How to beat Atrebe's Vault.

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Maedhros, Nov 11, 2017.

  1. Maedhros High King

    Atrebe's Vault is more difficult than the Queen and arguably the hardest raid in EOK after you complete the Essence of the Dragon 2 ACH for the majority of your raid.
    While the Queen is mostly a dps check raid with a sprinkle of high healing and tanking requirements, Atrebe's Vault will test all facets of your raid crew and push them to their limits.

    So much of the preparation on this raid is resting on the raid leaders shoulders.
    It's important to set the raid groups up a bit differently on this if you can manage it.
    I have found the best results by breaking my tanking and healing into four groups as evenly balanced as I can.
    If you have four of each tank type that would be ideal for synergy(SK epic, Warrior Aura, Paladin Aura and group armor) but it can still be done with a less than ideal set up.
    Spread the talent out so that you have at least one exceptional tank in each group. The rest are backing up the exceptional tank.
    You want at least one cleric per tank group, and utilize the shammys and druids to make sure you get at least two total healers per tank group.
    Do not stack your two best healers in one group, you need to spread the healing talent as well. If you have a cleric mixed with a druid or shammy, make sure they can compliment each other.
    You dont want to put your worst cleric with your worst druid in one of these tank groups, it will just fall. Insolate your weaker healers with a strong healer.
    Note: I am sure there are many guilds that are not breaking down to four tank groups on this that are still successful. I had found that when trying to use 3 tank groups on this, if a healer was standing too far away from the rest of their group, the heals would not fire or land on all the tanks. By breaking down to four tank groups, you can prevent any confusion and the groups will move more smoothly as a unit.
    Assign each tank group a corner for the golem phase and make sure the healers are paying attention to the assignment as they have to move with the group during the golem phase.

    You're effectively going to be losing 1 dps group from what I would call the ideal raid set up of 3 tank groups, 3 melee groups and 3 caster groups.
    Try to throw the weaker melee toons in a tank group that has a shammy as secondary healer, or throw a weaker caster in a tank group that has a druid as a secondary healer.
    Youre going to need your 5 remaining dps groups to be as stacked as you can make them.
    Atrebe's Vault does have heavy dps checks, but you can work around some of it, the first few phases are going to test your tank crew far more than anything else.

    [IMG]
    Set up at location A on the map. You want to get your buffs and assignments sorted out without someone pulling a Leeroy Jenkins and starting the event if you prep down below near the entryway.
    This is where corpses will pop after a wipe anyways so its best to establish it as the prep spot for buffs.

    Assign and coordinate Celestial Regen, Ancestral Aid, Peaceful Spirit of the wood, Auspice of the Hunter, Warcry, AE Paragon and all the circles. Guardian Circle is incredibly useful on Weapon and Book phases.
    Make sure players have their good Power Sources on and click their Geomantra everytime its up, and have it on during prep. Encourage use of stamina heavy type 5 augs for players with lower hit points.
    Make sure healers have their version of Nature Spirits, Divine Spirits, or Responsive Spirits up.
    Make sure healers Alliance is on all the tanks. Most people advocate utilizing Shammy version of Alliance.
    Make sure druids and Shammys keep Ferocious Growth on themselves as well as whatever additional targets they need to put it on.
    Raid leader should make room in each group for a shammy to hit Group pact of the wolf and then finalize the groups afterwards. Group pact looks to be one of the buffs that cannot be cast on other groups after the November nerf patch.
    Paladins need to be ready to twincast Splash everytime its up.
    Clerics should be ready to cast Splash everytime its up too, though you can cut them slack on the twincasting.
    Shaman need to be casting Glacial Gift to twincast Shear of Renewal followed immediately by Spiritual Swell every time its up. Keep Krasirs Recourse on full time and hit Lions roar every minute when it pops. Be ready with Historians if someone takes a big AE or spike.
    Druids should be casting group heals when they see anyone hit 90% or less. Dont wait til a finger wiggler hits 50% to heal, you will often find they are dead before the heal lands.
    I cannot emphasize enough how incredibly necessary good AE healing is on this raid.
    Casters should keep Shield of Consequence up full time, and use any self runes you can.
    Enchanters need to hit every group with Legion, Glyph spray and whatever other runes you can before engage and throughout the event if possible.
    There is probably a lot of good prep advice that I have missed that will hopefully get mentioned by the community on their replies.

    Once you are ready to rock you can call an AFK check in voicechat* and have everyone move from Prep spot A to Prep spot B. There should be no more afks once you move to Prep B.
    At Prep spot B you can get a visual track on the boss. You are going to have to wait for him to be in a safe location before the raid enters the main room.
    The boss walks around the room fairly randomly. He definitely has a track and you can get the feel for it with enough experience, but I doubt anyone can predict his next move with 100% certainty.
    To my knowledge there is nowhere in the main room that is safe from his pathing but could be wrong.
    He has a big purple Aura around him that causes a ton of damage to anyone that it strikes, as well as a significant mana drain.

    Phase 1 - Weapons
    Gina trigger - An unseen voice shouts, 'You will suffer for defiling our sacred vault = 4min 30sec until Book phase goes live.

    My guild runs in and hugs left to corner 1 on the map when the boss is in a good spot. Any corner could work, but this is what I use.
    Casters and healers can be facing away from the corner and actively keeping an eye on the boss. If he starts to walk too close to the corner, call out in voice chat so people can get out of there.
    Keep everyone in tight and ensure that no one is far away from the corner. Healers, casters and rangers will tend to stay too far back, call them out and get them in close as possible to the rest of the crew.
    There are several reasons that you need to stay tight here.
    1. You need your AE healing cranked up to max on this. Players that are too far away may avoid some AE's but will most likely miss AE heals. Stay tight, Knuckle up and power through.
    2. Siphons will do the same type of AE-blur that Chokidai throughout EOK use. All the weapon types that are present will be looking for a new target after blur, most likely whoever agros first. It could be a nuke, it could be a heal, it could be melee damage. The Siphon is going to likely run directly to wherever that first person on agro is standing. If this player is too far away its a problem.
    3. Directly related to item 2, if a weapon gets blurred and runs off, it is now out of range of melee damage range. This is a dps check event, it goes without saying that anything that hurts melee dps is bad. Keep it tight and spoon feed those mobs to the tanks and melee.

    Weapons spawn in waves from the different corners of the room and will usually head straight for the raid. Its possible for one to not agro, and just idle in the corner. Be aware of this and pull them right away. Don't get behind.
    If I remember correctly it is 4 mobs per wave, 2 Axes, 1 Siphon and 1 hammer. 3 or 4 total waves. Someone correct me if I am wrong please.
    Tanks all need to have a target. Unless you have a major stud tank like a Zaknaffein, Fintank or Lyquid caliber, you're going to struggle 1 tanking this with Fort/Deflection and AE agro. You can definitely try this, it was easier before the Harmonious nerfs, but its a challenge now. I still start the raid like this, and have other tanks try to peel mobs off the studs.
    Priority for weapons should be to kill Hammers first, followed by Siphons and finish up on the Axes. Hammers cast a big nasty frontal AE DD. Tanks will obviously try to face them away from the bulk of the raid-force, but every time a Siphon does its blur pulse the hammers will be pointing any which direction and potentially hitting their AE's on the squishiest people. Need to get them down fast. After hammers are down, take out the Siphons so the blur nonsense stops. Axes hit hard but are comparatively little threat.
    Your dps needs to be using their heaviest short refresh abilities. You want to save any heavy dps abilities that have a long refresh for the dervish phase.
    Note: the regen on these weapons is absurd. The raid needs to have high discipline with their /assisting. If you are cranking enough dps and get partially ahead of the waves you will encounter times that you are attacking a Siphon or an Axe while another wave spawns. It is imperative to stay on the Siphon or Axe and finish it before switching to the next hammer. If you have an axe at 50% and leave it to swap to the hammer, that axe will regen back to 100% before you ever get the hammer down. Additionally, if you try to split dps on multiple targets, you are allowing each mob to regen for longer. Kill 1 mob fast and move to the next highest priority target.
    Keeping the regen in mind, there is very little value to AEing this phase other than to pad your parse. Any weapon that doesn't have the full combined dps of the raid force against it will be regenning too hard for AE's to cause much affect.
    After the Siphons are dead, casters and healers can move back to the entry way in preparation for the book phase.
    Keep an eye on that gina trigger for the book phase. Tanks need to be ready to pick up books as they spawn in the room to the north of the main big room and then path to the raid.

    Phase 2 - Books
    Gina trigger - knowledge is power = 3min 30sec until Golem phase.

    Whether you have finished the weapons or not, books are now live. The total number of books appears to vary. There is also a "mini boss book" the Lorenado.
    Pull the books close to the SE corner along the south wall so that casters will still have line of sight from the entryway.
    Books cast an AE silence. This is why caster, healers and rangers need to be at the door to avoid it. Since the books will silence the tanks, their agro is going to be crap. Casters and rangers really need to pay attention to their agro. You do not want to pull a book off a tank to the door and silence all the healers. That's a fast way to a wipe.
    Save the Lorenado for last. Keep an eye on the gina trigger for the Golem phase. Tank groups need to be in position for the golems before the Lorenado dies.

    Phase 3 - Golems.
    Gina trigger - you hear a hushed groan = 3min 55sec until Dervish phase

    Whether you have finished books or not, golems are now live.
    Golems are tricky. You are going to want your tanks standing in their assigned corners and using long range spells to pull the golems. SK's are awesome at this with Hates Attraction, Mindless and Terrors. Paladins can get by with Force of Disruption and Dicho. Not sure what warriors can use to pull the golems to a corner, hopefully someone can suggest something. The golems cast a lurch so if a tank is trying to run up to their golem and pull it with short range abilities or Tunare forbid, just melee whacking them, then the tank is likely to get lurched right in that spot. Quickly pulling each golem to its assigned corner is critical. If a primary Golem tank gets lurched in the middle of the room, a backup tank must use an ability like Unflinching to pull the golem to the corner asap. Golems cast an AE stomp DD. If two golems are too close together, you get double stomped and probably die. Until your tanks get good at pulling the golems to assigned corners, and manage to stay alive, this is going to be a major roadblock on this raid. Once tanks are up to speed and golems are getting positioned quickly every attempt, you can start to make some progress.
    Kill the southwest golem at corner 2 first then go clockwise so that you finish up in corner 1 south east. You could pick any corner, but you want to be near the entryway when dervs spawn, rather than way deep in the room.
    Keep an eye on that gina trigger for the dervs going live. Healers and casters especially have to be disciplined and stay close to whichever corner you're actively fighting a golem in. If youre wandering out in the middle of two golems you might get double stomped.
    You're going to want to kill the final golem and have everyone get out of the room right away except the tanks.
    Note: Healer and caster classes that struggle at mana expenditure will want to touch the edge of the bosses purple aura to drop their mana down to around 50-60% during this phase but be careful to not die to the damage portion while you do that.
    More info on the boss phase portion of the write up.

    Phase 4 - Dervishes
    Gina trigger - a trio of elemental dervishes descends upon you = 1min 30 sec until dervs repop

    Dervishes appear to spawn in the small rooms to the west, X or Y on the map.
    Set a knight in the middle of the room ready with deflection. Pretty much a speed-bump.
    Have 3 of the tank groups assigned to one dervish each, and the remaining group ready as backup in case a tank group fails.
    Pull the Flame Dervish to SE corner, 1 on map.
    Pull the Lightning Dervish to NE corner, 4 on map.
    Pull the Stone Dervish to the middle of the east side of the room, just inside the Entryway. Do not pull any of the Dervs outside the main room. Tanks should be standing at their final tank location when they pull the dervish from range.
    The first few times you do this and your dps is still struggling, take advantage of the mechanics of this phase. After 90 seconds, the trio of dervishes will reset to 100% and any that have died will respawn. As you have wasted some of the timer of the first spawn pulling them to their tank locations, just wait til they reset. They will already be in position and lined up nice for you to kill. Each successive time that you fail to kill all three dervishes, the next reset will be longer and longer each time. If your dps is particularly bad, you might want to just let them reset several times before you go full burn to try to kill them.
    The Flame Dervish does an ability similar to the fog that Warcasters cast. The tank is going to need hard and heavy heals. Put one of your most reliable tanks on it.
    The other two dervishes are much easier to deal with, but still your 3 best tanks should be used on these 3.
    When you're ready to full burn, assign casters and rangers to dps the Flame Derv.
    Melee on the Stone Derv. It appears to be vulnerable to blunt weapon damage but was never able to confirm with 100% certainty. When Flame and Stone are dead, everyone finishes off Lightning.

    Congrats, you just beat the hard part. There is still more but the boss should be a slam dunk if you can control your mana.
    Drogba, Yinla, Thrillho and 3 others like this.
  2. Maedhros High King

    Phase 5 - Boss

    Pull the boss to a corner and push him in tight.
    The hardest part about the boss is that he has very high wild rampage. Melee need to be at max range to "try" to avoid as much wild rampage as possible.
    Rangers should be using archery and casters and healers should be out of wild rampage distance.

    As you dps the boss down adds will spawn periodically that are not much challenge.
    There is an insignificant disease based AE dot that hits your song window that paladin splash should take care of, but be ready to cure. Keep that AE healing going!
    Sometime around 50 or 60% there will be a message about a totem. 3 colored items will spawn in the center of the room.
    Assign three players to grab one each. Red, blue and green.
    The rooms labled X, Y and Z on the map will have a glowing ring on the ground of one of the colors, red, blue or green.
    The player with the red clicky item must find the red ring, green clicky must find green ring, blue clicky must find blue ring. Once all 3 players are in position, have one of them coordinate each of them clicking their item at the same time.
    If they are successful there is a message and the colored rings may move from one spot to another. The players that was in the north room, on the "stage" can be helpful and call the color of the stage ring in voice-chat to speed things up.
    A second synchronized successful click will disable the totem. The totem can spawn several times throughout the boss event. No idea on the time interval.
    While those 3 players are far away they will need healer support. Sometimes the Disease dot will hit those players. Be ready to cure.

    Here is the big deal about the boss. At around 25-35% depending on mega dps or lag, maybe other factors, the event will "probe" the percentage of everyone's mana pool.
    Anyone who has their mana percentage above 70% and below 30% will produce an extra add. If enough people fail to be in tolerance with their mana, you may get many adds and wipe.
    That would be a shame after all the hard work you put in phases 1 through 4 to get here.
    I find that the classes most likely to fail are clerics, shaman, wizards and rangers. Clerics and shaman are so efficient that they cannot spend mana fast enough without using some tricks. You should be able to spam cast healer alliance on yourself and click it off, Divine and Responsive spirts have a high mana cost and can be spam cast. Things like Dicho's are heavy mana cost. Shaman can be using combination dots on the boss to control their mana. There are probably dozens of ways to get your mana down. Excuses suck. Rangers and Wizards have the opposite problem. Good ones are burning through mana fast. It takes discipline to stop casting when you hit 35% mana and not resume til you have got your mana back up.
    Raid leaders should be reminding people about their mana often as the boss is dying. Players should be watching their group window and call out people nicely when they are out of tolerance, too low or two high. Call them out less and less nicely if they fail to get in tolerance by 35% on the boss.
    At 35% - anyone who is out of tolerance for whatever reason must gate the heck out. People who are good players, but die to AE rampage at 40% should not be taking a rez and then failing the probe. I call off rezzes on mana users at 50% but if your total raid dps is lower, you might be able to get someone rezzed at 40% and throw a Rally call, mod rod, paragon and other tricks and get your mana above 30% quick before the probe. Pure melee can be rezzed anytime as they have no mana. Mana users that die or have to gate out should go back to their guild hall and get any needed buffs from some alts that are sitting in the guild hall and wait to take the guild banner in once they are in tolerance with their mana.
    The event will probe the raids mana several times. You have to STAY in tolerance above 70% or below 30% for the entire end of the raid.
    There will be a learning curve on this mana probe. You might get overrun by adds and fail and lose your minds about it after getting so close to beating this. Stay cool and keep a positive attitude and with enough effort you can beat this event.


    * Note on Voice-chat: If your guild or raid alliance does not use a voice-chat then you're starting from a massive disadvantage to raiding in modern video games.
    There are 100 things going on visually in EQ. Players will not see every command that you post in guild chat or raid channels. It's much more difficult to miss something that is said in voice-chat unless you are actively trying to not listen or a player is deaf. If your raid force has a deaf player, they will be able to set GINA triggers up for visual cues based on typed commands or hotkeys that the raid leader and deaf person set up. It will take more effort to coordinate but it can be done. Players that are not deaf but refuse to be in a voice chat are holding your guild or raid force back from effective communication and limiting the overall performance of a raid team. Voice commands can be issued quickly and carried out far faster than things in text, its just reality. If you choose to not enforce a mandatory voice-chat policy in your raid force, then you can expect that the harder events in EQ are going to be that much harder for your crew than raid forces that use it. That's your choice though.
    Yinla likes this.
  3. Brohg Augur

    I swear, you make everything so hard.

    Phase 1 : weapons

    Everyone should fire up burns, a fast clear here is the foundation of a good win. Burns are not for the boss in this event. The astute will notice that there's > 10 minutes between event beginning and the cores, anyhow, so burns will almost fully recycle.

    Kill siphons first. Their "blur" isn't "AE", they proc Fade on their melee target. They don't hit for anything, and they automatically turn to someone new after hitting them once anyhow ('dat Fade proc), and they have the lowest hp, so it's a fool's errand to spend any time even attempting tanking them. It's especially …silly to try tanking them and something else besides, since the one attempting such will be chain Faded. It can be done, for the duration of Deflection/whatever, since preventing mob hits prevents mob procs, but serves no end. Tanks should pick up 1-3 of the other mobs each, and have their own butts against the wall / in the corner.

    Hammers next to stop their frontal stun going out.

    Axes hit hardest and have highest hp, but have no tricks. Clean up and move on.

    Phase 2 : books

    Books don't AE silence, they viral silence; the range on the viral is super low. As long as you keep your raiders from making an actual conga line as a stunt, it's pretty much nothing. Spread the books out, assist them down.

    Phase 3 : constructs

    Each construct should have two tanks on it, and a healer. The second tank is not "backup", these guys aren't that beef - the second tank is there just as a hedge to move the construct away if the boss brings his aura into their corner. The first tank will be Grasped by the mob and so unable to do the moving. Unflinching works, but has a long cooldown. SKs have Mindless and Warriors have Grasp on shorter cooldowns, but anyone can just use Taunt to switch the mob's target and take it down the wall a little. If you have the plethora of healers that Maedhros describes, they should probably be dotting things.

    Phase 4 : cores

    Stone core takes one healer, Lightning takes one or zero (war always has to have their hand held, a good knight probably doesn't), Flame should probably have two. Magician pets tank flame core fine if you're in a jam, since there won't be players in range. That can even be Plan A if your tanks are whiny wimps. Engage the flame far away & sick pets-casters-rangers on it. Tank Stone where ever. Lightning directly into the raid, flatten it with melee.

    Phase 5 : boss

    Memblurs when he spawns the totem, will vanish from xtar while he's doing it. Just something to be aware of, not really a *deal* any more since SCS fix for dots.

    Clickers should be grouped so their healer can go with them when they go click.
  4. Bigstomp Augur

    I prefer Brohg's plan since I'd have fallen asleep before Maedro's plan happened. But for anyone struggling on this event. Read it all. There are lots of briliant details there.
    All that is left is your raid hopefully being able to look at their mana bar to avoid the adds. It's tank n spank otherwise.
  5. Maedhros High King

    Oh wow Brohg, a lot of that is pretty terrible advice to give to a guild that has not yet beaten this raid.
    Please do take my advice on this folks.

    You do not want to full burn at the beginning. If you do, your best stuff will be down during the derv phase. If your best burns have longer than 10 minutes refresh, as many of the best ones do, they will not be up for Dervishes. You have to decide what your best secondary dps options are to start off the event. If you have good dps buttons to push that refresh within 10 minutes, definitely use them as I mentioned originally.

    You can kill the Siphons first, but the effect they do is far less devastating then the Hammers big frontal DD. Brohg may be correct, the blur mechanic may be a proc rather than an AE like the Chokidai, but it leads to pretty much the same result, tanks having their agro wiped and mobs being loose on non-tank targets. Nevertheless kill the hammers first so you stop getting pounded by the hammer DD. Very few people will be killed by the siphons, it is the hammers that are the highest threat.

    Book phase, again Brohg, you would miss the forest for the trees.
    The net result of a viral silence is the same as an AE silence. People standing near a freakin book get silenced.Try not to get hung up on the nomenclature, you're quibbling. I do appreciate your efforts to devalue the incredible wealth of information that I typed up off the top of my head for 4 hours to help the guilds that are struggling.
    Spreading out on this raid is a terrible idea and will just lead to people getting killed by the boss as he wanders around.
    Players that are spread out also require direct healing instead of AE or group healing. There is no tactical advantage to be gained by spreading the books out. Melee will still get hit by the silence, but will be an additional burden on the healers. Keep all the tanks and melee in one spot so splash heals hit everyone, and then the casters healers and rangers are safe at the entryway assuming no one pulls a book to it.

    Golem phase, druids and shammys that are comfortable with it should definitely throw some extra dots in, but not at the expense of losing one of their tanks on this.
    Apparently the tanks in Ne Cede Malice are very very strong and do not die on this raid. I still recommend any other guilds that have never beaten this raid yet, do have your backup tanks ready to grab a golem if the primary tank dies. Just like pretty much any mob in game, the danger comes during the initial engage before the golems are debuffed. Tanks will definitely die to golems on this, Brohg is delusional. Once the golems are debuffed and the tank is settled in their assigned corner, the healing requirements will drastically drop. Healers will then find that the players that are at the highest risk of death are the non tanks in the group that get hit by stomp AE.

    Derv phase. Again, your tanks are going to need more than no healing on this. Refer to my original post for actual useful information. Yes you can throw pets on the flame dervish in case the tanks die.

    The one piece of really good advice here was Brohgs last line, but I will expand on that. I use knights on the totem clicky phase because the lost dps is minimized, and they tend to have way more hp than other classes except warriors and can survive the disease dot longer. You can put all 3 clickers in one group with a healer to babysit them while they click if you want to, or have a healer assigned that has those 3 knights on their ETW.
    Another good idea is to utilize players that have the disease cure shield from Tower of Rot raid, or classes that can cast eradicate disease spell to cure themselves.

    Brohg, I have a lot of respect for Bamkan and some old friends in Ne Cede Malice. I don't want to get into it with you. By all means, if you have alternative methods please share them, most raids other than Ancient Dragon can be beaten a dozen different ways. All the techniques and strategies I typed up do in fact work whether you agree with them or not and are meant to be easy for a lower tier guild to apply to this raid.
  6. Brohg Augur

    Hammer frontal hits only the wall if your tanks aren't working super hard to get themselves chain Faded to dump mobs all over the rest of the raid.

    Standing by books is totally fine. Standing on the tank's head or in their pants is not, and that's about the extent of it. The viral range of silence is *15*. Druid alliance is broadly considered to be nearly non-functional due to having a heal radius so small, near double that at 28. The only way to MAKE book silence dangerous is to try battling all the books in a big ol' gaggle.

    Constructs take one tank, one healer, and a buddy just in case to move the mob. Tanks can die in the Vault raid, but not to just four mobs with tank splits pre-arranged and a healer for each. If it takes gittin' gud, then that's what it takes. Heck, I even bet you get wild luxuries like debuffs on each of them in RotE raids.

  7. Nocomplaints Elder

    I heard something about if make it to derv phase as long as someone is alive in the room the raid can reset and extend the timer making easier to kill them? Is this true?
  8. Reval Augur

    [IMG]
    Veloce and Wizlard like this.
  9. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    How to make a Grilled Cheese Sandwich:

    Phase 1:

    You'll want to start by making sure to be prepared to read long walls of text without breaks and overly detailed explanations. I suggest starting by reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy in order to comprehend and elucidate to yourself how many very big and unnecessary and no reason to use adjectives and adverbs and other modifying descriptive terms can be added on and layered on and pasted on in order to elongate and enlarge and make tedious and boring to read single sentences that are now the length of small paragraphs.

    Now, on the the details. First you'll want to get yourself a pan to cook the grilled cheese sandwich. Now, if you're on a gas stove I highly suggest using a 24" cast iron skillet from the 1932 Sears catalog. If you are not blessed by the ability to have the optimal thermal transference tool, you could try using a stainless steel 18" pan from the 1977 Woolworth's collection. Now, if your stove top is too small to accommodate that size of a pan, you will have to accept the heating limitations of your cooking set up and go with a 12" teflon pan from the 1988 K-mart collection. In a pinch you *might* be able to deal with a 2002 version of the 12" deep stainless steel skillet from the K-mart Martha Stewart collection, but this may be setting yourself up for trouble later on. Now, if you're unfortunate enough to be part of an organization that only has an electric range top, then you'll have to wait until I have 2 more hours to add addendum 2B to my write up, as that is a whole different kettle of fish!

    So now, before you are able to turn on the heat, you need to make darn sure you're food is prepped so that you are ready to apply the sandwich to the skillet at the optimal moment. I suggest getting 2 other people in your home to assist you on this task, and assign one to sandwich prep, one to butter application, and communicate with Bluetooth headsets, so you can optimally do each part and make sure you maintain the appropriate synergy.

    Phase 2:

    Take your first assistant, which you can call chef assistant A (caA), and make sure you spend at least 30 minutes explaining the dynamics of the cheese to bread application. You want to make sure everyone is on the same page, so you don't lose any precious seconds getting the sandwich to pan. You might want to make sure all your chef assistants have maxed out their run speed by training until they can complete a 5 minute mile without any problems. You don't want a slow person ruining your 2 hours of prep time by making a mistake and putting the sandwich on the skillet 5 seconds before it reaches optimal temperature, leaving you with an uncrispy mess!

    Once you are comfortable that your caA knows their job, you're ready to prep your chef assistant B (caB). This is REALLY IMPORTANT! Make sure your caB has either:

    1) gone to culinary school and completed at least one year of training, or
    2) taken and passed (with distinction!) an online coursera course on food science, or
    3) at the very least, has spent a few years watching Alton Brown on the Food Network

    It is really important for your caB to understand the various synergies and difference in butter, margarine, cooking spray, and oils.

    Through strong leadership and extreme time investment on the part of your grill leader, you will eventually determine the optimal fatty lipid combination for perfect crispy sandwiches. Personally, with my setup, I have determined (though if you're not as smart as me, you may need to send me a PM so I can help you determine what is optimal for you), that the best combination is 1 teaspoon of Land o Lakes salt free margarine, 1 teaspoon of peanut oil, and 1 table spoon of olive oil. Heat together until it all mixes and then pour into a glass container to save. Prepping your potions ahead of time will save you valuable minutes on your future 5-6 sandwich preparations (I'm all about saving time).

    So, now you need to have a meeting with your caB so they know exactly when to apply the fatty solution to the pan (now, I know there is an argument to applying the fatty solution to the bread directly before applying the sandwich to the pan, but don't believe it! If you do that, in the hour you spend explaining the baseball-inspired hand signals (you don't want your neighbors peaking in on you and see you give clear explanations to your assistants, so make sure you code everything), the sandwich will end up soggy). Once the caB is prepared, you're ready to start cooking!

    Phase 3:

    Start by placing the pan on the stove top and turning on the heat. You'll want a thermometer of some type to make sure your pan temperature is perfect before applying the sandwich.

    This is a good time to get into an explanation of the relationship between bread thickness, cheese type, and necessary pan heat...(10 pages of nonsense)...so, as you can see, to make it simple, I'll say that when using standard sliced white bread (Wonder Bread or Sunbeam only, I won't vouch that these instructions will work with any other sliced bread) and kraft singles, stick to 275 degrees in the pan.

    So now, once your pan reaches the desired temperature, make sure you do an AFK check on your chef assistants. I suggest shouting "AFK check! Move to the laundry room!" into your headset, and using your trusty stop watch, time how long it takes your caA and caB to get to you. If they take more than 6 seconds, you may want to test that they aren't getting lag on their headset. Or you may want to inspect their body fat % to see if you think they may be lying about their physical fitness and their mile time. You can't neglect the chance that your assistants are behind on their heroic statistic preps.

    When you are comfortable with the responsiveness, it is time to get started with the food.

    Phase 4:

    This is where it gets tricky. I suggest having set up a gatorade station on a nearby counter. You need to keep everyone topped off and hydrated before the pan heat starts slowly dehydrating your team.

    So, you need to give the signal to caA to take their bread/cheese/bread combo and place the sandwich in the dead center of the pan, about 12 seconds after having caB applying 1 teaspoon of your oil mixture to the heated pan. If you have done everything right, you will have exactly 83 seconds from the time you apply the sandwich to the pan until you need to "flip". Any spatula will do, I'm not very picky, as long as it is made of heat resistant plastic and no thicker than 1/8" an inch with a 30 degree angle on the end. Totally up to you!

    Now, as the lead chef on this operation, you won't have time to do the flip yourself, so make sure your caA is ready to take on this added responsibility. It is all about optimizing your cooking force.

    So at 73 seconds on the timer, give the 10 second warning via your bluetooth headsets. This is the signal for your caB to get 1/2 a teaspoon of the oil mixture ready. At 82 seconds, give the signal, since it will take 1 second for your caA to get the message and scoop up the sandwich on the spatula. As soon as it has been moved off the pan, your caB needs to apply the next wave of oil to the pan. At this point, you have 6 seconds to spread the oil around the pan and heat up the second wave of oil. If you aren't as awesome as me and able to do this while maintaining the timer, you might need to bring in a 4th person for the operation at this point to lift the pan and spread the oil around.

    At 5 seconds in, put the pan back on the stove top and give the signal for the caA to flip the sandwich back onto the center of the pan.

    At this point, your stove "burns" are going, so you should only need 44 seconds to finish the second side of the sandwich. At 38 seconds give everyone the signal to prep for plating. Your caB should have nothing to do at this point, so make sure they are assigned to having a plate out and ready for your caA to plate the sandwich. I suggest at 41 seconds to do a countdown, "3, 2, 1, GO GO GO!" to have the caA take the sandwich off the pan and plate it.

    Don't forget to turn the stove off at this point. So many suboptimal cooking forces make this mistake and burn off their gas tribute at this point.

    Phase 5:

    TIme to distribute the loot. This is up to your own preference, but we can post about all the options for this (including the only correct way that I use) at another time.

    Enjoy your grilled cheese you dumb casuals! I made it super easy and now obviously everyone can successfully make one.
    Divinejustice, Shard, Reval and 4 others like this.
  10. Seldom Augur

    It's extremely unfortunate that someone can go out of there way to provide free info on these forums and folks jump on it. Detailed raid event write up? You're doing it all wrong, way too detailed lolz. Detailed parse? You cherry picked a parse on a dumb event, lolz. Detailed reasons why something shouldn't be nerfed or a class needs help? You don't know how to play, class balance good lolz. Folks then wonder why developers are swinging wildly with the nerf bat when the community is nitpicking everything and can't come to agreement even on articulated information. Had Maedhros made it undetailed folks would have posted all the things he missed and how he's EQing wrong. Nice post OP, I haven't seen a single post complaining from the crowd whom you've wrote this for(those struggling/unable to get Vault raid down)............
    adetia, Metanis, Thrillho and 2 others like this.
  11. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    Seldom is right, It should be possible to exchange information and tips/tricks on the forums, without getting "snark"-attacks from left and right.

    Show us that the EQ-community is better than that...
    Zhaunil_AB likes this.
  12. dwish Augur

    This is true. If your guild is wiping on the dervishes, try to have someone FD in the corner (but still in the room), and the dervishes will then just keep respawning over and over, but the event won't reset. Meanwhile, the rest of the raid can rebuff at the prep spot outside of the event area, and then run in when ready with burns going and kill the dervishes to get to final phase.
  13. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    The event isn't that hard. Guilds aren't struggling because they don't know how to beat it. They are struggling because they can't field 40 people on a raid or if they can, they are filling the raid up with people they would rather not have in the first place.

    Some of the advice is just awful, like bunching up books to try and ae them or whatever.

    Other parts are overly complicated added unneeded steps and have you micro managing multiple other classes abilities that they know how to use. If you have to do that level of administration, then you have zero probability of winning with a suboptimal raid force.

    If you have enough people to beat it, here is what you need to know:

    1) kill syphons and hammers first (tanks flip the hammer so they face away from raid), axes last
    2) assist dps (all these mobs throughout the event have extremely high regen, split dps is probably one of the biggest mistakes low dps guilds make), make a raid assist and follow them
    3) someone watching for the boss moving and telling the raid when to move to another designated corner when needed, in case someone isn't paying attention or turned the other way or not playing in 3rd person
    4) spread books out and keep them away from your healers/dps casters
    5) spread golems to the 4 corners of the room to prevent overlapping AEs which can wipe people out from 100% to dead if not well geared or had already taken damage
    6) move the dervishes to different corners, this is where you want to use your burns if you are having trouble with the event, again, HIGH regen so don't split dps other than dot classes going ahead and getting stuff on flame as the second dervish dies
    7) here is the rub, the dervishes are timed, after X seconds they respawn or heal to full (this is a failure), but on failure, you get Y seconds added to the timer, so at worst, you can offtank these dervishes for 10 minutes until you have a long enough timer to burn through them, if your dps is low you don't have another choice
    8) heal the flame tank a lot (or as someone else said, use a pet if you have to)
    9) manage your mana, you have to be between 30 and 70 mana once the boss hits 30 in order to prevent one add for each person too high or low, so:
    a) judge your raid to determine if you need to tell bards to leave ae mana song off
    b) always have ae paragon announced, so people can click off
    c) if you need to dump mana fast, take off equipment then put it back on
    d) if you die, don't hover, as you count as a 0 mana person, if you can't get mana back quick, go to bind and don't banner back in

    Do the puzzles quickly and get the 1 add that spawns dead then back on the named. Paladins splash at the boss to get rid of the dot ae. Max range as it has bad ae ramp. Everyone together for splash heals and cures.

    That's it.

    Look, trying to help is great, but the problem is, when he posts these "strats", he doesn't go "here is how we do it, hope this helps", or "here are the mechanisms, and here are some options", he goes, "here is the best (or only) way to do this, here is 100 reasons why, and you need to micromanage everyone and everything", when the guilds having trouble most certainly CAN'T do that in the first place or they wouldn't have this problem.

    It doesn't help with the trash talking the OP has done over the last couple of years souring people on him and his attitude.
    Zhaunil_AB likes this.
  14. Reval Augur

    It really is a strong initial writeup. Any writeup will have flaws. But as Brohg and Maedhros go back and forth, more and more information is revealed in a struggle to determine who is "the most helpful". The more they go at it, the better it is for those guys.

    Yepmetoo added information that is valuable too, and a strong perspective. He also addresses a strong social issue which I think I've addressed enough for one person.

    I guess I'll add a piece. Most melee get murdered by the ae ramp of the boss. It's great for them to split off onto any adds you kill, but also as a melee, if you take any damage, or get the dot, on average it's best to just back up well out of max melee range and wait for a heal/cure. That dot is this: https://spells.eqresource.com/spells.php?id=47937 and if it ticks you for 100k at the same time that you get wild ramped, you're most likely going to die. It is not at all insignificant.

    It may help for enchanters to use glyph spray or mgb one of the legion type spells that absorbs dot damage. This may help to take the edge off for recently rampaged or less geared players if it does tick on them. Even if you can't mgb it, you can try to keep it on the melee groups. Giving them a better chance to live is going to do a lot more on this raid than on most (especially if they had mana).
  15. Bigstomp Augur


    Never thought of that. I'm melee so mana doesn't affect me in this raid but I will be sure to remember the idea if something like this comes up again. I'm sure it would work equally well for endurance.
  16. Kiras Augur

    A couple minor things I'd add
    Phase 1: I think it's 5 waves total. The composition of the first ones is 1 hammer 1 siphon 2 axes. Later waves I've seen a slightly different composition (sometimes 2 hammers in a wave I think). The timing on the waves is a bit funky - I haven't bothered to nail it down, but it doesn't feel steady.Make sure nobody tries to play hero by offtanking too many axes or you'll get domino deaths going on.

    Phase 2: There's always 1 lorenado and 6 a_living_tome. Unlike axes, there's no apostrophes in a_living_tome, so you can pre assign them easily with /tar keys. (/tar a_living_tome00.... /tar a_living_tome05).

    Phase 4: Flame is also kiteable if you don't want to offtank it.

    Also the mana shedding thing that yepmetoo mentioned. We tell people to de-equip roughly 9 items then re-equip to drop their mana to 65ish fast. Obviously re-equip after they're all in a bag.
  17. segap Augur


    If the point is to help struggling, low dps guilds, their best bet is to burn from the start. If they don't get stuff down, they'll get buried by books then golems. They can always play the game with the dervishes to get burns back up if they need them there.
    kizant and Zhaunil_AB like this.
  18. Blitter Elder

    Looks like you missed a step here buddy.

    I thought that RoTe AE TL's after the golems are dead and leaving a FD person in the Y room. Then they banner back to the A spot on your map....and wait rebuff, wait for discs to be up, and all this while extending the Core timer. And then they pop back in to engage.

    At least thats what I heard from the grapevine.
  19. Cleaver Augur

    You burn at the start for one reason that the OP fails to understand. Most guilds wont have the DPS to make it to the dervs fast enough anyway. Anything 10m or less will be back up before the derv phase.
    Zhaunil_AB likes this.
  20. Maedhros High King

    Yepmetoo, thanks for the grilled cheese recipe. If you take a second to look at the Queen write up I did you will find that minor details that I left out were pointed out pretty vigorously. Even crap like alliances that are general raid knowledge and not specific to the Queen event at all. To say I made an effort to cover all bases for a complete EQ novice with the Vault write up is pretty evident.

    Your second write up is pathetic. Its more like the chicken scratch song lyrics someone scribbles on toilet paper with eyeliner they found in their girlfriends bathroom bag while they are taking a dump.
    Your "write up" makes a ton of assumptions and entirely omits incredibly amounts of actual data that a guild that has never beaten the vault would not have.
    From your numbered explanation here is what a new raid force will miss on this:
    1. Why do tanks turn hammers away? Ignored.
    2. What should my main assist target when an additional wave of weapons spawn? Ignored.
    3. Why watch the boss? He isn't active right? Ignored.
    4. Why spread books out? They apparently don't do anything serious. Ignored.
    5. Why spread golems out? Thats too far to run. Ignored.
    6. Why spread dervishes out? Lets keep them tight and AE as Yepmetoo doesn't warn about anything to worry about here.
    7. Dervishes are timed? Wait how long? What happens when the timer ends? Oh no!
    8. What is a flame tank? So confused!
    9. This is the closest you came to actual useful information to a raid that has never done this before.

    Do the puzzles quickly? What puzzles? How do I "do them"?

    Trying to help is great. What you tried to do is oversimplify one of the hardest events in EQ and discredit me. You failed at both.