Remember, Remember the 25th of November

Concerning this:

“We are proud to declare that all WOTLK PVE raid content has now been cleared. This is both a moment of triumph and a cause for concern. The question in all our minds right now is if we could do this, how soon until the rest of the top guilds in the world clear all the raid content that WOTLK has to offer? Did Blizzard miscalculate in the tuning of these encounters? Or is this Blizzard folding under the weight of a large casual player base that demands to be on equal footing with end-game raiders?“

So said the remnants of Nihilum and SK Gaming, who merged to become the Twenty Fifth of November. The actual guild title is TwentyFifthNovember, but such a name hardly rolls off the tongue. Nihilum was a better name, in my opinion.

You know who these are if you keep a small pulse on the WoW Raiding Metagame. Nearly all the world firsts through Black Temple in Burning Crusade went to Nihilum, with SK dominating Sunwell’s progression curve. Happily I’m confident there are people who have never heard of them period. There was a period when I wouldn’t have cared, but now, as Altitis so succinctly stated, I should think it better if people never heard from them again.

I have (or should I say “had?”) respect for the extreme hard-core raiding guild. However, I have also held a doubt as to their actual value in the community. Surely in any human activity there will be people who exceed and surpass the vast majority of those who venture into it–though this has far less to do with ability and more with motivation–and they serve a general purpose of being the paragon for that activity for which others aim. SK/Nihilum have always been very dedicated and exceptional players; for such characteristics some credit and praise is due.

It seems clear now that SK/Nihilum are not exceptional people, as sad as it may seem.

The extreme hardcore have a delirious need to prove themselves to the community. They constantly desire new content to show just how good they are, despite everyone already knowing that already. They suffer from an insecurity we call Pride. Remember how Black Temple sucked because it was rather easy, but Kael’thas was awesome because it was difficult. As was Sunwell. You had to be very good to get into Sunwell. A common slight against Black Temple was “it was a time investment,” not a “skill investment.” How fitting that the self-declared arbiters of good and “skilled” base it around content they’ve already beaten.

Of course, those quotes are all nonsense. All fights in WoW can be beaten in time. Some fights simply require more practice than others, and some guilds are strong in some areas, e.g., healing, that others are not. All fights in WoW are “time investments.” There is nothing in this game that cannot be beaten given enough time put into things. Kael’thas was not “difficult.” Kael’thas strategy was, like all fights, very simple in the theoretical. However, the execution required large amounts of time to get right. The difference in “difficulty” of fights is how much perfection they require. Some fights are aggressively perfectionist, while others are rather lenient. Nevertheless, no guild will ever kill something unless they have the time and energy to do so.

There is nothing “magical” about SK/Nihilum. Their secret lies in time and experience, not in skill. They are quite willing to take off large amounts of time and, according to their own website, “forgo family dinners” in order to get World Firsts. That’s it. They’re willing to put in more time to kill things. Any raiding guild that puts enough time into things will get something down. All Blizzard has done is try to reduce the amount of time needed to do so. TwentyFifthNovember howls at this because it cuts at their false veil of superiority. It wouldn’t do to for people to find out that the “skill” of raiding is all baseline, e.g, stay out of the fire and watch raid announcements, and the only difference between the hardcore and the casual is time and motivation to the learn the dance.

You may notice that very few American guilds take World First kills these days. I can’t remember the last one that did. Why? People make silly arguments about how European or American culture is superior to the other, but they miss the point. WoW is not a terribly skillful game that requires certain character qualities, except the basic ones that apply to all activities: attentiveness, dedication, willingness to listen, teamwork, camaraderie, etc. No, SK/Nihilum have more time than American guilds do because Americans (we can’t forget the Canucks, now can we? ;) ) have a longer workweek and fewer holidays than those east of the Atlantic. The Europeans have more time. Anyone with more time will, in the long run, beat someone at any activity. The pianist that plays for 8 hours a day will always be better than the one that plays for one, even if they have equal talent.

To wit, there is no difference in “skill” between SK/Nihilum and your average guild that only killed Prince in the Burning Crusade. Nihilum had more time. Time and dedication, all of which are nice and wonderful, but they don’t make you superior to any other person. Some people in the world have more responsibilities than you do, and some do not have a society that supports a shorter workweek. The Twenty Fifth of November are just laboring under the delusion that it does, that they deserve more than those pathetically stupid scrubs who never got past Gruul’s.

Of course, that attitude disgusts me, but it shouldn’t. There’s nothing to say about these people anymore. They are, quite simple, irrelevant. They matter no more to the game. They do not, cannot, and will not understand the people who play this game for fun. Falling into, as Lewis said, the “subtlest of all snares,” SK/Nihilum went from playing for fun to playing for playing. No longer having any actual goal behind their actions, they’ve slipped into irrelevance.

We have, of course, said nothing of the fact that SK/Nihilum farmed this content on Beta months before the Expansion actually went live, so this cannot be considered “new” content for them, but their little position is already quaint enough. No need to make it any worse.

We should forget them.

When You Want To Cry…

And laugh.

And scream.

And kill bunnies with Shadow magic.

Last night a crapload of stuff happened, and I’m not sure exactly where I am right now. I would swear I was drunk, but I’m afraid I was only subject to the delightful insanity of my mind. I love my mind. It’s so diabolical. *cough* </narcissism> Are you happy now, narcassistic voice? Who’s turn is it next? Psychopath? Okay, he’ll come out tomorrow. The rest of you…shut up.

I mean it now!

Ignore the above paragraph. I was possessed. Or maybe not. Or maybe. Am I confusing you enough? Whee!

Some pictures to demonstrate the insanity that happened in the 3 hours of raiding we did last night:

Yes, those are the Eredar Whores, who are now happily dead. There was some questionable conduct going on shortly before and after this picture was taken, but I don’t have to explain that, do I? :P

That’s M’uru. Whom we two-shot. I wiped on his unnerfed form for 2 months through the graces of another guild. I’m very grateful for that opportunity, but I wanted to cry when we killed him so easily last night. The fight is such a joke. It’s about as easy as Shade now. Like Kael, I’ll mourn for M’uru. It used to be the culmination of Blizzard’s excellent raid design. However, now he’s just a windchime pinata. *sob*

Still, there was a rather…surprising incident of comedy after the kill. The Fel Conqueror’s Rainments dropped, a, um, *delectable* caster DPS chest. The decision for the Council, after reviewing the statistics and attendance and stuff, came down to a literal roll-off between Cassytha, a Warlock, and myself. Two of the officers were picked to roll. My representative rolled a 4, which confirmed in my eyes my horrendously bad luck.

Until the other representative rolled a 1 for Cassytha.

There was a *slight* commotion on Vent afterwards. Suffice it to say, that roll will go down in history. I’m still convinced it’s all an elaborate ruse designed to rob me of hope. You hear that, Aliina? I’m calling you out, woman!

The next hour and a half we spent wiping on Kil’Jaeden, a fight I never thought I’d see. I recorded the summoning of Kil’Jaeden to etch the moment in my hard drives for all time. It was a great moment, even if the previous two bosses were nerfed and Kil’Jaeden will probably take a few hours of casual attempts to eventually kill. We got here by the grace of God and Blizzard. We’re going to kill Kil’Jaeden if it’s the last thing we do in BC…because it will be.

—

I am, if you’ve followed me over the year, a post-BC raider. I came into WoW in November of 2006 as a wide-eyed Night Elf Druid. It wasn’t until I found out how fun Priests were (specifically those of the Dark and Swirly variety) that I managed to level a character to 70. It took me 6-8 months to do so. A few quests here and there, an instance occasionally with my tightly-knit casual guild.

Eventually, however, I wanted to raid. I watched a video of a nigh perfect kill of pre-nerf Kael and I wanted to raid. So I said my farewells and left my casual guild to find a home for a raiding Shadow Priest.

Now, that wasn’t exactly hard. Raiding Shadow Priests, to say nothing of *good* raiding Shadow Priests, are hard to find. I was not a good raiding Shadow Priest at the time. That soon, however, changed as I got exposed to raids and Shadowpriest.com…which wasn’t the cesspool it is now. It was only becoming it. :P

Eventually I found a guild on Alexstrasza and raided with them for 8 months. I fit in mostly, but there were some undercurrents I failed to manage or even realize. Eventually, for my part, I got too outspoken for my own good, and got thrown out of the guild based on what was a misunderstanding. Politics. *sigh* Nevertheless, they were a good guild that taught me how to raid. I was delighted to find they successfully cleared through BT and Hyjal over the past few months.

In the meantime, I came to Que Sera Sera through the dubious machinations of Karthis Da Bear, and here I’ve been for the past 6 months.

It’s been a wild ride indeed. A happy ride.

To Wrath and more fun.

Upside Down While Tripping on Acid

Wow, um, yeah. *vaporizes some cobwebs*

I haven’t updated this blog in a while. I must be getting very popular…because that’s what you do when you become an internet celebrity: you get really, REALLY lazy.

Ahem.

Well, what’s been happening in the life of Apathy? In the two months since the last post, I have:

  • Killed Illidan with my guild
  • Gotten a fabulous new helm from said Illidan
  • Become a very infamous troll on Shadowpriest.com <– Life goal achieved!
  • Saved the universe
  • Killed people on the Beta and learned to hate Ret Paladins in the process.
  • Eaten Rice
  • Entered the last two months of college.
  • Achieved the unofficial status of co-raid-leader in my guild…
  • And…something else.

Hmm, it felt like I was writing a resume there. So much embellishment. Never mind! Ignore that!

These last two months people online have learned about how powerful Ret Paladins are. They can rip people to shreds in .5 seconds and heal back to full with impunity. They have a handy little immunity button that only one class can deal with, and have no mana concerns whatsoever. Yes, Ret Paladins are quite overpowered.

Or…were. In the latest Beta build Ret Paladins got nerfed back to earth. Apologies, but heaven isn’t for everyone, and especially not for most of the jerks playing Ret Paladins right now.

How fun! I just love it when classes QQ, especially when they’re Shadow Priests. But Ret Paladins aren’t Shadow Priests, so I can’t go onto a forum and annoy everyone to death about it. I can, however, write a self-important blog post about it for catharsis.

It’s not hard to find QQ about Paladins. Go anywhere to find a pink Justice Friend running around with his head cut off whining about how the world unfair. If you read the linked forum threads you’ll find tons of posts whining vaguely about how evil the nerfs were and how this will break ret paladins again, just like what happened in Patch 2.0.

In the grand tradition of classes, no one seems to even consider the idea that, horror of horrors, Ret Paladins might have needed to be nerfed?

The biggest problem players of any class have is the inability to rationally determine why something was nerfed. Instead of asking what was wrong with the class or why something was changed, people start whining like 3-year-olds and get as huffy as a high-school American teenager! Like, that’s SOOOO wrong. I think they should, like, change that!

A class should not be able to blow every other class out of the water and heal with no interference afterwards without any cost to their mana bar or some other detriment. It’s silly and unbalanced.

Ret Paladins needed to be nerfed. If you’d played on Beta for five seconds, you’d understand why.

And yet, I can deal with overpowered classes. Druids…*cough*…but I cannot deal with a bunch of 3-year-olds mad with power.

The conduct of Ret Paladins during their brief sunspot of godhood was appalling. They were cackling in people’s faces, showing off their advantage at every opportunity, and making the game a nightmare for every other class and spec in existence. It was moronic, they knew it, and they loved it! But did they honestly believe it was going to last? Are they so surprised they got beaten down? They were acting like three year olds.

I want to see Ret Paladins in raids. I want to see their class in BGs and be a force to be reckoned with. But they deserved a nerf. Their own ass-hattery condemened themselves, and I have no pity for a spec that dug its own hole. If you get buffed and become significant, have the self-restraint to be grateful about it. There was no gratitude from Ret Paladins towards Blizzard or anybody else in the matter. There was a bunch of vengeful shouting and fey laughter, coupled with the inane battlecry of “It’s our turn to be OP!” The Paladin community went completely and utterly drunk with power.

Am I to pity the hungover drunk the night after? No. I’ll do what a normal person would do: laugh at him.

And that’s what the burned community of 9 other classes is going to do.

Mother Issues

In the ten days since the last post was written, I have created an brand new, technologically advanced TELEPATHIC BLOG ENTRY TRANSCRIPTION SYSTEM! Or so I and every other WoW blogger out there wishes. I’m looking at you, Matticus. If I succeed in this venture, I’ll let you know. I may even consider selling you it for a heavily discounted price. *capitalist grin*

What happened? Why didn’t I post last week? Well, because school started. This threw me off a lot. Four new classes tend to be annoying, especially when one happens to be a completely useless elective Gender and Ethnicity in Business course that makes me want to murder someone every Monday and Wednesday morning. Life isn’t fair. Women and men are different. As if that was hard to figure out. I digress, but it’s fun to digress; now I’m digressing about digressing. Isn’t this fun? Semicolon! </random>

Needless to say, a lot has happened over the past ten days. A bullet list usually solves the problem of summing things up, so here goes:

  • I turned twenty years old and I don’t feel any different whatsoever. Don’t say it’s because I can’t drink yet, because I don’t like alcohol in any incarnation.
  • I saw M’uru to Phase 2. Expect a kill this week or next week.
  • I finally got above 1575 on my 3v3 team and got my S4 bracers. 1600 is my next target. By the way, F– MACE STUN. F– it to hell. That is all.
  • My guild finally downed RoS (with several very painful Phase 3 1% wipes) and Mother in one night! One night! Ha! Mother is pathetic, just so you know. Really…really…pathetic. I mean, seriously, she’s a boss? I think Blizzard had some sort of Void Reaver complex in Burning Crusade. Will Tier Shoulders ever be difficult to get?

  • I went with a different guild to finish up BT yesterday and got a Zerg on a stick. I look very badass, to use the vernacular. No, I don’t have a screenshot. Yet.
  • Said guild has been farming Illidan for 7 months and never saw a glaive…until tonight. The off-hand dropped. They were happy. :)
  • I started up a BE Frost Mage on a PVP server and have been fiercely leveling her in the past 10 days. She’s now 46, nearly 47, and I expect her to be 70 by mid-September. It’s time to for the stupid people who make me lose BGs in this battlegroup to face my apathetic wrath!

New Apathy Adventures in store this fall. Hopefully I’ll soon have pics of painful practice on Kil’Jaeden himself! Kil’Jaeden is what Illidan should have been…somehow.

F– Mace Stun!

Semicolon!

End of Line.

Screw you, Felmyst. Screw you.

If there’s one fight in all of WoW that I hate now and forever, it’s Felmyst. I have seen her down twice now, but I absolutely hate her. She is probably one of the stupidest fights ever conceived by Blizzard, for a few simple reasons.

She requires a minimum of 3 Priests to be possible. Yes. We’re not kidding.

If you have 2 Priests, put your tail between your legs and run away like a little puppy. You can’t do it. It’s not possible.

Why? No, not because you need CoH Priests to heal through the constant 1000 Nature Damage DoT. Not because you need Shadow Priests to keep up the mana of the DPS and get her down before the timer.

No, you need 3 Priests so you Mass Dispel one DoT that comes every 25 seconds or so. (Just so you know, boss timers are absolutely worthless in this fight.) If even one Mass Dispel is off, you’re screwed.

This is called Gas Nova, a nasty Magic debuff that hits for 3000 nature damage and drains 1000 mana every 2 seconds. This means that the 3 Priests must, in Phase 1, be constantly ready to cast Mass Dispel the entire raid instant Felmyst starts casting it. But if that we’re all the fight had to offer, it’d be too easy. No, there’s something called Encapsulate, on a similar CD with Gas Nova, which lifts one person up into the air and deals 3k Arcane damage every second to everyone with 20 yards of the person for 6-8 seconds. While this itself is actually pretty easy to heal through, it completely messes up positioning temporarily. Since Gas Nova is on a very short and arbitrary cooldown, it can come instantly after Encapsulate, when people are running back to their spots. This means that there are times when Mass Dispels start overlapping and people who are supposed to get dispelled don’t.

You cannot control which targets are dispelled in the MD radius. The only way you can guarantee all your targets will be dispelled is if there are 10 or less targets within that little circle. If not, then you’d better watch your raid UI and spam dispel on targets that still have the debuff before they die. Did I mention there is a 1000 nature damage debuff ticking all the time?

That means you need to stack another class: Resto Shaman! If you’ve been in Sunwell for the latter 4 bosses, you know that Resto Shaman basically make or break your raid. If you don’t have at least 4 for Twins, M’uru, KJ, and Felmyst, you’re screwed.

I can see why Blizzard is so focused on making class stacking less and less of a viable option in Wrath. With fights like Felmyst and M’uru (which actually takes a ridiculous amount of skill, DPS, and practice, and is not left up to the RNG), who needs any other kind of healer? Sunwell may be a very nice instance, but some of the requirements to get in the door and past Brutallus are somewhat…arbirtrary.

And yes, I’m in Sunwell, even though I don’t have my T6 4-set bonus and am still wearing my Frozen Shadoweave Robe. Why? It helps to be a good Shadow Priest. Guilds around the server tend to notice that sort of thing. I’ll explain soon enough. :P

And Koraa Saves the Day!

It’s the Tuesday Apathy Inc. Post back from the dead! Yes, I have finally gotten back to my dorm and acquired some actual time to write a post without mitigating circumstances interfering. So now you can get your two doses of Apathetic Cynicism this week. Rejoice, mind-slaves–I mean, readers of my blog.

More importantly, I saw the Dark Night, and it was good. However, many of the plot points were rather convoluted. I still don’t understand how the Joker managed to drive a beat-up, vacant school bus out of the wall of a smoking bank onto a busy thoroughfare in downtown Gotham without anybody noticing. From that point on it became rather hard to pity the people of Gotham, who apparently are the most inattentive people on the planet. I’d say at least 70% of their woe is their own, if not more.

Also, why is every skyscraper in Gotham except Wayne Tower abandoned?

Anyway, there’s been so much whining from Shadow Priests about how we suck in the expansion, our DPS isn’t being boosted, and nobody will want us in raids anymore, especially with Ret Paladins providing 60% of 10% of their DPS as mana return to 3 random people in a raid. I mean, that’s just incredible compared to VT. Today, however, Koraa finally posted concerning Shadow Priests and laid the smackdown on all the whiners–ever so politely, I might add:

We’re still in talks about how to consolidate buffs/debuffs between classes. Making VT raidwide is a possibility, but yes it would mean the value of multiple Shadow Priests in a raid is somewhat diminished. In a lot of ways we’re okay with that (you shouldn’t *have* to have multiple specs of one class in a raid), but there are a lot of other side effects we’re not sure about right now.

To be honest, 2.5% still might be too high. In our tests, Shadow Priests were still providing around the same amount of mana to their party (if not more) than before because of their increased damage output. Not to mention the Priest wasn’t going out of mana at all because of Spirit/Improved Spirit Tap. You guys aren’t testing enough :).

In retrospect, the methods of “testing” Shadow Priest DPS were always contrived. Exactly how did people think that by using level 75-77 damage numbers and stats you could accurately predict anything at Level 80? Answer: you can’t. Have these “testers” looked at the difference between 65 and 70? You’re gimp. Utterly gimp. You have about half the mana at level 70, to say nothing of actual damage. Koraa’s epic “You guys aren’t testing enough. :) ” is one of the best Blue posts I’ve ever seen. I’ll leave you all to figure out why.

Now, to address some whiny Beta “feedback.” Warning: there is math and large amounts of caustic sarcasm below.

Read More »

There will be posts!

Sorry about the recent lack of updates. Finals, transitioning from school to vacation, etc. Basically, real life has intervened with blogging. However, I’ve got lots to talk about in the upcoming weeks. We downed Archimonde cleanly and proudly, finally got to see RoS, one-shot Bloodboil after 3 weeks of not being able to work on him, and generally cleaned up our act. I got my T6 helm! Weeeeeeeee!

Also, I just spent the last 3 hours helping a higher-end guild (the one who helped us kill Kael) work on M’uru, and they want me back for future Sunwell raids if they need an S-Priest. I am very pleased with this recent development. I just got the honor of seeing one of the hardest (if not *the* hardest) fights in the Burning Crusade. It was pure awesomeness.

To reiterate, I haven’t died. I’ve just been busy, more than my Apathetic self would like to be. :)

Oh Noes! Mai Purplz!

It’s expansion time, so it’s lots (not) of (much) fun for most guilds! Given Burning Crusade timetables, it looks like we will, in fact, be seeing Wrath of the Lich King by the years end at the latest. Already much of the content looks well-polished and tested, much more than anybody anticipated. How anybody thought Wrath would be coming in Fall of 2009 is beyond me. I suppose some people are so ridiculously pessimistic because they want Blizzard to be wrong–so they can be righteously angry…or something. That’s our theory, but the real reason involves insanity more than else. Trust us.

Many guilds, especially the raiding guilds, are panicking because ZOMG!!! THEIR SHINY PURPLZ R GONNA BE REPLACED IN TEH X-PAC!! As if this wasn’t enough, people are asking what the purpose of raiding if their gear is going to be replaced one year from now? Well, that’s a stupid question. I thought the purpose of raiding, PVP’ing, Arena’ing, questing, and all of WoW’ing in general was…like…to have…….fun.

No, seriously.

I thought raiding was…you know…to have fun with 10/25 other people you like to be around and kill stuff with. Same with PVP and about everything you do in this Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game. Heresy! I know, I know, it sounds very ludicrous, but it’s the truth. WoW is a game you’re supposed to have fun in. It shatters your world, doesn’t it?

Do all those new shiny greens in Northrend some how make your Sunwell loot worthless and unworthy of the effort and sacrifice to get it? Only if you let it. You’d think people would take pride in it showing their skill, even if for a brief moment. How many guilds will have the pleasure of seeing Kil’Jaeden dead before their eyes between now and Arthas? Very few indeed. Given that Kil’Jaeden is probably one of the hardest bosses in WoW ever, isn’t that enough? Heck, how is Thori’dal not an achievement throughout the WoW ages? It’ll get replaced just as quickly, and soon you’ll have to buy ammo again, but dang if it isn’t a nice weapon to be proud of.

Also, if you’re raiding just for gear, you’ve got problems. Sure, it’s not bad to raid for gear. I want my T6 helm and Shoulders very much. Truth be told, I want them far more for their looks than stats. Priest T6 is just…cool, and they’re won’t be a set like it again. I want it mainly just to look cool in Shadowform. The stats/bonuses are just nice caveats on the side. If gear is the only thing you want to raid for, you’re never going to be happy in raiding. Ever. If you don’t care about the fights, the learning, the victories, the defeats, and the good times you have with your guild, you’ll never be happy. You’d be better off quitting now and never enduring the pain. Period.

Finally, be very, VERY careful what you wish for. Think of what it would be like if there wasn’t a giant game/gear/class reset. Think of how it would be if we were just playing at Level 60 right now. The game wouldnt’ have changed, class roles would be like they were back then, etc. You’d be bored. Gear resets are what give you an endgame–temporary as it is–in the first place. Without that reset the raiding just keeps going on forever, never a rest, never a new challenge, never new abilities, never improvements, etc. Burning Crusade fixed a ton of raiding/itemization problems, and Wrath looks to do far more than that. If you didn’t have a gear reset, nothing would change, and everything would be stale.

I mean, if you spent the rest of your WoW-life in purples…how would they mean anything at all?

BK Lied, Archi Died!

No, BK is not BigRedKitty. He never lies. He just distorts things and makes them theoretically humorous, like all huntards. *cough cough* BK = Bosskillers.

By the way, Hex-Lord is never going to drop my trinket, is he? :(

Nay, we killed Archimonde this weekend…somehow! It was rather amusing, actually. Last Wednesday we had to cancel our raid because DPS didn’t show up on time, and a large number of us (read: everyone) wanted to kill Archimonde this week. So, we hastily gathered together on Thursday, got a raid together, and cleared 4/5 Hyjal in about two hours.

Friday comes and we all get together inside Hyjal. Archimonde, despite Tyrande’s urgings to the contrary, has been blithely sitting there for two days with impunity to drain the World Tree of all its energies…and hasn’t gotten anywhere. I love MMORPG Temporal Mechanics! They make no sense and yet make everything convenient for us lazy “adventurers!”

We get in on Friday night and we start making attempts on the giant Eredar. Our tank noobs it up several times, missing the fear stance dance and causing us all to die in very short order. Since Archimonde is a 1 tank show, if your MT dies, you are screwed.

Many repair bills are paid, many wipes are called, and many, MANY people continue to crater to their deaths when practicing the timing of their slow fall items. I never did, so I got to laugh a lot. Watching Praemium Callidus’ (RIP, *sniff*) Archimonde video 20,000 times certainly helped! Thanks, Zin!

Nevertheless, we made steady progress on Archi, getting past 80% 4 or 5 times in a row. On what was one of the last attempts of the night, we all gather up and prepare for the big push. We’re going to get him down this time!

And it clicked.

Everybody timed their Tears correctly, decursing was spot-on, people distanced themselves from the fires when a fear was incoming, and everything went perfectly.

Until 20%.

Somebody died, and the Soul Charges came. People began to drop like flies, and the main tank soon went down. I, however, disconnected at about 18%, swearing many profanities (well, not really, but I was very angry! ANGRY!), coming back in at about 14% and suffering a very painful death soon afterwards. However, instead of wiping the raid like everybody planned, several DPS’ers stubbornly decided to stick it out and get him down as much as they could. Somehow they got him down to 10%.

Tyrande cast her Magical Spell of Invulnerability (and she doesn’t do this before why?), and much confusion happened on Vent. Some of us were in adulation, and others were in despair, saying our 4 last DPS would never get him down enough. 6%, a few seconds left on the immunity spell….and Archimonde just died.

We were…confused.

Very few guides or sites actually mention this very important fact, *cough*, but if you have even ONE person alive at 10% on Archi and Elune’s Protection is cast, you’ve won. Archimonde’s death is a scripted event, happening regardless of your DPS. This is hinted at on Elitist Jerks by people who mention how Archimonde sits at 1% for 20 seconds before dying. If it really were a DPS race, that wouldn’t happen. As it turns out, all you actually have to do is DPS Archimonde down to 10% and collect your T6 helms! Hooray!

My Arena partner, the Main Tank, got Cataclysm’s Edge. Our Priest class lead got the leggings, and 3 lucky people (not Priests, Paladins, or Warlocks, *sigh*) got their T6 helms. I will get mine this week.

Archi really isn’t that hard of a boss, to be honest. He just takes…practice.

Um…

I’m feeling incredibly apathetic today.

More so than usual.

So…no post!

*goes off skipping*

ROGUES GOT NERFED! HA HA HA HA AH! </childish>

Achievements look cool.

Removing Loyalty from Hunter pets….um….don’t care.

KotoR MMORPG. Interesting.

Kael’s dead.

And um…I just can’t bring myself to care about anything today.

So…back to the skipping.

*goes off skipping again*