naxx

We got our achievement for the Immortal on December 17th, when only four other guilds in the world had done it. (part of that is not having a laggy server, yes!)

It was pretty fun actually: we had someone disconnect a few times, and then disconnect on Thaddius — we were only saved by the quick thinking of our main tank, who told the raid “SHIFT RIGHT!” and amazingly everyone figured out what he meant in time.

Premonition apparently also had an exciting time, with a disconnect on Heigan (they healed him through it) and then one on Sapphiron just as Ice Tombs were going out — Guardian Spirit to the rescue.

I’ve since heard of guilds — quite good guilds — failing at it simply because their strats aren’t really *safe*, they merely work. But when it comes to having no deaths, do you really want to gamble on that not being the week that Sapphiron decides to put all iceblocks on one side?

I put together a guide to the “safest” Naxxramas raid that I could in response:

http://strats.fusion-guild.org/index.php/TheImmortal

sartharion, Tactics, three drakes

I finished up the video of our third Sartharion kill with three drakes up (so long! ‘Sarth3D’ is so much better) today. It seems to be getting great reviews, which is always heartening: it took at least 50 hours to produce. It even got featured on Warcraftmovies.com as their movie of the day.

Warcraft Movies: Sarth25 + 3: A Tutorial

And, of course, a strat page to go with it:

FuStrats - Sarth3D

There’s some things the movie just doesn’t cover well enough due to the medium. The strat page also contains a complete transcript of the movie for anyone hard of hearing or who just wants the reference.

Leadership, Recruitment

Too many guilds act like the world already knows who they are and how awesome they are, and the only reason everyone isn’t pounding on the door to get in is because they haven’t been told “hey, we’re looking for your class!”

Back in my EverQuest days, we had a guild below us in progression called Dark Conquest.  The joke in my guild was that their advertising slogan should read: “Do you breathe and play EverQuest?  Then join Dark Conquest!” click here to read entire article

Recruitment, Traits

Watching a movie made by an acquaintance’s guild today, I was struck by the utter lack of urgency most of their players showed when in a fight.  They would switch off the boss to DPS the adds, but they took their time about it.  If they were repositioning, they’d overshoot, then back up, then adjust again.  I saw keyboard turners.  I saw spell clickers.

This is the extreme version, of course, but I’ve seen it in every guild I’ve been in to one degree or another.  It’s often referred to, in DPS, as “pressing ‘2′ harder”, but that really misses the fundamental problem.

Today I was thinking a lot about our process of learning Sarth3D as Trouble and I were reviewing the notes going into his post on “How We Learned Sarth3D”, and I remembered how much that same urgency mattered when learning Sarth.  There wasn’t space to not switch targets instantly, or to pause in your DPS while moving from a wave, or to make extra movements just to spread out.

It’s not often a trait listed when you’re thinking about what qualities you value in your raiders, but I believe it’s a key one.