Last Saturday was War Machine’s first night as a guild raid in Icecrown Citadel 25 man.  We had a great turn out and started out pugging 2 people who really weren’t pugs in the sense.  We started out kind of slow.  We had problems with people disconnecting during some of the trash fights, but besides that, we moved through it without any deaths.

Lord Marrowgar was a fun fight.  We got some bad luck with the Bone Spikes and Bone Storms popping almost at the same time and had to wipe on our first attempt.  But! on our second attempt we smashed him which was our first victory in ICC 25man.  Congratulations to all those who got gear from this boss.  It was a fantastic victory for us as a guild to down our first boss in there.

We made our way to Lady Deathwhisper and cleared the trash before her without any problems.  This is kind of a difficult fight and we had a few tries at her until we got the fine tuning down and we downed her in our 3rd or 4th try.  We asked people to read up on the fight and it showed that we did our homework.  Our goal was to go in and just have some fun and downing our second boss blew away any expectations we had for our first night.  It was a great feeling when we downed her and it was another fantastic victory for War Machine.

It was getting close to our 11:30pm raid end time but we decided to continue and try our luck with the Gunship Battle.  It’s a relatively easy fight and we figured, “Hey, FREE LEWTZ!”  So we went in and had a try at it.  Some of us had some complications as to what we were supposed to be doing and we wiped our first attempt.  But wiping there didn’t get us down because  on our second attempt, we knew exactly what we were supposed to be doing and we defeated the Gunship Battle encounter for our 3rd boss in Icecrown Citadel 25 man!  What what what?!  War Machine downed 3 bosses in ICC on our first night in there!  It was just icing on the cake.  By that time a few of us had to leave and we called it after that encounter.  I forgot to get a screenshot of the Gunship Battle so if there’s anyone that got one, please let me know and I’ll try to get one up.

So our first night in Icecrown Citadel 25 man was a complete success!  Not saying we don’t have confidence in our guild, but going in for the first time as a guild and downing the first three bosses really blew away our expectations.  Everyone should give themselves a big pat on the back for how well we did.  Great job everyone!

We’ll be doing this every Saturday so read up on the next bosses.  We’ll make posts in the forums with quick links to the boss fight strategies.  Since we got up to Deathbringer Saurfang, he will be our next boss to study up on.  We also should study up on Festergut as well.  Defeating Saurfang will be a great achievement for the guild because we get the [Storming the Citadel (25 man)] achievement.  Although some of us have that achievement already, downing that far as a guild is a great achievement.

So again, great job everyone.  You all did very well.  Lets keep this up and get us some more gear in ICC 25!

Lord Marrowgar Strategy

Lord Marrowgar MMO Champion

This is the first boss in ICC.  His strategy doesn’t change much from the 10man strategy.  Everyone needs to be aware of his different abilities so read carefully.

Lady Deathwhisper Strategy

Lady Deathwhisper MMO Champion

How well we do on this boss is determined by how well we know the different adds in phase 1 and how to handle them.  DPS need to be aware which adds they need to DPS depending if they are a physical DPS or a magical DPS.  Once out of phase 1, it’s pretty much cake from there. 🙂

Gunship Battle Strategy

Gunship Battle MMO Champion

Very fun fight.  Although there are only 2 phases to this encounter that switch back and forth, it’s enough to keep you on your toes.

Deathbringer Saurfang Strategy

Deathbringer Saurfang MMO Champion

This encounter can be rather difficult if you have never done it before.  Ranged DPS be sure to read carefully.  Your ability to kite and destroy adds will come into play this fight.  Saurfang is the fourth boss in ICC and completing this encounter will earn you the achievement [Storming the Citadel (25 player)].  This boss also drops Marks of Sanctification Tier 10 tolkens.

We are all excited to be going into ICC 25man as a guild for the first time.  Our main goal for our first couple of runs is to have fun!  Don’t worry yourselves about how far we get.  Raiding is a learning process and and if we can’t have fun while doing it, why do it?   So come prepared and lets have some fun!

We may have to PUG a few so be on good behavior and show them how fun of a guild we are.

Although we didn’t have a raid scheduled on the calendar for Monday night, we got some members to come together and knock out a bunch of bosses in Ulduar. Here is a list of bosses we cleared Monday night:

• Flame Leviathan
• Razorscale
• XT-002 Deconstructor
• Kologarn
• Auriaya
• Hodir
• Freya

A couple of us got to go in and see some new content. Congratulations to those that downed bosses for the first time. We all did very very well considering we downed Thorim and Freya in one shot. Great job guys.

Great job today guys. A bunch of us got our Classic Raider achievements and a few of us saw AQ40 through to the final boss for the first time. Congratulations to all who came.

This run wraps up the Vanilla WoW raids for the moment and we’ll move on to BC raids next week starting with Karazhan and we’ll work our way up from there. If you would like to join us for some fun and laughs, sign up on the event calendar. Old School Raids will be held every Sunday at 12:00pm server time.

Again, thanks to all who came and lets do it again next week!

Great night guys. We went in and downed ol’ Kael’thas Sunstrider. He was a push over! Grats to those that got the achievement for clearing Tempest Keep!

After Tempest Keep we decided to go in and take a shot at Sunwell Plateau. We one shot Kalecgos and Brutallus, but we had to do a few retakes on Felmyst thanks to Anjanti’s “Stand on star!”, and die… But, Dakhan took up the slack of Anjanti’s fail raid leading and we downed her on the next attempt. After that we had a few tries at the Twins until we got the whole mechanics to the fight down and moved on to M’uru. Although M’uru is an easy fight, it is kind of technical and we took a few shots trying to get “it” down. It was getting late and we had a few people that couldn’t continue so we called it at M’uru<, but we have a plan to go in tomorrow and see what we can do about finishing the instance.

Again, great job to all those that showed up for raid. We’ll be doing an Old School Raid run for AQ 40 at 12:00pm server so show up to see some old content for the first time or relive the glory days!

If you have a screenshot of Anjanti’s epic fail “Stack on star!” wipe, please contact him so we can get a shot up of that here. 🙂

UPDATE!

We went back into Sunwell at 4:00pm on Sunday and downed M’uru and Kil’jaeden. A lot of us got the Sunwell Plateau achievement so congratulations! Fantastic work guys.

Great job guys!

Tonight we got six weekly raid runs in! Fantastic. Up until now, we’ve only done 4 runs in one night. We’ve had a bunch of new people join the guild who have alts so save your weekly raid for Wednesday nights and we’ll quickly bang through them in no time.

A special thanks to Goddess who had back surgery and stuck it out for us and healed a couple of our groups.

So again, good guild effort.

We have several members that enjoying PvPing whether its running battlegrounds, Wintergrasp or just going out in the world and causing havoc for the Horde.

Although you may not be interested in PvP or think you’re just terrible at it, we do have a guild PvP night that is hosted by Nenni every other week on Mondays and have a great time while doing it.

Nenni also hosts quizzes during the event where you can test your knowledge of WoW and have a chance to win some gold.

You don’t need to be an uber leet PvPer to have a blast during PvP Night. Just sign up for these events on the in-game calendar.

If you’re interested in doing some arena, ask Draagon or Thyalcine in game for details.

War Machine has never been a hardcore progression guild – that’s just not who we are. We enjoy taking things at our own pace, have little time for server firsts, and it has worked well for us so far. This is an attitude we’re likely to carry on with for the forseeable future, as it’s what brought us together in the first place. This doesn’t mean, however, that we don’t progress at all, and this is what this post and plan is all about.

Now that we as a guild are starting to get some excellently geared, specced, and talented people and with Patch 3.3 and the Icecrown instances and raids rapidly approaching, we would like to be moving in a direction to get into those raids and experience the content, as well as move further into Ulduar and to the ToC raids.

With that in mind, we are ready to start building a progression team. This team will run once a week with an aim to clear new content for the guild, experiencing the new fights and gearing up with shiny new stuff, but with the core focus of having fun doing so.

In order to facilitate this in the most efficient manner, the progression team will be required to adhere to some stricter conditions than that of regular guild members. These conditions are still being finalised and fine-tuned, but consist of the following:

• Prompt, mandatory attendance at the raids – obviously, we will take real life issues into consideration, but we don’t want to have to be waiting around before getting things rolling. Enforcing this helps to encourage people to be available on time and when they say they will be.
• Gear, gem, enchant requirements – We will be ensuring that those who want to be part of the progression team be appropriately geared for the instance, including correct gemming and enchanting on all gear. Many guild members can assist you with getting this sorted.
• Prepared and ready – we expect all progression raiders to have reagents, ammunition, flasks, consumables and whatnot ready at the time of raid start. There are plenty of guild members that are available to help with this also.
• Fight knowledge – progression raiders will be required to know the fights they will be taking part in. There is a vast amount of knowledge available online and here in our forums about boss fights and what various roles require, and we expect you to be familiar with how a fight functions before we get to it. We’ll also be improving what we have available in the forums with regard to this.
• Team play – remember, we are a guild of friends, and we’d like to keep it that way. Be polite, courteous, helpful and patient. This should be a no-brainer really, but being a progression raider will be even more representative of what we strive for in War Machine.

Initially, we will be forming one 10 man group with the aim of moving further through Ulduar, hitting bosses we have yet to get to. As things progress we will be looking at expanding the team to include a second 10 man group and leading towards 25 mans. This doesn’t mean we’ll be restricting the current team list to 10 people – we’ll need more than that to cover when people are unavailable.

Those of you who are unable to run progression with us for whatever reason, or simply would rather not, we’re not gonna forget about you! Out of our four weekly raid nights, we will only be dedicating one to the progression team, so you still will have plenty of opportunity to run raids with the guild. The only way we’re going to grow the progression team is to get you guys and girls to a level where you’re able to join us, and that will only happen with gearing you up and gaining you experience.

So, that’s our plan for progression. The next step for us is determining the level of interest in this endeavor. If you’d like to be part of the progression team, either send me (Dakhan) or one of the officers a whisper in-game, here on the forums, or reply to this thread. We do have some rules for application however:

• Mains Only – We’re aiming to make this group as good as can be, so at this stage are limiting it to main characters only, not alts.
• Apply with your main spec – Again, we want to run this as best we can, so we would like you to indicate your primary spec when you apply.
• Application does not guarantee acceptance – While we’d like to take all of you in, the fact is some characters aren’t quite there yet. We are always happy to help you get to that stage, whether that is gear, experience, or whatever, and we have our 3 regular raid nights to help you get there.

We’re all very excited about this and we hope you are as well! If you feel you would like to be apart of the progression team, SIGN UP HERE.

Although many of us have been in 25 man raids and have cleared a lot of the content in the game, this progression list will be limited to War Machine’s 10 man Progression Raid Team.

Ulduar

• Flame Leviathan
• Razorscale
• Ignis the Furnace Master
• XT-002 Deconstructor
• Kologarn
• Auriaya
• Freya
• Hodir
• Thorim

Trial of the Crusader

• Beasts of Northrend
• Lord Jaraxxus
• Faction Champions
• Twin Val’kyr
• Anub’arak

Icecrown Citadel

• Lord Marrowgar
• Lady Deathwhisper
• Gunship Battle
• Deathbringer Saurfang
• Festergut

We currently raid on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 8:30pm to 11:30pm.

Thursday: Progression Raid (ICC)
Friday: Guild Choice
Saturday: Guild Choice
Sunday: Guild Choice

Most of the time War Machine Raid Leaders will decide what the guild will run for Guild Choice nights, but sometimes they leave it up to the guild to decide at raid time.

Please try to remember, if you are signing up with an alt, please have that alt geared properly for the content you are signing up for. Also, come to raids prepared with elixirs/flasks, food buffs, health/mana potions, reagents and enough gold for repairs.

Some other things to be aware of when raiding are proper raid manners and etiquette.

1. While in vent, try not to talk over the raid leaders during a fight whether it’s trash or a boss.
2. If you have something you think the raid leaders need to be aware of, tell them in a whisper.
3. If you have a concern during raid, try to resolve that concern after raid instead of during raid.

Other than that, we’re pretty laid back and have fun while we raid. We look forward to raiding with you!