Grand things ahead…

Nearly a month has passed since we opened the doors for recruiting and I’d say things have worked out pretty darned well.

Was a month too long to catch back up to where we were? Perhaps, but I think we’re well past our previous mark and have a more solid footing now. We’ll move ahead easily.

This coming weekend marks our first attempts at the dreaded Sarth3D and I DO think we have it in us to ante up and get the job done.

So welcome Regard and welcome Carahil to the gang!

Now lets put our backs into it and get what little we have remaining done so we can be /complete when Ulduar hits us with new challenges.

We recently took a hit in membership. Some of our members have played musical chairs and now we’re looking to pick up two DPS roles.

We are particularly interested in a Retribution Paladin and a Survival Hunter. Yes I know a hunter, but we don’t have any that aren’t alts.

By the way, before any Hordies get excited-  we are Alliance. Sorry.

Kwane note: “These two classes are what we feel would best round out the 10 man death machine that Vanguard is and will be. However, same as those classes and being 80 is preferable, what we really want is the player. A certain mindset, willingness, drive and aptitude. All are listed better below, but it is something that should be mentioned up front.

As an example, the SV hunter wanted fills a ranged dps role. We feel this would be best filled by a hunter. If, however, a player the caliber of Aensu showed up to melt faces, they would likely not be turned away.

We are also looking to pad the rank and file a bit, so people that just want to have a green channel of like minded individuals, please feel free to contact us.” /end Kwane

A little info about the guild, Vanguard.

Vanguard has only been around since August, 2008. We may be new to the server, but most of us have been playing World of Warcraft from the very beginning. We intentionally keep our guild small, because we prefer to run with the same people. This allows us to keep us a strong, cohesive team.

This also means we are rather picky who we invite the guild. Case in point, we currently have a total of 10 accounts. (11 if you play the technicality game but he’s a social friend.)

We are not simply looking for warm bodies to fill raid spots. We are looking for like minded people that look to push the limits of their characters in order to reach full potential. Even after content has been on farm for several weeks or months and a player no longer has loot to attain, we expect everyone to bring their A game. This means on time, fully buffed and raring to go.

Each of us follow the theorycraft discussions for our respective classes on sites like Elitist Jerks. While not mandatory (we don’t assign homework), we do expect you to have an appropriate knowledge of your class. This means squeezing every ounce of DPS out of your character possible.

This isn’t just hyperbole. With this mindset, we were able to get all 11 members of our squad an Amani War Bear from ZA in 12 tries while still working on Kara/ZA/Badge gear. This should give you an idea how we play this game. We set goals and accomplish them, we play hard, we play fast and we have fun doing it.

In WotLK it took us one weekend with 8 people to clear up to 4 Horsemen in Naxx.  Second weekend ALL of WotLK was cleared.

As far as progression goes, we have only one encounter left in WotLK’s current raid content, and that’s Sarth 3D.

Effort and learning means a great deal to us. If you have great gear but a stupid spec, you WILL be told so. If you wont hear it or cant learn you’ll be invited to use the door. We aren’t mean, but we aren’t kidding about what we’re looking for, either. If you don’t know but are willing to learn, we are absolutely willing to teach. If you want handholding or a free ride, we recommend you look elsewhere.

Basically, we would rather have a player doing great than a body filling a role and collecting gear and dust. We would rather have an empty slot than dead weight in any role. This may sound repetitive but it bears repeating; we are recruiting players, yes, but we would rather have an empty slot than fill it with a screen-licking mouth-breather or emo-cry baby.

Especially if that body just wants to collect loot and then move on to a bigger guild, we’ll just skip the first part and let you move on now.

If history dictates anything, we won’t be needing all the allotted time to clear the instances once we’ve learned them. Currently we use about 4 to 5 hours total to clear Sarth 25, Sarth 10 1D, Naxx, Maly and VoA 10 man. We haven’t used the third raid night in many weeks, but we like to keep it open just in case.

Loot

We have a priority loot system in place. We often gear our Tanks and Healers with set pieces first as its for the betterment of the raid. This simply allows us smoother progression. Main Spec before Off Spec at all times; rogues won’t be taking ranged items over Hunters. In our group everyone carries their weight, and since we are a small group we gear up quickly.

We currently have no plans to move on to 25 man content. Our official focus at this time is 10 man content. Please keep that in mind.

I’d like to stress gear is not an issue here, as we’ve recently played the musical chairs game and I myself have switched to my third character. I am now the Resident Resto Shaman and I will be gearing up through Naxx like any fresh 80. We plan on gearing the raid up to par again then going after Sarth 3D before Ulduar hits.

A little info about Drenden and the Emberstorm Battlegroup.

Drenden is a PvE Server, now supposedly Medium Pop server due to the recent free transfers off of Drenden. Last I knew Alliance out numbered Horde. Our realm is normally stable, but is known to have it’s hiccups from time to time. I can’t speak of the pug environment too much as I don’t partake in it often, but I have been able to Pug 25 man VoA on a regular basis without any wipes so far, so I have to assume it’s fairly stable. Although we do expect our raiders to spend time outside of the raid getting upgrades, heroics are typically available within the guild without having to resort to pugs for those who ask.

I haven’t noticed our economy doing anything stupid as of late but every server’s economy is normally so different it’s pretty much a moot point. Our trade chat can be rather spammy at times with random BS, but on every server I’ve ever played on it’s always been like that.

Emberstorm Alliance Side, AV as of late has been 40-15 in favor of the horde. We control Wintergrasp fairly regularly. AB, I’ve been in a lot of winning games Alliance Side when I bother to queue. WSG pretty much the same. I have not touched EotS or the new BG SotA yet but if it’s a factor of you transferring here I’d be more then happy to look into it for you.

2. We will get back to you within three days or your money back. Sooner than 3 days is a safe bet, we are rarely “out of town”.

3. If your application impresses us, we will want to run a couple of instances with you. Not just to get a feel for your play style, but also to see how you gel with us as a whole. This is also your opportunity to evaluate us, both as players and as a guild.

4. Assuming the instance runs go smoothly, we will issue a guild invite for a two week trial period. The trial period isn’t training pants, it’s a guilt-free ticket to another guild if it doesn’t work out. Parting ways here means no harm, no foul. Now fowl either. Just leave the chicken out of it, ok?

*Note if you’re a server transfer, it’d be cool to see some WWS reports or the like if you have them available. Cause running an instance before you transfer requires the time machine and we’ve been told using it is immoral. We’ll mostly be checking to make sure you gel with us, and if you end up needing improvement you will be accepting and applying the advice given. Given 2k DPS peaks don’t impress us anymore because our tanks normally run that or so.*

Looking forward to hearing from some people,

Zack

aka Zasp, Nyisa and now Kafive.

Yep we’re pretty much a big fucking deal.

With the death of Malygos on Monday, Vanguard has officially cleared all raiding content available in the current Wrath of the Lich King.

It was good for me, was it good for you?

Sure, we aren’t DONE (not by a long shot), but we’ve cleared it. We’ve seen it. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

Now we just need to finish getting those achievements and clean up our kills of Sapp and Malygos, but with this crew, that won’t take long.

Congratulations, Vanguard! That’s a helluva thing to be able to say on our second week of raiding!

So we’ve finally started on Naxx 10… and decided to rename it Naxx-8.  Without much difficulty we managed to clear every wing except for the 4 Horsemen with only 8 people.  The Horsemen are difficult to not have bodies on, but honestly I think we could probably bring them down with 8 if we had a little more time on it.  Oh well, next week I believe we’ll have at the very least 9 so that means we’ll be ready to do what we have to do to succeed.

I have two videos from our Naxx endeavors.  One of them shows us clearing Plague, Arachnid, and some of Military wins while the other is a “How We Did It” when it came to 8-manning the Construct wing.

Shatter\’s Guide to 8-Man Construct Wing

Naxx Compilation Video

PS: Use the hi-quality versions!

Here’s the setting.

We mount, full bears, and everyone sets RP-walk on and auto-walk on. We walk out to, what to us seemed, the biggest bunch of a confused opposition ever, until they decide to lay waste to our hapless asses. It was great fun and many a laugh was had.
The end of the vid highlights one of the best parts. Xiless was so close to death when he hit FD that they bought it. When they finish off the last of us, you can all but hear them thinking “wtf mate?”

So being the generous guy he is, Nate mounts up again to waltz out and hand them the win.

Good times.

The Bears are Dead! Long Live the Bears!

We did it, guys! Patch is HERE, confirmed by the frustrating inability to log on to our server. That clinches it. We got every single bear we needed, and not a moment too soon!

Super huge congratulations to every single one of us, and I think we should all engage in a round of well-deserved back-patting. From bear 1 to bear 11, not a single failed attempt (though the developers themselves descended upon us and threatened us with the wrath of the server lag).

You guys are AWESOME and incredible, and I hope you all know what a huge achievement this is.  Congratulations on TOTALLY ROCKIN’ and for winning Burning Crusade.

I’d say 11 bears from ZA is a worthy roll of credits.

KZ 10-5

ZA 10-10

ZA clear 10-03-08

Here are the WWS reports for the last week, including two epic ZA runs.

KZ 9-26-08

ZA 9-27-08

ZA 9-28-08