Last week, my guild (Dooms Assailants) made our way back into the depths of Serpentshrine Caverns (SSC). Our first attempt at this 25-man was the week before. We downed the trash mobs, learning the pulls all of the way up to the bosses. We skipped Hydross (the first boss) because he requires all four tanks to have resist gear. The main tank must have full Frost Resist, the off tank must have full Nature Resist, and two other OTs must have a combination of the two (half frost, half nature). The first boss we attempted was The Lurker Below. He’s an interesting fight. Before I get into that however, let me give you an idea of what SSC even looks like.
When you enter SSC you must take an elevator way down under the Coilfang Resevoir in Zangarmarsh. Once you are down, you will see a large room, held over nothing but water. Now, this water is littered with fish mobs that will tear you to pieces if you are one of the unlucky few to take an accidental dive into the depths. If that happens to be you, your raid members will laugh and make fun of you, all night long. There is only one way to go in SSC, and that is forward. You literally make your way across scaffolds that keep you above the water. On these scaffolds there are six groups of mobs that must be killed. When they do, the water below heats up to a boiling temperature, and all of the fish will die. You must then jump into the water, taking 500 damage a second, and swim to the center. There you will find a circle of wood floating. This, is where you fight Lurker.
You need someone with 375 fishing to fish in the center of the circle. That is how the Lurker is summoned. The idea of the fight is to have him tanked in the water so that the Lurker doesn’t knock the tank back. Every so often he will do a spout attack where he blasts water from his mouth and moves in a circle. The raid needs to hop into the water so that they are completely submerged. If you are under the water, you will not get hit by the spout. If you do get hit, you will most likely die and be tossed across the entire room. He also will submerge himself in the center of the water. When this happens, a group of mobs will attack the raid from all sides. The raid needs to split up in groups, tank, CC and burn down these mobs. When the Lurker comes back to the surface the MT must grab aggro once more, and the fight continues. That is the entire strategy in a nut shell.
Needless to say, we wiped on this guy for an hour before calling the raid. So, Lurker still lives in DA’s book. The next week however our tanks had all of their resist gear, so instead of passing Hydross, we decided to stick it out and attempt him. Hydross is a large water elemental. Around him circle smaller elementals that hit hard but can be burned down quickly with AOE. There are banners on either side of Hydross, a bit in front of him. When he crosses these banners, he switches element, from Frost, to Nature. Every time he passes the banners he also summons four small elementals that will be of the element that he is at the time of their summon. The idea is to have the Frost resist tank to tank 
So now that we’ve downed Hydross, the next step is obviously to kill him again. But, once he bites the dust this week, we will move on to Lurker. Woot! Wish us luck.
This weekend I came to a rather sad conclusion. The guild I’m in is going nowhere. They’re all great people, good pvp’ers and very helpful – but they’re going nowhere. By nowhere, I mean they’re not going to be progressing past the Outland 5 mans. Individuals in the guild might see Kara, but it will only be because at some point down the road, they’re going to attune themselves and jump to a different guild. Beyond that? Forget it. Right now – I have good money that says more than half of them will never hit 60 – much less 70.
I’m sure a lot of it has to do with the fact that I’m in the military and that I’m going to deploy this year. I will spend a good 9-12 months with no WoW at all. This time constraint coupled with my ALT-itis going into remission seems to have galvanized me. I have goals – I want to run instances. I want to progress. This sudden focus has caused me to look at the game and the guild I’m in with new eyes.
Normally, I end up pugging the instance – or having to forgo it altogether. The necessary team-members either never show up or show up so late that it’s obvious they never intended to go in the first place. Lately, when I try to schedule a run, my queries are met with silence. It’s that nasty silence – the kind you get when your newest level 15 recruit is crying on guild chat for someone to run them through Wailing Caverns. Everyone heard you – and everyone is feigning afk in hopes you’ll just go away.