A Boss A Day...

... Keeps The Paladin At Bay.

Unfortunately since i decided to take up this hobby that i call life i've had social obligations spilling over onto my "real" life. As sad as that is to admit to myself it seems that is what my life has become for now.

To which i say, "I am content".

 Since I was engaged over Wednesday and a little on Thursday I missed my fix of Heroic Firelands. Rather I spent my time in Aberdeen attending a graduation Ball for my friend Jenna (Congratulations on the degree).  

On Wednesday the 6th (Duration 5:21) 

Shannox met his end.From what i've been told and witnessed it didn't prove to be a major challenge.

World of Logs: Kill for Shannox

Followed by Lord Rhyolith (Duration 5:18)

on Thursday the 7th

World of Logs: Kill for Lord Rhyolith

- the link says Normal (no idea why)

Here are the kill recordings:

Djass recorded and was a bit special in not actually starting from the beginning but you didn't miss much anyway the fight is very rinse repeat. He also didn't use his pet ... *facepalm*

 

Lord Rhiolith has a better recording although not perfect since it's a Death Knight who's recording... scum of the earth. (love you)

End music is perfection.

 Going up against Beth'tilac tonight, wish us luck

Long Time No Post

So it's been awhile since my last post. Actually been living life for once, isn't all it's cracked up to be. With the release of Firelands I got a quick fix of raiding for about 3-4 hours.... and then the inevitable happened. 

Ragnaros comes into the room all like... 

...and then we're all like KKTYBB

 As you can see I didn't really care about a screenshot for a Normal kill but apparently a lot of people did.

(Blue Circle Is Me)

Killing Ragnaros was a very easy task indeed, in fact I was a little disappointed at how straight forward all Normal Boss encounters actually are. All the prep work that was put into this instance for Normal encounters seemed to be absolutely pointless.

We'll be starting Firelands Heroic tomorrow, unfortunately we've lost a few people in the prosess of waiting for Firelands release so our tanking situation is a little off. It's me and Knjaz' as main tanks and our 3rd is a new Death Knight Papadk - not exactly thrilled about the name -  we've not had time to test him out. His progress wasn't up to what we would have recruited but here's hoping he'll learn very fast. Lost a few good DPS including Dethar and ABC but ABC should be coming back soon enough.

[To Dethar: "Wish you the best of luck in the future was good raiding with you and I hope we do it again"]

Do the Chernobyl, What too soon?

For those who want to know what happens once a guild has complete all content and raids are reduced to 7 hours of raiding a week. Life happens! - or at least until Firelands... 

Yes a new dance move was invented that night... yes I was for some reason a backup dancer in this video and yes the shitty quality just adds "teh uber sex" to my face. We had a drunk Katie recording... therefore camera quality is like worse than 240p and for some reason sideways. GG lul

Happy Clearing, I'll finish off my Tankadin guide before i need to start posting for Firelands again.

Far Too Busy Being Delicious

Distractions are a horrible thing, they throw you off your A-Game and always result in a waste of time. Lesson learned random women who add you on Facebook wanting to chat since we have 1 friend in common does not equal time well spent. During the raid this is exactly what happened to me a friend of a friend wanted to add me so i went with it. All well and good talking to her seems like a very sweet woman. 

Tab into game and do a couple of bosses, tab back to find...

For somebody you've known for a grand total of 1 hour this was a little intense. Not noticing she was also continuing the conversation on her own while i was tabbed out, saying how "Handsome" I am and how my "amazing eyes" caught her attention. I don't know about the rest of you but complements like this are seldom in my life - especially from people you've just met. Get a call an hour after we exchanged numbers from another friend, telling me that she's been sleeping around with the social circle I've been in and "You're next on her list". Well that's just awesome... I'm either going to die a horrific death tomorrow when i meet up with her or be pounced on. 

With all life dramas comes great friend mocking.

Nagrenol you're a star for making me laugh 1 last time before my end comes.

Nothing new to report on the WoW front. Cleared content last week, guess that's all the challenge gone from this tier for us now, slightly sad but at the same time something to be happy over - free time over Easter! 

Good to see the translator did its job well.

Al'Akir

Now that Sinestra and Cho'gall is on farm status the powers that be decided it was about time to put all the free time we've been having to good use. They decided to best if we once and for all take down Al'Akir the most RNG fight you will ever encounter on this raiding tier.

The fight consists of 3 phases, the first being the easiest and yet the hardest. During phase 1 Al'Akir has 4 ability's which effect the platform he stands on. 

The first is Squall Line, this summons a wall of tornadoes which rotate around the platform in either a clockwise or anticlockwise manor. There will be one tornado missing in each Squall Line, allowing you to let it pass by without dealing any damage to the raid. Tip: If you're at the edge of the platform and do not have enough time to avoid the Squall Line you can jump off the side of the platform and it will return you back to the fight.

The second is Wind Burst this ability knocks each raid member back. I'm unsure of the exact distance it knocks back in yards but it's just over half the radius of the platform. If knocked off the edge of the platform you're unable to cast or respectively be healed without a healer moving to the edge of the platform.

The third is Lightning Strike this ability is cone effect, it selects a random raid member and makes him the center of the effect. You do not want more than 3 people getting effected by Lightning Strike due to the more people effected the greater the damage, so you need to assign 1 person from each position to move from the group to another group at either side of the effect. This is why raid spacing is very important on phase 1. If you don't have good positioning raid members will die due to lack of healing or joining groups together. I would recommend the people assigned to movement are ones that have the ability to continue damaging Al'Akir while moving. (Hunters, Melee... etc)

The last of his AE ability's is Ice Storm this has the same look as Blizzard but leaves a trail of ice on the ground. This trail both slows and deals damage, it can be easily avoided by multiple ability's 

[Blink, Rocket Jump, Hand of Freedom, Heroic Leap... etc]

Hand of Freedom cancels the slowing effect of Ice Storm but also cancels the damaging debuff as well. 

I explain this to give you a slight insight into how annoying this fight can be on phase 1. 

Thankfully however we overcame the RNG that was phase 1 within about 10 attempts, but soon realized that we need all 25 members alive when we hit phase 2. This is due to the fact that Al'Akir and the Stormlings need to be attacked simultaneously. With each Stormling that dies Al'Akir gains a debuff that increases damage taken by 10% (this stacks) but the debuff only lasts 20 seconds, therefore another needs to die before the 20 seconds run out else the debuff is lost. This was a very easy concept and very well played out by the raid, and after phase 1 this was a walk in the park. 

Once you take Al'Akir down to 20% he breaks the platform you're standing on and you are granted the ability to fly. During this phase Al'Akir does not directly attack any raid members but instead creates storm clouds at the level where the raid member is flying. It is important to stand on the same level as each raider during this encounter else you will run out of space to fly away from the clouds. Each cloud that spawns will dissipate over time but to keep from running out of space keep the raid as close as possible to the cloud above or below.  

When done with 0 flaws this fight isn't as difficult as it's made out to be. Although the pain of phase 1 is defiantly something to be afraid of. It took Enraged Revolution 15 attempts to get used to the RNG of phase 1, after that it only took 5 attempts to kill Al'Akir.

04/11/11

Good Luck!

Touched by an Elemental

Kudos to Detha, Icyone and Zoï 

for the entertainment during raids and the idea for a fantastic movie!

Ladies and Gentlemen I give you Touched by an Elemental: A Cho'gall Tale

Thinking the shower scene from the movie Psycho (1960) by Alfred Hitchcock would be a fantastic fit for this film... "NO! NOT AN ELEMENTAL! NOOOOOO!"

Droxie-kins

Almost a week has passed since the Sinestra kill, with no other content to clear most of the drama has come to a halt. We have cleared everything this week again and killed Sinestra on our second attempt, showing that the first Sinestra kill was not just luck but an actual understanding of the fight. An old friend of mine [Droxin] got in contact with me a few days back letting me know that his 6th PvP video was just published on Youtube. I met Droxin when I joined Lotto on Twisting Nether, his first impressions of me wasn't the best seeing as on my first Lich King kill I ended up running into the raid in a mad panic with Defile. Later given the title "Lt. Defile" that one stuck with me for awhile, In my defense I was thrown in the raid as Retribution and not given much explanation as to what to do with Defile.
... this is what happens when you don't explain tactics with the raid

Woops, my bad...

 I personally enjoy watching his triumphs in battlegrounds but I've always wanted to witness the long battles he has in his arena teams. I get a sick pleasure knowing I "kicked his ass" on my crappy PvE geared mage. Even though that's true it was part luck and part good planning. I had dueled him a few times prior to that victory to make him waste most of his cooldowns. Still there is no excuse...

 

Props to Zoi for digging those screenshots out for me @4:00am.