Summer has come and gone and as autumn creeps towards us the lure of sun diminishes and normal raiding service is resumed. Aside from a week where the majority of the guild descended on London for the annual meet the summer gave us a fairly uninterrupted raid schedule and plenty of new content to keep us busy. The latest VoA boss continues the trend of giving casuals decent loot for zero effort and the welcome but in the end depressing return of Onyxia gave us pause for thought.

It was many years ago that I first remember Onyxia, but even that was not the beginning of the story. Of all the meeting places for raids Blackrock mountain was the most entertaining, a 5 minute ride in from Kargath and then into the mountain itself (along with 100 other people) and the amusement of lagging as you ran down the passage and into the lava - your screen just catching up as you sank to the bottom of it. Clearly the Blizzard Health & Safety team had not got round to installing safety barriers. Once this was negociated (by moving at snail pace) the ‘tricky’ jump to the balcony which involved half the people falling to the ground. Standing outside UBRS was a dangerous business as training mobs onto the people waiting there was a hobby enjoyed by some. I am not sure how many BRS runs it took to get the relevant key - all i remember was that it was a lot. Then UBRS runs, endlessly, stupid low drop numbers on the Blood and repeated trips to Desolace to find Rexxar the Disappearing NPC who wandered on a looooooong path before depopping. And that was before you even got to the dragon.

In the heady days of Molten Core there were not really phases to fights. Compared to modern standards there were hardly even tactics until you reached Sully the Shrimp. Onyxia was a different type of encounter for people, very little trash and then a boss in a big room. In the days where Ragnaros was unseen by all but the top guilds, for most Onyxia was the most complex and exciting encounter. The aggro was horrific in P1 with the knockback, i remember countless hours of auto-attacking through it and then spacing out in p2, the ’special’ rogues having the honour of meleeing from under her while the ranged dealt with loads of whelps and trying to dot her enough to stop the deep breaths. The deep breaths themselves were fast and covered the majority of the room, and were essentially raid wipers. Then came P3. In an era without Omen and when people didn’t fully understand the mechanics of aggro there were nights of people getting aggro and running to the middle, hoping the tank would get aggro before they died (never happened) and then eventually one of your 4 tanks getting aggro and seeing if you could survive. Stance dancing the fear, getting feared into the whelps (via the tail), overambitious dps aggroing and Onyxia flame breathing half the raid, having to stand in the right place so that when the fear hit you were away from the lava cracks because 2 bursts would kill you. The long run back from Brackenwall, pressing the map and seeing a long train of corpses running back for the 10th time. At the time it was a superb encounter.

While Blizzard had stated that Onyxia for the fail-generation would be there more as a tribute than a challenge it was still something to look forward to. Unfortunately the encounter was just destroyed. P1 may as well not have existed it was so pointless, P2 had no spacing issues and no whelp issues - the deep breaths cover about 5% of the room and take such a long time to start that you can crawl out of the way, not that it matters as you can survive them anyway. Then just as the promise of having an issue at start of P3 loomed it became apparent she was tauntable. Added into that the lava damage is pretty much the same as it was at level 60. Only now i have 26k hp instead of 4k with my imba “of the monkey” gear.

At least the achievements had amusing names and the most excitement was for the loot. Helm of Wrath! Can openers all round - now if only they would re-release the shoulders from Molten Core/BWL……..

Luckily to mirror this is the Coliseum, which has offered some entertaining fight and achieved something I never thought I would see - people whining there is no trash. Clearly the “I AFK on trash” brigade has found that they can no longer slack for half the raid. Poor darlings. The normal modes are uninspiring and limp, easily cleared by alts and undergeared players alike - the step up to heroic though is massive, especially in 25 man. The benefits of having to clear it on normal first are apparent as the heroic mode learning has been aided by the fact people know the ‘base’ fight.

The ten man heroic is an enjoyable instance, done in less than an hour and offers a reasonable smattering of loot for the effort. In particular the addition of limited tries has proved excellent, although in our case somewhat frustrating as our obligatory one wipe per instance has hampered our accumilation of nerd points. For the time being we’ll have to settle for the lesser achievement.

Heroic 25 man was a different matter! Not quite the stroll in the park which 10 man was, progression through the Beasts was nice and steady, with overall improvement until we got to Icehowl, relaxed and got trampled to death. Still perserverence was the key and they were vanquished swiftly followed by Gnome-Killer who didn’t prove much of a challenge. The Faction Champs on heroic are a lot more fun, and a lot more vicious. Aside from the fact no-one had PvP talents in their PvE build the challenges came from movement, the obscene amounts of damage to random players and having to deal with a multitude of debuffs and mobs. The pleasing thing about the encounter is that you can see it improving, from getting the first mob to 70% to 50% and onwards, you can see people improve at moving, improve at crowd control and slowly master the encounter. Added to that the differing setups of your own raid and the Champs means this will remain a difficult encounter (until the nerf bat hits).

Then came the Twins which, aside from wrecking everyone’s FPS, turned out to be most enjoyable and provided endless amusement to the girls in the guild when asked to ‘catch the balls’. Clearly the generalisation that girls are more mature than boys was not based on the actions of this lot. There were also a few issues with clicking the portals to change colour, which led to the inaugural “Who has the dirtiest mind” competition.

The Twins went down remarkably fast which left Anub’arak to occupy the remaining tries - a task he seemed well suited to doing. After all Blizzard’s efforts to equalise tanks this encounter proves that occasionally it is simply not possible. The offtank invitation clearly states “No Shield, no entry”. We look forward to dying a considerable amount on this encounter!

Back in Ulduar there was some unfinished business to take care - some trees and a gnome! Freya and Mimiron had escaped our attention for a little while but it was about time they were put in their place. Freya was first, a fight which it has to be said was a little ruined by having coliseum gear. The biggest problem was always keeping people alive and with the additional hp on that gear it was not an overly troublesome fight. That left only Mimiron - still one of the best encounters in the game - to beat and despite being incinerated a fair few times we slowly mastered the phases and saved the needed time in the earlier phases to poke him to death before the room imploded. The way was clear for us to summon Alganon, we are sure he will enjoy meeting us.

While the 10 man proto-drake had been aquired a little while back there were a few still flapping round on slow fat mounts and with only a single achievement left for the Ironbound Proto it seemed it was time to go and poke Yogg Saron with only one keeper up. This was a fight we had practiced a bit pre-coliseum (namely how to stop people going insane!) but had not been near for a month or so. After a brief period re-acquainting people with green clouds, dps control a few other old favourites we dispatched him with only Thorim to help us. Which made a lot of happy people (and retarded amounts of guild spam).

A few other achievements have come our way over the summer - including winning the race to the Conquerer of Ulduar title.

Elsewhere we have swelled our numbers a little and closed recruitment in most areas. Top of the shopping list is still a mage or two and a shadowpriest would be very much appreciated. Elsewhere there are possibilities for a boomkin and an enhancement shaman. If you are interested in joining please feel free to visit us on Arathor, any of our members will be happy to guide you in the direction of the best person to talk to.

Although most in the guild have returned from the summer rested and ready for action some have become a little more strange

Like most we have spent time on the less worthwhile achievements too - including trying the ever popular “Don’t get hit by the eyebeams on Kologarn”. While I feel this is not the greatest challenge there are those who felt the need to celebrate dodging them. Well temporarily.

The summer also provides the opportunity for a variety of parties. Not everyone seemed to have their priorities right however…………….