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Shining Alliance entered Discord Tower this week with a bang, defeating the first two events: Mindblight and Trophy Room! Initially we encountered some trouble with distribution of DPS on the oozes and Mindblight, but after changing the way we handled the oozes we were able to devote more DPS to Mindblight during the short time he's up during each phase. The end result: All-You-Can-Eat crab meat for SA!

Saturday we returned to Tower for an attempt on event number 2: Trophy Room. The adds were not as difficult during this event as I had expected, but we did encounter some problems with positioning on the last three trophies. After one wipe, we regrouped and gave it another go. This time, we tanked the Electric Trophy off the platform towards the entrance. This allowed us to have tank groups keep the Pyrilen and Gelidran trophies busy and position them properly while DPS burned everything to the ground. Overall a very impressive performance from Shining Alliance!

Congratulations SA on making it to Discord Tower and all the phat loots that go with it!

Although our raiding ranks are very robust these days, we could still very much use another cleric, enchanter, berserker, rogue, wizard, and necromancer!

We returned to Field of Scale last night to take down an event that had given us some trouble in the past. With on-the-ball tanks, fast healers and lots of DPS (plus a cool trick from the bards) we can now file this event under the "Won" category. Hopefully Sony gets the zone crashing issue resolved so we can farm more flying mounts. Good job SA!

Because Sony has limits on how fast we can get Tower keys to our troops, we've been going after some other events on the SoD raid list for more loot, spells, and glory. By the close of business today, Shining Alliance downed four raid events, two of which we had never won before! After a record time on Showdown at the Crystal Core, we decided to pay Rallos Zek a visit. With a tweaked strategy and more patience we were able to smoothly take down the trash, Murdunk, and Tallon and Vallon. Rallos Zek appeared shortly after, but was simply no match for SA.

From there we marched on to Kaesora Library to challenge the Council once more. With some strong tanking, fast DPS switching, lots of healing, and an easy way around the DoTs, the Council was divided....into many small pieces.

Overall, a very impressive performance by Shining Alliance today. With just a few more weeks of keying left to do, they better make some room in Tower for us!

Shining Alliance returned to Korafax today for a clean sweep of the zone. After flawless wins on Pallorax and Ksathrax, we marched forward to prepare for another attempt on the Mindshear Avatar. We quickly reviewed the strategy and jumped right in. With phenomenal performances by everyone the acolytes fell one by one and the cowardly Avatar showed his ugly face - which we promptly smashed in.

Congratulations to all of those who are newly flagged for Discord Tower! From here we set in for some serious Tower Key farming. Now that we have the strategy nailed down for Mindshear we can get six Tower Keys per week.

Over the past several weeks, Shining Alliance has proudly defeated several SoD Teir 3 raid events. The punishment started with Pallorax the Soul Slayer, who at first was reluctant to give up his treasure, but after a little persuasion (and lots of DPS) he's been placed on farm status.

After Pallorax, we turned to Showdown at the Crystal Core. It took a few attempts to get the mechanics of the event down, but after changing the way we dealt with the add waves, we were able to emerge from the Showdown victorious. We've since returned to farm those precious wrist/hand essences.

After Crystal Core we set our sights on the remainder of Korafax. First up was Venom Lord Ksathrax. After learning the tank requirements and the importance of placement for VL and VP (as well as healers and casters) we've placed Venom Lord Ksathrax on farm status. One event remains for Korafax: The Mindshear Avatar.

 While we continue to work on SoD Teir 3 raids we're also farming Old Man McKenzie Dragon Raids twice per week, which are arming our raiders up with even more Teir 3 raid-caliber loots!

Fun and phat loots are being had by all. Congratulations SA!