Our hard work has finally paid off.


We got our drakes... and our sanity back.




The current content has been an uphill climb for Encore. T7 bored a lot of our players, so we've had to do a lot of recruiting. Mainly though, it was the attitude and lack of motivation that hampered our progress from day one. From people expecting one-shots after one-shots, to inconsistent attendance from a lot of our veteran members (including myself at times), this drake is a symbol of our hard work and perseverance despite everything we've been through.

About a month and a half ago, many of us were afraid that we'll experience another Sunwell-type failure (couldn't kill KJ pre-nerf) with 3.2 arriving without our ironbound drakes. Our GM even told us that if we fail, he's quitting the game. From an outside perspective, it sounds a little selfish, but all of us could understand his sentiments. We were raiding with poor attitudes, we started at least 30-45 minutes late every night, we were frustrated with constant disconnects and crappy computers that cost us numerous wipes every night, and many of our tenured players weren't performing as well as they should be. Our GM is perhaps the most dedicated person I've ever come across in my life. I mean, the guy works full-time, goes to school, and still finds time to raid 5 days of the week. He also deals with everyone's issues on a daily basis, whether it be on AIM, his phone, or on our forums. He felt that his time wasn't respected by the guild, which was a fair sentiment. As for myself, I was a little lonely since I was the only raiding warlock at the time. Warlock chat had never been so dead.

But then we picked up a new warlock. We started dedicating one of our raid nights to 10-mans to serve as a halftime break during the week as well as for everyone to learn each fight thoroughly. We picked up some amazing players (one of our FNGs got his drake in 2 weeks, picking up almost all of the required achievements in that period). Then we picked up another warlock. Then we became Firefighters. Then in the same week we got 1-Light. Then last night, we got Knock(x3). It truly has been an amazing month.

Alright alright, we still have to kill Algalon (even in 10-man), and there's a very realistic chance that we might not have the time to kill him pre-3.2, but I honestly won't be that disappointed if we can't kill him before the patch. The 1-hour thing will ****ing kill us in our 25-mans. We've lost so much of our raid time to DCs, restarts, blue screens, 'stuck at authenticating', 'stuck at a full blue bar', and other stupid, mostly client-side issues. As long as we kill Algalon in our 10-mans, then I think that will keep most of us happy (Herald of the Titans is an amazing title).

Regarding Freya, I'm honestly disappointed in my performance on that fight. I suck at meta/ruin. The amount of movement in that fight affects the spec more than destro. The long cast of SB, as well as its travel time, resulted in a lot of dps that never happened. During p1, my dps was embarrassingly low on conservators, which is arguably the second hardest add pack. My snaplasher dps wasn't that bad, and I didn't have to worry about aggro. My flower pack dps is normally the highest, but on our kill pull it wasn't (probably because I focus more on the tree that spawns, but my dps on it still isn't good /sigh). During p2, I could barely hit any of the roots because they died so quick. I'm not afraid to say that the spec, if played properly, can and will top meters. But I guess I just suck at it. It requires a different play-style as compared to affliction (dot timer management) and destro (short-cooldown management).

I think my poor performance, at least compared to WMO parses, can be attributed more to the fact that in most of the top parses, the lock doesn't really focus on trees/roots. Our strat holds everyone accountable for those, so if you're in range of trees/roots, you switch to them. Looking at other parses, you can tell that most guilds designate 3 specific players to take them down, which is definitely more efficient. Who cares though, we got it and that's what matters. I'll probably stick to demo spec for this fight. Not only is it fun to play (/kneel during metamorphosis is full of win), but it's always nice to learn all the different specs of your class. I'm affliction for Yogg, Demo for Freya, and Destro for everything else. I think it's a good balance... kinda.

I can't wait for our Freya video to come out. Our movie maker (one of our rogues) always plays the last 10-20 seconds of our ventrilo which always includes the celebration, which makes me remember the feeling of getting these kills. Hopefully he finishes it soon. Check out his videos at: Encore Performances.

Remember, when you hit phase 2, always keep this in mind: "The tree IS the kill".