Blades of Light

It's been a little while since there has been a news post detailing the exploits of the progress raiding team, but that doesn't mean that we've been resting on our laurels.

Firstly came Primordius, with a slight strategy swap based on research by Mugul. We halted his mutuation rate for a little at the beginning of the fight and it gave us the edge we needed. Ever since the progress kill, each time we've returned, we've downed the freaky gollum wannabe with ease.

The second boss we killed was some guys with glowy hands. Everyone who was there knows full well what I'm talking about. For anyone who wasn't, let's just say that Blizzard has designed some mean, mean trash this tier. 

Dark Animus was less of a progression learning curve than it was an exercise in practicing robot tetris. A few healing checks at the start and then a DPS and healing check at the end, and the rest of the fight saw the raid standing around watching Mugul and I trying to make the robots fit. A really interesting fight that was a great balance of difficulty and unique raid mechanics. Blizzard is really upping their game lately with raid content.

Iron Qon fell last, despite his best efforts to distract us with his mighty wind. Sig stepped in to tank in an unfamiliar role to allow us to put together a composition that suited the huge amounts of spread raid damage and after some practice on the twister phase, we finally punched past with the raid alive and capitalised on the effort by not making a single mistake for the rest of the attempt. 

The super pretty Twin Consorts await us this Monday.

For some reason, despite this boss being fairly serious business and also quite fun, I almost forgot to post about the kill.

Durumu the Forgotten is no more. This was a pretty satisfying kill, as the mechanics of the fight, whilst pretty straightforward are extremely unforgiving and any mistakes are capitally punished.

Mugul and I spent much of the last few progress raids figuring out how best to tank the one-eyed monster successfully, and I believe it's the first fight in the tier that's actually forced both of us into having to gem and enchant completely defensively. After the tank damage was smoothed out and the practice finally made perfect, he fell to an extremely clean kill and some priest based Landshark damage and left us wondering what all the fuss was about.

Onward to Primordius where the game completely changes. A straightforward tank fight, but one which is already proving to stretch our DPSers to the very maximum. Hopefully you'll be seeing another news post before long.

We are now server rank 12th. Or 9th in the 10 man stream with 6/12 normal Throne of Thunder.

This week saw the stalwart forces of justice and light (and Joraz) engaging in some typical heroism and slaying two more of the fowl denizens of the Throne of Thunder.

First down was the Hydra boss Megaera which finally saw her killed with our strategy of splitting the damage across all different heads, but delaying the forced chaos of the green bolts. This boss took a solid week's worth of work and finally died to a piece of near flawless strategy eggsecution which saw everyone alive to the very end.

Not content with staying cooped up inside the caves, we ventured on to the roost and engaged Ji-Kun. The fight was a lot more straightforward than some of the previous fights, and mostly involved the floor team getting back to basics and practicing standing in fire the right way. More than one attempt ended up with the team with egg on their face.

The kill was a little hectic and she seemed to be more than a little peckish for hunters, but she finally succumbed to our battering.

Go team Blade!

Clearly, the rest of the officer contingent is too modest to headline this... Having taken down Council and Tortos last week, BoL now stands at 4/12 in Throne.

BoL has now completed the Stay Classy achievement. Thanks to those who have leveled chars over the past month to finish off the last few combos. A special mention to Pinch who managed the Dwarven Monk, Pandaren Mage, and Pandaren Hunter - your straitjacket awaits ;)

For those who need a reminder of why we were after this, the 8th Guild Vault has now been purchased (which also happens to be its own achievement).

Guild bounties have been re-opened for the Race/Class combinations required to complete Stay Classy.The first guildie hitting 90 in each of the missing combos (and having honoured rep with the guild to count towards the achi) will receive 5000g. Full details here; missing combos below:

• Dwarven Monk by Pinchfist
• Worgen Mage by Alator
• Pandaren Hunter by Pinchfist
• Pandaren Mage by Pinchfist
• Pandaren Warrior by Cotton
• Pandaren Rogue by Ameliora

***

All done!

Just a quick post to note that BoL is 2/12 in Throne of Thunder after taking down Jin'rokh and Horridon. The latter involved Joraz getting all Matrixy, further spreading his infamy.

The progress kills are coming thick and fast. Thursday's raid being no exception. A rag tag group of Blades entered Mogu'shan Vaults to find some very angry dogs in a very bad composition.

However we rolled up our sleeves (and the newspaper) and told those Stone Guards it's not OK to pee on the floor. pushing Blades of Light up a few places in the Guild List. 

Well done to everyone who was there, next to go will be Heroic Feng (we hope).

And in the fifth progress kill within a week, the Sha of Fear has been stabbed, shot and spell-damaged to death!

After dancing Empress Gary through her swan song last night*, Ame's astute leadership Mug's demand that we clear the current tier before 5.2 led to the team donning their size 14s and stomping indiscriminately through one of the Terrace of Endless Spring. After the so called Protectors proved ineffective, the team continued on to kick the loot out of Tsulong and Lei Shi (not to be confused with Su Shi).

That's a somewhat impressive 4 progress kills in 2 nights. Congratz to all those who participated in either fight, or who helped in getting the team to this point. This leaves but a single entity between BoL and normal tier clearance - the Sha of Fear.

* I think that ended as a double KO, but she did die first - clearly Timing is Everything ;)

TL/DR - Yay for progress kills! Boo for manually updating the Wowstead progression widget...

The 2013 Officer Elections have drawn to a close and the results were:

• Sericea has been promoted to Officer with 17 positive votes.
• Kodes has been promoted to Officer with 12 positive votes
• Childofwar has been promted to Deputy with 11 positive votes

Commiserations Champignons to all involved on their new positions! 

Breaking News!

Officer election votes have been reset.

There is a detailed explaining of why here: http://wdws.co/JqtM

Voting has started as of Saturday night and the voting period will run until next Saturday at 6pm.

The results will be published soon after the closing deadline.

Please do vote again.

As posted here, deadlines have been set for self-nominations:

The nomination period for officer candidates will end on Sunday night at 9pm.

Voting will start in the wee hours of Monday morning and will run for 7 days.

Officers will be announced during the week following.

Good luck.

If you would like to vote in the election, please request your voting card here

Announcing the first Officer Election of the year, and of the expansion. Anyone who is interested in putting themselves forward for an active role in driving the guild forward (or who just wants to learn more about the elections) should start here.

Yes, your favourite* GM is back. During my recent preoccupancy with that nasty out-of-game real-life stuff, it seems the minions have neglected to post any updates on the front page.

Raid Progress: Another 3 down since the report below. This brings BoL to 4/6 HoF. Kudos to all those who were involved along the way, but especially the persistent few who are there for every wipe. (Mug will be happy to note that the wowstead widget now reflects his efforts.)

Officer Elections: As hinted at the end of September, there will be some form of officer reshuffle in the weeks ahead. As the implementation changes every time, details for this will be posted on the forums over the weekend (hopefully).

Twitter: It seems BoL now has a twitter feed. Guildies who simply can't get enough BoL from the forums alone during server downtime can 'follow' @bladesoflight. Back in my day, we 'subscribed' to stuff. Kids *mutter* lawn *grumble*

Raid Schedule: Just in case anyone missed it, go comment on (or at least review) the discussion on new raiding times.

*That's me btw, seeing as how BoL only has one** GM.

**Anyone with a memory long enough to remember otherwise will be sent for re-education.

Monday saw Elegon finally being overcome. There were probably more wipes on him than the previous bosses combined. Grats to all those present for the kill, many thanks to those who endured the pain to get the tactics down, and kudos to Ame for herding the raid crew to victory.

Keeping up the pace, tuesday's raid led to the Will of the Emperor being thwarted, bringing BoL to a full 6/6 in Mogu'shan Vaults. This was swiftly followed by the demise of Imperial Zizier Zor'lok, the first encounter in Heart of Fear.

Thursday, we took a step back to clear up some unfinished business in the Bastion of Twilight. Nohman led a rag-tag bunch to take down Cho'gall on heroic mode, allowing access to Sinestra, who was bested in short order.

Not slacking off for the weekend, Hidori drafted a small squad saturday night to assault Shado-Pan Monastery. Challenge Mode was completed successfully, albeit a little shy of the bronze medal time.

It's been a good raid lock for BoL. Not only a double progress kill tonight (Spiritbinder and Spirit Kings), but I neglected to report our first kill of Feng last week. This takes us to 4/6 MV, with only Elegon and the WIll of the Emperor standing in our path. Congrats to those present for the kills and kudos to those who put in time learning and wiping with the team beforehand.

Last night, BoL blasted onto the MoP raiding scene. We're good at breaking things, so it was fititng that we reduced the Stone Guardians to rubble. I was thinking of saving them to build a rockery in the garden next spring, but the remnants were scattered in the post-boss-kill search for loot.

Feng proved more of a challenge, but I'm pretty sure we discovered many ways to not do things. In under 3 hours, we squeezed in about a dozen attempts on each boss (a little over 7 minutes per attempt). Not too shabby for our first run of the expansion. I was surprised to see us at rank 41 on the server after a single kill, until I saw that there are apparently only 40 other active raiding guilds atm ^^;

Of course, as with any guild run, there were some minor hiccups: the hour-late start, somehow managing to sync two of the large adds before the first boss (requiring an instance reset to fix), everyone walking past the big crystal on one of the later pulls of Feng... I look forward to more random chaos culminating in another glorious victory next time.

TL;DR - Gear up, skill up, read up.

As people may have noticed tonight, I've been on a demoting spree. All previous Raiders are back at Member rank. Requirements for the new tier will be sorted out as we restart raiding.

Cottoncandy and Honeybum are stepping down as Officers for the expansion ahead, though Honeybum will be staying on as a Deputy for the immediate future. I'd like to thank both, as well as those who remain, for the time they've contributed to maintaining the guild in the past.

I'll post an up to date list of active Officers/Deputies once I've heard back from everyone. There will likely be a regular election in a few months once the dust settles, but if anyone would like to volunteer to help out meanwhile, give myself, Shade, or Ame a nudge.

To assist guildies with their leveling efforts, the first 6 tabs of the Guild Vault have been thrown open. Withdrawal allowances have been increased for Members and Recruits (though Recruits are still restricted from accessing some tabs). Grab whatever will aid you powering through the next 5 levels, or 90 for those rolling pandas ;)

As Ellidian mentioned in the shoutbox, Pandaria goes live on Sept 25th. Assuming that's 2012, this gives people 2 months to renew subs, dust off chars, and recall which keys to roll faces across.

Ame has started a discussion on what guildies would like to get out of raiding for the expansion ahead. I'd encourage everyone to have a read, and maybe even voice an opinion. At the very least, those interested in raiding should sign up on the roll call so numbers can be estimated.

It's been a long, quiet summer, but now it's time to regroup and take stock of our resources before the deceptively cute wave of fuzzy doom descends upon us...

Just a quick note to say that the heroic mode rocky duo has been taken down, bringing BoL to 1/8 hc.

It seems I forgot to mention here that we killed Deathwing last thursday. I'm sure anyone who's been in-game since then knows anyway, because everyone reads the guild message of the day, right?

So, yes, BoL has taken down this expansion's Big Bad. All that remains is to take down the bigger, badder version at the end of heroic mode DS. The plan is to begin wiping clearing our way through this content in the next raid lock.

A big congrats to Ksiya for completing the many stages of the [Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest] quest chain. The final step was killing Rag (with a slight twist added to the regular fight) last night. 

Thanks to all those who helped in Firelands throughout tier 12, as well as those who carried on raiding the 'old content' just a little bit longer so that Ksi could finish off the legendary.

TL;DR - Guildies can now go and buy [Lil' Tarecgosa] from the local Guild Vendor. (It's 1500g, but is BoA, so you can pass it along between your alts.)