Heh...so out doin dailies today, Seagate and I ran across a hunter having a bit of trouble with the spider at the molten front thing. So, we give some friendly advice, a couple heals, and 1 tamed rare spider later, we have:

Aw yeah.

Short news post today. We've been busy.

If you want to know how busy we have been, you can download a .rar that has a picture of each of the things we have been getting busy all over. That's right here.

Rag's dead, but I can't upload the picture because we have grossly overstepped our allowed hosting quota. More on that later. He's dead though, Horde first etc etc.

blah blah blah,
toast blah blah

Press this lever, HE THROWS A RIGHT!

This one, he throws a Shadow Convertor that completely fucks over your attempt because you happen to have three Poison adds coming towards you at the SAME TIME!

So yeah we've been sorta up and down when it comes to raid attendance for a while. Stuff happened and then some other stuff happened. Long story short, stuff happens and now Samayael the Orc is raiding with us! He has been all sorts of helpful and generally whimsical.

He was here when we killed ROBOTS. Four of them, specifically. They were pretty heroic about the whole ordeal, to be frank. Now they're dead though.

Took a night of attempts to learn it, and then we 2-shot it on Thursday. Was pretty cool.

7/13 Heroic, put us back into (now-tied-for) first Horde, server 2nd or something. The rankings have gotten all sorts of muddled with sort of taking a month off. We'll probably kill more stuff soon, so be on the lookout for that?

Until next time,
Toast Witjam the Patient

Long story short, Magmaw was not as aggravating as V&T were. The fight itself is not nearly as technical or frightening from a mechanics viewpoint (finding out that kiting the construct adds is impossible now probably helped with that), but constant lag on our first night of attempts left everyone in a bitter rage. We took the next couple nights off and returned on Tuesday to punch him in the faaaaaaaaace.

Horde 2nd (yay?), we're still in 1st total progression for the Horde. Halfway done with the heroic content (excluding Sinestra), and only two bosses behind Ruin, which is kind of neat. WE'RE COMIN' FOR YA, PHYSIQUE! (not really. maybe. we'll see how Friday goes)

Until next time,
Toast Witjam, Agent of the Shen'dralar

p.s. Yuika got a Sulfuras the other day. there is proof right below this sentence.

Okay.

We learned a lesson with this boss. That lesson is "NO RAIDERS, YOU ARE ALL TERRIBLE AT NOT BEING PERFECT WHEN IT COMES TO DICE". I cannot count the number of bogus, RNG-fest wipes we had with this boss (well I could, but I'm not sure if World of Logs is posted yet). It's a stupid, aggravating fight and our attempt times ranged from near-perfect to frighteningly terrible.

Two nights on a boss that really should've died in one; the price of a stupid RNG clusterfuck.

As the pictures denotes, that's a Server Second kill! We're tied for Server 2nd and 10-man 1st (with a non-GIP ranked guild) now.

Up next: Magm'awwwwwwwwwww. Hopefully he's not this aggravating.

Until next time,
Twilight Vanquisher Toast Witjam

The heroic difficulty curves this raiding tier are rather bewildering. Some, like Maloriak, add entirely new phases or mechanics into the encounter, changing the game dramatically for the other phases at the same time. Others, like Halfus, just amp up the damage or introduce additional parts to existing mechanics.

Then there's Atramedes. Instead of new mechanics, you get existing ones reskinned and repurposed (Snobolds from Gormok are now Obnoxious Fiends. They increase your sound.). Instead of reworked mechanics from the Normal Mode, you get the same mechanics with more damage and more of a sound penalty.

We worked with a new position that we had never tried before, before altering it a few times and discovering how to use fucking raid markers. Holy shit, you guys. Raid Markers are like the cocaine of raiding. I can't even imagine the edge these things are going to give us now that we actually took the two minutes to figure out how they work.

So aaaaanyways, we killed Atramedes in about two hours! One hour to learn the fight, seriously.

Horde 2nd, puts us into 1st place total Horde progression.

RAID MARKERS!

Until next time,
Toast Witjam the Argent Champion

P.S. We are on the lookout for both a Mage and a Restoration Shaman (Elemental Off-Spec preferred!) to finish out our second 10-man, but there is always room for excellent applications. Any questions, talk or send a letter in-game to Jotaro, Nih, or Toast.

So, remember that long long time ago when I said Chimaeron was a stupid fight and he needed to stop being such a jerk? Yeah, it turns out I lied and once we killed him once he became the adorable puppy he was meant to be.

Instead of doing the logical, reasonable thing and going to Atramedes after Chimaeron died (like Redemption did!), we decided to head across the hall to Maloriak, Nefarian's alchemist and assistant. The heroic version added an entire new phase to the fight, which initially proved rather frustrating. After we figured that one out, we grappled with a load of RNG and the split-second interrupt timing necessary to not get completely gibbed by a spare Arcane Storm tick or an overwhelmingly obnoxious Consuming Flames proc on the tank.

About two and a half nights' worth of attempts later, we were awarded an illustrious honor by Nefarian himself: the title of "Slayer of Stupid, Incompetent and Disappointing Minions".

Shame it only lasts for 30 minutes though. Server 2nd, puts us back into contention for Horde 1st and Server 3rd 10-man. 3/13 Heroic!

Until next time,
Toast Witjam, Slayer of Stupid, Incompetent and Disappointing Minions

boy that's a mouthful

Chimaeron is an interesting fight. Instead of adhering to the healing philosophy they went into Cata with (triage healing), they made a boss who has the ability to literally one shot everyone in the raid on a 15-second timer; thankfully, this ability IS somewhat neutered by the presence of a tiny robot from our good friend Finkle Einhorn. If this weren't bad enough, there's a 20 second period of time (which can happen less than a minute apart) where he actually has the capacity to do so. Take all this and you have one of the most out there fights in raiding right now.

With Halfus safely dead (FARM STATUS), we decided Chimaeron would be the next best thing to tackle. Holy god we were in for a rude awakening. With just a few minor mechanic changes, the fight went from a pushover to an intense, RNG-filled mindfuck. It took a week's worth of attempts, probably close to 10 hours of consistent wiping, adaptation and near-flawless execution. I can't count with both of my hands the number of sub-10% and sub-5% attempts we had; there were even a handful of 1% wipes near the end.

When the RNG Gods finally took a nap, so did the horrific beast.

2/13 Heroic, Horde Second, tied for server 2nd; however you want to attribute this kill, be my guest.

Seriously though. FUCK Chimaeron. This boss goes against everything right and it is a 6-minute fight against sanity and the roll of so many dice that can crush you without even thinking about it.

Until next time,
Toast Witjam

Not much to say about this one. It's like getting an entire train station's worth of trains rammed up your ass for 4 minutes. We figured out a strategy that worked and he fell over.

Horde 4th, but we're back to tied for first. Yay!

Until next time,
Toast Witjam

P.S. <with Pancakes> is not recruiting right now, except in extreme exceptional circumstances. Feel free to apply, but don't expect anything magical.

ONLINE ROLE-PLAYING GAME, RUNNIN' AROUND KILLIN' DRAGONS AND SHIT. WHATCHOO KNOW ABOUT EPICS?!

Okay that's out of my system for quite some time. Possibly until November. Who knows?

THAT REMINDS ME! Does anyone remember a little get-together we had a few years ago in a little town called Anaheim, California? I do. It was called PANCON, and it kicked several different kinds of ass and a few other kinds of butt. We're going to do that again, if you haven't seen the GMotD!

The plan right now is for November 18-21st, 2011 in Key Largo, Florida. If you'd like to attend and can afford the trip out, toss a tell over to Jotaro. We're looking for a headcount right now to figure out lodging and all that jazz.

Okay, Agenda Item One has been taken care of. Number Two!
________________________________________________________________________________

Dragons can be a nuisance if you don't know how to control them properly. They can light you on fire, they can flap their wings wrong and knock you off a platform, or in the case of Nefarian, they can reanimate their long-dead sister and turn her into a horrible abomination.

It's no secret (look down this page a couple wheel clicks) that we've been 11/12 for...a week now, I think. Nefarian has been hot on our minds, which is understandable! A single boss being all that stands between you and first place on the Horde can sort of lead to that mindset.

The one thing about this fight that's more apparent than anything else about the tier in general is that this is a COMPLEX fight. In almost every second of our attempts (some of which lasted almost eight minutes), there was ALWAYS something to look out for. Shadowflame, the painful adds that required some pretty ridiculous kiting: it seemed like there were just a handful of mechanics that were thrown into a giant cauldron and then dowsed in hot sauce and "We Hate You" juice.

It took nearly four full nights of attempts, none of which really seemed like we were making any serious progress. We buckled down last night (2/11/11), focused in, and I'm proud to say...

We're now the furthest progressed guild on Dragonblight Horde. That is SO COOL TO SAY YOU GUYS, YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

With the demise of Deathwing's progeny, we have now completed every single Normal encounter. From here, I think it's about time we started looking at the Heroic encounters.

Until next time,
Toast Witjam, Defender of a Shattered World

P.S.
With the demise of Deathwing's progeny, as I just mentioned about half an inch above this sentence, we have also unlocked the Guild Glory of the Cataclysm Raider achievement! If you are Exalted with the guild, you may pick yourself up a fine lookin' Reins of the Dark Phoenix and proudly display the fact that we beat several guilds that I honestly thought were going to get this before us!