Catch up and the long absence

It's been over 5 weeks now since my last post and time sure has gone by fast.

So where have I been? To be honest when I started my absence there really was not a lot going on, there were some real life caused attendance issues slowing raiding and I was not spending much time on WoW outside of that.

The first few weeks were mostly just filled with me leveling my new Mage alt who hit 15 via RaF in the last day of the offer.
I had brought a copy of WoW classic from the Christmas special for $5 US and signed a new email address up for it. I then recruited that email under my main account and just forgot about it.
Somewhere in January I finally got round to buying my first month of game time for the second account and then with plans to dual box them, I forgot about it.
With RaF coming to a close at the end of Feb I got off my behind and finished the payments to net Orth his rocket mount and finally taught myself the art of dual boxing.

I have to say once I got my head around the initial complexity of the task it was quite fun. There were still several issues that I would no doubt sort out if I was to do it again but it worked well enough for the day I had left.
I rolled a Mage on my main account and a hunter on my second and sent them off into Elwynn forest where they quickly leveled through, stomping their way over mobs.
My night of dual boxing finished after an hour or so when they hit 15 in Redridge.

Once my blog break had started and raiding had slowed I decided to keep leveling my Mage without the restrictions that the RaF posed. So later that night she stood in heirloom gear and off she went.
I really was enjoying leveling her, for the first time since my Priest I was having fun on an alt and better still I could level her without my partner who my Priest still waits to level with.

The best part about leveling the Mage is being able to see the new Cataclysm world for the first time. Blizzard have really done a nice job on the revamp, there are so many new quests and zones just flow so much better now. It is great to enter a zone like Redridge and have all your quests flow from 2 or so stories into one zone wide piece of lore.

At the moment my Mage sits at 65 having just finished Hellfire and is ready for the painful 3 level slog needed to get out of tired Outland. After taking 5 character through OL it really is getting old and for the first time since creation the desire to level her has slowed.
However Northrend is next and of those 5 toons that have been through OL only 2 have made it through NR so I hope that it is a little less painful.


Guild wise things are finally looking up. Peoples new born babies are settling in, members who were previously without are finding new jobs and with people gaining more free time and a few new recruits we are now able to run most weeks PuG free with the promise of constant full guild runs waiting on a few more members to return.

As a nice side effect of a more active guild we have finally managed to hit guild level 10, opening up the heirloom cloaks to further boost my Mage's leveling.


With guild members coming back we have finally been able to step the raiding up.

We started with a move deeper into BWD to take on and quickly down Maloriak. This fight is another great fight for rebuke where I can be in charge of the first few interrupts and the other interrupters never have to worry about that one spell.


A Concave kill in the Throne of the Four Winds followed the next week. While this was not our first kill in TotFW, a power cut forced us to over PuG the week before and it had not counted as a guild kill.


That week ended with a few attempts on Atramedes just to see the fight. Even though we were not on him long we were constantly making 50% and left him there confident he would soon fall.

The next week was sent to move into BoT finally and get some work done there.
After clearing out our 3 in BWD we moved to quickly wipe out Halfus and move to the Double Dragons.
The fight was messy to say the least. The PuG's did not listen and very quickly died taking out a DPS and Healer wit them. Down a healer things slowly got worse as the other 2 did not have the mana to keep up with all the damage.
Eventually they got low on health and we pushed hard with the few people who were left.
The last percent of health got closer and closer and then finally not without taking one more with them the Dragons died leaving 3 people including myself alive. It was a one shot, messy as anything but a one shot.


The rest of the night was spent on the Council fight where we got to know the mechanics and were getting to phase 2 and even phase 3 on some attempts.

This catches us up to last week.

Wednesday me and my partner did not raid as I took her out to dinner for her Birthday, the guild however pulled in some PuG's and cleared our 3 in BWD without us. I was proud to see everyone still show up and my officers take over and lead a successful raid without me.

Thursday was spent on Atramedes where despite some close attempts we were unable to down him.

Friday was dedicated to BoT again and this time we had to go deeper. Progression.
As expected Halfus fell quickly and we moved to the Dragons. This week was not a one shot like the week before however there were several new guildies there as well as PuG's. Never the less we got them down and moved to the Council again.

The Council fight was picked up by everyone really quick including those that missed the week before. Nearly right away we were pushing phase 3 where we quickly discovered that we could not bring him down unless all 4 previous bosses were taken to 25% equally and we had all our DPS alive into phase 3.
We had many attempts where we would wipe sub 5% due to having a DPS die early to to a mistake or just plain bad luck. To many times did we push into phase 3 with all alive just to have to Ice boss throw off a Hydrolance right after a Glaciate and kill a DPS because I could not interrupt.
Finally though towards the end of the night we got an attempt without bad luck and easily pushed through the final phase for the kill.


That night ended with a brief look into Cho'gall's chamber.

This weeks raids come tonight and our main goal this week, Cho'gall.

A Frostwyrm Dies, A Frostwyrm Born

This weeks raiding was dedicated to one thing, killing Sindragossa's Hard mode and claiming our Frostwyrm mounts.

Our original plan was to extend the lockout and down her on Wednesday due to our Ret Pally/ Temporary Co-Tank only being available that day. However due to having to PuG a spot with a particularly bad Ret Pally coupled with our lack of practice on the fight, we did not make that goal. We did not give up easy though, the team did a great job of working well over time in an effort to get her down that night.

Thursday we came back this time with two PuG's but by the time we got them we were a solid 45 minutes into our time before we truly started. The little time we had was spent working on getting phase 3 under wraps, however we just did not have the time to bring her down.

We skipped raiding on Friday due to multiple people not being able to make it and came back early on Saturday.
None of our PuG's showed up despite having accepted the calender invite, luckily though we finally had more members free and were able to fill a full 10man with our own raiders.
This time we were confidant that we would have here. We had the skill, the practice and the time to put into it.
Every attempt got better and better but despite getting consistently to phase 3 we would always wipe because of something stupid be it and important member stepping to far round and Iceblock (guilty), to much damage being taken (guilty of not popping CD's) or various other little things.
At one point we had a run that while filled with mistakes made it to a sub 5% wipe, we were really close and just needed to tighten it up a bit.
Then we had an attempt where we his phase 3 perfectly and although we lost a few things were going strong. Then on the tank transition we lost my Co-Tank for the night, things got a little dicey from there losing another DPS.
We were 2 down and I had no tank to taunt from me as my stacks continued to rise. We kept pushing forward as we past the 10% mark and I used nearly every tool I had to keep myself up, Glyphed Divine Protection, Ardent Defender, Talented WoG and LoH all got used at least once to keep my up through the breaths.
At the 5% mark before the next Iceblock dropped I called for a burn and watched as her health dropped and the next Frostbreath approached. I had not CD's left and the next Breath would likely kill me but before she could breath.


We had finally brushed off the cobwebs of the last 6 months and claimed the Achievement we should of had a long time ago.


Before the night was out we went and finished H Blood Princes for another members Frostwyrm. Sadly I had assumed that my partner had done H Valithria and that we could finish her Frostwyrm Achievement off with the Council and Festergut, with Valithria already down she was unable to get her mount with us.

We all collected out mounts from the mail

and head to the unphased air space just out of Dalaran for a guild mount shot.


We finally have our mounts, just before Cata I could not be more relieved to have that over with.
Big thanks goes out to not just those that were there on Saturday but also to all the other guildies that have helped out and do not have their mounts, to the handful of PuG's we have used and to my Partner and Real Life friend who both went offspecs in Resto and Prot respectively to help us down Sindy.




On a side note, final Molten Core run of WotLK gone and still no Binding from Garr.

Post 100 and Chasing the Wyrm

Today's post finally brings me to my 100th blog post. When I first started blogging I never thought that I would really last this long let alone get to 100 posts. Heck with the decrease in posts lately I thought it would take a lot longer two.

In WoW we have been working towards finishing off our ICC10 Drakes prior to Cataclysm and this week we set our sites on the last normal mode Achieves we had left, Sindragossa's and the Lich King's.

We did not raid Wednesday or Thursday due to other player commitments so it all had to take place on Friday night. We re extended the raid lockout from two weeks ago and after clearing out BloodQueen we moved right into Sindy.

Sindy was proving to be a challenge because there kept being those little things that went wrong at the start of phase 2 that caused someone to take to many Debuff stacks.
We spent a while wiping but it was obvious that RNG and our own bad day were going to hold us back from doing it normally so we stitched to trying for a Zerg.
The first two zergs went badly but the first went off perfectly, we hit phase 2 without problem but then lost a few people mid phase to bad ice blocks. It came right down to the wire, we had lost a few players and I had just hit my 5 stack as we closed the final few percent. It was to late to call a wipe so we push on with everything we had left and watched helplessly as the Debuff timer reached out to the 6 stack mark. Then just at the last moment

literal moments after the Debuff ticked up to 6, but I have no idea how after she was dead.

From Sindy we moved to LK and while the achievement is much easier we ended up having a more difficult time due to real life things coming in the way such as sick and medicated people falling asleep. While we were constantly getting phase 1 fine we kept wiping on phase 2 so called it a night and planned a follow up raid for the unusual time of 4pm Sunday.

Sunday came and back we went for another attempt. The first few try fell apart when the adds died to quick and we lost the Debuff, the second attempt however went perfectly and a few minutes later.


Now all we have left is Heroic Sindy. Its going to be close with on of our officers only having one night for it but I am confident that we can push through the few blocking Bosses quickly and Take out H Sindy in the small time we have.
Hopefully all going well next week will mark the completement of all ICC10 baring H LK for us. Just in time for Cataclysm on Tuesday, boy is that getting close.

The Positives of Opposites

Its been well over a week since my last post and really its because I have just been to lazy to finish this one off, its been sitting in drafts since monday. The main reason for this is that the WotLK expansion is coming to its end, Cataclysm is still months away and like many my play time has started to drop a little. Most of my time has been spent on alts or raiding.

This weekends raids were rather uneventful, I missed Saturdays raid due to having people over for drinks and some playstation. We did recruit a new raid member on Friday and put some work into Putricide Hard mode, bud did not down him.

The majority of my time has been spent leveling my Priest to 65.
Me and my partner started a Paladin and Priest together many months ago as something to do together that was unrelated to the stress of guild and raiding. She went Ret and I went shadow, and we leveled that way through the starter zones mostly questing with a few instances to break sometimes.
Around STV we were starting to get sick of doing the same quests over and over so decided to level in LFD, which as you can imagine did not go well for two DPS.
From that point on we both respected and she started tanking while I healed.
The important part to all this has been playing a healing for 90% of my leveling since then. As a tank I have always thought and kept a close eye on my healer be it in a 5man or raid, without them nothing I do would be possible.
While I felt close to and had compassion for healers and their mana I have never really understood them or what is is to really be them.

From my experiences I believe that all Tanks and Healers should level an alt of the opposing type. Leveling as a healer has greatly improved my understanding of not just what it is that healers have to do but how they do it and the crap they go through in any given run. Its that sort of deeper understanding and connections that helps for find strange ways to solve issues and overcome obstacles that would otherwise have stopped you dead on the floor.

I really am looking forward to getting her up to 80 and running a few raids with her, I want to get an idea of what healing in that environment is like before Cataclysm so I have the experience under my belt for the next level of raiding.

Uneventful Recap

Its been a slow week in WoW for me with little Cataclysm news after the reveal of Holy Power. Most of my time has been spent ether on other games or working my Priest through Outlands with my Partner.
I did however have big plans for this weekends raids aiming to possibly look at Halion hard mode and spend some time knocking out Putricide hard as well. Unfortunately for us this weekend was plagued once again by real life and several raiders were not able to make it on. We went first and took down an easy Halion normal with only one wipe mostly due to my forgetfulness on boss positioning.
With Halion down we took the fight to ICC clearing out LDW, GS, DBS and BQL all on Hard mode before calling it a night.
Saturday was even worse with one more person away we were to be officially under the 10 we needed for ICC so instead we took 8 of us to Ulduar for some Drake catchup and gear collecting for the Herald of the Titans achievement.

After taking out One tower FL and Ignis, Razor and XT on Hard mode where we could we moved to the Assembly of Iron normal with no Deaths and then made our way to the Cat Lady for a new Achievement.


After that we took out Hodir and then to Thorim for yet another new achievement.


We called it a night after that with some people having dinner coming.
Sunday we went back into ICC 1 man down and after clearing through Festergut and the Rotface achievement It was obvious that we were one man down. Luckily for us one of our first applicants was online and not only was he unsaved but was keen to do his trial on the last half of ICC.
With a full raid team we quickly moved through normal Putriced, Valithria and Sindragossa to face off against the Lich King for the first time in months.

After a break and a quick explanation of the fight the those that hadn't done it before we went in. It was messy and several time we lost someone to something stupid I even nearly wiped us twice when getting Defile on myself and having no warning or /say cloud for it. Despite the mess the group managed to stay together and 10 minutesish later we had the guilds second Lich King kill, 5 people got new titles, the guild had a new member, my partner scored a new Spell Dagger and I picked up Troggbane the tanking Axe to upgrade my normal mode Scepter from Marrowgarr.

Next week we should have more people on and be able to knockout Putricide on hard mode, especially with the increase of the ICC buff to 30%.

Also keep tuned for my thoughts on any new changes coming in the next beta build that should be out later today.

Long Catch Up

Its been awhile since I last posted what I've been up to, part of it has been procrastination and the rest is trying to do to much.

Alot of my time has been tidying up after the move, there are alot of little things I didn't even think of that needed work since we came to Barthilas.
I'm still finding addons that have had some setting reverted to default that has to be fixed but finally most of the guild stuff is sorted. We have our guild set up on Barth now and the site is completely redone awaiting a banner that an Officer is making. We now have a new guild Ventrilo set up and are finally back into raiding. All we really have left to do now is start recruiting and building our numbers back up.

So while all the Cataclysm info has been coming out Midsummer Fire Festival has been running and while most run around getting Exp for alts of grinding for the Violet Proto Drake, Ive been doing something alittle different. I got my drake last yea so for this yea I've been doing this.


Look closely at that shot and check the level, this is indeed my bank alt(name removed for security) getting the achievement for collecting the Horde city flames.
In fact I have done this on not just one but two bank alts on on each server who have now 3/3 and 2/3 pieces of the Festival garb to go with it. I really is a painstaking and long process to ghost run city to city, graveyard to graveyard to get the flames. The worst part is not having a mount, I did the quests again later on my then 55 level priest and I finished the whole even in the time It took one bank alt to do the four Horde City's.

This weekend we had our first raid week as a new guild and we started as most have this week with Ruby Sanctum. We were not prepared. I had planned 30min to and hour for RS before going into ICC and boy was I wrong, that phase 2 really put a spanner in the works. Its fair to say we were alittle rusty, its been a month odd since we have done anything hard raid wise and far longer since we did anything without the ICC buff. Originally I was tanking Halion side on to the orbs so DPS could keep and eye on them but that proved problematic with the amount of room they had to move. After a few wipes I moved him to more of an angle and with some better communication on the debuffs we had phase 2 down and Halion not long after.


Sadly we missed the screenshot with his corpse when an over eager DPS skinned it before we remembered, oh well next time.
We left the raid there for the night after many wipes and decided ICC could wait for the next night.

Saturday came and we had a plan, hit the Achievements we didn't have try the hardmodes we didn't have otherwise blitz it.
We did just that knocking out normal Marrowgarr then an easy Heroic LDW and Lootship before stopping at DBS. This week we had 3 ranged DPS and strong ones at that so we decided today we were going to get that achievement. After a quick initial wipe when a ranged fell to the first Beasts we were back with alittle more CC on the Beasts and tryed again. It was going well but starting to get crazy, the enrage was coming and the damage was starting to stack high for two healers when the third mark went out. We were moments from taking our first death and DB gaining some health back when he went down for a two shot and our Heroic clear of the first wing.


From there we moved to Plague wing and picked up a quick easy Festergut achieve

and a Heroic Rotface for those who were missing it.

At that point we were running low on time and our third healer was still missing after having friends show that morning, so after two failed attempts at Putricide hard and two truly bad range tanking attempts on BPC by yours truly we called it a night.

The next day we were no better off for group composition with the third healer changing to tentative and not showing up. We had the idea to head to Ulduar to get Yogg one light but for the fact that we were all saved separately due to Razorscale being the weekly.
I will say this the team was determined this week to get some progression and being down a healer was not going to stop them. Our first point of call was Hardmode BPC, for it our DK Officer dropped a few hundred gold to respec, glyph and gem for frost tanking and with him on Kaelseth and myself tanking the other two we successfully two healed them for our Heroic Bloodwing achieve.


From there he respeced back and my OT went tank again and we one shot BQL hardmode getting a few people their Achieve and Wing clear.

Finally my OT went and respeced to Holy giving us a third healer and two Holy Pallys for a Valithria hardmode attempt.
We took a couple wipes on her once with myself overrun with Aboms, once with to many Blistering Zombies and a dead hunter and OOM Boomy and once with a healer getting potshot in the air by a Archlich as he fell from the portal.
After those few attempts though we had her down and soon she was up, all be it on a near wipe with two healer and one DPS alive.

I am very proud of how far we came that night with only two healers and now I am only short Sindragosa and Lich Kings achieves and Plague, Frost and Lich King end wing boss Hards from my drake.

After that great run of ICC one of our Officers informed us that our progression on Dath didn't follow us over and we would need to clear old content again. So with alittle time left on the clock we took the raid to OS+3 and Maly 8man netting those that were missing them those achievements and a drake to one lucky member.


This week we will begin recruiting and building our numbers and hopefully knock out a few more ICC achievements.

As for Cataclysm there is alot of nice info coming out but I'm still waiting for the Paladin preveiw, hopefully they wont have us waiting to long.

Also a quick update on Thunderfury, again no Binding this week from Garr. Looking at my old screenshots I got Barons Binding in November last year and have been farming for at least a year now straight not including a few runs before that. At the 3% drop rate that the Bindings have and the many attempts I have made on getting it statistically there is about an 85% chance that It should have dropped for me already, guess im just unlucky.

Week of the Yo-Yo

Well this week has been all over the place.
Our weekend raiding started poorly with only 14 people online, It's as most would guess that on hearing the news of our transfer many people left the guild our just stopped coming online. So with 25s ruled out we took a team for our stronger members from those on into 10man for some hard modes and achievements.
Our first point of call was getting the achievement for Deathwhisper, that fight is really a pain for anyone not favored by the RNG gods. We had many unsuccessful attempts when we would ether get nothing but Deformed fanatics or she would change one of our five into something we already had 1% or so before phase 2.
Eventually we managed to push phase 2 with 6 adds up 2 of which were Deformed that I was kiting while two of our DPS changed specs to tank the remaining adds and the boss. Our group on the final attempt ended up with two Pally tanks a Warrior tank, two melee DPS, two ranged DPS and 3 healers earning us.


From there we cleared the usual hardmodes for Gunship, Frestergut and Rotface since some people needed upgrades from them. We then moved to Putricide for his achievement and proceeded to one shot him with the lack of the slow making very little difference to the fight.


We then tryed for Blood Princes hard mode but the melee heavy group was stacked against us and we quickly called it and moved to take out Bloodqueen's HM instead.
The fight was very easy with the 20% buff to help out, I imagine the damage she does would have been very painful to heal had it not been for it. However with the buff up the hard mode was an easy one shot.

From there we moved to the final wing and set out to get the Valithrias achievement.
We had tryed a few times but never really bothered to stick with it so doing it was simply a matter of making sure we had a dedicated person to collect portals when not DPSing. The part that made the fight particularly interesting was the lack of a hunter for the first time in our kills of her. We instead had our Balance Druid step to the plate and for not having any idea what to do for it he performed very well and quickly got the hang of it. On the topic of the fight one tip that I have found very handy for the Blazing Skeletons is to move towards them and taunt as the spawn then move back to your position with the Abom, the Skeleton will come towards you for a short moment when he would have started his cast giving your DPS a few more seconds to bring him down.


Our final kill for the night would be Sindragosa and again we were hit with many of the same pains we had last week with people not moving for Blistering Cold fast enough or running with the marked target in phase 3 and getting multiple tombs.
Eventually we had a really strong run with everyone still alive well into phase 3, when people started to drop we lost my co-tank to a Frostbreath as I ran back from helping on a multitomb that also took out one of our healers. It was down to the wire she was almost dead but we had lost most of our raid with just myself one DPS and a healer up. Then at around 1% with my passing 9 stacks our healer got tombed and as a result we lost our one DPS. I popped everything I could and just moments before my death both the healer and Sind dropped dead leaving me as the only survivor of a very lucky attempt. I was glad for my frost resist ring I had crafted because I am sure that if i wasn't for it the damage would have eaten me down just enough over time that I would not have made it.


The next night we went back to try our hand at the Lich King and get 3 among us their titles. While we were making quick progress it quickly became aparent that a few people were not quite on their game. We were making it regularly into phase 3 despite 3 people never having done the fight before, the problem was that each attempt got messier and messier. In the end we called it as it was clear that peoples heads were not in the fight, myself included.
My problem was that we had moved the computers into the lounge for the long weekend and my partner was beside me playing Modnation which we had brought that evening, it was hard to concentrate with that playing in the corner of my eye.

The heavy drop down from the high of all those achievements came the next day when my partner logged into game and quickly call me onto my machine. One of our officers had stripped the bank clean of thousands in mats and taken all our gold then left guild. I problem was really my fault of how I had set up the ranks, an officer alt has all the same rights as an officer just a rank lower. The issue in this is that the officer could and did create a new character promote him to officer alt rank and use him and the other two toons to tag team our bank. Wondering if this was a result of the poor raids lately or if he had been hacked we ran him through armory to find him wearing nothing but PvP gear and Shadows Edge in a guild with a name similar to , it was obvious that he had been hacked and a ticket went out immediately. Although the ticket was elevated to the next level withing 30min the biggest concern is whether we will get our items and gold back before we transfer servers in a weeks time, it doesn't seem likely but it was included in the ticket and hopefully we can get the gold back at least. I am just thankful that the large majority of valuables were removed for liquidation earlier that week.
The officer in question did eventually post on forums letting us know what was happening on his end and as you would guess he did not have an authenticator. In the next guild officers will be required to have one and our settings for officer alts and officers will be better thought out.

On an unrelated side note, this weekend I finally got myself a new screen. Gone is the stock 20' screen with VG cables that caused so many headaches for me and my graphics card, now I have a 23' HD capable LG with 2 milli second response and a DVI cable to play on. My only issue was turning it on for the first time. It was night time and i spent ages looking for why the thing had no power, I couldn't find any switches and then when running my hands over it looking for one the thing came to life, the dam thing was touch sensitive and I didn't even click to it.

Fury of the Sunwell

10mans last night had mixed results the team stacked for the Lich King failed to get past Putriced when someone left and could not be replaced, while the other team made it all the way to Sindragosa.
Once that was over and people started to wind down I saw and add in trade for a Sunwell group and decided to finally go and try to finish my Outland raider achieve.
The group filled quickly and once guildes got word many of us came and made up about half the group. The run was 23 80s and run by two 70s who gave themselves first dibs on loot. While the leaders were very over protective and one was quite an ass we managed to steamroll through the who place, and even get some nice loot for guildies. While most of the loot I wanted failed to drop I did walk off with T6 boots and a new Helm from Sunmote turn ins. It was alot of fun and much better than the lat time I went in which didn't pass the first boss. I was awarded with two achieves for my efforts.


We decided we had had so much fun that the group of us went off to 8 man Black Temple. It was a blast and we cleared through until we hit a wall on RoS. We just could not kill phase 2, we managed though to bring in a friend with Heroism and once we got back made short work of him. The rest of the run went very smooth and by the end I had gained myself the T6 shoulders, T6 Pants and Brutaliser. I am very happy with that run, Ive been to BT many times before and always failed to win those beautiful shoulders.

It was a fun night despite running rather late and hopefully something we can run more often with the new guild.

Big Changes to End Disapointment

This weekends raiding has been disappointing at say the least, we extended the 25man lockout to try for progression and it went well first attempt was 60% and then attempt 2 was a 20% wipe due to a poor transition. Then we lost a raider to friends showing up and things got worse. It took far to long to get a replacement willing to be saved. Once we found one things just got worse with our best attempt in the next 4 being to 60%. We had to call it when we lost another raider to unknown reasons.
Tonight we went into 10man hoping to get at least one team to Lich King this week. It went about the same having to be call after a long night at Putricide with un-aware trials and someone leaving. The group not stacked for the Lich King is still going in frost halls as we speak which is disappointing but good for them.

Big news for me and my guild, after watching our server slowly die at progression and the few strong on server moving to Horde.
After a week of heavy thinking me and my officers have decided to move the guild to Barthilas. It would be a fresh start free from the name established by the founders of Lifé and away from the poor raiders we have been seeing recently. The guild we aim to make will be a place for mature raiders that can make the times we need, do the work we need and still have fun and do off night events sometimes.
We let the guild know tonight about the change and we had mixed responses, it seems some have surprised us with choosing to come others that we would have liked to follow wont be.
I personally will miss many of those staying behind and hope them well with where they head next. As for me I look forward to a brighter future with a much stronger guild.

Redemption and Lore

Sunday started off for me with something I have put off for a while, which is finishing my Lore Master achievement. Its been something I have been on and off on for a while and it was time to knock off Eastern Kingdoms once and for all.
I had a lot ahead of me but some how I quickly dropped into the groove and before I knew it I was down Loch Modan, Wetlands, Arathi Highlands, Hillsbrad and Western Plaguelands. I was coming close to the final achieve and had two epic chain left that I knew I had to do. First up was to finish of the final battle of the Darrowshire chain that I had started while leveling. I love the Darrowshire story and Cranius's song to match. I que'd up the song on youtube and started the event, no sooner had the relics gone down but out popped a Blood Elf DK. It was frustrating to finally be doing this event and here was this person I couldn't ask nicely to leave so I could have my moment, I let them stay and decided to just rock it as much as I could with someone else there. It was epic to say the least and the music really helped to set the tale. There was this one seen which came if you know the song just as the battle in the video takes place and the track picks up, as that started wave after wave came down the hill and it was just me and the undead in a perfect Paladin moment. Shortly after I had finished I got a whisper from a level one Shaman. It turned out to be that DK thanking me for showing him the event, it seems he had been long wanting to see the story but never finished it on any of his toons. I spoke to him for a short while and was glad I hadn't tryed to make him leave.
With that down I went north to the not yet Highlord Fordrings hovel to begin his tale of redemption. Early on I realised that this chain would be exactly enough to put me into the achievement so I through out all my other quests and put myself completely into Tirions story. Even knowing whats coming its a powerful thing to collect those remnants of the past for the son you know will die to redeem the father you know will go to bring down the Lich King. Its a sad realisation of the scripted nature of the game as you walk beside Taelan as he goes to find his father, one shotting all who come close with the wrath of my Hand of Reckoning and still have to watch him die to the Scarlet Crusade. The final walk of Taelan ended with not only the redemption of Tirion but with my
.

Now I am only 250 quests in Kalimdor away from my title.

After my epic night of quests the guild took off into ICC10 with two full teams, one being slightly stacked for progression. We planned to knock out as many hard modes as we could. The run went a lot better than last week with the group really working well as a team, we made short work of Marrowgarr and even Deathwhisper who's phase 2 was alot easier then I was expecting. Gunship proved to live up to the nickname of lootship this week and reward me with not only my Shield but a nice threat weapon to boot. After a few wipes on Deathbringer we decided to skip him in the thought of time and proceeded to knock out Heroic Fester and Rotface in one shot each. Rotface is a lot of fun in Hardmode with me finding that I really had to start using Hand of Freedom while kiting now. There was one moment I was sure I was dead when I had the Debuff on me while in a slime pool with the Ooze behind me and I was hit with the stun bomb, It was really close and popping trinkets got me out with only a few thousand health to spare and AD on CD. We finished the night with Putricide and a quick knockout of Blood wing all on normal. Putricide is getting to be very easy to the point were we are very confident that we can get the achievement for him next week.

Its been a strong week for raiding and hopefully the trend continues as we extend the 25man lockout for the first time in 25. Hopefully Friday will give us at least 2 end wing bosses of progression esspecilly if I'm right about the buff going up to 20% this tuesday.

Divided and Dissapointed.

So I started my week with a little stint in Outland Soloing some old Heroics for memory's and realised I was very close to Exalted with Aldor. After a quick pop to the AH and 200g later on Fel Arments



Friday came around and once again we were short a few for 25mans. Its strange how despite heavy recruiting we are still in the same place. We went as we normally would and knocked out an easy 6 bosses before having to call it a night due to a few being called away.
Saturday came and raids were called on account of to few on, however this time we were short the tank to do two 10mans and instead went to Ulduar to work on those elusive drakes. We made easy work of most of the place even picking up a one shot Freya HM with several who had never done her on normal. For our efforts we were awarded


We had some minor difficulty with Mim but Firefighter was soon down and the General HM followed.
Then we hit Yogg the last wall between half a dozen of us and our drakes. It was messy with people in clouds a lot but this time we weren't carrying anyone and all 10 did their work getting through phases despite all the adds. Several occasions we got to phase 3, once was even a 8% wipe but it started to get messy with even more mistakes. With my partner sick in bed we left it there and Yoggs toothy face smiling at us, still mocking as he keeps our drakes. We will get them though and now we are at his door again we can extend and work him till hes down.

Sunday ended up sharing Fridays fate with raids called early due to people leaving. Although one positive came and that was the failing of a rather annoying guildies trial, we can finally be rid of him and maybe there will be a little less drama now.
On a similar sad note we did lose a long time friend of mine. For the first time ever Festergut dropped his hunter belt in 25man and a guy I have known since level 40 has been waiting a long time for it to do so. However with pugs in raid there was always going to be a risk and this time a pug rolled a 96 far beating out anyone else. Being a strong item the pug of cause (and rightfully so) would not hand over the belt to guildies and my friend go angry. Now he is prone to the occasional rage and has rage quit once before and seeing it coming I would not let it happen again. He may have picked me up from the airport when I went to Oz, but halfway through his "I'm out" speech in guild "/gkick" and he was gone. Its sad to do it but really we have no choice in pugging a few people and they will often want gear you do.If the choice is not run because you wont pug or risk loosing an item to a pug most people would choose to risk it.
All we can really do is move on and hope that soon we wont have to pug again.

Weekendend Wrap Up

So this weekend started looking promising with 24 online including trials for 25man, we didn't even have to pug the spot in trade having a previous pug contact us looking for an open spot. The raid went mostly as normal with the exception of picking up

its taken along time but every run we would surely get both hunters hit with spikes at the same time just as they stand apart, finally we had a run where no hunter was ever targeted. When we reached the Upper Spire and decided to do the Blood wing first to try for that Blood Queen kill finally. We quickly dispatched of Council as usual and then it all went south. Really the best word to describe it was "Messy" there was fire everywhere and people getting Mind Controlled and raiders with Dark Pact not moving to the center. Every attempt we got better at fire and the Blood Bolts but everything else just got worse and worse. Its truly painful to watch people who have the Kingslayer title dieing because someone else wont stop casting to run to the center. The night finished with Festergut, Rotface and disappointment.
The following night shared the same fate for half the guild. With only 20 on for night two we spilt into 10mans and with the help of offspecs two pug healers and an alt tank we took two teams into 10man for the first time in months. We hoped to down several hardmodes that night as well. I finally see what people have been saying about those Hardmodes being such a step up, it was nice to be challenged on Marrowgarr. For me it was a nice challenge for others in my team it proved impossible and we downed him on normal and set the pace for the whole night. Gunship Hardmode took two trys with a wipe due to Axe throwers hitting 3, yes that's max level. Deathbringer proved to much with only 2 ranged and even normal Putricide was asking to much from the team. It was odd at first glance the team looked solid but by the end of the night my officer, 3/4 through a bottle of Jager was still out performing some of these guys.
Finally with Sunday being mothers day I wasn't able to make it online after dinner, but that wouldn't matter as half my team couldn't come back. The other team however seemed to do much better.

The positive to this all is were closer to where we need to be numbers wise now we just need to thin out those that can't dance and we should be away.

And So the King Falls

With Saturday being a disappointing day off due to lack of raiders again our next raid was Sunday with our 10man heading into ICC again to work on the Lich King.
We were feeling rather confident that finally with phase 2 almost worked out and the 15% buff up we could get him this week.
Our fist few attempts were working the rust off after not having been in last week due to lag issues from one of our healers. We were mostly dieing to defiles with the occasional silly death to Spirits in transition thrown in. But every attempt it came back to us and we pushed back deeper into phase 2. Then we we had the best run yet of the night we were only one down and were closing the 40% mark, so I used this time to quickly explain phase 3 as we had yet to cover it. Well everyone listened to me which while its good to know you hold your guilds attention even in fight, we were all so focused on my explanation we missed Defile and wiped at 41%.
We tryed again and this time knowing phase 3 before hand we pushed over 40% and into transition 2. It was messy and we lost a few to Pain and Suffering as well as the Spirits but were finally into phase 3. People started dieing left and right, we had Defiles down right and people were making it into Frostmorne but the Vile Spirits were killing at least one person every time they came down. We cleared out the Raging Spirits from transition and were down to me, my co-tank, one DPS and two healers and at 43% our Lock died. We kept at him, surviving Defiles and Vile Spirits pushing him lower and lower. Hearts racing as he passed the 42% mark and came closer to 41% with both healers running OOM. I switch to JoW and LoH a healer for mana, then in a flash it all goes. One healer is pulled into the sword and the other 3 of us are gone in seconds, it was a wipe at 40.6%.
We knew we had it though so with hearts still pounding in our chests and adrenaline in our veins we went again. This time all DPS would be on the King, having survived the Vile Spirits with no DPS up we knew that as long as we spread out we wouldn't need to kill them.
After summoning our Resto Druid out of Frostmorne we proceeded into a nice phase 2 wipe with a melee DCing right in the middle of the platform then being targeted by Defile.
With everyone back online we went again, this time there were no DC's. This time everything we had learned over the last few week, every hour we had put into this fight came together beautifully. Phase one went down like the rest nice and clean, the a tidy transition with adds dieing quickly. We hit phase 2 and people performed at that level I knew the guild could reach, Val'kyr died quick and Defiles were dropped nicely without me having to call for warning at time. We stuck a clean transition two and went into the final phase in full force, feeling the buzz and doing great.We lost one melee to Viles exploding but he was quickly back up on BRez. It was a weird thing the 40-25% bracket took forever then in the blink of an eye Arthus dropped us all and cheers went out, the King was dead.


We watched the well welcomed role play and then were back on our feet for the final stretch and it felt so good to just pop it all and go to town the Arthus for all we've seen him do since Warcraft III. Justice had come at last.




It was done finally over, we watched our cinematic, collected our loot and took our Screenshots. Just like that we were Kingslayer's, 12th on our relm to do so in 10man.

Now we can relax our 10mans a little and get those that had to sit on the sides patiently this whole time back in with us, work on some hard modes and get the others their titles.
Hopefully Ill have some video links up shortly with our close wipe and the kill.

Id once again like to thank publicly those that were with me for the kill for their hard work and dedication and pulling through when I knew they could. Also I'd like to thank those who had to sit on the sides feeling a little neglected, for all the pugging they did when only 15 were online and putting up with us.
Thank you all.

Stars and Orbs

So we started this week by heading back into Ulduar 10 for another crack at Alaglon. Unlike last week we had the advantage of knowledge of the fight and a Shaman for Heroism. Much like last week we had a few wipes to Cosmic Smash, Black Holes and one weird miss pull. However after 35min inside everything clicked and and we had a near perfect fight and up popped


Then Friday we headed back to ICC25 with the 15% buff behind us praying for some real progress, and ended up short 7 people. After 30min in trade chat and several pugs later we started clearing our way though ICC. With the 15% the only fight that gave us any trouble was the Frozen Rotting Giant for the weekly raid. We quickly dispatched Deathbringer and I picked up a token towards my 4 piece for Hardmodes. We finished the night one shotting both Fester and Rotface and a 3 shot on Blood Prince's. The Princes proved a little difficult with many of the pugs having not killed them before. The first two attempts were awful with people being hit and killed by almost everything they shouldn't do, but they got the hang of it on attempt 3 and we downed them again also earning us


I finished Friday off with a quick trip to Maly for the weekly and another achieve


Tomorrow its back to ICC for Blood Queen if all goes well.

Lack of updates

Sorry its been a while that I've posted but not a lot has been happening this week.
Managed to get Algalon down to 5% in 10man for our first ever try.
In 25 man we had a solid night until we lost a few after Deathbringer and had to call it and followed that up with the usual lack of attendance on Saturday.
So basically all I'm doing at the moment is focusing on recruiting more so we can thicken out the ranks and get rid of these disappointments that halt our progression.

Weekend Update

Been a rather good weekend of the guild. Started our runs with 25ICC as usual on Friday and only had to pug in 3 people. Not much to not for the 25, we had a clean run through Rotface and Festergut and had been doing well until we got to Council. For some reason Council didn't click this week at all and every attempt was plagued with mistakes until we called it with some people having to leave and planning to return the following night.
Then on Sat only 18 guildies were able to show and we dropped any further 25mans this week to work on ICC10.
The run started well with Gunship finally after all these weeks dropping my shield.
We then proceeded to get both


but then we faltered on both Putricide and Valitria trying to get their achievements.
Saturday finished on a poor note of having all of Frostwing left.
Today we went back into 10man to clear Frostwing and continue on Lich King. After two shotting both Valithria and Sindragosa we made our way again to the Frozen Throne. It did not go well to start people were making silly mistakes over and over, attacking the Horrors before they got to me, standing in AoEs and missing cleanses.
Our best attempt of the night was 66%. Then with peoples dinner coming and one having to leave we called last attempt and went all out. People just did what they were meant to and it clicked, phase 1 was perfect, transition also perfect and we went cleanly into phase 2 with everyone alive and perfect positioning. For the first time we got solid attempts on the Defiles and Val'kyr. We ended up having some people falling off the end as we started to lose it a little but with myself and the healers alive we managed to push him to 45% before wipe setting a new bar of excellence for next week when we extend the lockout and push phase 3.

Still He Stands

Not much to update from last night. We now have phase 1 and the transition mastered and are working on phase 2. Most of our troubles come from getting quickly set up for the phase after transition and watching for Defiles.
Going back tonight into ICC10 just to clear the first few bosses and grab some easy badges.

Bad Moon Rising

And I see trouble is on its way. At least that how tonight's raid went. Starting the night with 16 people on including some trials we trundled off to the raid weekly with the usual drama of people wanting to be their alts despite being told bring your mains in the previous weeks.
After 2 wipes on Noth the 12 that weren't saved finally downed him and we moved to ICC25 and pulling in pugs. Then it just go worse, with 6 pugs in the run consisting of obscure friends and trade chat members we continued to wipe 3 time on the trash to Marrowgarr. When we finally get to him we lose a trial healer to lag and replace then with a late coming guildie. The next four bosses were plagued with loot issues poor awareness bugs and the realisation at Deathbringer that some idiot had turned off our 10% buff with no way to turn it back on.
A messy Deathbringer, a new raider and a trash pull we almost didn't survive saw us on the stair to Festergut and Rotface. With the two as or raid weekly an old GM of mine from back in the days of Kara taught us how to abuse the weekly and claim badges without killing ether boss. You simple have Locks with their portal out of the room, druids or rouges with stealth or hunter with feign take both Rotfaces SlimeSpray and Festerguts Spores then leave combat and have the rest quickly die and bingo badges. Having these we went back for the Fester kill which with in-attentive pugs and no buff turned out to be 3-10% to much for us and the raid was called due to people having to leave after two wipes. I see little hope for the run tomorrow unless we get more guildies showing up and even then we wont be going for Bloodqueen without the Buff.

Then to add to the fun my partner has decided to take a break from WoW indefinitely, possibly to return in Catacysm. So with her spot empty I would like to welcome Mcveigh to the board of Officers.

Sunday will be back to ICC10 to extend the lockout and work on the Lich King after almost getting phase 1 down last week, hopefully this will go better than our 25 mans.

As for the guild there seem to be a lot of immaturity going around and less and less focus being put into raid, If anyone has some handy ideas on how to keep guildies in line and happy while everything is falling apart please feel free to comment I'd love to hear them.

Cold night in April

Back into ICC10 tonight, two hours later


Took quite a while from the group to master both the Blistering Cold and the phase 3 Ice tombs.
We had a few close calls with a 10% wipe down a healer and later a 4% wipe with some poor Tomb management. Finally though after several hours of trying It all clicked and Sindragosa went down. Now I leave to attempt the Lich King himself.

Easter Progression

Well I'm now back from holiday and slowly getting back into the swing of things.
It seems that despite the issue we had while I was on holiday the guild managed to do some progression with one 10man team clearing out Putricide and Dreamwalker in the same weekend.
So Friday has come around and being Easter there were only 11 people online with my partner offline not feeling well. So we decided to skip the 25ICC rather than pugging 15 and head to 10mans to try from more progression.
We quickly cleared out the first 4 bosses with the new 10% buff making them very easy and headed into Plague wing. Taking out Fester and Rotface we quickly moved to Putricide who had only been downed once and I personally had only one attempt under my belt where I had failed miserably at eating slime. We settled on the stationary strat and made the pull, right off the bat I was behind on slime having not realised I have to be dead centre while they are still small. Then the first Slime came and down went a DPS. We brought him up and things seemed to continue smoothly until late phase 2 where my delay in slime control started to catch up to me, big pools were popping up all over and more people were falling to the green slime. It was a wipe going into phase 3.
On the second attempt I got onto the centre of the slime pools and had them well under control, and with a positioning adjustment from Rhet my co-tank the slimes were now also under control. With these issues fixed and me now helping DPS as an Abom we pushed cleanly into phase 3 with no deaths, then as his health was almost finished people started to drop to goo and slime pools. Almost dead and with half the raid gone Putricide fell for the guild second and my first

Next we moved to the Blood wing and after a few wipes due to silly mistakes meet the Council.
Our first attempt did not go well with the early lose of our ranged tank we wiped at 55%.
Our second attempt following putricide went a lot smoother with everyone acing their jobs, and then again as to follow the trend at 12% the range tank dies. I pick up Kale but shortly after my co-tank dies and I have to pick up Taldram as well. Our healers really picked up the ball then with me tanking through Valanar and Taldrams enrages from 11% to 0 without popping Bubble Wall.
Then the progression, Blood Queen. Even with forgetting to remind people about the link the first attempt almost went well except the only person to die was out first vampire and she never re-bite anyone once he was dead so despite our best efforts we died at 30% on the enrage.
Once again attempt 2 was the one to click with all vampires biting their targets and each Air phase going off flawlessly.


We finished the night by one shotting Dreamwalker and getting me my first glimpse at the Queen Dragon herself. Hopefully tomorrow I will have an update about our progression kill in Sindragosa and hopefully the Lich King himself which would score us the 8th rank position in 10man on our server.