We only have three confirmed, and two maybes so this raid has been canceled.

8.30pm start

Team for 29th July.

Unless we get more than one or two pugs, this will be a continuation of last week's run.

Let me know or update the table.

• Boorunn can't make it.
• Tortishifty can't make it.
• If Zapharin cant come, we will need another healer.
• Deathmaven has holy offspec with 5200 gs but has some lag and also needs a few enchants
• Carlfish is probably not going to make it.

Team Bacon got one boss further this week as we took down Festergut to make it 5/12. We'll be Kingslayers in just under two months at this rate

When: 26th July 8.30pm

This will be a reset.

Let me know or update the table.

Moved to Blood Prince Council

Work in progress This is a distillation of stuff read elsewhere, and a bit of guesswork about how we'd handle it. The idea is that we'll amend this strat based on hard-earned experience.

Special Roles

Keleseth Tank

Keleseth stands around spamming shadow bolts. Whoever is tanking Keleseth needs to keep aggro on him while at the same time gathering Dark Nuclei. These orbs aggro to whoever hit them last. The recommendation is to have 4-6 around the Keleseth tank at any time: any fewer and the KT will get one shot when Keleseth gets Invocation of Blood, any more and the orbs AoE damage will start causing more harm than the bolts.

• Holy Paladins should probably bacon the Keleseth tank.
• We should leave it to the KT to round up the orbs. If the KT can't gather enough orbs on his own we can rethink that idea.

Kinetic Bomb Wrangler

There will be two Kinetic Bombs around at any time. If they hit the ground they'll do 10-15k raid-wide damage and knock everyone back: not immediately fatal, but close.

• One range DPS will be responsible for damaging them enough to keep them in the air, DPSing the boss only when it's safe to do so.

Things everyone needs to watch out for

• Shock Vortex. Will target one raid member and create a white swirly thing that will damage and knock back anyone in twelve yards. The white swirly thing will then hang around for twenty seconds.
• Glittering Sparks. Cone attack that targets random raid members for damage and a movement speed debuff. It doesn't look dodgeable (like the cone of frost attack in Northrend Beasts phase three).
• Flames. The longer it chases someone, the less damage it does.

So:

• Keep at /range 12 from everyone else as much as possible. If a melee dps gets targeted by the vortex, tank+melee will wear it and have to move
• Try to make sure there's nobody between you and Taldaram to limit the number of people hit by Glittering Sparks (semi-circle arrangement for range dps?)
• Healers should dispell the Glittering Sparks debuff from melee and tanks as a priority so they don't become even more vulnerable to shock vortexes
• If you get targeted by the fireball, run away from it.

Invocation of Blood

Which Prince is empowered switches every 30s. Furgin will be responsible for calling out what mechanic to look out for when the Invocation switches princes.

Keleseth (Shadow Bolts!)

Probably the least complex phase because it just means more damage to one person in the raid

Keleseth's shadow bolts start doing 90k damage.

• Each orb reduces this by 35%, so 4 orbs will reduce this to 16k per hit. Which is why having 4 orbs should probably be considered a minimum.
• DPS shouldn't need to do anything different, although it might be a good idea to save Tricks/Misdirect for the start of this phase since the KT's hold on Keleseth is likely to be weaker than the usual tanks?
• Healers should go all out on the KT. Don't worry about mana.

Taldaram (Fireballs!)

Fireballs no longer dissipate over time, they need to tick against other people on the way to their eventual target.

• The fireball target should run away as usual.
• Ranged dps should interpose themselves if they can
• Melee dps should follow the fireball, absorbing the damage as they go

Valanar (Swirly thing alert!)

Shock Vortexes now target everyone in the raid instead of just one person, but casting time is increased from 1.5s to 4.5s.

• When he starts casting it melee should scatter so that they're at /range 12 like everyone else.

…

Profit!

Team cheese progresses further into ICC with another successful night of raiding.

A new look Team Bacon eased its way through 4/12 last night. Great experience for some new raiders and people trying new roles.

8.30pm start

Team for 22nd July.

Unless we get more than one or two pugs, this will be a continuation of last week's run.

Let me know or update the table.

• Boorunn can't make it.
• Tortishifty can't make it.

8.30*PM* start

Team for 19th July, in game invites will be sent, verbal confirmation will also be accepted.

This will be a reset.

Let me know or update the table.

We have two raids planned this week:

• 20100712 - Team Bacon (Monday) - ICC 10
• 20100615 - Team Cheese (Thursday) - ICC

I know there is some confusion about the raid teams and where people fit in to them, its going to be a little confusing over the next week or so until it settles down and we get used to the new rotation. A number of people were upset they weren't getting a run, some people were not happy with the nights, I am trying to balance between the different players we have which is why there are now two teams. Neither team is a "progression team" or a "casual team", they are both about doing raids at the right level for whom ever signs up.

This might mean running a reset of ICC to help gear up people who need it, or it might mean progressing past a boss you need loot on. We all need to understand this balance.

Make sure you're on one or both of the raid team sign up pages:

• Team Bacon (Thursday)
• Team Cheese (Monday)

Lets give this structure a few weeks to see how it pans out.

8.30pm start

Team for 15th July.

Let me know or update the table.

Oh god.

Crying.

In.

Laughter.

I've sent out in-game invites to everyone listed on Team Cheese (Monday) for an ICC run. Please let me know if you can or can't make it at the earliest opportunity.

8.30*PM* start

Team for 12th July, in game invites will be sent, verbal confirmation will also be accepted.

Let me know or update the table.

Of course, the real raiding excitement last night happened far far away from ICC, in the depths of Blackrock Mountain.

We ran through Blackrock Depths pretty rapidly and got ourselves attuned to Molten Core. We then cleared Molten Core with no wipes.

Highlights:

• A couple of extended lava swims.
• Carl and Atlassia being completely unable to jump up to a ledge that Glwys and Denni easily cleared.
• Glwys attempting to murder Denni on multiple occasions.

Team Bacon had it's first ICC run last night and we rocked! 5/12 with only a minor hitch and we got close to downing Rotface too. This is going to be fun

Guild Progress

A new beginning has been progressing well over the last 12 months, we only recently started raiding ICC seriously and are now up to 7/12 ICC normal and will start on the second wing soon, tonight we are resetting for a farm run. This puts us #3 on the Guildox Nagrand-US 10-man Strict Progress ladder. For a guild of our size this is a tremendous effort.

Our first effort on Halion was a lot of fun, we did reasonably well for our first go.

We have a new member, Tortishifti has joined our ranks as a healer druid with some alts as tank and DPS. Welcome Tortishifti.

Humulupu recently hit 80 and will be able to start raiding with us. Grats Humulupu!

Raid Teams

Carlfish has been doing a great job leading the Monday night raid runs, as I said above he's lead us to 7/12 ICC, that is awesome.

Our thursday reset runs have been going well, we rarely wipe on the first 5 bosses of ICC now, even with the number of alts running in this team.

Guild Future

There has been discussions and debates on IRC about how we organize the raid teams, how we balance our progression with gearing up people, playing alts, availability and all the variables that exist between a group of 20 people.

As defacto guild leader its my job to get everyones input and try and work out the best plan for everyone. Before I start doing that I want to highlight my ideas about where this guild is going. Here are a few points:

The Plan

This is my proposal to overcome some of these planning problems.

1. Create two teams, a Monday and a Thursday team.
2. Appoint a team leader for the Monday and Thursday night teams. At this stage it will be Furgin (Monday) and Carlfish (Thursday).
3. Have each team have a pool of no more than 13 players that will be rotated or picked from based on availability. No one character can appear on both raid teams but you are able to take alts to both teams.
4. Both teams will need 2 tanks and 3 healers with one healer having a DPS off spec. Its up to the raid leader for those nights to balance the raid team each week.
5. Its up to the raid leader for the specific team to decide on what that team runs.
6. Its up to the raid leader to decide the loot rolling rules for the given nights.
7. The Thursday team roster will be based on the Current Monday night team which is currently full so new players and alts will likely only be able to join the Monday night run.
8. If you join a team with a character role, thats your role. You can't decide that you want to bring a different character at the last minute, this changes the balance makes it hard for the leader to plan a raid.

Please comment on this blog if you don't like this approach, or have a better idea.

Please take a look at the Monday and Thursday team lists add/remove your names as appropriate.

Today is a reset run for those Monday-only raiders who want to gear up.

• Riki and Jedi can decide between themselves who gets to DPS on the two-healer fights

Further discussion

With more people joining the guild (Hi Torti!) and more people hitting 80 (Hi Dee!), it's getting harder to justify limiting the Monday team to twelve people, especially if Monday is the only team that's going to tackle progression bosses. As far as I see it we have a few choices to make:

• Do we open up the Monday roster and just live with sitting out one week in three?
• If we open up Monday, do people who can't make Thursday get preferential seating?
• Do we get rid of the distinction between days, so Thursday is just as likely to be doing progression content as Monday and tough if that's the day you can't show up?
• What does that mean if we can't reliably get a full guild run on Thursdays?

We need more Dessert Per Second.