Spectacular Death

Just Keep it OFF the Mailboxes

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:03:03 -0500

Did you see this in Tuesday's WOWInsider?

Yak mounts lumbering your way in Mists of Pandaria

by Michael Sacco on Feb 21st 2012

Yak mounts? In my Asia-inspired continent? It's more likely than you think, according to Blizzard community rep Bashiok. Today, he confirmed on Twitter that the shaggy beasts of burden we saw in Mists of Pandaria preview screenshots will be available as mounts when the expansion hits. What wasn't indicated was whether or not the yaks are the official pandaren mounts; I'm leaning toward no, but we'll see.

We were actually just discussing what the pandaren mount might be when this news came out. Blizzard joked about it at BlizzCon, with its mockup of a pandaren mount as a huge bouncy ball with a seat on top. Mat McCurley's personal opinion is (verbatim) "probably, like, a big frog maybe?" I feel it'll probably be something a little more dignified. Like a rickshaw.

Wait! I Thought We Killed Him

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 10:10:00 -0500

There weren't enough people online Sunday night to run 25-man Firelands. I didn't do enough publicity for it to let everyone know that as long as they were level 85, we'd take them. We'll try a run again in the future and give you more of a heads up so you can plan to attend.

So, we headed off to the vast northern reaches of Northrend and ran 25-man Trial of the Crusader. Sixteen people came along. It took us an hour and 20 minutes to conquer the raid and fill the screen with guild achievement spam. I always like those nights where people get a boat load of achievements they wouldn't normally get. If you look over the Trial's list of achievements, there are a lot more we could work on, too.

This upcoming week sees us in the Firelands on Wednesday. We'll also be in there twice next week. We have Cataclysm 5-mans Monday and Tuesday. We'll be working on achievements and just running 5-mans for content, justice and valor points. We will do regular and heroic modes for all levels from 81 to 85. We have our weekly OS3 run. I'd like to, if we can get the numbers, break into two groups and get a couple people who don't have it, the black drake. While the blue one is more rare, if you don't have the black one, I'm sure you'd like it. This Friday is a "Friday Night Fights" PvP event. Come on along and run PvP with the guild.

Lastly, a few of us were discussing guild achievements. We are still solidly in 11th place. The Sardaukar is ahead of us with 1630 to our 1605 achievement points. Analysis shows we don't have a whole lot of achievements that we can grind out. There are a few, however, we could be working toward.

Daily Grind - We are at 50,463 of 75,000 daily quests.
Guild Gankers - We are at 174,493 horde killed out of 250,000.
City Attacker - We are at 1,822 of 2,500 horde killed in their own city. (We will be working on this next month.)
Glory of the Cataclysm Raider - We need Blackwing Descent for this achievement. (This gets us the Dark Phoenix mount.)
Better Leveling Through Chemistry - We are at 1,761 of 3,000 flasks made. (This gets us Recipe: Big Cauldron of Battle)
Gemcrafter Extraordinaire - We are at 1,724 of 2,500 Cata blue level gems cut.
Master Crafter - Craft 500 Epic items with an item level of at least 359. We are at 179 of 500.
(This achievement gets us the Cloak of Coordination which has a 2 minute cooldown as opposed to the 30 minute cooldown of the current SW teleport cloak.)
We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat - We are at 22,469 of 25,000 fish or other stuff fished from pools.

We also haven't done Baradin Hold, the raid in Tol'Barad as a guild and each of the Cataclysm raid has a heroic version we haven't attempted. As we have conquered Throne of the Four Winds and Bastion of Twilight only once each, we're going to need to run those more often before we attempt them heroically.

We had some guild groups doing Arena matches and we are at 704 out of 1,000 winning matches towards the achievement Killing With Friends. If you have any interest in running Arena, please talk to Fenistra so he can compile a list of interested people.

We are doing quite remarkable for a guild that plugs along at its own speed, doing its own thing. We have a lot planned in the next 3 months. Yes, I am looking that far in advance because we can't fit everything into one month. As we approach the end of this month and look to next month, if there is something you are interested in running, an achievement you'd like to get (within reason), I need to know about it. I will be putting the schedule for March together soon and need to know what things people would like to run.

Thanks for being a part of Spectacular Death.

--Gimm

Should be a Breakfast Topic.

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 11:26:00 -0500

We went into Sunwell last night. While we can, and did, blast through content, I wanted us to take it a bit slower. Blizzard put some time into Sunwell, to expand on pieces of the lore and to set the stage for later events, such as Kalecgos who is now in charge of the blue dragons since Malygos went mad and we had to kill him in Eye of Eternity.

Particularly of interest, to me, was the end fight against Kil'jaeden. The very first time I went in here, the group I was with (all level 80s), sort of blasted through content. I saw part of how the KJ fight was to happen. I've always wanted to see and experience the whole thing. Yes, that's hard at our level, but we were successful doing mostly auto attacks. We were able to engage the final dragons. Here is the video from last night.

There are other bosses who have longer fights than we currently see because we can blast them to pieces, Ragnaros and Nefarian in Blackwing Lair come to mind. It takes skill to be able to withhold your power so these events get played out as intended, but, we did it last night, we can do it again.

Lastly, I think KJ's arrival is one of the best boss entries in the game. Having spent days and days listening to Arthas, he could stand with an improvement in how he starts his battle. What boss's arrival do you like?

--Gimm

It Does Add Up

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 23:48:00 -0500

We got another achievement tonight. Huzzah for us!

A group ran into 25-man Naxx, cleared all 4 wings on Tuesday and finished off Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad on Wednesday. Branni had the great idea, because we were so close to this, that we should, well...

JUMP! Everyone! So, after we finished KT and contributed to a minute and a half of guild achievement spam, we met by the meeting stone and jumped. The outcome was predictable.

We raced up to the keep to repair and, viola, we got the achievement. This puts us at 1605 achievement points. Branni also pointed out we're only 20 points behind Dark Oath who is in 10th place. There are a few things we could work on to get that 20 points. Probably the "easiest" is We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat, which is fish up 25,000 fish or other stuff, from pools. Our total stands at 21,932 of 25,000. Three thousand fish is a lot but if everyone fished for 30 minutes every time they were on, it would quickly add up. We will be working on City Attacker in March.

The Monday Blackwing Descent group hit the lava, so to speak.

The Nefarian/Onyxia fight is a bugger. We could just barely get into Phase 2 before everyone died. We were disappointed because it's the last raid we need to clear and then exalted toons can get the Dark Phoenix mount. It's going to take some work to get these two down. Thanks to Jovarastus for leading us. He did a great job in his first real raid leading. Thanks to Unthur for tanking; Pinkel, Janarr and Argia for heals; and Varaluna, Squidchin, Tarsan and Duellona for dps.

Lastly, as Love Is in the Air winds down, you may find yourself short tokens for the exceptional vendor mount available this year.

I am still making Lovely Charms as I grind some items we need for the guild bank. There are probably others in the guild with charms which form the bracelets which you exchange one for one for tokens. If you are needing a few bracelets, speak up in chat. I and others are happy to help so you, too, can be as awesome as Lohnar and I.

Upcoming, we have Sunwell, OS3 and a 25-man Firelands run. If we don't have enough people for a full 25 man group, we'll take everyone who comes somewhere else so we will raid Sunday night.

--Gimm

Take That! Blackwing Descent - Day 3

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:06:00 -0500

I think it was the M&M's. I went to the store on Sunday morning and got a bag of the Valentine peanut M&M's. With peanuts is my favorite and I had those for snacking when we downed Arthas.

Chimaeron didn't start out very well. Breath, AOE, dead. (sigh) Looked like it was going to be another night of working towards a downing. But, we're used to this. We know, having listened to Arthas repeatedly, what it's like to work hours on a boss, getting close and then nothing. Rez, run back, buff up and...

I'm crediting the M&M's, personally. Now, on to the last boss before we get to see Nefarian and Onyxia, Atramedes.

This is an interesting fight. It's "sound" based. Atramedes is a blind dragon who uses sonar, much like a bat would, to find and eat his enemies. The Cho'gall fight is similar to this in that you build up stacks of something and when those stacks reach 100%, you are killed. Most of his attacks can be avoided, once you learn what you're looking for. We wiped, regrouped and downed him.

Many people would like him as a mount. I missed getting photos. Next time.

Thanks go to Jovarastus and Hercules for tanking; Janarr, Totorodoo and Dirtdart for healing; Deadwarf, Squidchin, Pinkel and George for dps. One day left of Blackwing Descent and we are on Nef and Ony. If we can clear this, we'll get the meta achievement for Cataclysm raiding, Glory of the Cataclysm Raider. Not to get your hopes up but earning this achievement gets us a nice reward, Reins of the Dark Phoenix. Think you'd look good on one of those? Unfortunately, you'll need exalted reputation with SD and 3000 gold, but man.

Plus, if we get Nefarian down, that means we will have, for the first time in SD's history, cleared all content up to current raids. We've always been a half or full expansion behind. We haven't really cared. It's not the SD way to run through content getting to new and improved right away. We'll get there in our own time. But, this is exciting, to say the least. The guild that takes on WOW on its own terms is almost running current content.

If we don't get Nef down tonight, I will use the raid lock out so we can come back in some time within the next month and try again. I want to thank all of you for being flexible in your schedules so we could get a large number of people into this raid, to see it. It's so very helpful to me when you're all willing to be flexible and come on different dates. That way, those who can only come on one day can get in, too.

Remember, we do all content, so if you want to see a specific raid instance, let me know and I can schedule it.

--Gimm

Cat NOT Included

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 14:56:00 -0500

I got my geek on today. Needed gas so I went to the ampm which is, around here, attached to a BP gas station. The gal at the counter wanted to know "Horde or Alliance". It always floors me when someone asks. Even with the number of people who do play, there are many more who do not.

They had several of each cup in a small corner display by the fountain drinks. These are large cups for $1.99 each.

Here's a two-liter of soda so you can see the relative size of the cups.

They are a nice sturdy plastic and, when you grow tired of them, can be recycled. The design is all around the outside, not a half and half design as I've sometimes seen. Not bad, not bad at all for 2 bucks. (For the record, Pilchard was interested at the beginning, then bored and then annoyed at all the photos. I take several to get the best one.)

--Gimm

Not Even the Lucky Pig Helped

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 01:45:40 -0500

Some raids are a struggle. Chimaeron, the 2-headed dragon, had our number tonight. I even pulled out the lucky pig but the lowest we could get him was 32%. It does not appear that we are doing anything wrong. It's timing and the random "who gets hit by the caustic slime". Totorodoo had a lag spike. Prinny and Janarr were hit, back-to-back, by slime, followed by a massacre. It's a tough fight.

Thanks to Jovarastus and Unthur for tanking. Unthur was, consistently, the last one standing. I'm convinced it's his outfit. Totorodoo, Janarr and Amaera were healing. Our dps were Dolvange, Prinny, Varaluna and Slugslinger.

Two more days of working on Blackwing Descent. More of you will get to see the fights.

--Gimm

Blackwing Descent - Day 1

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:54:07 -0500

Not quite a hot knife through warm butter, but we're close. The longest part is explaining the complicated fight mechanics.

We've never done this raid as a guild. We've accompanied The Sardaukar in here but we were working on other content and never got in here. Tonight began four days of raiding and we lost one person all night, one.

This is Magmaw, a one-shot. From there, we downed the Omnitron Defense System and Maloriak, also in one attempt each. There are two bosses left before the duo of Onyxia and Nefarian. We will be raiding through Monday in an attempt to clear this raid. If we do, we have somewhere else we can go.

We also got an achievement on Maloriak. We were quite surprised.

Thanks go out to Jovarastus and Thoryn, our tanks; Totorodoo, Janarr and Dirtdart, our healers; and Bowell, Prinny, George and Pinkel, our dps. There will be ample opportunity for everyone who signed up to raid over these next four days. Thank you all for being agreeable and sitting out if asked.

Lastly, Thoryn got booted over a ledge into some lava. He just would not die. He managed to swim to a spot where he could be fished from the lava. We told him to take off his armor to facilitate dying. George and Dirtdart celebrated his survival.

--Gimm

18 Minutes 40 Seconds

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:30:44 -0500

Not quite start to finish. I didn't start the video right when Jov kicked Tirion in the shins. Plus, I don't have the sound until the end. It's a quirk of how I play the game. If you have never done the Arthas fight, you can live vicariously through us. The next time we go in, we'll be doing it on regular so more people can see the fight without a lot of the headaches we endured.

Enjoy.

--Gimm

Downed

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:59:59 -0500

There's really not much to say other than, we got him, finally. Here's the group prior to starting the fight.

No, George doesn't stand still.

We wiped twice, regrouped and came back. Third time's a charm.

For this effort, Spectacular Death earned the following:

and

This puts us at 1595 achievement points. Guess we need to find something to do as a guild to shove us over the 1600 plateau. Not bad for a guild that does whatever we want when we want to do it.

Those of us in the raid earned these achievements:

This gets us the title, Bane of the Fallen King. Ever since we downed Algalon last year, I have been running around with "Starcaller" as my title. We worked so hard to get into the planetarium and to down Algalon. I have decided, for a few weeks anyway, I'm wearing this new title. We earned it.

Thanks go to Pinkel, Totorodoo, Xoni, Jovarastus, Helgahoney, Varaluna, Janarr, Unthur, Huckleberry, a quiet George and Orion for their hard work in finishing this off. As you know, we run everything here so we will be back in ICC for those of you who would like to see the raid. There is a video of the successful downing. It will be posted within the next 24 hours.

Congratulations, Spectacular Death.

--Gimm

A New Publishing Sensation!

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:03:05 -0500

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.

The week ahead.

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

One Boss From the Meta

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:55:00 -0500

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

Guild Member of the Month

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:48:00 -0500

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

George

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

Our Biggest Event Yet!

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:22:00 -0500

Rules are here. For questions not covered in the rules, talk to Amaera or me.

--Gimm

BG's R SRS BZNS

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 01:51:00 -0500

That's why, every chance we get, we are going to try to set BG's on their ear. Tonight's Guild BG night didn't quite work out the way I had envisioned. First of all, the good news. Dirtdart is our new Guild PvP Officer. He's already come up with some wacky ideas which you all know I'm excited about.

Then, the bad news. We got steamrollered in Tol'Barad. We were going to try to bring our brand of surreal to the BG, but horde just ran right over everything. I think it might have been a record for an Alliance loss.

Soooooo...

we had to take the fun to the bridge. Lohnar came out and we all transformed into Totorodoo, running around him like gnats around your face on a summer day.

Can you imagine how awesome that would be if we all became Pinkel or Fenistra? Gnomes! Then got baby spiced? We'd be unstoppable or at least hard to find, let alone kill.

After the Potion of Illusions wore off, we decided to see what would happen if Lohnar was the target instead of Totorodoo.

The real Lohnar is in there somewhere.

Possibly the funniest part of this was when that belf priest came riding over the bridge, saw us, and came to a dead stop. It's been a long week for me at work. I needed a good laugh and man, this was just awesome.

Unfortunately, some people don't get our brand of fun. That's too bad because this is a game and, in SD, I never, ever, want us to forget it. We had a lot of laughs tonight. Thanks go out to Lohnar, of course, for being a good sport, and to everyone who was willing to become tauren: Pangs, Chainclaw, Fenistra, Totorodoo, Dolvange, Bluenuit, Tarsan and Pinkel. Branni was in the BG but suffered a DC right before we did our potion fun.

Look for more crazy PvP events upcoming.

--Gimm

That Time Again

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:52:33 -0500

It's that time again. I need nominations for Guild Member of the Month. Tell me who and what they did to deserve to be recognized in an in-game letter. I need it in my grubby little paws by Sunday, January 29th.

Also, if you are wanting to run something, I need to know what that is. I can't read your mind. We still have a couple of things I want to accomplish before we step into Dragon Soul as a guild.

--Gimm

They'd Be Better if SD Was on Them

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:36:04 -0500

Stolen from George's Facebook post:

Here's the link to the original post. And whaddaya know, there's an ampm on my way to work. Yup, there's a poll to the left. We'll have to have a forum thread with photos of guildies and their cups.

--Gimm

Proof

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:53:00 -0500

In case you were wondering about our achievement standings, Guild Ox provides this proof.

Take the poll to the left. What should we go after next? Next week, we will be working one day on Arthas and one day on Cho'gall.

--Gimm

We Rock.

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 23:25:54 -0500

Moonglade will never be the same.

We attempted to spell "SD ROCKS !!!" on the ground. It was close. Once that was done, we killed Omen.

Then we went back to our words and covered the path with feasts to get Dinner Party! It was a typical Spectacular Death event with people running around, having fun and doing things that, well, I had a lot of explaining to do after we were done. But why do this some mundane way? It's better when we all work together and get the achievement, particularly if we can think of a creative way to get it.

To the left is a poll. What should we work on next?

Looking toward the bridge.

Toward the arch.

Ground view.

Thanks everyone! We have 1545 guild achievement points.

--Gimm

We All Agree On Something

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:20:16 -0500

We officially hate, loathe and despise spiders.

Beth'tilac did not go as well as we would have liked. Ironically, the "usual" strats say that the Beth fight is first BEFORE Shannox. Now, we struggled with Shannox before we downed him so our struggles with the spider are to be expected. It was just tougher than we thought it would be.

Saturday's group: Jovarastus and Bowell - tanks; Janarr, Totorodoo and Pinkel - heals; George, Bearsilver, Gimmlette, Squidchin and Deadwarf - dps.

Sunday's group: Jovarastus and Hercules - tanks; Janarr, Totorodoo and Dirtdart - healers; George, Prinny, Dolvange, Gimmlette and Varaluna - dps.

We'll get her and then we'll wonder how we struggled.

--Gimm