So long and thanks for all the fish

 I posted this on my guild forums yesterday. I might as well post it here too.

Well... its become that time.

I've realised that while the game can be a great hobby I need to recognise that it is just that and that it inhibits me in the way I play it now. I had an epiphany the other day whilst on holiday. Things are going slowly in the guild at the moment, with many people hitting burnout and holidays etc so staying online unless you're levelling is a little pointless and I realised: I'm tired of the heroics I've run for a year, of all the raids I've raided to death, of trolls both in LFD and trade (and the lack of server community) and above all I'm tired of the grind. The fact that you can't stop playing or you'll slide back, blizzard isnt alone in using this idea of loss to get you to keep playing. . This article was one of the things opened my eyes. I wouldnt say it was fear, more a bit of a wake up call. I had 2 weeks off - week 1 I played wow - week 2 I'd arranged a trip to see some relatives up north. Week 2 I was severely ill and I still had a better, more rewarding time.

There's another article on that site thats also very good. It show how the internets is making us sick. Again a little dramatic but some of what it talks about is completely valid to most of us. I do realise this website is mainly a comedy website but they made some pretty good points.

I recognise that I get a kick out of taking a an alt character from scratch and by allocating the time and the effort gearing it until I can shine with it. Maybe I'm a little OCD but I enjoy the feeling of power this gives me and the way I can excell. I also get a kick out of raiding, like the satisfaction when we kill something we've struggled on. However, this is a virtual world and at best we're leaving footprints in the sand. I can't put on a CV my Hardmodes, my experience or even my Gearscore. The fact is that any reasonably intelligent person can pick up the game and excell without too much work is depressing and devalues that crap anyway. People constantly go on about skill when increasingly you don't need it to do well at this game . It's a grind fest. It rewards you for knowing that 1 piece of extra information.

Basically I took a hard, honest look at myself and didn't like what I saw. Gone was the 19 yearold scamp who was playing between partying and in it's place a guy in his mid 20s, who's mildy overweight and has alienated to this date 3 girlfriends and a couple of best mates. I didn't start out like this, in fact at the beginning I was determined not to play as much as I do now and I forgot that. Sure I've made friends playing the game and I hope that they find a balance that works for them. Most of the people I've met playing WoW have been fucked up in at least one obvious way, often not making them a bad person (like Axxx who hates gays but is otherwise friendly) . Often it's just something that they've fallen in to. I know a lot of you do have your heads screwed on right but you guys seem to be few and far between. I hope you don't go the way I've gone. I recognise it's not entirely the game but how I interact with it and it's my own fault I've come to this point.

WoW has taken some of the best years of my life. It sounds melodramatic but I've been foolish and tied myself to wow to make sure I didnt miss anything in game and as a result I've missed a lot outside it. This large amount of time in game has also made me ill. Not "arghh its the bad AIDs" ill but disatisfied with my quality of life. Getting home and playing several nights a week means I don't have time for exercise, sitting at the pc has given me bad posture, and playing late and relying on the game for entertainment have made me a frequently tired, boring person. This got worse when my job changed.

I'll be online sporadically to enjoy the game in small chunks, but I'm not going to put my life on hold any longer. Good luck in the future with your goals whether they be Virtual or RL and I'll probabaly see you from time to time in game. Rxxxxx xxx is probably the best home I've had in any online game and I hope you guys chill out a bit because the atmosphere we have in raids sometimes can verge on toxic .

All I'd suggest is that if you've put on weight like I have, go out for a jog. I did the other morning and although I nearly died and was slow (and in all honesty had to walk off a stitch for part of it) once I'd got back and returned to normal I felt incredible. I slept like a baby that night something I haven't done in ages.

Oh and be nice to Bxxxxx and Hxxxxx theyre both working hard for the guild with no thanks for it. They have a difficult time ahead and could do with your support.

I hope Ive given at least 1 of you something to think about. Surprisingly I'm going to miss the time I spend with you guys, even the bulgarian mafia or TEAM SWE. Please know that even though I'm a bit of a cunt, I generally either wasn't serious or was doing it for the benefit of the guild. To paraphrase Txxx: While I was an officer we had to make some tough decisions and they weren't always the right ones, but they were the best ones we could make. It's been a privilege being an officer for you guys and being a member of Rxxxxx xxx.

Laters,

TLDR: ISAK, Retiring from raiding/being an officer. Won't be online so much.

PS: If you need crafts or something. Send the mats to echo then get Exxx to text me.

It's been fun being part of the blogging community but I feel I need to take a big step back.

So long

/echo out

The Hypocrisy of Gearscore and a Racist gets his Just Reward

As my previous guide showed I've rolled a paladin. Well, I've been mostly focusing on building a ret spec on the loladin, so Lady RNG in her capriciousness naturally is bestowing me with healing upgrades and tanking gear. I blame Theanorak - He made me want to dips! Also becoming v tempted to fork out for a shadows edge as I have golds! I'm chasing DMC:G too and just missing an ace. Total of 1kspent on it - which is mitigated by all the other cards I picked up trying to proc them via Inscription isn't too bad.

I did a random icc10 on the pally as I was on too late to make the raid the other night. I knew a couple of the guys in it and it seemed we'd probably clear at least 7 bosses. As I'm in the process of speccing ret (in ret gear so comedy that people stop me and make fun of me in dalaran - yeah thats a 251 weapon next to those 138 trinkets /flex)  I was questing as ret in zul drak to finish it off and make some tasty gold for any silly achievements I decide to do. I join the raid and the first thing I get is "why does the paladin have 4k gearscore" from the tanking DK. I reply with something snarky, confident that I've three people from the guild that I might not know that well but at least know me well enough to know I'm a good enough player to keep up and that my holy gear is pretty good . Plus I'm an officer so they wouldn't dare kick me :D .

Now after the dk is reassured I'm healing and that I'm in ret gear he shuts up. But I'm still annoyed. Everything goes fine mostly up to rotface. We've killed fester and have the weekly and he suddenly pipes up.

"I'm tanking the boss, the warrior should kite the ooze".
"Actually" I cut in "It's really easy to do the kiting as a dk, plus you can CoI the little oozes and control them" "Yeah but I can't do it"
"So you were prepared to not let me come on this run when I had 4k gearscore but you yourself don't have the ability to be here"
"yeah but its hard, paladin is easy"
"actually I've done it before on my dk, you don't even need to be tank specced"

The group worked around him and only one wipe caused by both of us healers getting the debuff and a little confusion about who was healing who along with the tank (the dk) staying in to take the angry poo poo to the face. We kill putricide in a 1 shot again despite the dk playing terribly and tanking in the wrong place and go do valithria before doubling back to blood. After the mage randomly drops group we continue with 9 and the dk is tanking kelseth the caster. Complete. Abject. Failure. He's not using CDs not stacking orbs its a nightmare to heal. By this point I can tell people are playing like gash as I'm also keeping an orb up with judgement and holy shock in between spamming holy light on the tanks. we get it to 3% but people have to go.

How does this work? I can't come to fucking ICC with 4k when I've knowledge of every fight but scrubs like him think they can stop other players from joining despite the fact they're not actually any good and have lamed their way to a higher GS. Even with the 4k GS I could still link the achievement for 3 wings on this alt and if pressed could even relog and link all 4 wings on both difficultys with kingslayer. I realise this is preaching to the converted and this is shit everyone knows and the subject is a tired one at that but I needed to rage! I've started ignoring players that malignantly stupid so I don't have to carry them in the future.

Anyway we had a main run on reset day. Wow all these people we don't see on progression days showing up on reset day? What a coincidence! The high point of the raid - being told by the trial rogue (who has a tendency to talk alot and state the obvious) was that his friend, a hunter, had been banned for something he said in ICC general chat. I recognised the name and recounted why he'd been banned. I'm a hypocritical jerk to be qute honest and I often say things that are borderline tasteful and I troll a fair bit, however I know where the line is and I never cross it. His friend posted something racist which, as some people know, really grinds my gears (many in my guild actually think I'm a black muslim for some reason). I'd reported the guy and apparently he got a 1day ban and nerdraged hilariously. I'm sure the rogue will tell his friend it was me, and I actually generally hope it gets a rise out of him. I have no patience for that kind of mental retardation and I'm quite happy to continually report his misdeeds until its perma :)




Top tips - include time in the chat log of when the person you were reporting said the offensive statement. So please, blizzard do read these and like any sensible company they take a very sensible approach and they DO DEAL with it. Report - ignore them - clean up wow!



/echo out

Real ID - See what I mean now blizzard?

The WoW blogosphere has been awash with people posting their concerns and worries about the new RealID system were introducing. Chas over at Righteous Orbs pretty much had the same thought as myself as did Jen over at Stories of WoW

I've stated in the comments of a number of blogs that I'm against the nature they've introduced the system and the fact they've now tied it to the forums for my own reasons.

Well, they only went and got pwned. A blizzard moderator posted his name to show how "harmless" it was and sure enough the digging some people did was instantaneous. His address, phone number - you name it they pulled it up. Apparently his house has had in the region of 80 pizzas sent to it (thank you 4chan, ahem) and they've had to diconnect his phone due to prank calls and he's taken down most of his facebook. Here's the story over at wowriot. Here's the original thread on the official forums .

All I'm going to say is a great big fat

I TOLD YOU SO!

On the other hand I hope the rest of that poor misguided moderator manages to regain some sense of privacy after all this blows over. I know some blizzard employees are famous in any case and this could happen to them (hell some crazies have probably already done it) but considering this guy seems to have been int he wrong place at the wrong time

Also here's Hitler's reaction to the forum addition. Mainly geared towards the SC2 people but made me smile.



/echo out

Edit 1:  It's been brought to my attention that some people have been harassing blizzard staff. There's even a website full of personal information about them. They even know someones goddamn shoe size. If that isn't wrong I don't know what is.

I know I don't get a hell of a lot of traffic but I might as well document some of the downright crazy shit some people are doing. Someone posted on one of the staff members wedding guest books

A very interesting read over at Team Liquid who singled out a single post made by someone claiming to know a GM basically mentioning that the employees are just as pissed off as everyone else. With good reason I imagine, now they not only have an unpopular decision they don't want to enforce but they also are getting harassed. As much as I'll repeat myself saying this but I feel really sorry for the middle guys taking the flak. Full quote below:

---

Nachtjäger, Suramar, 59 Night Elf Death Knight post 35821 in epic thread wrote

Got in touch with my ex-flatmate, whose sister works as a GM for Blizzard, to see what the internal buzz on this was. Apparently, at the moment the employees are largely as pissed as the players, and she stated that despite attempts to keep it hushed, it has become known that the big creative players within Blizzard are pretty much as unhappy about this as we are. Everybody has been told they are not free to comment on this situation outside of specially prepared statements.

  I also did a bit of digging to see if I could find any further detail of what's really been happening. Typically the full scale of the shitstorm isn't known for a couple weeks but Encyclopaedia Dramatica already have a post on it. I did try and brave /b at 4chan to see if anything else was happening but now I feel soiled. Heading to bed, I'll keep updating if I find anything.

/echo out

Preparing to Raid: A Slacker's Guide to Holy Paladins

When I rolled the paladin I intended him to tank. But reading blogs and seeing some of the fights in ICC, notably valithria,  I found myself being enthused with the idea of healing. So I read up more, pestered my guildies who play the spec, looked longingly at loot lists and generally tried to absorb as much as I could. Below is what I did and how I did it.

Basically my first stop wasn't really a surprise. Its the holy pally compendium on Elitist Jerks. It's an incredible resource so I recommend anyone rolling a holypally pick it up and read it. I should also point out that I had a very clear vision of how I was aiming to play and it wasn't Flash of Light even though it's easier to go that way to begin with. I'll explain a little about what I see are the two percieved methods of healing as a holy paladin and how the people who play them tend to spec.

Spec

Now basically theres two main playstyles each based around which healing spell you more commonly use, Holy Light and Flash of Light. Holy Light paladins are incredible tank healers, whereas Flash of Light is more suited to raid healing. Personally I'm of the opinion that Flash of Light is suboptimal because you have other healers that are far better at filling that niche. HL tends to be focused on healing the tanks, is a bit easier to play and really uses the strengths of the paladin. Again the EJ compendium has an excellent breakdown of the pros and cons of each playstyle.

Now armchair experts might tell you that FoL pallys go Holy/Ret and HL pallys go Holy/Prot. This isn't the case always. It's said because the FoL style requires more crit for throughput generally because they can't cast many HLs due to their much smaller mana pools (at least this is my interpretation) but to be quite honest you can perform well in either spec and Holy/Prot has some very nice utility.

Spec wise I went straight into the Holy/Prot raid spec but you may find it easier to go holy/ret, at least to begin with, and pick up the crit talents because you may struggle in blues especially with the amount face tanking aggro whores in the LFD system these days.

At this level with your mana pool tiny you'll be using FoL more so its better to glyph for it now then once your mana pool is bigger swap the glyph to Glyph of Holy Light.

Stats

Working back from what stats benefit me the most you basically want these things:

• Int
• Haste for throughput
• mp5 (regen)
• Crit (regen)
• Spellpower

Typically any healing plate will have int plus one of the other three. In terms of regen mp5 is on the whole better than crit so bear that in mind when selecting gear.

Glyphs

With my DK a Scribe (or inscriptioneer/inscriptivist as trade chat seems to call them) I churned out the following glyphs

• Glyph of Flash of Light
• Glyph of Beacon of Light
• Glyph of Seal of Wisdom

Then craft but don't use:

• Glyph of Holy Light

As I mentioned above I swapped from Glyph of Flash of Light to Glyph of Holy Light once my mana pool could handle it. Some people also use Glyph of Seal of Light instead of wisdom but personally I don't think 5% healing it's worth the mana wisdom saves you

Gearing

Ok so you've read up a little, got the basic shit down and are sitting in blue gear with a thumb in your anus. Here's the way I believe is best to gear up.

Do a couple BGs or a wintergrasp. Acquire the paltry some of 12k honor and buy the pvp libram. It buffs your FoL and will help you out.

Hit TOC5 Normal - you should be getting reasonable queue times, if not beg your pals to come help because you're running this instance for Tears of Vanquished. Any other plate healing loot you might as well pick up and chuck rare quality yellow int gems into them. Once you've got this trinket you should have motley collection of gear in addition to it.

Hit ICC Normals - You're after the Shield in normal Pit of Saron and there's some other fairly nice stuff to pad out your gear.

This is when the heroic grind starts. If you really want to go for 4parts t9 then go ahead. But personally I think it sucks complete ass in general and you'd be better off picking up other things. Now you want to maximise benefit from the badges you get so we're going for the shit you will not replace for a while.

First off grab the trinket Talisman of Resurgence for 50 badges. This is incredible and you should macro the Spell power "on use" effect to your Avenging wrath (you want to use Divine Plea because it gives mana back, but "Oh no - my heals suck because it reduces healing" so you pop your AW and they suck slightly less).

Then go for the badge ring Heartmender circle. It's not ideally itemised but for your buck it gives you a solid item that doesn't require you to gem or enchant it.

Now you suck slightly less, so you continue doing heroics - the weekly etc until you have enough badges. Unless you're an asshole like me and bully guildies in to helping you in TOC25 you will not be picking up trophies and so you will not be able to upgrade your t9. So the best course here is to go for the 245 MAIL (omg) helm from badges and the 245Plate shoulders (UNLESS YOU WANT THE 4SET BONUS). The mail helm quite frankly is incredible and the shoulders are similar to t9 shoulders but a higher iLvl and so have better stats so if you must drop one of them for the bonus lose the shoulders. Once you have these pick up the t9 gloves and chest. The gloves are very good and the chest is ok, the only other achievable chest outside of raids drops from Falric in Halls of Reflection so you may find it easier to just go with the tier one.  Legs wise you have a similar choice so if you can't get Legguards of the Frosty Depths or Blackened Ghouls Skin Leggings to drop from Pit of Saron it might be better to just take the tier set again. I go for the cheap option so I just queued for the ICC heroics I felt comfortable doing.

You should basically be trying to run at least the first two ICC heroics every day as 2good necks, a weapon some boots and the above legs and chest all drop there. I'm just going to whack a list of all the reasonable items you can find from those instances because quite frankly its the fastest and cheapest way to gear up.

Forge of Souls:

• Love's Prisoner or Arcane Loops of Anger (neck)
• Seethe (weapon - even though it has hit it's the best pre-raid)
• Recovered Reliquary Boots (Boots - Plate - not amazing but they'll do)
• Helm of the Spirit Shock (Helm - Mail - the badge helm is better but hey - this is free and its a slackers guide)

Pit of Saron:

• Legguards of the Frosty Depths (legs - plate)
• Blackened Ghouls Skin Leggings (legs - mail)
• Mudslide Boots (Boots -Mail - better in my opinion than the FoS ones)
• Rusty Frozen Fingerguards (Gloves - Plate - again not as good as t9 but free)

Halls of Reflection:

• Chestpiece of High Treason (Chest - Plate)
• Oath of Empress Zoe (Ring - as I mention below its not one of the ones you want to end up with but it's ok as a placefiller)

Bracers - I broke with tradition here and crafted the ToC ones. "Reasonably cheap" but if you want something else pretty much any mail or plate mp5/haste/crit ones will do not that you'll find anything approaching 232 ilvl thats decent.
Waist - lot of people argue for going craftable - I had a mail belt for a while that I got from a TOC10. There one in TOC5HC which is passable
Cloak - Pvp! Its 50+k so it might be a bit of a slow burner if you detest pvp.
Ring - theres a load of reasonable rings out there. Anything with haste/mp5 int is good but you're more liable to find a crit one. Hold off on buying anything - you're going to want to wait for the Ashen Verdict Rep ring in any case once you start raiding. Having the HoR ring and the Badge one isn't a bad start.

Remember the time you level it is also very important - if you can manage to get anything reasonable from holiday bosses like Ahune or the Headless Horseman you should always pick them up.

You're pretty much in the best state you can be without raiding. Grats you sexy bitch. Your mana should be in the 26k region provided you haven't slacked on gemming/enchanting which means you're able to through a lot more holy lights into your repertoire. Throw out that FoL glyph, pick up the ilvl 200 badge libram and you are a healing machine.

You'd probably be ready about halfway through this guide to start raiding but I felt comfortable that I was actually pulling my weight once I'd gathered most of the stuff I've mentioned. Your gearing from here is fairly simple. Try to concentrate on the same stats I mentioned at the start. As your gear gets better and better is easier to pick up more crit and haste. Just remember its only generally worth picking up your t10 head and shoulders.

So I'm not a complete bitch and don't show you I lived what I learned, below is my sexy MALE draenei's armory. Join Team Fridge (referring to his slender shape) and roll one yourself.


Armory

Many thanks to both the full time and part time Holy Paladins in my guild, the people at EJ and anyone else blogging about healing in general today. Oh and the rest of the guild for not whining when I said I'd help them out and join their raids then relog to my shit alt :D

/echo out

I Haz Announcementz

Well I've got a day off so I'm actually able to update for once! I had a very productive day levelling my boomkin and stopped early to look at the mountain of planned posts I'd made while bored at work. Then I sat in a car for 8 hours and listened to England play terribly in the world cup. Not exactly what you'd call a perfect day. I'm beginning to think I'm cursed and that any football team I follow is doomed to failure.

Before the car journey I was rifling through my notes I keep around my pc. I have all kinds of scrawled notes from my loot system on my pug runs, officer duty reminders and notes about players I want to invite to alt runs. The vast majority is notes on my alts and the gearing plans I make plus the associated theorycrafting with notes to check my bookmarks to find the pages again.

I was considering alts and how I play them. I'm incredibly cheap with my alts - I almost never spend ages gathering crafting mats and having shit ready for them but at the same time I've very single minded about gearing once I have them at 80. It occured to me the other day reading some other blog (I shan't flop my wowcock out, don't worry) that I'd also rolled an alt of that class and spec too, and given how in depth the person had gone about various subjects I was curious about what state their character was in. So out came Echo the Internet Detective and I tracked down their character on the armory. I was surprised with their gearing level. I don't mean GS - hell, the holy pally BiS libram is ilvl 200 but with what items they'd picked up. I honestly thought they would have a much more optimal setup given what's available to them. They're on about ICC yet theres some pretty nice upgrades available outside that would help them out.

I don't mean to disparage anyone but gear makes shit easier. There's a saying army types have which goes something like:

"A litre of sweat is worth a drop of blood" 

That basically is my entire approach to raiding. However I'm also a bit of a slacker so I use what other smarter and more dedicated players have done. Every time I roll a new alt I generally have a clear idea of what I want to do at 80 and so I research and collect so much information I figured I might as well put it to good use and do something with it.

So, expect several guides on how to play in patch 3.3 which don't assume you want to pay 30k gold and blow all of your carefully hoarded goods but will have you ready for ICC with a least a broad clue of what you're supposed to be doing. Currently in the works are Holy Paladin, Boomkin, Elemental Shaman, Arms Warrior, MM Hunter and maybe a spec of DK if I get overexcited.

In other news I stumbled across a couple great bloggers so I'm in the process of updating my blogroll to reflect this. There's been a couple I've left off for too long. Also the webfilter at work means I'm able to read  you have if you have your own site as anything with blogspot/wordpress is blocked. Although I may have found a loophole that will enable me to view but not comment.

/echo out

PS. Today's question is: Even though you're playing on a multimedia machine do you also take notes in the old fashioned way if you have to remember something or plan something to do with wow?

Update!

Sadly due to the amount of work I've had recently and my employer's IT team deciding to block any blogging websites it's meant I couldn't update my blog as often as I had meant to. This combined with trying to make as many raids as I can to support the other officers in my guild means I've been playing lots and had lots to write about, just not really had the time.

My guild is doing well. We're currently bashing our heads against LK25 HM which is just a painful fight even with the buff. We also recently got our first shadowmourne the other day and its owner has been putting out quite frankly sickening dps (it's also good on putri25 HM, because we tend to have that guy tanking in the abomination which bases its damage off of his weapon damage -  he did 18k dps on that fight).

I've been incredibly ill so have been mostly standby. Except for the fights we still struggle with I've not really been to many of the icc fights this week on HM.

The main result of my flu has been my paladin who's professions I powerlevelled to Northrend levels as well as nabbing him 3bits of tanking T6 and enough shinies to ensure his levelling will be peaceful and smooth. Just don't talk to me about mining mithril in the hinterlands...

I also rediscovered my favourite pvp movie in my bookmarks whilst looking about. It's callled Danaik 3 Tripple D and it left me gobsmacked the first time I saw it. Its not another one of those "high crit" videos its a hunter ranging in level from 72-78 taking on raid geared 80s (i think ulduar was progression at the time) and completely and utterly destroying them. I highly recommend it - link below

Daniak 3 Tripple D

Currently planning next weekend to pull my finger out and get myself the 10man drake. Haven't really been bothered till now as our 10mans are friday and saturday evenings which I made a promise to myself to keep sacred. So I've set the challenge on our guild forums and I'll see who shows up. It's only liable to be Putricide and Sindragosa that provide the challenge but we'll see. Hopefully in a couple weeks I'll have a shiny drake to show off or if we decide to put progression aside and do the 25man achievements - 2 drakes!

/echo out

A reminder of why I still raid

Posting this very late as I've had a fairly hectic work schedule (long story but essentially I had to find a new role within the company I work for). In addition to this I no longer have access to any Blogger or Wordpress sites from work, so please if you find me commenting less on your own blogs please understand that I still check my favourites even if I don't always have the time to post.

Monday the 6th of April I had a reminder of why I still raid.

We had 23people 10mins after raid start and in /o we were having premonitions this raid being like our last 2 raids on thursday and sunday which were cancelled due to lack of people that could do the Hardmodes. One of our pally healers logs on, and the last of the bulgarians logs on. We has raid.

Immediately start on Saurfang HM. We've been just about managing to hang in there sub 30% when the Marks really start hurting but we've been losing people at 5% and wiping (one memorable wipe last week my beast died and I distracting shotted the boss). People are staying positive and assigning marks and then 4th time we managed the kill. Very impressive stuff from our healing squad.

Then onto Rotface HM where we oneshotted and then Festergut HM where after a small wipe due to DPS dying (I swear I was in range of the goddamn spore!) and other DPS being stupid with Malleable Goo we took him next try with a pally bubbling on enrage and the dots taking him down for our second new HM kill of the night.

From there we moved to the Princes HM which I swear is a test of "can you stay awake while shooting balls" and BQL HM where we managed another enrage pally bubble kill second try after our bite order severely messed up.

So then we cleared up putricide on normal and headed back into the frostwing lair where after a minor altercation with one of our healers and the subsequent ragequit on the pull (who does that?, I mean really) we adjusted the raid and bounced back to take down Valithria on HM second try. It was getting very late by this point and by the time we'd killed sindragosa on normal we had 1minute to raid time. So we said to the raid:
"Look we realise it's raid time. Stay with us and we'll have one shot on the Lich King then we'll call time"

We zone in on the spire and hurriedly assign tanks and dispellers. We've got a couple of us who haven't downed him on 25man and in my case I've never seen the penultimate phase. Halfway through P1 we realise we haven't assigned Valkyr dps
"Fuck, just go fucking nuts on them"
we haven't assigned TotTs or MDs for raging spirits
"Glue them to the fucking tanks"
Healers are running low so our boomkin is calling the innervates for the lowest. We're on the valkyrs now and people are playing out of their skins to get the CC in. I'm kill shotting Valkyrs right at the edge. Slightly badly placed Defile caused by me, but we're all out of it in seconds.
We hit the second remorseless winter in fine form and then P4 and vile spirits are dying quickly and the tanks are kiting.
All of a sudden its over and everyone is joking about kicking one of our rogues so he doesn't get the kill.

Lich King one shotted. Hello Kingslayer Echo. Hello the reason why I raid. It's not so much the stuff we accomplished last night although thats always gravy. It's more that this is a group of people who for the last year I've spent upwards of 16hours a week with in 25mans and countless hours here and there in alts runs, 10mans and nostalgia runs. I've actually really missed them since I had to stop raiding so much midweek. I know most of them pretty well and this last push from them after the loleaster holidays trouble of the past few days has been epic. A lot of people have been musing that we don't kill LK enough since we downed him. This may be true but focusing on hardmodes is an obvious choice we've had to make as an officer team. The fact that nobody was screaming at anyone when things didn't go perfectly or already working out who to blame for the wipe while everybody was alive was really refreshing. This showed when we bounced back from everything the big bad of the expansion threw at us and downing the bastard to top off an already awesome raid night.

/echo out

PS: Its nothing to do with the 10% buff fuck you :D

Since this happened we've also taken down all other hardmodes we were working on and are now 10/12. Putricide HM went tonight and we're working on Sindragosa HM. The night described above is what I see as the turning point.