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

..

Server First and our first Hard Mode kill:

The last few weeks have been filled with Ulduar raids, testing and killing the remainder of the Ulduar bosses and starting to work on the Hard modes. We have been thrilled with some of the encounters so far and some, while easy on pussy mode, promise to be exceptionally challenging on hard mode. The guild has responded well to the increased competition of wotlk and has surged forward in terms of ‘worthwhile’ achievements.

The four keepers guard the final two bosses and we progressed through them at a rapid speed, before returning in the last week to play with some of them on hard mode. Blizzard have made a commendable effort to keep these encounters different and they have a healthy mix of adds, single target, single tank and multi-tank fights. The first keeper (by virtue of the fact that if you go down the stairs from the Shattered Walkway and turn right you get to him first) is Hodir. Hodir is the closest Ulduar has to a resistance fight, and by this i mean your tank has to wear some - the amount being dictated by how slack your healers are. Continuing the tradition of NPCs with the intelligence of gnats the encounter allows you to free a number of ice-tombed idiots to aid you in your cause and they show their appreciation by making nice little cooking fires and the like - before promptly getting themselves ice-tombed again. The normal mode is the easiest of the Keeper fights while the hard mode (assuming you didn’t exploit to get it) represents a massive test of dps and healing. From looking at the loot table I am sure that people can squeeze out some more damage….

After Hodir comes Thorim whose room brings back memories of the arena in BRD and you’ll find the spectators about as friendly. While one group forges through the tunnel in order to goad the fat giant into getting into the thick of it, the rest brutally squish the dorfs (and others) who try to gatecrash. The hard mode sees a nice increase in his damage and the intervention of his ‘wife’ who runs around generally being annoying and casting frost nova on people. On normal mode this a is relatively entertaining, although not overly difficult, encounter which should present little challenge to those able to reach it. On hard mode we look forwards to a nice repair bill while we learn it.

Freya the Fluffy likes flowers and trees (and probably new age music and baking flapjacks). Thankfully the trash in the room has been reduced making it slightly less of a chore to clear through to her. This encounter is the Sartharion of Ulduar with 3 tree-friends you can either chop down on the way or allow to buff her. The main fights consist of handling several add phases, each of which requires a slightly different approach and then a second boring phase which consists of button mashing and avoiding exploding acorns. With 0 tree-friends up the fight is just a question of handling the add phases, which is to say ensuring your raid can a) engage their brains and avoid standing in the middle of the raid and flaying everyone with a lightning storm, b) Manage to kill 3 mobs within a short space of time and c) Avoid killing 10 exploding mobs at the same time and thus taking 1,000,000,000 damage each. Once she gets her guardians it becomes a LOT more fun. Each guardian adds a different buff and increases the difficulty of the fight considerably. This week our focus has been on dispatching her with one of her guardians up - a feat we achieved after some practice, making us the second guild (and first Horde) to reach this milestone. The next few weeks promise to add to the difficulty as we explore the other guardians.

Last, but by no means least in terms of difficulty and enjoyment, is Mimi the cute gnome. Well annoying really but he has been blessed with some excellent scripted lines - sadly mostly when he kills people so in order to maintain morale we sacrifice a few people each week so we can hear them. A dynamic encounter with lots of different phases this is an excellent boss which, judging by the number of kills worldwide, represents the greatest challenge on hard mode. A slight tendency to lag has crept into Ulduar these last few weeks and this is one of the fights where you do not need that to happen. We strongly object to the nerfing of his trash however which provided endless amusement as those incapable of moving died repeatedly.

General Tentacle (as well as being popular with one of the girls in guild) was a breath of fresh air, certainly as far as healers are concerned. Mana conservation is the priority and a combination of interrupting and movement keeps the other classes from being bored. Initially perplexing and annoying to be unable to get mana back in the normal manner this is nicely tuned little fight which we had great fun with.

And finally Yogg Saron, This is another fight which on normal (4 Keepers helping) is fairly straightforward and is more about eliminating stupid mistakes than actually doing anything clever. As the keepers diminish however it becomes massively more difficult. On 10 man we have happily poked him to death with 3 Keepers and are looking forward to being able to do this on 25 man also. Ulduar has given a huge amount of choice as the hard modes mean that you can focus on any one of half a dozen bosses as your progress raid and mop up the others as and when. Not only does this provide variety it also provides a large amount of content for raiders and is to be encouraged. With flashbacks of C’thun, still in our opinion the best encounter the game has produced, Pine Cone Mk 2 is most enjoyable and having tentacle toys is the pinnacle of any raider’s gear collection.

Alongside our progress on the Keepers and their hard modes the guild has had great fun with Flame Leviathan - a superb encounter which just gets better and better the more turrets your leave up. From the very first week the guild has tested itself against this encounter, choosing to kill it with one turret up from week one. Last week we took some time out to play with three turrets up, which turns the encounter from a zergable one into a fantastic control fight, with every player needing to perform their task and show awareness of their surroundings. ‘Nuked From Orbit’ gave us a great sense of achievement and continued our streak of server firsts on it and we look forward to trying 4 turrets at some point over the coming weeks.

Elsewhere we picked up some other entertaining achievements as well, ‘Nine Lives’ and ‘With Open Arms’ providing a twist on otherwise vanilla fights. With the guild up to its full raid quota once again recruitment is open in a few classes, notably a mage, a resto druid and a tanking deathknight. As ever we will accept exceptional candidates in other classes and look forward to offering them the chance to join the team and play at our high level.

Bunny madness overtook us, along with a distinct high from eating too much chocolate. Some people had some harmless fun making a potential dream of Dr Evil’s come true! Bunnies with frikking laser beams.

Others saw different opportunities…..

And while we look for dedication from our raiders, people show it in varying amounts!