Gramme

This 'fuckawful football' has still just taken us to sixth place and two trips to Wembley. It's effective enough to have seen us beat everyone else in the Premiership in recent years, including an extremely sweet win at Old Trafford which had previously happened once in my Villa-supporting life. Bleating about an alleged lack of entertainment is just ridiculous. Let's win something first, eh? I can't believe what a pile of miserable, unrealistic swine some of you are. We're still on an upwards trajectory despite running into a 'big 4' entrenched by years of success and Champions League money, a Spurs squad who had a massive head-start on us (and still barely scraped into fourth ahead of us), and a Manchester City empire which is effectively unrivalled in world football. Why do some of you believe we have any right to compete against them? We don't. We're a provincial team with a dwindling budget, a limited support and minimal global appeal. Get real. We're doing at least as well as we could realistically hope for.

Assuming £40 a shirt, there's absolutely no way we sell 250,000 shirts in a season. We'd be doing well to get a quarter of that number.

Exactly how many shirts do you think we sell in a season? Even some back-of-an-envelope maths would tell you that shirt sales for a club like ours will have practically zero impact on our transfer budget. That said, getting them on sale for the start of the season is a matter of common courtesy and the current situation is a poor show.

I suspect such activities may be discouraged these days.

But whilst he might give up possession, he's often 30 or 40 yards further up the pitch when he does so. It's an important distinction.

Second half stuff broke down through him, I agree. But he was doing so much work, and often had little option but to carry it and try to find only a single option. He ran his legs off and did so much good defensive/destructive stuff. I thought he did really well througout, and I get the impression I'm not the only one.

Agreed - absolutely no shame.

Missed out Harewood from the bench on Wedneday too and bought in Weimann. Amusingly enough, Porto have nearly twice as many on the bench as we do. Maybe they're going to come after us mob-handed!

No Harewood, unless I'm missing something.

I seriously doubt that Martin needs any help whatsoever with signing players, having been in professional football for a significant number of years. And even if he did, I can't imagine that he'd consider cherry-picking from Villatalk's motley array of keyboard warriors, Football Manager addicts and semi-literate panic merchants. (I place myself in the first of those categories, by the way.) On topic, thanks must go to the General for his drive, tolerance and the heart-warming comments he sprinkles upon this thread.

I'd say Silence is mostly a waste of time for SSC. If you can compare it to Counterspell and consider that I've more or less never used CS in SSC, then you can draw your own conclusions. No use at all on Hydross, Lurker, Morogrim or Vashj. It *might* work on Karathress's adds and it *might* work on your conjured demon at Leotheras, but it's really not needed. And the trash isn't worth worrying about these days.

Thanks for the welcome last night - was fun to come and say hello. Not sure how much playtime I'll manage on my little priest, but keep an eye out for me!

We might be girly, but I'd fancy our chances in a 'square go'... :winkold: Who are In Nomine Mortis?

Hello again... been away from this thread forever, but got drawn back by all the close-season transfer chatter elsewhere on the board. Hope you don't mind my interference... :winkold: How's the expansion working out for you all? I'm still kind of amazed at the effect it's had on the population on my server (Draenor EU) - our Naxxramas raids were always oversubscribed and yet we've had to recruit to stay viable on the 25-man content. At one stage in Naxx, we were running with 8-10 mages and 6-8 warriors... now we have 3-4 regular raiding mages (2 of them are new to the guild) and 2-3 warriors. So many old faces have just disappeared, without even having been marked as 'surplus to requirements'. Seems a shame really. I've read the last few pages of this thread and it looks like you're heading into SSC. It's a decent instance and your timing is good since you get the 'nerfed' version of it; not too long ago it was hideously overtuned and pretty painful. The trash was an absolute killer - too much of it, too much HP, 45-minute repop... all added up to make the place a bit of a nightmare. I think it's about right now though, and the loot is generally not too bad. We've cleared SSC, The Eye, Mount Hyjal and are now about to start working on the fourth boss in Black Temple. If I can give some advice before you start out then it'd be: a) stack shadow priests - they make everything *so* much easier; we have 3 in every raid, without fail. stack stamina gear - some encounters are DPS races, but many more simply require heavy duty HP to survive. To this end, I reckon that only the Frozen Shadoweave set from the tailoring epics is actually worth it - Mooncloth and Spellfire just leave you too exposed to be being one-shotted. On Archimonde last night I was running with over 10.2k HP and I was the lowest in the raid. c) stack paladins - we always run with three, one of whom makes a superb off-tank.

Yeah, that's us! Did you watch it? I love it, a really special summary of Naxx and the guild.

What does this mean? Anyway, as i wasnt there last night, what was the class balance like? TFFT = thank f*ck for that... we've been really short of healers for a wee while now.

With the timings in ED's movie (@ 54% after 5 minutes of phase 2), you should be able to use Evocation twice if you need it - once after phase 1 and once after you've nailed the zerg. The zerg in itself is easy - the risen mobs only have about 6-7k health. So as long as you have a warrior near each door with a couple of healers and Challenging Shout ready to pull the mobs into a pile, you can't really fail. Frost nova to proc Shatter, wave your CoC at them and you're sorted. We still use the Limited Invulnerability Potions after 30 kills - they make it completely stress free. The most important thing about going into the zerg is picking your moment. We tend to stop ALL DPS at 22% and assume our positions behind his tail, between the pillars. We take him to 21% kinda slowly to allow mana regen and wait for a favourable class call. Hunters/rogue/druid are the best ones to go on - take down the last 1% to 20% quickly, wait for the zerg to rise and get gathered, pop your pot and trash the bad guys. Should only take about 5-10 seconds. Stray mobs can more or less be soloed - they don't particularly hit hard. Then the last 20% is an absolute breeze - like phase 2 only fun since you KNOW you got him! Killing Nef has been one of the biggest rushes in WoW so far for me. The Naxx bosses we've done so far are typically harder but don't seem quite so special since they're only 'minions' on the path to Kel'Thuzad. Speaking of Naxxramas, we're back in full effect now. We trashed Loatheb for the third time last night, bringing him down in 4 minutes 40 seconds, touching over 20k raid DPS for part of the fight. We then trundled off to Gluth and took him down for the first time to give us a Horde first and server second on Draenor. 10 bosses down... We also recruited a tank, 2 priests (TFFT!) and a mage from another server last night - all in full tier 2 or equivalent. So we'll really be stepping things up now.

Still here! Our hacked fella got all his gear back (minus enchants), but none of the guild bank stuff. The GMs were weird and/or lazy. Without asking, they managed to return 3 BoE greens from the last Naxxramas run, but claimed to be 'unable to find' other reported missing items. The whole carry-on took about two weeks to resolve and did dent morale a bit. Our Naxxramas progress has temporarily stalled (on 9 bosses), but we got Loatheb down again on Tuesday so it's not all doom and gloom. Part of the problem is a shortage of healers at the minute, as well as the other stuff we've had to deal with. Before all this happened we had Gluth on 18%, so hopefully we can nail him before the reset this Wednesday and get things rolling again. The top Alliance guild on Draenor has 12 bosses down and is now starting on the Four Horsemen. What PvP battleground group are you guys in? Am I ever likely to run into any of you? How's Nefarian going? Phase 1 headaches?

From the highs of last week's server first on Loatheb to... Logged on to raid last night to find out than one of our raid leaders has had his account hacked. He was left naked, with every single item of equipment vendored - 5/9 Earthshatter (shaman tier 3), 8/8 tier 1/tier 2, FR gear, NR gear - EVERYTHING gone, including his totems. Not one single copper left on his character. Same for his 60 rogue alt and 60 warrior alt. Same for the 5 (count 'em!) guild bank characters he had on his account... nearly a year's worth of Fiery Cores, Lava Cores, Frozen Runes, BoE epics, thousands of herbs, essences, dusts and shards from everyone in the guild. We estimate the AH equivalent to be in the region of 10,000g from the bank characters alone, not considering the time value of the 100+ days played and gear he had on his main. As you know, we're an established Naxxramas guild and everything we've stockpiled since our first MC run last October has been stolen. Actually, the thief did leave 200+ Nexus crystals - simply because they can't be vendored. To say that morale is low right now is an understatement. I just can't understand the morality (or lack thereof) of someone who would think this was an acceptable act. Give the nature of the theft - items vendored rather than put on AH, for example - it's almost like it's a personal attack (or one against our guild) since money doesn't seem to have been the main objective. There can't have been *that* many people who knew the guy had all our bank characters, but random coincidence seems unlikely. Blizzard are looking into it. We're not getting too hopeful. Gutted at the minute, really.

The real killer is the Inevitable Doom, fairly obviously from the name. You need a very precise routine of Greater Shadow Resistance potions and bandaging, as well as Healing Stream totems for the flimsy casters. A successful attempt means 3 SR potions per person - 1 Dreamfoil, 4 Grave Moss, 4 Fadeleaf and 2 vials for each potion. It's not so bad when you realise that 20 minutes farming/resetting Scarlet Monastery should be enough for most of those things for a 'proper' attempt... In time, we'll get by without most of the buffs I listed above. The SR pots will *always* be necessary, however, and a Spirit Of Zanza makes a big difference. The damage you can deal in the fight is pretty funny. I did *nothing* but spam scorch for 5 minutes (to keep up the rolling ignites) and I hit ~710DPS. The top damage dealer was a mage - he took most of the ignites and had in the region of 1200 DPS over 5 minutes. Now I need to get my new pants enchanted. Which means Zul'Gurub... I think we filmed the kill, so I can link it sometime if anyone's interested.

More news from the Draenor frontline. Chimaera does the not-obvious thing again and takes down Loatheb for our 9th Naxxramas kill and a server first. I got the mage leggings to make 6/9, and our MT is in 6/9 now too. We were absolutely buffed to the bollocks on the kill - I had over 6k HP and 8k mana, plus a Flask Of Supreme Power, Elixir Of Greater Firepower, Greater Arcane Elixir, Blessed Wizard Oil, Major Troll's Blood Potion and Mageblood Potion. We used a Rend buff, a Hakkar buff and a good number of us had a Spirit Of Zanza up too. At one point our raid DPS touched 17.4k, although we averaged 16.5k for the duration of the 5-minute fight. The leading Alliance guild has taken Gluth, Thaddius and Gothik in the last 10 days, so it hopefully won't be long before one of us in the Frostwyrm Lair. We're trying Gluth tonight. It looks like EZ Mode compared to Loatheb...

Congrats mate. Do the rogues in your guild get pissed off when another class gets loot too? How are you stacked for damage now? And no matter how well geared you are, can an Undead Soul Link Warlock with a Felhunter who is decked out in Dreadmist still take you in a duel? The key to Flamegor is the hunter tranq shot - they *must* set up a solid rotation and have macros in place to tell one another if they miss. As long as the hunters are landing their tranq shots, the raid will NOT get hit by the fire aura, so there's absolutely no need to gimp your stats and damage for FR gear. As soon as the MT has aggro and the OTs are in place, you can just go all out DPS to get him down. There's no need to take cover or whatever - the aura has an unlimited range and ignores LoS, so more DPS is better. I wear my full normal gear, and don't even bother with the Onyxia cloak any more. Just knock the hunters into shape and you'll be fine. As for positioning, we fight him in the left-hand corner of the room near his ramp - basically where Krixxit hangs out with the 3 big guys. Keep him facing the corner. As for loot... the rogues have been very understanding so far in Naxx, since they share the tier 3 quest drops with warriors. We're basically giving everything to our 4 main tanks first, and then using DKP thereafter to determine who gets what. I think we have our tanks in 5/9, 4/9, 4/9 and 3/9 Dreadnaught so far, and only 1 or 2 pieces of tier 3 to rogues. The rogues have picked up some nice weapons though, so it's not all doom and gloom for them. As for my gear, you can find my profile link a couple of pages back - I updated it this morning. I'm on +617 damage with +16% to hit and 10% to crit, including talents. My average frostbolt hit - excluding any crit modifier - is exactly 1100. With respect to duelling - I never do it, so I can't answer you. Having heard as much as I have about SL 'locks, I can't say I fancy trying it. EZ Mode though, innit? :winkold:

Which boss are you talking about? Sounds like either Firemaw or Flamegor, but I can't tell which. After our first kill we still had some issues with Firemaw for a week or two, until our healers sorted out some nice positioning. Flamegor is an absolute joke boss - just make sure your hunters have a nice tranq shot rotation set up and you can forget about wearing FR gear; it's a DPS competition! Give me a yell if you think I can help at all. We had a fun-filled evening on Draenor. We took Grobbulus down on the fourth pull after a couple of sloppy attempts and a 6% wipe. I ninja'd another server first with my new tier 3 mage shoulders; you can practically see me from orbit now... :winkold: Not wishing to start on Gluth just yet, we set off to clear MC. We brought some alts etc, but managed to trash the place in 1 hour 59 minutes - Ragnaros died in under 2 minutes. But the best bit was that our MT got the second Windseeker Binding he needed and picked up his spangly sword; we have two of them in the guild now.

Our raid had 16 healers, 7 mages, 4 hunters, 3 warlocks and the remainder as melee. The damage charts were as follows: DPS warrior (dual-wield fury) Rogue Rogue Rogue Fire mage Fire mage Rogue DPS warrior (dual-wield fury) Frost mage (me!) Fire mage The top warlock - the only person in the raid who took a spellpower flask - finished in 12th, but 67 DPS behind me. He has 8/8 tier 2, various pieces of the AQ40 set, Neltharion's Tear and the AQ quest reward staff, so he's not exactly poorly geared (and is a very good 'lock) - but it seems that the class is incapable of keeping up over long periods of sustained combat due to mana issues. We couldn't really afford to heal anyone other than the tanks to allow for life tap... but then again, only the tanks will take any damage at all on Patchwerk. So you don't need to worry about your health. I guess we could do fine with only two 'locks - CoR and CoE are the debuffs we need most, I reckon.

News from Draenor - Patchwerk down on the first night of trying! Used 3 Major Mana Potions, 4 mana gems and Evocation to keep up the DPS for the required 7 minutes. It was absolute carnage. Tonight we'll mop up Grobbulus - easy mode, allegedly - giving us our 8th kill in Naxxramas. Fingers crossed for a set of the spectacular-looking mage shoulders.