Practice, Practice And More Practice
By: Mika
Raids in Guild Wars 2 are The End Content and I saw that Gaiscioch had group running raids, but as being european player usual event times aren't always working for me as most of the time events are on US primetime. So on January I started asking if there would be enough people for raids for EU primetime. After couple of weeks, we started group on Saturday 8am PST (4pm GMT). As being partly teaching group we had pretty rough start. Sure we got through to second or maybe even for third phase, but still it was pretty rough. After some time raiding on Saturdays, we changed it to happen on Sundays same time. We started to get core group for the raid. Marvelous Namrie as a tank, Glorious Kitty as a healer, Fantastic Jay as dps and Amazing Shaaba as a condition dps. Rest of the group more or less kept changing on each raid day.
However we did see constant progress and no time we started getting more and more people interested joining for raid runs even though we weren't able to beat the boss. We also did some training on lovely training room on Aerodome when that nice place was added to Guild Wars 2. Progress was constant and we started getting to phase 5 more and more. Sure there was hiccups time to time and wipe happened sooner than we wanted, but those things happens. RNG is RNG, bad placement of green circles and red seeker and you are toast. But I was confident that we are able to beat the boss some day just because seeing the progress and people willingness to make changes to their built and equipment.
So it was Sunday 24th of July and I woke up well rested little knowing what day brings. After being awake for some time I started preparing my dinner, minced meat and macaroni casserole and continued my day watching Bones and eating my dinner. Clock turned to 7am PST / 5pm GMT +3. I checked that I had my notes for Vale Guardian just in case if there is new people joining so I can explain all mechanics and I continued launching the game. Meanwhile game was loading I checked website how many people had signed up, 8 people! Nicely done guys and gals! Logged in with my revenant, Collin Brightwulf the lame dps. Sent shout on guild chat for the event and went doing my daily.
Daily done and time for start squad which was easy job as there was already 8 people joining me being 9th member so had to find only one member. We started preparation who is going to bring which character and after that we went in. Green guardian was first warmup guardian, alright watch out blue circles. And worst start what you can have, someone got teleported, aggroes Blue Guardian and bam, whole raid group down because of green circle. All I was thinking that ok so this is how it is going to be today. We rallied and sliced through 3 warmup guardians and moved towards Vale Guardian itself. Run after run we bashed our heads against the boss getting closer and closer to the end. We had fun and laughs and finally last run for the event came. And it was complete disaster. Everyone agreed ok that didn't count as run so we went again and this time run was so great that VG didn't have even health bar left and Jay was only one up and he goes down. He tries and tries throwing stones at VG, but it wasnt just enough. Some says ok one more and everyone is that alright one more time, encore!
We start the fight and everyone was pumped up, determined to wipe smirk off from Vale Guardian's face. 6.15 and we reached phase 2, not bad, but could have been better. After 1 minute phase 2 was done and it was time to start running clockwise. We continued pushing very hard on boss and hacking, smashing and throwing stuff at him. "Green, cover not gonna make it" Shaaba says. Oh no, not enough people in the circle, 2 person down, but we had 3 minutes still left. Quickly as possible we get our people up and continue whacking the boss. Next split happened on 2.48, not bad considering losing one green circle. Again 1 minute on split phase so 1.48 time to kill boss before enrage. 30 seconds left before enrage and boss still has around 3-4% of health. Time to use all the skills your character has. Everyone bombing the boss. Enrage! and the same time 5 goes down because partially missed green circle and boss's health bar cannot be seen. "Keep on fighting!" and boss goes on breakbar phase and then final hit on boss and he goes DOWN! Shouts on discord, everyone congratulating one and other. Such a joy on discord and relief that finally group has done it. Time to check achievements, ooh we got achievement no-one dying on VG fight. Awesome! and group had even 2 people who hasn't been raid before. Time to line up for group photoshoot and take that victory photo.
It is time to start research next boss fight, Gorseval. See you there, brave warriors!