So long Disciples, and thanks for all the fish.

It's time guys.  The Disciples of Thrall made it almost 2 years as a guild, but our time has drawn to a close.  Very soon I will be disbanding the guild, and for good reasons.  "WHAT?  WTF! WHY DISBAND?!?"  I can understand why you might take issue with this decision, but I have thought it out and it is the only option.

• Guild membership has dwindled, and during hiatus more members left and we were unable to bring new ones to the forefront.
• I could pass leadership on to someone else, but of those I trust to lead the guild no one has wanted the responsibility (and I can't blame them for that).
• I don't want to see our guild languish in the way I've seen other guilds languish.  It's depressing, and it strikes a contrast to why we made the guild in the first place, to play and enjoy the game as a close knit group.

Have you ever had to break up with someone?  Sometimes its not easy.  You think, "Ive been at this with him/her for years, and now all that time is wasted."  The reality is that even though you aren't going to stay with that person you got a lot of life experience and memories along the way, and when you know it's time, it's time.  Here is your DoT end of days faq:

Q.) What about the guild bank?
A.) Over the next few days I will be liquidating guild assets into gold as much as possible.  Those that have a claim to that gold and have contributed need only send me an email, but with people logging on so sparatically  there is no way for me to be diplomatic about it.

Q.)  Where the fuck are you going?  Where am I supposed to go?
A.)  In the short term I don't know.  I may server hop a bit, but I honestly don't have alot of interest in playing WoW at the moment.  I will certainly give SWTOR a shot when it comes out, and would love to join a guild with you guys (Sith side of course) but my days of guild leadership are behind me.  Nothing saying I won't come back to wow if I find it calling me, or if the next xpac is the shit.  But, you never know.

Q.)  What about the vent server?
A.)  I will probably maintain the vent server until the end of the year, and I will post a paypal link for anyone that would like to contribute to it continuing.  Its pretty cheap, like 45 bucks a year or something like that.

Final thoughts from Thall's Hand,

Im going to miss all of you guys, Sezmra, Marty, Darkie-poo, Rumblerz, Jimbo, Glenda, Cimmers, Bhoardy-Bhoard, Moo, Graal,  and yes even Kyle  (Please don;t be upset if I forgot anyone, theres too fucking many of you.  You guys made it worth it, and it's with you in mind that I end it.  Stay in touch, stay sweet, and Lok'Tar!


Much Love,

Kay


And one of my favorite moments:

Remnants of the Horde

Herro Dishiplz,

Just wanted to let everyone know that we started a sister guild on Rift.  Alot of us either bought the game or are on trial accounts and are currently on shard Faeblight (shards are the same things as realms on wow, cute right?).  We rolled Defiance, between the two factions Defiance isn't necessarily "Hordish", but the Guardian faction is 100% "Alliancy".  The guild name is <Remnants of the Horde> and of course all current guildies are welcome to join.  At this point Rift is more of a pleasant distraction from WoW than a replacement.  I encourage everyone to give it a try and see how they like it.  We will still be raiding on Tuesdays wowside and I expect interest to flip back over to WoW when 4.2 drops.  As for Rift?  Dark made a Warrior named Darkranos, I made a Hunter named Kaylith, and Lauri made a healer named Sezmra.  The more it changes the more it remains the same, lol.

Anyhoo, please pass any questions along to my secretary, or send a carrier pigeon into the air when the DoT leer jet is flying overhead.  Speaking of lightsabers:

Lol.  Nerds.


 

Simmer Down Now. Simmer.

1 year, 7 months.  Thats how long the mighty DoT has been in existence.  DoT has always been a casual guild and we have always valued friendship over progression.  I don't want to see that change.  We lost Bhoard recently to burn-out.  He may come back, he might not.  I hold no blame against Bhoard and neither should any of you.  We play this game to have fun.  Shit, we pay monthly for the privilege.  If the game becomes more of a responsibility or a chore rather than fun, why play?

I feel some of this is my fault.  We have been progression raiding for a while now.  This is fine as long as people have fun doing it, however, I think we have been pushing ourselves too hard.  As I said in raid last night, DoT is moving to raids 1 night a week.  We had a fairly crappy run last night, multiple wipes, random shit that we couldn't predict.  We also had fun.  Jimbo was back, we got to raid with Tom after a long absence, Marty was in rare form.  I had fun, I had laughs.

I love you guys and this guild, and I don't ever want anyone to feel like they have to show up, even though they don't want to play.  Im making you guys the following promises:

1. I will never scold you or hound you for not playing or quiting wow.  I really do like all of you guys and I want you to be doing what you want to be doing with your time.
2. We will raid as often as general consensus warrants it.  We will be on 1 night a week for a while, when 4.2 comes out that may change, it may not.  No pressure.
3. If someone comes into the guild and sows conflict they will be removed.  I don't care if they can tank in cloth gear or heal an entire raid while chilling in Org.  If conflict arises and I don't know about it you can always come to me and it can be confidential if you wish.

Last Note from Thrall's Hand


If you guys have comments or questions on the above, let me know.  I just don't want anyone to turn up like this guy:

                                          -Kay

Nefarian Night DoT Style:

So tonight is the first run on Nefarian, I thought it would be nice to have a visual aid as we go.  We will probably change up the strategy several times, but this should serve as a good starting point.  I'm not explaining the whole fight here, its mostly just placement.

Phase 1A:

 The fight will start with Darktholumew grabbing Ony "X" by the face and bringing her to the point and the position shown here.  Betholoumew will be tanking Nef "Skull" on the opposite side.  I will be kiting adds "Stars" until they die, at which point I will join the dps group.

Phase 1B:

When Ony does Lightning Disharge Dark will move her so the tail points at the dps group.  At these intervals the sides of Ony are bad places to be.  How we deal with this positioning may change from what I made here, but the idea remains the same.  Sides of Ony = Bad.  The main idea is to get Ony to about 5-10% and then switch to Nef and drop his health to 80% before killing her.

Phase 2:

As soon as Ony dies the fight turns into a bad Indianna Jones rip off.  The floor fills with hot molten magma.  Each of us will retreat to our special pillar which will be painted with purple, blue, or yellow.  (We will assign teams later.)  There will be "Chromatic Prototypes" at each pillar.  We will have to interrupt each cast of "Fire Nova".  We can continue to dps Nef during this time, but only if the healers can handle it.  Also, we need to make sure the Prototypes die at the same time (or thereabouts) so we don't have them running around in phase 3.  When Ony is close to dying in phase 1, be moving to your pillar if you can.


Phase 3:

Same as phase 1, with the following changes:

• Dark will be kiting the adds.
• Rumbler is all time Nef, and her main responsibility is making sure to keep Nef's breath away from adds, and coordinating with Dark to make sure he has enough room to kite them.
• Dps is going to be FUCKING BURNING!  Cooldowns, Bloodlust, dogs and cats having sex!  Also, DPS and healers are responsible to stay out of the way of breath and tail lash.
• Graal's "sigh" intervals will be increased.

I hope this helps us tonight.  Making these maps was time consuming, but i'll be glad to do it again if it helps us down a boss.  Lemme know if you think this was helpful.

Pah Pah Pah Progression?!?!

So the mighty mighty DoT had quite the week for progression.  Makes me wish we had a 3rd day to raid.  Atramedes and Chimaeron are regarded as some of the harder fights in Cataclysm as a whole and I feel like we got our learn on fairly quickly with each of them.  Chimaeron in particular was most impressive to me.  90% of the team had not seen the fight and we learned it, applied it, and killed it in just shy of an hour.  Will Nefarian be so easy to beat?  Most likely not.  However I feel that we have grown well as a group and have become much more capable since our "Sindragosa wipefest" days.

So here's my thought, I would like to get Nefarian and his bitch ass robot sister down and I would like to devote 1 night a week to doing so.  I realize that there is gear to be had for everyone on the prior 5 bosses, but we will never be able to say "Ah, we got everything we need from these guys," like we did in ICC.  Different game now, for us anyway.  There are still a lot of guilds where we were a few months ago.  They go in, beat up magmaw, wipe 10 times on Omni-Tron, take their maelstrom crystals and call it a night.   That's not us anymore, and I don't want it to be that way again.

We have a shot at downing all twelve bosses before the next content patch, and I think thats a great goal for us.  The 4.1 patch is in release status on the PTR right now.  That means we will see it drop the Tuesday after next (Thats my best educated guess).  4.1 will not have any raid content, but the new Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman 5 man's will have a shit ton of purple "almost tier" gear available for us to fill holes in our sets.  If 4.1 drops say, on the 26th, we won't see Firelands for at least a month and a half.  This gives us a solid 2 months to beat Nefarian, Ascendant Council, Cho Gall, and floaty turban wearing guy.

How do we do it?  It actually won't be all that tough.  On Tuesdays we go in on a fresh run of Bastion of Twilight.  I figure including a Baradin Hold run we can get up to Ascendant Council and have a good amount of time on them as well.  On Wednesday we go and punch Nefarian in the face.  Ideally we beat Nefarian, and then we reset BWD each week for gear on Tuesday while making BoT the raid lockout night.

There is something I need from you guys to do this:  Attendance.  I know a lot of you are great at getting to every raid, and I appreciate it.  I really really do.  The issue with doing top end game bosses is that we can't explain the fight every week because our composition changed.   I know people have real life shit, and work and the like, but I need people who want to raid to sign up.  Tentative is not acceptable.  We need to have a yes or no so we know what we are doing.  Nothing sucks worse than waiting till after we are supposed to start because so-and-so might show up.

Last Note From Thrall's Hand:
Thank you all for reading my bitch list.  Love you guys.  Everyone is doing really really well.  Except Bhoard.  (He can't read so don't feel bad for him.)

               -Kay

Ps, the video for this weeks post was requested by Lyrra:

Damn....  If you want to get the taste of that out of your mouth:

 

Hello Friends,

Disciples!  I hope I find you all well.  Perhaps you are reading this while running on a treadmill, or more likely while smoking cigarettes and eating cheetos.  Progression goes well as we have downed Valonia and her Bro in Bastion, and we will likely add 2 more next week (Maloriak and Four Winds).  As we grow deeper into this tier of content and gear becomes more readily available, we have more and more people wanting to raid in ten mans.    Its going to be a while before we get a second team up and running, so I wanted some input on possible short term solutions to the problem.  Here are a couple ideas I've  been kicking around:

• Have people who have no need of gear on early bosses rotate out on that content in favor of someone who might be able to get a drop and could use the experience.  When the first "farm bosses" are down the "new" person would rotate out with the original person.   Now the team is back to full force, and has members that have been working on progression content together week after week.
• Dark has been kicking the idea around of making a second ten man group consisting of alts and people that have scheduling conflicts during normal raiding times.  Time for this TBD.
• There has also been talk from Bhoard, Graal, Dark, and myself about setting up a night during the week for rated bg's.  It's not raiding, but it involves the same level of skill.  Please let me know what times would work for you guys on this.  Right now it would only be 1 night a week for an hour or two.

We need to figure something out here, because while we have 10+ people that want to raid, its obvious to me that having the same people running week after week has huge benefits as well.  It's a tough balancing act, and as guild leader it's really hard to make sure everyone is happy.  That brings me to my final point....

Last Note From Thrall's Hand: 

We all like raiding, and bg's, and achievements, but that's not why Disciples of Thrall was formed.  In the olden days I would hop from guild to guild.  Some of them would raid (all horribly I might add.) some of them would just putz around.  It was ok.  It was like vanilla ice cream.  If it's there I'll eat it.

Turns out you can get plenty sick of vanilla ice cream and the only thing you can do is set out to make your own flavor.  And that's what we did.  At the time there were only four of us, but we knew we enjoyed playing together and that made all the difference.

As we slowly added members, there would be shitty ones, but we would keep finding diamonds in the rough. A new tank named Rumbler in Zul Drak, or a pugtastic hunter named Grim- no Doom- hell it's just Marty.  Jimbo and Glen and Bhoard helped make DoT what it is today, even though they had their own guild.  There are too many to count, too many stories to tell...  What it all boils down to is what makes DoT great, and that's the friendship, the family of it all.  I'd take a virtual bullet for any of you bastards.  WoW is about 18 times more enjoyable when you have cool people to enjoy it with.  To prove my point, and to indulge in some nostalgia, I have made this little guy for you,

Enjoy,


-Kay

Voice of an Angel!

Who says DoT can't go in and rape what is now trivial content.  Our time in Ulduar was fruitful, and we even got a mount and title out of it.  Saweetah!  Enjoy the content below, tis truly epic.

And if you liked this, you will love the DoT ringtone associated with it:
Graal Ringtone

bored

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Anger Leads to Hate

Hello Disciples!

Just wanted to drop a line and say I reserved a guild name for Star Wars: Old Republic.  We don't have to use it, but I know a lot of you are interested in playing SWOR.  I figured Sith side was the way to go, and <Anger Leads to Hate> also popped into my mind when I heard you could reserve guild names.  Admit it, it's fucking epic.  Anyhoo, I figured it would be nice to have a sister guild that involved lightsabers.


Last Note from Thrall's Hand:


Leading a guild is a shit-ton of work, and I can't see myself leading two, so if we roll with ALTH, i'll eventually need someone to step up to the plate and take it over.  It's a long way off though, in a galaxy far, far, away.  I am excited about FUCKING LIGHTSABERS though:

How many Magmaws does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?

So I read up on the fights we have coming in BoT and BwD.  We should have minimal problems until the end boss in each raid.  I also pugged into a Throne of the Four Winds, and the first fight, while hectic, is easily within our grasps to down.  Especially with our raid comp.  The big difference between Wrath and Cataclysm however, is that we now have multiple raids that we can bounce between.  This is a good thing.  As more and more bosses come into farm territory we can mow through them one by one to get at the tasty gooey lewt filled center of each boss.  More loot means more deeps means more heals means less tank dead.  I'm all for it, and I think you guys are too.

The thing we need to avoid is farming too much.  We reset ICC for months (no seriously, months) because a few people wanted gear that wouldn't drop from earlier bosses.  As a result we were behind the curve and got to the later parts of ICC when most guilds had already downed Sinestra.  Not now.  Not this band of manly men and even manlier women.  We are in a position to have all non-heroic raid content down well within this tier of raiding, with some work that is.

So what needs to happen?  We need to do the Rain Raid Dance.  We need to find the effective balance between gearing players, and downing new content.  I unfortunately have no idea what that is yet.  Me, the Jimmer, and Darkie poo will be weighing options each week on where we need to be.  At this point all raids we be reset for us on Tuesdays, but soon we will have to push further than we have before, and that means extensions.

Last Note From Thrall's Hand:

The reason behind this is, as always, to keep you guys in the loop about where the guild is headed, and to give you the chance to put in your 2 cents in.  Apparently next week will be sunny with a slight chance of Sezmra, so here is something she, and you, will really like:



-Kay

Success!

After a rough start on Omnitron Defense System last night we finally smashed them in their retarded golem clown-shoe faces.  Then, for shits, we decided to run Magmaw and proceeded to smash his face, er, beak as well.  I would like to thank Moo and Bobby for stepping up and healing in a non-conventional raid comp, and Jimbo for taking point on Dark with wonderful tank heals.  The weird thing is we spent so much time on Omnitron that Magmaw actually sent me strat to beat him, but I didn't get the letter until way after the fight.  Seems as thought the big guy got lonely.  I've left a copy of said letter here:

 Feels great to get those bosses down and feels a little like the floodgates have been opened for the mighty DoT.  What now you ask?  We will reset next week as we do not have Omnitron on farm just yet (Magmaw might be a different story).  This week we will delve deeper into Blackwing Descent and try some of the other bosses available.  We may even run into Bastion of Twilight to beat Halfus Wrymbreaker down a bit.

Until we have scheduling down to a science we will still have somewhat random raid nights.  We still have more people that want to raid then we have slots, so I would like to see if anyone would like to step up and be a Recruitment Officer.  Please inform me of interest by in game mail. 


Last Note From Thrall's Hand:


We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but I think the boss kills will come more quickly here on out.  Speaking of not that, who doesn't enjoy fat guy techno?

-Kay

Where the fuck is this train headed?

I just wanted to take a minute and share my hopes and ideas for the mighty DoT this early in the expansion.  I also want you guys to give me feedback on this, either through comments here or in-game mail.  I want to know if you think I'm setting expectations too high or too low, and if you have any ideas you think might help then let me know that as well.   So without further to do.....

Raiding Times:

I'm thinking we should go back to 2 nights a week on raiding.  Tuesday seems to work for most people, and we can figure out what will be best for the second day.  8:30 to 11:00 server time gives us a solid 2 1/2 hours of raid time, and we shouldn't need more time then that on current content.

Raid Composition:

This is a tough one.  Current raids seem to favor range over melee to a small degree, and we are short on range. I know we have a lot of Shammies right now and if anyone has an elemental off-spec it would be helpful to have that set ready and geared.  We will do anything we can to help with gearing that spec as well.

As it stands right now we only have the one raid group, but we will eventually have a second.  In the past we have had the second group as a "b" team composed of less geared players and alts.  I'd like to see us move forward to have a full second team that alts can jump into when needed.  This is of course a down the road move.  We need to recruit more, especially healers and tanks  (any help on that front will be much appreciated).

The down side is that right now we have between 15-16 people that want to raid and we only have 10 slots.  For the time being we will be rotating players in based on the following factors:

• First people to go, first and formost, will be the players most likely to achieve success on the given raid.  This can change from encounter to encounter, based on the mechanics we find ourselves in.
• If the raid composition isn't and issue then it's first come first serve.  Raiders need to be on at 8:30 server time.
• 9:45 server time (or closest approximate time to that) will be the rotation time.  Present officers and myself will choose who gets rotated out before the raid starts so everyone knows what to expect.  You don't need to stay on while others raid to be rotated in, but you do need to show up at raid time.  The only exception to this rule would be if we are very close to downing a boss, then 1 or 2 attempts might be made before rotation.  I don't anticipate this being an issue often.

Raiding Strategy:

Right now we will be focusing on Blackwing Descent until we can get two to three bosses down, at which point we will split our time between BD and Bastion of Twilight.  Main idea here is to keep it fresh, while still gearing everyone we can.  I'd like feedback here on what you guys think.

Raid Attitude:

This hasn't been an issue in this expansion, but I still wanted to address it.  These new raids are ferking hard, and we still need to gear people up.  Everyone needs to be patient while we get back into our raiding shoes.  Wipes will happen, but wins of the epic variety will as well.

Mumble:
I've set up a mumble server for us.  Mumble is like vent but supposedly better.  For info on it just google Mumble and go to the sourceforge site.  If it goes well we will be using Mumble rather than vent, as its cheaper for me and I like the interface.

Fucking Kyle!:
Kyle's time has come.  He wants his fucking Frostmourne and we have to help him.  Should be easy enough to do Lich Bitch 25 man with 20 people so we will be coordinating a time to get this taken care of after the next patch (in case there is a dungeon id wipe).  Why are we helping Kyle?

1. God wants you to.
2. Achievements and tasty titles.
3. The ghost of Kyle will haunt your dreams if you don't.
4. When you get Frostmourne you get a quest for a lich king kill that drops epic lootz.  This will be a free roll.
5. I want you to, wait shit, thats the same as #1.

Last note from Thrall's Hand:

Again, I seriously want to know what you guys think about this.  I leave you with a musical history lesson of my favorite candy.

                                                               -Kay

First Attempt.....

Well the first attempt at raiding went as expected... We got to learn us some new boss fights and it was reiterated that alot of us need better gear. I would encourage everyone to check out Baradin Hold if your gear is up to par. We won't have a full raid night next tuesday but we will have a Baradin Hold run next Tuesday assuming we have control of Tol Barad. Again, nothing to fret about as we are ahead of most guilds in gear, especially one our size. Keep gearing and we will have another full raid night very soon.

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January 2011 DoT Newsletter

Hi guys!

We've been running with Cata for a almost a month now and there is so much stuff to go over I decided to make a blog to put it in a easy to use format that you can read on your phone or pc.  If you use a feed reader or news reader subscribe to this so you can get info as it pops.  

Raiding:
Everyone is excited about raiding, which is great!  We do have some steps to go however to get raid ready.  I have a few friends who have tried to tackle the raid content with people geared similarly to our people, and they have been unable to get a raid boss down below 70%.  I decent benchmark would be 10k sustained dps per player, and I know we don't have 5 dps'ers there yet.  We will still put a raid together on 1/11/11, but our gear may not yet be up to the challenge.  So how do we get there?

1.)  Gear runs.  Im going to put a few dates on the calender for gearing runs through heroics.  These will be guild events so they will not show as invites.  Check your calender often!  I wont be doing actual raid invites until we have our teams down.  Use atlas loot to see what gear you need and from where so you can make your own "wish list".  This will also get you the Justice Points you need to buy additional gear.
2.)  Crafted Epics.   We have several guildies that are maxing their skills up right now and many (including me) will craft epics for you.  Guild members are not required to do this for free, and if they do it for free you will be required to gather all the mats as well as the mats required to get the recipe for the epic you want.  Chaos orbs are not easy to come by so be patient if you are in line to get gear.
3.)  Reputation.  Everyone should look up what rep gives them the best gear and should be grinding that rep through heroics as much as they can.  This goes for heroic gear as well as epics.

We will only have one raid team to start, and may rotate players out when needed.  I would encourage everyone that has a healing or tanking offspec to gear that up as well when available for raid utility.  Once we have enough members or alts available we will make a second raid team.

Recruitment:
You may have noticed we have added new members.  Please give them the courtesy you have shown new members in the past.  Everyone that's an officer should be available for questions when you are in game and not dungeoning it up.  With guild leveling becoming slower and slower I am still looking for new members.  Lowbies are fine, I'd like to see a few locks, and healers are always a plus.  Please advise anyone you invite that they are under evaluate status for at least two weeks.

PvP:
Yes, we are a raiding guild, but a lot of us like to punch Alliance in the face whenever possible.  We will setup a rated battleground night in the future and I would recommend using Arenas to gear up.  Dark and I made a 2v2 team and all you have to do is win 6 matches in one week to get 1350 Conquest points, which award PvP epics.  Pair up with someone and run the hell outta those if you are interested in PvP in the future.

Last note from Thrall's Hand:
I'm excited about this new expansion and getting to see all of it with you guys.  Please let me know if you have any questions, and Ill leave you with this slightly gay, but cheery video.  Ok, its really gay.



Lok'Tar O'gar!


Kaylith

Newbie Guide to the Mighty DoT

This post is for you my very, very, new Disciples.  Who are the Disciples of Thrall, what is the main goal, wtf did I get myself into?

Disciples of Thrall is a casual-medium raiding guild.  While we are on an RP server we don't do any RP events (Although we don't frown on people doing it on their own.).   We do a bit of PvP, but its not our main focus.  DoT values social compatibility over skill.  What we mean by this is that anyone who doesn't get along with the group as a whole (and we are a very fun-loving group), won't last long with us regardless of skill.

A couple things to note:
1.)  If I call you pigfucker, its a term of endearment.
2.)  Darkranos is one of our main tanks.  He is insane.  Cimeries is another.  He is also insane.  Rumbler is yet another tank.  She is insane as well.  If you become a tank with DoT, you might become insane.  Fair warning.
3.)  The Brothers Hickman are two of our healers.   If you pull a mob without letting them get mana they will most likely bitch you out for 5-10 minutes.  So just don't do it.

If you have any questions please direct them to Kaylith, Sezmra, Darkranos, Surinacus, Chioni, Graal, or Cimeries.

Thanks,

Kaylith