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Guild Progress Update - September 2011
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The last 2 months has been an interesting time for Shades. The “summer slack” always has an impact on people and raids, as guildies (quite rightly) enjoy the delights of July and August holiday activities. People have enjoyed the sun, the beaches, the family, the kids, the trips abroad and the long warm evenings where sitting in a bar is more appealing than sitting in front of a PC.
This has meant that raiding has been a bit more varied and turbulent than would be ideal. We were short on people to reliably do 25man raiding, and we also had a few core players decide to take a well earned break from the game. We have also had a bit of a “re-sizing” in Guild Officer numbers, to reflect the lower number of people needed to run a guild of our size over this period.
Despite all this turbulence, we are still doing pretty well on the Realm charts.
We are 18th on the 10man raiding progress list, and as long as we do Shannox heroic, we can say we are a solid 10man raiding guild. We are still first on the Guild Achievements rankings by a good margin. We are ranked as the 7th best Rated Battle Ground Guild on Balnazzar.
The desire to get old gear in advance of Patch 4.3 for Transmogrification has meant we have picked up a few more Legendaries and people have been doing old raid achievements by clearing the content in small groups. We need the bow to drop in SWP. Ideally, we need Castix to return to the game so we can complete his Ulduar mace. We need to keep Firelands raiding going for those grinding for the Legendary staff.
Blaki is now running a very effective 10man Rated BG evening on Tuesdays and we are now picking up PVP Guild achievements as well (which is good news for the achievement points total!). We are closing in on many of the hard to get grinding Guild Achievements and just goes to show what can be done if people stay active and within the guild.
With lower levels of activity and people, and a relatively low server population that makes finding quality raiding recruits a lot harder, we took the practical decision to raid 10man over the summer period. From the people that were left from the two 10man groups that operated through BWD/BoT/Tot4W, it was agreed we needed two viable raid groups rather than 1 very active, tighter raid group and a second follow on group. Out of this decision was born “Shadesway” and “Shadeswork” – two 10man raid cadres with about 16 people in each cadre (with IRL commitments, holidays and summer, 5-6 people were bound to be unavailable of the 16). The idea was that this would provide reliable 10man raiding opportunities for people over the summer.
Shadesway was up and running faster, with an excellent line up and very good progress to 6/7 bosses after 5 weeks of raiding. Shadeswork took a bit longer to get going (as this cadre had to recruit some new blood in to make it viable) but after 3-4 slow weeks, it became a stable raiding platform and suddenly went from 2 bosses down to 6/7 down within 2 weeks. What made this raiding happen was the excellent sharing of ideas, strategies and tactics / learning from one group to another. Shadeswork benefited from the learning Shadesway gained early on, and both groups started to learn Raggy 3 weeks ago. Both groups had a few raids which did not go due to holidays / low sign ups and changes in people’s lives, and it looked like Raggy could be a long learning process, given we were only getting 1 or 1.5 evenings of tries on him per week.
At the end of August, both groups were grappling with the Phase 2.5 transition and wiping at 40% (or 38% is a few made it into Phase 3). On 4th Sept, Shadeswork took probably its strongest line up of people (all had a lot of time clocked up in the learning tries) for a “big push” evening and after getting some clean transitions to Phase 3, killed Raggy on its third Phase 3 attempt (wiped on 18%, wiped on 11% then killed him). This was the 5th evening of learning tries - one evening to learn Phase 1 and fail on the Phase 1.5 transition, 1 evening to learn the Phase 1.5 transition and fail on Phase 2, one evening of nailing Phase 2 and wiping on Phase.25 transition (with a brief glimpse of Phase 3), one evening of failing at different points and getting frustrated, and the final evening of putting it all together, learning Phase 3 and killing him. This was similar to the time it took us to learn and kill LK10 in WotLK (which in many ways is an easier fight). Shadesway, if they had got the full sign ups needed for Sunday night, would probably also have killed him at the same time as Shadeswork.
Congratulations to all involved in the raids that helped build the learning and gear to clear Firelands, and we will now look forward to Shadesway killing Raggy very soon, Shadeswork doing repeat clears, with the possibility of doing a few bosses on heroic (Shannox to start with, possibly others to follow), and generally keeping the spirit going in the guild. We also have 2 raiders actively working on their Legendary staffs (Hustlethroat and TheTrickster) and we need to keep killing Firelands bosses to ensure they get their embers and shards.
Summer slack is now over and we need to get ourselves motivated, organised and ready for the challenges 4.3 will present. We need people to stay active. We need people to gear up and polish their main characters. We need people to help each other achieve results within the Guild.
A good summer and a lot to look forward to!
Cheers
Hok
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Posted by Mindhal on Tuesday, September 06 @ 23:30:39 EEST (30 reads)
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Well, we did it.
About 2-3 months ago, it was clear that we were hitting the daily XP cap for guild leveling and were one of the guilds doing that on a daily basis.
We kept this going and last week, we decided to go for it and put some plans in to focus us up as soon as we broke through the 24 barrier. There were 3 other guilds that looked active - Guild Perks, Athan and Wraiths. On Monday night, we were shocked to see that Athan and Guild Perks were ahead as it seemed they had hit more daily Guild XP than us so dinged 24 a day earlier.
Strikeforce, Elby, Cy, Hustle and others then did a night shift on turn ins and heroics to catch up as well as loads of people who pre-saved 25 dailies and logged in at 6am to hand in then go to work.
Tuesday saw a huge amount of activity with people running heroics, we did TotC / Naxx / ICC 10man raids for fast boss kills and grinded quests and 5mans galore. We had several characters in Guild Perks and it was clear they were not organising or moving for the cap fast. Wraiths still had not dinged so they were not going for it. We were confident.
Then to our horror, Athan dinged 24 Tuesday evening about 2-3 hours before we were going to. This was a shock and we re-evaluated our options. The only way left to us was to grind normal 5mans fast so after some research, we opted for Halls of Origination. However, it was discovered Tol Vir was faster and a better yield, so we swapped to that.
Wednesday saw loads of people give up their lives and grind Tol Vir 5man all day - boring, repetitive, and soul destroying. Big respect and thanks must go to Setz, Exx, Hustle, Ardoix and Strikeforce for keeping them organised and all of the players who committed their time to this. These guys made the big difference.
But at 20:00, we pushed through the barrier and got the 25 realm first. The award, the mount and the honour was ours - a real achievement for Shades.
Photos are here of both Ogrimmar and also a group photo at Tol Vir.
 
It was a close race with Athan - respect has got to go to those guys who were ahead of us for most of the way. Only their work commitments during Wednesday day time made it possible for us to over take them and end up winning this with some gap between us. Hats off to the officers and players at Athan.
Congratulations to all of us. Big thanks to all the officers that organised and ran instances, and all of our players for a huge effort and contribution for 2 days. We earnt this and deserve this.
Good job guys!!!
Hok
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Posted by castix on Tuesday, April 12 @ 19:48:29 EEST (17 reads)
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Shades progress in Cataclysm
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Well, it has been 6 weeks since Cata hit the server. Xmas and New Year has come and gone, and we are into January 2011.
WotLK was quite odd for the last year as there was once instance that ran from Dec 2009 to Dec 2010 (with the small addition of Helion in July) and we got out of the routine of charting progress in the guild. Well, we will be putting more focus on that in 2011 and putting effort into keeping the community a social, raiding guild.
At the moment, we are in an odd position. We now have 15 or so well geared and active people that have started to push progress in 10mans. We also managed to get 25man Baradin Hold done last week, which was the first 25man raid in 2 months. Raiding is what guilds are set up for and we need everyone to contribute to this goal, be it via 5, 10 or 25 man activity.
We are now 6/12 and Strikeforce/Ardoix have done a great job in pushing forward progress in 10 mans. People are getting better at preparation now so lets keep this movement going!!
We have also got people looking at Guild Achievements and we have have seen some unexpected results there - currently, we are 2nd on server and 1st Horde side on Guild achievement points.
We can push this further as well, both on doing the retro instance runs (superb job at the weekend on Yogg 0 and Algy - was good to see that achievement and Kain / Hustle being so happy to finally have got this all done!!), crafting / farming stuff and progress on current content. Good job all on this!! (check out www.GuildOx.com for our standings - 18-21st overall on PVE progress but 2nd on Guild Achievement points!!).
In simple, lets keep up the good work and focus on the following:
1. Grind those heroics for rep and gear, craft, grind or make money for BoE/BoA gear, and max yourselves out in as much raid quality gear as possible.
2. We want to get 2 10man running each week and ideally get full 25mans up and going in February. This needs people to gear up and sign up and be active. We are deliberately swapping / rotating people about in the one 10man atm so more people get to see stuff and raid again - bear with us until we get to the point of a 2nd 10man group or 25mans.
3. If 4 of you are bored, please do:
- any TBC 5man - any WotLK 5man - fish in pools of water - make flasks
These 4 activities are the focus for guild achievemnts at present.
So lets keep the 10man progress going, and start to generate even more momentum for 2011.
Cheers
Hok
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Posted by Castix on Monday, January 17 @ 15:53:33 EET (17 reads)
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Shades of Fury in Sweden - August 2010
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From 20th to 22nd August 2010, Shades held its first European get together of players from the Guild.
Shades of Fury outside The Bishops Arms, Saturday 21.9.2010
Basing ourselves in that well known Swedish tourist hotspot Trollhattan, 29 people touched base over the long weekend. For some, it started a bit earlier as the guys from the Slovenian work camp arrived on Thursday and set the tone for the following few days by getting very drunk with Tharby, Mifune and Dotcha, staying out till 4am, and moving around very slowly at midday the following day.
Friday saw the arrival of most of the people from outside of Sweden – players from UK, Finland, and Norway (with the Netherlands guys arriving on Saturday). The general flow of the weekend was:
Friday Bars, food, bars and random events on the way back to the hotel;
Saturday Bars, food, bars and random events on the way back to the hotel;
Sunday Sight seeing, bar and food for those staying on a bit longer.
A big thank you to Tharby for being a great host and organising a things in his home town, with expert help and support from his local friends and family. We have also got to thank Hotel Oscar who were very good to us and let us enjoy the experience to the full (and not throwing us out into the street due to noise and disruption!!!).
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Posted by Castix on Thursday, August 26 @ 18:48:09 EEST (19 reads)
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Well, we finally got Sindragosa down 25man. Is very odd that we spend a few evenings struggling and where we just fail and fail. Then we kill it 2nd try of the evening with no issues.
Very good job guys!!!
The challenge is LK 25man. This needs people to really understand tactics and what to do as RLs cannot call a lot of the stuff here. So read the guides, watch the videos and understand the fight.
Defile will be our downfall if people do not know how to handle it so you all need run speed on boots and fast reactions.
Anyways, onwards to a 25man LK kill!!
Hok
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Posted by Castix on Monday, May 17 @ 18:20:38 EEST (15 reads)
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Well, we have been pushing at things for a while and over the last few weeks, we have been getting things a bit more sorted.
10man has now seen real progress. Last night, after a few weeks of extending the raid lock out and 3 nights of learning, we killed the LK and got Kingslayer for a few people. This showed the importance of people willing to sign up and commit to evenings of wiping and learning - it is the only way to learn the encounters and each time we returned, we got better and better.
Screenshot is below of the 10 who got the kill. Sadly a few who helped on some of the evenigns were not around but this now means we can open up heroic tries on the easymode bosses in 10man icc10 which should help a load more people in guild :)
We also filled a gap last night as well by doing the 10man TotGC achievement with more or less the same group (some noob called Raistlin joined on his mage to make up the numbers) and we got the git down. Good job there as well.
25man has seen BQ down (see pic below) but sign ups for Thurs and Sundays have been poor to say the least. To progress to killing Singragosa and LK, we need people to sign up and commit to progress evenings. We will continue to recruit to fill up ranks but existing guild members need to look at their commitment to raiding and sign up for at last 50-75% as a minimum, reaching the 2/3 attendance we need to down all the 25man normal content.
So lets do it guys - we will push 10man hc modes and will push 25man to the limit.
Cheers
Hok
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Posted by Castix on Sunday, April 25 @ 11:21:56 EEST (15 reads)
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| Five weeks have passed since Hok wrote the article on ICC progress. Since then we have reached 11/12 on 10 man & 9/12 on 25 man. 8/12 is easily manageable in one raid night. Blood Queen is in our sights & will go down once the Easter break is over -sign up peeps to make it happen!
Lich King wont last long in 10 man - we have a group that will devote time to learning this fight - Below is picture of us posing before his throne - soon we will be Kingslayers!
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Posted by Castix on Saturday, April 03 @ 02:24:15 EEST (19 reads)
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Well, we have set off on our ICC25 mission and progress is going. It is a bit stop and start, but we are now getting to grips with the harder and more technical fights, both in 10 and 25 modes.
Currently, we are 8/12 in 10mans (Blood Queen, Valithria Dreamwalker,
Sindragosa and Lich King still to do) and 7/12 in 25mans (samne as above apart from Putricide who is proving to be a git in 25man).
Pictures of the deaths are below:
Lord Marrowgar
Lady Deathwhisper
Optional Frost Giant Kill for weekly instance quest
No pictures of Gunship Battle but we did it!!
Deathbringer Saurfang
Festergut
Rotface
Blood Council
Overall, the kills are getting cleaner and faster - normally when focus is good and energy is excellent!!
Focus will be on getting Putricide down and build on the odd learning tries we have had on Blood Queen and the Dragon.
Keep it up guys!!
Hok
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Posted by Castix on Monday, February 22 @ 19:31:43 EET (23 reads)
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Well, it took us a long time to get here and a lot of hard work, wipes and focus.
This just shows what can be done if we get the following:
1. Sign ups so we can do 25man tries on the harder / more technical fights;
2. Stable internet connections so we dont lose 1-2 people during the fight
3. Real focus and effort from all 25 people plus the other 15 or so who wiped on the other learning nights - is a real git that some people who invested a lot more in this boss killing did not get to see the fight where we actually killed the git.
4. Learning by all - I deliberately tried to keep people who did the Sunday tries in the same roles and positions, so we can keep the learning curve up. And was good to see people get up the learning curve faster than in previous weeks.
Screen shot of boss kill is below. I did Fraps the kill to an extent - I have not yet installed Adobe Premier on Windows 7 yet (it went on OKish but is running slow, suggesting there is some compatability issues as my Adobe Elelements version is XP age) so that may take a bit of time to do.
This wont be a one off kill. I want to kill him again so people who helped learn this fight but did not expereince the kill last night get to see it again. So keep signing up and dont slack :)
Good job and lets keep activity levels high on all 3 nights now!
Hok
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Posted by Castix on Tuesday, November 17 @ 15:18:57 EET (26 reads)
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Ulduar Progress - General down
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Well, we have some more 25man progress. Did a good clear of early bosses on Thursday so we were hopeful of having a good raid evening for General Monday, after a few General tries on Sunday night if all went to plan.
Sunday went very well and we got Mimiron down fast. I did not manage to fraps the Mimiron 1st kill so fraps the 2nd kill - here is the link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_30Z9Uv_lY
We then killed the others and moved on to General V. Focus on General V was excellent. We got him to 24% first try with some dead and he hit enrage. 2nd try saw him dead.
The kill video does not show me in a great light (a good guide of what NOT to do as a Priest on General  ). I was going to edit out mid bit but would show a boss health sudden drop from 45% to 24%. Video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DDRoJdVprY We now need to push for Yogg S and need as many Monday sign ups as possible. So lets get sign ups maxed so we can do more than just learn phase 1 again
Cheers
Hok |
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Posted by Castix on Tuesday, June 23 @ 19:51:11 EEST (16 reads)
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| Tuesday, June 16 | | · | Ulduar Progress Update |
| Thursday, May 14 | | · | Ulduar Progress Update |
| Wednesday, January 28 | | · | WoTLK - All Main Boss content cleared - Gratz!!!! |
| Monday, January 12 | | · | Shades Northrend progress update. |
| Saturday, October 25 | | · | Filling in the Gaps - Illidan & Kael'thas |
| Tuesday, September 16 | | · | Black Temple 8/9 - Illidan Next! |
| Tuesday, September 02 | | · | Black Temple 7/9 - Mother Down |
| Thursday, August 21 | | · | Black Temple 6/9 |
| Tuesday, August 12 | | · | Mount Hyjal 5/5 |
| Wednesday, July 16 | | · | Black Temple 5/9 |
| Wednesday, July 09 | | · | Shades goes 4/9 Black Temple - Teron down! |
| Monday, June 09 | | · | Some downtime again! |
| Tuesday, May 20 | | · | Hoks wrote'' |
| Monday, May 19 | | · | Shades progres Update |
| Tuesday, March 04 | | · | Vashj spanked & sent packing!! |
| Tuesday, February 05 | | · | Shades TBC Raiding Milestone reached: SSC 5/6 and TK 3/4 |
| Sunday, February 03 | | · | Zul'jin has left the building! |
| Friday, January 25 | | · | A Double Whammy evening for Shades |
| Tuesday, January 22 | | · | A whole new trinity downed |
| Monday, January 14 | | · | Another one bites the dust! |
| Wednesday, December 19 | | · | Hydross - annihiliated! |
| Tuesday, December 11 | | · | A fish gone bad! |
| Thursday, November 29 | | · | Shades of Fury - the 2 year ding! |
| Monday, November 19 | | · | The Lynx Avatar whooped |
| Thursday, November 15 | | · | Nalorakk and Akil'Zon downed |
| Friday, November 09 | | · | Progress in the cave |
| Thursday, October 25 | | · | Serpentshrine Cavern |
| Tuesday, October 09 | | · | Bulls eye - Voidreaver downed! |
| Friday, August 24 | | · | OMG |
| Tuesday, August 14 | | · | Magtheridon PWNed by Shades |
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