Skroesec

Oh hey... didn't see you there! So it's what... Dragon Soul week 26? Something like that right? NOPE! Wrong! It's Mists of Pandaria 25-Man Beta Testing week 1! And Tyranny was out in force! I Over the last few weeks our team has been getting our guild ready for this moment and were we prepared! Our Beta guild (Tyranny) on Gilneas is Level 18, and most everyone who has a Beta Key is 90 and Tuesday night we got to work! After a few attempts we "killed" Garalon in Heart of Fear... I say killed because we called Wipe at 5% with the entire raid alive at the same time Blizzard disabled the boss. Then we went to Terrace of Endless Spring and downed Tsulong here in a few attempts (as seen above). Do you know how great it is to do? new content after the longest interval without a new raid in WoW's 7 year history? It was orgasmic. Really. Orgasmic. I went there. So what does this sampler tell us about MoP raiding? It's going to be fucking awesome. DS had some seriously hard fights at 0% and 5%... but it was, how shall we say... stationary (likely due to Blizzard experimenting with making fights LFR friendly). These fights are the exact opposite of that. In fact, I don't think I've moved so much in two back to back fights since AQ40. I haven't been this excited about an expansion since TBC. So Tyranny is here, and we're doing just great. MoP is on the horizon and our army is getting in order. Two fights in the bag, 12 to go, and the future looks very very bright! Oh, and since we're recruiting as always, if you want to join us in our quest to be the top 16 hour a week guild in the US, apply today! We're recruiting everything.

Over the last three and a half months, oranges have happened... a lot. First up was Vlade's guild first Fangs of the Father back on February 29th. Congrats Vlade! It's fitting that one of the smartest, most reliable, most gifted raiders we've had the fortune of playing with since Ulduar get the weapons he deserves! About a month after that Yuffy completed his set. He started building them before he joined Tyranny, but did the bulk of it here, and boy were we glad! Congratulations to you as well man! Truly you have far surpassed your namesake! Most recently however Furcouch was up to no good now that he completed his pair of legendary daggers! He's totally the fall guy for why you can't play Diablo 3. Seriously! Way to go! This completes the three primary sets we've built, and happily they've gone to three truly excellent rogues who are the backbone of our present and future! But wait, there's more! Legendary Staffs may be from 4.2, but they're still BiS and we worked dilligently to get all our raiders them. And sure enough Dxe completed his. It's kind of criminal he got his this late considering what he can do with it, but boy did it go into the right hands now that it is finished! Congratulations! Our boomkin Oltanya built his at about the same time as Dxe, in our twice (sometimes three time) weekly ten man Firelands, as we farmed the guild their Rag mounts. Sometimes they even drained the same bosses in the same run! But shortly after, our good thunderchicken completed his, truly topping off a ten month guild exercise that spanned dozens of rag kills, Fireland runs and many staffs. Congrats Olt! It was a long time coming. So here we are... ten months and nine staffs! This pretty much caps off Dragon Soul and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. We've done everything. We've farmed around three dozen Deathwing and Ragnaros mounts. We've built about a dozen legendaries. Now begins our preparation for Mists of Pandaria and a whole new world of raiding!

Back in early April we took a (long planned) week and wrapped up SERVER FIRST GLORY OF THE DRAGON SOUL RAIDER capping our list of Dragon Soul achievements. The first half of our raiders got theirs when we activated Kalecgos first that week, and the second half when we activated Nozdormu first (on Heroic at 15%) the following week. The latter was especially fun a good challenge for folks farming DS looking to mix it up. The result? Dark horned dragons. Admit it, it's the best one.

Tyranny, an equal opportunity employer. Except if you're from Switzerland. We don't serve your kind here. Sooooo....Grats to Laodead on her Legendary Staff! LONG time coming, and hard earned over the last two tiers. I'd say I'd be excited with what you will do with it, but looking above... well... we already know. I envy what you can do with that long throbbing legendary sta... err *ahem*. So yeah... Lao's staff is more potent than mine. So what! Nobody's perfect. Doesn't make me any less of a man....

8/8 Heroic and US#37. Let's take a second to look at that. After an absolutely stunning two months, where 8 demanding and technical fights as have ever been put in the game were killed at higher ranks in less time than ever before... where the guild faced the challenges of the holidays and new work schedules, ongoing recruitment, comp issues on fights like Spine... where the guild raided extra hours, extra days and raid extended without complaint or worry... now here we are at the end of our labors... Deathwing is dead and Cataclysm is over. The fight was surprisingly fun (compared to Normal) with a very fun and fast paced last leg. It took some solid problem solving for 4th Platform and Phase 2, but in true Tyranny fashion, the last attempt of the night, Madness of Deathwing is no more... right at 11:59. It was the perfect way to win the fight, the expansion and our amazing rebuilding story. Congratulations to Asked and Komma on their mounts and Pizzo, Asked, Eref, Foolish, Meks, Shogun on their server first madness weaponry. For the past 11 months the assembled members of this guild, past and present have lived the most remarkable of comeback stories, a story that belongs to them. You see just over a year ago, after six months of farming Heroic Lich King, planning for Cataclysm and getting a strong start to the expac, Tyranny fractured for terrible reasons and we decided then, that it was the end. After that I got sick, we formed a bunch of casual 10 mans and some people raided elsewhere. In March Pizzo, Danaros and myself took our 10 mans, merged them into a brand new Tyranny and started from scratch, with nothing. No planed comp, tons of tanks, just people and an idea to do this and do it right. Three months later all of Tier 11, including Sinestra was cleared... quite late but cleared... as we planned for whats next. Then Firelands came out From July to October we pushed fiercly through that - through some incredibly demanding fights like Baelroc and Beth'tilac pre-nerf, and finally Ragnaros US #75. We were back to where we were historically, with Lich King, Yogg+0 and KJ before that. But it wasn't enough. A year ago we went into this expansion with a goal: do better than we ever have. And a year later because of the efforts of every single person with a Tyranny tag active and recently retired, we were consistently more accomplished than ever before and finished at a rank that at one point, we once could only dream about. We did it because we worked hard. We did it because everyone put the team first. No matter what our people find themselves doing in Mists of Pandaria, or years from now when Titan is out, everyone in Tyranny, today, who raided, who helped, offered advice, who cheered us on, participated in something extraordinary and truly rare. Tyranny is not one of the guilds that the raiding changes in Cataclysm killed. Tyranny is the guild that fought back from absolutely nothing - puggers from trade chat and friends and people who found us in the WoW forums and thought that we'd be a good place to call home. Tyranny is the guild that finished Cataclysm with unprecedented life in it. Tyranny finished US #37. No guild in the world worked harder for what they accomplished in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, than Tyranny. To all who raided with us in Tier 11, Firelands and Dragon Soul, and is in good standing, thank you for your trust, your patience and your faith that there is something special about Tyranny that made it worth achieving this come back that few MMO Raiders will ever so completely understand what we had to do, to do this. To me, that's worth a hundred thousand Deathwing mounts. We did something this tier and this past year that I hope you'll tell people about years from now as something you were a part of. Alas, we still have much to do... more legendaries, lots of movies to publish, mounts to get.... and months and months to prepare for our next act.... improving on this foundation for World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria!

World of Warcraft is a game where people spew bullshit regularly. The stuff we heard about Spine of Deathwing was a new peak for it though... that you NEED 7-10 mages and 5 rogues. You NEED a Feral Druid. You NEED to have this many healers of this comp. You NEED to do this thing this way. That you NEED to use your CDs this way. Yeah that's all crap. People outside this guild run their mouth like nothing else. We had none of that, developed largely our own, better strat (with some helpful tips by friends of the guild) and Spine of Deathwing is now another notch our our belt, pushing us 7/8 Heroic and US#33. Why? Because Team Tyranny showed and and fuckin' played and used their brains and did what worked for us! I do want to say that every member of Tyranny went above and beyond their normal awesomeness on this fight. People were very willing to go with raid extending, with playing mage alts (for a while), sharing alts, gearing alts, coming in, rotating out and sitting. This fight was a test of the guilds cohesiveness if nothing else, and damn, did we come through. Everyone saw several dozen of attempts on this thing, and the final shape of the strat and kill was in flux really until the hour we killed it. All that's left in Cataclysm is Madness.... and with an hour of work we're already on third platform. Also late congratulations to Romanko on his Legendary Staff! Long time coming man! Very well earned!

Captain's Log, Stardate 20121.12. An unidentified distress signal has led the Starship Tyranny to the discovery of a strange flying boat filled with what we thought were hostile Romulans orbiting Galorndon Core, a Federation planet. Unfortunately we later discovered they were not Romulans, but a Vulcan away team, but only after the unfortunate slaying of their Klingon mission commander. The Captain of the Federation vessel that dispatched the away team was understandably displeased with the untimely demise of one of his senior officers. Captains Log, supplemental. After consultations with Horde Fleet Command, we have confirmed that our actions on Galordon Core and the slaying of Lieutenant Commander Worf brought us to 6/8 Heroic and US#34. Romulan Ale is being distributed in Ten Foward as a celebratory gesture to the crew.

Yes, that's our man John Madden feasting on Ultraxion's decapitated head! Because honestly, this guild has never had higher DPS than it has now, or tighter heals, or smarter players... and we pulled out all the stops... and I DO mean ALL the stops, to scale this obscene mountain with 1.7 seconds to spare and losing only one person in the last half second of the fight. So Heroic Ultraxion died, pushing us to 5/8 Heroic and US#32. This after a heroic effort by the ENTIRETY of Team Tyranny during less than ideal raiding circumstances (the holidays) and on top of that, a 5 hour raid the night of the kill that the guild went with without complaint because they knew... just KNEW, we had it. This is a fantastic fight. You do it or you don't. No kiting around. No last second trickery to win. It took nights of work and a lot of heart ache and hard slogging by our entire crew, to get this son of a bitch where we wanted him, with a high DPS attempt with everyone up 6 minutes in. Damn, we just scaled one hell of a mountain. Congratulations Tyranny... crushing a fight like this is one hell of a way to end 2011.

Boy have we been busy! Let us get to it. So last week (the first week of heroic content), we killed two heroic boss... Morchok (obviously, see below) and Zon'ozz. He's pretty much one of the most ridiculous non-end of tier fights we've done in ages. Good god does Blizzard really try to stretch every raiding muscle. Anyway, US #16 kill of one ridiculous encounter. This week, after about a night of work we ripped into Yor'shaj. Slightly less of a ridiculous encounter compared to Zon'ozz, he was punctuated by pretty much continuous 10 minutes of "we're all going to die" moments where we prayed the next set of oozes didn't put us over a barrel. I think I exhaled so hard when we killed it I dislocated a rib. Good luck to everyone who did Hagara before these two bosses. You're in for a treat and a lot of wiping. Our kill was US#21! Lastly, Thursday this week we finally got around to killing Hargara... you know after a good 60 or so other guilds. Sorry, we were busy doing tougher content first. Ranked kills first, purps second! The hardest part about the fight was finding where to stand at the start of frost phase. That makes us US 4/8 Heroic in 25-man after 2 raid weeks with a good hour of Heroic Ultraxion attempts already invested. This has been the strongest start Tyranny has ever had. Keep on pushing team!

When you go to war, the plan is always the first thing out the window. So here we are with this incredible plan to maximize raid DPS on Heroic Morchok by tanking them close (I know)... only to find that in implementation it was retarded. So we just treated it like two 10 man bosses and won 3 attempts later. Moral of the story, don't cheese the easiest boss in the tier. Great job though guys on rejigging our entire strat in like, 10 minutes. World #21 Also I, Tyrant god-king Skroesec finally got my everyone-gets-an-award-award like guild 5th because I wasn't one of those douchebag GM's who took it first. Ask me nicely and I'll let you touch it.