How many readers of Timesink who play EQ2 have their Epic weapon? If you aren’t complete where are you in your questing progress?

I confess I am not as far as I should be. Should be? I mean up to date with the rest of my guild. My wife and I are well behind the curve with the rest of our guild. In fact I may be mistaken but we are the only 2 that don’t have them.

When they were initially released there was a mad push by most in our guild. Most times I logged in I was immediately asked to tank a heroic instance for one of my guildies to advance their progress. I always obliged and unfortunately neglected the progress of my own quest. My wife being a Defiler had an initially bugged quest that needed to be patched and then had to go into the deepest reaches of Seblis to get an update. It was tough going and it soured our desires to continue on the quest for sometime especially when a few steps included grinding faction in mind numbing repeating quests.

Lately our desire has returned to continue on slowly but surely. A very pleasant surprise was when we both got to a point when we needed an update in Chelsith. I knew nothing about this zone as my questing had never took me to this instance before. Chelsith is the lost underwater city of the Yah – Lei, a fish-man race. The whole zone radiates a green glow and stuff oozes and slimes everywhere. Almost all the architecture resembles some sort of genetalia and is prime for poopie jokes.

I have to say this is now my favorite instance to run. The design is just beautiful. It’s a tough zone, and you need a pretty competent group to get through it. With my patented “Bull in a china shop” method of tanking an Illusionist makes my life pretty sweet when I grow impatient and accidentally pull an extra mob.

I hope the screen shots I took do this zone justice.

This weekend I will continue on my quest for my Epic weapon. I have to hit Kanor’s Castle. I’m not really looking forward to it to tell the truth. It’s not one of my favorite zones. My “fondest” memory of it was when a innocent group of mere level 73-ishs decided to check it out for the first time. After about 23 wipes in the front foyer we decided to call it a night.

Saturday night grouping was interrupted by a call to the guild that our Raid Force was setting up for a pull. The intended target was a contested mob, Dominus Atrebe The Architect of Life Level 83 ^^^ X4 Epic, in Kylong Plains.

Our raid force assembled with astonishing speed, something that I have never witnessed before, and within 5 minutes we were approaching our target. Next thing we knew, a charmed Sathirian was charging toward the mob and stole it from under us.

24 stunned people followed Dominus to a set of ruins and displayed a locked icon above his name. Set in the ruins a lone Wizard and Coercer had the mob engaged in battle. Dominus was placed on one side of the ruined wall while the Wizard did AoE damage. The Coercer keeps the mob stunned and stifled to prevent Dominus from casting while charming lesser mobs in the area to beat on it. The Wizard was protected by line of sight by the wall from the epic mob’s nukes and the pathing script that the developers put into place rooted Dominus in place. Very slowly but surely the mobs strength was decreasing.

After 15 minutes into the battle the mob is was at 98% health.

In frustration guild members began to train mobs on to the Wizard while others put in petitions for exploiting and for disrupting the zone. I just sat in awe of how these 2 were taking down a mob meant for a full raid force.

I had all but figured the raid was lost and grew bored of the whole situation. That was until a GM popped into the scene. And then another GM. And then 2 more. I had never even seen a GM in game before and here were 4 of them.

Dominus was insta-killed and the Wizard and Coercer were frozen. After not too long the Wizard and Coercer duo went link dead and I later learned that they had received a 7 day ban for exploiting. I also learned that the 2 players were actually being played by the same person.

The GMs then reset the Dominus and we promptly killed it, getting mediocre loot.

This issue caused a lot of controversy on our server. If you actually want names and places it’s really easy to track down on EQ2Flames. As of writing this it’s up to 20 pages.

A number of arguments came to light.

My view on this matter is: It’s a contested mob. This is all fair. If the player that pulled this off did it by following the rules that Sony put in place, the more power to him. I do not think that this was worthy of a ban. Sure I was miffed that we got a mob pulled away from us by a group of 2, but that is the nature of contested mobs. How sweet would it have been if this guy had been camped for a week waiting for Dominus and we came along and pulled it from him.

Most in my guild thought justice was served that he got banned. They were vocal about it too. Too vocal in my opinion. They brought our guild into yet another drama on EQ2Flames and most on the server were in support of the banned player. The server channel was full of comments for almost 2 hours after the incident. I logged in the next morning and someone gave me the bird just because I had a guild tag over my name.

I totally support my guild and generally stick up for them but in this scenario the “Pirate” in me just loves the way we were owned. It’s part of the game. Contested = contest.

I wonder if the general population would have been on our side if the Wizard and Coercer were a known plat farmer? Do you think that attitudes would have been different if the duo were not from a highly respected uber guild? He is also the second most richest person in EQ2 worldwide. How is he better than the plat farmers who ninja loots or steals named mobs just to sell the drops for plat. Yes I realize he is not taking real money for the plat but he is taking away an opportunity for those that have never killed an epic mob before.

The player involved has also been involved in past exploiting, details in which I am not familiar with. Perhaps his ban was due to his past activity. My last question was why is he wasting his time on this mob designated for casual guilds? The guys and girls in his guild are routinely killing stuff I only dream of seeing. I know I wouldn’t be slumming in Kylong Plains if I had experienced the things he has experienced in the game.

What is a “proper” raid set up? Is it the perfect mix of classes, the mix of friends, making sure everyone is included, or making sure everyone in the guild is rotated fairly? If the former, there are countless threads with facts and opinions on EQ2Flames and other sites on the perfect class combination. If the later, what is fair?
I would hate to be a raid leader who has to decide who sits and who raids. The sole reason I raid nowadays is because my wife plays geared out Defiler. The only Defiler in the guild. Our guild is couples oriented where most of the people who play are husband and wife. Our raid leader often feels obligated to let the couples play together on raids otherwise giving those who would normally sit a raid spot.
Fact: Sony made Shadowknights the least desirable class to have on raids.
Fact: We have 2 SKs in our guild and I, being the less uber, am often asked to sit.
Fact: I am hooked up with a highly desirable Defiler and a raid leader who allows us to play together. Yay for me!
This last fact often makes me feel guilty for making another class who clearly is needed on the raid sit out. And this last fact has led to a tiny tidbit of guild drama that happened on our forums and in game.
The crux of the drama can be summed up in one quote:
“What kind of a raiding set up allows 2 Guardians, 2 SKs, and Bruiser to raid while sitting out a Necromancer?”
If I break it down this is what happened.
1 Guardian is our MT (need him), 1 Guardian is an officer and is learning the encounters to be MA (need him), 1 Bruiser is DPS and an officer (I guess we need him), 1 ShadowKnight is former MA and officer (I guess we need him), and 1 ShadowKnight who is poorly speced for tanking and has a hot Defiler wife (Yay for me!). On the flip side, we asked a DPS, life burning, rezzing, FDing Necro to sit.
It doesn’t take a Rocket Surgeon to see who should be sitting. I am more than willing and my feelings don’t get hurt when I am asked to sit. I watch jealously over my wife’s shoulder as she sees zones that I only wish I were playing in.
My “Finest” moment that I will never forget is when I was asked to sit out of my first DeathToll run. I was talking about it for a week before hand I was so excited that I was finally going to see this end game zone I only saw in random screenshots. At the last moment I was sat out for an empty spot because the officers decided my resists weren’t high enough and in hopes someone “better” would log in. The spot remained empty till the end of the raid. I sucked it up and laughed about it… after. This also happened the night our guild finally took Pawbuster down. BUT I AM OVER IT!!!!
Issues like this seem to bring the worst out of our guild members. Feelings get hurt and people type with out thinking first. Going into a raid tonight the issue is still up in the air.
Should be interesting…

Being third plate fighter in a raiding guild places me in an interesting position. Not Main Tank and not Main Assist. It puts me in the awkward position of having to pick up adds if things go wrong and usually puts me in the caster group with no fighter buffs in a DPS spec with DPS gear equipped.. Luckily, a Shadow Knight has damage spells which can take advantage of the occasional Troubador that joins the group. That is my usual placement in our raiding structure.
Last night as we were beginning our assault on The Temple of Kor-Sha, word came down that our usual MA would not be available. I didn’t have to worry about taking over MA duties because our Bruiser would be able to take that role. I was then moved up into the group that our usual MA occupied.
Now, DPS for me has always been a challenge. I have to work HARD for it. Refining my gear, maximizing spell order, making sure to debuff before throwing a certain spell to maximize the damage. I had never made the top 6 positions of the Damage parse ever. On this night I learned that it isn’t what you know, it’s who you know. With a Dirge in my group along with an Illusionist, a Fury (Agitate me!), a Mystic (Bolster!), and a Swashbuckler I was 4th on the Damage Parse list. All time highs. I was drunk with power giddily laughing at the destruction I was dishing out.
All at once as I was in my glory…
“Warghoul, we are going to need you to MA tank!”
“But, but, but… “
I was maliciously thrown into the secondary group and buffed for hit points and defence. I stripped off my DPS gear and threw on my Tank gear. I stared with regret at my AA spec and wished that I had used my respect mirror to spec for Hate.
The first pull on trash went fairly smoothly. Losing aggro wasn’t really an issue as our Guardian could take the mob at will and he did. Feeling confident we went into the next battle. This was my first named mob I had tanked in Tier 8. I pulled Uthak the Cruel while our Guardian kept Aktar the Dark occupied and our Bruiser plucked the mezzed adds one by one. I popped every trick in my SK arsenal to keep Uthak on me, losing aggro only once and yelped for my Dirge to “Magnetic Note” it back to me. It went like clockwork and before too long the encounter ended with us being the victors. Our luck continued all the way to the twins Zarda and Kodux.
Kodux was my target. The goal was to keep the twins separated and keep their health with in 10 percent of each other. All the while aggro switches from random target to random target teleporting the victim away from the tank.
To sum up the long battle up into a sentence: My throat was sore from the endless string of profanities that spewed from my mouth as I think I had aggro for about a total of 10 seconds throughout the long fight. Despite my frustration the twins fell on our first pull.
We went toward the Overking and sized up the encounter. We have not yet beaten this boss and that night we failed again realizing quickly that we needed our standard raiding force and ended the raid early to leave a nearly empty zone for us to return.

“Your job is to click on the statues.” Seems simple doesn’t it? Let me break down what I really had to do.

Our raiding force decided to finally enter Venril Sathir’s Lair deep in Seblis. Feeling empowered after doing quite well in the Temple of Kor-Sha, beating everything except for The Overking, Selrach Di’Zok, Venril was a target that we were curious about and thought we would take a crack at. So there I was staring into Venril’s throne room watching Venril himself floating 3 feet off the ground with his arms folded glaring at our raid force.

“Just run up to him, Feign Death, and the encounter will reset so you can set up camp behind the boss and be in clicking position to the statues.”

I did exactly as instructed and there I was actually 2 feet away from Venril looking at 2 tiny statues tucked neatly behind an alter. “The statues will turn green at which point you need to click on them to disarm them. This will happen through the whole encounter so you have to be Mr. Johnny-on-the-spot.”

I moused over the statues for practice.

“Everybody in the raid MUST keep their power between 40% and 60% at all times, other wise Venril will cast a shit storm on the raid.” Basically, during this fight I would have no clue as to what the rest our raid was doing. I can only hear Ventrillo and the sounds of battle behind me. My focus was the statues and my power. I heard the call for the first pull. I put on my “Sprint” and watched my power begin to drain. All at once, both statues began to glow green and vibrate. Smokey fumes erupted from them like an old steam pipe ready to blow. I disarmed them.

“Warghoul! WTF! Your power is way below 40%!”

In my clicking haste I forgot to turn off my power draining Sprint. I turned it off and clicked my Manastone which didn’t do a whole lot so I clicked my Power Shard increasing my power a little past 40%.

“WTF! Adds! Warghoul! Did you disarm the statues?”

Apparently I had missed the statues changing green in my concern for keeping my power levels in check. The statues were farting noxious gas and convulsing, “Adds” spawned and systematically assaulted my guildmates. I watched the raid window as my comrades fell one by one and their screams of pain echoed behind me. I clicked the statues frantically as if my late disarming would take away the previous 10 seconds. I sheepishly apologized to my guildmates and stated that clicking statues isn’t as easy as it sounds.

After countless pulls and “Mendor Bots”, the raid was called leaving Venril victorious and our guild’s spirits in the shitter. Various reasons were had for the wipes but I can only take credit for the first one.