We found a good rhythm quickly on Elegon, and once we worked a couple kinks out, the spectral dragon was handing out loot! I think in some ways the raid team really wanted that 1000 EP that Lofaz promised us if we downed Elegon on the next pull. Thanks Lofaz for delivering the EP AND promising not to do decay this week! You’re the best!

The Elegon team was as follows: Boomtree (DPS), Ursal (DPS), Nordicslayer (DPS), Lofaz (Tank), Morniel (DPS), Raziel (Tank), Selene (DPS), Ildara (Healer), and Bibbel (Healer).

The team then moved on to Will of the Emperor, but weren’t prepared for the final bosses to fall in just 3 pulls. Our Raid Leader, Lofaz, decided to end the night on a very high note with 2 boss kills and a raid clear and told us all to go relax and enjoy the 30 minutes of freedom before stepping into Heart of Fear on Wednesday night.

The Will of the Emperor team was as follows: Bibbel (Healer), Nordicslayer (DPS), Ursal (DPS), Boomtree (DPS), Lofaz (Tank), Raziel (Tank), Ildara (Healer), Morniel (DPS), and the Elder Naz’jar Honor Guard, AKA Selene (DPS).

Once again, Nordic saved the day by filling in for us when we needed another raider! He keeps saying he’s our lucky charm, and I suspect he just might be on to something!

Wednesday night spawned and we stepped foot into the bug infested lair that is the Heart of Fear. A quick kill of Imperial Vizier and we knuckled down to continue working on Blade Lord Ta’yak. We had several close attempts where we almost had Ta’yak down, but couldn’t keep ourselves alive (or out of tornadoes) long enough to secure a kill. We swapped a few things up and added Ta’yak to our kills list for the week!

The Blade Lord Ta’yak team was as follows: Kokushou (DPS), Ursal (DPS), Boomtree (DPS), Morniel (Healer), Ildara (Healer), Raziel (Tank), Selene (DPS), Lofaz (Tank), and Bibbel (Healer).

A special mention goes out for our GM, Cendra, who stepped out of the raid for Kokushou, and cheered us on in Mumble as we worked out way through the kill. Thanks again Cen!

In other news, Selene will be taking an absence from raiding for a while (hopefully not permanently!), which is a bummer because he helped us net 3 kills this week. Best of luck and hope he’s back on the raid team soon with renewed energy and enthusiasm to kicking bosses in the face!

Next up is Garalon!

ES had another strong week working through Mogu’shan Vaults and Heart of Fear this week! Great progress was made on Elegon as the raid team coordinated and continuously pushed the final phase, well ahead of enrage timers. There are still some tweaks that need to be worked through, but we are getting close!

We decided to go play in Heart of Fear again after giving over 3 hours to Elegon this week. The team went in to put more attempts in on Imperial Vizier Zor’lok, and in typical ES fashion, downed him after Raziel called for “last attempt” in Mumble, even though there was plenty of time left in raid!

The team executed the fight perfectly and we were able to claim our first pieces of ilvl 496 loot along with a pattern!

Congrats to the team who participated in the kill: Ursal (DPS), Naz’jar Honor Guard – AKA, Selene (DPS), Morniel (Healer), Raziel (Tank), Kokushou (DPS), Ildara (Healer), Boomtree (DPS), Cendra (DPS), Lofaz (Tank), and Bibbel (DPS).

The raid team in Enveloping Shadows netted their fourth kill in Mogu’shan Vaults during their fourth week of raiding. Spirit Kings fell to the floor in a one-shot that was cleanly and smoothly executed by all involved. The kill participants were as follows: Bibbel (Healer), Nordicslayer (DPS), Lofaz (Tank), Ildara (Healer), Raziel (Tank), Kyter (DPS), Selene (DPS), Morniel (Healer), Ursal (DPS), Seiius (DPS). In addition to one-shotting Spirit Kings, all but one previous boss fell on the first attempt!

Many thanks to Nordicslayer for coming in and assisting in the downing of Spirit Kings! His assistance and willingness to avail himself to the raid team is greatly appreciated!

The guild is continuing to work through Mogu’shan Vaults, their sights set next on Elegon. The team has made good progress on the fight, hitting the enrage timer on their second night of practice. We will continue to work out the kinks and improve our performance to bring a smooth kill in the coming weeks!

Our raid leader, Lofaz, took us for a jaunt into the Heart of Fear on Wednesday night. After many promises of “sweet loot” off the trash, we discovered that said “sweet loot” doesn’t apparently exist for us. We put some time in on Imperial Vizier Zor’lok, getting a chance to experience all his platforms and discovering that the fight won’t be a challenge once we clean up our positioning and execution. It’s safe to say that many members of the team are excited to go see Garalon and all are enjoying the challenges that the new raid tier brings!

*This post brought to you courtesy of Raziel, our wonderful, articulate pally tank!

It’s been awhile since the last post but ES has continued to muscle through content impressively while many guilds fail.  We’re now 6/8 on Heroic Dragon Soul, with lots of pride for having not changed our base morale and goals.  We bring everyone fairly without stressing the “perfect” makeup that a lot of sites recommend and work and adapt as needed to have whatever group it may be continue to kick ass.  We’ve also been proving ourselves by earning a lot of achievements like Taste the Rainbow and Deck Defender.

Morniel has stepped up and shown her versatility with a dual spec heal/dps combo that has helped us greatly when switching back and forth between 2 and 3 healers, and our backup tanks Selene and Weriik have been working to keep us ready for anything RL can throw at us.  With the whole guild getting busy with work and living changes, we can still be proud to say we’ve shown our dedication and loyalty by sticking together and getting things done.  Its been a great few months for ES and I personally think we’ll stay strong and knock out all heroic modes before the next changes.

Death to Skittles!

Well, it has been an interesting couple of months in Azeroth. ES has seen many changes. We lost our Guild Master, Raid Leader, Backup Raid Leader, Main Tank, backup tank, several officers, still more healers and DPS, and we transitioned to a 10 man raiding guild after being a 25 man raiding guild for around 4 years. In most cases, when you hear news like this, you would assume that the guild was on it’s death bed, suffering it’s final throes before it disappears from this world forever. We, however, are not most cases. While it is true that ES has been through the wringer, it is also true that we have come out clean on the other side. The transition has been a great success, and as is evidenced by the above screenshot of a fresh Heroic kill, we are well on our way to being a competitive Lightninghoof guild once again.
Transition is nothing new to ES. I am actually the fourth Guild Master, and now Kithandra is our 5th raid leader. Kith has had lots of experience leading 10 mans in the past, and I think she has done a wonderful job picking up the reins and running our new raid. We also still have a lot of the old guard left in ES including our officer core: Me, Cendra, Kith, and Ildara. Plus, in order to have better availability online, and also to get some fresh perspective we have unanimously voted to add Lofaz to the officer ranks. Lofaz is a long time tank with a great knowledge of the game, and apparently a lot of free time to play We are glad to have him onboard.
We also have a strong and dedicated group of players outside the officer core. I can already see the forums starting to pick up once again, and the calendar is starting to show life outside the regularly scheduled raids. There will be more events in the future, and of course anyone is free to set up an event and try to run with it. Guild unity and friendship has always been one of our main goals…that and melting Heroic Boss faces.
The future looks bright in ES. The new raid is really starting to click, and we should be seeing more and more progression bosses dropping their loot at our feet. Thanks to all of you who stuck it out and continue to make this the best guild in all of Warcraft.

With 4.3 hitting last night, we took our first furtive steps into the new raid, the Dragon Soul. All the confusion of new content that we know and love was available in generous quantities, as we brutalized our way through the first three bosses.

Admiral Morkchop fell over with barely a protest, feeling more like a 5man boss than anything! Warlord Zon’ozz gave us some trouble as we worked through the mechanics of the fight — both when they worked, and when they didn’t. And Yor’sahj the Unsleeping was just embarrassing. Deathwing needs better minions, a four-minutes-to-go “let’s do one attempt” one-shot shouldn’t be!

Like Han Solo said, let’s not get all penis-y. The bosses ahead will assuredly be fairly difficult, before we hit the big guy himself. Still, great start to the week! Onward and upward, twirling, twirling, etc.

After many, many weeks of coaxing him out of hibernation to show up to raids to get his items, Sheepin has finally assembled the Horde-side 2nd Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest!

As per new guild policy, we’re going to be referring to Sheepin from now on as “the staff”. Aka, “the staff is dead”, “battlerez the staff”, “the staff is tearing up the meters”, etc. etc.

Hopefully we can churn out staff #2 a little more quickly!

Yes, we skipped Beth’tilac. I wasn’t actually in the raid for the Beth’tilac kill, which was accomplished through an elegant ballet of spiderling control, drone dps, and web climbing, or so I was told.
Baleroc, however, was a boss of a different color. While we have decent raid discipline in terms of dps switching, staying out of fires (mostly), and using cooldowns, Baleroc’s mechanics require extremely tight discipline and need the healers to completely override their normal instincts. For us, this means Rhidach dies. A lot. We used a pretty standard strategy, healing in three groups of two (then two groups of three when we panicked, then three groups of two again when we stopped panicking), two sets of six man shard teams (one melee, one ranged), and two tanks willing to bankrupt themselves on repair bills. We initially faced a few major problems: 1) the first tank switch, where Ronada had a couple stacks and we were switching to Rhidach, who had none, often resulted in Rhi biting the big one, a trend that continued as we worked on the fight, 2) Healers accidentally refreshing Vital flame before they got the hang of it, impairing our ability to gain stacks, 3) DPS trying to be heroes and tanking shards for longer than they should, resulting in deaths. Luckily, none of these issues were anything that practice couldn’t fix, and every time Rhi or Ronada bit the dust, we wrenched them from their peaceful slumber and threw them back into the fray. Healers learned to build stacks efficiently, DPS got a feel for how long they could handle shards, and we gradually made progress. The tank deaths… well, we didn’t eliminate them entirely, but they got less frequent. After steady improvement, we had a few low percentage wipes, held things together a little bit longer, and then finally killed him, 15 seconds after he enraged. Since then, he’s been pretty easy and seems to be one of those “once it clicks, it’s not bad at all fights.” Rhi still dies, but that’s nothing new.
We’ve spent the last couple of weeks on Alysrazor, learning to dodge tornadoes and learning that baby birds are assholes.