Friday Wrap-Up: Boss downs, Recruiting, and an additional posting day?

It’s that time of the week again! Happy Friday, everyone. I hope your workday is extremely short and your weekend is full of R&R. It’s time for the Friday Wrap-Up, a weekly summary of Ephii’s debauchery and fraternizing in WoW (ha! I wish!). No rants this week though; I was too busy running heroics and trying to gear up for raids and the such and the quickest way to do it was with guildies instead of PUGs (but the rants are entertaining, aren’t they?).

What I’ve accomplished this week:

1. Naxxramas 10-man raid // Arachnid Quarter & Vault of Archavon // Archavon the Stone Watcher

   I spent a little bit of time in Naxx while playing vanilla WoW. My faint memories of it include wiping endlessly on the Four Horsemen in a 40-man raid on a mage. I didn’t stick with that guild (or WoW) for too long after that. Catalyst took our first foray into Naxx-10 on Tuesday after the reset and although I didn’t have any good feelings about Naxx, it almost felt like going home – this bittersweet sensation of returning from whence you came, awash with waves of nostalgic frustration and aggravation mixed with a sense of knowing that through it all, you still loved every single minute of it. Then you realize a lot of things changed while you were gone and for better or worse, it’s really not the same place anymore but the people in it are still the same.

   What am I rambling on about? We were able to down Anub’Rekhan and Grand Widow Faerlina after 1-2 wipes on each. We had a late start due to missing a tank so our raiding time was cut down by an hour so we didn’t get to down Maexxna… :(

   • Anub’Rekhan

     We had trouble until our MT learned how to kite him during Locust Swarm, which has a 30-yd range in all directions around the boss. Healers should run ahead with the tank, out of AOE range, and keep him up in case he gets hit (he shouldn’t if he’s kiting correctly). DPS should stay in the middle and to minimize damage taken, everyone should stand so that no one is standing in front of someone else to avoid Impale hitting more than 1 person.

   • Grand Widow Faerlina

     Wiped twice on her due to downing the adds prematurely and her Frenzy butthurt our tank pretty severely. We eventually just put our top DPS on the adds with our OT. Our DPS would get the add to ~50% and then switch back to Faerlina. Our warrior OT was able to get the add down to about 10-20% by the time Frenzy was up, at which time the entire raid would down the add to silence her Frenzy. If you down the adds prematurely, you WILL wipe. Healers just need to stay out of AOEs (Rain of Fire, Blizzard, etc.) that the adds cast.

   We eventually gave up on Maexxna (Matticus wrote up the healer strategy for Maexxna on 10-mans already so go here) and headed to the Vault of Archavon while we still had Wintergrasp for another 15 minutes. Successfully downed him after 1-2 wipes (1st one was due to the Enrage timer, 2nd one was intentionally wiped because we knew we wouldn’t make the Enrage timer and get another try in).

   • Archavon the Stone Watcher

     He’s a simple tank-and-spank fight. Your MT and OT will taunt off each other. He will also randomly target a person and hit him/her with Stone Shards (ah! the sky is falling!). The Stone Shards won’t kill anyone so the target can just be healed through it (including you). Run out of his cloud though – that will kill you. He’s on an Enrage timer so this is a DPS fight.

   We will be going back into Naxx tomorrow to see what else we can finish up. We’ll clear at least Arachnid Quarter, that’s for sure.

2. Catalyst is recruiting healers & DPS to fill up our 25-man roster!

   Not sure how successful recruiting on the blog is going to be but it doesn’t hurt to try, I guess. Shattered Halls is a low pop PVP server where Horde outnumbers Alliance at least 2:1 (the rumor is there are more Blood Elves than Alliance). The server is really small and it takes a really long time to PUG a 5-man dungeon if you’re going to go at it alone. Yeah, the server pretty much sucks. Why would anyone want to transfer here?

   Because Catalyst rocks! That’s why! Heh. We were the best Alliance guild on the server as recently as April! As summer hit, some of our core raiders stopped logging on, two of our healers transferred (TWO!), and we just couldn’t pick up any more people. It makes me sad to think back on it. The guild used to be twice as big and did awesome things like downing 4 SSC bosses our first time in there.

   Why would you want to be a part of something that will require so much work to rebuild when you can just go to a high pop server with progression light years ahead of ours? Because we have great people! Our core members from leveling 1-70 and Kara progression are still here, loyal beyond all belief, and we all have hope that we will be able to hold our own 25-man raids again. We’ve been around for a year and a half so we’ve definitely got the foundations of a stable leadership. Long PUG times are no concern for us because our members are always up to run dungeons (normal and heroic).

   Right now, we have 15 hardcore, active members. It’s too many people for 1 10-man raid and not enough for 2. If we just get a few more warm, able bodies, we will be able to hold 2 raids and build for the 25-man raid from there. Catalyst is only willing to grow to about 30 truly active members to guarantee everyone in the guild has a raiding spot.

   Our website is http://catalyst-sh.wowstead.com if you are interested in transferring or re-rolling. Our FAQ is contained here.

3. Wednesday posts also?

   I’ve recently had these great ideas for posts but I simply can’t fit it into the Mon & Fri posting schedule. On Mondays, I really want to feature mods because I find them extremely helpful and they truly enhance your playing experience when it takes care of simple things that you really wish you didn’t have to worry about.

   On Fridays, so many things happen during the week that I need to write about them and share my experiences with you guys! I feel like I need an extra day where I can just write about… Well… Playing a priest! I’ve got a post on glyph selection per spec that I’ve been meaning to put up but I don’t like disrupting a predetermined schedule unless I have to (i.e. Thanksgiving week). Sorry, I’m kind of OCD…

   What do you guys think?