Shades of Fury

Shades of Fury in Sweden - August 2010

From 20th to 22nd August 2010, Shades held its first European get together of players from the Guild.

Shades of Fury outside The Bishops Arms, Saturday 21.9.2010

Basing ourselves in that well known Swedish tourist hotspot Trollhattan, 29 people touched base over the long weekend. For some, it started a bit earlier as the guys from the Slovenian work camp arrived on Thursday and set the tone for the following few days by getting very drunk with Tharby, Mifune and Dotcha, staying out till 4am, and moving around very slowly at midday the following day.

Friday saw the arrival of most of the people from outside of Sweden – players from UK, Finland, and Norway (with the Netherlands guys arriving on Saturday). The general flow of the weekend was:

Friday Bars, food, bars and random events on the way back to the hotel;
Saturday Bars, food, bars and random events on the way back to the hotel;
Sunday Sight seeing, bar and food for those staying on a bit longer.

A big thank you to Tharby for being a great host and organising a things in his home town, with expert help and support from his local friends and family. We have also got to thank Hotel Oscar who were very good to us and let us enjoy the experience to the full (and not throwing us out into the street due to noise and disruption!!!).

ICC Progress 11/12

Well, we finally got Sindragosa down 25man. Is very odd that we spend a few evenings struggling and where we just fail and fail. Then we kill it 2nd try of the evening with no issues.

Very good job guys!!!

The challenge is LK 25man. This needs people to really understand tactics and what to do as RLs cannot call a lot of the stuff here. So read the guides, watch the videos and understand the fight.

Defile will be our downfall if people do not know how to handle it so you all need run speed on boots and fast reactions.

Anyways, onwards to a 25man LK kill!!

Hok

More Progress for Shades

Well, we have been pushing at things for a while and over the last few weeks, we have been getting things a bit more sorted.

10man has now seen real progress. Last night, after a few weeks of extending the raid lock out and 3 nights of learning, we killed the LK and got Kingslayer for a few people. This showed the importance of people willing to sign up and commit to evenings of wiping and learning - it is the only way to learn the encounters and each time we returned, we got better and better.

Screenshot is below of the 10 who got the kill. Sadly a few who helped on some of the evenigns were not around but this now means we can open up heroic tries on the easymode bosses in 10man icc10 which should help a load more people in guild :)

We also filled a gap last night as well by doing the 10man TotGC achievement with more or less the same group (some noob called Raistlin joined on his mage to make up the numbers) and we got the git down. Good job there as well.

25man has seen BQ down (see pic below) but sign ups for Thurs and Sundays have been poor to say the least. To progress to killing Singragosa and LK, we need people to sign up and commit to progress evenings. We will continue to recruit to fill up ranks but existing guild members need to look at their commitment to raiding and sign up for at last 50-75% as a minimum, reaching the 2/3 attendance we need to down all the 25man normal content.

So lets do it guys - we will push 10man hc modes and will push 25man to the limit.

Cheers

Hok

ICC - More Progress

Five weeks have passed since Hok wrote the article on ICC progress. Since then we have reached 11/12 on 10 man & 9/12 on 25 man. 8/12 is easily manageable in one raid night. Blood Queen is in our sights & will go down once the Easter break is over -sign up peeps to make it happen!

Lich King wont last long in 10 man - we have a group that will devote time to learning this fight - Below is picture of us posing before his throne - soon we will be Kingslayers!

ICC Progress Update

Well, we have set off on our ICC25 mission and progress is going. It is a bit stop and start, but we are now getting to grips with the harder and more technical fights, both in 10 and 25 modes.

Currently, we are 8/12 in 10mans (Blood Queen, Valithria Dreamwalker,
Sindragosa and Lich King still to do) and 7/12 in 25mans (samne as above apart from Putricide who is proving to be a git in 25man).

Pictures of the deaths are below:

Lord Marrowgar

Lady Deathwhisper

Optional Frost Giant Kill for weekly instance quest

No pictures of Gunship Battle but we did it!!

Deathbringer Saurfang

Festergut

Rotface

Blood Council

Overall, the kills are getting cleaner and faster - normally when focus is good and energy is excellent!!

Focus will be on getting Putricide down and build on the odd learning tries we have had on Blood Queen and the Dragon.

Keep it up guys!!

Hok

Yogg Down

Well, it took us a long time to get here and a lot of hard work, wipes and focus.

This just shows what can be done if we get the following:

1. Sign ups so we can do 25man tries on the harder / more technical fights;
2. Stable internet connections so we dont lose 1-2 people during the fight
3. Real focus and effort from all 25 people plus the other 15 or so who wiped on the other learning nights - is a real git that some people who invested a lot more in this boss killing did not get to see the fight where we actually killed the git.
4. Learning by all - I deliberately tried to keep people who did the Sunday tries in the same roles and positions, so we can keep the learning curve up. And was good to see people get up the learning curve faster than in previous weeks.

Screen shot of boss kill is below. I did Fraps the kill to an extent - I have not yet installed Adobe Premier on Windows 7 yet (it went on OKish but is running slow, suggesting there is some compatability issues as my Adobe Elelements version is XP age) so that may take a bit of time to do.

This wont be a one off kill. I want to kill him again so people who helped learn this fight but did not expereince the kill last night get to see it again. So keep signing up and dont slack :)

Good job and lets keep activity levels high on all 3 nights now!

Hok

Ulduar Progress - General down

Well, we have some more 25man progress. Did a good clear of early bosses on Thursday so we were hopeful of having a good raid evening for General Monday, after a few General tries on Sunday night if all went to plan.

Sunday went very well and we got Mimiron down fast. I did not manage to fraps the Mimiron 1st kill so fraps the 2nd kill

- here is the link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_30Z9Uv_lY

We then killed the others and moved on to General V. Focus on General V was excellent. We got him to 24% first try with some dead and he hit enrage. 2nd try saw him dead.

The kill video does not show me in a great light (a good guide of what NOT to do as a Priest on General ). I was going to edit out mid bit but would show a boss health sudden drop from 45% to 24%. Video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DDRoJdVprY

We now need to push for Yogg S and need as many Monday sign ups as possible. So lets get sign ups maxed so we can do more than just learn phase 1 again

Cheers

Hok

Ulduar Progress Update

Hokhealee wrote:

Well, the last week has shown we can focus and keep progression going in Ulduar. Last week, 10man activity picked up a bit and we got Mimiron and General V down. This provided a better understanding of the encounters for 25man and officers put a lot of time, effort and thought into how to do this. This proved to be so useful on Monday when after wiping badly the previous week on Mimiron with phase 2 healing being just hideous, we adopted a more healing centric strategy for phase 2, more spreading out and low and behold, we got him down 2nd try. We then went to look at General V and spent 2 hours learning the process here, with the final try of the night getting him to 43% within enrage timer target - mana is horrible here and only having 8 mana spawns is a nightmare. But we showed we had focus and skill to start to master the encounter - is just careful use of mana and knowing the rotations. And a lot of focused interrupting!!! Good job all and I can now say a clearance of Ulduar 25 (and Ulduar 10) will be soon on the cards Gratz to all, esp Fry and Elata who have put a lot of effort into RL, learning tactics and helping get progress moving on these fights. Cheers Hok

Ulduar Progress Update

Well, been a while since we formally updated progress.

Ulduar raids have kicked off and with a bit of practice, we managed to get down first 4 bosses without too much grief. Like always, our kills either go smoothly by the book or become the very messy "Shadesway" kills we have come to know and love. Speed of kills on the first 4 bosses has increased and one-shotting initial bosses is now expected rather than hoped for!!

Kill video with first 4 encounters is now up and held here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npxaMn1BpGQ

Progress on bosses in the Antechamber has also been good. We have killed all 3 now (some screenies below) and have Fraps some of the kills (only Auriaya is complete - Fraps was not running for Kologarn and the kill footage of Assembly of Iron sort of only captured the end, with not many people alive ). Full videos will go up when I get enough Fraps footage to make good videos.

Aurieya video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfL4PqooA_g

We have now started on the Keepers and the level of difficulty goes up accordingly. We did our first tries here on Hodir last week and got him to 13% before the enrage timer kicked in. Some tweaks on NPC defrosting, removal of FR gear apart from the tank and some more practice on positioning will see him down. Freya and Thorim should also go down OK as we have done them on 10man and know the routine - just need to learn it with bigger numbers!

Mimiron is the biggest challenge likely to face us in the short term and our main goal is to get him down to allow access to the fional 2. We can do this as along as sign ups and focus is good, and gratz to everyone for putting all the hard work in so far.

Will keep this updated a bit more and enjoy the videos / pics!

Hok

WoTLK - All Main Boss content cleared - Gratz!!!!

Hok wrote:
Well, I was really impressed Monday night when we got our focused heads on and finally hit an evening of no lag / dc's and downed Malygos.

The learning curve has been hard work on Malygos as it is such a random fight but the practice paid off and the gripping / stunning / positioning of the sparks really came together and made such a difference in phase 1.

Malygos went down and it was good to hear the shouts and celebrations on TS once again! For me, Naxx 25 was OK but did not have the challenge - the boss kills that have felt like 1st kills has been Malygos and Sart with 1 drake up (and we will start to progress to Sarth + 2 and 3 :) ).

Photos of Malygos kill below

Keep signing up for raids as we need to gear up and prepare ourselves for Ulduar. The challenges there are bound to be harder and we need a good solid raiding base to start there.

But lets pat ourselves on the back and just acknowledge the achievement. This is Shadesway - we may take longer than the hardcore guilds to clear content but we go at our own pace, our skills are good and we have fun - that is what raiding is about for me.

SO cheers and lets get this all on farm so more people see the kills and we max ourselves out!!

Cheers

Hok