Failure is not an option

Ah. Here again.

The latest adventures of the three dunces/stooges are unreported. There will still be one report missing after this one is done, and more to come on Thursday. We'll see when that report gets written, though...

Anyhow. After success in the Halls of Origination, the three -stupid- Stooges took up on the old nemesis. The Lost City of Tol'Vir. Remember the visit, eh? (Sidenote: it seems that this has been hinted a couple of times, but never really reported. Sorry folks, I'm only sub-human.)

It started as a nice retaliation with a vengeance on those mobs.

And our earlier nemesis, that General Husaam, was our puppy this time. "Look mom, no deaths still!"

Then we got to Lockmaw, and with the dps we can muster, it started to feel like a job. But...

Sleep thee well, Lockmaw!

On and on, till we downed...

but Siamat left untouched. "Can't touch this" was so right. The storm is strong in that one...

Back to Stormwind with the three of us, singing...

"We shall overcome"
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Outdated update

Oh, joy.

This post was supposed to be posted about a week ago, but alas, blogger was down. Still bugged in some parts it seems (at least I'm having trouble to comment on blogs with Blogger comment section), but mainly working.

Anyhow, a week ago three brothers took up on a sword and rode into the Halls of Origination, where they were beaten severely on their former try. Guess how it went now...?

That should give you a slight hint...

There is one particular set of mobs which caused us some grey hair, and that was the one after Temple Guardian Anhuur on the way to Brann Bronzebeard. The one with one big baddie and three other ones. Tricky if you do not sap the infuriating caster type and kill the other one as soon as possible.

After coming to terms with the kill order, that mob was easy. Surprisingly so.

To our misguided amazement we found ourselves in the Hall of Lights or whatever the place is, and proceeded to dismantle the safeguards: the four elementals and a bunch of troggs. Long story short (as one picture equals some hundreds of words, like they say):

As you can see from the sequence, we had problems with only one of the elementals, that being the water one. The bubble, coming on the healer at the right moment, is a bugger, and really caused some hilarious moments. On the other hand, our main theme of the evening was that the healer lives, everyone else dies, even though in the last picture it's the rogue alive. He - on the other hand - used his vanish on each and every occasion things started getting hairy, getting the tank aka me killed more than I really deserved.

We skipped most of the 'unnecessary' parts and finally took the fight to the main boss, fiery Rajh. We had some negative pepping going on when the fight started, and the trash guarding the boss was really a pain: in randoms this would cause several groups to disappear into thin air if the end boss wasn't in sight.

 What a warm and loving fight that was. Heated debate, streaming solar flares, burning embers raining from the sky. What more can a man desire?

In the end, it was one mob standing. That being the three unbeatable, who again did the job of five, which so many random groups still fail to do (in heroics).

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Time to ride again

If a group of 10 or 25 is a raid, isn't a group of 3 doing the content for 5 a ride?

Anyhow, it's time for the three to do the job of five again, this time all at the cap. The only thing I'm nervous about is not to waste any Justice Points on vanities and to find as good upgrades before the round up as possible. Now where are the easy solutions when you are in a hurry, eh?

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Three on two occasions

Previously on Three Stooges:

After seriously banging their head on the Lost City of Tol'Vir without seeing a single glimpse of hope on General Husam and later Lockmaw, the worrisome threesome decided to tackle on an old nemesis of theirs. The reason to give up the Lost City of Tol'Vir was due to the fact that even though General Husam was put to rest, the fight felt like sheer effort on luck, with no effect based on the way the three were performing. Lockmaw even more so, and the collective intellect suggested that the main reason to this is the lack of survivability of the lowest common denominator, the Tank.

The old nemesis was... Mr. Sunshine himself, The Lich King in Hall of Reflections, into which the three plunged themselves like vaseline to... well, slided in like... /snap Ouch. Entered the instance like a brave group of - undermanned but severely overgeared - adventures.

For the first time ever the instance felt like it had felt in full group at the glory days of WotLK, when the tank was overgearing the content and AoE ruled the world.

Needles to say, the instance was a breeze and the trio decided to fulfill the one instance needed for the Rogue's Northrend Dungeon Hero achievement: the Halls of Stone, in which he was lacking the Maiden of Grief.

In short, the three went wham-bang through these two instances, gained Guild achievement on one of them and lived happily ever after.

Yesterday, current time (check the timestamp, please)

Instead of taking on the Lost City of Tol'Vir, the three decided to go for the Halls of Origination. Wider selection of nice bosses and sidetracking, the instance 'felt' like a good second choice for the undermanned group.

The trash from the beginning, the menace of an unsuspecting PUG even, was just about the right challenge for the three, so much so that it felt like home after the Lost City of Tol'Vir experience. Even though the Temple Guardian Anhuur requires the flick of a switch - two in fact - it was clear from the first try that this boss was doable. The three stated almost in unison after the first wipe that this one is doable, when they were not in unison with the General Husam earlier, which tells quite a lot.

Temple Guardian Anhuur taught the Healer the first usable spot for the Leap of Faith (or HealGrip): as the Tank had flicked both of the switches, the Healer pulled him up with the Leap of Faith and the slaughter would commence. The point was that this provided the Healer a few moments to heal the Tank up before the damage started raining in and get his stuff on the roll before the snakes came into the show.

After four or five tries it was the Healer who got the honors in letting Temple Guardian Anhuur to rest: the Rogue and the Tank came to the conclusion that the Healer had let them die deliberately to get all the honor and recognition to himself. He even made the point to dance on the dead, mutilated bodies of his companions before resurrecting them. The disgrace!

Instead of taking the scenic route to the end, the threesome decided to take the long route instead and started their way to Earthrager Ptah. The road to good intentions - especially in Egyptian themed instance - is always paved with Scarabs, though.

But the way to Earthrager Ptah - the twin brother of ICC's Marrowgar - was easy enough to clear and fun to run around with the camels provided (tell me there isn't a grande reason to have them rideable over there, please!), and as much as we tried we couldn't make this boss feel as ominous as it should have felt.

Boy were we taken. By the hand, by the feet, by the platter and everything that hurts. The encounter is fun and furious, and it's sad how people just 'ignore' this encounter and go through only the mandatory ones.

It took the threesome around fifteen (15) tries, where in the middle of them the Tank had to go to Stormwind and replenish the potions and flasks, after which he learned a lesson, too. Somehow the Tank had missed the memo stating that the cooldown of a potion starts only after the combat ends, and thus he ended up being potionless in the end because he had popped a Earthly Potion (or whatever) in the beginning.

That resolved, the Earthrager Ptah went down on the third try after this revelation. This time the term 'close call' got a whole new meaning, even closer than the one experienced on Tempel Guardian Anhuur. You see, the damage over time effects left on Earthrager Ptah by the Tank and the Rogue killed the boss at the same second the Healer died. The tank followed the dropping health down from 80k to zero from the ground zero, telling the others the status of the boss as they were too busy in (I hoped to say killing the boss) staying alive.

But hey! Earthrager Ptah was put down by merciless effort and good spirits.

Now the question is why would the Threesome bother to take on so many wipes on this one, but gave up on the Lost City of Tol'Vir. The reason is simple: the Tol'Vir combats didn't show even a promise that something was changing from one wipe to another, while the Halls of Origination encounters showed clearly the difference in changed tactics. The effort - reward - ratio was right, and the encounters really responded to changed tactics.

By far this Earthrager Ptah fight has been the most fun I've had with my pants on in Cataclysm. Temple Guard Anhuur felt like a victory with capital v, but Ptah proved that we can change, adapt and persist.

What the Three Stooges wouldn't do for a few deserved - and poorly documented - deaths?

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Asaad day

There they were: the foolish three who had once failed to conquer the Vortex Pinnacle. Facing the portal, feeling confident and willing to die for... the sake of dying.

Fast forward, with subtitles:
"If you just sap that one and I pull the rest... Oh, it can't be sapped, and omgwtf LET ME AT IT!"
"Could you use Fade or something, so I can keep the aggro?"
"Um, well, it might be better for my mana if I stopped doing damage to them, right?"
"Ok, I'll go and strangle that one, silencing it? Ah, for crying out loud, you pulled it already..."

The groups of different sizes of winds and clouds came and went, and the majority of the time my screen was like this:

Happily smashing away, from one pull to another. Ok, save the one time an exploding cloud warrior pushed me over the edge of the Pinnacle, but otherwise the trash mobs were pretty uneventful, as if someone had tweaked them - again! - to some lower level of challenge. This time the Grand Vizier left another man standing, and it wasn't the tank...

Bloody priest! He should keep the tank up rather than the rogue, as it was the tank who bit the dust first again.

No reason to cry over the spilled milk, though.

Jump to the next, the mid-boss Altairus was a nice, fast and simple fight, right after the fellowship thought out to use the wind to their benefit. Old hunter adage was proven correct: always stand downwind...

Finally it was time to face Asaad. The trash mobs of the Tol'Vir after the Grand Vizier were a sort of nice change to the pace, as our rogue could sap and control the excessive healers. Otherwise it was - like I commented in Twitter - "sap one, tank on rest, kill the second, wham-bang-slam-smash."

Now Asaad. That is one bugger of a boss. The stars around pounding extra damage to us all, with no way of putting them out of their misery, having to run from one Containment Field to another while tossing things to the Lord of Wind and Fury himself, the fight was actually very interesting. Thrice we fell, until...

The perfect performance.

In the end, all we could conclude was...

After which we searched for new challenges. I wonder if this is good enough?

Oh, by Golly!

The first fights in the Lost City of Tol'Vir were intense, interesting and way better than all the fights so far in Cataclysm, with several aspects to take into account. It is indicative that we didn't get the first boss - General Hasam -  down on the first run we were there, yet everyone of us felt that we were doing our best, with little to improve in our playing.

So off to the questing it is. Mind you that we cleared Vortex Pinnacle with tank and healer being at lv84 and 'just' the rogue at 85, and the healer dinged to cap while in the Lost City of Tol'Vir. More or less, it's down to gearing up from now.

It seems that the game just turned interesting, if the quality of the instances grows this rate from now on...

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Again three did the job of five

It's been a month since the Three Stooges (or Three Dunces) rode together. Calculating the /played over that time on these characters, the time is around half an hour a character.

No wonder the game felt clunky and jittery, as we soon found out...

The first set of characters was - in lack of better word - a mess. Of the five, three were running wild, one was being pounded by our 'overlevelled' rogue (Förgelös, 85) and the last one was being handled by our healing dps machine (Bishopgeorge, 84). So what the heck was the tank (Laiskajaakko, 84) doing?

Trying to get a hang of the buttons and binds. Removed from this set of skills and keybinds, succumbed to Rift with another set, had had it's cost on efficiency. Really, during the whole run I was fumbling with the buttons and at no point did I feel that the character was working as intended. Also, compared to the response and speed of Rift (or my spriest, for the matter), the response and cooldown time was absolutely horribly sluggish! I know I have mentioned it earlier how the queuing system for skills killed the responsiveness for me, but I never, ever thought it was really THIS bad. Push a button, once a second. The need for the skill passes by faster, so there is nothing you can do but to hope that you can still counter the attack by the skill needed. Oh, it passed and I launched a useless reflect, nice.

And so on.

Never the less, everyone of the three wondered if something had happened to the game, as the encounters seemed to last longer and the whole gameplay felt slow.

The mobs
We passed the trash in the traditional mess we like to do them. The tunnel between Corborus and Slabhide was amazing, as the annoying rock spider thingies just kept on spawning after a spawn. The flood of them was constant, not like the last times, obviously meant to keep us going. Otherwise the 'trash' was uneventfull till the end.

The bosses
Corborus, you dear ground worm you. How lackluster you are on the umpteenth time. One thing which has happened over the last month is that the DBM updates have made it impossible to miss the crystal barrage even on a team mate way over where.

Slabhide
This old, wary dragon just doesn't hold the magic anymore. The fight is furious and fun in it's own way ("Are you out of mana, yet?" - "Not just quite yet" - "HEAL!" - "Sorry, out of mana, try to hang on" - "YOU JUST SAID YOU WERE FINE" - "Sorry, can't help it" - "AAAARGHH!!!"), but still it's like wiping the stains off the window. No, not the way that they still are there after a while, but the way that it's easy to make the stains to go away. Really.

Ozruk, our earlier nemesis because the tank (that bugger) didn't understand the finesses of the fight. Well, didn't remember them the first time around this time, either. So yes, we wiped, gloriously, but the second run was flawless. Hit, bash, maim, mutilate - oh, ground smash - splash, boom, bang - oh, shatter RUN! - kill maim KILL!! In a way, I like this encounter for it's simplicity but still requiring solid concentration.

High Priestess Azil
Grande biatch of the highest order. We came, were cautious and ... wiped. The void zones just kept spawning so that the second or third wave of the adds just didn't catch them. So we had two dozens of those pesky worshippers pounding on us, add a few criticals from them and down we went. But the second time over was lovely. Bishopgeorge learned to dance the tune, Förgelös just kept on hopping and jumping from the voids and I... I tried my darnest to keep the adds from Bishop and in the voids.

Down she went and all we got was this lousy achievement.

"What shall we do next?" -
"Conquer the World! Let's try Vortex Pinnacle?"
"Isn't that supposed to be extremely hard?"
"Aren't they all?"
"Ah, ok, let's go."

So off we went to Uldum and Vortex Pinnacle, first visiting some sort of repair shop. The overall monetary stuff on Laiskajaakko ended being negative, repairs costing more than the quests and loot could make. I guess that's because Laiskajaakko is in his early 84s, as Förgelös (that overlevelled bastard rogue) claimed to have made over 250g over the night...

Anyhow, the night was turning late when we started. The first group of five mobs proved to be a challenge: not a huge one, but a challenge for a change. The Wild Winds seem to be the buggers of this place, annoying casters who shake the stuns off of them in record time.

And they cannot be sapped, which crippled our secret weapon!

Another problematic trash mob was the Cloud Princes, as they summon immediately and uninterruptably three Wind Gusts or something. So a nice trash group of two mobs turns into a foray of six, all hitting at an unimaginable rate.

Still, long story short.

We.
Killed.
Grand Vizier Ertan.

On our first visit, on our first try.

That was just the halfway spot, but still. Three did the job of five.

Again.
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First of Three

Congratulations Förgelös for hitting the Cataclysm level cap!

Förgelös is the first of the Three Stooges to gain the revered level 85. I'm pretty sure Bishopgeorge will follow him soon enough, leaving Laiskajaakko last, where the order in WotLK was quite the other way around.

Supposedly this will help the Three Stooges to clear the rest of the 5 mans undermanned and unmannered.

As always, dying can be glorious.
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Stooges with a headache

Despite Tobold trying to explode my visitor counter, I will stick to the schedule I have now established on my mind.

Yesterday was yet another Three Stooges night. The holy trinity of warrior (lv83), priest (lv84) and rogue (lv84) entered Stonecore with all the confidence in the known world to overcome their nemesis from the earlier attempt: Ozruk. For the record, we still feel - even more so - that this instance is easy for a full group, let the composition of the group be anything. If we can do it with such an ease as far as we do, the a full group should just do it.

Corborus was really a pushover and Slabhide was just another boss dragon with it's own dance moves. In the end, the trash mobs provided more entertainment value due to their uncanny way of getting some adds to the fight. This one ability proved to be the one we couldn't later overcome.

But let's continue with the dungeon delving.

After Slabhide there comes the passage with the mobs and sentries. Nothing strange in there, kill the sentries as fast as possible or face the consequences: they call ALL the mobs to protect the High Priestess. Carefully we disabled the ones which might have caused any further trouble (or so we thought) and faced our nemesis.

We banged our head on this rocky fellow time and again. Running around like chicken in heat. Pulling those extra mobs while running from the Slabhide teleporter, the ones we thought wouldn't cause any trouble. And wiped once more.

Until this one particular warrior, Laiskajaakko (his player, in fact), suddenly had an realization that you do not have to run from the Ground Smash, just side step. So instead of running around from the Shatter Blow and Ground Smash, you have to pull away only from the first and NOT MOVE OZRUK.

Stupid player that guy. Heard he's writing a blog or something. Real git.

All this and some more, the next try resulted.

Yes, Ozruk was down. And the only reason it took us so long was this stupid tank person who couldn't read the signs and interpret the graphics on this fight.

On we went, through the meaningless bunch of the Cultists, until we met Her.

High Priestess Azil. The fight is really a simple one for a bigger group, as ranged dps can do her damage all the time. We - on the other hand - are lacking two dimensions of dps in our group: ranged and area. Both of which would be nice to have in this one, making life just a bit easier.

Needless to say, this fight is messy and not too satisfactory.

And the conclusion pretty clear.

In short: the Three stooges are lacking some serious damage dealing on Azil, and our tank has to learn more about grabbing the aggro from the healer. The major cause to the headache resulting wall banging was the fact that the healer was being pounded by the Cultists, while the tank was being Power Gripped and unable to say "Cheese!". The main reason for the frustration on High Priestess Azil encounter was the fact that no changes we made to our approach gave us any noticeable advance in the encounter: everything we did to change the result was in vain. On Ozruk we saw from the beginning the problems and could work on them, but here... nothing sticks. It just bugs the living daylights from us.

Like the song goes, she bangs, she bangs. But not for long, for as Förgelös (the rogue) said...

WE WILL OVERCOME, AZIL!
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Stooged in Stonecore

Deepholm. Lovely scenery, interesting story and Stonecore.

Three Stooges had been warned about the instance time and again, that it will be the one that will challenge the group. Having only one level 84 (Bishopgeorge) and mostly in greens and select blues the trio embarked on the trip to the challenge land.

The initial shock was short and sharp. The rag-tag group of five turned into a mess of twelve, as everyone seemed to aggro everything. Score 1 for Stonecore and Millhouse the Mad Gnome.

But as accustomary, the Stooges learn from their mistakes. The next time wasn't as trivial, and as we started our slow trek into the depths of the Core, we noted the skills, damage and peculiarities of the mobs. Without hesitation - and needless dying - we encountered Corborus.

Believe or not, Corborus was a snack to our professional group, not even sweat broke on this first try. It was too easy, considering the level, we stated, not noticing the mockfull tone in our comments.

Onwards and deeper we went, and on to the Slabhide. Lovely dragon, who's breath is really, really bad. She should really make an appointment with a dentist and do something to her reflux problem.

As usual, our group of professionals couldn't find a proper - nor unanimous - way to conduct the battle.

This fight was interesting, not only because it had a lot going on simultaneously, nor because we took the spanking like three man do, but because as we returned to the instance, the encounter was locked. The impenetrable wall was blocking our way to Slabhide, who may as well be a he.

Out we went, repaired, reset the instance and in again. This time Corborus did a trick to us and emerged from the side of the cliff after his first dive and caused us some trouble.

And then the world fell apart. Three quarters of the WoW EU population were kicked out of the game, without the option to re-enter. That meant that our meager group was reduced to one, Laiskajaakko, while the two others were locked out of the game. As it happens, this affected the whole server and later I learned that it affected the whole EU area. Better part of the guild raid running at the same time was kicked out, and as Laiskajaakko took off to do some mining in the meanwhile, it seemed that a good part of the mobs were having a vacation, too.

Anyhow, the situation resumed later and we proceeded with Slabhide. She's a beauty in the end, as we found out.

Down and down we went, and met our next obstacle. Barrier. The wall to bang our heads on.

Ozruk.

We tried, we fought and we... failed.

One or two tries were very close, and it was just the final punch that was lacking. We were certain as we logged out, that we could do it, easily, given the difficulty so far. Remembering how Lady Naz'jar was our nemesis earlier, Ozruk will be done next time.

All in all, the Three Stooges are certain that the difficulty of the instances as such is too easy. If three can handle Stonecore on their first visit there ever like this, how can five fail?

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Throne revisited

There they were again. The Three Stooges, in all their glory. Well, this time - again - in Stormwind, but dedicated to take on The Throne of the Tides again: this time the whole experience.

To get to the Vashj'ir - as well as any other Cataclysm high end area - is pretty easy. Just login, go to the island within Stormwind and pick your portal. WOOSH and you're there.

Except that when we are around, things are not exactly that simple. Oh, the WOOSH part was ok, we got to Vashj'ir area, but to get through the maelstrom in the Shimmering Expanse was another story. You see, we should have understood at that point that the game was somehow bugged. While Laiskajaakko, the tank and miner and bullsh blacksmith went around the area mining (it's amazing how empty Vashj'ir is nowadays, and how much there is to mine!), Förgelös was the first to enter the maelstrom...

"Wait! What?! I died!"

Silence.

"Yea, I died as I parked above that swirly-thingy. No reason!"

You must be kidding, bro.

"Wait. Killed by Exhaustion?!"

At this point Bishopgeorge tried to enter the maelstrom and noticed that a) he got the fatigue debuff and b) he didn't get in, right away at least. And concluded that you have to enter the darn thing exactly from the top of it, and smack in the middle, otherwise you get the fatigue debuff and - eventually - die.

I had to try it myself, and sure as hell, I was about to die before I got out of there and went for the white hole for entry. We then summoned the ill fated rogue among us, he would have gotten lost in the whirl otherwise...

The instance felt even easier than before. Main things that had changed were that we were all now level 83, so slightly on the high side for the normal levelling instance. But our undermanning tactic should have countered that. At the same time Förgelös had received some green rings (Alcite Band) and some other green crafted gear to compensate the outdated Northrend blues, still being below the gear score of the normal dungeon PUG you might find through the Dungeon Finder.

No, really. The trash felt almost as trashy as the ones in the WotLK instances. Crash in, trash them, move on. Very little need for any crowd control or care. The overall comment was that the instance felt sluggish and the characters abilities seemed to lack the punch they had a week ago.

This went on to Lady Naz'jar, whom we downed after several tries last time. This time - however - she went down on the first try and without breaking a sweat. Only one time pop of cooldowns from the tank, no real thing in there. Wo-hoot and rejoice.

Except that from this point things continued to go 'our' way.

The encounter didn't proc the conclusion and we couldn't initiate the cut scene nor open the gate to let us out. We tried this and that and some more, until we gave up and hearthed out. Only to find out that the instance was stuck in the moment and we had to reset it to proceed.

Rinse and repeat. This time it worked, we had not died once (to our surprise and disappointment) and we faced the Ulthok thingy.

All posh and full of ourselver we crashed in and...

Wiped. (Hooray, we died!)

It was a splash, bang, 50k+ in and out! We had gotten careless due to the instance being so easy till now. As we ran in and took Ulthok down without even blinking, we came painfully aware of the fact that the instance WAS too easy. To add to the injury, we killed Erunak's squid helm without a thought and helped Neptulon to defeat Ozumat, even though Förgelös decided to die and watch the fight from the other side of the gate again. Like I mentioned earlier, he has this cunning habit of giving the bosses some equal ground every now and then, and this time he decided to do this before the final of the instance.

His loss: as he was standing outside when Ozumat was vanguished, he didn't receive the achievement for the instance!

Due to the running from SW twice, we spent some time discussing how anti-climatic the finale of the instance was, very much a let down in both story and difficulty, and noting time and again that the instance was - in the end - very much too easy. Even though it's an entry instance for the WotLK skipping newcomers, it still doesn't pose any real challenge to a full group. Hecklers, if the three of us cleared the place in two tries, severely undermanned in the end, then a whole group should clear the place in their underwear!

To add insult to the injury, everyone else got a piece of gear or two except the tank, who is running around in WotLK purples and crafted Cataclysm greens. Which means that the gear composition of the group is pretty much in level with the required ones.

The decision was made to tackle Stonecore next. Let's see if we can two shot the first real instance.

I sincery hope not.

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Applying for the Throne

Ah. Another Thursday, an evening with brothers. In WoW.

The usual question opens up our discussion: "What shall we do tonight?"
As usual answer comes from all three at the same instance: "Conquer the World Well, I don't know. How about the Throne of Tides?"

Ok. Settled. The exceptional success of Blackrock Caverns was pushed aside and no-one had any interest in trekking back there so we started towards the Throne. Forgetting completely the greatly successful fiasco  entrance we had last time we started moving towards the whirling maelstrom leading to the entrance of the flashy instance.

Needless to say, we were all a bit nervous about the place: as the instances in Northrend had taught us to use our main skills to the max and forget about all the other skills completely, this seemed to be a new paradigm shift for all of us, for some more than for the others. Thankfully I had been keeping my fingers alert over the three manning of IC5 mans by using all skills in my bars more or less every now and then, making the tanking maybe a bit more hectic than typically, but still helping the healer to keep up with it all.

The trash mobs were a bit lackluster encounters, as be blew through them in a breeze. The only one causing us any thought were the Naz'jar Sentinels with their pools of goo, demanding us to move and kite the mob.

Finally it was there. Lady Naz'jar. Förgelös, our resident blabbermouth rogue pointed out that this was easier than last time because we hadn't died on the trash at all. How wrong that sentence was proven pretty soon after we took on Lady Naz'jar.

And again.

And again.

After a while we started to get frustrated because after each wipe we could see that we were progressing nicely. At the same time Förgelös and Bishopgeorge were discovering new skills to use, which actually helped to make the progress even further. It took about 7 wipes for our gear to dissipate and we had to take a break and visit a vendor. It was time to reconcile what we had learned.

You see, the problem wasn't the Geysir Lady Naz'jar puts in. Nor to cancel the Shock Blast, which the tank did routinely (/flex). Nor even the adds which spawned, because we pretty soon came up with a way to deal with them.

It was the cursed Plague Seed infection Lady Naz'jar placed on a random member. Cursed damage over time which put too much strain on healer.

(To be honest, I'm fooling myself: they were all pains to begin with, but we learned to cope with them. The infection was something we couldn't do a thing about. Or at least we didn't find a way to avoid it.)

From the tank point of view, the fight is simple and nicely multi-faceted in threesome. First it's Lady Naz'jar, solo tanking duty with moving the boss away from the Geysir swirls on the floor and interrupting the Shock Blasts every now and then. In this part there are no cooldowns needed: it's a simple tank, interrupt, move encounter. But at 60% she summons two Naz'jar Spellsingers and one Sentinel to deal with the intruders - us - and that's when things get tricky. Not for the tank in a full group, naturally, but in this threesome. You see, we do not have the luxury of crowd control at this point: the rogue doesn't get in fast enough to sap any of them. We had to come up with another strategy...

My first idea was to have Förgelös kill first Spellsinger, Bishopgeorge to fear the Sentinel and Laiskajaakko take the second Spellsinger. It was discarded at first as being too messy and too slow to activate. At one point it occured to Bishopgeorge (who had been practising the skill on the trash already) that he could Mind Control the Sentinel. It was tricky, as the Mind Control cast time aggroed Sentinel on him.

The funny part of it was that it worked. It worked well in fact, but it required inventive use of cooldowns on the tanks side to aid the healing during the time of the Mind Control - which had the additional bonus of replenishing Bishopgeorge's mana!

As we returned from the repairs, everyone had done some shopping, too: we were lacking buff foods, every one of us, so the added boost of food in the cycle made things even more even. With all the buffs I found out that my tank's health rose above 80k!

And off we went and wiped time an again, every time getting closer and closer. I even commented to the guild chat that Lady Naz'jar was our new Scourgelord Tyrannus: a fight we just didn't get through.

In the end the fight turned out to be a fascinating one. Sans the Lady Naz'jar spank and tank, the adds formed to the following pattern:
- Adds spawn, tank picks up one Spellsinger, dps another.
- After initializing the aggro on the first Spellsinger, tank takes aggro of the other Spellsinger too (Heroic Throw ftw.) and taunts the Sentinel = All three mobs on tank.
- Tank hits a required cooldown (Shield Wall if in near 'full' health, Last Stand and Enraged Regeneration added if below)
- Healer puts a HoT on tank and
- Mind Controls the Sentinel
- Proceed to pounce the Spellsinger still up to pulp
- If time, beat the Sentinel down.

And at that point Lady Naz'jar would come out. Over the fight you can damage Lady Naz'jar with throwing a Heroic Throw on her (also shooting and thrown weapons work, casts... I'm not sure, we didn't have time).

If we were lucky, as we most certainly usually are not, Sentinel was down. If not, I had to tank them both till healed and Bishop would take the Sentinel again: the increased dps was a boon in the mix, really.

Before the last fight I decided to make some adjustments to my gear, though: off with the Cataclysm greens in some spots and in with the tanking purples from WotLK with more dodge and avoidance. Exchanging 5000 hp and some 50 armour with decent chunk of avoidance in general might have an impact.

It did. The amount of incoming damage reduced dramatically and the fight was on.

In the end she went down. It was one of those silent moments, only Förgelös stating from somewhere there "Did we really get her down? What happened? Wait, did I miss something?" and cheers.

It took us about three and half an hours from zero to hero, to come up with a strategy and execution to reach this.

The rest of the instance seemed bland: the middle boss after Naz'jar was a weak exercise, and didn't even require cooldowns (popped them twice in Lady and available even more). The headhugger... Sufficient to say that Förgelös' daggers had gotten a bit beaten on Lady Naz'jar, so one of the broke before the headhugger and another in the fight. (He's always trying to give the bosses an upper hand for some reason). Still we one shot it.

As we entered Neptulon's chambers, our gear was pretty wasted. Förgelös had his old item lv200 daggers on him, almost broken, Laiskajaakko was more or less yellow on the damage screen and all. Still we had over-exceeded our expectations manyfold: It was our first time in the instance and we made it to the final boss!

The last fight was epic, too, as we fought well, hard and till the last drop of muck.

What a night. What a bunch.

Next time we will claim the throne!!
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The Three rode to... success?!

"What shall we do tonight, Brains?"
"The same as every night, Pinky. Conquer the world."

Not a very bad comparison there, really, when you think of the bottom line of Pinky and Brain versus The Three Stooges (in the sense discussed in this blog, aka. the adventures of three misguided brothers in WoW): both start with grandeur ideas of conquest and glory, only to fail miserably in trying.

Gee that sounds great condensed that way.

The start was similar last night. "What shall we do tonight?", a common question heard from three players. Not simultaneously, naturally, as we logged in at a bit different times and - naturally - didn't know someone had already gone there. After two different discussions we decided to take on the formerly impossible Blackrock Caverns.

All except Bishopgeorge being at lv82 (that bugger had dug himself to 83 via Archeology), we slightly over levelled the instance. Despite of that, we had visited the place only once and then resorted to the LFD to get us at least a feel of the place; an experiment that left us with very negative view of our possibilities to actually finish the instance at all. All those new - to us at least - mechanics and things left us a bit dumbfounded. The encounters include interesting and different mechanics than anything we've seen so far (except for Laiskajaakko with his 'extensive experience' in ICC raids...), so we felt a bit off to even be there.

First was Rom'Ogg the Bonecrusher. Had the Tank kept his cool, we wouldn't have pulled that fellow while cleaning the trash away from the area. To add to the pain, the darn shackles got somehow inside the mob itself, making it effectively impossible to target! Not even tabbing showed the shackles, so... Oh, we wiped.

The second try was perfect show of execution: Rom'Ogg went down even with one cultist picking on us on the run. "RAZZ SMASH!!"

I started to wonder what the heck had happened to the group when we cleaned the trash from Rom'Ogg to Corla: I could pull whole groups of four and they would go down without us even breaking a sweat? Was it really all about new daggers Förgelös had acquired the last time or what?

But Corla, Herald of Twilight, with her Evolution rays... Mind you, this is the second time we even visited the instance, and already the pressure was mounting. How to handle the two rays with three players so that we could a)tank, b)spank and c)heal effectively over the fight. The solution was to have Bishopgeorge on one ray, tank Laiskajaakko on the second and our resident town fool dps dance the night away backstabbing the Herald.

All fine and dandy, except for a slight bit of lack in communication, which lead to Evolution of Bishopgeorge, an immense damage spike on Förgelös and effective wipe as Laiskajaakko was swat on the floor.

Back to the execution part: everyone watch their own cooldowns and buffs, and not listen to anyone else giving any sort of comments on them.

Corla went down without the slightest problem.


There was silence.


Some more silence.

"Now that was awesome."

And the congratulations and comments started flowing. We downed Corla, Herald of Twilight on our third try as trio, on our second visit to the whole instance, without the help of any darn strategy guides!

Full of ourselves and Bishopgeorge grasping his new Baton we went on to Karsh Steelbender. The flame elementals were tricky due to the quicksilver adds they heat up, but nothing serious. As customary, you have to wipe to learn the basics, so we wiped on Karsh because one darn stupid tank didn't move him out of the flames promptly enough.

Like Corla, the second time was impeccable performance: like watching a movie. Quite astonishing.

The corehounds were just pushovers, really, nothing to comment, and we really descended hard on the Ascendant Lord Obsidius with his two adds and role switching.

We were exhausted, exhilariated, excited and really proud of ourselves. Three manned Blackrock Caverns on our second visit! We didn't manage that on Forge of Souls, despite the fact that it was more simple and straightforward, we had better gear related to the instance and we knew the instance better.

The conclusion was, that even though Blackrock Caverns has more interesting mechanics and a bit more demanding bosses, it was too easy for comfort.

So we had to take beating to get us back to the ground, and to the Throne of the Tides we went.

Oh, yes, that felt like home again: even trash requires some crowd control, which we are short of. And at least the initial boss, Lady Naz'jar, requires some increased dps to get through the adds in time before the fat lady sings again.

Needless to say, we wiped once and again and after the third time we decided it was time to rest and reconcile what we had learned.

All in all, a fantastic evening, loads of laughs and glorious "WTF just killed us all?! 30k OVERKILL?!" moments. Something to forget before we ride again.

Seriously.

C out

PS. Just a thought: if we three man the instances and are in a same guild, shouldn't the run be a full guild run?
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The truth comes out of an infants mouth (YAWP)

Not exactly an infant, naturally, but a small kid. In this case my youngest son, 9 years, who got the luxury of playing his DK on Sunday while I was first having a nice jog and then a long walkie with one of the dogs.

His DK was lv60 when we got his UI set up and I left. When I returned half an hour later, he had gotten almost one level more, without problems in the quests and was already stating that the game feels easy. After another hour and a half the DK was lv62, my son had needed help with only two quests and he was convinced that the game was easier, his unholy DK was a brutal killing machine and the mobs in Hellfire Peninsula gave more exp than earlier.

Who am I to agree? The truth in this case came from the mouth of a young gamer who knows neigh English, plays a game which he shouldn't even touch and who has earlier - before patch 4.0.1. - been suffering from utter difficulties with the levelling process.

I also confess that I did the unthinkable and installed Carbonite once again. Only to rationalize my Loremaster project, that is. And I have to say I was very, very pleasantly surprised after I got it running on my machine. Gone is the heavy and straining memory usage, the addon works fluidly and the new additions are pretty nice, too. Partly with the help of it I finished the Grizzly Hills loremaster part in a breeze, and still had time to read the quests.

Next stop Zul'Drak and then it's all Old World till either I finish the Loremaster or Cataclysm hits. I have already made a decision that I will queue for randoms only as a dps on my warrior, as this gives me a bit time to do quests on the side. I did tank only one boss over the weekend, all the rest of the few randoms I was dps.

Like someone commented earlier in Twitter: Why bother with the gearing if I'm not raiding?

C out
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Three again

The patch still haunts me. Sure Auctioneer got an upgrade, but for some reason it's not working on me, so I have to install it anew. Out with the bad air, in with the good.

So the Three Stooges rode again. First it was guiding Bishopgeorge, our resident evil healer, with his talents, gems, reforging and skills, so he could heal us. However, the action bars and their bindings seemed to cause more problems than anticipated, and the game client didn't help by freezing on him at awkward times.

However, after some half an hour or so we launched to our meeting with the Headless Horseman. I started repeating a phrase even before we went to the queue, that "do not touch the pumpkinhead, do not touch the pumpkinhead". Guess what? Both Förgelös and Bishopgeorge moused over the pumpkinhead, disconnecting almost simultanously and losing the first fight! Bishop had a faster boot, and could toss one heal before the flaming bastard unfortunate soul was released. So, we went for another.

Did I mention that Bishopgeorge should have checked his glyphs, too?

The second run. Random dps got frozen and I -the tank- too my chances: it worked for a change! Alas, the Headless Horseman was killed and everyone was rejoicing.

So Bishop checked his glyphs, made them work and off we went for a random.

Ahn'Kahet.

Nice, I thought, as I ran to the first mobs at the entrance. Weird, I thought as I was doing over 3k dps on the mobs. "Is this really a heroic?", asked Bishop, because it was too easy to heal for him. "Yes, it is", I had to reply. 

Even more weird was our threesome consensus when the DK putting out some decent 2.5k dps died in before the first boss. "This can't be heroic!", claimed Förgelös. "Yes it is, I queued us on heroic", I said with confidence. 

And she died on the boss. And on the first hulking giant.

And then I noticed that the hunter in the group didn't rise above my 2.7k dps at all.

Turned out that the DK had just dinged or had had very, very poor luck in the gear draw. His gearscore was around 1k after the instance. The hunter wasn't much better, gearwise, but he was obviously a smartass and alt of a raider: Bishopgeorge died more than once, and after the second death -as he was running in- this hunter a) started a vote to kick Bishop, reason: slack, and b) asked "could we go faster, gogo" while we were waiting for the healer.

Sufficient to say, I took that as a sign he wanted to see the whole instance, lead the group to Amanita and proved that it was a heroic. At one point Bishop got a revelation, message from above or just woke up, as he noticed that he didn't have Fade bound in the action bars, and thus was like a plum ripe for picking for the mobs in rampage...

The rest of the instance was pretty uneventful and goes without a note that either of these extra members in our team didn't as much as thank us.

We had to contemplate the situation for a while after the run, because this was pretty unheard of: we, the ones who go to die where others run amok laughing, were actually boosting -not only one, but two!- newly geared players, and only our healer got killed! What the heck is going on in the game!

Then we cleared FoS and PoS only to learn that it is possible to wipe still even though we are super elite boosting machines, and that there is something wrong with the ghost flight as the ghost griffons fly at the speed of a snail. Going uphill. On fine gravel.

As usual, the time passed too fast on the route, and as we started to bang the doors of Halls of Reflection it was way past our bedtime. "Our playtime always comes to end when we come this far", went Förgelös, quite a bit annoyed for the fact that he hadn't had a single upgrade the whole evening. Which was true, in fact. 

So we decided next time spend our whole evening trying to best the Halls of Reflection. Only because Scourgelord Tyrannus is our puppy and we are so good in the boosting.

Because we can!

C out

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Sidestepping again (YAWP)

First things first. Blizzard has decided to commemorate the attack on Pearl Harbour by releasing Cataclysm on it's 69th anniversary. I hope this is just coincidence and not a sign.

Anyhow, the weekend. I spent playing this and that, for example a great night of going through old Vanilla instance Molten Core, Blackwing Lair and Ahn'Qiraj, but the main thing for me was that I finally got my unguilded crafter DK to ding 80. And noticed how the problems started right on the bat.

You see, with the quest blues and greens, I was smacking top dps in all the instances up till I dinged. After that, I feel like a slacker, not being able to even compete with the big guys. Funny part is, that even though my dk sucks in delivering, he's been just getting encouraging comments from the people I've ran heroics with. Mind you, HEROICS. I gently skipped normal 5mans alltogether.

Had I been tanking, I would have been scorned, called names and kicked from the groups. Like happened to that one pally trying to be a tank in better gear, wiping the group in the Gundrak. I stayed, with gear score below 2.5k, where as he left with his score of 5+k. Go figure.

So thus far my experience with levelling - or gearing a toon through 5mans - has been such that a melee dps is the one most easiest left alone in the instances. Tanks are under the most scrutiny, high above healers which in turn are high above all dps.

I think I start doing IC5hc's with my tank as dps. I wouldn't need to talk to anyone, just hang around and deliver. No more stress nor waiting for the one less fortunate soul who decides to do something stupid for which the tank gets the blame in the end for not saving their sorry butts.

One other thing about this DK. The first instance I applied to as newly dinged lv80 was Coren Direbrew. Ques what happened? He got both mounts on the first try. My other toons do not have the mounts as of yet. Sucks to be me.

On the other hand, I have checked the new talent builds through WoWtal.com and I think I've found builds for my tank and his dps as well as my spriest. Of course the cookie cutter talent builds will come in no time, but as far as I can see the 'new' talent system is much easier to handle and is less prone to gimping your toon completely with 'bad' choices. The PvP talents stand easily out of the trees and are in some cases more a question of choice rather than crucial things. The main talents are still there, with the characteristics.

Last but not least. Last night. Guild 5man achievement runs. With my spriest. Great big fun. For example, it took us at least 15 impales in Gundrak before we got the Share the Love achievement. Zombiefest was a blast and no one died. Pupunen still has a lot to fill for the Glory of Hero meta, but then again, so does Laiskajaakko, my warrior. Not to speak about that newbie dk.

So I have again sidestepped from my tank. Shame on me. Have to correct that soon, as the rest of the guild seems to be smacking LK weekly now. Kingslayers everywhere, except in my roster.

But hey, I still have almost 2 months to go!
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A night at the IC5-mans

Ah, well, the brotherly love again. We decided to tackle the Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron and if there was time before the sandman insisted upon his appointment, we would try Halls of Reflection just a bit.

To be honest, we did splendidly. The initial start resulted the death of our dps and healing only because one particular tank had forgotten to set the difficulty to normal instead of the former LFD PUG heroic. This corrected, Forge of Souls was a bliss: fast, fun, furious and sadly non-rewarding experience. All drops were mail or caster weapons, so Förgelös, our resident dps, still hits like a teddybear with his lv70 daggers.

Pit of Saron proved to be as much a lackluster considering the loot. The same pattern repeated itself, only mail and caster stuff, nothing for the poor rogue. Tank and healer are already so above the gear level even on their secondary specs that the disenchanting department made a good work this evening.

Our only real miscommunication blunder happened after Krick/Ick. Whereas I, the tank magnifique, remained to examine the carcass of the downed opponent, the clever duo of healer and dps mounted their trusty mounts and dashed the road uphill, triggering the incoming mobs. Tank was effectively separated from the rest of the team...

I did what a good tank always do. I made sure that if I go down, everyone else goes down. I mounted my trusty ram and dashed through the mobs to the group, pulling ten obnoxious vrykuls behind with me to their feet. Needless to say that the fight was pretty short and one sided.

After that, the rest of the instance was pretty uneventful. Even our former 'scourge', Scourgelord Tyrannus, proved to be nothing more than a bag of big words and boring promises, and we cleared the instance without any 'real' wipes: the one with the vrykuls doesn't count.

All in all, our final conclusion was that our group has the worst tank ever, poor healer and darn amazing dps.

None of which is true, really.
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A bit better

Oh my.

I have gone through a grinder and I presume I'm still at one piece. Lack of practise shows -and feels- deep in my head. And partly in my corpse body, too.

You see, last night was the raid night and the guild went to Ulduar 25 for a change. I have decided to give this kind of life a shot and see what the cards hold for me. Staying up late is just a minor repercussion compared to this raging hyperactivity my mind is experiencing. It goes along the lines:
- Did I execute the right skill on that fight?
- Was that really the right decision based on the info I had then, because it sure as hell isn't when I'm looking at it now?
- How could I do it like that?
- What can I do to learn that other thing better?
And so on.

Most of the time I was in my protection spec and in defensive stance (mental note: work out the key layout for prot spec-battle stance!). In couple of fights I had my dps spec and gear on (mental note: badge gear upgrades and practise on this set!), and I even got to tank some fights (mental note: streamline keybinds, pay attention to UI layout, too).

I can see the lure of the dark side raiding, though, a bit more clear now. In ICC25 my computer's performance is too low for the playing to be responsive and controllable enough, but in Ulduar... I could do something and feel I was working with the team and for the team. It was not constantly guessing where I should be, if that attack landed or if I stepped away or in the goo.

This time I had my flasks, I had my foods and I was more prepared and tweaked up. The beginning feels always easier when the encounter is something you know at least adequately, like Flame Leviathan and XT002, latter of which happened to be the last weeks weekly which I tanked succesfully, btw. So tanking the Life Sparks in that encounter should have been easy, but honestly speaking I didn't even remember where they spawned originally! Once I got the grasp of it (thanks to everyone patching my misses) I felt I did it quite properly, missing one which really bugs me (mental note: mocking blow still exists if taunt is on cd).

The first wipe we faced was that with Auriaya and her kittens, but that was because we wanted the achievement and really weren't trying hard enough. And I was the first to die because I just didn't pay attention to my cooldowns just there and then. The second run went smoothly as if everyone had been just woken up.

Kologarn was a blast as the second tank of the colossus himself, even though I didn't find the debuff showing on my screen anywhere (it's on the left side in the middle you idiot! You just put it there SO YOU WOULDN'T MISS IT!!! :P ) so the taunt rotation went a bit awry. But it worked anyhow.

Hodir was our second -and final- wipe, as we tried to go for the heroic one with all sorts of achievements on the way. For this one I changed to my arms/dps set, and boy, was I lost (mental note: dummy): the buttons just were so WRONG! No shield slam, no revenge... Hello, you're holding a two-hander! I suppose I do better damage with my current prot set than with my dps set, so I decided to go with that after this fight. The logs will tell me if I'm correct, but anyhow my dps set requires some badge love. I had even a blue trinket in there, that should tell something!

The only fight I'm really disappointed with was the one with Mimiron. You see, this was the only fight along with Hodir in which my screen froze to ICC25 kind of state, and this resulted a pretty quick demise in the first  Plasma Blast. I think I was one shotted. Never the less, I followed through the whole fight with my face buried beneath Mimiron himself, enjoying the view and admiring the scenery. Just like I'm used to when we're going through content undermanned with my brothers, mind you, so it made me feel so warm and fuzzy inside...

All in all I now understand why Ulduar is referred as being beautiful and well thought instance. Granted my experience of raid instances comes down to ICC25 (being laggy as hell for me), I still loved the feeling of space, epicness and completeness of the place. It has much in common with the scenery and feel of Karazhan in a way, having something new to see behind every corner and imaginative visions here and there. Also there are some great references to Uldaman and other old world instances, which really made me smile on the way.

Now, the next step is to get out of this self-doubt and see what I learned. Now that is a challenge of epic proportions!
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I messed up my good impression (YAWP)

by Copra


They say that you can make a good first impression only once. I had my chance and I blew it, really.

You see, I got myself to enter into the Saturday raid and I made a promise to myself to be prepared. Like all good plans, it was ruined by bad luck and bad execution.

First of all, I took upon the preparations in a hurry and by accident put the flasks meant for my warrior on sale. I was to check my gemming before I enter the raid, but was sucked into a living hell of a Stratholme and couldn't leave that be.

And I noticed the lack of flasks when the raid leader did his check...

Then the actual hell began. Like I've told earlier, my computer handles the 25 mans very badly: my fps dropped to 2 on Marrowgar, making it next to impossible with my experience in the encounter to avoid everything. No problem, though, as the other two were pro's and I learned that one of them has the same issue with the encounters. Though it never shows in his performance due to long learning. Which I lack naturally.

Marrowgar was just the initiation rite for the lower depths of hell. My heart sinked when I had to change to and fro between dps and tanking, as I noticed at one point that my action bars had gotten messed up. I was supposed to dps, I was in battle stance (my secondary spec is Arms) but my bar was lacking the critical skills! No time to switch anything in the heat of the battle, but I learned later that... I had been in my protection spec all along...

Now the logs are a mess on my part: they'll show me being is protection spec on fights I was dpsing and I fear it's the other way around on some other fight.

I think all this comes down to two things. Trying too hard and leaving things to the last possible minute.

Let me tell you something: I wasn't pleased on my performance, my gems nor my preparation. I feel miserable enough without the motivational message from the tank officer, which explained in detail what I had done, what I hadn't done and what I should have done. However I've taken everything under consideration and I'll be more prepared next time, if I'm ever allowed to join again...

Raiding is really fun. /cry
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The Three conquered all

by Copra


Another Thursday evening, the evening for the Three Stooges to stand up against unbeatable odds. And get beaten the heck out of them in doing it.

That's the general idea of our brotherly Thursdays and this one was no special. One random heroic to begin with (smooth and crispy Utgarde Pinnacle) followed by Icecrown instances. Three against the odds designed for five.

We like to give the opponents an advantage, you know.

So we went from the beginning. Forge of Souls. Bishopgeorge decided to give the instance the advantage of having his keybinds being unlocked. This did cause a wipe on trash (aye, on this gear and knowledge level, it's just appalling :D) but we downed the bosses one by one with no real problems. The Devourer of Souls was a kind of "one man standing" in the end, but FoS was a nice distraction. Lots of unnecessary movement, strange mantras being recited by Förgelös who is trying to learn to use his Trick of Trades and one hand miracle working on my part.

Pit of Saron. Off we went like the current modus operandi states, riding on our high horses past the initial introduction of our main target, Scourgelord Tyrannus. Where the tanking me and the dps'ing Förgelös circumvented all the additional trash, decided our residen healer, mister Bishopgeorge, give the instance an upper hand again by leading a group of mobs to our combat zone. Thanks to that, we had a very pleasant bloodbath and survived the hilarious onslaught of pixelated carnage.

Forgemaster Garfrost was just a tad short of being a let down. You see, I had the Permafrost debuff at around level 30 all the way, only resetting it twice over the course of the encounter. It took a while, but it was over just around the time we all started to worry if we would make it.

Krick and Ick. Now this bugger is really a bugger. For some reason it seems that this fight is our Achilles heel in many ways, but not because of the movement part. Oh, no, the movement is ok, the stopping to hit is the bugger: we gain so much momentum -each one of us- that we just simply keep running when the running part is over. And we always seem to manage to reset the darn boss in the middle of the battle. Like this time.

Then I have to admit that we resorted to the current modus operandi of avoiding the majority of the trash leading to the tunnel: mount up and run as far as you dare. Which usually leads you to the last pack of mobs before the entrance.

Like the mobs in the tunnel, the mob was a pushover. I heard my brothers yawn even though Bishop didn't even have his headset on. I on the other hand had fun, trying to learn to time my Spell Reflect right on the casters: the havoc it caused!

Finally, Scourgelord Tyrannus. The only boss in this set that tries to bore you with his monologue. Really... /yawn... boring, but the fight was a perfect example of dedication, sacrifice, selfless commitment and sheer dumb luck. The execution was perfect and when Tyrannus finally fell, he was the end of a series of very long boss fights in Pit of Saron. We prevailed and Tyrannus went down on the first try, even though we had had problems with him last two times we had visited him!

By the cost in repairs, Tyrannus has been the most expensive boss for us so far. But I fear that Halls of Reflection will best that and some more. You see, we got in and tried to see what it was like on three of us. I was the only one who had been in there before and I have tanked it only once with a good group of guildies.

We were severely under dps'd and even though my control over the incoming mobs was pretty good (ok, one or two got to hit the other two, maybe once or twice before I caught them), the sheer amount of damage was such that the healing had a bit of a problem there. And it didn't help that we had three waves on us at a time because we couldn't kill the buggers as fast as they came.

Result: The three stooges have a new challenge, a challenge for which everyone of us has to work on. I need more dps (I really need to check if I can get some str or haste on me), Förgelös has to get new set of daggers and attack power and Bishop... well, he just has to be.

All in all, one great night at the Icecrown instances.