On Monday we lost Aalonz so had to start from the beginning (Iron Reaver), but we absolutely plowed through the first wing and a half of HFC. We one-shot Iron Reaver, Corncob, Council, and Kilrogg. We took a few tries on Gorefriend but eventually got him down, bringing us back to Socrethar.

We had a couple of new attempts on Socrethar, leading to our best attempt yet. He'll be going down shortly

Next week we're starting fresh HFC Normal again rather than warping to Iskar for two reasons:

1) More tier gear for the raid
2) Our fourth Gorefiend down, which means several of us will have the Iskar portal rather than just one person.

See you next week!

Hello! That's all the small talk I have time for.

Timing
We raid on Sundays at 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern, and on Mondays at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern. We raid mostly until enough folks get too tired to continue, and that's fine, that's all fine here, how are you?

Loot and gearing
I am starting another thread to discuss loot. I prefer master loot, some folks prefer personal loot, I would like your opinion.

As for rolls, if we ever do loot manually, it will be in a 'rolls rule' sort of format. I'm skipping out on loot council for a couple reasons - for the most part, most of us want our buddies to succeed, and I have found over time that people tend to be pretty good about sharing loot. I want to keep it this way. I don't want to prioritize people that are 'better,' because that's demoralizing to people who are trying but just not as talented. Everyone deserves that lottery-winning feeling. You helped down the boss, you get an equal shot at the goodies.

Additionally, BoEs will go on a need > greed basis. If it's an upgrade and you need it, you get first dibs. If you plan to sell it, wait for the greed roll. A common response to this includes "shouldn't the guild get this for the money?" Tragedy of the commons be damned, I trust the lot of you to assist the guild with money when we need it. @primesuspect will alert us if it gets bad, and we'll do guild dungeons or donate. I usually run things on the honor system, and I will continue to do so until tragedy of the commons rears its ugly head (here's hoping it never does)!

Finally, if you win a piece of loot, there are two things you need to know:

1. I don't tolerate any 'begging' for loot to get passed on. None. No coercion, no whispers, nothing. If someone mentions that it might be a better upgrade for someone else because they don't think you've noticed, that's fine... but you are under NO obligation to pass it on, and you are under NO obligation to feel bad for keeping what you won fair-and-square. I won't have any hurt feelings because you were forced to give a piece up. Yes, we will have days where someone sweeps the board with the loot - and the people that swept the board will come back and help us get more, and they won't roll on the stuff they already have! And you know what? If they don't come back, you won't remember it a month down the line anyway!
2. If you want to pass loot on to the next person who needs it, I absolutely encourage it. I think it is a wonderful thing to do, and I think you should be thanked out loud for it. I find that Icrontians tend to do this more than not, and it is absolutely awesome. This is the one major reason I'd rather do masterloot - I get to see shows of generosity like this.

Philosophy
The general raid plan is to attack raiding from a cerebral perspective - we're not running day-in-day-out to push muscle memory and burn you out on content (this is a game, not a job). Instead, I'm going to push you to think and come up with new ideas. I want you to rearrange your UI, find a better way to be a little bit quicker, cleverer, etc. I will ask you from time to time to look through your spellbook and find a way to use those stupid, niche spells you don't like. I will insist on weird strategies that don't make sense for anyone but our raid comp.

I cannot do that alone, so I also insist on a lot of chatter. If you have an idea or strategy, don't be silent. Don't pussyfoot around trying to hint that you have an idea - just spit it out. I promise you that if someone is being rude about your idea, I will give them all sorts of trouble for it. If you get hate-whispered for it, say something. I don't put up with bullying even a little bit.

Between being cerebral, a small raid slot, and insisting on chatter, there's one thing I really love in raiders - that's raiders that pick up slack. If you're a dps class that has spot-heals, throw a heal out when it's necessary. If you don't know when it's necessary, then I think you've just found a way to improve! Personal damage-mitigation cooldowns? You can never use 'em too much, but you can definitely use 'em too little! And let me tell you - I ADORE dual-spec raiders.

Speaking of picking up slack, you may have noticed that I tend to dominate the microphone. But I don't have to! I love when people step up and 'run' certain sections of the raid - every timer I don't have to watch is a little more attention I can focus on solving problems elsewhere. You wanna coordinate the healer chatter? Please do. Wanna coordinate ranged movement? Go for it!

Your name will probably get mentioned at some point. And it will probably be in the context of 'such-and-such, you're doing it wrong.' It will also probably be publicly. Please, please, PLEASE do not get upset or offended. Damn near every one of us knows every one of us. Most of us have attended each others' weddings, birthdays, parties, whatever. We are not trying to make enemies on the internet, we are just trying to progress, and more viewpoints involved in the problem solving process are better than just mine. Suppress any hurt feelings and remember - the people talking to you want to see you succeed, not make you feel bad. They like having you around. We're all in this one together.

Don't feel bad mentioning someone's name if they're doing something wrong, too. Keep it clean, keep it friendly, and don't make 'em feel bad - remember, these are your friends, all you're trying to do is get them to raid better. Add positive comments when you see anyone doing anything awesome or pro-social. If you notice someone is going too hard on someone else, say something. The worst thing that ever happened to me in this raid was when I was calling out a problem I saw and the guy took it personally - but nobody warned me that he was irritated and that I wasn't sensitive enough, and it led to hurt feelings. It sounds corny as hell, but it's legitimately on all of us to make sure the air stays positive.

Having said that, you are NOT allowed to call someone out on a grievance. I don't need that aired over mumble, or over some public channel. If you don't like something raid related by all means, speak... but if you have a problem with someone else and it's going to cause a fight, you tell me. If you think what you're going to say is going to make someone mad enough to leave, you tell me. If you are being chewed on by someone, you tell me. If you instead air something publicly, you bring everyone down, you cause people to choose sides, and you create a general crappy environment. Come to me instead. I'm here to be the bad guy when I have to. You are here to have fun. See? Your job is way better. Why would you want my job?

Above all, remember that this is just a game. When life calls, life calls. You wanna take a hiatus? Go for it - we'll be here to get you going again when you come back. Just keep in touch - what's the point of WoW if you don't get to keep the friends you've made?

This week was a fantastic raid week for the guild; we were able to weather significant roster changes, bring in a lot of new blood, and continue on without missing a beat. While we didn't get any new bosses down in HFC, we got right back to Iskar, lots of people got gear, and we all learned our new roles and responsibilities with flying colors.

Welcome to the new raiders, thank you very much to our existing raiders for their flexibility and willingness to step up to help the guild, and yeah... Onward to next week!

I'm here to assure you that it's not. People come and go all the time; WoW is a game and when the game stops being fun and becomes a chore, it's time to stop for a while (or forever).

I want to assure the rest of the guild that we are in no way falling apart or stopping raiding. We've got fresh blood (hey Cyp, Ibby, Braticus, Totesadorbs, Sarstree!), we're going to make some role/roster changes to fill the gaps, and we'll continue our excellent progress through HFC. I've heard from a lot of people privately today that they are still having a blast, still look forward to raid nights, and are still very much enjoying raiding with IC.

I just want to make sure that those who are still having fun and still look forward to Sunday nights with Icrontic that this will not be going away.

Attrition is normal, especially when you get close to the end of the expansion.

So, as it stands, unless I let everybody know otherwise, we're still planning on our normal Sunday/Monday raid nights. We'll see you guys then

Good luck out there!

We started fresh and plowed through to our roadblock (Gorefiend), and this time we ended his ass and made him our gorefriend.

Tonight we saw two new fights: Iskar and Socrethar. Iskar went down like a prom date on Zima, and we got Socrethar down to 50% after just a handful of attempts.

We're losing Ryanfodder, a core member of the guild, as he is taking a break from WoW, but don't let it get you down (though we will miss you, big guy). We'll keep trucking on because we have a date with Archimonde.

I told @Myrmidon as much, but even the NPCs were annoyed with my pep talk.

This week we made big improvements to our execution (lawl) of Kilrogg Deadeye and KILL ROGGED HIM RIGHT DEAD IN THE EYE.

Err. something

Anyways, Kilrogg down!

We got to Gorefiend and WOW what a fight. Very unlike most of the other fights this expansion and definitely a lot of new things to learn. We were wiping pretty consistently at 90%+ on Sunday but tonight everything clicked and we got him down to 13%. We figured out the fight and now it's just a matter of time before our EXECUTION EXECUTES HIM... or ... something.

Onward!

We started stronk in Hellfire Citadel and with a little effort, plowed through Hellfire Assault, Iron Reaver, Kormrok, and Hellfire High Council. We're now 4/13 HFC Normal. We hit a mechanics wall when we got to Kilrogg Deadeye. With excellent execution we got him down to 1% tonight. If we had made one less mistake, had one more pre-pot, drank one more second potion, stood in one less bad thing, we would have had him. We definitely know the fight; now it's just about execution, which means: We'll definitely get him next week

It's good to be back!

Progression starts this Sunday, July 5th at Hellfire Citadel. Leading the raid will be @Myrmidon, aka Mirste the Pretty.

Get your gear, get your potions, your flasks, your loot tokens, and your food. Icrontic is back

I am pretty confident when I say that if we didn't have the beyond-our-control stuff working against us and instead had gotten to use that time to raid, we would have downed Blackhand this weekend.

We made significant progresss in phase 2 tonight after pretty much mastering phase 1 and got further than we've gotten (so close to P3).

Next week we'll be doing some team shuffling as our beloved Paladin (bear hates her though) most likely won't be able to attend. We'll try to figure out a lockout so that we can spend all weekend on Blackhand again (if we do, I'm confident we'll get him), but if not, at least we can get some gear

Icrontic progression raiding is taking a break this and next weekend for Expo Icrontic. We will begin raiding Hellfire Citadel as a guild on July 5th at 8pm EST!

Also Wardreams' transmog really is terrible as you'll see in the top comments.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/kelthuzad/Wardreams/advanced

Celsh is not leaving the guild, the site, mumble or anything else. She's got a full plate with her main raiding guild and she is merely stepping down from the raid leader position. She'll still be raiding with us and healing our sorry asses or chain lightning out of nowhere the bad guys.

For tonight's raid and next week's raid, @Thrax has graciously stepped up to the plate to lead us through the final steps of Blackhand's defeat (which WILL happen). Thank you so much, @Thrax.

Unfortunately, his work schedule is such that he regretfully cannot commit to leading the raids after next week. We have two weeks off after that (due to Expo Icrontic), and by that time it is almost 100% certain that 6.2 and a new tier of content will be back, which leads us to:

The return of @myrmidon as our raid leader for the remainder of patch 6.2 and (presumably) Warlords of Draenor. I'm very grateful to him for agreeing to get back in the saddle and lead us on to victory in Hellfire Citadel

For the Alliance!

To Summarize:

Tonight: Thrax @ BRF
Sunday 14th: Thrax @ BRF
Monday 15th: Thrax @ BRF
June 21-22 & 28-29: BREAK FOR EXPO ICRONTIC
July 5th + onward: Myrmidon @ Hellfire

Celsh thinks we can do it. She wants to extend this week (again) and get everyone their Acheevees. After the kill we could start over for loot.

What does everyone else think?

We are now 9/10 Heroic BRF

It took us a few attempts, but the choreography of the mechanics just seemed to click in place all of the sudden on Monday night and we made excellent attempts, culminating in @Marshmellow letting us know that "this attempt is my last for the night" upon which we decided to step it up and win.

We're going to be taking a vote on whether or not to continue the lockout and work on Blackhand next week. @Celsh will be making a separate thread.

Great work to everybody involved!

Wow Scavenger Hunt!!

https://blizzard.wishpond.com/photo-contest/

You can win a trip to BlizzCon!

Hint: Week 1 is in a horde city!

The Personal Loot system offers several advantages to certain group types, but there are still several areas where we think we can make improvements. Our goals with Personal Loot going forward are threefold:
Make Personal Loot more consistent and rewarding.
Bring Personal Loot up to be competitive with Group Loot, so players who prefer Personal Loot receive rewards comparable to those you get from groups using Master Loot or Need/Greed.
Celebrate rewarding Personal Loot within the group in a way that captures the excitement of receiving rewards in Group Loot.

Secondary Stats

In the early days of World of Warcraft, Raid bosses didn’t have that many items to drop—there were only 150 items in all of Molten Core, and more than half of those were set items. This small amount of total gear in a Raid meant there might only have been one or two items per slot in an entire tier that were appropriate for your class—and if you were a Hunter or a Shaman in a place like Molten Core, that meant your only option for a belt in the entire Raid zone was your class set piece. On top of that, if an item wasn’t class restricted, it was shared between many other specializations with wildly different ideas of which stats were good or bad. When very few items were available to fill any given slot, the desire to make sure they were useful for many specs led us to keep from straying too far from a 50/50 split on secondary stats.

Let's call this version 1...

I want this achievement and I have been trying every day for two weeks now to PUG it. It absolutely will not work. I've got 40 attempts in with various randos and I just cannot, for the life of me, find a group that can do it. It's been supremely frustrating to wipe over and over again with random people who just won't or don't follow instructions. I've tried with every kind of group: Full guild groups where I was the only pug, full random groups with headlines like "FAST CLEAR, 698 MYTHIC LEAD" etc. None of them have worked.

Please, IC, pull a group together to take me and the others who don't have AOTC through this thing. Please.