Friday (1 Jan 2010) - I Hate Malygos

Friday (1 Jan 2010) - I Hate Malygos

Sigh. Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed. Of course, I no longer get paid to get out of bed on any day - but you know what I mean. :P

Have I mentioned that Wild hates OCC (the 5 man dungeon Occulus)? Sure I have. Have I mentioned that, even more than OCC, Wild hates EoE (the 10/25 man raid Eye of Eternity)? Certainly. Both of these places are found in The Nexus, a dungeon hub in the icebound Colderra, which is a frozen island that is part of the Borean Tundra in Northrend. Here's the GPS position - ha, got you, didn't I? Just kidding. About the GPS. Not about hating those places.

The short answer as to why Wild hates those places is that both require mounting up on dragons and flying around in three dimensional space trying to shoot down hostile dragons while same, with much better flying skills than Wild, try to shoot me down while laughing near helplessly at Wild's uncoordinated efforts to get his dragon mount to go where he wants it to. That was the short answer, but what a long sentence!

So, why does Wild care? Well, he sorta didn't, "didn't" being the key word here. Each week a random raid is given a special quest that rewards 5 frost and 5 triumph emblems. Wild planned to do those quests each week as 10 emblems cannot be allowed to get away. The Big Butt to this, however (no cow jokes please, this is serious), is that this week's quest required killing Malygos in Eye of Eternity. Just say no, Wild told himself. I'm not going in there, emblems or not. End of story. And that should have been the end of the story.

It's Friday night. Wild was in game working on his culinary skills and otherwise minding his own business. Cm, a good friend and long time guildie, asked in guild chat if anyone still needed to do the Malygos quest. The quest is called "Malygos Must Die!", but as far as Wild was concerned he might as well just take a flying leap with his wings clipped. Cm said that he hated the place, hadn't done the fight in months, and would only do it in a guild run - no PUGs, no way, he said.

Wild kept his mouth shut, busy in the kitchen. There was a little discussion in guild chat, but it didn't seem to amount to much. There were only ten guildies in game anyway. Wild puttered about some more. Than, against his better judgement, swearing to himself he was only looking, he peeked in on guildie locations and saw that six had left comfortable Dalaran and were in Borean Tundra. Yuk, they were really trying to get a raid together.

Wild stayed in denial. Even when a guildie whispered Wild and asked if I'd like to join them, I told them I sucked at EoE and that I didn't want to screw it up for the rest of them. Wild didn't exactly say no, though. Why didn't I say no?

Another whisper a bit later - Come on, Wild, we need one more, and we want it to be a guild run. We all hate this place, and we all suck at it.

How can one turn down an offer like that? Hey, this is going to suck and we're going to hate it and we'll probably fail. Sounds like fun, right?

Count me in, Wild replied. They quickly sent Wild his invite, before I could change my mind.

Malygos is the only boss in EoE, but the battle takes place in three phases. There is a single, circular platform that literally floats out in space. If you walked off the outer edge you'd fall to your death. Wild was Summoned via the Summoning Stone to Colderra, and then Wild flew the rest of the short way into the Nexus and through the EoE instance portal. On the other side, Wild popped out in mid-air and dropped twenty feet or so to the platform. Everyone else was already there, so Wild did his buffs, set his gear, and got on vent quickly so we could start.

There were some short explanations. All of us had been here before, even if we rather didn't want to think about that too much. We began by calling down Malygos.

The first phase, a beitch when the guild first began attempting it, was relatively trivial for the gear level of our current group. The tank dealt with Malygos and we had to dodge (or endure) Sparks while the DPS attempted to destroy them at a specific range from Malygos. Additionally, vortices formed which pulled groups of raiders up into the air and did considerable raid damage. Wild and a priest did the bulk of the healing with modest effort and no deaths. It wasn't the first phase Wild was worried about.

In the second phase Malygos leaves and two groups of mobs begin to appear. Here is where it gets pretty complicated for the tanks and DPS. While mobs are flying around on surfboards (ok, they call them discs) tanks have to grab and hold one type of mob while staying in a bubble. Did I mention bubbles? Large bubbles form one after the other on the surface of the platform, and then start shrinking. Raiders have to get into those bubbles quickly - or die quickly even with healer help. That's why mobs have to be tanked inside the bubbles.

When a mob dies, he drops his disc. DPS raiders jump on dropped discs and wage a flying battle with other disc flying mobs. Healers have two jobs - keep up the healing, and keep moving from bubble to bubble. Most PUGs fail on this phase, but we made it through, and again no one died. But it wasn't the second phase Wild was worried about, either.

At the start of the third phase the platform exploded into shards and the whole raid fell to their death - well, almost. As raiders fell flying dragons swept under us and we all mounted up.

There is no frame of reference, and no way to gauge distance. We are in space, stars twinkling in the distance, vague clusters like far away galaxies at the edge of vision, and blackness everywhere else - up, down, and sideways. Ten raiders spread out, nine of them looking to circle Malygos and find the range to attack him with various flame weapons while avoiding some really, really, nasty attacks from Malygos. The tenth raider, Wild, was still trying to figure out where everyone else went. Wait, who is that? Oh, that's just Malygos.

"Malygos Focuses on Wildshard." Uh oh, that's probably not good. I think I have some sort of shield I should be using. Hmm, which button is that?

Malygos casts Surge of Power. Ouch, now that hurt! Not Wild, but his flying dragon is already in desperate straits. Don't do that again! Ok, there's a heal button here somewhere.

Malygos casts Surge of Power. I said don't do that again! Wild's dragon dies. No dragon, no flyboy. Wild shakes an impotent fist at Malygos, plummets to whatever the bottom of this place is, and dies.

Wild was the first to die. But not the last. We still had 7 raiders up with Malygos at 21%. Six at 18%. Five at 16%. Four at 15%. Three at 11%. Wipe at 8%.

We tried again. We mowed through the first two phases and entered the third. Wild wasn't flying any better than before, but at least I didn't wander totally out of the fight. Eventually Wild found Malygos again, out of range this time, which was a good thing. With Malygos as a frame of reference, Wild flew toward him, noticing other raiders now arrayed around Malygos. Wild crept into range, and remembered the initial firing order - Flame Spike, Flame Spike, and then Engulf in Flames. Again, and again, and again. Other raiders had more aggro on Malygos, so Wild stayed under (literally) Malygos's radar long enough to do some consideration damage without taking any shots. We lost almost half the raid, but Malygos died.

Wild was still flying around, having not been returned to the platform like everyone else. Huh? So Wild jumped off his mount, figuring he would return to the platform. Wild died. Drats. Wild returned to the instance as a ghost, figuring, ok, now I'll be rezzed on the platform. Instead, Wild was rezzed, still in space, on his flying mount. WTF? I hate this place!

Hearthing didn't work, either. In the end one of the raiders switched toons to his warlock and then Summoned Wild. That worked. No idea what the problem was; Wild was glad to finally be out of there, and with a victory in EoE!

"Don't forget to turn in your quest, everyone!" the raid leader called out in vent.

The quest.

"Everyone should have it. I shared it with everyone earlier."

That was before Wild was invited to the raid.

Uh oh.

With deep misgivings, Wild opened his quest log.

Sigh. There was no quest. Wild had completed the instance, and was now locked out until it reset and a new weekly quest came out.

Now you really know why Wild hates that place.

Wild was actually pretty philosophical about it. It's a new year, let's get these little wrinkles out of the way early. Besides, it was time to do some more cooking.

On that front Wild was doing quite well. Dramatic progress was being made. But more on that in the next post. Wild would like to wallow in despair at those lost emblems for a little while longer first. Philosophical, my azz.