Challenge Mode Noobs - Gate of the Setting Sun

I've decided to talk about our Challenge mode adventures as a series, and am calling it Challenge Mode Noobs - because, we go in to give it a try, no research and make mistakes like total NON Pros.  So, this is the story of ordinary players attempting challenge modes!

Yesterday we had about half an hour to spare, and decided to give Gate of the Setting Sun a go, since we had heard that it was pretty easy.  Gold time is 13 minutes, 22 minutes for Silver, and Bronze is 45.

Now, the first challenge mode I ever tried was Gate of the Rising sun and we failed on the pulls before the first boss!  I think we wiped about times on trash trying to do it like we do a heroic with good gear.

So, keeping that in mind, I hoped that everyone would focus a target down.

The first trash pulls really were spiky, and I blew a lot of CDs trying to keep Arv up.  Those windwalkers are annoying!  But as each mob died, it got better.  However, the mantid flying around the top dropping their bombs still knocked a few of us out, each time you got hit by the bomb it shaved off about 2/3 of your life.  

The first boss was relatively easy to kill - compared to the trash, it was a breeze!

Then, we thought we would be smart and run all the way down to the elevator, like you do on heroic.  The mobs would bug out once you reach the elevator and basically you could make it without killing anything at all.  We thought we were so clever... but that was NOT a clever thing to do.  More on that later.

So up to the flying boss who strafes across and drops those fire trails and I admit our awareness was poor.  We would split up and get separated, and when the guys got picked up, I wasn't fast enough on the heals (and I didn't realise they were picked up) so they would die a lot!  We wiped a few times on that but we got it down eventually and we headed down to get the mini cut scene of the wall breaking.  The trash before the next boss was a bit easier than the first lot of trash, and that boss was quite easy kiting him around with his poisons and adds. We thought we were doing pretty well!

Then we started on the last lots of trash before the big bug Raigonn who is a bit dumb and all he does is headbutt the wall.  If you're on the bridge when he collides you get stunned but you can jump and avoid that. Then Karn noticed something... we didn't have enough mobs killed as an instance requirement.  We still had plenty of time to scrape in a medal and we made our way down to Raigonn, 3 mobs short.  The early mobs had disappeared from the wall breaking (I think) and so, fingers crossed, some or Raigonn's adds would count towards the kill requirement.  But no.  Raigonn himself was quite easy, as long as people didn't run away from me, because those who ran for from me didn't get heals and died.    With 6 minutes or so left on the timer, we had to teleport to the start of the instance to look for mobs and we realised that there was none left - we couldn't finish the instance!

There was no choice.  We had to reset and start again.

OMG, it was getting late.  So our second attempt we tried to fix our mistakes but ended up making more mistakes - DPS stood in bombs more and died, and we STILL died to the flying boss.  It was getting late for Arv - it was nearly 1am - and he had to work!  20 more minutes and he was done, he said.

This time, as we stood on the bridge where you get stunned as Raigonn headbutts the wall, we pulled and wiped - THAT didn't happen last time!

Raigonn was quick and easy though, and this time we had our kill requirement and walked away with an easy Bronze.  Next time we will be cleaner and I will be more on the ball!