______________________________________________________________________________________________

Happy holidays to and from everyone in Lazy Peon Tavern!

Can someone explain why the Blade Lord has hurty winds and the Wind Lord has nasty blades? Seems these two bosses should be swapping places! In any case, after killing Garalon we made our way to Wind Lord Mel’jarak and soon noticed the encounter wouldn’t be very difficult, if we only sorted out the Rain of Blades healing towards the end. We had time to go back later that reset, and after reaching berserk on the Sunday with 10% health left, we came back on the Monday and did it better. Wind Lord Mel’jarak dead, and two bosses left in Heart of Fear. Go go!

The art department did not screenshot the boss this time, but rather one of our gnomes in an Amber trap.

Next boss on the agenda was Garalon. Like with Blade Lord we again faced what felt like a tight berserk timer, and again we had the same problem with our dps not being high enough to kill him before the time was up. It took us two resets of practise where we gradually got him closer to dead. Our best try previous to tonight’s raid was 0.2% or 488k hp. This time we intended to do just a little bit better, and thankfully we had success! Garalon dead, and we’re off to see the Wind Lord!

After having a few tries on Will of the Emperor in last night’s raid we made a few smaller changes in tactics. If this change was the deciding factor or if it was tonight’s dps-setup that made us breeze through the encounter is not yet decided upon. What however is clear is that Will of the Emperor went down on the third pull and we have cleared Mogu’Shan Vaults! Good job everyone!

The pose above is from neither Devastating Arc nor Stomp, but rather from a private tango performed especially for the art department.

Staying away from an encounter a few resets apparently does wonders! Elegon is dead and we didn’t even break a sweat, especially compared to last time we tried the encounter when we were miles off. Probably having better gear is probably the main reason, but we also did really well with the execution. After the kill we had some time left to have a few tries on Will of the Emperor and it didn’t seem too tricky. As long as we handle the adds better we have a good chance to kill them in tomorrow’s raid and get Mogu’shan Vaults cleared!

After having killed Zor’lok we took a stab at Blade Lord Ta’yak and quickly realised that the berserk timer would be our biggest issue. For progress we now had the choice between two bosses who both had high dps requirements: Elegon or Ta’yak. We decided it seemed easier to work on the latter but continued to have problems with the encounter for a few resets, mainly because our dpsers had such differing output, some very high and some struggling low. With some gear improvements we all increased our output and we finally had him down, much to everyone’s surprise! Hopefully we’ll get some progress on Elegon in the Sunday raid!

Heart of Fear is out and after headbutting Elegon a few times too many with nothing but a headache as a result, we decided to go have a look. At first glance the first boss, Imperial Vizier Zor’lok, seemed very easy. All three platforms had just one event each on them, and even if the last 40% would have all three events combined, it didn’t seem like a big hassle as the boss would only do one thing at a time. With high hopes we dis a few attempts only to realise that Force and Verve was not to be taken lightly. In fact even with two or more of the dps spamhealing we were dying from it, if not on the platform, then in the last phase. After spending the whole Sunday wiping on Force and Verve we came back on the Monday to go at it again. This time things seemed to be a tad easier, even if we had thought the healing setup with all paladin healers to be worse. After a break, when Prisane got to have a smoke, we came back and sorted the encounter out. Zor’lok is dead, only five more bosses to go in Heart of Fear.

After killing Feng in the Sunday raid we brought a few pugs to go look at the next boss on the Monday. After changing from three to two healers we managed to get Gara’jal the Spiritbinder down within the berserk timer. With some raidtime left we went on to The Spirit Kings and soon realised this encounter was probably the easiest of the tier so far. After a few unsuccessful tries we sorted ourselves out and the Spirit kings bit the dust.

The art department wants to point out that the Spirit Kings bossphoto above is not an actual screenshot from the game, but rather an artistic interpretation. If this is hard to believe due to realistic artwork the art department wants to point out that the Spirit Kings do not really have mouches.

After having killed Stone Guardians we had a few pulls of the second boss, Feng the Accursed, before the time was up and we had to leave him for the following reset. The encounter seemed healing intensive but we thought we’d come back and sort it out the following reset. However with raids being cancelled due to our immediate lack of healers and Jasper Chains causing commotion on the first boss we didn’t have much time to work on Feng that reset either, and we would have to wait to the next week to try again. This time it went a lot better and as soon as Mulines started interrupting the Epicenters we had Feng down!

The expansion is here and levelling and gearing up – and farming carrots – is all we have been doing. As the first raid was released this reset, Mogu’shan Vaults, we decided to go and take a peek. Initially it seemed trickier than expected as we didn’t manage to kill the second trashpull! Then Nuok took over the pulling and all went better.

The first boss was The Stone Guard, where we had to fight three stone lion-dogs in a sea of “don’t step in that!”-spots. It started out a bit confused, but after we had figured out the tanking bit it took just a few tries until we had them down. Lack of gear made the fight last to only seconds before berserk, so it certainly felt like we had time to learn the fight well. At least we will know how to handle Amethyst, Jade and Cobalt in the future.

First liondog boss dead, and more to come next week hopefully!

Once again it was time for the race of all races, the Gnomish Race of Death! Since it had been over four years since the previous Race of Death, we had primarily new racers. While the previous top three are still all in the guild (Pest, Ingek and Saerdon), it was only Saerdon who dared to show up to defend his top three position. There was certainly an optimistic mood on the starting line at New Tinkertown in Dun Morogh, as all the racers had their pictures taken and were handed guildtabards and a short description of the race. They were to race to Stormwind to greet the pandarens, in order to persuade them to be gnome BFFs and teach them the ways of the monk. However before they reached Stormwind they had to do two detours: to south-east Burning Steppes and to Sentinel Hill, Westfall; in order to pick up treats for the pandarens and to slap Professor Rumpleblast, the master of goblin engineering.

As the race started the gnomes split up into two groups each taking a different path towards Burning Steppes. As the teams closed in on the goblin, it seemed that either path were equally time-consuming, as the frontrunners of either group were pretty much side by side. In Swamp of Sorrows the final positions started to crystallize and the first gnome into Deadwind Pass ended up being the final winner of the race.

There were a lot of deaths, evident by the trails of small skeletons that lined the race. But every gnome that started got to the finishline, and will now be able to learn the ways of the monk!

Congratulations Bartie, who’s race gnome Bartý was the winning gnome. Not only do you deserve honor and glory amongst your peers. The art department also feels you deserve to have your racegnome’s face on the webpage!

The summer of 2012 turned out to be the longest summer break the guild has ever had from raiding. There were many reasons for this. One was Dragon Soul fatigue and general boredom which made us feel like we had nothing interesting to do in game. Another reason was summer activities and vacations, where at least some members (Atemm) were perving at beaches instead of being at their computers. Another reason and the main one for why our raiding stopped from May and onwards, was that other games that seemed fun were being released, most notably Diablo III where Ingek ended up getting the first paragon maxlevel character in Europe. In retrospect we didn’t expect the summer break to be as long as it turned out to be. There were just a whole bunch of circumstances that made us not as interested in playing WoW and raiding.

Now it’s time for a fresh start in a new world, but before we are ready to race to 90 we will first race for our very lives!!