Topic: World of Warcraft

Broodlord Lashlayer Defeated

Broodlord Lashlayer was killed for the first time on Kil'Jaeden by The Flying Hellfish (9/10). This fight is one that appears to be very basic from an outside perspective, but requires a full understanding of aggro, healing control, and basic positioning and strategy to defeat. We came in on Saturday with a new strategy and dropped Broodlord easily on our 2nd attempt. Apparently Broodlord has been nerfed tremendously since the patch, so it will not be long before we see a large number of guilds begging for Firemaw advice.

 

The previous weekend The Flying Hellfish accomplished another server first by killing Vaelastrasz the Corrupt. Like all of the other BWL events, this encounter requires a tremendous amount of teamwork and coordination to win. In fact, in order to win, it demands a nearly flawless execution of strategy. Vaelastrasz will wipe your raid in seconds with even one minor mistake.

Bonus points for spotting a Hunter

You can see a movie of our first kill here. You'll notice that for our first kill, we went way beyond the duration of essence of the red. We also used zero consumables. This mob requires amazing tanks, amazing healers, and all the dps going simply all out. Everyone performed exceptionally well, and we ultimately enjoyed a very satisfying kill.

 

Since our last update, we have also killed Razorgore the Untamed. This encounter is not as difficult as Vaelastrasz, but it certainly requires the same level of coordination and teamwork. Our raid had to change their mindset of working as a single unit, and shifted into several different squads, all performing unique tasks, which gives the feeling of well-controlled chaos.

Razorgore casts levitate on his corpse

In the end, the final version of each of these encounters has actually been a lot of fun (minus Broodlord being a joke now). However, these mobs are only being properly tuned after the bleeding edge guilds beta test them. We've had to experience that partially with the drakes after Broodlord already (before the 1.7 changes). Things are still rather buggy near the end of BWL. Hopefully future 40-man raid level instances will be more well refined than what BWL was at launch.

We will update the webpage with tons of action shots, random screenshots, and quotes on the next major update. To whet your appetite in the meantime, here is a teaser.

Ragnaros the Firelord has been destroyed by The Flying Hellfish

 

After a significant span of teamwork and experience, The Flying Hellfish have altogether annihilated Ragnaros. This encounter required many weeks of guild preparation, determination of strategy, and everyone learning their own task. In the end, when everything came together, it was a decisive win with minimal losses on our side.

This encounter has been dramatically enhanced since the latest patch, but in the end, DPS still plays a significant role in taking down Ragnaros. One of Ragnaros' new abilities is the Wrath of Ragnaros (WoR). WoR hits your rogues for at least 1000 damage and sends them flying no less than 120 yards skyward. The rogues then land for either 4000 damage, or in a pit of lava... meanwhile, they are also getting hit by both lava and magma splashes. Finally, the WoR is a partial memwipe on the main tank, causing any rogue who doesn't follow the plan to steal direct aggro and take up to 4000 direct damage from Ragnaros instantly, plus a 4800 over 8 second DoT. To put it simply, this is a painful fight if not done properly. Daggeth, who is special enough to have his own guild rank, submitted this view of the Ragnaros fight from a rogue perspective.

Anyway, below are some of the images we collected during the Ragnaros fight. In particular I'd like to point out the screenshot submitted by Sooryo. His GUI single handedly reinforces the idea that priests are unorganized sociopaths. From what I gather, his GUI is typical of a Hellfish priest.

Raid Setup, Mage DPS

Crazy Gui, My perspective, Group shot

 

Due to some computer issues, this update took long enough that we were actually able to engage Ragnaros a second time before the update was published. For our second kill, the plan was to engage Ragnaros on our first attempt and have it be a "trial run" in order to make sure everyone had the strategy down, and then use consumables for the next run. However, we ended up downing Ragnaros with no consumables or buffs on our very first pull of the night. Ragnaros: Farm status.

We were also fortunate enough to have Ragnaros drop his legendary Eye of Sulfuras. This item immediately sparked a tremendous amount of guild cooperation in order to create the server's first Sulfuras (an item that is still extremely rare server-wide).

Within one hour we had acquired the necessary ingredients: 50 arcanite bars, 10 blood of the mountain, 20 dark iron bars, 10 fiery cores, 10 lava cores, 25 essence of fires, 8 Sulfuron Ingots (one kindly loaned by Bloodline), and of course the Eye of Sulfuras, an extremely rare drop from Ragnaros. Within 1 hour we had gathered all the reagents, and our friend Nambo, from our kind allies in the guild Auphan, performed the combine for us.

Materials, Precursor Hammer

Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros - Now belongs to The Flying Hellfish of Kil'Jaeden. The lucky recipient was our most active DPS warrior who is also well trusted by the guild. His name is Cuauhtemoc (we just call him Carlos).

Of course no one would leave Cuauhtemoc alone, and he was forced to duel for nearly 2 hours, with record crowds. Orgrimmar was emptied, and our enchanters were actually making money off of the attendees.

Crowds form, Dueling starts

 

Moving right along... In addition to farming Molten Core, The Hellfish have been doing Alterac Valley battleground instances en masse since its release. Many of us have been working diligently on reaching exalted status. Speaking from personal experience, you start to become a sadistic son of a bish after playing until 10am five nights in a row, training nearly 80 mobs on a single alliance just to loot his body for 1/2000th of the faction needed to reach exalted. The best part was, before the patch, faction wasn't shared so you had to race against your "friends" while they cursed your name and blamed your looting skills on their crappy ping (this excuse works against Chubits and Tanka when trying not to look slow). Moreover, late at night, a group of 10 horde would be able to easily hold the base against a vastly superior zerg of 40 alliance, allowing the loot to stream in at unprecedented levels.

Unfortunately, as that previous description might imply, Alterac Valley was not exactly "tested." Below are some screenshots that will give you an idea of the pain that is AV.

AV Troubles, 12 Korraks

Over 100 Arch Druids, Final Boss evade bugs

 

Besides Alterac Valley, we have been doing many things to keep ourselves busy. Below are a few snippets of the life of a Hellfish.

Having Fun in MC

When Kil'Jaeden goes down, and it does a lot, the entire server logs in to our albino Tauren alt guild on Dragonmaw and cause minor chaos. Last time we went we made the bold journey to Orgrimmar at level 1, and caught us a gnome on the way there.

Albino Taurens abuse Dragonmaw during downtime

Our most active players each have their own personal way to pass time when they're bored. Kronos apparently visits farms. Sangreal has become famous for selling enchants so much that he could single handedly alter our server's economy (no this isn't a joke). When he isn't in Orgrimmar, usually due to raids, he actually suffers serious enchanting withdrawals and will start to sell them in the Molten Core general chat channel, or to fellow guild members who just won a new item. Yachiru on the other hand, once fished for deviate fish, 2-boxing, for 16 hours straight. Here is a small excerpt of his night.

Kronos visits the farm, Sangreal: Kil'Jaeden's #1 swindler, Yachiru post-AV

And finally the last few random shots of Hellfish life:

Player abuse at Azuregos

Tanka finds true love, Braze, Jersey

 

And finally, as we end all updates, and everyone's favorite part... quote time!

Nothing can kill Ragnaros...

Applicants who may not get in...

Officer Chat - Tanka

Officer Chat - Milian

Officer Chat - Sjamlock (clear winner)

Congratulations once again to all of the Flying Hellfish

Ragnaros has been summoned by The Flying Hellfish

 

There is a lot to get to for this update, but first we should start nearer to the beginning of the last week. The Flying Hellfish have been making attempts at Onyxia over the last couple of weeks now. We unfortunately did not have very many people keyed, but still went after her anyway. Our best push prior to last week was a flawless entry into Phase II with 23 people. Either way we spent a good week getting another 20 or so keys so we could make a more serious attempt.

Flawless phase II entry on Day 1 with 23 people, Getting n00bs keyed

So after getting a little more than 35 people keyed up, we decided to make another attempt. This time however, things were looking good because we were able to intimidate, confuse, and embarrass onyxia. First we were able to catch the dragon mating. Second, thanks to blizzards utter lack of respect for horde appearance, we made the dragon die laughing at our shaman's shoulders.

Dragon Sex, Shaman Shoulders

Finally we were able to make a flawless exit from phase II with over 35 people, which basically ensured victory. Everyone went pretty crazy when the dragon went down, and certainly everyone there deserves a big congratulations for killing Onyxia.

Onyxia in Phase II, Group Shot

Onyxia has been Destroyed

 

The next night we went back to Molten Core to finish clearing it, and make a 2nd attempt at Majordomo. We have been fully clearing Molten Core for over 3 weeks now and been getting more efficient each time. In our latest attempts we're able to get through shazzrah in about 5 hours, with a full clear in approximately 8 hours. Our goal is to hit the 5-6 hour full clear mark that many guilds claim is the limit.

That night we cleared to Majordomo and took our 2nd attempt at him. We had wiped 4 times previously on this encounter, and had decided on a few strategy tweaks that might work out. With everyone clearly focused, and our new strategy in place, we pulled Majordomo and killed his 8 minions on the first pull of the night. Ragnaros has been awakened.

Majordomo and his 8 friends, Wrapping up the Kill, Majordomo submits to the Hellfish

With every boss in Molten Core down, Ragnaros was now up, and everyone felt like taking a brutal beating, so we decided enact our proprietary Ragnaros preparation strategy.

Hellfish BBQ

Summoning Script, Too damn big and close

Ragnaros Summoned, Size Comparisons

 

After being totally abused by Ragnaros, there was only one other mob left in the game that we needed to kill, Lord Kazzak. We set our sights on this mob and planned to down him within the next week. Last night after our Molten Core run, we checked and found that Lord Kazzak had spawned.

Now, for people who have not yet done this encounter, Kazzak has a few abilities that are simply ridiculous - and even moreso on PvP servers. Kazzak will hit anyone within 100 yards of him with a shadow bolt and can be effectively trained by ONE person (usually a shielded paladin) onto a raid of 40 people, wiping them. Furthermore when Kazzak is engaged, if anyone in the raid dies, or any alliance die to Kazzak, he heals for 70,000 HP. There are quite a few other tricks to him as well, but these are the ones that really make the encounter suck on a PvP server - a single alliance player can easily wipe your raid.

Incoming Pain and Frustration

Anyway, we engaged Kazzak, and on the fifth pull, we had our main tank Dexaar engage, sunder once, and within 3 seconds we had all of our dps and rogues totally unloading without feint or stopping (Don't let anyone tell you a protection specced warrior isn't superior for PvE). Dexaar didn't lose aggro once, and we were taking 20% of his health every 15 seconds. During the fight, no less than 10 alliance attacked our raid, attacked Dexaar, our healers, and our rogues, and all were dealt with. Furthermore, Kazzak healed at one point for 70,000 off of a single alliance player, and we were still able to recover. Kazzak was Down.

Kazzak has been killed

The Kazzak kill for The Flying Hellfish marks a Server first for Horde. We're now left with Ragnaros as the only mob remaining that we have not yet killed (also a server first).

 

In between raids we've still been having a lot of fun, and recently the PvP honor system was rolled out. Now anyone who has actually experienced this system can pretty clearly and honestly state that honor and skill has nothing to do with it. Still, at least its something to do between the extreme lack of PvE content. One of the unfortunate side effects of the PvP honor system is it stressing our already overworked hamster who powers Kil'Jaeden; when you see scenes like the following, that take nearly 3 minutes to load, you know a crash is imminent.

Yeah, this'll happen

Finally in closing I thought I'd put up a couple of pictures that really can't be classified - and close with one of the excellent images that Andurin has uploaded to our user galleries.

Guild Mascot (unedited), The Flying Hellfish

Orgrimmar at Dusk

We went after Garr and Baron Geddon last night and got to Garr within 45 minutes of entering the zone.
Both bosses died on our very first pull - which was also our very first encounter with these bosses. Screenshots will be added later.

UPDATE: The next night we re-entered MC and killed Sulfuron, and Golemagg 2.0 on the 2nd pull each. Grats to everyone involved. We've cleared essentially everything in MC - all that remains is majordomo (who is kind of pointless to summon on your first clear) and Ragnaros who really doesn't count yet.

Magmadar DOWN

The Flying Hellfish have made their way into the Molten Core a couple times in the last week and we are moving along relatively well on each attempt. This Thursday, the Hellfish engaged the outdoor dragon Azuregos, and destroyed him on our first ever pull of the event.

Azuregos dropped TWO of the uber Fang of Mystics Daggers - Grats Complete and Tanka!

We then moved into Molten Core and decided to go straight for Shazzrah without first killing Magmadar due to the absence of a few critical players. This meant the Ancient Core hounds would be respawning all around us every 18 minutes (at one point there were three spawns we had to time while killing Molten Destroyers). Regardless, we navigated to Shazzrah, dealt with the numerous hound adds, and downed the mob sometime in the middle of the night.

Grats Sjamlock on Felheart Bracers

 

So two days later we re-entered Molten Core with a fresh instance. We pulled Lucifron first, and killed him flawlessly. Next, we pulled Magmadar and using our new strategy, killed him on our first pull of the night.

Lucifron Flawless, Magmadar Setup and Pull

Magmadar Fight and Group Shot

Grats to Wangchi, Razer, and Archbane

 

We then proceeded further into the Core and setup for Gehennas. Gehennas is a fun encounter, but a bit too easy. We killed Gehennas on the first ever Hellfish pull for this boss.

Dexaar standing alone, Gehennas Destroyed, Loot (Grats Andurin)

So, once again we then moved back to Shazzrah, saving Garr and Baron for later this week.

2 Days, 4 new Boss kills, over 100 MC trash mobs, 12 Epics

 

It's also been quite a while since I've done a non-raid update. So this would be a good time to show everyone some of the things that we've been up to over the last couple of months, and perhaps let the outside world see the deviance that is the Hellfish Druid.

Naked Hellfish Action (PvP Bait and Fist Brawl Included)

Abusing Guild Members with lootlink

Working on our Train skills (for Kazzak):

Kil'Jaeden of course did its best to provide us with uninterrupted interruption of service. Kil'Jaeden has recently been upgraded and connected to an overclocked 300 baud modem, which is in turn connected to clients via a string attached to a plastic cup. When patch day rolled around it was too much for the poor hamster spinning the power wheel for our server - he died, we got a gerbil instead... we're screwed.

Patch day is upon us - RUN KIDS!

And finally, this is where we keep everyone up to date on Flying Hellfish members making asses of themselves (everyones favorite part):

My mailbox is full of this kinda stuff, seriously.

(Beware the Hellfish Druid, especially in Springtime)

Tanka determined that 75% of our guild members are programmers. I'd say we're also 20% aussie, and 100% nerd.

And Finally, I think this image on many, many levels encapsulates the last 2 months of Hellfish life into 1 picture: