Affliction Guild

So the last couple of months have been rather devoid of updates, but not for lack of news. A whole bunch of bosses have died at our hands - too many to write about individually - so I’ll just give a brief rundown of each and pretend that’s more than enough for everyone, much like Blizzard with WotLK info.

We last left you after killing Shade of Akama, the evil twin of the emo inter-species boyfriend of Maiev, jilted ex-lover of Illidan and renowned bunny boiler, previously thought dead in a horrific gryphon accident on her way back from the Outland portal, recently found alive if not entirely well, being kept captive by Akama for unknown (but we suspect very unwholesome) reasons, who has sworn revenge on old Illy for leaving her for a skull and enlisted the aid of her captor (Stockholme Syndrome anyone?) in plotting his rather overdue demise. If this sounds more complicated and convoluted than a soap opera to you, you should hear Evangelical tell it.

So ANYWAY - rather than focus on trying to unravel the plot line of Days of Our Black Temple, we figured we’d just kill the whole bunch and change channel.

Next on the list after Akama was Teron Gorefiend, a rather confused death knight slash fallen angel slash warlock who we accidentally released back in Shadowmoon Valley in our pursuit for leet quest reward blues because someone forgot to mention that powerful and annoying raid bosses were hiding out near innocuously placed altars where tailors transmute shadowcloth. I mean honestly.

The toughest part of this rather easy fight is learning to control the vengeful spirit you become when Teron whups your ass during the course of the encounter. Although pressing two buttons and then mashing a third until the first two are off cooldown doesn’t SOUND particularly difficult, our experience has proven that it is indeed rocket science for a number of the chosen few. Indeed, the only thing this fight will test is your patience, and the effectiveness of your subconscious powers of suggestion whilst you try to will Teron into not marking “those people”. Eventually however, we plucked old Gorefiend’s wings and collected the first of many pairs of hunter boots and throwing weapons.

Teron’s death led to the discovery of even more insanely boring trash packs and Gurtogg Bloodboil, our next target. Gurtogg is a fel Orc, conceived through the intimate coupling of a fel orc female and what appears to have been a Clefthoof Bull. Though he had a pretty normal upbringing, pillaging his first draenei village single-handedly at the tender age of 3 and eating a fully grown Netherdrake at 5, he was not content. During his quest for greatness, he was fatefully bitten by a radioactive scorpid named Bob, causing him to grow 10 sizes and ransack Shattrath for a new pair of jeans. He was then recruited by Illidan as the entertainment for some legendary Black Temple parties involving Lady Vash’j, some seaweed and a whole lot of Dwarven Wine.

As a boss though, he wasn’t particularly difficult either. (see a trend here?) Indeed, once you have the strat down and assuming your healers aren’t all AFK watching TV when he enrages, the toughest part of this fight was trying to get Photonn to stop chanting “Group 3, get in the water.. group 4, get in the water..” after Bloodboil died. More largely irrelevant and mostly unwanted loot dropped and we moved on once again to face our toughest challenge yet: The three-headed emo monster.

Reliquary of Souls is a really quick but technically challenging fight that requires your tanks, healers, rogues and a mage to give 110% focus and use their cat-like reflexes to conquer evil, while the rest of the raid sits around and scratches their asses. (mostly) Between having no aggro table, evasion tanking, really fast cast times on raid-wiping abilities, our insanely reliable internet connections, high latency and threat caps, this encounter took a fair deal of work but fell eventually in a shorter time than we’d initially anticipated. We were also really glad to be rid of the constant whining and “why won’t you be my friend?” lines we’d had to put up with during the course of our attempts.

Next on the list was Mother Shahraz - a loot vendor akin to Void Reaver whose only purpose in existence is to make sure you’ve spent enough time in BT / Hyjal to have farmed lots and lots and lots of Hearts of Darkness for SR gear and to verify that you do indeed possess an intellectual capacity equal to or greater than that of a gnat. The entire encounter consists of two elements. Once you have mastered them through long hours of practice and meditation, you will have no problem collecting your shiny new T6 shoulders. As an added bonus, in the time-honored tradition presented here throughout the years, I will reveal to you this ground-shaking strategy so that you too may reap its wisdom-enhancing rewards. The strat is:

- Hit stuff
- Run away

Stare in wonder, young glasshopplas, and feel your minds expanding. If you feel anything else, that is indeed not your mind but Run having stealthed behind you in cat form, and you should not stare in wonder so much as flee in stark, unrestrained terror.

Having killed the trash mob that is Shahraz, we proceeded to the most recent of our accomplishments: The Illidari Council. The council is a quartet of noble Blood Elves, hand-picked by Illidan to manage the day to day running of Black Temple Enterprises and do an absolutely fabulous job of interior decorating. They consist of a cross-dressing warlock wannabe rogue, a zealot-like priest wannabe mage, an ACTUAL priest and a flamboyantly out of the closet Paladin. The fight (is there an echo in here?) is rather straight forward. It consists entirely of a mishmash of Blizzard’s most popular recipes for boss encounters, namely: Mage tanking, spell interrupts, dispelling/decursing and “Getting the f*ck out of AOE”. On our first night of serious attempts, we spent the first 1.5 hours on tank two-shots due to LOS, tank two-shots due to range, accidental pulls, intended pulls with people AFK, intended pulls with nobody AFK but several people asleep, several speeches about “getting the f*ck out of AOE”, some emergency player replacements, a few respecs and several he said / she said moments that belonged in a Monty Python skit.

After sorting out all the crap, making sure everyone was ready, in range, aware of the various elements that could kill them and focused on their particular job, we engaged the Council once again and proceeded to smack their collective asses out of the park. Yep, that easy.

So quite a bit of progression for Affliction to this point. Still ahead lie Illidan and Archimonde, the two final bosses before Sunwell and keepers of the “I would cut your throat for your DKP” quality loot. They both (are you even surprised?) don’t seem to be too difficult, so expect some updates here shortly.

Congrats to everyone involved on the great runs we’ve been having and our continued success and keep it up. I leave you with an image that pretty much sums things up at the moment:

The past 2 weeks have seen Affliction opening up several cans of “Whup” and “Ass” and mixing some potent margaritas with the resulting mess. After getting our slavering masses attuned to Mount Trashmobs and Black Ezmode, we set about exploring the instances and introducing several bosses to Run’s after-action “action”. (if you know what I mean. If you don’t, GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN!)

We’ll start off our recap with Mount Hyjal, wherein Blizzard figured that “traveling to the past” is of course completely synonymous with “fighting wave upon wave upon wave of undead”. Clearly. While the idea of traveling back to the Battle of Mount Hyjal and teaming up the combined forces of the Horde and Alliance to defeat the evil of the Burning Legion and the Scourge with the help of Thrall and Jaina and their ridiculously retarded entourage in a series of staged battles consisting of eight waves of increasingly more annoying trash blessed with abilities they use on your entire raid with glee leaving you wondering “why on earth would Blizzard put this shit IN here? WHY!?” while at the same time being infinitely more difficult than the bosses they precede and inexplicably respawning any time you may happen to wipe even though you killed their stupid, stupid asses two minutes earlier and eventually lead onto a not-very-fun-filled boss encounter each of which contains a silly gimmick which once mastered enables you to zone in and collect your loot while wishing “some of the most powerful demons to ever walk the earth” a good day and handing them a future wish-list for drops SEEMS like a good idea at the start, after the initial wow factor (haha!) is gone it’s about as much fun as it was reading through the entirety of that sentence and nearly as entertaining as the pun in the last line.

Anyway.

Mount Hyjal - once you get used to the trash - is a somewhat entertaining instance. It is filled with fun moments like fighting alongside Jaina Proudmoore, who it seems founded the Cult of the Suicide AOE’ers, as well as Thrall, who turns out to be a complete noob because he’s DPS’ing with Stockade Pauldrons and can’t tank to save his life. Literally. While spamming Seed of Corruption and hoping like hell a Pally hits you with a BOP before you die seems to be the order of the day on the trash, the boss fights are slightly more dynamic and memorable.

Rage “Please take my loot and stop hurting me” Winterchill is reminiscent of a Karazhan encounter. Get a PVP trinket or some healers with fast reflexes and loot falls from the sky, along with “Don’t forget to loot your vials!!1one” messages in raid chat.

Anetheron is slightly more challenging, in that instead of slamming your PVP trinket button, you need to spread out around him to minimize the number of people who get to experience his severely advanced case of halitosis. If you can master the ancient art of remaining 10 yards away from your neighbour at all times, and hit whatever buttons it is that you use to DPS, more free loot falls from the sky, along with “Oh shit, I forgot to loot my vial!!!1one” messages in raid chat.

Next comes Kaz’Rogal, a slightly tougher fight because it involves relying on other people not to kill you. For those that don’t know, Kaz’Rogal slaps a spiffy gold star on the entire raid which gives you that special “teacher’s pet” feeling but also sucks your mana right out through your nostrils. Should you not have any mana left, the gold star will self destruct, killing your ass and anyone around you. This requires (a) spreading out (b) chugging mana pots and (c) exploding the hell away from everyone else when you finally do go supernova. Oh, and if you’re a melee class (d) anticipating the imminent demise of enhancement shamans who have forgotten that they use mana and subsequently explode on the entire melee group and the tank. Oh and (e) running the hell away from enhancement shamans that have exploded and miraculously didn’t kill the ENTIRE melee group, only to Ankh, explode and finish the job.

The fight is twice as hard as a warlock, because since you can never run out of mana if there’s still a healer standing, the only thing that can kill you here is dumbass raid members that didn’t keep an eye on their mana and suddenly realize that they’re about to get crapped out on vent. So as a lock, your life is infinitely tougher because you have to (a) spread out (b) lifetap more than usual and (c) dodge last-minute suicide bombers killing everyone in their path in their haste not to kill anyone. However, as soon as it was discovered that a small amount of shadow resistance cheeses this fight completely, Kaz too fell to our overwhelming trash re-clear angst and was molested by Run.

Last but certainly not least on our quest to get the hell out of this instance as soon as possible was Azgalor, another Pit Lord in the long, distinguished line of Pit Lords who look exactly the same. Azgalor seemed like he would actually offer up some form of resistance by wiping us consistently, mostly due to the age old problem of people’s survival instincts not kicking in when playing WoW. Much fun was had by all watching various people melt in the apparently harmless Rain of Fire, a boss ability they could easily be forgiven for falling victim to because they had never, ever encountered it before. But, a bit of reading up and re-strategizing later and Azgalor fell like the rest of the instance, into the eager arms of Run.

The raid breathed a collective sigh of relief at this point, as it was now time to venture into Black Temple, which contained less trash that stayed dead. Our first challenge here was High Warlord Naj’entus, one of Illidan’s top generals who apparently pulled the short straw when they were dividing up the prime office space. We found him in a dank corner of a sewer, mumbling something about maintaining #1 position for weeks to get his blues while casuals these days just had to grind AV.

We knew we were in for a treat when we discovered that this fight too required people to spread out. We also squealed with absolute glee when we found out that Naj’entus is quite fond of impaling people with giant sea shells - and your only hope of survival should this happen to you would be the people around you, who are tasked with pulling it out before the hermit crab inside eats your brain. Grim times indeed.

Much hilarity ensued as people hugged each other and died together in icy tombs, while the melee chained parried blows onto the MT and raid members continued what they were doing in blissful ignorance of the fact that not five feet away, their buddy’s brain had become the main course for a hungry, hungry hermit crab. Eventually though, the fight’s mechanics sank in and Naj’entus was dispatched to trade war stories with Davy Jones and yearn for his Vengeful Gladiator kit.

Next came Supremus, who the Mages were thrilled to find out is very, very similar to Thaladred, in that when he isn’t trying to beat the tar out of the MT, he chases down a random target in the hopes of beating the tar out of them, too. Easy enough you’d think, except that Supremus also spawns ninja volcanoes which pop up out of nowhere with cries of “Ni Hao!” and spew blue lava all over the place. Oh, and blue fire. Stay out of the fire. No seriously.

Once we had discovered that sometimes other people’s strategies not only don’t work for us, but are completely retarded, we proceeded to deliver a swift kick to where Supremus’ groin would be if he actually had one and two-shotted him.

Off we went to face the Shade of Akama. It seems that at some point during the last couple of months, Akama decided to take up engineering for the overpowered crafted helm. Along the way, he created the Gadgetzan transporter and used it, causing it to backfire and create an identical but evil version of himself. This evil twin then decided it was high time to enlist in Illidan’s army but failed the entrance exam. They don’t take kindly to that kind of thing over there, and so Illidan had the shade banished by Yet Another Group of Dark Channelers, whose sole purpose in life appears to be dying first in any given end-game encounter. Which they did. But, only after we had wiped to an untimely invasion of adds because someone, somewhere decided that “for the fiftieth time, don’t talk to Akama!” couldn’t possibly apply to them.

This fight is easier than most of the trash in Hyjal, and Akama’s Shade was brought into the daylight soon after we had the strat down. We also advised Akama to start doing the daily quests for the Shattered Offensive as soon as 2.4 hit, so he could get into Sunwell and grab himself the upgraded engineering helm pattern.

And that’s it for now. We’re currently working on Teron Gorefiend, who seems to be the last of the mindlessly easy bosses and should die as soon as people learn to click a few buttons while moving.

Big grats to Affliction for the kills these past couple of weeks - and I’m sure we’ll be seeing several more shortly.

And so it was that after a long, hard week full of attempts on Kael’Thas, Affliction zoned into Tempest Keep once more last night with dreams of bringing Kael’s palace shattering down around his ears. It was a week full of wipes, repair bills, consumables and wipes. And some wipes. And a couple of wipes. There were also wipes. And because you can just never have too many of them - another wipe. There were wipes of all shapes and sizes. Some long, some short. Some began before the actual attempts did and some ended long after the first person had died. Some were amusing, some were frustrating and some we’re still not sure about. But we persevered, dusted ourselves off and tried again.

And again.

For those that have never experienced it - it’s easy to describe the mechanics of the Kael’Thas fight. You can run through the various phases, the mobs, the strategies and lay it all out on the table clear as day. But until you actually take part in this elaborate dance, this merry-go-round of porcelain plate juggling jesters, every attempt teetering at the brink of a cliff with only jagged edged rocks and bad metaphors below - until then, you’ll never truly understand when someone tells you that Kael’Thas is quite possibly the most awesome and rewarding encounter in WoW up until this point of progression.

Blizzard took a different route in this encounter. They heeded the cries of the masses who told them that the Lady Vash’j fight was too random and luck based. They did not want to create another boss who at a whim could summarily execute a quarter of your raid with nothing you could have done to save them. So they created Kael’Thas - a fight that is only about control and execution.. and seven thousand miscellanous things that COULD go wrong and wipe your raid in a slow and painful death.. but which you are perfectly in control of.

The above is, perhaps, the most frustrating thing about this fight. Experience has now taught us that you cannot assume that every person is born with a survival instinct, and that it would naturally translate into their online play. Indeed, it seems that for a fairly sizeable portion of today’s humans, a fifteen foot tall maniacal and savage-looking Blood Elf wearing horns and flaming armor and wielding an axe that could level Shattrath if dropped from a sufficient altitude is absolutely, positively no reason to panic. It also seems that this transcendent feeling of euphoria abounds even when said Blood Elf is bearing down on them, drooling blood and with a look on his face suggesting that your torso is quite possibly the tastiest morsel of food he has ever seen, and it cannot be in his mouth quickly enough.

Yes, you guessed it, many an entertaining wipe was had at the hands of Thaladred “It looks like I’m only walking, but remember that I’m fifteen feet tall” the Darkener. Many a “he’s after you! Run!” was cut short by the death screams of a daydreaming raid member, or your typical mage whose priorities in life place firing off another fireball above.. well.. life itself. It took many an explanation to convey the idea that Thaladred wasn’t, in fact, on his way over to give people an encouraging word and a friendly slap on the ass. But finally, we were past that particular hurdle.

Then came Capernian - an embarrassment to the warlock community who forgot to spend all of her talent points when going down the destruction tree and then forgot which game she was playing and took a level in the Mage class to pick up Fireball. She also didn’t bind any of her keys before the fight and forgot to drag her abilities to her action bars, and is thus limited to spamming Fireball and Conflagrate for the rest of her rather short and not so illustrious career. She also gave us many a headache, displaying a female characteristic that has baffled men since the dawn of time by never quite being able to decide what she wanted. Thankfully however, she had very little health and we only had to put up with the random conflagrations, aggro changes and high pitched squeeling for a minute or two at a time.

I could go on about this fight because, frankly, there are FIVE bloody phases to it, each of which is divided into various sub-phases, each with their own little sub-sub-phases which I suspect were soon to be listening to the pitter patter of little sub-sub-sub-phases of their own had we not arrived and put an end to the madness by ordering our warlocks to eat all of the children.

In case you were wondering, the only really tough part of the entire fight is Phase3, when Thaladred “I’m walking faster now because you seriously pissed me off earlier” the Darkener comes back with the rest of his posse, with twice the HP he had before and a dent in his helmet which he is very, very upset about. Once we’d given him a couple more matching dents, it was onto Phase4, where Kael’Thas finally graced us with his supremely Drag Queen-like presence and offered to let us play with his Phoenix. (it’s not as bad as it sounds)

It took a bit of persuading to stop the rogues from trying to stab the Phoenix’s eyes out as soon as it spawned. It also - rather surprisingly - took some persuading to convince people that a patch of fire all around them on the ground topped by three flaming orbs spinning in a decidedly “I’m about to go supernova and wipe out any trace of your very existence” way was something that they should - as they say in the delightful French language - get the F*@#$ away from.

But eventually, all of these useful little lessons sunk in, and our attempts got closer and closer to our goal - which was of course, to stick Kael’Thas’ staff somewhere he would find decidedly unpleasant. Phase5 turned out to be a cakewalk, punctuated by periods of frantic swimming through thin air and vent shouts which might have led a stray passerby to believe that an egg was about to, in fact, take over the world and kill us all.

But so it was that slightly overtime on our very last attempt (well, obviously, but I didn’t mean it like that, so shut up) Kael’Thas’ evil mana-sucking existence came to an end and we received our Vials (woo!) and phat loots. We also totally trashed his room. Rock on!

A huge congrats to everyone present on the night, and to Affliction as a whole for another awesome achievement which has now opened the door to BC endgame. We’ll send you all a postcard from Mount Hyjal.

And so it was that Affliction zoned into Tempest Keep again last week. This time however, our intention was not simply to walk past Al’ar’s room, but to do some industrial grade pest control so we could finally have a place to park our mounts without finding them burnt to death by a stray blob of burning bird poo at the end of the evening.

As we cleared to Al’ar, the GM’s and Officers were deep in thought. The success and morale of the raid in mind, we were pondering important questions and their ramifications for the guild as a whole. Heated were the debates, lengthy were the discussions and bordering on the theological were the conversations as we talked in detail regarding each subject. Was Al’ar a mythical Phoenix, or was he bitten by a radioactive Spider in the Searing Gorge? Should we cook the corpse, or use it to power a Gnomish Airconditioner in Honor Hold? Could you actually cook a Phoenix, or would the oven explode from reflected heat? And finally, if you ate a Phoenix, would he stay eaten, or respawn later when you were on the toil- actually, we should probably leave that one out.

Suitably prepared for the encounter ahead, we forged on past the last couple of “special” hunter pulls involving some bad timing and very surprised healers, and reached Al’ar’s cage. Or perch. Or roost. Minus the straw. But he would probably set that on fire anyway.

Those of you unfamiliar with this fight will be comforted to know that it too follows the age old principle of raiding, which we have perfected and refined into into its purest form for you, right here, time and again, so that you may benefit from our wisdom and experience and carry it forth into your own raids. It is a timeless strategy, a mantra if you will - which can be depended upon to guide you in the right direction. I am, of course, referring to:

“Don’t die.”

You may take the customary moment for recovery and adulation.

The fight itself is fairly straightforward. Phase 1 consists of lots of running around the room, as Al’ar inconsiderately interrupts our attempts to bring him to a timely end by flying off to find a more comfortable spot at one of four positions along the upper level. Unfortunately, each position was occupied by either a very spiky warrior who insisted on poking him continuously with a sword (or in Testa’s case, a magical fairy wand) or a Druid, the latter’s stench being enough to prompt even Kael’Thas to pop round and ask if Al’ar had eaten a bad batch of giant bird seed. Some burnt fur and furnace-heated warriors later, we gained the hang of running around like a herd of lemmings and the tanks learned that sometimes, jumping off a cliff is a good idea.

On we went to Phase 2, which involves more running around, but for different reasons. Al’ar, tiring of the tanks hoarding the prime nesting spots, exploded out of the center of the room and decided to take matters into his own hands. Or feet. Inevitably, he headed straight for Netcode and pecked the living crap out of him. We can only assume that Net must closely resemble a tasty Mana Worm snack from one hundred feet in the air. As the melee chased Al’ar around like a prehistoric hunting party, and Al’ar’s adds chased the healers around, and the tanks chased the adds around, and the ranged chased the tanks around and various people exploded, were crushed or burned to death, we eventually got Al’ar closer and closer to looting time. Some frenzied action, triple somersault mid-air BR’s and disappointed calls over vent as someone lost yet another pair of pants to a flame patch later and Al’ar fell over dead.

We poked the corpse a couple of times to make sure he was staying down this time, and then nuked it a bit more just in case. Finally, we let Run loose on the feathered carcass. There’s no faking death through THAT. After lining up for the killshot, we got even more healer loot and a hunter trinket. I guess Phoenixes aren’t herbivores after all.

Big grats to everyone present for the kill, and to Affliction for another great achievement!

Evangelical here. Melasco has the week off. He is suffering from massive head trauma sustained from briskly mashing his face against the keyboard. Such is the life of a warlock.

Affliction zoned into Tempest Keep yesterday with the intent of knocking High Astromancer Solarian off of her high and mighty throne. With the entire raid repaired and carrying bagloads of every consumable known to man, what could possibly go wrong?

We decided to warm up with a visit to our old friend Void Reaver. The trash clear was relatively uneventful until a singular bad pull that apparently no longer needs crowd control of any type according to our warlocks and mages. After a nice quick disembowelment, we gathered our composure (and our entrails), and proceeded to show Void Reaver once again that Tony Danza and Bruce Springsteen are not the only bosses.

After sorting through the stack of shinies left behind by Mr. Reaver, we did an about face and began marching to Solarian. After what seemed endless hours of AoEable trash, we finally came face to face with Miss Solarian herself. Although its not for certain she is a Ms. rather than a Mrs., its pretty obvious that no sane man would wed a woman who turns into a gigantic blueberry 5 days out of the month.

In preparation for this epic battle, we had several of Affliction’s finest go spend the week at a bomb technician training camp. Unfortunately, little did we know it was not a Bomb Technician Training Camp, but instead the Middle Eastern School for Suicide Bombers.

After a brief rundown of macros for healers and deciding who was to be the lucky individuals to interrupt the priests’ healing, our attempts at destroying Ms. Solarian began.

Our first few attempts looked rather strong, but none was flawless. Despite the prior warnings of “Run the **** away if you’re the bomb”, several of our finest instead followed the teachings of the MESSB and proceeded to blow up the raid. After picking the shards of shrapnel out of our asses, we gathered our composure and made our next attempts, each one better than the previous.

On our final attempt, with trash respawning behind us, we knew what we must do. The bombs ran away, the healers healed the missiles (but not our unfortunate rogue who burned through two Battle Rezzes in record time), the pallies consecrated, the mages and warlocks blew up agents, and we finally convinced Ms. Solarian to reveal her inner voidwalker. Several nukes later and she lay on the floor whining about dying a virgin.

Congratulations to Barlan on his new belt, Ragul on his new staff, and me on my new pants (Its about time too…was tired of always raiding naked from the bottom down

Kael’thas…beware…your flaming bird is soon going to become our Thanksgiving Dinner.

And so it was that Affliction zoned into SSC once more last week, still high on the scent of victory after our string of recent conquests. Some of us were higher than others as it turned out, if the various ninja pulls and accidental deaths on the way to Leo’s place were anything to judge by. Eventually however, we arrived at Leo’s modest bachelor pad with some much-needed house-warming gifts and some very specific instructions for him on exactly where he could stick them.

Now, learning this fight can be a very stressful experience for any raid. Healers - who have spent the last few years staring at health bars and mashing their healing spells - are expected to be able to deal a certain amount of damage in a limited time window or risk being mind controlled by Leo and abused by angry looking gnomes with a chip on their shoulder. Tanks are expected to perform the same feat, except for them it’s more like trying to tear down the Berlin Wall with a spoon and some candy floss.

Last but not least are the poor DPS, who against all reason are expected to run away from a 15 foot tall blind Elf, who has x-ray vision, mumbles insanely throughout the fight, dual-wields six foot long, double-edged swords, spins like a Tazmanian devil on a cocktail of crack, speed and acid while trying to tear their faces off, and often turns himself into a fire-breathing, demonic vision of hatred. With wings.

Despite all this, some of our healers and several of the tanks clearly preferred Leo’s medical plan (free eye-care!) to ours, since they spent more time fighting for him than they did for us. Clearly, we need a guild psychiatrist dedicated to dealing with the problems caused by persistent inner demons. (I made a funny) Likewise, several DPS consistently found themselves so drawn to Leo that it was all we could do to stop them from running out and hugging him every time he came over to say hi. This was only exasperated by the fact that as soon as they did so, Leo would shove his swords so deeply down their throats that in the days to come, we made a small fortune in gold by renting them out to farmers for use in ploughing their fields.

Eventually though, enough raid members graduated from the Rocky Balboa school of hard knocks to kill their inner demons and our attempts got Leo closer and closer to his ultimate demise. On the final attempt we had a couple of close calls, most of them to do with the crazy burst damage I took occasionally while trying to sear Leo’s lame-ass blindfold off of his head. I can only be thankful that Warlock pets don’t have any form of the loyalty system that Blizzard employs for Hunters, since my Felhunter would long ago have un-summoned himself and left for an alternate reality where he does not spend the majority of his time bathed in chaotic fire inherited from a crazy master who insists on continually taunting a large, pissed-off demon currently engaged in trying to burn him out of existence.

Much to the relief of my Felhunter though, Leo’s better half (I made another funny) did eventually manage to nail me with a well-aimed shot to the head, but not before he was low enough for the rest of the raid to finish kicking his ass and wipe that stupid smirk off his face.

A big grats to everyone present for for the kill, and to Affliction for another great achievement!

Affliction has been kicking some serious ass this week. SSC bosses have fallen in our path like the puny insects they really are. After a short adjustment period to some internal changes, I think it’s safe to say we are back on track and taking names in a big way.

With the first half of SSC cleared the previous night, Thursday saw us zone back in with the sole purpose of giving Fathom-Lord Karathress a solid night of attempts. You’ll notice I wrote “attempts”, because we had heard the horror stories and experienced for ourselves the three-shotted tanks, mana-less healers and “what the *@#& just happened?” moments that characterize this encounter. It was with this mind-set that we entered his room and buffed ourselves, flasking, eating and enchanting until the room glowed like the reactor core of nuclear power station. (only with more hooves, fur and summoned demons complaining bitterly about having to share a dimension with Run)

We had a secret weapon this time though. We had expanded upon our time-worn strategy, with wisdom and tactics gleaned from Sun-Tzu’s Ancient Art of War itself. Long had we labored over this addition - writing, refining and setting in stone an addendum so complete, so complex, so overwhelmingly all-encompassing that it threatened to break free of the magical tome in which it was wrought and unleash a wave of destruction upon the world, obliterating life as we know it.

But that didn’t happen.

What was this addendum, you’re probably asking yourself at this point. What was this shining beacon of hope, this seed of imagination.. what stroke of brilliance could possibly hold a candle to “Don’t die”? We shall quench your thirst for this knowledge, and end your suffering. Behold, in all its glory!

THE ADDENDUM:

“Don’t let others die.”

You may take a few moments to compose yourselves. I know that was a lot to take in all at once.

Anyway, getting back to the fight. As you may have surmised, we were prepared. Testacrush had even gone so far as to enchant his magical fairy wand with Mongoose, and Run had chugged down a gallon of anti-freeze and worn his prettiest lingerie for his encounter with Tidalvess. How could we lose?

We had two false starts when Sharkiss’ pet got the overwhelming urge to sniff some flasked ass, and bolted off towards a random healer right on the pull. Much leg humping commenced and we are sorry to say the owners of the aforementioned legs shall never walk again. After investing in a leash and a muzzle, we pulled Karathress again, ready to learn the nuances of the fight. Sharkiss went down a short while later, muttering something about us getting what’s coming to us in 2.3. We kicked his pet and then ran across to Tidalvess who was rather surprised to see us, and even more surprised to be staring at his own ass from the afterlife. Onwards we went to Caribdis, where approximately twenty thousand people were attempting to interrupt her heals while she made “Shhhhhhhick, shhhhhhhhhick” noises and asked Testacrush what his rating was.

She too went down like one of Run’s dates and we advanced on Karathress himself, where Mel was beating his latest hasty retreat from the most recent spitfire totem trying to burn a hole in his pants. Some leet DPS and scorched Naga ass later and Karathress collapsed to the floor, accompanied by cries of “What the hell was that?” and “You’re kidding me, right?” on vent. Indeed, after all the preparation, psyching up and a fortune in consumables, we’d have to class Fathom-Lord Karathress as quite possibly the biggest anti-climax in WoW to date. We replaced Mel’s pants, forced Run to wear a pair of pants and gave Eluras a shiny new trinket.

After giving Leotheras a try or two, we are pretty confident that he too will be joining his Naga buddies in the great big Aquarium in the sky shortly.

Big grats to everyone involved in the kill, and to Affliction for another great achievement.

Monday night saw us zone into SSC with just one purpose in mind: popping Tidewalker’s fart bubble.. permanently. Such was our enthusiasm that several raid members completely forgot how to play their class along the way. We had to give Mellon a quick refresher course in Hunter 101 for example, teaching him all about Feign Death and its 30 second cooldown. A magical ability which - get this - allows you to DPS while not pulling aggro! Truly revolutionary, we know. We also sacrificed three rogues to the luck gods - not because we needed it, but because really, how can anyone say no to a good rogue death?

With the amusing trash clear behind us, we trooped into Tidewalker’s room, inserting our nose-plugs as he popped even more bubbles. We came prepared with an all-new, thinking-out-of-the-box strategy for the fight. A strategy so different to our previous ones, it took us one or two attempts to perfect it. As usual, in our eternal benevolence, we will reveal this startling new strategy to you here exclusively. You will not find this information anywhere else, and we are confident after much testing that it truly trivializes the Tidewalker fight.

With no further ado, our new strategy is: “Don’t die.”

I’ll give you a few seconds to get over the initial shock and awe, and pick your jaws back up off the ground.

One or two attempts later and we were sure we had the fight down. Potted and amped, we pulled old Morogrim “I’m too sexy for a belly button” Tidewalker for the last time, and settled down for the long fight. Things went smoothly from the get-go. The murlocs played along, the rogues remembered to vanish, the mages had more than 5k HP with raid buffs and we only had to remind Mellon to Feign Death twelve times during the fight - a new record. A slightly hairy 25% transition and some leet AOE later, Tidewalker finally bit the dust, succumbing to his own body odour for evermore.

Big grats to everyone involved, and to Affliction on another great achievement.

This last week has seen Affliction add two new notches to our belts. Last week and again this week saw us flying up to Kazzak’s new hidey-hole in Hellfire Peninsula to relive our Blasted Lands farming run days. After a quick tactics change (”Nobody die this time!”) and a try or two to make sure everyone was on the same page, Kazzak bit the dust like a rabid mole and bled Purplez all over his little platform.

Last night after giving Kazzak a quick once-over again, we flew on to Shadowmoon Valley to confirm reports that Kil’Jaedan’s malfunctioning pet robot, Doomwalker, was on the loose and begging for scraps at the gates of the Black Temple. Sure enough, we found Void Reaver’s illegitimate son trying to pass on the legacy by humping the remains of a catapult. After a try or two and a lot of waiting around (thanks for the 15 minute death timer, Blizzard!) we reduced Doomwalker to a pile of rust on the ground. Definitely one of the easiest fights BC has to offer.

Big grats to Affliction on the new achievements.

Last week saw Affliction zone into SSC once more, intent on silencing the annoying voice of Outland’s only known cross-dressing elemental. After some amusing trash clears and zero nether vortexes, we decided to slap Lurker around a bit before facing Hydross - a warm-up if you will.

It turned out to be a really good idea in the end, as some of the raiders showed off levels of noobishness heretofore unimaginable during what turned out to be several aborted kills. We also learned some valuable lessons on the night as raid leaders, which we are infinitely thankful for. We learned that shouting “GET INTO THE WATER” fifteen separate times on vent just isn’t enough for some people - and that sheeps have “Please dot me” signs pasted on their backs only visible to a select few. (we suspect alcohol)

But - eventually - Lurker died and sank into the depths, dropping the same old crap that left everyone sighing and wondering exactly why we bothered in the first place. But, we trooped on back to Hydross, eagerly discussing the strats and ensuring that everyone knew exactly what they should and should not be doing. The fight involves no water and no sheep - so we reckoned we were already ahead of the curve.

With 10 minutes left on the trash respawns in front of him, we pondered waiting for the repops and re-clearing. It appeared as though the timers were off though, so we figured we may as well get an attempt in to try squeeze any remaining noobishness out of the raid in time for the real event of the evening. Things went well right off the bat, as Testa dry-humped the Eye of Kilrog like a champ and we engaged Hydross “It’s my poison and I’ll whine if I want to” the Unstable.

Using our new, soon to be patented add control technique and some serious AOE fireworks displays, the fight progressed more smoothly than we’d hoped. Transitions went off without a hitch and DPS was high as Hydross’ health plummeted further and further down. We were so surprised that by the time the “fear and nuke” call came round vent was as silent as a graveyard - truly a sign of intense concentration in this guild. As we finished Hydross off and vent erupted in cheers, we rather deservedly patted ourselves on the back for this very memorable one-shot.

Congrats to Affliction on another great achievement.