Gnome weekend that was: UnderGnomed is Over Powered

What’s better…

• 10 Regulars tackling Naxx?
• 8 Regulars + 2 PuGs tackling Naxx?
• 8 Regulars only tackling Naxx?

Crazy Thinking

I had this crazy idea mid-last-week, why lose 1/2 hour to 1 hour LF2M Normal Naxx, when the 8 of us could just give it a go by ourselves. Let’s face it, more often than not, 2 people go down in the 1st 15 seconds of any fight, so what’s going to be the difference…

Hey, there’s even an achievement for it, The Dedicated Few.

It was put to a ReadyCheck vote and 6 out of 8 were prepared to give it a go, after all, worst case we could advertise later… let’s face it, there usually comes a point in the night where we lose one and have to go hunting.

Early Regrets

Pretty soon I was regretting this decision. I just didn’t have the mojo this night, everything felt wrong. It wasn’t just that my pocket Healer was playing LaserChicken (I’m not going to look that 5% crit in the mouth!), but I was just unsettled… my DPS was low, I couldn’t find my targets, not even with AoE… it just all felt wrong.

We got to Instructor Razuvious and my worst fears were confirmed… this wasn’t going to be our 8 man night. I still don’t know what it is about Razuvious, but we never one-shot him, there always has to be at least one fail. My heart sunk as the Tank apologized, saying he wasn’t warmed up yet… but then he’s never warm enough for Razuvious.

Gosick the Harvester

We got Razuvious 2nd time around, easily, so it was time for Gothik the Harvester. We realized at this point that this would be the make or break fight for us, we only had 3 full time DPS, with Mr.Tree being Mr.Bird for the night… the question was, would we have enough.

Mr. Tree got the honors for starting the fight this time around and we did… we took Gothik down. It was at this point that we were all filled with a new sense of possibility, if we could take out Gothik with our underGnomed group split in half, maybe we could take out most of Naxx.

8 Men / 4 Horsemen = 2 each

The Four Horsemen brought new doubts of course… now we were split in 4 parts. Mr Offspec and Mr Tree got the back of the room, they can look after their own healing, while the remaining 2 DPS look after the front Horsemen… not really sounding all that promising on paper.

In practice it didn’t appear to be going all that well either.

Thane was going down, slowly down, as was Rivendare…

Then Blaumeux made a mess of Mr Offspec and the raid wide pain began…

… or not.

Thane dropped…

One tank ran to the back to take care of business there, we switched to and slaughtered Rivendare, and as soon as it looked like a wipe it was over….

Not a wipe, but a stunning victory!

One quarter and 3 bosses down… maybe, just maybe we can do this…

Mini-Patchwerk

Next Boss of the rank was Patchwerk.

We were concerned about Patchwerk, you see he has this enrage timer thing, and we had chosen to demote Mr. Tree to healing for this fight, which meant that were were left with only 3 DPS.

I took the initiative, and brought Patchwerk down to our size.. if only temporarily… sure Baby Spice does nothing more than make him look smaller… Sure he hits just as hard… but I figured that if he looked smaller we would have a psychological advantage.

Won with a roll of One!

Must have worked as we one shot him before he enraged, and our tank used his best roll on Hatestrike… luckily he had no competition!

Infection Central

Grobbulus was an interesting fight. When you basically have 2 toons out of action at any one time running off with their Mutagen Injection (one running off, one running back), plus only one spare DPS to help with the slimes, things can get very interesting.

Add the accidental cleansing of the 1st Mutagen Injection while the infected toon was in the middle of the room and you have a recipe for disaster… No?

No!

One shot… nothing can stop us now… can it?

Zombie Block

Well nothing but Gluth…

The key to Gluth is a competent kiter… WTB competent kiter… No Hunter, No DK, just one Pathetic Mage that can’t kite to save himself, let alone 7 other mates…

Mr. Z! admitted defeat before we even began.

He also admitted defeat after our 1st failed attempt where the pathetic Mage couldn’t kite the Zombies.

He also admitted defeat after out “PuG” Tree Druid respeced to Bear to Offtank…

Now I call him a PuG, but he has been pugging with us for as long as we have been running Naxx10, so he is really a regular… but although he has Bear as his Dual Spec he never uses it… literally! Mr. Offspec (who has a Druid Alt) was giving tips on how to tank as we started the encounter.

So after that wipe Mr. Z! was adamant that our 8 man attempt had come to an end… but Mr. Gloom, our Going-To-Give-This-A-Go-Bear-Tank thought it was worth one more go.. and promised not to taunt as often. I focused more on Gluth, while our Tankadin was left alone with the Zombies.. My only input was going to be a Frost Nova and AoE during Decimate phase.

Mr. Z! was amazed when Gluth went down… he wasn’t alone of course, we were all amazed… looking good baby!

More Positive, Less Negative

Which left Thaddius to complete the quarter.

Thaddius  and his two mates before him.

Considering we normally struggle on Thaddius, we were doubtful that we would succeed. Normally we struggle to keep the DPS balanced on his mates, but there was no time to ponder the likely chances of failure.

We all knew the fight, all that needed to be done was execute it perfectly…

His mates went down perfectly, never more than one percent difference in health.

Thaddius himself was no match for us. Perfect charge swapping, all bunched up as required… It was all Pew Pew Pew…

Thaddius says:

Thank you…

To which I say:

No, Thank you!

What’s this, 2 men short and a new Thaddius record… Geez, something is really broken here…

Ohh and Thaddius gave me a new Hat!

How long I have dreamed of a hat that wasn’t blue… now I have one!

2/4 Quarters down… can we keep this up?

Noth the Plaguebringer – One Shot!

Heigan the Unclean – Two Shot!

The 1st one was just an unlucky break, but the 2nd one was perfect, we even all danced perfectly.

Hallway of Full Health

Every week when we do the run from Heigan to Loatheb we lose one or two in the hallway.. we ALWAYS do!

I should point out, I am always one of them, and have to Invis run back through to join the others…

Do I need to tell you how we went with only 8 bodies…

Perfect…

Spore Loser

Apart from Mr. Bird hugging all Loatheb’s spores (being a healer, he never realized it was important for DPS to hug the spores, he just saw them as another opponent and Moonfired then ASAP, Loatheb just went down like a pile of Zombie excrement.

3/4 Quarters down… into the home stretch…

Anub’Rekhan… One shot…

I think we were now so confident that we were leaving the room before his corpse had settled on the floor.

Mommas going to knock US out!

Grand Widow Faerlina… Do we go for the Momma Said Knock you Out achievement…

The wipe says no!

The 2nd wipe says we just aren’t going to do it…

Back to the usual strategy…

I warm up the adds with a bit of FrostFire, then we take them down when she enrages… actually, there wasn’t much left to take down, I was cooking!

Web Wrapping it up

That just leaves Maexxna, but Mr. Tree was now healing with his forehead… We needed to shout at him through vent to keep him awake… it had been a long night. We convince him to stay with us for Maexxna, while we tee up a Priest to fill in if we get Maexxna down.

We get Maexxna down… bid Mr. Tree farewell, welcome in the Priest and rock up to Sapphiron.

Ice cold dead

Now we know we are pushing it. We normally lose more than 2 in this fight, so starting the fight 2 behind is going to make it all that much harder. Worse yet, the priest is unfamiliar with the fight.

3 of us go down during the fight, the priest twice, but against the odds, Sapphiron is returned to a big pile of bones.

You and what army?

Final Boss…. Kel’Thuzad

I have to admit, I am feeling pretty freaked about this fight. We are normally stretched to the limit. I normally have assistance with the banshees, but I am the sole ranged this week. There is no margin for error on this fight, ok well maybe a little, but not much.

Mmm and I was the one that took out his kitty before we began.. I hope he doesn’t hold grudges…

We didn’t fail… You Failed KT!

When this flashed up on the screen, Vent erupted… against the odds we had done two things:

• A full clear of Naxx in one night
• We did it with only 8 raid members

We were left wondering why we ever bother losing time at the beginning of the night looking for 2 more… Ultimately we lose at least 2 people each fight, usually lose at least 1 PuG as the night goes on. I was reminded of the night we failed on Sapp twice and a PuG left calling us losers, only for us to take Sapp the next attempt… this time, we didn’t have to entertain fools or puggers, we just did it ourselves.

Looking for Boost

One little thing wiped the smile off my face, only momentarily, but after the awesome efforts that my mates and I had put in to clearing Naxx underGnomed, the last thing I wanted was a random tell asking for a boost.

For one thing I am in Dalaran, not in Westfall, or even Stormwind.

For another thing, No! means No!

After my knockback he started whispering my mates… I hope he managed to find someone, eventually, but it wasn’t going to be one of us.

A Small Feast

I’m still working on my cooking achievements. Only a few until I have conquered the Northrend cooking, and only 11 recipes to learn before I’ve knocked that achievement over too. One that I had left to do was cooking a Small Feast.

So I cooked it.

Then I thought… I haven’t got much chance of selling it anywhere, so I might as well eat it.

Before I ate the feast I was a big BIG Gnome…

Once I ate it, I was small…

How small…

Small enough that I could barely see myself over the top of the feast.

Small enough that I gave some Hordies a bit of a scare…

• What you think I’m Gnome poop?
• You think that other Gnome just gave birth to me?

Lucky I didn’t pop any other shrinking consumables…

Riding my strider was a bit difficult… I could barely see over the handle bars!

Hat Trick

I don’t often display my helm, I sort of figure it messes up my hair too much… well you can’t see my hair, which is worse than it being messed up, because my hair is as much of my identity as the Fonz’s leather jacket was to him.

Still, whenever I get a new one, I have a quick look… and I have to say, I thought twice about turning this helm display off… I look much more fearsome with it on!

Crawling for Chicks

So I have spent a bit of time lately buttering Marcia up. I knew things were going well, as the little gifts she has been giving me have been getting better the more I chat with her… A jeweled rod has to be a symbol of something and I assume the reason she gave me the compass was so I would find my way back to her.

On my next to last visit to Marcia, she had a couple more gifts for me…

You know a girl’s got the hots for a Gnome when she starts giving clothes as a present… obviously she doesn’t want to be seen in public with me wearing my gladiator’s helm. I guess it will keep the sun from my eyes while we throw the rods together… At least it isn’t a purple pimp hat!

As for giving pets… I’m guessing the next step is she is going to want to leave a toothbrush at my place… She better not want closet space, because I have none to spare!

Luckily the pet is smaller than me.. almost big enough to ride mind you, maybe a Gnome wake board? Maybe if I keep it out while strolling the streets of Dalaran she will realize how much it means to me.

I guess there are some other things I can do to catch her eye…

Get my fishing up to what she probably considers the bare minimum for Northrend… Not that it helped me avoid the trash catches…

Maybe catch the eye of a marine creature, or ten.

Tell the world how much I love critters and glitter.

Prepare a great feast and share it in danger zones… well prepare the feasts at least…

Marcia has a question just for me…?

• Is this the moment I’ve been waiting for?
• I did just lather myself in blood just to draw some delicious fish to woo her with…

Maybe wearing Mammoth Blood has paid off!

Ohh yes, success!

She is mine…!

Keep your filthy fishy hands off her… she is a one-Gnome woman!

What to do on our first real date?

Maybe share a Velociraptor…

and a Snapper or two…

I know she’s a busy woman and all, wont even leave her post by the fountain, but did she have to give me the dinner scraps to dispose of? Couldn’t she have handed them out to a lesser mortal to use on their next fishing trip?

Me thinks that since this is the extent of her gifts on the consummation of our relationship, that the next words I will hear from here are:

It’s not you, It’s me!

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/07/14/gnome-weekend-that-was-undergnomed-is-over-powered/