Icecrown Citadel: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Ooze

In the interest of keeping the front page at least somewhat up-to-date, here is an update.

So far I've enjoyed pretty much everything about ICC - the first 4 bosses were kind of a pushover but still some interesting mechanics (lolvehicleslol). I was glad to see that the new wing had something of a learning curve, even in 10 man, and while it's frustrating to wipe without seemingly making much progress like we did last week, it clearly helped us get the fight mechanics down. Also, have a look at just how much crap we have on the ground during our raids:

What a difference a week makes; from wiping at ~45-50% each attempt and not making much progress to coming in and plowing him straight away without having ever seen phase 3. A couple of strategy adjustments (and the moral boost of repeating Insanity in ToGC before the ICC raid) definitely helped, but really I think people were just not playing well last week and came back this week with a much greater understanding of the mechanics.

We've been making progress on the meta achievements as we go, and I'm pleased that we're more or less keeping up with the pace of new content. We decided to do Festergut and Rotface on Tuesday this week in order to have a fresh run at Putricide tonight, which helped, but it also means that trying to do achievements on Lag'Thuzad when we raid on Tuesdays is just too much frustration to be worthwhile. We'll bang out the Fester and Rot achievements next week but I'm thinking we'll hold off on Putricide's meta for a while since he shares the attempt pool with the upcoming bosses.

Thank the Lord Jesus Christ

After a lot of weeks of changing personnel, bad luck, bad excuses and server bullshit, we finally managed to finish off Trial of the Grand Crusader, something that had been really dragging down the level of fun in our raids lately.

The final moments were a little hairy but well played by all - personally I'm very glad to finally get this achievement out of the way. One of those things that's hard enough to do to be interesting but also so subject to falling apart quickly it's infuriating.

We used a 3 healer 1 burrow phase strategy that worked out very well for us in the end, though it does require some pretty decent DPS (for a 10 man anyway):

We've also been in Icecrown the past two weeks, found the bosses to be a lot simpler than expected and are already doing a second 10 man group this week of half alts. Personally I'm hoping the regular mode stuff gets at least a bit more challenging, and that heroic modes are significantly more difficult.

For now, our recruiting is closed, though exceptional applicants are always welcome. A big thanks to our two new recruits for coming in and making an immediate improvement in our overall DPS - Hippoh and Nineball.

We're Back (Sort Of)

As Hocken mentioned in the last front page update, Pacifist on Kel'Thuzad has become an active guild again. Over the past few months quite a bit of the old school membership has returned, with a focus on 10 man raiding.

So either we still remember how to play, or this game is too easy (probably both). Started really pushing Ulduar 10 hard modes on 10/15/2009 and as you can see, we had some success:

Though for some we may have been a little too quick in our progress:

As you saw in the previous post, we've also been working on Trial of the Grand Crusader. Our first completion was fairly easy, but for some struggles learning Anub (which still resulted in Tribute to Skill in the first clear). Our second run through was a bit more successful:

And now to the main reason for this post...

We Are Recruiting

Even with our success in plowing this content, we find ourselves struggling to fill raids with healers. As such, we're looking to pick up a couple more in order to keep going for Insanity and the Icecrown hard modes when it is released.

Please take a look at this thread if you are interested. We are primarily looking for people interested in healing, but anyone is welcome to apply.

Hopefully we can pick a few people up soon, to avoid more nights like this: