Trinity Clears Nightmare EV - Infernal Titles

Now I know I've already posted one of these, but being in a new guild doesn't just mean new people it means new progression markers.  It's still an accomplishment when you do the same thing with different people - maybe not as much of a personal accomplishment, but it still feels good down where it matters.

So last night was HM KP and NiM EV.  I think the HM KP was for my benefit to gear me up a bit more before sending me in to tank Nightmare.  I appreciate that, and in the end it might have made a difference.  I did manage to snag 2 new Rakata pieces out of KP before we ran Nightmare.

The night started out on an interesting note as our raid leader "accidentally" led the charge up the hill to the two turrets - which promptly destroyed him in under 3 seconds.  The two tanks quickly took their assigned turrets and we burned them down with only minor further issues (adds destroying one of the healers).

Really in NiM mode the mechanics are all the same - so if'you've farmed this on Hard Mode for a while you should be familiar with all of them.  Once you know the mechanics the fights are a snap.  There is still a small learning curve for me working with different people all the time remembering what we do in which phase - but I catch on quick.

We ended up one shotting XRR-3, no enrage to be seen.  We actually wiped him faster than expected - everyone was suitably impressed.

One shot XRR-3 on Nightmare

Moving on from there clearing trash wasn't a problem, except for our Raid Leader that again pulled a big group of trash and wiped himself and a few other people before we got everything under control.

I didn't feel as accomplished on Gharj as I normally would because for about 25% of his life he just stood there and let us beat on him.  No pouncing, no jumping, no frenzy ... so I guess it was a good warm up for us.

After that of course he decided to do his best to make up for lost time.  He dropped a fake platform on us so anyone that went over there took a lava bath.  The prophetic words at the beginning of the raid "It isn't a Raid until Welmik dies" proved true during the first frenzy.  I'm guessing that our melee wasn't used to ducking out for pounce and frenzy - I made sure to keep on them for the rest of the fight so we avoided as much damage as possible.  Really that's the only key to this fight, if your melee doesn't move for the pounces your healers will have a hard time keeping up.

One Shot Gharj on Nightmare

The pylons behaved for us, other than our Northern group having an easy time solving the puzzle and yawning at us over Mumble about how slow we were finishing up our side.  Next time I hope they have a 12 turn to solve so we can repay the favour.  We also ended up fighting an Acklay at the end that kept us from running to the chest immediately.  It's hard to kill something when you're laughing while they threatened to open the chest and take all our loot - then only give it to us if we were nice.

One Shot Pylons on Nightmare

I love how mumble always gets eerily quiet while everyone focuses on taking down their 1-on-1 target for the Council fight.  There were a few times I wanted to yell "Boo!" or something into the mic to see what happened - I managed to restrain myself.

At the end the only real comment was "Well, that was easy."  Yes, yes it was.

One shot Council on Nightmare

Which brings us to Soa.  Now I remember this fight being brutally hard and requiring exact co-ordination like a well put together dance troupe.  I was slightly disappointed that it has changed so much that you don't really need to watch as many things as previous.

The lightning balls damage has definitely been knocked down, at least in half.  It was only ticking for 1.5k damage, I remembered taking ~10k damage from each ball, from a single tick and then the explosion.  Most of the time it didn't seem like the ball was ticking before exploding.  Maybe it used to be a bug - if so this is a great fix ... but it was really easy.

Similarly, not having to watch for someone flying through the air, or make sure everyone was out of mind traps before pushing to phase three just took some of the skill out of the fight.  Not that there isn't enough going on, but that was what held us up most nights.

Phase three went perfectly, we knocked him out with only the tank dying due to the enrage pylon and auto-death at that point.  Once more I was very impressed with the group - one shotting Soa on NiM is nothing to sneeze at.

One shot Soa on Nightmare

Now in Nightmare in addition to the boss dying and dropping loot there is also a chest that spawns in the middle of the room.  I had a hard time keeping my mouth shut to tell them that it always contains a mount - they were all excited to see what was inside.  We ended up getting 2 mount drops - congrats to the winners.

To top off the night, we also did this on a speed run, finishing in just over 1.5 hours.  What does that mean? Infernal titles for everyone!

Infernal titles for Trinity!