River of Souls raids

On 6/4/2011, we made our first push as a guild into River of Souls. Although we did not down any of the bosses, we did manage to clear the first of the trash all the way to the first Dark Foci. We were also able to make a few attempts on the Foci and we learned a lot about what to expect from that encounter.

I would like to thank Wildflower and Reivyn especially for their help. Reivyn was our main tank and Wildflower was able to give us an excellent overview of strategy for the Dark Focus. Considering this was our first foray into the dungeon as a guild, and we are definitely undergeared for the area I want to congratulate all those who had the courage and tenacity to show up and die courageously. Repeatedly. As I said, we were able to down the trash and in this raid that is far more difficult than the word "trash" would otherwise indicate.

Among the lessons I took from the raid, I think it would be best if I had a co-leader for these raids. My schedule is pretty hectic and as any raid leader can tell you there's a lot to coordinate in a small amount of time on a raid. We're going to try to schedule these for twice a week (at least to start, possibly extending to 3 times a week). Nobody has to attend all of the events but the more experience a person has with the area the faster and more effective we'll be.

While we are in the "progression" phase of raiding loot will likely not be a serious consideration simply because there will be very few pieces that drop until we are taking down the bosses (including the Dark Focus). When loot does drop, we will be using the Family rules.

I will not be doing a gear check, but I will be asking for your primary raid stat (Toughness for tanks, Hit/Focus for others). This will help in assigning tanking duties. Healers (other than chloros) don't have a needed Hit/Focus but should be advised that these mobs hit HARD and heals will be needed.

My intention with setting up this raid is to make it a more Family-friendly introduction to the raid dungeons. We're starting with River of Souls instead of Greenscale's Blight because it has not been as thoroughly covered and quite frankly it seems the general consensus is if you can go through RoS you can go through GSB (in terms of gear and attitude). Once you've learned the mechanics in one raid setting you can take what you've learned to the other raid dungeons. This will eventually mean that we will be one of the very few guilds in the game that can field multiple raids in some of the most difficult content in the game but that's a long-term goal. In the meantime, come join us in learning and dying in River of Souls!

*in his best Legolas voice* You have my bow! It was a good first attempt - I look forward to the follow-up this evening. My Hit rating is sitting at 186 currently - it's tough to get a T2 group these days.

I am going to setup on the calendar multiple events spread across different days/times specifically to take people through T2 runs in order to help with getting everyone geared for these raid outings. I hope the variety of times and days will allow the maximum number of people a chance to go on these runs. I recommend that everyone going take the time to do several things: ~ SIGN UP on the calendar event that you wish to participate in. I will look to take those people first and then fill in slots on the runs as needed to successfully complete them. ~ Rune your gear, in every slot possible. The amount of stat boost you gain from taking the time to rune your gear is significant, up to a 25%+ boost overall. When you are trying to do your best in raiding dungeons, that difference is significant. Take advantage of the Marketplace the family uses - you don't have to use it just for fancy purple items, use it for -anything- you may need! ~ Find out which of the faction quartermasters sell stat food that you can take stacks of with you on raid outings. For example, the Wyrmbane Spire quatermaster sells stat food for casters that provides a +10 intelligence boost for 30 minutes for only about 1g. All of these foods stack with any self buffs, potions, or other buffs you may get and make a difference in your performance! ~ Look through all of the posts available that show Best in Slot (often abbreviated as BiS) gear options, what the stats are they provide, and most importantly where to get them from. That will help you map out a path for gearing yourself up that feels a lot less like luck of the draw and much more like focused decision making. With the changes in 1.2 for many of the classes the best in slot gear is actually the stuff that is sold by the Elder gear vendor in Sanctum using Plaques of Achievement as the purchasing currency. BUT. There are also a lot of item drops from T2 runs that can substitute for the T2 vendor gear, so it helps to do your homework ahead of time. I will post a list of links to BiS gear separately. ~ Consider doing T2 runs using the role you are normally expected to do in a raid setting. If you are normally DPS, then DPS -- but if you are normally a healer in raids, go as a healer in T2 runs as well. This provides you a chance to learn how to react quickly to the different kinds of situations that come up in a raid setting and allows you to get comfortable with your spec and setup. For example, if you are a cleric that normally heals in raids perhaps don't run T2s as the tank. :) I am really excited to see so many reaching 50 and wanting to progress through the end game content. I think spending some time running T2s on a regular basis will really help those who want to go to the next level of PvE content be successful.

» Edited on: 2011-06-05 11:32:17

» Edited on: 2011-06-05 11:45:57

Wildflower covered a lot of good topics, but I wanted to throw two cents in on the subject of focus/hit. If you have less than 200 focus/hit, you're going to miss. A lot. And if you're missing, it doesn't matter how awesome your stats are. To that end, you should, uh, focus on getting to 200 focus/hit. Two easy ways to do this is via the help of runes and/or easily obtainable gear. FOCUS RUNES ============ There are 4 locations which can take focus/hit runes: Head Helmet 2H Weapon -or- 1H Weapon & offhand Ranged If you put on your good focus/hit gear and are less than 200, you can use runes to get to 200. The (fairly inexpensive) runes you want to use are: 1. Radiant Sharp (Accurate) Rune: +18 focus (hit) to Helmet/Legs 2. Blazing Savvy (Precise) Rune: +17 focus (hit) to 2H weapon 3. Blazing Savvy (Precise) Runeshard: +9 focus (hit) to 1H, offhand, ranged. These are the blue quality runes. The green quality ones are Radiant, and the purple quality ones are Incandescent. Most of these runes can be ordered through the Marketplace. Or if you're in a hurry you can contact your local Runecrafter - they're easy to make so you don't really have any excuse for not having these if you need the stat. By using these 5 runes, you can add 62 (63 if using 1H/Offhand) focus/hit to your gear. EASY-TO-GET FOCUS GEAR ====================== Artificers can make the following: Platinum Necklace (25 focus) Platinum Gorget (24 hit) And if you have Decorated Order of Mathos rep, you can buy a +20 focus/hit ring from the vendor at Zareph's Return.

during the last RoS raid, I parsed the log and overall my accuracy was 93% with 113 Hit (as a tank). Overall, I believe Mythgarr was 98%. That extra 5% may not seem like much but keep in mind that's just accuracy and just about every boss in RoS has a dps timer of some sort. For example, the Dark Focus summons a Focus of Corruption during each wave that channels a spell that wipes the raid if it completes. The mob has around 53k hitpoints, and I don't know how long it takes for the ability to complete but you can do the math.

I was just about to parse my log (which I badly need to truncate - it's over 350MB currently) - thanks for saving me the trouble. Getting some solid T2 weapons in my case will take care of both boosting my hit by the requisite 14 as well as likely boosting my Dex, Atk Power, and Phys Crit.

Not to speak on Elsimer's behalf, but for the last RoS run there was a great deal of confusion about this outing. This is not in any way tied to, associated with, or lead by Bentmer and his Greeenscale/River of Soul outings that he does with a mixture of Gaiscioch members and others from the server community. These events are on the family Event calendar with sign-up available to all who are level 50 and feel they are geared enough to give it a try. Please do not confuse these 2 very different types of raiding outings and be aware that once a boss is downed in one of these runs, you then become 'locked' to that instance of the dungeon until it resets - which can be 5 - 7 days time. To see your personal lockout information, just type /dungeoninfo in game. Bentmer let me know he was flooded with /tells and questions about this outing and I hope this clarifies he is not associated with Elsimer lead events.

I agree with Wildflower (thank you for the detailed layout on how to up your hit percentage). Thank you for the opportunity to run RoS last week and look forward to more here in the near future. PS. I got my hit up to 222 with runes, so I'm ready to go on marksman or bard.

I've posted the next RoS date on the calendar. As Wildflower said, these aren't associated in any way with Bentmer's GSB group. I had noticed awhile ago that Bentmer's reserve list was long enough for a Family-specific raid. There seemed to be enough interest in building a second raid group as well, but occasionally there were people who went to GSB with Bentmer so I decided to go with RoS. This way anybody who goes with Bentmer's group to GSB can (in theory) also go with us to RoS. I could still use a co-leader for these events. My work schedule (and family schedule) can get pretty tricky and I'd like to be able to put these in at regular times without having to worry about canceling if there's a family emergency on my end at the last minute. I'd imagine the East Coast people would like to see some raid times that are a tad earlier as well, but I can't guarantee that I'll be on early enough to gather a group before 6-7pm Pacific (Wednesdays are a special case for me)

Count me in please. That raid was a blast, and it is frankly a great challenge when the trash is like a boss fight in most T2. Nahli's Hit is between 205 and 225 (gear/role dependant) MDPS RDPS and bard all available

Your style didn't seem too bad the other night Katjenka. It's also a good way to work on improving your raid management abilities :-) Tues/Thur/Sat are pretty much defined as Family events. Right now we have Wednesday night for the first RoS incursion. I'm thinking if we go Friday at 6pm Pacific (that'd be 9pm Eastern) would that be too late to start for a weekend? I have my kids every other weekend or I'd say we could go Saturday afternoons...

Unfortunately, I can't post polls here. The Dungeon Demand tool only shows 15 people, with the majority looking for about 6-9pm on a Saturday. That puts it beginning at the same time as the Family rift hunt and considering many of the essence and accessory gear drops from raid/expert rifts I don't know that would be a good thing to ask people. Anybody else have any input? We need to have something for the East Coast and maybe Saturday late afternoon would work best... maybe start at 6pm same time as the rift hunt with the rationale that gearing up is something that can be done in RoS as well as with expert/raid rifts.

FYI, Raevyn will not be tanking any guild events. Don't think any more needs to be said.

Sign me up. Not sure how to add equipment stats to my character on this site....I need a PhD to figure out our site.

Under Membership, choose Edit Characters. Then click on the character's name. One of the fields will be Grade and you can choose between Warrior (0-49 Hit/Focus/Toughness), Champion(50-99),Elite(100-199), and Hero(200+). Tier 1 cap is approximately 50. Tier 2 cap is approximately 100. Tier 1 raids (GSB/RoS) cap at 150 Toughness/200 Focus/Hit. I believe Bentmer has instituted additional gear requirements for Spellpower/Attack Power since there are a number of dps timers in both GSB and RoS but I have not done so.

» Edited on: 2011-06-09 07:04:15

The cap for Hit/Focus is at 227 FYI.