3.43. Showtime!

The 25-Man Progression Team defeats The Twin Val'kyr in
under three minutes, earning "Salt and Pepper (25 Player)",
Tournament of Champions

The Definition of Insanity

Cheeseus had taken a bow and exited stage right. Upon his exit from DoD as raid leader, some significant hurdles remained. Omaric and Bretthew took control of our 25-Man progression team at a time when it was most critical for DoD. Only three meta achievements remained outstanding in our quest to complete Glory of the Ulduar Raider, but they were arguably the most difficult ones of the bunch. All eyes were on them as we returned to our instance locks that Sunday at the start of October 2009. How would they approach it? Would Omaric's voice impressions and Bretthew's chatty nature distract the team from focusing in on the most brutal of these final Ulduar achievements? Would the raid follow their direction, or get caught up in unrelated conversations as they began to wipe to trash? Did the boys have the capacity to keep the peace and identify problematic players, or were we headed into attempts that Blain warned me about years before; attempts where you repeat the same thing over and over, changing nothing yet expecting results. Would Omaric and Bretthew deliver? Or would they slowly drive us insane?

The lights dimmed, and the curtain went up on their first act.

For their first trick, Omaric and Bretthew drove the raid up through the Tournament of Champions and had us target a three-minute burn on The Twin Val'kyr. A month earlier, The Eh Team had knocked out "Salt and Pepper (10 Player)", so this achievement was a safe play for them. I casually suggested that they keep their strategy and opinions hidden away in officer chat. We needed to keep a handle on the perception that The Eh Team's influence was broadening in scope. Many of us had first-hand experience in performing the 10-Man version by this point, so it was common knowledge that "Salt and Pepper (10 Player)" was an order of magnitude easier to accomplish. Repeating this information to the twenty-five as a teaching device would have been a bad idea. That tactic could have been misinterpreted as "we beat it a month ago because we're better than you" -- a situation not so difficult to imagine in a game where the difficulty between 10 and 25 was blurring in the public eye every day.

After securing "Salt and Pepper (25 Player)", their next trick involved Mimiron. We were dodging mines, bursts of damage from mechanized guns, and making our way into phase three. Omaric directed the raid to leave an Assault Bot alive in an attempt to force Mimiron to destroy it with a rocket strike. As it turned out, I had an Assault Bot on me, and kited it around while Mimiron transitioned into his final phase, combining into a giant clockwork monstrosity. I scanned for the rocket blast targets being painted on the ground while the raid began to chip away at all three parts of Mimiron's body. I missed the first target by inches, but remained diligent, zooming my camera out and spinning it like a top, watching for new crosshairs to paint. Another showed up across the room and I made a mad dash for it, squinting as I prepared to mess up in some horrific fashion; the guild leader ever-confident in his abilities.

The Assault Bot tailing me sputtered, whirred, and fell backwards, while achievement spam lit up guild chat: "Not So Friendly Fire (25 Player)". We were clear to burn through Mimiron, and the steampunk Voltron soon sagged its shoulders as it ran out of power.

Their opening act was a success. The main event was yet to come.

DoD defeats Freya with all three Elders alive,
earning "Knock Knock Knock on Wood (25 Player)",
Ulduar

Knock Knock Knock

To say there was a lot going on would be an understatement.

Freya's adds made up the majority of our suffering. While Ancient Protector himself wasn't terribly oppressive (as the raid very quickly moved under mushrooms to evade the silence from Conservator's Grip), a random person would be selected for Nature's Fury, doing repeated damage to players in close proximity. If players were sharp, the Nature's Fury target would zip away from us in no time at all. It didn't always play out that way. The ring of Detonating Lashers were also not much fun. A warrior tank could deliver a Shockwave to AoE stun them, allowing the casters to chain into a massive shower of AoE damage, while we gained a safe distance from their explosives deaths.

It was a pity, then, that our warrior tank decided to become a druid.

Meanwhile, I had my own struggles to deal with. Snaplasher, Storm Lasher, and Ancient Water Elemental all spawned together, and required us to kill them within twelve seconds of one another. Yet, the "group up and AoE down" method wouldn't fly here, either. While Storm Lasher's chain lightning could be mitigated with stuns, Riskers was having a tough time of it on his own as the sole remaining rogue in progression. Ancient Water Elemental had a tendency to want to charge out in a random direction, and made it difficult to keep damage focused on him. As it turned out, both of these adds were my responsibility. Meanwhile, Snaplasher was kited away, its own damage growing as its health dropped. In 10-Man, the Snaplasher would eventually be frozen into position, affording the kiter a buffer of freedom. In 25-Man there was no such allowance. Poor timing on the part of the kiter would cause player death as Snaplasher's own life came to an end.

The deficiencies of modifying a 10-Man strategy for the 25 were starting to rear their ugly head, and the audience grew restless.

Mangetsu, along with his warlock officer Eacavissi, worked  in tandem to perfect an extended Shadowfury chain, which Turtleman helped augment with a Frost Nova tagged on the tail. This was our best bet to eliminate the threat from the ring of Detonating Lashers. Meanwhile, Bretthew, Omaric and I worked on our own system: Ikey-bear held Freya while Bretthew AoE taunted Snaplasher, Storm Lasher and Ancient Water Elemental. Without skipping a beat, Ikey would pull Freya back (as she was also subject to Bretthew's AoE taunt), while I gripped Storm Lasher and Ancient Water Elemental, facing them away and keeping tabs on Riskers so he was in range for stunlocks.

The baby steps slowly emerged over the course of the evening. The Detonating Lashers remained in place just a bit longer. Those with Nature's Fury moved away from the group a bit faster. The Snaplasher dealt far less fatal blows to random players in the raid. But it was grueling to perfect, and our attempts filled up the evening. Even when all looked good and we transitioned into the final phase, Freya still managed to play us, locking random players down with grasping roots, only to end their lives with the toss of spore-like bombs that we needed to avoid.

The worst part is when you feel like you have a phase down, only to be awakened to the brutal truth that you have absolutely no handle on what comes next -- and the work begins anew. In the days of Kael'thas Sunstrider, this sort of raid mentality was par for the course: entire weekends spent working on one phase, while four more waited in the wings. But now, in a new era of raiding where everything was a "pushover", getting a taste of what got us here was a bitter pill to swallow.

"Knock Knock Knock on Wood (25 Player)" eventually wrapped late that evening, in DoD's trademark famous last pull of the night. We sealed the deal eight minutes past our raid end time. Exhausted, we congratulated one another and retired for the night, replenishing our energy in preparation for the remaining two metas. The raid retired, rather. A guild leader's business, as they say, is often never done.

Jungard and Crasian go head-to-head in Recount as
the guild wraps up "Con-speed-atory (25 Player)",
Ulduar

An Axe to Grind

The decision on Shadowmourne still hadn't been made; a melee officer promotion hung in the balance. With two tanks now leading raids, melee lacked guidance -- a role formerly held by Cheeseus. I was lucky that talented players like Riskers were able to work through their own issues as he had on that evening's boss kill. But our guild needed to provide a better support mechanism than that. We weren't a true hardcore raiding guild; it was unfair to expect that every player could act as their own troubleshooter. It was our job to provide an official person in which to assign the responsibility. If we claimed to take players of all shapes and sizes (read: skill levels), we had an obligation to prevent them from impeding the work of our existing successful core. I needed a melee person that excelled to such a degree that they could not only keep their own shit straight, but had the capacity to clean up after other people's messes as well. Weighing the options on deck, two names rose to prominence.

First on this list was Crasian, the Eh Team's resident death knight who demolished the damage meters each night in our progression raids. Having climbed up to Elite rank, he was one of the primary drivers behind Descendants of Draenor's melee DPS being absurd throughout Wrath. Crasian was a likable guy, full of energy and carried with him a completionist mindset -- he was one of the first guild members to finish Glory of the Dungeon hero, earning a Red Proto-Drake in the process. Crasian had been sacrificing much of his spare time to help others knock out these heroic 5-man achievements, demonstrating that guild spirit I often looked for in people. Still, he was reasonably new to the guild, so his perceived selflessness had to be tempered carefully against other criteria. Crasian made a regular habit of checking in with me on the status of my decision regarding the legendary, and I assured him it was my number one priority. One thing was certain: putting Shadowmourne into his hands would secure his place in the #1 DPS spot for many months to come, and when I imagined how many heroic mode kills his boosted DPS would guarantee us, flashing images of golden achievement bars filled me with glee.

A second option existed, the yin to Crasian's yang. The warrior we called Jungard had been a steady source of high quality melee DPS since joining our 25-Man progression raid late in Mount Hyjal, way back in The Burning Crusade. Jungard was less of a show-boater than Crasian, but no less timid than the death knight when wrecking the meters. Jungard had recently helped grandfather his brother's guild into ours, augmenting the roster and adding another 10-Man team to the weekly clears. Jungard and I saw eye-to-eye on a good many things, and shared conversations over IM. He supported my changing guild structure as we moved from TBC to WotLK, and never once missed a raid he hadn't cleared with me before hand. Jungard was one of those few individuals that had never red flagged me once; never for a moment giving me a question to doubt his loyalty or honesty -- and with every bit of praise I showered on to him, he remained humble, thankful, and ready to prove himself worthy at the start of the next raid weekend. It stood to reason, then, that Jungard wielding a Shadowmourne in one hand and a Shadow's Edge in the other would be a force that few on Deathwing-US could threaten.

With my sights set on both Crasian and Jungard, the next quest in my log was clear to complete: Promote a New Melee Officer. It was time to schedule some interviews.

3.42. The Talking Cricket is Dead

Audio from the final minute
of DoD's first kill of Morogrim Tidewalker

The Fan Who Played

The warriors of Descendants of Draenor had a curious way of consistently leaving their mark.

By now, the stories of both Ater and Annihilation should be no secret, but their stories aren't a reflection of the only contribution warriors had on DoD. Many other names came and went, painting plate wearers in various degrees of both light and shade. Burburbur famously stepped away from a raid for a moment to shoot a raccoon off his porch. Abrinis once excused himself, proclaiming "a car just drove through my living room wall". Thangrave will be remembered as having looted every edged weapon out of Molten Core and Blackwing Lair. Darange was responsible for setting up the initial meet between The Final Cut and Descendants of Draenor; the interview that ultimately led to our assimilation of their guild, catalyzing our start in Molten Core. Rocraw pushed the front line during The Burning Crusade and helped drive our content until a failed relationship with another guildy took him out of the limelight. And who could forget Kurst, the officer that could never be. Even now, it looked liked another warrior (in spirit, at least) would once again take center stage: Omaric. Each warrior's mark either signified a bright or dark day for DoD. But it seemed to me that no warrior worked harder to change their particular mark than the one who called himself Taba. It was because of his unending effort to scrub his past that I struggled with the decision before me.

If you know someone that has a special knack of stretching out the phrase "come on...." as your team is about to score, much in the way one would use it while trying to start a stubborn lawnmower, then you have an idea of what role Taba played in DoD. Taba was one of those players; the kind of player that channeled the raid's impending victory into Ventrilo, building momentum with every last second. He was a player that felt the game, knew when we were closing in on the kill, could taste the sweet victory that loomed. If our raid leader was the team's coach, then Taba most certainly was its number-one fan. Taba would often jump into Vent and let me know about a commissioned piece of art he was having made up featuring major players in DoD's history -- the perfect example of a project a die-hard fan would take on. But how many fans get to play for the team? He was our own Tim "Ripper" Owens, a DoD enthusiast who got the chance to show us what he was made of, rising from his early days as a warrior in a monstrous guild, to leading the charge at the precipice of greatness. From the victory dance (in real-life) after acquiring Ashkandi off a fallen Nefarian, to holding the line of Murlocs as they swarmed in during Morogrim Tidewalker, Taba had played an integral role in DoD since the very early days of our raiding career.

My internal struggle, then, was the red flag. Or more appropriately, the fact that I had already swept it under the rug.

Bretthew and Omaric had an
"interesting" working relationship

Misguided Conscience

I moved past the little white lie about being hacked; Taba -- now Bretthew the paladin -- had come clean. He was back to reclaim his former glory and wipe the slate clean. The Eh Team had made him a core member of the group and through their efforts, had risen to glory on Deathwing-US as an unbeatable 10-Man team. Players graciously stepped aside to allow him into the 25-Man rotations so that he could begin to provide tanking support on a regular basis. Omaric, my choice to take up the mantle of raid leadership, had proposed Bretthew as his partner; dual raid leaders -- something we hadn't seen since the days of Ater and Blain. I desperately wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, yet my written rules on how to address red flags continued to glare back at me. Give me a reason to doubt your integrity, and a position of authority is off the table. Humans make mistakes, forgiveness was divine. But it didn't change what happened, and that trust he earned was wiped away in an instant. And my hard-and-fast rule said there would be no earning it back.

The evidence mounted that Bretthew was a changed man, fully absolved of his past. He wasn't languishing in denial, but rather was accepting of those events and put forth every ounce of effort to scrape that old mark off our history, and replace it with a new one. In the midst of my summer vacation, I logged on remotely to check in-game mail, only to see The Eh Team wrap up Glory of the Ulduar Raider, and in a huge spam of congratulatory cheers from the guild, another round of peer pressure was sent my way via whispers. C'mon! Just go ahead and promote Bretthew to Elite, already! He's earned it, hasn't he? Look how great the team is doing! They were right. So, in that moment, I gave the final member of The Eh Team a promotion to Elite. Bretthew had more than made up for any past injustices levied on me. Perhaps it was time to quit dwelling on the past.

It wasn't so much that I expected Bretthew to earn back my trust, but instead, that I didn't expect myself to be prepared to grant it.

So, I made the call. I smashed the cricket dead and agreed to Omaric's proposal, telling the two of them that I had no actual written rule about dual raid leaders for the time being. With the two of them in Vent, we worked through the ground rules. You must be unified in your approach. There can't be any public fighting between the two of you over a given strategy; take debates offline. You must back each other up at all costs, and sweep any personal differences of opinion aside until after the raid. Debates will breed dissent, and when the raiders start second-guessing you, they’ll begin to offer up their own two cents on how things should be done. That evening, we agreed to put an end to backseat raid leading, "It dies this day."

With new leadership taking the reins that weekend, a depressing task remained: seeing off the old blood.

The 25-Man progression team defeats Freya with two
Elders alive, earning "Knock Knock on Wood (25 Player)",
Ulduar

Cutting the Cheese

The conversation over IM that morning was as if nothing was changing. I sipped my coffee, reviewing some of my code at work, while the chat window filled with text from Cheeseus. He spoke of a math problem puzzling him, a hobby I'd since come to recognize as his means of sharing a nerdy passion among fellow gamers. Perhaps "solving for x" was his way of distracting himself from the more serious topic of his impending retirement from leading raids, a mantle he only held within the guild for one tier of content. Two weeks prior, he delivered the fatal blow: he was unable to pull himself out of the funk caused by a perception that we were failing. In his eyes, the blame rested solely on his shoulders. I made a concerted effort to convince him to reconsider, but I wasn't going to break my back over this upcoming changing of the guard. I'd lost far too many nights of sleep over the exit of high ranked players in my guild.

My expectations of guildies changed at the start of Wrath; I planned for players to leave. Player deficit was already in the budget before the first piece of loot ever dropped. Leadership held no get-out-of-jail-free-card in this respect. Even when my officers were solid, my ear was to the ground, listening for the threat of incoming change and grooming players as future replacements. Change begat change.

As we discussed the necessary changes to a race car's acceleration in order to match a new average speed, I began to zone out. My brain argued amongst itself, just as it had in dealing with the decision to accept Bretthew into a position of authority. The old, "pre-WotLK" me was struggling with his apparent denial of the situation. Why aren't you discussing your retirement? Don't you feel guilty about leaving the raid behind? Don't you have more work to do before this expansion ends? The new me kept it at bay. Quit dwelling. It isn't worth losing sleep over. He's made his bed. Omaric and Bretthew have a new show to put on. Business is business. That weekend would be Cheeseus' final raid as leader -- his last, great performance.

That evening, we managed to wrap up three more achievements, and although none of them were metas for Glory, one acted as a stepping stool to a needed meta. The first of these final badges under Chesseus' watch was "Must Deconstruct Faster (25 Player)", earned by dropping XT-002 in under 205 seconds -- just a tad under 3 ½ minutes. The second was "Rubble and Roll (25 Player)", forcing us to spawn twenty-five rubble minions from Kologarn's destroyed arms. The stepping stool achievement, which took us through the end of the evening, was "Knock Knock on Wood (25 Player)". This time around, the 25-Man progression team defeated Freya deep in her Conservatory of Life while being assisted by two Elders. Cheeseus opted to keep Stonebark and Ironbranch up, granting both Freya and her minions an additional 50% physical damage bonus. It was challenging but not oppressive...the real test would come later when the third Elder looped in an additional 50% nature damage to both Freya and her minions. Under those circumstances, blanketing the soft earth with a shower of AoE spells would ignite her adds, setting off a chain reaction that would blow the entire raid apart. It was an obstacle quickly approaching, just not one Cheeseus himself would have to deal with.

---

The raid wished Cheeseus well as the curtain drew to a close on the evening's performance. He shared with them that he wouldn't be too far away, watching their progress from the forums and popping into Ventrilo on occasion. He wouldn't be gone entirely, no...he wouldn't be that lucky. Our daily conversations would continue on to this very day, which was important -- because we still had one important topic to discuss...

...a topic I would not find out about until the end of Wrath of the Lich King.

3.26. Pants Tres Bien!

The 25-Man Progession team defeats Hodir,
earning "Heroic: I Have the Coolest Friends",
Ulduar

Oh, Dear

By the third weekend of raiding Ulduar, we were face-to-face with Hodir. The second of the four keepers, Hodir hid within a refrigerated tomb. An audience of NPCs stood before him, frozen into position -- a reminder of the bitter elements he wielded. Our task was to break the NPCs out of their icy prisons so that they could offer assistance to us in the defeat of their captor. Freeing the NPCs granted us buffs which would accelerate our execution of the frozen giant. We slowly led him around the circumference of the room and I traded off tanking as his Frozen Blows pummeled us. Other mechanics existed and were no less important: runic discs that indicated incoming icicles, the need to constantly move to prevent Biting Cold from stacking -- but freeing the NPCs was a decisive way to turn the tables in our favor.

Providing, of course, that our raiders made the breakout a priority.

Sowing chaos in Ventrilo was easy to do, thanks to the Flash Freeze mechanic. Everyone felt the need to communicate to the team that now was the time to get into the runic discs that lit the floor. Moments earlier, the discs were a death sentence, the destination of an incoming shower of icicles. Now, they were sanctuary, providing the only protection against the entire room's encasement into ice. And no matter how many times we'd remind players there was no need to call it out...they felt the need to call it out.

When raiders don't follow the strategy, you are filled with an urge to backseat raid lead. Like a nervous tick that you repeat subconsciously -- an unchecked addiction. It takes every ounce of energy to keep yourself from picking at the scab, because you know it won't heal...yet you continue to push your nail under the surface, over and over until the wound is raw. When Blain was my raid leader, he was very good at reminding me to stop. He took control of the situation, no matter how much it might offend me, and reminded me to shut the hell up. This isn't your job. You're not making things better. I'd snap back into reality, and apologize. I'd stop picking. For the moment.

In the absence of his familiar calls in Vent, I was on the receiving end. Everyone felt like they had to take on the responsibility of notifying the raid exactly when and wear to move. And of course, I wasn't the raid leader, so deferred to Cheeseus to handle. The good news was that Cheeseus and his merry men from Eh Team were already schooled on Hodir; moving appropriately was nearly instinctual for them. The 25-Man progression team saw them in action and learned quickly, proving that they were highly tuned raiders. The raiders did this because of the expectations we had set ahead of time. They knew to listen and follow directions...if they wanted any chance to return to the roster the following week.

Well, except for Ben, that is.

In his uniquely adorable fashion, Ben liked to play by his own rules. And even though Cheeseus gave Ben very specific instructions on execution priorities (frozen NPCs / players first, Hodir second), Ben liked to focus all of his damage into the boss, walking away from the kill with a nice record of top DPS. And, as is typical of players whose priority is a spell-rotation rather than the subtle details of ambient incoming damage, Ben fell victim to some falling ice and was killed. So, not only did he not break people out of ice as instructed, his own critically important "top DPS" was quickly 0 DPS, thanks to pushing up daisies while the rest of us dealt with the frost giant. Cheeseus was good at holding his tongue in the raid, but I'd be sure to hear about it over IM the next day.

---

After the excitement of another boss kill died down and the achievement of "Heroic: I Have The Coolest Friends" faded off of our screen, Neps began to solicit bids on the linked loot. One of the items, "Leggings of the Stoneweaver", were a pair of Mail Intellect/Spirit pants, intended for a Restoration Shaman. A few moments after bids started, Neps shot me a whisper.

"Divine is bidding on these."

Ah, God. What the Hell would a Paladin want with Mail Pants?

"He says they're still an upgrade from what he has."

I scanned the roster. Four Shamans, two of them Restoration. One of them...the Healing Officer Kelden.

"They really ought to go to a Shaman off-spec before a Pally, but whatever. If he insists on bidding..."

There was a bit more silence as Neps completed his whispers back to Divineseal, and then spoke in Vent, "Ok, counting down bids...3...2...1, winner is Divineseal."

Comes the laughter. Divine quickly sprung to defend his bid, "Hey, they're an upgrade! And you know...you can never tell when you might get an upgrade, right?"

I glanced down at officer chat.

[Officer][Dalans]: What an idiot.

The 25-Man Progression team poses after
defeating Freya in The Conservator of Life,
Ulduar

Attuned to Nature

We took our leave of that subzero prison, and made our way into a room that was everything Hodir's wasn't. Sunlight bled across a lush forest, pools of water and rich vegetation. The room bore a striking resemblance to Sholazar Basin and Un'goro Crater, known playing grounds of the Titans. It was in this chamber, dubbed The Conservatory of Life, that we'd face our third keeper, Freya. Like the others, Freya's good intentions had been corrupted by a evil presence deep in the crust of the earth. She planned to put a stop to our advances by leveraging her power over nature. We chose to chop down the three elders, deferring hard mode to another day.

Initially, Freya was untouchable, protected from damage by her "Attuned to Nature" stacks. As the fight progressed, she summoned Snaplashers, Storm Lashers, and Ancient Water Elementals, all of whom did not wish to be friends. As we worked through the kinks of her summoned soldiers, she lost stacks of her attunement buff -- eventually leaving her naked as a noob in the woods. That was the signal, and we burned her to the ground, keeping an eye out for any sprouting Blessings of Eonar; foilage that would heal her if left to grow unchecked. It only took a few attempts to get a feel for the craziness of the add tanking. Once we had that polished, Freya succumbed to the might of the 25-Man progression team. Three guardians down, one to go.

Neps began to take bids on Freya's loot, the first of which were tokens for the Tier 8 legs. One such token was the Legplates of the Wayward Conqueror: potential owners were Priests, Warlocks...and Paladins.

"Closing bids, 5...4...3...2...1," said Neps into Vent, "Winner: Divine".

Wow.

[Officer][Dalans]: Really?
[Officer][Cheeseus]: lol

The ability to exchange loot with players that were present when the loot dropped (for up to 24 hours) was a wonderful feature that Blizzard added to the game, to help us mediate some of this loot drama. Unfortunately, that feature wouldn't be implemented for another three months. So I said nothing, but only shook my head in disappointment, a gesture which ended up being completely lost on a person who was hundreds of miles away.

For a Paladin, he wasn't exactly demonstrating the best judgement.

Descendants of Draenor defeats Mimiron, wrapping
"Heroic: The Keepers of Ulduar",
Ulduar

Mimiron, Assemble!

At last, the pièce de résistance. As our third weekend in Ulduar neared its end, the raid took a trip deep into the heart of Ulduar. Our destination was so vastly remote and buried below the surface that we had to board an underground train just to get there. This location, an underground machinist's shop, bore immense pistons and gear cogs with teeth larger than any of us. Electrical currents lept across doorways as we moved into the central lab. We were tiny specs crawling across a cog in the machinations of some far more extraordinary contraption. This was The Spark of Imagination, home to the final of the four keepers of Ulduar, a clockwork gnome named Mimiron.

Mimiron was an intense and complex encounter, split into four different phases. In phase one, Mimiron commandeered a literal tank, a smaller version of Flame Leviathan. Our own figurative tanks had to control it in the center of Mimiron's lab, blowing cooldowns to survive Plasma Blast while avoiding ejected mines. Defeating this tank took us to phase two. A gatling gun emerged from the floor, pivoting and blasting us with no uniform pattern to speak of.  While healers struggled to keep up with the chaotic damage, Mimiron launched missiles from this gatling gun, painting targets of instant death on the ground. Phase three had Mimiron piloting a miniature aircraft. Safely out of melee, he would require a ranged DPS as a tank -- a throwback to old encounters like High King Maulgar, Illidari Council and Leotheras the Blind. The secret to grounding him came in the from of gravity cores which we farmed off his bot defenses.

Once the raid became accustomed to the nuances of all three of these phases, they would be tested one final time in a fourth phase, in which all three units would re-assemble into a single gigantic robot, employing all of the above mechanics against us at once. All three machines had to be killed again...and all three of them had to be destroyed within seconds of each other. Failing to do so meant each component repairing one another, whittling us away in the process.

I remembered back to similarly complex fights like Lady Vashj and Kael'thas and wondered how many nights of work we would need to put into Mimiron in order to execute a kill. I had my answer within the hour. 45 minutes before the scheduled end time for the Sunday evening raid, a broken and badly beaten 25-Man Progression team limped through the third and final attempt on Mimiron. With only 15 of us alive, the last bit of damage was poured evenly into all three parts of Mimiron's gigantic Voltron-style mech, and in one final moment, he twitched, shook, buzzed, and teetered over as his robotic components lost power. "Heroic: The Keepers of Ulduar" was complete, and after three weeks, we were 3/4ths of the way through the instance, earning ourselves another early end to the raid.

Hard mode is gonna suck on this one, I thought. And I couldn't wait.

---

"Hold on a second," said Neps as the cheering died down, "I think Divine's pants are in here somewhere."

Vent lit up with a round of laughter. The ping of a whisper notification caught my eye and I glanced down to my chat window:

[W From][Cheeseus]: We need to talk about Divine after the raid.

I chuckled.

[W To][Cheeseus]: About his supreme lack of sensitivity surrounding loot?
[W From][Cheeseus]: About the fact that he's 7th in healing.

Well. This was a bigger issue than I thought.

We'd only brought six healers to the raid.