best to have all the adds down before this phase starts.

We did notice an odd thing in this encounter, which might be a bug. Maloriak would sometimes interrupt himself when he moved to the cauldron. We kept asking in raid to see who was doing the interrupt since we needed to release the adds at this time, until Narl noticed he was interrupting his own cast!

I'm pleased to announce that we were able to get our first kill on Maloriak on Apr 22, 2011, on our first raid night of that raid week and I believe only our 2nd week at attempting him. Here's a picture of us:

Our next goal was the Valiona and Theralion or the twin dragons fight in Bastion of Twilight. You might remember Valiona as the dragon from Grim Batol who escapes us. This, like many other Cata flights, has multiple bosses in the same encounter with different abilities. In this encounter, one of the dragons is on the ground while the 2nd is in the air. Both dragons have different ground and air abilities and they switch back and forth. This fight has a lot of raid movement, collapsing in on a raid member, running out to be at least 6 yards away, running out of blasts from the sky, running from flame breath, running from puddles of all types of color on the ground. Let me tell you, our toons have lost a lot of weight from all the running in this encounter.

We were able to defeat these twin dragons on May 1, 2011, and you can see this screenshot of the day:

The fourth downed boss in four weeks is Atramedes, the blind dragon in Blackwing Descent.

This encounter has an interesting twist in that everything is revolving around sound. As soon as the encounter begins, a sound bar is added to your UI. It starts at 0, and increases with damage taken from the various abilities that Atramedes uses to try and "find" you. If your bar ever gets to 100, it's an insta-kill. There are also a limited number of gongs around the room that can be used to interrupt Atramedes and reset the sound bars on the entire raid.

He has various abilities in his different phases, ground and air, where he tries to zero in on someone chasing them with breath abilities. If you get caught, you take a ton of damage. So either don't get caught, or use one of the precious gongs to save yourself or your teammate. In his air phase, it is surprisingly easy to get caught and die to his breath, even with some of the speed enhancing abilities. We are still going to need more practice on him to get through it without anyone dying.

We did managed to kill him on our 3rd attempt of the night on May 8, 2011, which was our 2nd day of trying him. Here we are with his body:

The Set Team has now set its sights on Chimaeron and the Ascendant Council. I hope to have more good news to share soon from the Set Team journeys.

Meanwhile, I also have some news on our other teams and their runs. On Apr 15th, we happen to have quite a few people on and by some luck, the alliance had Tol Barad, so we put together an group and made fast work of Argaloth. Here are Sigmos, Falarelle, Aridonna, Ephany, Ifer, Marlette, Melosa, Valaevil, Mariance, and Eriene by Argaloth's body:

Last, but not least, we had a 2nd Team do a raid on Apr 29. 2011. This raid was also successful in downing Magmaw. Grats to Maxtel, Melosa, Sigmos, Ifer, Aridonna, Marlette, Jaylo, Ephany, Eriene, and Valaevil for their accomplishment seen here:

Man that is a big worm!

Grats again to everyone who has or is participating in the Force Recon raids. Great work everyone and I look forward to more tales to come!

Kori

Fishing Contest and Level 17!

Nestra — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 17:40:33 -0000

Posted 04/22/2011 12:40 PM by Nestra.

On Friday April 15, Force Recon held its first fishing contest.

The goal of the contest was to fish from pools. As a guild we are working on fishing 10,000 fish from pools, for the achievement That's a Lot of Bait which provides a recipe that is useful for guild raids.

Participants were: Brenda, Falarelle, Marlette, Narlexia, Nathelien, Valaevil

We fished for 30 minutes and the competition was stiff. A few people got distracted by tantalizing herbs too close to their fishing holes, but most were focused on optimizing their fishing strategy.

There were two winners from the contest - Narlexia won for getting the most actual fish (65 fish) and Falarelle won for the most number of items (55 fish and 25 non-fish). In all, we got 420 casts from pools in 30 minutes. That helped us move to 3115/10,000 for the achievement.

Congrats to Narl and Fala and thanks to all who participated!

We are also well on our way to level 18 as a guild. We hit level 17 a few days ago and Crempuff was nice enough to send me a screenshot. Thanks!

With level 17 we now have instant mail between guild members. That's definitely been a nice perk.

We're making good progress on our road to level 25 and lion mounts. Thanks all for your hard work on this.

Onward!

Pink Robot No Match for Force Recon

Koriander — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 21:54:08 -0000

Posted 04/10/2011 04:54 PM by Koriander.

The Wrath Raiding Wrap-Up is still in the works and should be posted soon, but here's another update on the Cataclysm Raiding.

The Set Team has been continuing to do raiding. We'd been working on Omnitron every raid week after we'd killed Magmaw. We had a couple of raid nights off in Mar, but worked on Omnitron some more and on the last possible try on March 28th, we downed him! Thanks to those who came out to help us this night - Donus, Xassana, and Aridonna. And thanks to the Set Team Members - Nestra, Nathelien, Falarelle, Valasca, Terreis, McSquizzie (and me) for their continued hard work and perseverance.

Here's a picture of us by one of the corpses of Trons:

The following raid week, on Apr 3, 2011, we went straight to Halfus to begin learning this encounter. This Raid Instance - Bastion of Twilight, has significantly more trash than Blackwing Decent. We made our way through the trash and began to learn the Halfus fight. Halfus does not come alone. He has a total of 5 drakes that could be used in the encounter. Only 3 of these are active each week and every raid week, these drakes are a different combination, so you will never see the same 3 drakes up two raid weeks in a row! In addition, he has another friend, a proto-behmoth, that is shooting at us during the encounter.

Each of the three active drakes in the encounter start out being caged/chained. We must release them from their bonds in order to kill them off. For each drake released, the damage to Halfus is increased by 100%. This is significant, so we must release as many as we can handle to get this damage increase. Also, each drake, when alive, gives a buff to Halfus or the proto-behemoth. However, if the drake is dead (released and then defeated), they'll provide a debuff to Halfus or the proto-behemoth, making it easier for us to survive and kill him.

On the night of our first kill, we encountered the Nether Scion, Storm Rider, and The Time Warden.

I'm extremely pleased to say that after about 45 minutes of attempts on him, less than 1/2 way through our raid night, we defeated him.

We've now begun to learn Conclave of the Winds in the Throne of the Winds Raid Instance. We'll also start planning for the next encounters as well. Hope to have more to report soon!

Kori

Level 16!

Nestra — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 22:42:42 -0000

Posted 04/08/2011 05:42 PM by Nestra.

Our push to move up guild levels has paid off again. We made it to level 16 on Tuesday night, just a week after hitting level 15. Thanks again to all for pushing to get these levels faster.

Here's the image of the big moment:

We also have been working on getting other guild achievements as well. On Wednesday Narlexia ran his usual weekly raid event and we were able to get 10 guild members into Malygos to work on the You Don't Have An Eternity - Guild Edition achievement. We got it on the first try. Congrats to all and thanks!

Then, for good measure, we all headed to Sarth 3D to get another mount.

Remember to sign up for these runs if you would like a chance to participate in these events. It's exciting to get guild achievements and it's also an opportunity to get justice points for your mains or alts.

Set Team Cataclysm Raiding Started

Koriander — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 16:49:15 -0000

Posted 03/05/2011 11:49 AM by Koriander.

I plan to post a review of the rest of Wrath raiding in the next few weeks, but life has been quite busy lately. However I didn't want to delay this news update by too long.

The Set Team was a bit tired after Wrath raiding. We pushed hard and achieved pretty much everything we wanted to. So we took our time prepping for raiding in Cata. We spent our time leveling and enjoying the new lore and new lands, then we spent more time learning our classes all over again, esp with some of the significant changes that came with Cataclysm (or right before). We started to complete quest zones, gather gear from dungeons and heroic dungeons, work on crafting or obtaining crafted gear.

Now we're back with a vengeance. We worked toward getting our gear to the 342+ range, and first entered Blackwing Decent on Feb 20th. We'll continue our tradition of raiding 2 nights a week at this time. The first fight we decided to tackle was Magmaw. There are only 2 sets of trash before you can get right into the boss fight. The first one is no problem, the 2nd one is a pair of mobs, that should die as close together in time as possible because one enrages once the other dies. With the trash out of the way, we spent the next several days learning the fight, and practicing.

One of the crazy things to note about this fight is that the entire floor over 20 yards away from Magmaw's head is considered his body, so it is very easy for ranged to accidently trigger the boss. We've tested this floor boss and he has caused us a few wipes.

During the Magmaw fight, there are a lot of adds that spawn that require control and fast killing, then a good deal of damage done to the raid that the healers had to adjust to. In addition, every so often, the boss eat the current tank, causing the tank to take an enormous amount of damage and to get a debuff reducing armor significantly. Also, during this time, 2 members of the raid must work to target a spoke on the ground and try to pin Magmaw's head to it.

If this is done, there is a short period of time with no damage to the raid and a reduction in Magmaw's armor, where we can do significant damage to him. Then we return to phase 1 and the adds until we get to the impale again.

On the night on Feb 28th, only our 4th night of raiding this XPac, we were able to defeat Magmaw.

Here's a picture of us by his corpse:

It was nice that it was our first attempt of the night as well. That gave us plenty of time to head on over to Omnotron Defense System, AKA Tron Council to test this encounter out. This fight actually is a rotating set of 4 "trons" up. One is active at the start of the fight, then approximately 1 minute in a second tron activates and for the rest of the fight at least 2 are up at a time. Each one has different types of damage (fire, arcane, nature) and abilities, which range from adds that spawn to a major conal effect like a flame thrower targeted at a raid member.

We were able to spend about an hour on this encounter. However with 25 minutes left in our 2 hour raid window, I realized that we had Tol Barad, and thus Baradin Hold, the new Wintergrasp and Vault of Cataclysm. I rushed everyone over there. We killed a few trash mobs and then were looking at Argaloth himself.

This fight was a fast one for us and a few minutes shy of midnight, Argaloth also lay dead at our feet as you can see in the picture below.

We've obviously got a long way to go and a lot of progress to catch up on, but we are willing to in our Force Recon way to continue to strive to do better and work towards the goals we have set out for ourselves.

Glory of the Ulduar Raider

Nestra — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 23:32:03 -0000

Posted 11/20/2010 06:32 PM by Nestra.

Kori likes to set big goals for our raiding team. In BC she pushed us all to get the Zul'Aman Bear Mounts. We humored her and were quite surprised when we actually got them.

In Wrath, we got such a head start on raiding that we were able to set multiple goals. Our three biggest goals were:

1. Sarth 3D
2. Kill the Lich King
3. Get the achievement Glory of the Ulduar Raider, and the mount that results from that

I'm pleased to report that on Monday 11/8/2010, we were finally able to complete the remaining step for Glory of the Ulduar Raider. We had practiced on One Light in the Darkness for months off and on, but had stepped up our practices after the 4.0 patch, in fear that the mount would be taken away pre-Cataclysm.

On that Monday, we calmly stepped inside Yogg-Saron's mind, and killed him.

Here's the achievements we got.

We then went on to face Algalon, after taking a 15 minute break to read the strategy. Algalon despawns an hour after you first engage him, so we went to see him mainly to learn the fight for another day. We got him to 27% before quitting due to general raid-wide exhaustion.

Here's a shot of the beginning of the Algalon fight. It's a beautiful room and an interesting fight and we look forward to killing him soon.

A few of us gathered in Dalaran for a screenshot of the Rusted Proto-Drake that we got for completing Glory of the Ulduar Raider. Here we are:

Thanks to everyone for working so hard on this. I'm quite happy to have achieved the goal of seeing all the raiding content for Wrath. We even got a chance to see many of the fights in Heroic mode. I look forward to much more in Cataclysm.

More Set Team Raiding News from ObSanct, Ulduar, and ICC

Koriander — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:12:08 -0000

Posted 12/15/2009 06:12 PM by Koriander.

Set Team Kills All Regular Ulduar Bosses, Starts Icecrown Citadel in the Dungeon's First Release Week, Begins Farming for Sarth 3D Drakes, and More

Yogg Down!

Well, it's been a while since I've had time to write, but with so many exciting achievements and so much good work, I had to take some time to post a few items. The FR Set Team triumphantly completed all the normal bosses and wings in Ulduar, with the crowning achievement being the defeat of Yogg Saron on Nov 23, 2009. We worked on him for months, but were persistent, and that persistence paid off!

He is a very complicated fight with 3 phases. In the first phase, the mobs we face blow up and do AOE damage to everyone near them. In order to progress to the next phase, we have to cause a set amount of damage to Sara, an NPC, in the middle of the room. This meant grabbing adds and dpsing them down next to Sara as these explosions are the only things that damage her.

In the second phase, we are faced with Yogg's Tentacles and Brains. To get to phase 3, we have to do a certain amount of damage to Yogg's brain. However, there are various obstacles in the way of this. First are Tentacles that we need to DPS down - 3 different types of tentacles with different abilities, including one type which places curse, poison, magic, and disease debuffs on us. It's a cleansing frenzy! At specific times, portals open to Yogg's brain. In these areas, there are "illusions" to dps down first while avoiding the "gaze" of some mobs that cause us to lose "sanity". Once the adds are down, then we gain access into Yogg's brain, the only place to damage the brain directly. However, this is all on a time limit and if you don't exit these areas fast enough or you lose all your sanity, you proceed to become mind controlled and kill your friends (Mr. Nath who has the highest kill count for Friendly Fire! LOL).

Finally in the third phase, more guardians spawn which must be killed while also dping Yogg himself. In addition to this, more sanity issues! But we made it with most of our sanity intact! Grats for a job well done!!! Here is a picture of us:

Here are shots of us with the Keepers and the defeated General, those defeated along the way to Yogg. With the Keepers, when enough damage is done to them, they are restored from their mind controlled states and will stand to help you in the fight against Yogg. They stand ready with us:

Hodir:

Freya:

Thorim:

Mimiron:

General:

1st 2 bosses in ICC Defeated!

On Dec 14, 2009, we began Icecrown Citadel in its first week of release. We only had 1 day this raid week, BUT we certainly made the most of it! It was a packed night, where we grabbed another Sarth mount (yippee! it was mine!), got the raid quest done, and then also made significant progress in ICC.

After Sarth and U10, we rushed over to ICC. There we cleared some trash, set off some traps, wiped a few times, and faced Lord Marrowgar, the first boss of the first floor of ICC. He has abilities similar to other fights we've done before - Kill the spike that is doing damage to the raid member and freezing him/her, get out of the firewall, tanks stand together for the cleave, watch the whirlwind. It was a bit chaotic, but we did manage to 1-shot him. Here we are with Lord Marrowgar's corpse:

We then proceeded to Lady Deathwhisper. After clearing her trash, we started to move into position and somehow errantly pulled her. It was unexpected and we fought bravely, but she eventually took too many of us down. We revised our strategies and ran in. There are two different types of adds that can transform to doing more damage if they are not dpsed down fast enough. One type of add must be killed with Physical DPS and one with Caster DPS. There are also various curses and such. In our 2nd attempt ever on her, we were triumphant! We were so excited (but had so little raid time left) many ran off to see the next encounter, the gunship battle! Some ran back (err...fell back), and we took a quick screenshot:

The 1 attempt we had at the Gunship battle was chaotic. We had only about 12 minutes to clear trash and try it. We ran over and I VERY quickly gave abbreviated directions to the three subgroups within our raid. Needless to say, we ran into some crazy issues. (Why is she wearing that jet pack that way? How do I use this jet pack? Wait! Don't go there without the Tank! Yes, please kill these that are aboard our ship and killing us. Shoot that mage!) It was a lot of fun, and we look forward to going back!

Defeat of Sarth with All Drakes Up!

On Sept 25, 2009, we once again attempted Sarth with all 3 drakes up. We had been doing this on and off for some time, but on the 25th, we were victorious! Here is a shot of us with the defeated Sarth and some of our achievements scrolling up on screen:

Since then, we've been working to get everyone on the team a mount. We've gotten 8, and have just 3 more to go!

Soon we'll be able to regale you with more of our adventures in Icecrown Citadel.

Kori

Karazhan in Costume

Nestra — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:10:44 -0000

Posted 11/10/2009 01:10 PM by Nestra.

On Halloween morning we assembled at the door of Medivh's tower to exorcise some ghosts - oh, and to get an achievement. Most everyone was in costume, which lent a festive air.

It took us two hours to finish, mainly because we kept having to run around for quest turn-ins and because we kept getting lost. It's amazing to me that after running this weekly for over a year in Burning Crusade, I had forgotten so many things about the bosses. Amusingly enough, the main thing I forgot was how many of them were immune to taunt, which led to a near-wipe on the Prince after he decided to enfeeble and kill Valaevil.

All in all, we had a great time. My thanks go out to the attendees: Amareec, Antropos, Blueberi, Mariance, Miicha, Narlexia, Valaevil, and Xassana.

I'm still planning to put up a run for AQ40 but the holidays are making my schedule crazy for the foreseeable future. But that will be forthcoming, never fear!

Blackwing Lair

Nestra — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:25:04 -0000

Posted 10/28/2009 12:25 PM by Nestra.

Thanks to those who came to BWL a few weeks ago. Mariance was kind enough to tell us the real strategies for each fight and then we mostly just zerged each boss. It was great to finally see Nefarian and get the achievement. That fight must have been killer at level 60!

Here we are with the defeated Nefarian:

I still plan to put up an AQ40 run so we can complete the classic raider achievement. That will probably be in the next two weeks so look for it.

Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj

Nestra — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:01:41 -0000

Posted 09/29/2009 10:01 PM by Nestra.

We ventured into the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj last Saturday. The day turned into more of an extended skirmish than a battle, as the resistance we met was much more feeble than we had anticipated. Within 40 minutes all the bosses had fallen to our onslaught. Guild members Falarelle, Fazia, Koriander, Mariance, Mixtel, Narlexia, Nathelien, and Nestra were in attendance. Congrats to all on your achievements!

Here we are beside the body of Ossirian the Unscarred, on some of our favorite mounts:

Thanks for making it a fun raid and keep an eye out for more runs!