As you can see, our new website is now live.

We hope you like the new design and can bear with us while we move the news archive over to the new system.

Many thanks to our fantastic all-girl design team of Kayti, Kizax and Squish, as well as to the other officers and classleaders for their feedback (both positive and negative!).

One more and I’ll stop……….

I am torn between feelings of admiration and hatred for the person/s who thought up the idea for achievements. Hatred because of my inability to let the little boxes stay incomplete and thus why I am forced to address the Brood of Nozdomo bar being in the hated section. After killing 30000 bugs for the AQ40 opening chain I was hoping to never again see the ugly things, let alone be faced with killing them. Of course I could also hate the idiot who put paladins on the horde side and thus essentially reset all my reputations. Admiration because of their understanding that the most pointless task becomes compelling if you award points for it! The points get you absolutely nothing. But you still need them.

Achievements have given us some wonderful sites - the only draenai priest (well since we were forced to make an alt called ‘Snowflake’ there are now two) on the server showered in snowflakes with every step she took, 20 people running round trying to gather up enough turkey minions while the stupid things cluck about and cause havoc - max level, epic geared characters madly chasing round mice trying to vanquish them, questing in the Valley of Trials, and people hurling firecrackers, rockets and all sorts as fast as they can in the hope of gaining an achievement.

Of course not all achievements give this level of amusement, some demonstrate a level of play you should aspire to. Many of the dungeon achievements were well tuned and forced people to thing up different tactics to just tank’n’spank. Learning to kite, learning to use ae damage to break cc, trying unusual class balances and abilities - all these were brought to the fore and breathed new life into the heroics. Pre-nerf there were a few very challenging ones.

The raid ones (both 10 man and 25 man) allowed those who had breezed through content (which was most of the pre-Wotlk ‘raid’ guilds) to find some new challenges in the game, to strive not just to beat the encounter but to annihilate it. Sartharion alone is no fun and not a challenge, with 3 adds he is fun. Killing Thaddius is easy (and you can carry several directionally confused people and the normal ‘MSN beeped’ fools) - killing Thaddius without a single charge hitting anybody needs every member of the raid to focus. That is what the raiding achievements are all about. If you have truly mastered the encounters most of them just require everyone to show that. Killing Maexy within 20 minutes of Nub is not hard, but it does need everyone to be awake and trash-surfing to cease.

The true prizes amongst the raiding achievements belong to ‘The Undying’, ‘The Immortal’, ‘Of the Nightfall’, ‘Twilight Vanquisher’ and the Malygos burn ones. These are prizes worth striving for. The loot might not be better but they are a demonstration of commitment, focus and pride.

Sadly ‘The Undying’ and ‘The Immortal’ can be wrecked by a single dc (although thankfully the lagspikes are gone) which means you need a little luck as well as good play. However it gives an easy instance a new challenge.

Of all the encounters currently in game 10 man Sarth+3 has presented the greatest challenge. It is both beautifully and badly balanced. With the right raid it is so tight as to only give a few seconds leeway - the choices between burn and control, regarding healer and tank numbers, what to do with adds - all this makes it a worthwhile experience. Sadly it requires a stacked raid (although luckily you can stack melee or ranged, just not both) which was one of the things Blizzard were determined to avoid.

The Malygcos achievement is another example of how to force people to improve their gameplay. The enrage is remarkably tight with the added bonus that if you overshoot by a few seconds the fat dragon dies to the ticking stacks meaning it is hard to repeat (6mins 1.3 secs is not a fun way to fail). Again it highlights the need to take a raid full of people who want to succeed, who can take personal responsibility for their action and are prepared to step forwards and deliver a worthy performance.

For a guild leaders point of view the achievements offer both a good tool with which to motivate people and a powerful tool to see who is actually pulling their weight not only in terms of attendance but in terms of individual performance. When killing bosses routinely it is easy to overlook player A doing bad damage or dying on certain fights. When you are racing a tight enrage and miss it those players are highlighted.

The 10 man achievements completed now the focus comes down to completing the 25 man ones.

Recruitment remains open in limited classes. Currently we are very keen on a tanking warrior (due to the importance of this role the successful applicant would need not only MTing experience but also high attendance) and are also looking to supplement the following dps classes;

Warlock (1 slot)
Hunter (1 slot)
Elemental Shaman (1 slot)

There are also possibilities for an oomkin druid, a retribution paladin and a shadow priest.

The Immortal…….. and then perhaps I will stop.

Well while we have been busy for the last two and half months the front page has slacked, mainly because there really is nothing to celebrate at the moment. We await the Wrath of the Lich King because at the moment he seems only mildly annoyed and how his armies have not been beaten by a collection of small fluffy animals is a mystery.

The changing face of raiding has ensured that everyone can walk into raid dungeons and clear them with the minimum of effort and skill. The guild levelled fast with the vast majority of members hitting 80 within a week of release and piling into the heroics. The more dedicated members raced for the server firsts - achieving it in several classes while the spam-o-meter (achievement announcer) went into overdrive during that first week.

The skipping of ‘normal’ dungeons was to be expected and we amused ourselves in the heroics as soon as we hit 80. Disappointingly they were swiftly cleared and the list of achievements for “Glory of the Hero” started diminishing at a rapid rate. After a few days of getting locked out of every heroic and having nothing more to buy from vendors except Mammoths we delved into Naxx, an instance which had caused a lot of trouble in its original form and one we were hoping would have retained its flavour and a degree of difficulty. Sadly that impression was not to last long.

The original Naxx might only have been seen by 5% of the players and I understand the reason for recycling it given the amount of work/lore in the dungeon. However the difficulty of the place has been completely removed as was discovered in our first trip to the spider wing where it transpired that tank kiting on Nub’s locust swarm was a total waste of time and effort - far simpler to just stand still. As we progressed deeper it was also gratifying to note that if your dps are incapable of stopping damage on Maexy in order to time the enrage it makes no difference at all as she could not fight her way out of a wet paper bag even when in that state. On and on it went; once proud encounters now reduced to zergs which can happily ignore most abilities. While entry level dungeons should not be overly challenging it is not really ideal when you one shot most bosses. Ten man Naxx was in the same vein.

The achievements promised to provide some challenge but by then Blizzard had implemented it’s own additional tactic - chronic lag. Providing some additional difficulty to Naxx was a splendid idea but most raiders would have appreciated more damage from bosses or more hp or tighter enrages. Instead we got massive lag spikes. Thaddius takes on a whole new level of amusement when you can only dps for 40% of the time and your polarity charge takes 6 seconds to appear. Poor Gluth got so confused he simply cast decimate every 15 seconds for the whole second half of the fight while his zombie cohorts teleported around and into his mouth and we particularly enjoyed the amusement of Nub’rekhan instantly casting 10 stacks of locust swarm without the cast bar ever appearing. Our dreams of achieving “The Immortal” disappeared as the only realistic option was to raid at 4am to try and avoid any lag at all. Of course some people have been frustrated at not getting their achievements!

Ten man Naxx was a different proposition and the lag was a lot less noticeable. Both the Undying and 8-man are very possible here and for added fun taking a single healer makes it faster and more challenging (you will need a Sp or a Ele to heal the 4H and top up a tank on Gothic).

Other than Naxx Wolk brought two other encounters - the new Onyxia (Malygcos) and the new mechanic in Sarth and his little friends. Malygcos provided some amusement with the dragon riding and was a refreshing encounter which, as new encounters should, took a little time to learn and was gradually mastered. The achievements for Malygcos are distinctly tougher than the Naxx ones and the 8-man one allows for very few mistakes and if you get unfortunate sparks can be very very tight with the enrage. They were probably not helped by some additional features such as Maly landing in p2 to help out his minions.

We would like to extend our gratitude to Blizzard for their continued use of chests - it’s fabulous when it takes longer for 25 people to loot the chest than it does for 25 people to kill the boss.

Sarth is the one ray of hope in the current raid encounters. Sarth alone could be pugged by 20 rather un-ambitious people who have consumed 10 litres of Diamond White apiece and then had 10 MacDonalds cheeseburgers each. The thinking behind the encounter is excellent - differing difficulties for differing levels of raid guilds. Sarth +3 is a decent encounter - maybe the only one in Wrath thus far that is a substantial gear and retard check. Again the difficulty is supplemented by lag every time Wintersgrasp starts or every time someone talks to an NPC. Having killed all three drakes it is somewhat frustrating to lag and discover during that time Sarth ate your tank and your entire raid missed the chance to cook their marshmallows as they got flayed by a breath.

Blizzard has stated that it will have more encounters of this type and that is nothing but good news - everyone gets to enjoy the content and the more skilled/ambitious people can increase the difficulty. We can only hope that new dungeons bring an increased level of difficulty and ensure that content both lasts for more than 2 weeks and separates the skilled raiders from the unskilled.

At the moment the guild is relaxing - clearing the 25 man raids as fast as lag allows and then trying out various combination on 10 man Sarth +3. Blizzard has done some good work with wotlk but a lot more remains - server stability, raid difficulty and class balance remains key. Alhtough nerfs to Beacon of Light are simply not allowed.

Recruitment remains open for a few classes following a spate of unsuccesful trials…..

We are especially eager to get a high-attendance, skilled warrior to keep the druids and paladins in their place and prove warriors are the kings of tanking! A successful applicant would look to maintain at least 80% attendance and be prepared to both main tank and off-tank the new encounters are they arrive. Plus you get this guy as your classleader!

And briefs from this guy!

As the guild gears up and meanders through the initial instances is a good time to apply - both to ensure you are familiar with the guild and them with you. We also have potential slots for a hunter and exceptional players in other classes. When the new dungeons arrive if you want to be challenging for server firsts and experiencing bosses before their inevitable nerfs and changes - come and speak to the relevant classleader or one of the officers. Full details on how to apply and who the classleaders are is contained on the forums, shockingly enough in the Recruitment folder.

With current content clear it is now time for us to turn our attention to the future and prepare ourselves to face the wrath of the lich king.

In order to do that we are opening recruitment in the majority of classes to worthy applicants. We are receiving applications now and are looking to have people in guild a week prior to launch to enable you to get to know us a little. We have been fortunate to have several older members return to us and boost the guild with their devastating insight and critical questions…..

Think you can do better?

Umbrage was formed on the first day of Arathor’s life and has remained at the forefront of horde raiding from that time forwards. The guild has a proud raiding tradition stemming from our server first of Azuregos all those years ago to our horde first of Kil’jaedan. You will find our frontpage updates date right back to that first raid kill and we like to think offers an amusing insight into our raiding and guild life.

The guild is primarily a PvE raid guild and it (almost) goes without saying that you are expected to maintain PvE specs during raid times and be driven to succeed in that field. While the guild does PvP it is very much a secondary pursuit.

Raiders are expected to maintain at least 60% attendance, although 80% is preferable. We use a modified zero sum dkp system which benefits regular raiders (dkp is issued to all those available to raid regardless of whether or not you are in the raid). The guild’s raiding hours are 1915-0000 from Sunday to Thursday. There is the occasional early start (1700) on Sundays. Friday and Saturday remain free days for whatever fun people choose to have alt runs/pvp/5 mans/drunkenness.

Before applying you should read the guidelines and if you desire please feel free to talk to one of the officers or myself (Kätyri or Mera). The wotlk application form is a chance for you to sell yourself and while gear is not important you do need to let us know why you should be granted a trial.

Umbrage will start to raid shortly after Wotlk is launched and I expect all members (including trials) to work towards being ready to hit Naxx. This doesn’t simply mean being level 80 but also working through 5 mans to gear up. If you are aiming to ding 80 at Christmas this is not the guild for you.

Good luck!

(Please note we do have some loot issues with decent items - see below)

Kil’jaeden Tamed

One thing which was certainly clear is that KJ was an awesome and challenging fight, that much is clear from the leftover shell which now inhabits sunwell. It is disappointing that defeating the un-nerfed version eluded us but the current one is still entertaining, albeit not overly challenging. While I can understand Blizzard’s need to make the content more accessible this change has sadly turned SWP into a bit of a joke with only Felmyst retaining any real level of difficulty. Poor Muru has been hardest hit with the heart ripped out of the whole fight.

KJ was clearly a fight Blizzard put a lot of effort into, from his gradual emergence from the sunwell to Kalegcos’ efforts to aid the raid. It is perhaps a shame that the nerf has been so complete. In any case people enjoy the pictures of his demise.

With content clear we now have a new aim! Achievements!! We’d like to congratulate Blizzard on such an obvious time sink that is at the same time so addictive. Suddenly re-rolling for TBC looks to be a horrific mistake as the neutral rep with Zandalar, Cenarion Circle and Hydraxian Waterlords looks less than fun. I am not even going to contemplate Brood of Nozdormu.

Elsewhere people’s focus had fallen on abusing the new talents including our holy paladins who have spent there weekends ret specced running round AV killing people with their talentless new abilities. While I am prepared to accept Blizzard has an overall plan I am at a loss to understand quite how allowing Paladins to use Avenging Wrath and Divine Shield at the same time is part of it. It’s probably not that overpowered I mean how much damage can an avenging wrathed ret paladin do in 10 seconds…….

While battling with M’uru in the shadow of WOTLK.

Raiders have found a new toy.

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