The Summoner Ring event - Help needed plsFollow

We gate out and head back. This raid had good attendance for the first time
in a while, forcing us to actually kick out bots to make room for real
guildies. So our leadership decides to try something that we haven't yet
succeeded at: the Summoner Ring.

Unlike a lot of the other raids I've been writing about, this doesn't
require an expedition or an instanced zone. The Summoner Ring is right
there in Kod'taz, right in the middle of everything. In a Stonehenge-like
ring stand eight summoners and the untargetable High Grand Summoner. We
clear our way down and get ready. The first part of the ring we're pretty
familiar with: we move in and start killing summoners. They all summon a
*bunch* of pets, and the chanters get busy mezzing while we move from
summoner to summoner. Oh, and did I mention that the High Summoner
regularly casts an AE curse that drains mana? Fortunately I recently got
the AA to upgrade to Radiant Cure3, so every other AE I can cure my group
of.

As usual, we pause about halfway through the clearing of the summoners to
rez and rebuff. I've managed to survive so far. We then complete our way
until only the High Summoner is left. This is the part that always kills
us, for after the last of the regular summoners is dead, the High Summoner
summons a whole bunch of golems. Some are mezzable, some are not, and the
chanters do their best while the melee try to handle the unmezzables. I
heal and heal but get get aggro and die.

I run back - through long practice I've learned how to run through Natimbi
to Kod'taz naked and visible. I make it back to my corpse while everyone is
still fighting golems. I loot my corpse, leaving one bag on it, and cast a
couple of buffs on myself. My Quarm shoulders are very helpful in
situations like this, giving me a buff that gives me 8mana/tick
regeneration.

We're doing good; we might actually kill the golems for the first time ever.
All the unmezzable golems are dead and we begin to kill the mezzables. When
those are dead, the High Summoner becomes targetable. All the healers are
just about out of mana, and what we have left we throw on the tanks that
engage the High Summoner.

The High Summoner dies. Our cheers are cut short when a *huge* mob appears
in the center of the ring. If we were low on healing mana before, we are
running on mere mana vapors now. I do what I can, throwing heals as soon as
I've regenned mana, but tanks are still dying pretty frequently. Finally
the only tank left is a recruit, a warrior with good attitude and ability
but not much in the way of equipment. He gets one-rounded by the mob, from
full health to dead in the blink of an eye. Our raid leaders tell everyone
to burn whatever disciplines or mana they have left. I manage a couple of
heals and, finally, finally, with most of the raid dead, the mob falls.

I manage one woot before the awful realization hits: the ring is not over.
*Six* *more* golems spawn. That's it, we just can't handle it. These mobs
are supposed to be easy - they drop the quest pieces needed for eventual
access to Uqua. They don't hit that hard and don't have that many
hitpoints. But with most of our melee dead and everyone else out of mana,
they are more than sufficient to wipe out the rest of the raid, including
me.

I sigh and make my way back again. I run to a spot outside the ring that is
our usual rezzing/rebuffing spot. Alas, we learn something else about these
golems: unlike the other mobs in the ring event, they are perfectly capable
of running outside of the stone ring itself. And they have a huge aggro
radius. They run up and manage to kill everyone who was just rezzed.
Including me. I sigh and run back. Again.

In the meantime, there is loot to be awarded. Once again one of the pieces
is proving difficult to give away, a cape that I can't find listed in
Allakhazam's. It's nothing special, 175hp, 175mana, no focus effects. Once
again officers can't find anyone who wants it. I relent; I still have my
Sol Ro cloak, whose focus effect of Marr's Gift has been outdated by my new
breastplate. So I tell one of the officers I could use it as a minor
upgrade, and instantly I get awarded it.

There's the small problem of looting it. My Divine Aura and Divine Barrier
aren't up yet. I burned Target Divine Aura earlier in the event. DA and DB
take fifteen minutes to refresh, and the corpse with the cape on it will
expire in five minutes.

One of the clerics casts TDA on me at the zone-in and I try to run to the
corpse from there, but I don't nearly make it in time. I do manage to get
to the edge of the ring without getting aggro, though, so I hover there
wondering what to do. I can see the corpse I'm supposed to loot, surrounded
by six red see-invis golems. There's less than a minute on the corpse now.
Fatalistically I run in, hoping against hope I can loot it. Nope, the golem
make quick work of me, and the corpse poofs, taking the cape and a cap that
was awarded to one of our rangers. Argh.

I get lots of sympathetic tells. Truly it doesn't bother me too much, it
wasn't really a big upgrade for me. I get rezzed again and we get ready to
kill the golems, because we still need the quest pieces. We make our way
back to the edge of the ring, in full force this time. Just as we are ready
to enage, the golems disappear. As in, we're going to have to do this whole
event all over again.

It's not such a bad thing, though. Now we know what to expect every step of
the way. We should be able to handle it a bit better next time.

I'm still very very tired and I log without further ado. Despite having a
piece of loot with my name on it rot, I feel pretty good about the night's
event. We figured out an event that's been giving us problems. Next time
we'll beat it *and* get the loot and quest drops. =)