The other three bosses, Freya, Hodir and Mimiron were not as easy tasks to handle, at least for some of us. Inner Sanctum killed Freya in the first reset, while Method killed it on the same day as us, the start of the second week of Ulduar.
That would be unacceptable and highly de-motivating. Anyone that has done that fight before the usual nerfs knows that the most common way to for a raider to die was a combo of two or more abilities Freya and her cronies can and will throw at you.
Well, and who are we to suggest that maybe pre-shielding raiders would help raise their survivability when stuff does more damage than their natural health is. Silly naive us, what were we thinking? After some convincing and more tries, we managed to dispose of Freya, not as easily as one would hope, but the hard part just started.
We were back in the game and really just warming up. I was really happy with the level of morale in the guild at the time.
Even shadow priests, yeah, even they were not bad, thankfully. The role that I was always complaining about for the most part were melee dpsers, namely our warriors were pretty meh and bland, but not awful. There were some complaints about them, but I for the most part, liked how they played, apart from Claypool, aka the Kologarn hole boy.
This guy would manage to die from every single threat in the instance, as if there was an achievement for it, and every single time anyone asked where he is during a Kologarn try, he was dead in a hole under the boss. Equal parts funny and sad, almost like certain people at the Mimiron Firefighter encounter.
At least we got rid of him soon, as we did with Diomache, a guy whose biggest achievement was — collecting achievements. Ironically, what pushed him over the edge sadly a metaphorical edge were achievements, or at least the unwillingness of the raid to provide him with his precious points. Hopefully the non-metaphorical edge was the reason for that. All fun, games and rage quits aside, we were still one kill behind Inner Sanctum and that other guild.
Anyway, since Blizzard just has to showcase their inability to properly tune a boss in each and every instance, the Hodir heroic mode achievement was way under tuned, so both guilds that attempted it during the first reset got it down with no problems whatsoever. Developers swiftly figured out that the boss was too easy, so they ramped up the difficulty by lowering the timer needed to achieve the proper kill making it literally impossible by normal means at least.
They still let the two guilds keep the achievements, making them so much ahead; we could very well forfeit the race. As we figured out that we can possibly reach the insane amount of damage needed to kill the boss and get even with IS and Method in terms of kills, all that remained were logistical and ethical questions.
How do we pull it off and should we even do it? I already spoke about the ethical part of the dilemma in a blog about exploits, but the latter was a bigger dilemma. Surely it might sound interesting, but for me and most of the players in the guild, this was one of the most boring things we ever did. First we transferred some mages from other realms, trying to plainly do it with mages en-masse, but that proved to be a massive failure. When we finally decided on the number of mages and who is going to do it, the really boring part started.
Will we get banned and probably lose the race, or will Blizzard realize it was their fault in the first place? Either way, the next day was long, since we had Mimiron to kill and Firefighter to claim, for me the best and hardest boss Blizzard has ever made, a boss where the true colors of many raiders were shown and where I realized our raid is not as perfect as I thought it was when we started the Ulduar race.
The race for Ulduar just got real. With three guilds having only three encounters left to deal with, there was no time for bickering and drama, arguments over who did what legit were moot, there was stuff to be killed and world firsts to be claimed. The last and toughest obstacle on the road to Algalon was the Mimiron Firefighter achievement, aka crazy super mode of death and suffering, where a raid had to kill this brilliantly designed four phase boss, which was surprisingly well polished, considering the complexity and the number of mechanics it had.
Obviously there were some bugs, but nothing so game-breaking that would prevent guilds from defeating it. What did prevent guilds from killing it easily though was the length, survival difficulty and insane dps required to do it in time before the hard enrage, one of the more fun ones at that. Other people I had issues with on that boss, and these came more because of the frustrations of wiping in the last phase AGAIN were Ragebar, known as Minebar at the time, his nickname soon changed to Cosmicbar when we reached Algalon.
Sadly a dps warrior is as squishy as a squid, so his collecting prowess often left him quite literally face down dead in a fire. See, a guild is supposed to get one hour weekly on him, and minus all the res walks and preparation, you are left with 45 minutes of decent attempts.
But he did it, and we were on our way, with the knowledge of getting back our 45 minutes of straight tries. In the meantime though, between the planning and talking about quitting, there was a moment of extreme fun every week, and that was watching Method's internal Algalon try or should I say fail videos.
Well, learn being laugh at their priests for sucking so hard, one grew appreciation for Dio and Poptisse. Luckily the boss was easy, and with the luxury of getting to do it more than twice a week, we killed it a day before Method. That was quite worrying, not as much because it was so close, but for the fact that if they killed it playing as badly as they were on those leaked movies, how badly did we really play then?
Yogg-Saron with 0 watchers was one of the breaking points in Ensidia. And then there was Yogg. I hated the boss from the get-go, any version of it.
Not likely. And the first kill came quite fast, but from an unlikely competitor. Hardly a competitor even, Exodus were as real a threat as a fat wheelchair kid is to Michael Jordan in 1v1. Naturally, when this group of should-be-aborted-with-a-coathanger-out-of-mercy raiders killed Yogg, no one took it seriously.
But almost no one said anything about it, the only discussion about it worth of note was on Nihilum forums, where certain individuals attacked me and some others who called shenanigans on their kill, the juiciest of drama came soon afterwards. The first legit kill came from an unlikely contender as well, but this was not only very believable, this was a slap in the face to everyone that underestimated the Chinese guild Stars, who employed a somewhat different approach to raiding.
Having several times more members than your western guilds, they could afford to raid much more and make hundreds of attempts more on a boss. We noticed them first on Firefighter, where they claimed world second, and here they were with a world first kill. For us, this was a mobilization call, now we knew it was doable and we had to go and do it.
With a long collective sigh, we started progressing on it for real, and I was none too happy about it. Am I still on? After that no one ever could claim that excuse for a retarded death again, sadly. As many times as I tried the old 24 versus 1 argument gag, It never worked for me, It never worked for him.
Fun times. The Yogg killing experience was nothing to write home about; it was a boring and buggy boss and a war of attrition. For soon there will be a new instance released and after that the Lich King, the last boss I ever planned to kill. If the start of Ulduar progress was the time when Ensidia was at its most motivated and functional, Trial of the Crusader was probably the furthest from it imaginable.
If anything, the PTR killed most of the anticipation I usually had about new content. In the released state the fight was like the other non-boss encounters in the instance, un-fun and too easy to beat. So there we were, doing PTR and already knowing it was going to suck. The issue I was most concerned with was a departure of certain members and their replacements who still had to prove themselves. So there we were, mostly uninterested and jaded, with new people waiting for an instance that no one expected much out of.
The encounter was divided in three phases and required less time to design than setting up a mailbox outside the auction house. I liked the third phase and the constant whines of players failing on the charge, blaming everything from lag to camera position, juicy tears of frustration. Lord Jaraxxus aka the most useless encounter since one of the devs mistakenly put a stationary box in the middle of a boss room and left it there.
One positive thing about it was the fact it was a nuke fest and a good boss to test your dps. The negative thing though, was that you had to swap your damage to some portals and random things that came out of them. The only person in the guild that had lower combined damage on the portals through time was Tun, who stood at exactly 0 damage dealt to anything but the boss.
I was firmly in second place with the staggering amount of around damage done during a few dozen tries. So why waste all the shiny gear and valuable dps time on anything else but the boss itself, which would be selfish.
There was this time I swapped to affliction and dotted the portals for more dps. There, any possible accusations of selfishness and damage whoring dispelled. With all the dissing and finger pointing that followed, it was fun seeing him just helplessly die every time something swapped to him.
If this fight showed anything, it was our total inability to focus fire when required, not a big deal on this fight, but proved to be a problem a bit later on in ICC. Each of the camps would have a guy shielding them from the balls that would hurt them by collecting certain balls and avoiding the rest. Anyway, for me this fight proved that we needed better melee if we wanted to be successful in ICC.
The other side was not as smooth though. Most of the other melee acted like geriatrics in a wheelchair, not knowing what the hell is going on, only raging if something went wrong instead of helping. My god, what a good fight this could have been, if it was only a bit harder. Might not be an exact quote, something along those lines though.
The last boss in the instance was just another design disappointment of WotLK. Blizzard once again added an artificial content extender, this time around in the form of limited attempts. The boss itself was nothing special, what made it extremely annoying for us was a noticeable drop in player quality and famous Magtheridon lag, which already troubled us in Ulduar and before. At one time, Mek came out with a kiting tactic, where him and a very subpar shaman Implied they would kite the mobs.
Anyway, try after try we had different issues on the boss, but nothing out of the ordinary. We knew that a lot of people had to be replaced, because this roster was far from the one we'd plowed through Ulduar with. And suddenly, a few other guilds killed it. Premonition maybe not as much, using a tank gear setup and exploiting a flaw in the boss design, but Paragon's method of killing it was just blatant and obvious skipping of the only phase in the fight that was actually difficult.
So here we were, on a new server, the boss was somehow downed and we were supposed to get ready for Icecrown. But first things first, there was another thing to be done.
Tribute to immortality is just a dumb achievement, where the raid has to clear the whole Colliseum on heroic without anyone dying. With extreme luck perhaps, but at least in the meantime we got some really good recruits so, if anything, our raid was getting better and better.
Soon after though, we managed to kill it. Talk about loot whoring hurting your achievement point count, eh? Since I soon got all I needed from the instance, I was giving my spot to other warlocks, and Mek was doing the same with shamans, so we naturally missed it. We never did it again obviously. All I cared at the time was getting missing people replaced by some quality, and so we did, for the most part.
ICC was creeping closer and we had to regain the throne, or miserably fail, there was no other option. For Ensidia, the time spent between Trial of the Crusader and Icecrown Citadel was mostly about licking wounds, strengthening the roster and motivating the guild to try and perform better than in the previous instance. We sucked and that was the end of it. We needed to replace bad cogs in the machinery, we needed to motivate core players more than ever and most of all, we needed to get back the taste of world firsts.
It was the goddamn Lich King! So this was it… kind of. It consisted of the same three guys since the inception of the guild and we performed constantly, confidently and without major complaints even if there were any, they were not based in reality and utterly ridiculous.
Priests: Then there were Shadow priests pretty much being the same as warlocks. Actually scratch that. Mages: Ok so where were we? Mages, yeah… mages. Ekyu and Aryu would in theory be a perfect mage combo for any guild, If the first would shut up for a second ever, and the second one spoke up once in a while. The problem was though that Ekyu played his warrior more and more and since we needed a new mage we were forced to recruit Mancy somewhere down the line.
Mancy was an interesting character, a fellow that most of the guild hated on, at least it seemed so. Paladins: The paladin roster got way stronger after recruiting Santella and Spritzor, two awesome guys and amazing players. Since Mackzter played a lot of specs other than holy, those two were a welcome change, since they not only stepped up when needed, but mistakes were few and far between, they were both cool and after dealing with Mancy and such, you preferred a bit of normalcy in your guild.
Protek was another paladin reinforcement, a Method player officer also I think with whom I had my run-in on forums way before Ensidia. In fact, the first thing he asked me after he joined was if I still want him burning alive in a car crash. We obviously let our animosity and harsh words behind, for he was one of the best players I played with and if anything, I find it very hard to hate on good players, let alone phenomenal ones like him and his friend Naihiko, who joined with him.
Plus, Protek liked my priest Vhailor and if someone recognized the awesome in that useless char, he must have a nose for talent, obviously! Rogues: Naihiko was also a Method recruit, a more silent version of Protek, a killer when it came to raiding and one of two players that lifted the rogue class above the line of mediocrity. The thing was, Inthya slowly stopped playing and the only two rogues that were left were Calipoo and Krematoria.
They were ok yes, but nothing like Naihiko or Farz French rogue that was also really good. The rest of the classes were also changed here and there, but nothing really significant or really memorable. The problem in the end was not the roster, one of the main reasons for our downfall was the lack of cohesion and the inability of leadership to overturn the mentality that was prevalent in the guild at the time.
Ensidia was created from the two best guilds in the world at the time and was artificially sustained through its fame, notoriety and quality recruits that joined for mostly those reasons. To play in Ensidia was a privilege, and not many new players managed to survive, let alone succeed in the end. But herein lays the problem. The Nihilum and SK side did manage to work together from the get-go, that was never the problem.
While raiding, we could achieve anything and the lack of success up to this point was never a result of any internal problems. We had the same goal, most were highly motivated and our failures up to that moment were attributed to weak links and bad decisions if anything. You had cliques that were convinced that Kungen was not pulling his weight, cliques that claimed Mackzter was not involved enough and even go figure groups that were of the opinion that Mek was too involved.
Of course not, because I was doing the same about other people. For me, this particular way of handling criticism and criticizing others was something completely normal, a way this group treated each other in Nihilum and how we were used to manage our issues. So if this in any way helped dissolve what little cohesion Ensidia had at the time, it was more the problem of those individuals that were bothered by it than it was our fault.
Ventrilo etiquette was one of the bigger issues in Ensidia — namely the problem was a different view on things between different people. But instead we had to listen to constant whining, even had private convos with Mek about the Ventrilo attitude, and his attempts to make a more nazi environment on voice comms to my disappointment not the fun nazi way , where only him, Kungen and Mackzter would speak. Aaaah, Ensidia vent ruled. Good job, asshole.
Icecrown Citadel was supposed to be the pinnacle of raiding, the ultimate and bestestest instance not only for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, but also for the whole of World of Warcraft up to that point. I mean, you get to face the Wrath of Arthas yo, or the guy that used to be Arthas but now is a Lich and a king and has this cool new helm and blue eyes and Was it my continuous loss of confidence in the leadership or the pure hatred for certain members, verging on homicidal tendencies?
Surely there was some of that. They introduced another pathetic attempt of prolonging content via limited tries on the last portion of the instance and for me that was definitely the main reason for being so disappointed in ICC before we even stepped into normal modes. Add to that constant bickering and fighting with Tun, the inability to significantly alter the ways the guild was doing things and ultimately, the inability to get useless ballast kicked even though everyone knew and agreed they are the dead weight and lost causes in terms of uselessness.
After all the preparation, meetings and sad attempts of motivating the raid, it was finally time to delve into normal modes and see what we can expect once heroics hit. Not like we were going to experience that in normal, right? I can say for myself, the second we started killing trash, the feeling was back, we were progressing again, the only time in WoW where I felt comfortable and really enjoyed myself. Soon enough Tun and I made up, we needed only three bosses to fix our problems and issues that we were bickering about for weeks and months of boredom, and I even stopped hating on the priest ballast for a second.
Literally for a second. Normal modes were as expected a joke, and the most tragicomical moment was seeing gunship battle in all its glory on live servers. My god, was that a failure of an encounter. But gunship battle snatched that trophy and I bet it still has it, regardless of me not knowing any encounter past WotLK, nothing can ever be this boring and dumb, nothing! A fight where healers kill the boss and dpsers run around killing adds?
Oh the boldness that had to take to pitch, I bet that boss meeting was a riot. Ok, so two encounters sucked balls, but rest was ok. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Edit this page. History Talk Universal Conquest Wiki. Hate ads? Prior to playing Hearthstone, Kungen was a noted player of World of Warcraft as part of renowned guild Ensidia.
Following being banned due to exploiting the 25 man normal mode Lich king fight it was announced, on April 12, , that a number of their core players would be retiring from World of Warcraft altogether to focus on real-world affairs.
Ensidia has since disbanded. The serious allegations towards the former Method player Josh have effectively destroyed the organization within the last few days. Ragnaros lasted for a record-setting days before Horde guild Ascent killed him. No other boss in the entirety of the game has lasted as long as that.
Twitch streamer Methodjosh indefinitely banned for unknown reason. Well, one thing is for certain: the caster DPS weapon will never drop for us I am forced to mention that I am missing a gem in my very recently added new socket on my belt the leatherworking crafted one. Ekyu forced me to say that. And that concludes the raiding section.
However, this week's article's main focus is the recent roster changes and the impact I believe they will have on our raiding.
Kungen quit raiding. Well, there are plenty of reasons, but the main is demotivation. After playing WoW competitively for such a long time, it makes perfect sense to lose motivation. And when you lose motivation, you lose all interest to play the game as well. What will he do next? Well, I don't know that, maybe he wants to talk about it himself some day.
Varokk cloze quit raiding. His lack of time and motivation has been apparent for a long time now, and it was only a matter of time in my eyes until he made the decission to perhaps temporarily quit. Ekyu, Mage class leader of Ensidia rerolled and is now playing his warrior, fulfilling the Main Tank role that Kungen left open hence why he was playing his mage in the alt raid. What to make of this?
Well, some people might think that losing one of our leaders, as well as some other awesome players, will significantly cripple the guild. What will actually happen is unknown to everyone, but from my perspective we will come back stronger than ever.
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