Goodbye wow :,(

Attackattack will not be

Playing a Paladin come Xpac. I don't want a fucking pet or to become a mobile Healing Stream Totem. Fuck you Blizzard.

April fools joke a day early?

Paragon and Premonition will merge for Cataclysm
According to a news post on Paragon and Premonition websites, both guilds will merge in Cataclysm to create a new entity : Paranition.Some of you have heard rumors about it, and today we're able to announce it officially: we are moving to US servers and merging with Premonition to join forces in Cataclysm.

While we had a very successful run in ICC, we lost the race for the first kill on all the eight first bosses, which were in fact killed before the EU servers came up. Thus, the only way to aim for perfection is to play on the US servers. This will enable us to start raiding over 12 hours earlier. To further strengthen our force, we opted to look for a partner to merge with; we chose to present Premonition with this partnership suggestion for their excellent performance and connections.

Statements were released from one of the leaders from both guilds:

When looking for US partners, Premonition was an obvious choice for us. We've had friendly relations with them for a while, and they're good guys that we'll enjoy playing with. Furthermore, their excellent track record guarantees that we will have the absolute optimal player setup for any and all challenges that Cataclysm will offer. Their connections also aided us in our search for sponsorship, and we look forward to working with them to further push the limits of World of Warcraft raiding. (Paragon / Lazei)

Paragon is an exceptional raiding guild that we've had a good relationship with in their brief but highly successful time as a guild. When the leadership of Paragon approached us with this idea, we were, of course, happy to work with them for a mutually worthwhile merge. We are very excited to help make the #1 raiding guild in the world the strongest it can be - by expanding the roster for the capability of maximum learning in the smallest amount of time. (Premonition / Xav)

In the spirit of a true merge, the new guild will be called Paranition. You can find us raiding on the lag-free realm of US-Sentinels.

We're also very, very proud to present our new main sponsorship deal with Unilever, most known for their AXE grooming product brand.

NEW YORK (01 Apr 2010) AXE is giving a big boost to guys that feel the need to RAID! The iconic leader in men's care, in partnership with Blizzard, launched the brand's new product line: AXE Sunwell - Get Energized! Studies conducted about gamers concluded that this segment was completely untapped by any grooming products. The Sunwell line is targeted for appearance-conscious gamers that understand the social aspect of gaming. AXE products will now ensure that you stay uniquely fresh even during 24-hour raiding sessions and LAN-parties.

Many thanks to our sponsors; this merge would not have been possible without those private English classes to overcome the language barrier. Also many thanks to all our supporters, and see you on the US servers - fresh!


This is quite obviously an April Fools joke (I hope). As it is April 1st in Finland atm where Paragon is located. Much better than some I've seen in past years!

10 man BiS lists

After trolling elitist jerks for 45 minutes looking for strict-10 BiS lists, I walked away empty handed. I'm sad that the greater theorycrafting community doesn't consider or research our particular approach to progression. I'm not going to get into which is harder - obviously it is more challenging to coordinate 25 people; however things are just as hard when your approaching a boss with the ilvl gear it was tuned for. I recently put together what i believe is my BiS for retribution for ICC hardmodes - and thought "HEY! YOU HAVEN'T UPDATED IN LIKE FOREVER111!11" So here you go.

• Helm: Sanctified Lightsworn Helmet
• Neck: Precious's Putrid Collar
• Shoulder: Sanctified Lightsworn Shoulderplates
• Cloak: Saronite Gargoyle Cloak
• Chest: Sanctified Lightsworn Battleplate
• Wrist: Vambraces of the Frost Wyrm Queen
• Hands: Throatrender Handguards
• Waist: Etched Dragonbone Girdle
• Legs: Sanctified Lightsworn Legplates
• Feet: Wyrmwing Treads
• Ring 1: Seal of the Twilight Queen
• Ring 2: Ashen Band of Endless Vengeance
• Trinket 1: Herkuml War Token
• Trinket 2: Whispering Fanged Skull
• Weapon: Warmace of Menethil
• Libram: Libram of Three Truths

Projected DPS - 11,140 (11,697 with current ICC buff)

Lich King down!

Guildmates overcame Arthas while i've been out due to family issues and moving. Grats to them! 23rd world for strict 10 man progression! We kicked around in heroic mode tonight downing Gunship (lol) and Lady Deathwhisper.

Ruby Sanctum

Read some confirming/info from Zarhym - and i'm quite upset that i will not be getting a skeleton bear mount from Zul' Gurman. The new raid instance will be Ruby Sanctum: a single boss encounter that will have sub bosses that drop emblems of frost (ala Sarth). However unlike Sarth (unfortunately) there will be no gradually esclating hard mode mechanic (1-2-3 drake). My guess hard mode will give the boss simply an HP/Damage boost and one or two new abilities and/or adds.

Most of the new blue posts on the subject can be found here.

My first night with Vortex

I had been away from the game for approx. 6 months. I'll keep this post short and just post a screenshot that should say it all.
Kae posted this on Dreambound (Thank you for the highlight by the way!) She has me pretty well pegged! I'm also very glad she took the screenshot because i was too busy trying to figure out how i was going to get 225 badges for my 3 Trophies.

PS
On the off chance you did NOT find yourself here by way of Dreambound, here is an excellent Sindragosa 10 man strat written up by Kae.

The Sound of Music.

The Sound of Music! ...no not the 1965 Academy Award winning film. Simply, the sound of music. I love raid videos, during SSC/TK whenever we would down a new boss my rogue buddy (Ishatai) and I would start brainstorming about the soundtrack for our kill video. Ishatai lives in a town alive with indy bands, little hole in the wall bars that people play open mic night (like me!). Safe to say his taste in music strays far from the typical trance filled videos we see from world ranked guilds of past and present. Most the time we would come up with a funny theme song - or group of songs that we felt reflected our fun atmosphere as a guild (Tidewalker Texas Ranger anyone?). I would now like to play for you our favorite kill video from SSC - FLK, it will give you an insight to this facet of sound tracking a kill video.

Now about those mind-numbing trance songs that repeat the same 3 beats for an hour and a half, while an autotuned version of Gene Kelly performs "Singin' in the Rain". I can't stand that stuff, I feel i should shove red hot metal in my ears just to make the pain go away. However, I have discovered that my mind treads a fine line between noise and bliss. My favorite that i have encountered is from SK-Gaming's kill videos for Brutallus and M'uru. The band is called Grendel - a dutch aggrotech (irony?) group; I have downloaded and listened to their entire discography and love it. Have a listen.

Brutallus

M'uru

Just as in a major motion picture - good kill videos come down to 3 things: Content, Music, and Editing. Without those items they would seem incomplete. I believe the most important thing when it comes to making the kill vid for your guild, is to stay true to who you are as a group. What are your favorite kill videos? What kind of music does your guild use for such things?

The race to hard mode Lich King (and where WoWprogress is wrong)

I'm a competitive person - I can admit it - I have a problem. When i first popped onto the raiding scene, I was groomed in an environment that didn't promote the necessity to push ourselves to the limits. We raided 40 mans two days a week, almost always clearing MC one of those days. So safe to say we were not ranked high on our server. With TBC, i found myself an officer in the leading guild on The Underbog - and to maintain that became everything to me. When i joined up with Temerity (Windrunner) - I began caring about where we ranked on the world stage. I understand the needing to protect someones world rank at all cost - especially when it drives in high quality applicants that is needed to continue to propel world class raiding. Now let me ask you ask a question that will only apply to some. For those that achieved Hand of A'dal - how did it feel when guilds who barely cleared Gruul and Mag were skipping T5 content completely? I put the wipes in to earn my key to T6 content (we were horrid at Vashj) - and didn't enjoy people who hadn't put in the work frolicking in my playground.

Now about Premonition (Sen'jin), they recruited an applicant (who they had previously turned down according to the rumor mill), who had killed Lich King in 25 man regular so they could access heroic modes when they failed to down LK with limited attempts. Now whether they had turned the applicant down before or not is irrelevant: the fact that they are considered a world class guild is just pitiful. Wowprogress.com instituted a policy in which guilds who faction/server transferred to achieve extra attempts on heroic bosses - are banned from rankings.

"There is now possibility exists to get additional attempts via faction change and Blizzard is a bit slow fixing it.
Just wanted to note that those guilds who will use it to buy advantage in heroic progression will be banned on WoWProgress.com. So don't use the faction change service!" -WoWprogress

I fail to see how recruiting a character to achieve heroic access is any different. What are your thoughts on it?

Wow didn't get easier - we just got better!

Saw a post on MMO-Champion that prompted this post. People/Players constantly complain about how the game is watered down and if you think about how the player base has learned to adapt to the increasing complexity of the game; it really hasn't been. When i was raiding in SSC/TK a boss would take a week or two to get the mechanics down and down it - hell when we got FLK and Hydross in the same week - we thought we were on top of the world. Nowadays, it's completely common for an instance to be cleared in two days by top guilds (if the entire instance is released at the same time), and in a week for the more competent. Think back (for those of you who can) to MC and BWL - what addons did you use? I had decursive (yep thats it) - now i have unit frames, dbm, recount, grid, clique, etc. The player base that has grown around this game has picked apart every facet of this game to where if you aren't doing your specific role correctly - there are 1000+ pages about how to do it. How much more complicated was say Sarth (even with 0 drakes up) compared to the first boss in Molten Core. Instead of people complaining about how the game is going down hill - let's see them go into every boss blind and learn to play their class not from EJ, but from their own personal theorycrafting.

For those interested - i think the guy hit the nail right on the head...
Original post on MMO

Zul Gurman!?

Life after ICC - Blue Post

"You personally still seem to have a lot of raid content to experience in Icecrown Citadel. In that regard, one thing we'll be doing in the coming months is slowly making the content in Icecrown Citadel a little more accessible to the majority of the player base; meanwhile the more advanced raiding guilds will be working their way through Heroic difficulties of the various final bosses, including the Lich King.

There's a lot of content in Icecrown Citadel for those who like raids. There are plenty of bosses, a good deal of trash, quite the need for progression, and even random weekly quests which have varying degrees of difficulty. This is aside from the new boss in Vault of Archavon, the weekly raid quests in Dalaran, and the very popular cross-realm Dungeon Finder. We feel these features will bring enjoyment to those who like the PvE side of things for quite some time, allowing the average level 80 player to collect some great gear over time and hopefully have a shot at the Lich King before Cataclysm happens.

With that being said, we do have some additional PvE and PvP content and changes we plan to implement prior to the release of the big Cataclysm patch and subsequent retail release of that third expansion. We'll be discussing these new features in more detail in the coming weeks." - Zarhym

Seems like we'll have some content to cover when we're banging our way around in Icecrown Heroic. I personally hope it's another troll instance with a land mount award ala ZA. Alot of people have already said this but they are quite correct: We have the lore, the zone, and a plethora of characters to choose from for bosses.

Gimmie a skeleton bear!

10-Strict Sindragosa Down!

Very challenging encounter for Strict 10 man raiding. The dps needed to straight power through p3 isn't available at our gear level yet, in my opinion. Being as we do not double up on 10 AND 25 man gear to do it. What that means is we have to have a very controlled P3 taking her down slowly.

Our raid set-up:

• 1 Protection Warrior wearing frost resist.
• 3 Healers: Disc Priest (normally shadow), Holy Paladin (normally protection), Restoration Shaman.
• 6 DPS: Retribution Paladin, Unholy Deathknight, Affliction Warlock, Destruction Warlock, Marksman Hunter, Feral Druid (normally restoration).

Safe to say it was a serious bouncing around of offspecs! Overall felt great to get this kill! Guildox.com now has us ranked 11th for progress and 9th for achieves in the world! Not too shabby!

The Lich King is next! Stay tuned!

Hand of Salv - An Introduction

Hola, I'm Attackattack, a Retribution Paladin on the US-Turalyon server. I've played wow since late 2006 - with a couple month breaks here and there. I work as a server, bartender, and general jack of all trades in the food industry. My girlfriend and I live together in north Texas. I've been in numerous guilds over the years - while currently I have made the switch to Strict 10-man raiding.

My hope with this blog is to provide my personal insight into Strict 10 man raiding, raiding as retribution/holy, and my general experiences with the game. Some guildmates of mine also blog regularly, you can see them at Dreambound and Ancestral Knowledge. They are far smarter than I am at this game and are great resources to others interested in 10-man Strict raiding!

Please leave comments if you have topics that you'd be interested in hearing about!