WoWGrrl's World

Last night, the Zul'jin server was in awesome condition for raiding.

Only one disconnect (a Rogue who would disconnect as soon as he targetted Emalon), no lag, no being booted out of the instance - only beautiful, beautiful raiding.

Taking On Emalon The Storm Watcher On Normal Mode

I got up from my pre-raid nap with an hour to go before raid invites, and when I got to my computer and looked at who was on my private Vent server, I noticed one of my raiding guildmates who had been trying to lead the Emalon10 run the past few days was in my "Workshop" room with me.

"Hello!" says I.

And then while I'm logging in to my Holy Priest, my raiding buddy gives me the low-down on how many people are already gathered for this pre-official-raid attempt - looks like we're already pretty much ready to go!

I love raids that are pretty much ready to go by the time I join, and Guild Raids are regularly like that, even on off-nights.

Reason #243 why I like my guild, I suppose :)

Patch 3.1 Introduces A Summoning Stone At VoA

Vault of Archavon was one of those annoying raids to get to, specifically because quite often, even when we controlled Wintergrasp, the portal in Dalaran - which was supposed to be open when we control WG - wasn't there.

Now they've moved the Horde portal in Dalaran slightly (into the room to the left of where it used to be, at the top of the stairs of the Sanctuary) and have introduced a Summoning Stone inside the main Wintergrasp building, to the left of the portal which leads into Vault of Archavon.

Our guildmates are all quite used to getting to raid spots on their own, but because we were doing a pre-official-raid run and had limited time, we were also quite happy to be able to summon the last couple of people as soon as they logged in.

Battling The New Trash

The new trash in the new Right Wing in VoA isn't overwhelming, but like the Gargoyles in Naxxramas that need to be burned down quickly once they emote something important at a low percentage of health, these trash mobs need special attention too.

The difference is that unlike the Gargoyles which just get a hardened shell and are almost impossible to do damage to for a while, the trash in the Emalon wing of Vault of Archavon grow and grow and grow until at 10 stacks of growth, they overload and explode.

Explosions are bad, mmkay? They hurt the whole raid ;)

So, if you're DPS, save your cooldowns for when the Tempest Minions begin to overcharge, so you can burn them down quickly and save your healers a lot of work :)

Battling Emalon The Storm Watcher

Emalon himself has four Tempest Minions as his bodyguards, and during our 10 man attempt, it was the tanking coordinations in handling the four adds and the extra adds that got spawned during the fight that were our biggest challenges.

Because of course, the moment an add got loose, it jumped on a healer, and since for our 10 man attempt we only had two healers, both of us Priests who wear toilet paper for gear (pretty toilet paper, but still that protective), it didn't take long for one of us healers to get taken out.

The first fight, the other Priest got nailed and while I was able to solo heal for a couple minutes afterwards, it wasn't long enough to defeat the encounter. I ran out of mana and out of mana-regenerating tricks, and then a tank went down, and a wipe quickly followed.

Noticable Improvements To Attempts

One thing I absolutely LOVE about new content is that while our first wipe is generally laughable and terrible, each consecutive try is a hundred times better than the try before - we make such great strides between attempts!

It's very rewarding.

Yay For Lots of Damage, Lots of Healing

We completed the 10-man encounter after a couple of initial wipes while we got ourselves coordinated with tanking and with the burning-down of mobs that Emalon himself targetted for Overcharging.

It's great to see that Emalon drops Emblem of Valor in 10-man!

Of course I guess that makes sense since Emalon on Heroic mode drops Emblems of Conquest :)

Then, when the Official (25-man) Raid was compiled (again, with 4 people on overflow) we headed straight back into VoA to take out both Emalon and Archavon.

Both times, I was thrilled with the fact that I actually have to work on Mana Efficiency again! If I didn't pay attention to when I used my cooldowns, they weren't available for the second time I needed them, and I flopped around a little bit like a fish out of water.

"Can't heal... buh, now what do I do... oh hey I can toss another heal, but buh, I can't heal now... dum dee dum, OH! I can cast another one!"

Despite feeling a bit helpless for a while, I really did appreciate the fact that I'm back to having to worry about my Mana again, because for most of the Official Raid Nights over the last month or more, I haven't even been picking up a stack of Mage Food for an entire 25 man run.

Finally Got Loot Of Of Archavon

The loot that dropped off of Emalon was Mage gear, Hunter gear, and some gear that spanned across 2-3 of classes - but none of it Priest gear.

So, I was glad when we headed over to down Archavon to take him down, since I hadn't managed to get any PvP gear from there in all the times we downed him, each and every week.

And lo and behold, BOTH the PvP Chest and Gloves dropped for Priest, and nobody else wanted any! Score :)

Now I don't care so much if we take down Archavon, although the extra badges are certainly nice.

Next up, Ulduar!

After finishing off the Vault of Archavon, we all loaded up and headed over to Ulduar for our second night's attempt on the Flame Leviathan, and later on, to Razorscale.

But I'll write about that one later!

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Related posts:

1. Emalon the Storm Watcher, Dual-spec'd Shaman, and Ulduar
2. Taking On Koralon the Flame Watcher In VoA
3. How To Destroy Koralon The Flame Watcher

Tagged as: archavon, archavon the stone watcher, emalon, emalon the storm watcher, naxxramas, summoning stone, tempest minion, why i love my guild, zul'jin horde raiding