Naxxramas: Status Report

Last night (Thursday) we completed another full clear of Naxxramas 25. The guild is making constant progress and we are almost making a comfortable two night clear. There are a few roadblocks in the way of this goal and I'll address some of them later in this post.

First off, I'll summarize the most recent run. This run felt a little awkward. Many little things crept up throughout the entire run such as disconnects, addon issues, communication problems etc. The leadership team handled all of this very well and the players were patient when we were working out problems.

The goal of the run was to complete the instance, all that remained was the last two bosses in the Arachnid Quarter, the entire Construct Quarter and Frostwyrm Lair.

When we killed Faerlina, some of the addon trouble began. We're using an addon called EPGPlootmaster which makes loot very very fast when it works properly. It appeared that the loot addon would act up if someone disconnected during the run. We had a couple of participants in the run who had connectivity issues on bosses which resulted in loot problems. The Raid Leader assigned to loot handled this frustrating dilemma very well, and we tried to move on as quickly as possible. Once the addon problems are sorted out, this will save a significant amount of time.

Other than loot delays and waiting for some disconnects, it was smooth sailing through Naxx until Thaddius. This boss has been a stumbling point for our raids in the past. The same problems arise just about every time. Players miss jumps from Feugen and Stalagg's platforms which excludes both their DPS and their raid DPS charge buff for too long. They also miss the Polarity Shifts and end up on the wrong polarity side which will sometimes kill a couple of squishies.

In addition to the usual problems, we try to Battle Rez players in this fight. For a successful Battle Rez, the Druid must go out of the action and resurrect the player away from the charge buff area; also the player being resurrected must accept the resurrection right when Thaddius is casting the Polarity Shift. This is rarely successful, and will remove a Druid doing DPS and their DPS charge buff for a long time.

Eventually I had to tell the raid "if you die, you will NOT get rezzed so don't count on it". Maybe saying this has nothing to do with the actual outcome of the battle but we killed Thaddius the next try with very few deaths. I think the "no rez" approach is probably a good policy to keep in this encounter, as every time someone has to rez it's too costly to the raid.

On a positive note (oops bad pun) - the majority of players including those that often have trouble with fine movement have significantly improved their performance on this fight. It's great to see personal improvement among the raid participants, good job!

After the minor debacle on Thaddius, we proceeded to kill Sapphiron without too many issues. One thing to mention is how much the healing squad has improved on this fight. Often after a Frost Block I would have no incoming heals and get dangerously low on health throughout the encounter (and die sometimes). The healers kept a nice steady stream of incoming heals on me and the entire raid. Great job!

On to the final boss - The leader of The Cult of the Damned, Kel'Thuzad.

Knowing in advance that I was leading this fight, I worked out all assignments ahead of time and kept a list of who will be doing what for each phase and also a list of reminders for the raid as this fight is so busy. The overall explanation and assignments from me took 7 minutes. To me this is extraordinarily long to explain a fight but he is Kel'Thuzad, the final boss in Naxxramas. I would rather spend more time preparing instead of wiping then working out the assignments which should have been done anyway. We're all set to go in - Melee groups set to go, interrupts arranged, healer positioning and assignments set etc.

Chaaaarrrge! First Phase - cake, here comes Kel'Thuzad... I picked him up, pulled him to his spot and tanked. All looked good, we lost a couple of people to Frost Blocks, one or two to Shadows, still moving strong. When Kel'Thuzad was at about 60%, everyone on my screen stopped, they were running in place... *BOOM* Disconnect. I panicked a bit and yelled into vent "I'm disconnecting!!". One of the OTs taunted immediately and took my place. I managed to get back into the game about 30 seconds later, the adds were incoming in a few moments, and a couple of people had died. There was still hope for this fight. I was on adds duty, the other OT and I picked them up, it was a little tricky to get the right positioning for them. With the combination of confusion from being our first attempt, disconnects and having some people die for various reasons, our raid ran out of steam and Kel'Thuzad had ~250K health left (2%) when we died. Dammit!

That was a great first attempt though, we went back in immediately with plenty of momentum. By this time, we had hit the official raid end time, no one is ever obligated to raid beyond this time and it's also pretty late for East Coast players. Everyone wanted to continue, great! We got buffs up, worked out a few kinks and rushed in there again. There were again issues with ice blocks, Mind controls and such. There were two designated melee groups who have to stay far enough apart so that only one group gets blocked at a time. A couple of people were in between both groups and formed a bridge for the ice block. Almost the entirety of the melee force got ice blocked at once. This was terrible... but it was also impressive! (in a cruel kind of way). This initiated the slow killing of the raid.

Something similar happened on the next attempt too. I was ice blocked as well, this was very frustrating. Also, some healers would die in blocks too, this made us fall behind. Even with all these issues, we had very good DPS, steady healing and good recovery. This was certainly within our reach. We just had to concentrate, pull it together and get this boss!

A few players had to depart because it was late. No problem - they have no obligation to stay and their contribution for the raid was appreciated. We replaced a few raid slots and went in for the kill - DONE! Another full clear of Naxx! Great Job.

Considering all the little things that happened, I tried to keep the run moving. I have been implementing methods of minimizing downtime and it has been pretty effective. I must admit that after getting disconnected, then being ice blocked twice, I was pretty frustrated. I just let out some of that frustration in discussion after and then let it go. Honestly, I had a ton of fun! It was still an odd run, but everyone learned a lot. I'll try to take a lot of experience from this as a leader regarding communication and how to deal with unexpected situations. I'm also happy that any frustration from this run didn't continue for long after; in the past things like this would bother me but I do realize this is a game and it's nothing to really get worked up about, I just get passionate sometimes.

Great Run! We'll have an easy 2 night clear in no time.