Ghallanda ReRolled Completes Epic Lord of the Blades

[Anthios888]

What a raid! We had fun working through this raid over the last day or so once people got off timers. The final run was very smooth with a lot fewer deaths than previous runs.

The completion time was 88 minutes, including Belagra losing link a few times.




Completion run:
Rockna (human favored soul)
Raizertron (human favored soul)
Fanfare (human cleric/monk)
Nikkola-1 (human cleric)
Krescendo (warforged bard/barbarian)
Iblys (human paladin defender)
Seetee (dwarf barbarian)
Teliana (human barbarian)
Loaken (elf ranger)
Rakamonk (h-elf fighter kensei/monk ninja spy)
Belagra (human sorcerer acid savant)
Lazertron (warforged sorcerer electric savant?)

Thank you to everyone who supported us by showing up to help, even those who were not able to make it in the final group. We are so lucky to have you!

I will also be posting a guide to help other guilds who want some spoilers.

[Anthios888]

**************SPOILER*****************

For those of you who haven't gotten to run Lord of Blades yet, here's some information on the raid. We decided that rather than hush hush, we would try to make our time benefit others so this raid can start being run routinely. Please feel free to post any suggestions/observations here.

Beginning of the raid trash.
Go through the halls and kill groups of mobs to make it to the end fight. These mobs are pretty tough and take some strategy especially on harder difficulties. Get rid of the artificers right away because they have nasty big-damage rune arms and a command-like effect ("tactical knockdown") that can't be avoided or warded against. Most of the mobs are warforged assassins and artificers, with some lightning golems thrown in. A buff will appear in the center that gives 25% damage increase to melee, and 40% spell point reduction, and allow you to float over the water to melee pillars. Beware, however, because the floating part will drop at 1:10 remaining on the buff (you can see your floating time in your focus orb looking on yourself). And also watch out because this buff is like the Reaver's Fate buff. Getting it once is great, but again and you will be stunned and start taking mega damage from the mind lock debuff it will cast on you. So tread carefully in the center of the room.

• Will save is the weak save for most of these.
• Use greater command, dancing ball, otto's irresistible.
• Melee stunning is great.
• On normal-hard, you will get a shrine before the end fight. On Epic, there's no shrine in the raid, so don't use up your boosts/rages here.

The End Fight
Finally you will make it to the end fight. It is on a circular platform surrounded by water, like Abbot. This water isn't instakill, but it hurts, like epic deep lava. On any difficulty above normal, you cannot raise a person who dies for 1-2 minutes after the death, length depending on difficulty. So if you die on Epic, you get a 2 minute timed debuff that looks like a skull and you cannot be raised until it goes away.

Buffs

• Freedom of movement (dogs spit electrified grease that ****s you up)
• Death ward (Lord of Blades neg levels)
• Electric resist/protect
• Blur/displacement is nice for the trash rounds at beginning and end
• Jump, haste (mobility is important)
• Greater heroism (there's fear at some points)
• True seeing (most of the trash displaces itself)

End fight round 1: Artificer/assassin trash, pillars, dogs, and Lord of Blades

• A high-hit point tank (800ish hp is nice) will take the Lord of the Blades.
• Another person will kite dogs. Wings are really nice for this.
• The party will kill trash, then one dog at a time, then the pillars that are out in the water.
• You can get a buff to float over the water to melee pillar bottoms, or you can range pillars.
• Finally, only the Lord will be left.

Round 1 Lord Special attacks - mounlands debuff, mighty blow.

• Mournlands debuff - stacking debuff that lowers your hit points and casters (including divine) arcane spell failure. Blocking without other movement prevents it. It wears off.
• Mighty blow the Lord stuns the tank, then spins his weapon, then smacks the tank with about 500 damage. Back up during the spin, it'll kill any flankers. Break his blade barriers as soon as he casts them so your melees don't die jumping out. Beating down the lords' hit points (I think it's this and not killing the pillars) triggers round 2:

Round 2: more dogs and jumping Lord of Blades You get two new dogs. Do the same setup as above with someone kiting the dogs and a tank tanking the Lord and party killing off one dog at a time and then paying attention to beating the Lord. Get the Lord to about half (if I remember right?) triggers round 3.

Round 2 Lord Special attack - jump (and all the above attacks)

• Jump: Lord of Blades will squat down, jump up into the air, and land hard (don't get squished). Then he'll charge across the center of the platform like a minotaur and agro on someone random. Tabbing him will show you where he is landing more easily. The tank should try to establish aggro ASAP, preferably with a returner or other ranged source of DPS while he is charging.

Round 3: more dogs and whirlwind Lord of Blades You get two new dogs. Kite, then pick em off like above. Or, have casters kill and melees work on the lord while he is safely tanked. Get the Lord to about 1/3 health to trigger round 4.

Round 3 Lord Special attack - whirlwind (and all the above attacks)

• Whirlwind- the most dangerous/chaotic attack. He will spin like an air elemental, smacking the tank hard and bouncing him across the platform. To live, everyone needs to get the heck away from him and chase the tank with heals. Tank can easily go out of healing range if you don't chase. Tanks may also opt to block with a shield, although beware as he will push you around with the whirlwind and potentially drop you in the water, which acts as lava.

End fight round 4: more dogs and Ring of Blades attack. Two new dogs.

Round 4 Lord Special attack - Ring of Blades. Be ready for comet fall and electric dog goo. Keep your hp topped up, check your fire/elec resist, freedom of movement, and mass protect. Also be ready to scatter in case he whirlwinds right after the ring of blades. Taking the Lord down to about 10% health will trigger round 5. You don't have to beat the Lord any farther down than this. This is where things get really different:

• Ring of blades - Lord will squat down and shoot silver rays out of his back. Everyone get into the center because a rain of steel blades is about to hit all but the center of the platform. The kiter with the dogs will stay out of the center and just get healed through the blades, because if the dogs come in the center, they will electric goo everyone and you'll wipe. The tank will face the Lord of Blades away from the party so he doesn't wipe everyone while you're grouped up. As soon as the rain ends (only a few seconds), get out of the middle so he doesn't cometfall/charge and kill everyone.

Round 5: two more dogs and lots of Artificer/assassin trash. During this phase, you don't tank the Lord of Blades. He spends all of round 5 jumping and charging, then immediately jumping again. Always keep a lookout so he doesn't land on/charge into you. You get two more dogs. Kite them while the group takes out trash. Displace everyone. You'll get dozens of trash mobs with repeaters that wiped us once and nearly wiped us the second time. Will saves are the bad save. Dancing ball, greater command, Otto's irresistable. Several waves will spawn a few seconds apart. Each wave will have an artificer or two. Kill the artificers immediately before they wipe you! Once artificers are down, crowd control the remaining trash, get the group together and take out the trash one at a time. Save the last trash mob until you have killed the dogs. Killing the final trash mob spawns round 6, but you do not want to take the dogs into round 6 with you. Once the dogs are dead, kill the final assassin trash mob and you'll be at the end. Round 6!

Round 6: Lots of trash like the eye of the titan end fight, nightmares, four red-named wraithy evil outsider gatekeepers, and pillars. The Lord of the Blades stops his constant jumping and comes back. Tank him like you did above and watch for all his special attacks. You don't have to kill Lord of Blades, just tank him to keep him under control. A kiter will grab the red names. The remainder of the group will quickly kill off the trash and then take out the pillars. The trash nightmares can be ennervated and finger/wailed, just like in Inspired Quarter. Red named wraiths are nasty! They flesh to stone, cast all kinds of stuff, and pwn you hard. Being prepared with curse pots, stone to flesh, etc. might save a life. When the trash is down, the party will kill all the pillars. You can range them, and you can also, one at a time, get a buff that lets you float over the water to melee pillars. When the last pillar falls, you win!

At the very end, you go in groups of 3 to kill 4 elementals to get your loot.

PARTY ROLES - so what do I do?

The most important part here is that the party be pretty self-sufficient, that you have a lot of healers, perferrably fvs because of the wings and dot, and that you have at least two big-hit point tanks.

Tanks - The party needs at least two tanks with around 800 hit points. Armor class doesn't work on epic. It's really nice if the tank has intimidate of 80+. This is because the Lord randomly agros after several of his special attacks, and you have to get him back on someone with enough hit points to tank him. You need two tanks that trade off holding agro so that they can get rid of their mournlands debuff when their hit points get below 550 or so. If you don't have intimidate, it worked all right to just build some hate and then use a returning to get the lord's attention back after he resets. Casters or FVS can tank but cannot effectively heal / hold aggro while blocking or they risk mournlands (giving arcane spell failure and -hp)

Healers - Favored souls are very effective in here. The divine DoT does more damage to the Lord than any of the caster DoTs. The wings are also really uber for saving you - play for very long and you'll understand precisely why the wings needed a nerf. Because the DoT does so much damage, try to get your hit points up there, too, so that you don't die when he inevitably agros on you for a round after a jump.

Melees - Be sure you can bypass his DR by having adamantine/good weapons. Have at least 600 hit points if at all possible so that if you get the agro, you can survive tanking a round even if he does mighty blow on you. Evasion is nice. The fight is really long, so this is a rough one for kensei/barbarians who rely so much on limited rages/boosts for their agro. We ran a few parties with a balanced number of melees, and some with almost none at all. High hit point rangers fit the bill pretty nicely. Might be nice to check if a light monk can prevent the stun before mighty blow, but this is a rough raid for monks that don't have high hit points. (we think light monk will prevent stun, but the mighty blow isn't a huge issue with coordination)

Casters - being warforged was awfully nice for being able to self-heal (and heal each other) even after death penalties. It's pretty rough to have only UMD-based healing once those death penalties start stacking up. Pale masters also had a hard time in this raid because no one could heal them, so they usually died when he agroed on them. Lazertron was pretty successful on his 530 hp warforged sorc - he had a shield with him (gimp right?) and he survived pretty well when he got caught with agro, until Lelo could intimidate the agro off of him. In our most successful runs, we had casters hold off on DoTs when we didn't have someone who was able to intimidate. A DoT means the aggro will go to you when he jumps and you'd better be ready to tank until someone pulls him off.

Be sure to memorize spells like dancing ball that work on the warforged's weak will save. The warforged trash has pretty high reflex and fort saves. Irresistible dance is great, especially if you end up with some death penalties and still need to crowd control.

Get LOTS of clickies to boost up your spells (ardor spark etc). You will do lots of DoTing and nuking things throughout the raid.

Bards - sing for mee! Lots of bard builds would work. It's nice if the bard can help out with healing or even just scroll healing. Will have to conserve songs, so not every death gets a new song. It's nice to have hit points and also nice to have an item with anthem to recharge your songs. I don't know that much more. I mean, as long as everyone has haste! Music of the Makers helps with the assassins in the next to last round. Regular fascinate does not seem to work even though the trash seems to be warforged.
Everyone should be able to raise dead and buff themselves as much as possible.

[valorik]

The time, and death count



Random Vanity shot @ the chest

[Chette]

This was I think my most amazing gaming experience ever. This raid was so incredibly intense, not like anything I'd ever experienced before (especially since most of us were just learning the raid).

I never thought I was a particularly talented or skilled player, and hey, I'm probably still not compared to a lot of others on this server and others, but this raid tested me to my limits, and really made me happy with my character Raizertron, as well as my play style. I have never had to multitask like I did in here (also, curse you new UI!!!). Everything else will seem like cake compared to this, I know it.

Thanks so much to everybody who participated, this was an amazing group of people. Individually none of us has the perfect build/gear for this raid, but everybody came together. The communication and teamwork was amazing. You rock GRR, thanks for having me!

I don't really have a lot of good screenshots to add, but here is one of me where I was trying to take a picture of myself winging across the platform after we had finished...right before I winged off the side of the platform and into the electric goo and died...Ya, I'm that uber.

[aleyana]

Wow- we have done it^^
It was fun and a awesome job :-))
Thanks to my guild and special to rocka :-)))
GRR

[BeccaBop]

I have to say, this was the most fun raid I've EVER done in DDO, or any MMORPG.

First, to emphasize the difficulty: If elite Tower of Despair were a gerbil, epic Lord of the Blades would have been an elephant wielding a bear.

This was AWESOME. Thumbs up to the devs for coming up with something super challenging, and crazy. Good voice acting, too.

Also...Hey guys, is it okay with you if I..you know...stay behind....alone.....with the forge......for a while.......just go ahead and zone on out, I want to check a few things.

I just yell a lot at the forge and it works, right? I mean, that's what Mr. Blades was doing...

[Nomical]

Great teamwork. That was so much fun!

This raid does take coordination, focus, and solid tactics. It was a rush working through the raid yesterday and getting closer each run as we solidified our tactics. I'm sure that others will come up with different ways to run, which will also be interesting to see.

Here are a couple of my screen shots at the end. I was too busy during the fight to take any screen shots, which is too bad since the whole fight looks awesome.

Thanks everyone who came and everyone who was ready and willing!

[dejafu]

Ditto to pretty much everything said above by my guildies. The raid was amazingly fun and challenging without being annoying. I was particularly impressed by how much it makes sure that pretty much any class or ability can feel useful without utterly dominating the raid.

Also, shield blocking the Lord of Blades when he goes into whirlwind mode? It's like a theme-park ride with spikey death.

Special thanks to our fearless guild leaders Rockna and Fanare for persevering through our harrowing first few runs the other night, Tealiane for putting up with me constantly stealing aggro, Lazertron for being the eternal sorc punching bag, and to Loaken for not reaching through his monitor and strangling me.





And finally...

Megatron has fallen! I am the new leader!!

[kailiea]

The raid is tough so Congrats on the completion.

[Clay]

gratz! on the win!

[BlackPantha2]

Nice one!

[Phalcon]

Big congratz guys! Its a tough raid, way to stick to it! I don't even care to ask how many pots you drank bc even with infinite pots, this raids a beast. Well done

JEn

[xTethx]

Very nice run guys. Major grats!!! Ouch on the pot count tho

[Larv]

Grats!

[LeLoric]

Grats to all my guildies so bummed I couldn't make it. I blame the guy who t-boned me running a red light today.

[Arnhelm]

Congratulations

Edit - Wow, LeLoric, I hope you're ok. Wishing you a speedy recovery from any injuries.

[Anthios888]

Grats to all my guildies so bummed I couldn't make it. I blame the guy who t-boned me running a red light today.

Shoulda hit abundant step.

[Nomical]

Grats to all my guildies so bummed I couldn't make it. I blame the guy who t-boned me running a red light today.

Oh, no! I hope that you and your family are all right. We missed you and held off for a while. Glad you're at least all right enough to post in the thread.

[LeLoric]

Yeah I am good no real injuries just some cuts and really sore. Fam wasn't with me thank god. Anyways feeling much better now knowing that you kicked LOB's arse.

[FreDDyoShIie]

Many grats to you all, great achievement!!