Guild going inactive until MoP

At the end of January this year I decided to stop raiding for this expansion at least. I've possibly logged in two or three times since then and maybe done a cooking or fishing daily. Instead I've tried some casual SWTOR, playing some alts there instead of pursuing a main character so I've been spread a bit thin and maybe that's why the game hasn't really got a strong grip on me.

I'd say being on a break has been good to me so far, health and work is great though the same was true while raiding seriously. It's just sort of nice to discover the amount of time that you suddenly have available once you stop with something you've been doing a lot for so long that you've almost forgotten what it was like without it. I did commit to the deal about free Diablo 3, MoP beta access for WoW subscription so I haven't really made good use of that if I look at hours spent logged in but it doesn't bother me. I'm fairly confident that I will return for MoP to check things out, even if I strongly suspect that the immersion and comradery I felt in Vanilla and TBC will never return in the game. The people that made the world come alive have moved on and the mindset is lost. It was a shared experience in a perfect environment that is hard to explain if you weren't there.

Anyway, my guild had struggled with raiding numbers for a while and it had to turn into a 10 man guild. Having been an epic full scale raiding guild since 2006, this was a sad turn of events of course. It just wasn't the same in a 10 man raid and looking back I haven't really enjoyed any raiding this expansion. I think the last fight I enjoyed was heroic Halion back in Wrath when it was topical.

I browsed the guild forum today as I do from time to time as I like to stay updated with what's happening and found the post below. As it has been posted on the public part of our forum I think it should be fine if I post it here as well:

Hello guys,

It saddens me to have to write this, but unfortunately this time there is no way to avoid it :(
Never in my 5 years since I have started calling Anarchy a home did I think this time will come or that I would be the one having to do this.

Anarchy has reached a point of no return for this expansion. Due to our slow progress and 10 man raiding not providing the same enjoyment as 25man raiding we have lost a lot of key players in the past months which at this stage prevent us from being able to do any kind of progress raiding.
Taking this decision was the hardest thing we've had to do in what WoW is concerned: as of today Anarchy will stop progress raiding and step down to a casual raiding style until MoP.

The current plan is the following
- We will be only raiding once per week, and then depending on raid setups see what bosses we can try to do on heroic and which on normal, but without banging our heads against a wall if a boss just won't die (see Hagara the past two weeks). The day for this raid will be set according to the day most of you remaining in here with either the mains or just with alts will vote as the best to try to make the raid.
- We will not be kicking any of the alts of the people who wish to leave the guild with their mains. We appreciate you guys sticking with us until the very end and really hope to be able to raid again together (see the next point).
- Two months before the release of MoP we will try to restart the guild and do mass recruiting in order to try to have a 25 man squad ready for MoP raids, even if at the start it won't have the same level of raiding quality as most of us have grown accustomed to.

Once again - thank you all who stuck around until this point, and many apologies for not being able to any longer provide that which we all want from a guild - nice steady progress and a friendly environment.
We are totally aware that even more people will leave now, but while you do so please keep in mind that the friendly environment isn't gone and you will always have a home to return to back in Anarchy should you decide to try with us to restart Anarchy before MoP.

Just so there is no misreading - all current members will get into the guild instantly without an application, should you decide to re-unite with us for MoP. We rely on you for this to happen.

Signing:
A sad Evil, a sad Pharaoh, a sad Dast and a sad Karja

Anarchy, I thank you for the moments we had and hope that you will manage to be reborn for MoP!

Destroyer's End

Second night trying and down he went! :)



I can't say I'm very pleased with my healing on this fight. It's quite a lot like Chimaeron all over again. Big damage spike on part of the raid, heal them quickly or they might die from the next spike. Rejuvenation mostly end up as overhealing and Nourish always feels too weak and slow. I prefer staying on tank healing and using Wild Growth together with Swiftmend for Effloresence when bunching up. Timing Innervate together with Power Torrent procs and mana wasn't really an issue in this fight (until the very end that is). Large parts of the fight are pretty slow as well so there's room to let mana build up, even time to chat with friends while waiting for something to heal.

Rhyolith 25H down

We got heroic Rhyolith down at the start of this raid reset. Not the cleanest kill you could have but it got the job done :)



I've made the decision to post less on my blog which I'm sure you can tell from the lack of updates lately. Just thought I'd let you know that I'm still here but I haven't got that many interesting things to say right now.

Ragnaros 25N and Shannox 25H down!

This Tuesday we managed to get Ragnaros down on normal 25 man mode. I have to say I like this fight.



I'm healing the tanks, dodging waves, doing some general raid healing and just keep my distance from others. Stay out of the middle in phase 3 and run in on seeds, avoid the 1/3 of the room flame attack and in the end dodge the rolling balls and victory is achieved!

Now for tonight we got Shannox down on heroic 25. Alliance #1 I believe, awesome feeling! I didn't really expect a kill on my first night trying him. My guild wiped all night on him last night when I wasn't there. They got some vital practice though so I think that made it seem a lot easier than it actually was.

Majordomo Staghelm down

How would I summarize this fight? Good coordination of healer cooldowns, moving at the right time, crucial debuff management in the form of running away when you're about to detonate and sharing stacks of damage in the end. Get those things right and he's down!

5/7 25m and Shadow Wardens unlocked

I wanted to show our first kill shot of Alysrazor, this is by far my favourite fight in Firelands so far! I've always had a soft spot for fights with mobility, multiple tanks and phases and stuff to dodge.



Currently we're 5/7 on 25 man normal mode with Fandral and Ragnaros left naturally.

Today I also unlocked the Shadow Wardens daily quests, it was fun to get some momentum in the dailies again. I think it was a mistake to stop the progress for 150 marks. A whole new zone and then being forced to just doing the same thing over and over in the first area? When I first got there I could feel that I was fighting on the frontier, Malfurion saying that the war starts now, it was pretty nice! It would have been better I think to just let us unlock all content in a linear quest chain without gating it for several days. Slowing it down in this unnatural way mostly ruined the immersion.

Shannox and Beth'Tilac down

Just some brief updates from the Firelands here. We had some good tries and then Shannox went down tonight.



Last try of the evening and Beth'Tilac went down as well!



I'm not sure about my spec yet and I'm tweaking my UI for mastery tracking and other CD's. I'm using the big green circle to the top left of Grid with a red timer inside for Harmony (visible in the top picture).

Heroic Valiona & Theralion down

Two Internet dragons fell tonight.



Here's also a shot of our heroic Magmaw kill on the 20th of March. I'll try and get a video up if I can scramble one from a guildie.



Here's a low quality video of our kill from Magmaw for now.

Heroic Conclave of Wind down!

Well, it took a couple of weeks of work but here we go!

Updated with video! I'm the druid healing the paladin at the start! :)





A surprisingly clean kill as well with no deaths. Click is the sound of an attempt suddently gone right.

Heroic Chimaeron down

Tonight was a successful raid! We got Heroic: Chimaeron! I was healing the MT and the double-strike tank. The MT just needs to be above the Low Health debuff while the double-strike tank needs to be topped off as quick as possible. We had a paladin Lay on hands rotation for quick tank switches and everyone just did a great job.



I've made the switch from haste to mastery and tried a spec without Furor where I went for Genesis instead. Might take a while to get accustomed to the new mana situation and it certainly is a big change when it comes to such a huge haste drop.

What I've been up to

I'd like to thank Blizzard for designing a great looking set again. I managed to get 5/5 in the resto suite recently and it looks fantastic. Just keep the T9 and T10 design person away from his keyboard.



We've been clearing all bosses on normal mode each week, getting Halfus down on heroic and trying for Conclave of wind on heroic. It's not that easy that one.

I haven't been playing anything at all outside of raids for the last couple of weeks. It's been a long time since I even did a single daily heroic. I wonder how connected that is to not being able to improve my character outside of raids and if that is what makes me lose interest. I still have a couple of achievements left for the heroic dungeon mount that I'd like to finish someday.

With Loremaster of Cataclysm done on my main I'm waiting for some extra energy to start leveling my mage and dk. Both are 81 for the moment, my dk from jewelcrafting dailies alone. I did start to quest some on my mage in Hyjal and it's really a lot quicker the second time around. The heirloom cloak, the guild perks, not having a gathering profession, not reading all the quest text the second time around, fire mage burst dps. The difference is striking.

That's all for now!

Defender of a Shattered World! Nefarian 25 down!

As Nefarian fell in 25 man mode tonight that gave us a shiny new title:
Defender of a Shattered World!





It's hard to describe what an adrenaline rush this fight was! We got him tonight on our third try having spent 1 previous night on 10 man with 21 wipes and 2 previous nights on 25 man with 27 wipes in total. Here's the WoL for our kill.

I'm not going to delve into abilities and detailed strategy for the fight, I really recommend the guide on Tankspot by Aliena for that. I'll just briefly describe my point of view.

Phase 1
Before the pull I set Nefarian as my focus target as that helps me to see the percentage of his health in Pitbull so that I can know in advance when high raid damage is incoming and everyone will need to be topped off. A small tip is to jump down in kitty form to save some health from the fall, it's not really needed but it saves some health and mana at the start.

I'm on the left side healing the Onyxia tank. This means annoying Tail swipes that you can't avoid and healing everyone a lot when Nefarian does the Electrocute (huge raid damage). I keep triple Lifeblooms on the tank with Nourish spam to refresh it, Omen of Clarity procs are most often used for Regrowth on the tank. A few Wild Growths to heal the Tail lash damage and on Electrocute I use Efflorescence and Wild Growth combined on the melee group. Mana Tide Totems helped a lot in this fight as we had a couple of shamans in our raid. You need as much mana as possible going into the next phase.

Phase 2
I spent phase 2 on the south east pillar, popping Tree of Life and rolling Lifeblooms with instant free Regrowths. Then I used Nourish and Wild Growth with a Lifebloom stack on someone. As the Electrocute is about to hit I use Barkskin and Tranquility to get everyone to max health. When the lava goes away I hop down and run off to the 2 add tanks.

Phase 3
In phase 3 we had our warrior tank that was on Nefarian in phase 1 tank him on the right side with the raid stacked up close. The paladin add tank from phase 1 kited the adds assisted by the warrior that tanked Onyxia to keep the adds in control while they both were being healed by a holy paladin and myself. The key here is to not let the adds touch any fire! It was pretty hectic healing them both on the move while dodging fire and adds because the incoming damage was so high and add to this the huge Electrocute bursts!

That felt great! :)

My first Cataclysm 25 man raid

Heya!

I've been slacking on updates here lately but I've just been busy playing the game instead of writing about it, I'm allowed to do that you know :)

So what's been happening? My druid is 85 and I've done most heroic 5 mans now except Grim Batol and Throne of the Tides. I'm done questing through Hyjal, Deepholm, Uldum and I just started in Twilight Highlands, I'm saving the underwater zone for last. I've maxed out fishing, first aid, herbalism and alchemy. My DK is almost lvl 81 from jewelcrafting dailies alone, his inscription is around 510 and my mage has tailoring up to 500 and enchanting somewhere around 485 or so. I've levelled a worgen hunter and a goblin mage through the starting zones, I love those!

I spent around 14k gold the first few days on leveling these tradeskills (expensive raw material) but now I've got that back and I'm about +8k gold since the expansion hit. My main source of income has been prospecting Elementium Ore and selling cut and uncut gems from that. I switched to transmutation spec on alchemy so I've also transmuted some Volatile Life to Volatile Air and sent my Truegold to the guild bank on it's cooldowns for raiding gear to the guild.

My guild has been raiding 10 mans for quite a while now but last night was my first signup and it turned out there were enough of us to form a 25 man raid. On 10 man the guild progress is 11/12 and last night we got to 5/12 on 25 man. That's nice progress for our first evening I'd say. The general opinion seemed to be that 25 man raiding was easier than 10 man. More margin for individual mistakes, enraging bosses needing to run around longer before finishing everyone off leading to more dps time, things like that.

We started with an easy Argaloth kill in Baradin Hold then went to Bastion of Twilight and got Halfus Wyrmbreaker and then Valiona & Theralion down (forgot to take a screenshot of them).

After that we went to Blackwing Descent. Now that is a nice environment!

Magmaw was the first boss that we did. Impressive scenery here as well!


Magmaw down!


Next up was Omnitron Defense System!


We rounded off with a close one on Maloriak!


I think the fights were all fun ones, I probably like Valiona & Theralion the most and Halfus the least. It's a bit confusing going in blind on some fights as I hadn't read up on all abilities or strategies. At least I never died on a fight that wasn't a wipe so I managed to dodge everything that was dangerous. I ended up pretty low on healing done on all fights but I'm still in blues and I was quite conservative on spells as I held back in order to save mana. I wasn't sure how long the fights would be and I didn't want to run OOM. As long as the boss goes down and people are alive I'm happy! :)

Tonight depending on signups we might continue on 25 man or switch to two 10 mans, I'm hoping to get as many new bosses down as possible and maybe I'll get some shiny epics as well!

Outland Raider

This one was a bit overdue. I hadn't gone back to Zul Aman since Wrath arrived so I didn't have that one achievement registered. Luckily for me there were a few others in the guild missing some old raids as well so we had a stroll through Hyjal and Zul Aman as well as a quick kill of Magtheridon and Gruul.

It was great fun to go back to those old encounters but I distinctly remember them being harder back then. +100 wipes on Archimonde in a 25 man raid compared to killing him in less than one minute with 8 people. Raids doesn't age very well in this game.

This is also what my UI looks like now that I've got a new screen running at 1920*1080.

Heroic: The Twilight Destroyer (25 player)

We finally nailed it tonight after weeks and weeks of hard work! After 7 minutes and 56 seconds Halion fell! This feeling brings me back to tbc, it was long ago you had to try a boss for so long without getting him down.



I was healing our feral druid MT together with a paladin in the fire realm in the last phase. A shaman was on our DK offtank and we had a priest on debuffed people and raid and helping out on the tanks when possible. There's not really much room to do much else than just spam the tank with everything you've got. In the twilight zone we ran with a paladin, druid and priest as healers. Boy am I glad we got this one down before the patch and the changes! :D

Conqueror of Ulduar

I finally got Conqueror of Ulduar done! I was missing Thorim, Mimiron and Vezax before tonights raid.



Please note that Rippel is a druid and is showing a remarkably low amount of health on that screenshot of our Vezax kill. He was dead one millisecond later...phew! ^^

We also had a huge improvement in performance on Yogg + 0 tonight which we got down nicely after a few attempts! This is the state of the whole raid at 1%:



Just a smidge more control here compared to last week! :)

Alone in the Darkness and some other fun stuff!

Here's what I've been up to lately!




Besides discovering how fun and easy it is to solo Zul Gurub and AQ20 I also got to see Sunwell Plateau cleared, hit exalted with Zandalar and in tonight's raid we managed to get Yogg+0 down earning us Alone in the Darkness (25 player).




We had it all along! ;)




I also got to 5 man and tank all of BWL! Never thought I'd be tanking Nefarian, it was great fun! :)

Soloing AQ20 as a feral druid

I got [Classic Raider] done tonight! Getting AQ20 done was the last part!

Since Zul Gurub was such a success to solo I wanted to check out Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj solo as well. I only ever reached the second boss of that place before the Burning Crusade and I haven't been back there since. I've always been a bit curious of what was waiting behind those walls that I never got to peek behind and it was the only thing missing from the classic achievement. I remember going there in a raid with my first guild mixed with some randoms and someone talked to an NPC before people were ready and we failed miserably on the second boss and for some reason we never tried again.

I cleared the whole place solo in 2 hours tonight and I only died twice. My feral set is my worst as it's my second offspec and I really don't know how to gem or enchant it properly. I've never raided and don't intend to raid as feral and I make no claims of having a clue about it. I just know enough to solo old stuff, I like playing feral but I don't feel a need to be so scientific about it to be the best bear/cat that I can be if you know what I mean? I went with some sacrilegious mixture of agility, stamina, hit and whatnot. Trinkets are item level 200, I've got 2 pieces of 277 and the rest is 245-264 stuff and 3 pieces of T10. That's just to give you an idea of the gear I used. What I want to say is that if I can clear it who isn't a very good feral druid then I'm pretty sure you can do it too :)


Kurinnaxx going down



This boss is very easy, just walk around backwards and avoid the sand things on the ground and you'll get him.


General Rajaxx

I didn't get a good screenshot but the only time I died on a boss attempt was on the second one. I have no idea what happened, I was hitting a group of mobs in the early trash waves and I had full health and then I was one shot and my combat log said I died from Falling for 37k or something. No clue how that happened but I ran back in and reached the mobs before my NPC friends died and so I could continue. General Rajaxx was still the boss that was closest to kill me, he hit me very hard a few times and he was extremely close to killing my NPC friend Andorov too. Just Demoralizing Shout/Swipe the mobs and then use cooldowns to stay alive on Rajaxx. If you need heals you should be able to heal yourself and Andorov if you let him tank a bit. I lost my focus from being killed on the trash so I'm sure I did poorly here.


Moam down



This guy is supposed to be hard if you've got a mana bar, as I don't have that in bear form he was very easy to get down. You needed warlocks and priests to drain mana from him when you did him properly back in the day I think. In the end he summoned 3 elementals who did some Arcane damage but they were quickly killed.

The second and last time I died was actually on a Flesh Hunter who Consumed me. I had no idea he would do that, I couldn't do anything and I lost health until I was dead. Apparently you don't want to be in melee range when he casts Consume. That was easily fixed by going resto and nuking these mobs down with Starfire/moonfire as ranged. That way they just stayed as ranged and shot Poison Bolts at me until they died.


Buru the Gorger going down



I liked this fight the most of all the bosses! You need to kite Buru as he hits very hard and increases in speed as the fight progresses. You want to destroy the eggs as he passes over them, this hurts him and resets his speed buff. I ran in a circle as kitty and kept the eggs low on health. Kitty dps is so bursty that I could bring down an egg with full health egg with good margin as he was approaching but it was more fun to keep running and just hit a mangle or so on them. As you destroy an egg an elite add spawns which you easily can kill while kiting Buru.


Buru the Gorger down



When his shell cracks he's safe to melee and you can finish him of easily. I swapped back to bear form at this stage.


Ayamiss the Hunter going down



You need to dps as ranged until 70% health as the boss stays high in the air and shoots a stacking debuff on you. I went with full healing gear and feral spec to get spellpower and mana for the first 30%. It was easy to stay alive and bring the health down. I stood and nuked the boss with Moonfire/Starfire and ran off in travel form when I had some 15-20 stacks of the debuff, let it drop off as I outranged the boss and went back in. When adds came I swiped them as bear. When the boss landed it was easy finish as bear. You don't want a pet here if you're another class soloing as there's some sacrifice mechanic present that you don't have to deal with when you're soloing. Treeants aren't a good idea as a Moonkin because of this.


Ossirian the Unscarred down



This was a simple fight too. I cleared the trash in the large room then pulled him back to the first crystal and clicked it. Then I just kept dps:ing while moving backwards to the next crystal I could see and clicked it.

The basic rotation for all bosses is just having Demoralizing Roar and Faerie Fire up, 5 stacks of Lacerate and then alternate Maul and Mangle and swipe if there are any adds. I don't think I actually kept Faerie Fire up at all on most of them, even at my gear level it wasn't needed and I'm just a terrible bear so I forgot :o

Good luck, have fun if you try it!

Fun in Zul Gurub!

I wonder why I've never thought about how easy it is now to solo and clear all of Zul Gurub as a feral druid. There's just no reason now not to get exalted with the Zandalarian tribe. All those bijous and they're all mine, mine I say!



The real reason I went there though was that I thought I'd have a go at the tiger mount from Thekal. It was so surprisingly easy that I got the rest down too. No mount this time but I'll be back for sure! Already looking forward to the reset! :)

Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25 player)!

After having wiped for most part of tonights raid on heroic LK 25 we completed Neck-Deep in Vile (25 player) for Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25 player)!



Sweet reward: [Reins of the Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher]



The challenging part of Neck-Deep in Vile (25 player) besides the AoE and dps requirement is that Defile will cause more trouble in that last phase. As you spend a lot of time grouped up and you can't drop it in kite path there's a chance something will go wrong.