Written by Sil
Saturday, 04 August 2007

Now everyone knows that the third date is where you get the good stuff, but alas our third evening with Lady V left us with a large bill and plenty of frustrations. The first evening we spent together was definately promising, through the awkward inital introductions and very quickly thought the first phase. Then there was trouble and the second evening ended in disappointment as she gave up nothing more than the previous night. It has been said girls appreciate you spending money on them - so that we did freely for the 3rd and 4th evenings - but to no avail, all our expensive food and drink was not rewarded with anything on her part, she just continued shout and keep us at arms length. Finally on the 5th night everything came together - rather like discovering that the bra you have been struggling with has a clasp on the front and not the back - and everything popped into place. We rocketed into phase 3 and then shortly after finished the job.

In contrast to the early TBC encounters which are often ‘Tank and Spank’ variants, Lady Vashj is the first truly testing fight - in the same league as C’thun and Nefarian - in SSC. The delicate balance between ranged, melee and healers and the need for everyone to concentrate for the duration makes it quite a challenge. Initially in a fight with so many (seemingly) random elements, it seemed like luck and ‘un-avoidable deaths and insta-deaths’ reigned supreme, but slowly we mastered each phase, and each area within the phases. The ‘Sorry i didn’t notice i had static charge’, ‘I DID pot’ and the ‘I swear i didn’t bolt the Coilfang Elite as it popped, it aggroed me for no reason’ changed into slick movement, focused dps and efficent healing. While we missed getting the goodies on the third date we did prove the saying ‘The longer the chase; the sweeter the reward’ and the pleasure at her demise was sufficently intense.

The guild has also been progressing into the Eye, dispatching the entertaining Al’ar a few weeks ago and then Solarian this week. Both encounters are different and each quite worthwhle in their own way. Al’ar combines a fair amount of movement and also provides entertainment in the form of resisted taunts followed by abuse from healers as the MT gets slapped for 12-14k. The fights itself is not too hard, but again has different people performing different roles. After the trials of Vashj where often one death in p1/2 meant disaster it was refreshing to have a fight where a few char-grilled people provided easy mocking targets as opposed to a wipe. After careful consideration and counting we were able to determine that shadowpriests are easily the most useless class at avoiding this fate. In stark contrast to Morogrim who still has not dropped any worthwhile loot Al’ar (and Solarian) have provided some juicy items for which we thank them.

Solarian is a manic fight, and assuming you chose not to exploit, requires strong dps, interrupting, fast healing on mutliple targets and efficent ae. We are not sorry it is being re-worked as the currently method of having 2 (basically) afk AR tanks seems against the spirit of the encounter. In the end an enjoyable kill, while long and complex fights bring out the best in people there is always a place for the short ‘zomg dps’ ones such as Instructor in Naxx.

The smaller raid sizes have contrived to make the guild a more close knit place, Umbrage members have been trying hard to breakthrough any language barriers they might have and focus on common ground

Some more successfully than others…….

Life for our rogues was shattered in a most unpleasant manner….

Our shadowpriests however (in addition to winning most-crispy-fried on Al’ar) must be congratulated for their heroic efforts to improve their damage. But perhaps not in this case….

Now we face the might of Kael and look forward to to joys of that fight and the subsequent trip into Hyjal. Recruitment remains open in a some classes, we have slots for a holy paladin, a mage, a warlock, a resto druid and a hunter. We are happy to consider exceptional applicants who are (holy) preists. We are currently fully stocked on warriors, shadowpriests, shamans (of all persuasions), ferals and rogues. For account activation please send an ingame mail or ingame PM to Sil/Effis along with your forum username.