Welcome one and all to Spectacular Death's web site.

We're gonna call it "Where's Pinkel?'


We were waiting for Vervaine to turn in Nefarian's head to Wrynn. Gnomes can go the darnedest places. Find our pink-haired shadow priest and put your comment below. If you were there, you know where she is.


Due to some real life things, we weren't able to run Arthas Sunday night. We are free on Wednesday and Thursday this week. (I swear. I didn't do that on purpose.) Whichever night we can get the 10 people who were slated to go online at 8:45, we will go. Let's shoot for Wednesday night first. We will grab someone to fill a slot if it gets to be 9:00 and we don't have a full raid. You need your "A" game and you MUST be on Mumble.

Monday night, Lohnar and Vashkiri have graciously agreed to help any horde from Deathtacular get the achievement for killing Omen. Hop on your horde at 8 and collect the quests you need. Be ready to go at 8:30. We'll run around on horde for a couple of hours.

Tuesday, we're doing our usual dragon killing. This coming weekend, we will be headed into Blackwing Descent. I have planned for four days of raiding for this raid. We haven't done this as a guild and it's the last one from Cataclysm that we need to conquer.

I will be going over the roster and sending out letters to you with invitations. I want to take as many people as possible into this raid. Your ilevel need only be 342 to enter. I need you to respond ASAP to the letter with a yes or a no. Don't not respond. 1) That's rude. 2) If you aren't going to respond to a request, then why should I bother inviting you to anything further? This is a great event for us and running this as a guild is important. I don't want to have to rely on the same 9 people who always sign up and then have people silently sulking because they never get to go anywhere. When you get your letter, look at your schedule and respond the next day.

There's so much going on right now. Some people still need elders, particularly in the Wrath dungeons. Some people need the flowers that drop from Grim Batol or Stonecore or Blackrock Depths. Plus, the Faire is in town. If you can't find anything to do or to assist others with doing, you're not paying attention. When there is a request made, speak up to help. Even if you only run one instance, you've helped someone and you get the pocket change off the mobs.

Here's to a busy, busy week.

--Gimm

Last night was one of those "Holy carp!" nights where the planets and stars aligned and the RNG smiled down on us. It's been my goal that we down both Arthas and Cho'gall before we consider walking into Dragon Soul. Arthas bedeviled us on Tuesday although we are so close to downing him, we can smell it. Last night, we approached Cho'gall.

Boom, second attempt of the night.

We think we figured this fight out so now, we can bring in more people who would like to see it. We killed Cho'gall at 9:45. We had an hour and 15 minutes of raiding left. What do we do? Let's go see Barney.

If you don't know "Barney", it's what everyone calls Halion. I am convinced that someone, in probably a Jolt cola-filled moment thought that a dragon of this color was a good idea. It's not. No really. It's not. He's ugly. Dragons should look intimidating. When I talk about visiting the "purple mosquito", I am talking about Onyxia, not Halion.

We have downed him a couple times on regular, but we needed to down him on heroic for the guild achievement.

It's not an easy fight. If you have done the Kalecgos encounter in Sunwell, the principal is the same. Halion goes into the twilight realm and then splits in phase 3, between the physical and twilight realms. You need to match dps in both realms or he heals himself. We watched that happen when we got him to 1% and Amaranthaer died in the shadow realm. Jovarastus was the only one standing and Halion healed himself to 46% before Jov died.

We came back, wiped once more and then got him.

It really was touch and go there at the end however. These are the people who were still alive. In true Spectacular Death fashion, Dirtdart died right after the dragon did.


Whew! I want to thank Amaranthaer and Jovarastus for tanking; Janarr, Zelde and Dirtdart for healing; and Xoni, Prinny, George and Tarsan for providing dps. The only boss left in Wrath for the 10 man meta-achievement is Arthas. The Tuesday group is going back into ICC on Sunday. We are so close to getting him down.

Next weekend is a marathon Blackwing Descent run. We haven't been in this raid as a guild and it's now the only original Cataclysm raid, outside of Baradin Hold, that we have not conquered. The suggested ilevel is 342 so if you are at or above that level, consider signing up. We will be running this over 4 days and I'd like to take a wide variety of people into this raid. You can expect to get a letter from either me or Jovarastus within the next few days asking if you can come along.

I was asked where this puts us on the Guild Ox achievement rankings. We are a solid 11th.

What I find interesting is that other guilds are ranked as 10 or 25 man. We are simply ranked and, given that criteria, we are number 1 in achievement points just accumulated without being put into a category. Killing Arthas will give us 30 more points which would then put us a mere 5 points from 1600. I could not be more proud of the drive and excitement of this guild toward working together to get achievements. I think this shows, unequivocally, that you can have fun, run around and do crazy things and still be a top guild.

Watch out Arthas. We're coming back.

--gimm

It's time to announce our Guild Member of the Month. In this program, we recognize someone who has done something during the previous month which is extraordinary or who contributes quite a bit to the life of the guild. During the month, take note of who does something extra special, whether it's filling up the bank, volunteering in raids, crafting items or keeping the guild the happy go-lucky place we all love. Did someone help you improve your gear or find all those links that help you be a better player? Did they keep their cool in a very nasty PuG? Did they run you through several instances? Send me an in-game letter with their name and what they did. Once a month, we recognize someone for those extra contributions that make our guild so extraordinary.

This month's honoree was chosen for his help in getting the guild three achievements. He dropped everything he had planned and helped me level Glitterati so we could get "Classy Dwarves", "Stay Classy" and the 8th bank tab. He runs World of Logs when he's in our raids which can help those of us in a raid setting improve on what we do. More personally, he recently helped me work on my dps after the log of Beth'tilac showed my dps to be horrid and I couldn't figure out why. Lastly, he was nominated by several people for being such a good sport about us not calling him his toon's name. If you haven't figured it out, our Guild Member of the Month is Leonard...no...Ian...no...Tony...no


Congratulations, George. As our honoree, you may pick one item from this list:  50g; 2 5-man runs of your choice; a 22 count bag; a stack of buff food or health potions; a guild paid-for enchant; a vanity pet from our stash or the black drake mount from OS3 or the bronze drake mount from Culling of Stratholme.

--Gimm