The Emerald Nightmare

The Emerald Nightmare

Keya is out of excuses. Since her return to action earlier in the week her sole focus was to get her Nightfallen reputation to Exalted. It was one part of her class mount progress, which she was happy to have completed, but she also had hoped that it would complete the Good Surumaritan and open up the many things that are still denied her.

It didn't. So, she is back to working on the two pieces still incomplete, "A Growing Crisis" and "A Change Of Seasons." Which brings Keya to this morning. Her next step is to open the group finder and select The Emerald Nightmare raid. Once there, Keya must find and kill Xavius.

The details are kind of confusing, which is the status quo from Keya's perspective. The quest associated with the raid is specifically called "The Emerald Nightmare: The Stuff of Dreams." However, when Keya looked up the raid in the raid finder, the title was a bit different. It reads only: The Emerald Nightmare, and three sections within the raid. The part of the raid of importance to Keya is "Rift of Aln," where Xavius lurks. She has to kill him. She also has to collect a Purified Life Essence as well.
Armed with that limited information, Keya set up shop at the Raid Finder. This being a Saturday, her wait was only about fifteen minutes.

Keya really hopes this raid gets her back into the mainstream of her class hall and quest threads. Her i899 gear score was good enough for the LFR dungeons. She hopes that her now i901 gear score is sufficient for the raid. Soooo, here goes. Keya selects the Emerald Nightmare raid.

So.  It was done. Keya ran the Emerald Nightmare raid, all three sections: Darkbough, Tormented Guardian, and Rift of Aln. She saw only one Purified Life Essence created which was won or acquired by another raider. She killed Xavius, but received nothing to show that she had even been there other than the usual stuff.

Now for the why. The first run helped Keya get a feeling for the raid (which was a large one), how to get around, who to follow, how much damage she was taking and giving, and, to be honest, gawking at the raid for the first time. She quickly learned that she had little to worry about protecting herself at the LFR level. I doubt she dipped below 95% the whole run, even during the heavy melee periods.

What she learned. Keya learned after the fact that trying to loot Xavius after killing him won't work. Instead, you will go into a dream (I remember that, but then there were a lot of dream sequences) and next to Cenarius is a pot thing. The pot thing is what she should have taken. Somehow she missed it. Also, the Purified Life Essence is on a pedestal next to Cenarius. Missed that, too.

So. Keya learned some things. Time to try again.

Second Try. The group slid through Darghbough without trouble but fell apart in the Tormented Guardians. Waste of forty minutes. She did get some information on her DPS, which she'll admits is laughable. It was a 25 person LFR raid. Subtract two tanks and five healers, the raid had 18 DPSers. She did 4.3% of the damage and managed to reach 11th place among the 18 DPSers. Most of her damage came from Immolation Aura (32%). Fel Devestation (19.8%) was second on the list. She crit 31.5%.

Third try: Another wiff. Sigh. All three parts of the raid show as "already looted" now. I suppose that means Keya will have to wait until next week to try again?

Keya is disappointed that she is still not in sync with her advancement. However, she had fun on the raids. There's little chance she'll earn a gear upgrade on these raids. Gear up to i895 is possible, but unlikely. She has to be very fast on the take, too, the loot was grabbed pretty quickly. Keya's main needs are upgrades for her i880 pieces: neck, wrist, legs, finger, and trinket.

So, Keya now figures she'll take turns between Argus and dungeon runs for practice and the small probability of loot. And maybe check out some other raids. This is starting to be sort of fun.