Logged in today in the tired old LGuk. The zone was mostly empty, probably due to the opening of Velious. More people playing their mains over there and more exp zones open means more freedom here in the classic zones! Checked out LFG, and put together a group in short order. Headed over to the frenzy camp, and cleared out some froggies. I was not able to find an enchanter (which was astounding), so I grabbed a paladin to help offtank. This worked pretty well, and though we lacked CC, we were still able to get a good killing pace going. Eventually a group member had to leave, and a chanter was available, so we filled up with some CC. We decided to move to the hamlord camp (hand, arch magus, lord). The killing went pretty well, though we had trouble with root on our pullers and had a few mishaps. Luckily having a paladin turned out be a blessing, and a couple rez spells kept our down time to a minimum. We ended up getting quite a few named, though we didn’t get any of the high ticket loot.
I was playing the main tank and healer at the same time, which proved to be quite a task. However I was complimented by the group on doing a great job, so that made me feel good. At one point I was healing, buffing, pulling, and tanking. Definitely kept me very busy, and not for the faint of heart. Our first pull of the lord went south though, as I tried to FD pull to break the room. Unfortunately, after getting up from FD we still got all of the room on us, and the enchanter died, which unleashed his pet. My shaman and the mage died shortly after. It was one hell of a battle though. We killed the adds, and thanks to my SK chain tapping, paladin heals (who was afk at the start of the fight), and ranger spot heals we managed to get the lord down to about 25% before my SK went down due to everyone being OOM. At that point the lord went into “runaway” mode, so the remaining ranger and paladin finished him off. Rezzes were passed out and we got back in the action shortly. After a bit more killing, the group broke up due to people having to head out. By then I had hit 40 on my SK though, and 39 on my SHM.
Sword to the noggin
I took this opportunity to head back to town for selling and buying of new spells. At this point I was not going to head back to LGuk, and decided to go to CoM for some new action (finally!). I got a port, headed over without incident, and entered the zone. I sent a few LFG calls out but did not get any bites. I decided to head in and see about doing some duo action while waiting for a group. I had only been to this zone once or twice before in many years past, so I had no idea of any camp spots. I found a good looking corner though, and set up there. I had just finished buffing when an enchanter in the zone asked if I wanted to start a group. I said sure, and the chanter came over. Apparently the spot I thought looked good was actually a camp, the left arena. Lucky guess!
At this point it had been announced that there would be an XP bonus for the weekend, so I was excited to get in on that action. I sent out a request for members in general chat. I was instantly bombarded by about 10 tells responding to the request. First time I had that many people jump at a group offer. I picked out the cream of the crop and got a full group set up. We ended up with a necro, enchanter, SK, Shm, druid, and wizard. Once everyone arrived and we were ready, about 15 minutes before the “go live” time for the exp to turn up, we began to slay.
It was pretty ridiculous how fast we killed mobs. By the time my shaman could get his slow cast, the mobs were already under 40%. I said screw it, since there was no point on slowing mobs that lived for 10 seconds or less, so I focused on spot healing the enchanter when pet broke or when the wizard pulled agro from the face melting she was doing. We had killed about 20 mobs in 5 minutes and I was pretty stoked with the xp rolling in, so I popped exp potions on both characters. Then BAM disconnected on both characters. Phinny down! Not sure what happened, but the server was down for about 20 minutes, either due to a technical error or because it needed a restart for the bonuses to work properly. I got back in as soon as I could, half expecting the group to have wiped. Happily we were all alive and well, and except for the wizard we were all back within 5 minutes. We continued the slaughter, and the wizard returned just as we were starting to look for a new member.
I found out the named here are pretty damn strong (level 49 as I later found out). We had 1 wipe due to a pull of what I thought was a single named when the enchanter was afk. I pretty much have to chain tap and chain heal on my shaman to keep my SK up on some of these bastards. Once we were set up again, we continued on. Got a few other named but I was prepared and we managed to kill them without much trouble.
Gooey!
Chanters seem to like their Boon spells, werewolves all over the place!
Damn bushes are always in the way here
We did end up getting trained twice, which was a bummer because it took a bit to find rezzes, and slowed down the exp by a good bit. However, I was able to ding 40 on my shaman and 41 on my SK in a couple hours, which would probably have been at least 1 level more if we did not have all the down time due to the wipes. Also, another group moved in on the other side of the arena and we had to compete for pulls.
By the end of the group, we had 2 SHM, 1 SK, and 3 NEC. Was a bit of an odd group setup, but the necros charmed some of the undead skeletons and it was facemeltingly fast killing there. I had heard the HP of the zone mobs was pretty low, and from what I saw that was very very true.
I also found out my guild has a few Child’s Tear for MQ, so I am hoping I can get my shaman epic’ed sooner rather than later! If I play my cards right, maybe even before he can get into the planes, which would be very awesome. Will have to see how it plays out.
Welcome Back to Norrath 