The last time "The Twins" was splashed across our guild chat with such regularity we were in the middle of AQ40 and enjoying our tanks getting tickled for 10-12k in a second (this was when tanks had 10k hp). This time the Twins were marginally better to look at and fortunately marginally less annoying.

Theses two charming ladies offer a devastating combination of fire and shadow but a fair amount of diversity is given by letting you choose which one to poke first. That is not to say that they were easy - to start with they presented a few problems. On the face of it they were looked favorites to kick our asses - i mean who would you choose to put your money on!

Needless to say after our first attempts met with failure we felt the need to rethink our tactics. Our initial attempts to boost our current raid members to Superman status did not work overly well….

Time for a rethink!

On all new bosses we like to counter their abilities with better ones of our own - we like to hone our skills, take on board comments regarding our play and in the need arises recruit. Firstly we needed our own imba stare to combat their fierce approach to life!

Then true to form we need to expand on our tactics - and how better to do so than debating how we can improve and offering hints and tips for other classes!

Our warriors explained to our rogues how to backstab properly

Our feral was sent to learn some new tricks from his superiors

The debate of windfury Vs GOA was solved with a gentle bribe

and finally two of our core members decided they needed some upgrades!

Some people however felt that they needed even more help in order to maintain dps

Finally we sent our some of our faithful members to seek our additional healers….

All this prep work would not be a success without a master plan - and in order to concoct one we needed some excellent ideas!

Now all that remained was execution!

It has to be said for a fight so deep inside SWP the loot from this is pretty crap and even our first kill was blighted by having to vendor and void some loot. Still 4 weeks on it is nice to know that we get to vendor loot each week. Awesome.

And now for something really scary…..

(look an exciting new room to die in!)

Elsewhere in guild we celebrated more time in BT o/ However this was not all in vain as our first set of glaives appeared nicely.

True to form Umbrage waited until the last hour of the raid week to vanquish this particularly ugly dragon. Felmyst has continued the high quality of SWP bosses – combining elements of the first two nicely. The enrage is not too bad, any guild with the dps to kill Brutallus has the dps to kill this (assuming your dps live!). The movement is important but fortunately without the randomness of Kale’s portals. Like so many fights before it, practice is the key and once it clicks – everything goes right (and of course being able to pinpoint the cause of any wipes…..)

Fortunately for Felmyst she was also blessed with seasonal boss abilities called ‘Sun’, ‘Girls’ and ‘Euro 2008’. These did their best to slow down progress, especially combined with the tricky raid setup. This enabled her to survive a few weeks longer but to the detriment of Hyjal which suffered the ignominy of being alt-bashed. However with our healer team in fine form and our dps ensuring they did not let the side down, the dragon’s cunning use of encapsulate and gas nova were to no avail and she dropped from the sky gifting the raid with pretty epics.

Our condolences go out to Trynn who far from enjoying the exceptional graphics of the Illidan shield is now cursed with the fugly crap she drops. Apparently the stats make up for it - but that is very much a secondary consideration. The Twins now lurk in our future although they seem well hidden behind a gauntlet of trash – which I am sure is less difficult when you don’t pull it while looting at the far end of the dead scar.

Elsewhere in Umbrage news recruitment remains open for a select few classes. The shadowpriest slot remains vacant (for some unknown reason), a slot beckons for a well geared rogue and joining our awesome tanking team remains an option. Well geared healer applicants will also be considered but unfortunately dps opportunities are very limited. After all who could turn down the opportunity to raid with these fine members of society??

Our drive for a second glaive for our little rogues continues as BT shifts from a joy to a trial. While some of the loot (read Council and Illidan) is still desirable the rest of the instance is pretty much a void-fest. The slight increase in money and badge drops helps to compensate for this but we look forward to the day we can simply skip the first 6! True to form we like to mock our members on our updates and this time we have two winners ……Mince and Darkmage!

Mince has the honour of holding our first glaive, a shining example of skill and dedication to the rest of the dps. Unfortunately his reputation was tarnished when a second rogue (played by a holy paladin due to normal player absence) button mashed his way above him using only 3 buttons for the fight. This clearly ends the debate of which is more skilful to play in a raid – melee dps or a healer. Illidan clearly found this a good reason to withhold the second glaive.

Elsewhere Flatmage – lord and commander of the “give me a group with a BM hunter, elemental shaman, boomkin and shadowpriest (and all possible innervates) and I will do 5000dps on Brutallus” group – was busy proving his skills on the alt Magtheridon run. After 3 years of raiding the concept of ‘dead = 0 dps’ is still in its infancy and despite 2 battle resses and being relieved of the burden of clicking was consigned to mid-table mediocrity. Magtheridon remember is easy to die on – there is the ceiling collapse at 30% which “one shots you” and most certainly cannot be iceblocked and erm, something else unavoidable!

Perhaps in future he will be a little less cavalier about essential buffs………

As summer arrives talk in the guild switches from cerebral topics such as the long term effect of global warming on the migratory patterns of swallows to well……. porn.

Some people however have taken it one step further and and have actually started skipping raids in order to further their careers in somewhat dubious fields.

Between SWP fights we also found time to take in an old favourite - one of the most flavoursome bosses. Sadly at level 70 he doesn’t present much of a challenge unless you choose unarmed as your method of killing him. Initial cries of cheating at the hunter pets subsided as it became apparent that it might take quite a long time without their help…..

The Twins beckon!

There has been a slight delay in this update simply because there have not been enough witty comments in guild to warrant a decent update.

Brutallus is well named - this encounter is incredibly simple and incredibly unforgiving. A single death will likely cause a wipe (unless it is in the low %). While Kalegcos is a fight where you can admire the mechanics and the balance, Brutallus is a fight where you either have it or you don’t. Either you can do the dps or you can’t, either your tanks can take the huge beating or they can’t, either your healers can heal enough or they can’t. Only Burn is unpredictable and requires individual action - everything else is a gear check.

The ugly one has died 4 times now, giving us a nice feeling for the fight and to give Blizzard their due it is very nicely balanced. We appear to have been more fortunate than many guilds having seen a 1% wipe only once although we have had our fair share of “omg the tank got gibbed” wipes.

The one nice thing about the fight is that raid stacking is absolutely not needed and there are no essential classes (although doing it with 0 shadow priests might not be too fun). Indeed we have triumphed with a lock heavy group, a mage heavy group and both with and without an enhancement and/or elemental shaman. The healer mix is equally changeable with only the 2 shaman being highly desirable. The changing raid balances have made a difference of only a few second on the kill giving this encounter the feeling of being a well-tested and researched boss.

After Brutallus comes Felmy, a cute little dragon with a slight attitude problem. Aside from the entertainment of watching her gib mages who accidentally press their AE button while running around during a briefing the lack of trash makes this a far more enjoyable encounter. Indeed from Kalegcos to Felmyst is only 2 trash pulls (surely a new record low!)

Felmy again feels like an enjoyable encounter, continuing the excellent quality of bosses in Sunwell.

Elsewhere recruitment remains open in a few classes, we are especially keen to recruit a shadow priest (if only to shut up the mage class leader and fulfil his lifelong dream of having multiple shadowpriests in his group). We are looking for a focussed individual keen on high attendance and high performance. In return we offer raid slots!

Other open slots include a protection warrior/paladin (you should be geared sufficiently to tank in MH/BT at a minimum) and a holy paladin. There are good possibilities for other healer classes and we will consider dps applications although we would be looking for a very high level of gear and experience to get accepted.

We’d like to thank Blizzard for their "special occasions" it gives us a chance to indulge our maturity and wit…..

Elsewhere we discovered something out about some members and Ghorghor decided to mentally scar the entire classleader corps

SWP burst onto the scene complete with its (stupid) gate system. Not that this was a concern for us as the first boss Kalegcos was enough to keep us busy for a little while. Before raiding got underway the great race for exalted with Shattered Sun Offensive got underway (otherwise known as the ‘I play too much’ competition). Worryingly it took Biitti until Saturday night to manage it.

The trash in SWP continued Blizzard’s policy of trying to stop people afking through trash. While not hard, it is difficult to slack through. On the other hand trying to do it with a single mage is in no way recommended. The trash drops are of high quality with the crafted items currently amongst the best ingame, superior to T6 in many cases.

The first boss, Kalegcos, is a brilliant fight. It continues the trend of “one retard = wipe”, and is certainly a fight along the same difficulty as the Four Horseman. Tank rotations, healer rotations and dps rotations are all involved and incorrect positioning and/or taunting dooms you to failure. The added twist of keeping alive a aggro-whore npc makes it challenging on many fronts. We would however strongly advocate more regulation on the portals (or removing some the bugs) and we just love the increased cast time on heals.

Still we always know how to motivate ourselves, and one cunning plan later we were good to go (while I would in no way promote the pimping of female guild members - sometimes leaders must make brave decisions).

Our performance on the dragon was not brilliant but it came together slowly as we rotated through people, giving everyone a chance to participate in the wiping. After a couple of close calls it was finally time for it to die, revealing the way to Brutallus.

An enjoyable little cut scene followed introducing us to the ugly little pit lord.

It seems however he did not enjoy his little levitation trick.

We’d like to thank Blizzard for their (eventual) release of new content, there were some in the guild who were getting a little strange…..

Recruitment remains open in some classes, check for details!

The question of what to do once the content runs out is a taxing one. One fact is certainly true - we are glad that, like Nihilum, we did not have to wait for 10 months for new content.

As so often is the case when given time to reflect, thoughts turned to the past and in particular to Aq40. One guild message of the day later and we were off to Silithus to let our newer members experience the beauty of the fights there. Both the Twins and C’thun were brilliant fights and even at lvl 70 promised to be entertaining. Breezing through the first encounters boredom set in and someone had to ask the question of whether it was possible to pull all the trash between Fankriss and Huhuran in one go. The answer of course is yes. However if the question had been was it possible to survive if you pulled all the trash the answer would have been different.

The red beam of doom on C’thun provided entertainment, killing a surprising number of people who had died on it 14 months previously. Then onwards to Viscidious, a boss we had not killed pre-TBC due to a) our lack of mages and b) his loot table vs farming consumables to do it. We were happy to pop in and see him at 70 though, it is ‘slightly’ possible that Seed of Lol breaks this encounter. Still witness the triumphant team!

While there were no new 25 man instances we were pleased to receive ZA and the challenges of the timed run. Blizzard deserve congratulations for a perfectly balanced encounter - the first team to succeed had a little over 20 seconds left at the end. The raid balance was not perfect but it showed that the testing to balance the time was excellent. Since then we have ‘beared’ up, with the mount becoming the favoured choice for our raiders - a small selection of whom had a bear tea party under the world tree.

The rest of our time was taken up with advanced slacking, giant pets and gearing in BT/MH. Our loot luck remained perfect with Illidan coughing up 12 shaman (hunter/warrior) chests in the first 8 kills. While our shaman trials seemed to enjoy this, no-one else did. The increase of the number of tokens to three was greeted with reasonable optimism until on our first Hyjal clear after that Archimonde decided to cough up 3 shaman helms to compliment the two the week before. When your shamans have a t6 resto chest, elemental chest and flatspec chest as well as one banked for exchange for the pvp one you know there are problems!

Aside from that we took the opportunity to revisit one of the better quest chains in game. The encounter with the spirit of Eranikus. At this level it is not too challenging but I would recommend it for the fun. It should be relatively balanced for about 15 people

All in all we were rather pleased to see the arrival of Sunwell.