Crisp Presents... A Night You Will Never Forget...

Hey, everyone! I know you guys love hearing about my raiding antics, but wouldn't you rather be a part of the boss-killing and loot-whoring action? In celebration of our 7th anniversary, my often eccentric but always funzies guild, Crisp of Baelgun-US, is holding a community event and contest to give away a free full run of Heroic Siege of Orgrimmar to one lucky winner!

Click for full view

All you have to do is tune in to my guildie's Twitch.tv show FinalBossTV on Tuesday, August 26th for a secret password. That will get you entered into a lottery drawing, and one person will win the grand prize of a full clear of H SoO, complete with priority on loot and a mount off Garrosh! People usually pay guilds hundreds of thousands of gold for runs just like this, but you can experience fourteen bosses of heroic-mode raiding with some of the most unique encounters ever made FOR FREE! Click here for full details.

Remember that the Kor'kron Juggernaut, like all other heroic-only mounts, will change from a guaranteed drop to a less than 1% drop chance when the content is no longer current. Taking advantage of this opportunity and making sure to acquire this mount now can save months or years of farming later. Plus, you get to hang out with us in Mumble while we ramble about weird fetishes during the eternity it takes for Galakras to land.

Over the past few months, we've carried quite a few guests through SoO, and they always have a great time with us. Enter for your chance at a fun-filled night of virtual shenanigans. Make sure to check the forum post for all of the fine print, and watch the show on the 26th for the password and how to join the lottery and possibly win!

See you in raid!

-Avia.

The tier is officially over.

I finally got my H Garrosh mount this week. :D Now I can go out into the World of Warcraft and flaunt my heroic achievements by chopping down trees and drilling tunnels to the Maelstrom.

Er... that doesn't sound very glorious. How about aerating soil for a vegetable garden? Or opening a very large can?

Iron Juggernaut made this seem a lot more intimidating.

-Avia.

Am I a question talker? Not usually.

Because my raid leader is on vacation, our raid team is on break this week. Does this mean that I get to spend a week out in nature, collecting fresh blueberries and braiding garlands with wildflowers? Maybe heading to a museum or poetry reading to get some culture? Perhaps learning a new skill to better myself or enrich my life?

Of course not; I'm raiding with someone else for a week.

Warlock for hire!

In true mercenary fashion, OG Priest and I helped out a friend's 14/14N guild, which we are proud to say is now 1/14H. Is it cheating a little to bring in fully heroic-geared raiders to slum it in a normal run? Maybe. Do they care at all? Hell no! Heroic loots!

And how does it make me feel to be back where I once was, progressing on that very first boss of the tier? Is it the same heart-pounding push for DPS and fight for survival, all culminating in the sweet relief of victory? Um... no, not really. Let's face it. Progressing on a fight this late into a tier is much different than progressing SoO just fresh out of ToT. Everyone has been clearing Normal and Flex for months, which means that the average ilvl of a raid team is so inflated that the bosses should be complaining that the fights are rigged or that no one is enforcing weight classes. Then I get to hear my guildies talk about how 10 man is so much easier than 25 because their alts are killing N Garrosh with 20 more ilvls than when it was relevant.

Do I sound a little bitter? I bet I do. Without getting into the whole 10 vs. 25 argument, I wouldn't call anything that we're doing right now difficult for people who have already seen it. There's a difference between killing bosses on alts to prove one's ability to be proficient at multiple classes and progression raiding for guilds not involved in the push for rankings. Does that mean the latter is more valid/worth more/more honorable in comparison? No, it's just different, but I wouldn't use alt-raiding as a stepping stool onto my high horse.

Am I done ranting? Yes, I am.

-Avia.

It might not be annual.

It's time for the 1st Annual RP Your Life! Awards, when I call attention to some of the most notable aspects of this soon-to-be-ending expansion! Now before you report me to the committee for rigging the elections, please note that these are all personal choices, not reflections of popular opinion or objective fact. Feel free to propose your own nominees in the comments; I'd love to hear them.

Most Interesting Boss Fight: Siegecrafter Blackfuse

There are plenty of fights in Siege with interesting mechanics, but while I got sick of looking at a resource bar by Sha of Pride, I never grew tired of the belt. With the choice of which weapon to kill left up to the players, the fight can change drastically depending on which mechanics a particular team finds hard to manage, the raid size, or the difficulty setting. If you're a lucky boomkin or hunter, you could be on the belt full-time, and as much as people bitch about having to be on belt duty, it is truly the easiest job in raiding history besides maybe being a lock on Garr or anything on Gunship. I would have given my left kidney to stay on the belt instead of hang out in the fiery deathtrap that is the main platform. Even though the fight on normal becomes pretty trivial with improved DPS, it's still fun and engaging every time.

Boss Who Puts Up the Best Fight: The Spirit Kings

 

In WoW's encounter history, it often feels like bosses just hand us the tools to eventually kill them. How realistic can a fight feel when there are such conveniently placed mechanics like Feng's Nullification, Will of the Emperor's Opportunistic Strike, or Tortos' shells? In fact, the one boss that seemed to actually want to kill us rather than help us was the Spirit Kings. They offer no protective bubbles, damage-buffing pools, or one-shot disintegrating lasers that were totally negated by clearly defined paths of safety. While other bosses were giving us magic tiles or standing around while we disabled their bombs, the Spirit Kings tried to take our armor, pin us down, and turn us on each other. Even when Meng was cowering away, he still put up a damage-reflecting shield that could easily cause a player to kill him/herself. There are many fights that are more technically difficult, but in an actual battle, these guys would be tactical officers.

Best Normal-to-Heroic Conversion: Imperial Vizier Zor'lok

There are many easy methods for changing a normal fight to "heroic," and I've seen Blizz employ them over and over again: increase boss health enough to turn it into a DPS check, add adds, include an insta-death mechanic, tack on an additional phase and change nothing in the previous ones, etc. What makes a successful conversion is changing the fight in a way that makes the raid rethink its strategy while still maintaining an organic relationship with the normal-mode mechanics. Therefore, I give this award to Imperial Vizier Zor'lok. Not only was the fight varied in normal mode and culminated in a last phase combining all of his abilities, the insect-like shedding of an echo forced the raid to strategically split up and handle the mechanics they had already seen in new ways. Unlike Morchok, one didn't merely split the raid in half and continue like normal, and the last phase was so appropriately chaotic that it gave a sense of relieved triumph to defeat him.

Worst Mechanic: Horridon's Pink Dinosaur

Since I consider well-thought conversion from normal to heroic mechanics to be extremely important, the worst mechanic of Mists raiding has to be that pink dinosaur. I'm not going to bitch that it was hard, because it wasn't, especially for a ranged DPS like me. It was a terrible mechanic because it was just freaking annoying and turned an otherwise engaging encounter into a nightmare of micromanagement, and anyone unlucky enough to be picked early had to deal with repeatedly knocking back an add for up to ten minutes. In general, I love add fights and council fights because there is so much to juggle, and there is a pleasure in keeping a mental priority for what adds and their mechanics need to be taken care of and which can be ignored. The dinosaur? Well it adds nothing to any of that.

Best Pet Name For a Guy's Penis: Wheatley

Uh... How did this one get in here?

-Avia.

Making friends in the military starts with your sub-unit.

What it felt like:

 

There were plenty of people in our battalion but only a few of us in our platoon. Three warlocks against the forces of Orgrimmar defending their corrupt warchief. If that's all the lieutenant thought we needed to succeed in our mission, then so be it.

A little away from us, the healers huddled around a pile of complicated charts and graphs, their officer briefing the new priest recruit on his assignments. The tanks seemed to have their strategy set and were sitting quietly, keeping an eye on the enemy that marched in the distance. Meanwhile, one of the death knights had fallen asleep, and the other melee were taking turns teabagging him. How ironic.

"You alright?" asked a fellow warlock, sitting next to me.

"Yea," I replied, a little too quickly. My fortified rations sat unmoving in my stomach.

He patted me on the back with a heavy hand. I felt some of the anxiety dissipate under the pressure. "Just do your job," he said, staring off in the same direction as the tanks. "It's important to get the mines down before they reach the ranged troops. Just kill the mines, and if you're still alive at the end... Well, that'll really impress the officers."

"Ok," I said. "Got it." Just stay alive. Stay alive.

"Ready check!" yelled the lieutenant.

We all leapt to our feet, the death knight swatting away someone's crotch as he did so. I adjusted my staff and my shoulders with shaking hands.

"Get into positions! We engage in twelve seconds!"

Falling in line next to the other warlock, I looked over at him. He caught my gaze and smiled before turning towards the boss, a potion at the ready in his hand. I clutched mine too and faced forward.

It was time to prove myself.

What really happened:

 

[warlockchannel] Fellow warlock: Just stay alive.
[warlockchannel] Me: Kk.

-Avia.

Exciting Times in a New Guild

Guess what? After all those Braveheart theatrics last week, the priest and I found a new guild anyway and transferred off.

Yea yea, go ahead and try to say that we abandoned them, but believe me that almost all of them are simply relieved to not have to endure Blackfuse anymore. Now they can finally go off and farm D3 and chase tail all they want without dragging themselves begrudgingly to raid and alt-tabbing Hearthstone the whole time.

Why do I say "almost all of them" are relieved? Because there is always that one angry guy who feels betrayed, but it's not because we left the guild during progression. Actually, he thought that the three of us were going to find a new guild together. Now, for some reason, he feels entitled to be all emo mad like a hypocrite when we saw him applying for guilds by himself a week ago. Caught.

Anyway, the new guild is 25 man, and it is a huge adjustment after raiding with a close-knit 10 man group of RL friends and people who have played together for years. It's daunting to now have to get to know people in a 25 man setting. I'm finding it difficult to approach anyone, and I can't even look at that list of names in Mumble and think of opening my mouth and putting the spotlight on myself. Unfortunately, I also feel a pressure to get noticed and stand out as more than just a number on a DPS meter since right now that number isn't so great. You try being thrown into H Garrosh and killing him without ever practicing phase 4. I was so nervous, my stomach figured I was being chased by a lion on the Serengeti and stopped working.

It's still early, so hopefully OG Priest and I will settle in with time. That OG stands for "Old Guild" by the way, not "Original Gangster."

Maybe it's both.

-Avia.

HAPPY NEW YEAR AHHHHH!!!!

For our raid team, the new year brought new management. Yup, there has been a bit of shuffling around in the ranks, and our disc priest turned raid lead started off last night's Siegecrafter attempts with a speech so full of confident assurance of our future survival and stern beratement of our past mistakes that there was much moisture from the members of our team; and I don't mean tears. I guess there is truth in the old advice about men being attracted to inner-strength and confidence though I never had the fortune of experiencing it in action until I saw our hunter getting riled up Braveheart-style last night. There's nothing like an impassioned, uplifting speech to inspire the troops and turn them on... to raiding. ^_~

-Avia.

A Plea on Behalf of My Raid Team

Lately, my guild has been under a lot of strain. It definitely started around our 150th wipe on H Thok and is compounding with our near 200 on Siegecrafter right now along with a general complacency from a few key members of the team. Long story short, our progression has come to a halt and everyone has retreated to other, less stressful activities to cope.

We might still be hanging out together in Mumble, but the in-game guild roster is empty since almost all of us have suddenly renewed interest in D3. Our priest has been playing random games on Steam while our raid leader is out on a quest for tail. And where am I? Making friends with 12-year-olds and soccer moms on the Sims 3 website.

At this point, when we have lost any chance of ending the tier with a competitive rank and are  struggling just to hold ourselves together, there's no other alternative but to abandon any vestiges of credibility and beg for the one thing that most respectable raiders cry against.

-Avia.

My guild is still stuck on H Thok.

How many ways are there to die to H Thok? Probably just as many as LFR, but as my guild hit over 100 wipes last night, it seemed we were out to find every interesting, unique, and completely idiotic way to die possible. Long past are the attempts where we simply wiped from lack of healing or dispels. I could reminisce about those days.

Let's do a quick overview of the fight for anyone who isn't familiar with Thok. If you are close to his mouth, he Chomps you and you die. If he is chasing you and anyone else is in the path of his mouth, they will get Chomped and die. It sounds simple, but he can get speedy, and then you are running for your life with a giant dinosaur's teeth nipping at your cloak like UNNNNNNNGGGGGHHH!

Our strategy calls for everyone to gather in a specific place until Thok fixates, and then the fixated player moves away from everyone else. It works great... unless s/he makes Thok path too widely and then you get this:

The easy solution of course would be to set up by gateway to help people escape, but aside from the annoying bug that makes it disappear if I'm not standing directly on top of it, its usefulness is also combatted by people who walk right past it instead of clicking on it and others who don't bother checking which end they're clicking and teleport directly into Thok's mouth. Chomp.

If Thok is fixated on a class with movement abilities like Blink, it can also be very helpful for escaping. That is... unless s/he blinks the wrong way directly into Thok's mouth. Chomp.

I know! We'll get a priest to lifegrip the fixated person when Thok is getting too close! That's brilliant! Except when the lifegripped person gets confused and turned around and lets Thok catch up to him/her anyway! Chomp!

And even when it's not the Chomp phase, the solo tank could forget to use a CD at high stacks, take a Deafening Screech hit for over 1 million, and have Thok turn around and cleave everyone to death. Or we could stay in the phase too long and all get one-shot. Or we could phase him too early and die to soft enrage. 2-heal? 3-heal? 4-heal? Everyone go tank? Cry for eternity?

If we don't get this boss tonight, I'm going fetal.

-Avia.

Edited on 11/10/13: We finally got it today. US 10m 89th.

Spoiler Alert: Watch the cutscene after Garrosh's defeat before reading.

Yesterday, my guild cleared Normal Siege of Orgrimmar, and after watching that final cutscene (for Alliance), I feel this needs to be said...

Jaina is such a bitch lately.

I understand that she got friend-zoned by her "BFF" Thrall. Then Garrosh destroyed the entire city of Theramore, which was both her home and her charge as a ruler. Plus, I'm sure she's pretty tired of always being the level-headed one who reaches out to the Horde with peaceable ways of settling their problems only to see all of her work get manabombed into the ground. But seriously, manage your anger, Lady.

It's disappointing to see her descend into such pettiness after all of those years of admiring her diplomacy. This entire expansion has been about controlling one's emotions and not letting anger and hatred consume one's soul, something that King Wrynn has finally learned and now exemplifies. It is the truly redeeming aspect of this entire ordeal in Pandaria, and as much as I'm dreading further development of Jaina's new hardened personality, I'm looking forward to serving under a king who may have vanquished the wolf within at last.

By the way, it was sooo satisfying watching Wrathion's hissy fit. Finally, I am DONE doing that little twit's bidding, and I definitely stayed behind to help Tong fix up his shop. He's awesome.

-Avia.

Patch 5.4: Every friend you've made, you must now kill.

Siege of Orgrimmar is turning out to be a huge bummer, not because I have a problem with its structure or any of its mechanics, but because it seems that Blizz worked extra hard this expansion to have us develop close relationships with NPCs only to have us assassinate them. And I don't mean just the Paragons. Let's walk the trail of tears together.

Please note that this is not angry bitching about how Blizz does everything wrong, which you can find in your local Timeless Isle general chat. Rather, it is a saddened RPer's lament at the fate of her friends.

The Fallen Protectors

This was the perfect opportunity for a Tsulong-type encounter where we "cleanse" them of corruption and they surprise us at the end by being alive, but no. They've already died during the destruction of the Vale and we get to kill them so they can die a second time. What the hell, Blizz? Wasn't once enough? It was only last week when my alt traveled to the Golden Pagoda and He Softfoot escorted me through the Crumbling Vaults to recover lost artifacts. The priest Sun Tenderheart always sent me on missions to heal injured Pandaren at the Golden Stair. And Rook Stonetoe, the quiet Brewmaster monk swinging a mace, cried like a BABY in the Bleeding Sun story when his friend's infant child was crushed to death.

All of that, and what the devs have to say about it is "...you may earn some epic items from the Golden Lotus one final time."[ref]

That is just morbid.

General Nazgrim

In order to be familiar with this NPC, you need to have leveled as Horde through multiple expansions. He's one of those characters who, like Chromie, tends to pop up often in storylines and always greets you as a friend. We've seen him fight against vrykul as a Sergeant in Grizzly Hills, survive near-death in the waters of Vash'jir as a Legionnaire, and reminisce with the player about their adventures together as a new General exploring the Jade Forest. Now we have to kill him because he is a loyal soldier of the Horde who follows the orders of his commander to whom he is honor-bound and dutiful.

One can say that it is his fault for blindly obeying a corrupt leader, but how many times has that happened already? This is the saddest story in all of Mists, and if it were up to me, I would have made him the hardest boss in Siege and placed him right in front of Garrosh instead of...

The Paragons of the Klaxxi

I've read Blizzard's explanation for why the Paragons have sided with Garrosh, and I understand that religious fanaticism is a popular go-to excuse for unwise alliances and murderous behavior. However, as loyal as the Klaxxi were to Y'shaarj... Garrosh only has one of its body parts. If anything, I'd expect the Klaxxi to be on our side and want to kill Garrosh for basically desecrating their god's resting place and holding a piece of it hostage. Their new allegiance makes me think that the Klaxxi are not as tactical and intelligent as I previously believed them to be when we fought together to bring down their corrupt Empress.

I guess all of that nursing back to health, feeding, and singing "Soft Kitty" didn't mean anything either.

-Avia.

Patch 5.4 Prep and Apprehensive Speculation Time

Look at this cute Sunsong Ranch GIF I made.

It won't be long now until Patch 5.4. Everyone has been stocking up on Valor, the married men in my guild have been cashing in their "good husband" chips to their wives so they can raid seven days, and I just spent two weeks making enough pots to fill the Great Sea.

As excited as I am for the new raid, the patch is also introducing the Connected Realm business, which might prove to be a success or end up just as buggy and zone-crowding as CRZ. Call me selfish, but I'm most curious about the exact way that it affects server first achievements. Can one person make a guild on a dead server and invite a bunch of people from a linked Proudmoore-US-esque server to get realm first H Garrosh? I want to say that I'm sure Blizz has thought this through and planned ahead for such manipulative practices, but I'm not entirely certain that they have since inquiries into server first logistics have been met with a dismissive remark about how achievements of that sort will probably be removed anyway. That doesn't seem like a very responsible response to a legitimate concern about an aspect of raiding that provides a huge sense of accomplishment.

I guess we'll have to wait and see how Blizz handles it. In the meantime, watch my animated GIF, and tune in next week for reports on the Siege of Orgrimmar!

-Avia.