Shadow Ryders

For those wondering, SR has left the "race".
With another horrible holiday release by Blizzard, I hereby declare the "race" to be shit.
With players gone to other country's or rather wanting to spend time with their loved ones during the holiday season, it seems rather pointless to push for a good position. 1 week has gone by without progress raiding, and we are looking at 2 more weeks of that. Fuck it!

We wish all of the "racers" good luck.
Also good luck to G2 for taking the final step into parting with us and doing their own thing. You can do eet gais!

So with the first week almost over, we might as well recap:

• 5 server first out of 6.
• More hardcore 10 man guilds this week then usual made this a fun start, unfortunately a lot of them will be back to 25 come Wednesday.
Good to see the absolute top guilds are not godly like, and it's possible to keep up with them in the same bracket.
• Good news for 25m guilds, the race will finally start in week two of hard modes!
• The current realm race is tight, with ScrubBusters and Twenty Percent Cooler right behind us. We expect 25m to catch up as Warmaster Blackhorn is quite a lot easier then 10m. So it will most likely be even tighter next week when most active guilds will start at 6/8 bosses.
• With so many pro guilds running 10m until next week, we still managed to get a comfortable spot at rank 27 overall, not bad when raiding half as much as the top guilds!
• It's unlikely there will be any spine kills this week, at least from us!
• Tier 13 was timed terribly, there will be a lot of scattered off days for various people now, but we will play as good as we can when we are here!

Blackhorn kill:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=oJle_eEfTPQ

Smooth Ultraxion kill:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=B9j7bQY90xM

G2's Morchok kill!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=K-qDSKcqctQ

Written by Lieris


Having been eagerly anticipating Dragon Soul for some time, as soon as PTR character copies became available we were determined to do some testing: The objective, make mistakes over there instead of on live. With strategies established, macros sorted and boundaries tested (yes, you can jump off the top of Wyrmrest Tower!) we achieved what we wanted to: Being in a position to clear normal modes in the first week of when 4.3 goes live.

Kudos to Blizzard on a generally smooth raid testing experience. Some of the fights felt fairly simplistic on normal mode, but we're not taking them for granted, as we're sure their heroic counterparts will really give us something to sink our teeth into. There are some really fun encounters and stand out fights in there, and with the exception of the final fight, most seemed to have had their bugs ironed out of them.

Of some concern is the loot: With only one off-set item dropping from token bosses there isn't enough of it. It was already difficult to gear up the raid and things have been made considerably worse. If heroic Ultraxion is the gear check we think he is (the numbers suggest so) then overcoming him quickly is dependent on the raid's luck with drops (and willingness to brave LFR week one to complete set bonuses).

Shameless Group 2 plug:
Raiding on the PTR was a good experience and proof that we can achieve a lot just as part of our normal raid schedule. If the idea of hardcore progression with sane raiding hours appeals to you, Group 2 would welcome your application. We are recruiting Dark Intent! (otherwise known as a Warlock).

World top 20! Realm first?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUuCq_04qtE
Shadow/Disc priest PoV, no shitty melee wanted to fraps this time!

World Rank 13 xDDDD
No realm first, but it feels da*n good to be done with the boss none the less.
We could probably have reduced the time it took by getting in the right classes like a Death Knight, and not bringing poorly geared offspec naab who shall be unnamed, but this is sort of the drawback with our roster.
It is as small as you can get it, and in return we all get to play, albeit not always optimized for the encounter at hand.
Maybe we will change that for next tier, but probably not. I think we all enjoy to actually play more then we enjoy ranks, even though both can be fun!

More guilds are clocking in the kill now, and more will next week as they suck up even more items, but damn it was wicked to experience how much gear really mattered for us.
You could notice every new item drop would boost us just a little bit further and get us slightly less overwhelmed all the way from 3-4 meteors with heroism and potions, until
2 meteors with just a few of us popping potions.
Trying to practise the last phase with 4 meteors is frustrating as h*ll, even with 3 it is still a big mess, but you do it over and over until you've optimized what you can in those seconds you are able to stay alive.
That is when you are able to reach the last phase, the fight has a really steep learning curve, the mechanics are very unforgiving, when they bug out on top of that you are looking at some long nights.

If one person had a bad night, it almost felt as if it would train wreck everyone, every time.
Eventually it just got to the point where if someone died during some point before the last phase, we would call it a wipe.
It takes 10 minutes to reach the last phase, and the last phase requires a lot of practise, if you already used up your 1 combat res that you are allowed to use..AAAAAAAAAAAAA.
Then you have the nights with disconnect and no one to replace with, or you are close to getting a server first and someone has to leave ending the raid 9 in the evening.
But it's part of the game, and it will probably make us stronger at some point, or I sure as f*ck hope so.

All in all the encounter was interesting to say the least.
Sometimes frustrating, specially if you were the best "dancer" ever, and the flames still hit you like a truck because of no syncing with the server.
When that happens on the last flame dance step , 2 seconds before phase 4 starts.................well I hope you all get to experience it yourselves.

As for our roster, like I said, there probably won't be many changes unless Blizzard takes forever with the next tier.
I think we picked up a few things we can improve on though, both as players and leaders.
Beating a world 13 rank will be hard for us none the less, but who knows.

Some thoughts about the "shit throwing" going on at the moment, I can only recommend not to care.
Paragon said what they said, and of course a lot of kids will say the same, because it was Paragon who said it.
I agree with them though, overgearing an encounter, bringing niiiiiiiice classes and killing the boss for the second time, is easy. Hell, just the fact that you are killing the boss for the second time makes it pretty damn easy.
I think it is a bit different when you do strict 10 man raiding, and have to deal with the god awful 10 man loot drops, or you cant "hand pick" your classes from a huge roster.
In the end it doesn't matter much, we can compete with the other ten's, there ain't much else going on anyway, of importance.

With all this retarded shit said, my god it got longer then expected, the fight is EPIC.

• Roju is a sick douser, even though his hair color is evil (not even a handful number of attempts..wtf??)
• Ramadan is sh*t, thanks for those 8 hours or so of extra breaks you piece of sh*t boomkin.
• Forgot to add that we had the disconnect by yours truly in the beginning of our actual kill, it would not be a kill without, and we all know it!.
• Being number two on the realm will grant you a lot of fake "congratulations" and so forth. Almost getting the number 1 spot on the realm will get you a lot of hostility, go figure.
I guess the realm ain't that open for competition after all, even though it pretends to be. Oh well.

Thanks to everyone for all the effort put into the roster and tier!.

-EDIT.
The nerfs are awesome! It now takes about 3 hours to clear the instance
Ragnaros felt a bit too nerfed, and it was possible to 9man the entire last phase without any problems.
Hopefully still a fun fight if you haven't touched it yet.

Cooldowns and dee-pee-ess equals one less!.......fuc*ing hell I'm tired.
Our homie Trille is raiding a bit again though, woot woot!
But enough of this writing sh*t, here is the moneyshot:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHNnmX8wKmk

So Alys went down last night.
We all had a lot of fun, specially fjolliz.
What an awesome encounter! /wrist.
At least we remembered to screenshot it!

So Baleroc finally went down, I am sure our healers had a calm and relaxing experience, plus we got a screenshot!
Not a whole lot more to say really except DO watch the exciting movie of the kill here.



Last week, Ragnaros dropped a little flying surprise which we forgot to mention.
Who was lucky enough to random roll it into his bag was NOT a surprise though.
Congrats sir Fjolliz, make sure you land for food and fluids every now and then, we don't want you dying on us up in there!
PPS! Make sure to say hello to him. He can be found up in the air outside the Stormwind auction house during off raid hours.

The upcoming week is looking rather rainy for us in group 1.
Consider yourself skilled? Got gear? Want to raid 10man? Go apply !!!
We don't open spots often on our roster, but the summer is indeed here.
Any class might have a shot at the moment, except healer classes, we need none.

With a tank, dps and healer going on vacation, I think it's safe to recap already.
3 bosses down the first week, could "easily" have been 5.
Baelroc at 20%, "Alys the bird" really doesn't seem that much harder on heroic.
If we managed to see Lord Rhyolith on PTR we would probably have been a whole lot more prepared and saved a whole lot of hours by not stacking casters. That was a huge waste of time, haha.

The biggest thrill so far has to be Beth'tilac.
This is one intense bit*h of a fight when not over gearing it.
The fight REALLY kept everyone on their toe's.
Finally it all just clicked and we managed to have just enough damage and mana to survive phase two.
I think we all felt a huge relief when it was all said and done after a long day of spider splatter.
Special thanks to Dwalin and Tirad for filling in for our vacation slacking kiddos.

All in all, the hard modes in Firelands has been a lot of fun, Blizzard has mixed things up quite nicely this time.
It feels like it will be a short adventure though, unfortunately.

Thanks for a long but fun first week everyone, we should all be happy with world 30 something rank!