Journeys in Azeroth Archives:

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Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

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Journeys in Azeroth

Part VIII: Razorfen Raids

Warning: Throughout this article there will be several spoilers related to World of Warcraft. If this is a concern to you, please do not read any further. This is the only spoiler warning you will receive.

As I mentioned last week, I finally got myself a mount and am now able to get around a whole lot faster than before. I can’t emphasize enough how much of a difference it makes, especially when you have to cross a particularly monstrous stretch of land. For the first little bit, things were all about covering a lot of ground while polishing off some quests now that Lovelyrita could actually move around at a decent pace. There were plenty of quests that needed finishing up in Stranglethorn, as well as a couple in the Arathi Highlands, but once those were finished I decided to get off my ass and do some instance raiding. I hadn’t done it in a while, and there were some dungeons out there I wanted to explore.

That being said, I made my way down to the Barrens, and after a while found myself at the entrance to Razorfen Downs (now that was one hell of a hike coming in from Astranaar). Luckily, there was already a group forming to make a few runs on the place, and they had an extra spot, so I joined up with them, and before long we got down to business.

It was an unusual mix of classes in the party with two priests, a warlock, a druid, and myself playing rogue. Most of the enemies wouldn’t be much of a problem since all of us were a little bit over level 40, but it was still strange to have so many magic users there. Plowing through Razorfen started out pretty easy as we took down one group of monsters after the next, eventually making our way to the gong room. After clearing the area of all mobs, we began the process of banging the gong, as it is how certain mobs are summoned to the room. On the first try, tiny spiders come scurrying in, swarming the party. They aren’t very strong, so it doesn’t take much to kill them. On the second try, about a half dozen larger spiders

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come in. These too are relatively simple, though their webs are a tad annoying if you are a melee. Finally, it came time to fight the boss, a massive spider beast. This battle took a little bit longer, but all in all was quite easy, especially with two main healers in our group.

With the spider battles out of the way, it was time to move further into the dungeon. Eventually we came to a small prison with one human inside that had a quest we could do where we

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had to protect him while he tried to destroy this massive machine. While the NPC was doing his thing scores of fur-covered undead began to spawn, and things started to get hairy. At first, we were making pretty good work of the monsters, but eventually the numbers got to be too many, and our party got wiped. Upon re-spawning, we got to talking about how one of the priests had almost full mana for the better part of the battle, and took her to task as to why she wasn’t pulling her weight in the party, leaving the other priest, and the druid scrambling to keep everyone alive. After a bit, the priest got fed up with the criticism and left the party, taking her friend, the warlock, with her. Undaunted, myself, the remaining priest, Rezme, and the druid, Welterra, continued on, this time on the hunt for the undead skeletons, spirits, and whatnot of Razorfen.

For there only being three of us in the party, we did a hell of a good job taking these creatures down. The druid would stay in animal form and tank the enemies, allowing me to stay behind the mob for Backstab and Ambush, while Rezme would do crowd control and keep everyone’s hit points in the black. Playing with these two really showed just how much proper communication and coordination within a party can help bring success. We knew who we had to go after first, who to shackle, and how to clean the rest of the attacking mobs out of the way. It was a very steady, efficient march to the top of the spiraling tower inside of Razorfen, where we would have to fight the undead necromancer lurking at the top.

The boss fight itself proved to be a bit of a tough one, though. The three of us did our best, as I stayed glued to the back of the necromancer, hitting for backstab and similar attacks, while Welterra did his thing from the front, and Rezme healed. The problem came in the spirit minions that the boss summons every so often, which would consistently overwhelm us. I did my best to stop his spell, kicking him every time he tried to call them in, but eventually the boss would pull the spell off, as my cooldown timer wasn’t finished yet. After that, Rezme would try to do crowd control, while Welterra and myself would try to take the spirits down as quick as possible, and return to the boss. On the second try against the boss, we made it through the first wave of spirits, but by the time the second wave was summoned it just became a little bit too much for the three of us. We were kind of bummed out about the loss because we were so close to victory that we could taste it, but we sure did have a lot of fun with it. After the second wipe, it was coming up to four in the morning for me, so I had to get going. Luckily, one of Rezme’s level 60 friends was coming to help, so they were finally able to take that undead bastard down. Whatever the case, the Razorfen run was incredibly fun, and it just goes to show that with proper communication and planning instance raids can be amazing, and not like some of the nightmare stories you read on message boards.

Mr. Nash

(July 1, 2005)


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