Swords of the Mourning

Swords of the Mourning finished clearing Cataclysm's first tier of normal mode content last night.

We are now, in the eyes of all the entities of Azeroth, Defenders of a Shattered World.

Those of you who were around for our Lich King kill might remember that post, "Whoops there goes the Lich King." I'd like to do something similar here:

Gilcrist: You are an absolutely incredible tank. Always on the ball, showcasing a mastery of your class, fight mechanics, and tanking in general. It is an absolute pleasure to heal you!

Flavie (er, Berugrim): You always do what needs to be done. You switched classes for us, and I can't say what a huge help you've been. Tanking when we needed, picking up adds, heroic leaping all over raid bosses' faces, and rocking the DPS charts.

Veerna: Another class-switcher. You learned to play a Resto Shaman on the fly, which is so impressive considering the content we were facing. I think you healed Cho'Gall before you had healed all of the heroics as a shaman! Your steady healing presence, easy demeanor, and of course valuable buffs are always appreciated! Great healing with you, sir!

Phyona: Another steady presence for our melee corps, you always do what needs to be done. Whether it's interrupts, one-liners, or kiting flame breaths, we know we can count on you. Hot deeps in more ways than one. ;)

Cathari: You've brought such stability to our healing corps, especially when you remember what day it is! ;) In all seriousness, you've single-handedly prevented so many wipes we couldn't begin to count. It's an honor to heal with you!

Timelappse: Our newest guildy! So good to be guilded with you again. Amazing work on Nefarian, you never ever missed a beat.

Vahlden: Gahd I'm glad we pugged you. You are an incredibly quick learner, and you never get frustrated no matter how inadequate our explanations are! You are a natural tank and an upstanding individual, and I hope we have you tanking for tiers to come.

Dorakeen: The heart and soul of our raid group, the kind of warm fuzzy glue, if you will. Have we ever needed to ask for a brez or innervate? Do I need to say more?

Taiyoukou/Daranor: We miss you two! Hope all is well. You were invaluable in conquering the earlier parts of this tier.

Blathinas: You fit in so well with us, I feel like you've just always been in the guild. Another one I'm so glad we pugged. Thank you for always being willing to switch roles and classes. It's great knowing you'll excel no matter what we ask you to do.

Nazburr: Where would we be without our ever-prepared raid leader? You fulfill so many responsibilities on every fight, and despite that we always see you at the top of the DPS charts. Truthfully, we are all lucky to have you leading us into battle.

Congrats on 12/12 everybody! Heroic lootz await!

Well, yes, he is much harder than every other normal mode boss this tier.

But that didn't stop Swords of the Mourning from downing him in approximately five hours of attempts. Every single raid member performed with aplomb. Heals were solid through every crackle, interrupts were perfect. DPS was rocking, and our tanks (hardest jobs this fight) managed the fight to perfection. The result was a silky smooth kill. We could have kited those adds forever!

Here's a pre-kill shot courtesy of Dorakeen:

And a neat kill shot:

11/12!!!! Al'Akir, here we come...

In one of our very finest moments as a guild, we were able to down two relatively difficult progression bosses in one night. Ascendant Council a.k.a. Team Rocket went down in a couple attempts, despite a huge imbalance of health pools in the first phase.

Then Giovanni Cho'gall and his small army of Muks and Grimers went down in under 10 attempts. 90 minutes for an end boss kill? Hell yeah. I can't say enough about everybody's performance.

I liked the loot, myself :P

In other great news, we've had two incredible additions to the guild in the past week. We're happy to welcome Blathinas and Vahlden to the guild! You guys have been great.

On to Nefarian!

Just sleeping with their eyes open, fabulously of course.

This actually only took us about 4 wipes to figure out (not including trying ot 9-man it twice when we had no clue what we were doing).

On the same night, we got Ascendant Countil to 2%. A few of us (read: Phyona and I) were very off all night, so speaks volumes about our raiders. Council and Cho'gall are going down next week.

That's right, we told Chimaeron where to shove both of his heads.

We're really starting to come together. Chimaeron took under two hours of attempts, total. And we had heard horror stories of wiping for weeks on this fight!

Everybody performed extremely well. DPS was rocking with three people over 17k, tanks were doing a perfect job with the double-strike taunting, and heals kept up enough to nab us the achievement! Even the loot was good for a change, with Veerna getting much needed bracers (upgrade from a 318 green) and Daranor getting a tanking ring (finally some tank loot).

This easy bosses are on the agenda: Conclave and Valiona/Theralion (which we got to <10% on our second and final full-strength attempt). Maybe we'll down Ascendant Council, too. 9/12, here we come!

We put this poor dragon out of his misery.

Dora is dead on the left. "Hard to heal a dead Boomkin," said Gilcrist.

The overpaid Guild Page was facing the wrong direction.  Also, how about that smokin' trio of human females?

Cata raiding is hitting full swing!

We downed Omnitron in about 2.5 hours over 2 nights last week.

Then yesterday, in our best night of cata raiding, we one-shot Magmaw and Omnitron before moving on to Maloriak, killing him in about 12 attempts over 1.5 hours.

Here are a few victory screens:

                                                         VVVVVV MALORIAK VVVVVVV

:P

Actual screenshots will be taken next time!

Swords of the Mourning held its inaugural Cataclysm raid!

And a successful one it was. After some initial hiccups (replacing DC'd pugs, repairing, running back to grab lost flasks) we were able to down Magmaw in a mere six attempts! That number was inflated by a few hilarious mistakes (it turns out you can, in fact, fall off of the edge). We might have defeated this overly warm worm even sooner.

As we fill out our raid comp, get accustomed to Cataclysm raiding, and get back in the swing of things, the raids will only get better!

Well, Cataclym has been out for nearly a month now, and what a month it has been!

The six dedicated raiders we have left over from WOTLK are just about ready to start hitting Blackwing Descent and the like. We're still looking for those few, perfect pieces to round out our group.

Heroics have been a lot of fun, if not as challenging as everybody makes them out to be. Still a lot more engaging than WOTLK 5-mans. And did I mention how much I love healing now?

Here are some screens from Arthre's journey to 85. I encourage you to post some of your own!

Launch Night:

Graduation Speech

Thrall!

85, in the company of Gilcrist and Dorakeen.

First congrats? From a gent named Firefarter, a legend of the game.

Wowstead got a facelift!

As a bit of a side effect, we temporarily lost all of our news, pictures, etc.

I've contacted the wowstead staff and they are hard at work restoring all of the old content. In the meantime, you can see our old stuff at swordsofthemourning.wowsteadlegacy.com.

Get pumped for Cata! WOO!

-Art

Here's a shot from a recent victory at Thousand Needles.  Because Crossroads was too hard.