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…………….

Eventually there comes a time when most of us grow out of stamping our feet and throwing our toys out of the pram. Sadly XT never seems to have developed on from this as the large piles of junk in his room prove.

Did you ever wonder what would happen if the Action Man/He-Man/My Little Pony that you casually hurled into a corner or against the wall took exception to this and decided to shove its gun/sword/ erm tail (?) where the sun doesn’t shine as a sign of its displeasure? Well it was time for XT to learn that toys should be respected too!

The XT hard mode is a variation on the normal one with a much higher damage output and the removal of the adds (which sadly removed the fun of letting bomb bots reach him ‘deliberately’ to see which melee were paying attention) and drastically increased light bombs/gravity wells. Nothing about the fight can be deemed hard but it is good for seeing people who can’t change targets fast! The enrage is fairly soft and now that Blizzard seems to have sorted out the lag this is a nice introduction to the world of hard modes - and now poor Flamey has been reduced to his current pitiful level is the first fight which makes you die but not too much!

Next up for hard mode spanking was Thorim and after a day of trying to see what it would be like doing it without any aura of celerity we decided to let one of our shadow priests have a giggle and find a new friend. This fight has quickly become one of the least favourite hard modes - mostly because it is just annoying, blizzards, frost novas and frostbolt volleys all combine to make it intensely annoying, especially as it is one of the few fights which does seem capable of randomly killing people by bolting them repeatedly in a ridiculously short space of time. We like tentacles however, so any fight with them in gains bonus points. With the second of the four keepers having surrendered his sigil we have looked at the hilarious Mimi hard mode and the less entertaining Freya & the happy huggy tree friends - certainly two fights which will keep us occupied.

One more hard mode lurked in the shadows, awaiting our attention - it was the turn of the Iron Council. Having killed Brundir last the first week of Ulduar and the Runemaster shortly afterwards this fight has been a little neglected and just finished off as and when for loot and badges. The fight with Steelbreaker last is certainly interesting - and from a healing point of view somewhat stressful especially as it quickly became apparent that melee just love taking huge amounts of damage while killing Brundir. For the dps the first part of the fight is reasonably slack but then they have to earn their reward in phase 3 as it turns into a massive burn before Steelbreaker either kills the tanks by hitting them for 60k or lobs static discharge onto some poor sod incidently dealing them 30k damage. While Hodir provides a gear check with some randomness (lucky buffs can give you a bit of an advantage) there is no such trick for this fight - just a race against the fat giant. To be fair to him he won the race a number of times but slowly the dps got closer to that magic number and the healers managed to get the tanks to live longer and longer.

Recruitment remains open in the following classes:

Protection Warrior
Enhancement Shaman
Elemental Shaman
Mage

We will consider applicants in other classes but, as ever, it would take an exceptional applicant to succeed. Please see the forums for additional details on how to apply and who to poke for any further information you would like.

Ulduar 10 man has provided some entertainment and post-nerf Mimi, while considerably easier, is still a challenging and fun fight. The most fun seemed to be had by Fail Mod but everyone else had a little giggle. The moment was immortalised in the below video which is well worth watching to get a overview of the fight.

Umbrage vs Mimiron Firefighter 10 man

This left the way open for our first trip to Algy, the start of the enocunter was met with a mixture of joy (from those with high end computers) and groans (from those with hamster powered computers). The encounter looks superb - although the healers did not particularly appreciate his direct damage. As most encounters seem to gain complexity and fun on 25 man this promises to be an awesome fight. Just Freya and Mimiron stand in our way - although no-one is under any illusions about the time it will take to master those encounters.

For those of you who have followed us for a while you will note that one thorn in our side has always been the lack of a tree-friend to help us out. Recently things reached desperate levels as we investigated all possible options to try and find one. Annoyingly it turns out that not every tree will do…..

There has also been a recent addition to our officer team - something some of our trials have been quick to notice and have suddenly become a lot more pliable….

While we cleared Ulduar a while back there remained a feeling of annoyance that this was done with the assistance of a gnome. The history behind this is very simple - gnomes are a blight upon the game, the only slight benefit to them is the noise they make when you jump up and down on them (which of course if they were not in the game at all would not be needed). Gnome culling has become a hobby for some of us and a way of life for others. You can imagine our disgust at having to rely on one for aid.

Since that day this concern has been niggling at the back of the minds of the guild officers and this week we decided it was time to show the gnome that he could take his help and shove it. Leaving gnome-boy behind we descended down to Yogg Saron with the backing of the 3 more palatable keepers and the fun began again. Well executed this fight is a joy to partake in - the nerfs to phase 1 are understandable and have certainly allowed a lot of guild who were incapable of getting past it progress and clear in the last few weeks. Of all the phases the first remains the least changed by having less keepers and so the nerfs to it are not overly important as the fun starts later in the fight.

While not a ‘hard mode’ the increase in difficulty is quite sharp and as more keepers are removed the potential to recover from mistakes diminishes. Already the mind boggles as to how you do this without any keepers (lack of sanity wells and immortal guardians in phase 3!), however the journey will be an enjoyable one. A few slots remain for people looking to join in the fun!

Open recruitment

1 Mage
1 Ranged Caster Class
1 Holy Priest

There is also a potential slot  for a well geared rogue and a resto druid. The forums contain more details on how to apply and the relevant classleaders - failing that feel free to poke Effis online.

Every raid dungeon has one: ‘The Gear Check”. Since the beginning of time these fights have existed to allow dps classes to measure e-peen and argue about which class gets ‘an unfair advantage’ in damage.

For vanilla wow this was Patchwerk - and while the fight was more challenging for healers than other classes it became the favourite of the meter maids. Pride was won (and lost), gold was won (and lost) and egos were enhanced or trampled underfoot. Some people never recovered and were left hollow shells, crumpled and broken in the corner, never to emerge into the light again.

TBC gave us Brutallus where the vast improvement in class understanding played an interesting factor. The plethora of excuses for being beaten in the meters flowed forth “I got Burn!”, “My group is not as good as his group!” “i had to apply debuff X which basically halves my dps” “I had to stop dpsing for fear of aggroing”. As an encounter Brutallus was tuned to give you a cushion of about 6 seconds assuming you played well and no-one died. Once you progressed beyond him the additonal gear shaved plenty of time off this but at the time you needed everyone in good gear, playing well. And so it is with Hodir.

Despite a little bit of randomness included with the buffs this represents the purest burn fight of Ulduar so far - limited add (npc) action, limited movement and a big fat health pool to burn through. It took a little whlie to eliminate the frost freezes, the frozen blows deaths and the ice shard impaling but when all is counted up it seems that we are the winners!

[Disclaimer: All assumptions made on the above should also take into account - unfair distribution of buffs, lag, cats stepping on keyboards, being relentless discriminated against by ice shards, tank deliberately moving the mob away from some players, bugged flash freezes and being forced to dps with one hand while eating. In short everyone would have been the best 'if only'].

Time flies when you are having fun and that is exactly what Flame Leviathan has provided us with. More than any other this fight has proved how an encounter can develop with increasing levels of difficulty until it is a superbly tuned fight, unforgiving of mistakes and unbelievable fun to participate in. The progression of the fight from the no tower zerg, which we have since perfected using 8 undergeared alts (yes on heroic), through to the two tower fight which while not zergable allows a few errors and is well within the reach of most guilds. With the addition of the third tower comes a choice about which of the two remaining ones to leave up (both affect the fight in a very different way). We chose to unleash Freya and her friendly plant things on our first 3 tower kill and leave Hodir and the ice beam for last. While we might (and often do) criticise Blizzard for bugs, lag, class imbalance etc it is also fair to say that in this encounter they have hit a winner. While we all chose classes for a reason on this fight it is irrelevant what class you play as almost any role can be fulfilled by almost any class. Like all true challenges it is dependant on all people fulfilling their role and while, after a few kills, we can recover from one mistake the first time this was not an option. Even if the loot was not worthwhile there would be an argument for doing it with 4 towers up every week, the same reason we play the game - for fun and for the challenge.

[Edit: Well between me writing this and posting it (comments regarding my slacking are not welcome), it seems this fight was the recipient of a huge nerf. Not only a health nerf which would have made the fight slightly more accessible but the total gimping of one of the beams rendering the fight at least 50% easier. Sadly this is the way of things - that encounters get nerfed a little as time goes on - however given the fight gets easier the more gear you get this is one I felt was not worthy of a nerf yet. It gets easier by itself as more people fill up on 226lvl items.]

Elsewhere Ulduar is developing nicely, the step up from gimp mode to challenging mode is extreme in some encounters, turning a simple mindless zerg into an encounter to test your dps, healing, tanking and awareness. Only Freya has degrees, the others are all or nothing. Some immediately grab you as encounters you can just about, almost, maybe do with a little tweaking. Some make you shake your head and wonder how you will cope with 3 adds when one makes the fight 100% harder already. Some simply make you laugh - as Mimiron turned the entire room into an impromptu bbq - steak a speciality (sadly only well-done). It is nice to see encounters were progress is steadily made, where you can see yourself working towards the end result even if the progress is slow - one day soon victory will be ours!

Hodir continues to provide a barometer for dps epeen stroking, however following a shortage of dps one night we allowed one of our resto shaman to dps alongside our regulars. Initially their joy at her low dps swelled their egos further however some of us knew the cause and shortly afterwards the smile was wiped from their faces.

Ten man Ulduar has provided us with some amusing fights, on some fights you cannot gain much insight into the encounters as Thorim and Hodir surrender their hard mode kills with barely a whimper, on others you can get a feel for the Heroic encounters - Freya with two happy tree friends, general tentacle with his saronite blob-thingy and Yogg Saron with only two guardians as the other two gaze down (probably drinking a cup of peppermint tea) and do, well, nothing. It’s nice to get a feeling for these encounters and the ten man just wets the appetite for the 25 mans as you are able to imagine the challenges massively increased in the heroic.

If Ulduar is an example of the raiding of the future then Blizzard’s domination of the market looks sure to continue, personally I think the loot on 25 man should be improved given the increased level of difficulty and perhaps some of the 10 man encounters made slightly trickier (certianly the ‘harder’ modes) - but it is hard to deny that Blizzard have improved massively on Nub-Naxx and produced encounters which make your heart race and leave you with a desire to beat after a night of wipes.

As a shameless plug, recruitment remains open in some classes as we seek to bolster a few areas. Never one for benching people we look for people who want to raid 4+ times a week, who are prepared to devote time and energy to raiding and own pets which are able to cope with being left unattended for 5 hours without needing feeding/walking/shearing/bathing/riding. We are particularly interested in a mage (feel free to contact Arile for an informal chat prior to applying), a resto druid (contact Squishable) and a holy priest (contact Jezara). There are also opportunities for a dps dk, a lock and possibly a rogue. Should you wish to discuss applying feel free to poke me during the evening (on Effis) - if I am healing a boss fight you’ll have to wait, on trash - well - that’s a different story.

I used to state that a good understanding of English is required to raid with us however the reasons for our occasional lack of communication seem to have little to do with English, or indeed any language.

We are pleased to note that guild spirit remains high and as we work towards our raid goals we get closer and closer as a group. There is however a line which should never be crossed - some people however barely slowed down as it approached……

We all know that love is sometimes found in guild but it is usual to at least pause long enough to take a breath before trying to attract different people.

And finally a word from our resident slacker

..