On our first night attempting it, War Machine managed to down the Blood Princes! Excellent work from everyone learning the fight, being willing to try different approaches and being willing to rack up a bit of a repair bill meant we eventually succeeded. Here’s how it went down:
[youtube]QYugpch8sA8[/youtube]
A special thanks to our great pugs, Alyyix and Argentus, for making it all possible.
“Strategy
The encounter consists of one phase. The 10 minute enrage timer is generous and should not be of any consequence. Three tanks are required, one of them can be a ranged tank (e.g. Warlock).
At all times, one of the three princes has Invocation of Blood. The two without the buff have 1 HP and cannot be damaged, only the buffed prince has a proper health score and can take damage.
Invocation of blood always starts on Prince Valanar (middle), and switches randomly every 30 seconds to another prince.
All three princes have rather low armor and thus take high melee damage. DPS cooldowns should be used on Keleseth, if the tank has sufficient threat, since he frequently casts Shadow Lance which makes it impossible for him to dodge.
Prince Keleseth
This prince can basically be tanked by any class with a ranged attack. He does not use any melee abilities, he instead spams …”
more at http://livyatan.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=strats&action=display&thread=2165
What follows is the first of what we hope to be many more posts contributed by War Machine members. In today’s post, Robdamage begins to tell the story of how he came to WoW and War Machine. If you think you would like to contribute a story of your own, whether it be your version of Robdamage’s tale or something entirely different, talk to one of the guild officers.
What to say, what to say?
I’m not on trial for doing anything bad – at least not yet…
War Machine has been kind enough to offer me a home, of sorts. A sanctuary, if you will. My story is long, convoluted, and probably not very interesting. Still, I will tell it here in the hope that others will be interested enough to contribute their own. A guild is comprised not only of the people within, but of the individual history that they carry both into and through it. These tales are often fascinating, and mostly untold.
Case in point : did you know one of our members holds a server first achievement on one of their toons? No? Nor did I until last night. How much do you really know about what each of us have done in game (and out) – and conversely, how much do each of us want others to learn? A philosopher once said that to see where we are going, we need to look at where we have been. Ok, I made that up. But it sounded cool. Anyway, on with the show, err, spectacle, um.. story!
Sonjasdad – The Adventure Begins.
I’d played Warcraft III. I’d played Starcraft. I’d played MUDs. My background was gaming, I worked with computers. I thought I was up with what was current. Then I discovered WoW. An acronym was never more fitting.
I cannot remember the day, month, or even year I started playing WoW. I do remember my toon name. Sonjasdad. My (first) daughters name is Sonja. My wife also played. Her toon name? Sonjasmum, of course.
Ironically enough my toon name allows me to place a timeframe on the breaking of my WoW virginity. Sonja is now 4 years and 7 months old. I remember playing shortly after she was born. I have played WoW for the entirety of my daughters existence. I do not know whether this is a reflection of me, or the game. Probably both.
My journey begins on Aman’Thul. I am a warrior, revelling in the game and the newness of everything that surrounds me. I am enthralled. Joining a guild is natural progression, and I experience my first “clique” within the wider populace. The sense of belonging, meaning, companionship – intangible yet undeniable. Still, malcontent lurks. A dictatorial officer enforcing military style guild law invokes feelings of defiance, and these soon manifest into public displays of rebellion from my still innocent self. A swift gkick follows, and I am staggered. Who would remove me from their guild? Surely they see the folly? Evidently not.
I wander. Lost, confused, emancipated. What do I do now? There is nothing for me here. Complete abjuration will suffice, nothing less. I leave the server, and delete my toon. Never to return.
Or so I thought…
<to be continued>
Friday night Xaviorlight led us in VOA25 with some pugs and we easily cleared the pertinent bosses then outside for Wintergrasp, and back in for VOA10.
There was a running joke about baby-D tanking the bosses, as he made ‘concrete angels’ while getting in front of Koravon once. So when we got to Archavon, we talked about lock drain-tanking, and we decided to give it a shot.
My real worry as a healer was how long it would take the draining to start so he’d replenish his health, could we keep him alive through the whole fight? Draagon was on top of it. He calls his void, gets buffed and shields up, even using lock spells I’d not seen before. We pre-hotted him and with a yell ‘LETS DO THIS!’ he runs in…
Off the steps and the boss aggros, coming right at Draagon. I’m slamming my heal button to make sure there’s a large buffer of incoming heals… and Archavon’s legs twitch …some say they saw a knee, I don’t know. Draagon’s upper body makes a half turn back to the stairs, and I see the funniest confused expression on his face then he just lays down, concrete angel style again.
This is when I panicked. I start screaming ‘RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!’ and shadowmeld like the brave little druid I am. Other people seem to scatter, but at some point the tanks grab him. Slowly I realized I should probably heal something before all the tanks are dead.
Anyway we got this cool screenshot.
10 man Progression night ended with both teams clearing Rotface for the first time on Thursday! Team CAKE, (Raid Leader Ajanti) then went on to hit Putricide twice, both times wiping during second phase due to adds. Team PIE (Raid Leader Dakhan) then went on to attempt Dreamwalker.
Fantastic work team! We look forward to easier clears of Rotface, familiarize yourselves with Putricide and Dreamwalker!
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!
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 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. 🙂
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 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.
We are proud to announce that War Machine will once again begin it’s foray into 25 man content with our new weekly run into Icecrown Citadel! This will begin on Saturday the 24th!
This is a great opportunity for the entire team to get together and see how well we do. Everyone will be there, and this is sure to be a wild fun night in the coming months. Expect wipes, loot, and the usual vent cutting up.
We *will* be pugging some to bolster the numbers, but as these are our first times in as a guild group, the focus will be F-U-N more than progression. That said, remember we do expect you to KNOW the first two fight strats for 25 man (also note, knowing means more than watching one video). But if the first boss falls great, if not beeg deeel! The point is we all get in one space organized together and get things moving.
Later, we’ll start to look at what our problem areas are … Strats/preparation? Gear? Raid awareness? etc. Again, if you know your gear isn’t up to snuff for ICC25, start gearing NAO (we’ll help of course).
This is the last big instance until Cataclysm, which is expected before year end, perfect time to jump in, both feet first. We will get to taste some of the “good stuff,” get excited!!
See you on the 24th!
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:
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!