All for the sake of the moose! My story of getting the Guardian of the Grove.

I have long wanted to tell this story to at least someone, but I never found the right moment or occasion. That is why I am very pleased that I have a reason to share it with you, because almost 3 years have passed since its completion.

The end of the World of Warcraft expansion, Warlords of Draenor, was coming. I, who played a BM hunter (Beast Master, Master of Beasts), and the guild mastered the regular and heroic DAC (Hellfire Citadel) without any problems. I didn’t try Mythic mode because I was afraid that periodic 10-20 FPS, lags, freezes (I had a very old and broken computer at the time) would not be excusable on that difficulty. What’s funny is that all these problems did not stop me from giving me average and sometimes even high damage, and now I mean not only raids with my guild. Either this speaks about the share of skill in me, or about the crookedness of other WoW players, so let’s agree on the first one so as not to offend anyone. In any case, it’s not that important. After conquering the DAC, I decided to stop actively raiding and switched more to world content. But I changed my mind when I saw HIM.

Patch 6.2.3 started the event. Its essence is simple – kill the final boss of the DAC (Archimonde) in Heroic or Mythic mode, and a quest item will drop from it – Residual chaos, starting a quest, at the end of which you receive a new vehicle – the Guardian of the Grove. I didn’t find out about him right away. The patch was released somewhere in November, and I heard about the mount only at the end of April. But when I saw him, I fell in love at first sight. Its shape, size, accessories with which the elk was hung, the magical trail when moving and much more was done for me, if not perfectly, then exactly at the level of “AAAAAA, I WANT!“To this day I consider it one of the most beautiful mounts in the game, so the next day I decided to get this moose together with my guild. This is where the problems started.

As it turned out, in the guild, almost all active raiders stopped playing and planned to return only to the pre-patch (The period when changes to the mechanics of a new addition have already been introduced into the game (As a rule, along with a unique event and content), but the DLC itself has not yet been released), when the event ends (I already know that in fact it ended at a different moment, but more on that later (MORE BRACKETS)). The only people left in the guild were newcomers who hadn’t even finished leveling up, and 6 more good raiders who didn’t want to help me and wanted to try themselves in PVP. By the way, I never saw them in guild raids after that. Apparently they were successful in their endeavors. I don’t have any friends who play WoW, so in the end there was nowhere to wait for help. I had no choice but to start looking for suitable pugs (Raid consisting of random people) with statics (Guild planned dungeon/raid. If there are not enough people, they can also be strangers) and try to go through the DAC with them. In fact, there were quite a lot of people who wanted to complete the Citadel in heroics, but the problem is that most of them had different nuances. Only people who had completed the Citadel before, only with an IT level of 735, had a legendary ring with them, contributed so much gold, had an achievement for conquering a Mythic mode, and similar conditions were somewhere in 7/10 cases. Some of them were difficult to complete.

Someone will say: “Isn’t it easier to create your own raid?”?- to which I will answer – “I don’t know how to lead raids”. In fact, it’s very strange. Managing people in the heat of battle, explaining tactics to everyone, quickly adapting to the situation – I have no problems with this in, for example, Dota. Hell, in real life I can handle these types of organizational situations just as well as I can manage groups of people. Apparently crowd control and relatively small group control require different skills.

After joining a suitable raid, the worst part of my trip for elk began – waiting. Waiting until you are accepted into the group, until enough people have gathered, until everyone is teleported, until everyone is told the tactics for the boss, until everyone is reassembled, because after the wipe people immediately start pouring, until everyone arrives again, since the teleportation stone is already far away, until the tactics are explained to everyone again, and waiting until ALL THIS is repeated three hundred million times is real torture. I’m already silent about attempts to kill bosses, each lasting 5-10 minutes. Of course, from time to time I was distracted either by the Internet or by something else. If I didn’t do this, I would definitely go nuts. But even so, it was necessary to constantly check whether it was time to start, which was very distracting. And, damn it, I wasn’t sitting there to watch videos.

Now a few words about the raid. Hellfire Citadel is a raid that I got bored with when I conquered it with the guild. Many mechanics seemed uninteresting to me and, what is more important for me, did not quite fit into the role of some bosses. Visually, nothing special either. Having already seen the theme of a fortress captured by demonic creatures, they did not decide to somehow diversify or develop it, which is why even thematically the raid looks uninteresting. The bosses are also particularly outstanding: almost every one of them is secondary and even tertiary characters who are not able to be remembered either for their fighting tactics, or for their character, or even for their phrases. We’ve seen some before, some are just orcs. But do you know what the main problem is with this and all other raids on Draenor?? Prolongation. At some point, you will get bored with the passage due to the large number of bosses and long corridors. When you conquer them on normal difficulty, you don’t feel it so much, but in heroic mode you feel the burden to the fullest. I do not pretend to be objective, all statements are very subjective and you may not agree with them. Moreover, I had to try to replay this raid several times. And, as they say, even your favorite food will make you sick if you eat it every day. But I can’t help but note that almost everyone in my guild expressed the same point of view. In any case, when passing it, I received more negative emotions than positive ones. Now imagine that I tried to complete not my favorite raid several times, often without receiving any reward from it in the form of at least equipment. Do you know how I felt when people started pouring after some wipe?? The correct answer is headaches. I now know what Vasya and Max experience during the debriefing. Speaking of wipes, it’s time to talk about bosses, what problems I had to face and my personal attitude towards them. I won’t go through all of their mechanics, but I’ll touch on some of them a little.

Assault on the Hellfire Citadel (protecting cannons from attacks from various adds) – one of the few bosses that did not have frequent wipes. They were, but very rarely and mostly caused by inattention. Almost always, several people did not notice the tank approaching the guns (It even sounds absurd not to notice the TANK). We didn’t have enough damage to quickly neutralize him, and he destroyed our gun. I think it was a cool boss, it gave a bit of an atmosphere that this was a planned invasion of enemy territory, but I remember him for another reason. Despite the fact that my build was focused on single target combat, I still dealt huge AoE damage in a small area, so during the battle with the Citadel my DPS was sometimes even the highest in the raid.

Iron Destroyer – it had more wipes, but not by much. Most often, people died when the boss hit the ground using the Heavy Strike ability and dealt AOE damage to all players. In addition, she pushed back the fire on the ground that appears from another ability, but this is not so important. Two scenarios could have happened here: either the healers were overzealous at the beginning with healing while casting this ability, which is why in the end they couldn’t heal and everyone died, or they didn’t heal enough, which is why many died and the battle with the Despoiler dragged on. Oddly enough, the second option was most often used and it did not mean a wipe for the entire raid. Otherwise, everyone passed the boss without problems. The Iron Destroyer himself is for me the most interesting boss in the entire raid. Although, who wouldn’t enjoy fighting a flying, shooting, fel flame-throwing, bomb-throwing, upgraded Fel Bot??

Kormrok – this is where the series of wipes usually began. The 3rd boss, there are 13 of them in the raid, the 3rd is far from the most difficult. Yeah, it was that bad.

The main reason for wipes is the damn waves. They deal a lot of damage and without saves you won’t live long if you hit them often. They move in one direction from three multi-colored lakes, but not very quickly, so you need to constantly keep in mind that a wave may appear (It seems that they appear in strictly defined phases, but I don’t remember exactly) and choose a place convenient for dodging. In such cases it will be easier to evade them. But apparently some WoW players are surfers, otherwise I can’t explain their desire to run into the wave. In addition, there were problems with the runes. They randomly appeared on the ground and exploded after some time, causing damage to all players. To prevent this from happening, some players need to step on them, then they explode immediately and only those who step on them receive damage. In one of the cases, the raid leader had to choose specific people for this job, he simply assigned certain classes for this. What was the problem? It’s just that few people wanted to cover the runes. This is how the majority most likely thought – “Hmmm, we have six more magicians and three hunters in the raid. Meh, someone else will close it."Because of all this, I tried to cover as many runes as possible. From time to time he could overdo it, even taking into account the use of saves, which led to death. Now I understand this. If you close only a couple, then a lot of damage will be done, but it will no longer be fatal, it will just become harder for healers. Looking at the situation this way, sacrificing the player to make life easier for healers is no longer my best idea. In some ways, I can even admit that I was the one who caused the problems with Kormrok. However, I’m also not going to say that it’s only my fault. If the raid leader had then chosen certain people for this, there would have been no problems at all. Moreover, the funniest thing in this situation is that after a few wipes, he poured. Although, considering the rest of the members’ shower after that, it’s not that funny. I liked the boss himself from a mechanics point of view, but I don’t like the arena where he is located, and it’s hard for me to explain why.

Supreme Council of Hellfire (Three bosses for the price of one) – we wiped no less here. Their main reason was one debuff that was applied to random players, and which exploded after a certain time, leaving behind a small void zone. It is not recommended to stand in it, as it causes quite a lot of damage. It is necessary to simply move away from everyone and let him appear far from the rest. As you understand, some did not notice this debuff on themselves and stood next to everyone, because of which many, not expecting any catch, freaked out from suddenly losing their health and died. It would be nice if only the DDs died, but often because of this the healers also died, which almost always meant a wipe. For me, “Council” is very boring and doesn’t really stand out in any way, except for the fact that these are three mobs that need to be killed one by one.

Kilrogg – there were no particular problems with this boss. There were wipes, but not as many as in the previous ones. However, Kilrogg was my personal headache, or rather, for the computer. It seems no different from other bosses, I didn’t see any things that created a load on the computer system, but it was on it that all the problems of my PC were elevated to the absolute level. As for Kilrogg himself, here’s a small digression. The addition is called Warlords of Draenor (Warlords of Draenor, Warlords of Draenor, whichever is more convenient for you), it is dedicated to the invasion of orcs from parallel Draenor under the command of clan leaders, one of which is Kilrogg, the battle with which does not stand out from other bosses. I think my position is clear.

Bloodthirsty – there were a lot of https://sportsbettingmedia.co.uk/latest-news/responsible-sports-betting-uk wipes on it, but I can’t remember why exactly. Either we didn’t have enough DPS in certain phases, or people didn’t want to help kill adds – one of two things. I found the fight with him interesting. Interesting and moderately complex mechanics But what I remember most about it is its appearance.

But he was once a death knight. Or he could become? Confused. Never mind dealing with this parallel Draenor in the past.

Fel Lord Zakuun – in my opinion, this is the most boring boss in the entire raid. both from a visual and mechanical point of view. Even though he had a unique model at that time, he was no different from other fel guards. And I personally think the tactics of fighting with him are too rehearsal, and that the phases of the battle don’t feel too different. To my regret, there were a lot of wipes on it. The problems began at the last stage, when Zakuun went into a frenzy. It will take too long to explain what the problem is, so I’ll say this: if you are told to get away from a huge spire because you have a debuff, at the end of which waves fly out, causing the spire to deal a lot of damage to the raid, and you are still standing next to it, then you have just decided to go over to the side of the demons. Because you really succeeded in setting everything on fire. My apartment was burning with anger and rage, caused by the realization that my time had been wasted in vain, and that I would have to try again to kill this bastard.

Lord of Shadows Iskar – this boss has been wiped a lot for a variety of reasons, but I will highlight the most common one. During the battle the Eye of Anzu will help us. It hangs on the player as a buff, can be transferred to another player if necessary (Manually) and thus helps with some of Iskar’s mechanics. One of them is the ability Unreal Winds. It is used on several random players, causing them to be pulled towards the abyss and die. To prevent this from happening, it is necessary to transfer this very eye to these people before they fall. Of course, there is someone who doesn’t understand which players should be given this eye, and a couple of people fall into the abyss, or rather, tanks fall into the abyss. What happens next with the rest of the raid members, I hope I don’t have to say. Regarding Iskar, I don’t like him. It’s hard to say what exactly the problem is. The fact is that most of the mechanics of this boss are simply slightly reworked mechanics of other Arakkoa that we saw in the dungeons of Draenor. The problem is that this kind of thing is not bad, since I saw similar things in other games (Maybe they did this in WoW before, I don’t remember), but there it felt good, but in the case of Iskar it didn’t.

I, like most likely you, are already fed up with boss screens, so here is a small illustration of the moments with blunts with the Eye of Anzu for a change. If several good artists have just committed suicide because of my “masterpiece” or are lying foaming at the mouth, then I’m doing everything right.

Xhul’gorak or as I called him, COG KILLER – the most problematic boss in the entire raid. He got on my nerves more than even Archimonde and Mannoroth. The main problem is the lack of DPS at the end. In the last phase, Xul’gorak gains a new ability, which, roughly speaking, is an enrage mode, so you need to kill him at this moment as quickly as possible. Moreover, relatively speaking, all participants suffered enough damage that the demon could be defeated in this phase, it’s just that many had already given up their ends by this point. Some are in the puddles, some are from hells, and some accidentally stumbled and fell over the edge of the arena, and so on. As a result, even if the best players in terms of DPS remained alive, but there were, say, 8 of 18 DDs – 100% wipe. Moreover, due to the fact that he was not one of the last bosses (It all depends in what order you go through them), people almost immediately left after the wipe. Want to know how many times I killed Xhul’gorak in heroic?? 2 times. Seriously. The first one was when I went through with my guild. The second is in one of the special pugs, but I’ll talk about its features and about it in general a little later.

Socrethar the Eternal – the situation is similar to Gorefiend. I remember there were a lot of wipes on it, but I don’t remember the reason for them. Most likely, this had something to do with the adds that kept crawling out of the portals. I can also say that I always wanted to ride in Socretator’s mech, but I knew that I couldn’t handle it, so I always refused or kept quiet when they were choosing who would get into this fucking robot… wait a minute..

Tyrannical Velari is the only boss that was completed without problems. There were a maximum of 1-2 trays on it. Perhaps this is due to the fact that I didn’t get to it often, at most 10 times. Velari herself is not memorable, that is, she is worthless in every sense, which, by my standards, is not a very good indicator.

Mannoroth – his feature, like Archimonde, is that, unlike other bosses, the player’s chance of losing was extremely low, unlike previous bosses. And this is understandable, there is very little left before completing the raid. Plus, they drop very good and powerful equipment. Also, I must pay tribute, this is a really difficult boss, which, in my opinion, is not a shame to wipe. The situation is similar to Xul’gorak – at the end, Mannoroth gains the ability to push all players away from the platform, which at some point intensifies so much that it almost immediately throws them out of the arena, no matter how much they resist. Plus, he casts different void zones and releases all sorts of waves. In short, the last phase is all you have to use on the boss. The problem is the same – few survive. Adds, debuffs, fir – there are many reasons. As for Mannoroth himself, I don’t know about the others, but I found it interesting to fight him. And the transformation from a skeleton into a living demon, followed by a strengthening so strong that the demon begins to shine from filth, looks cool.

Archimonde is the final boss, my main goal. I think there were more threads on him than on any other boss. You wouldn’t expect anything else from one of the generals of the Burning Legion. Problems started from the second or third phase. In the second there were always problems with adds, which were not paid much attention to, because of which the raid received too much damage and someone died. In the third, you need to have the correct placement and be able to quickly respond to some of the boss’s abilities. Most often they were wiped when Archimonde used the ability Banish into the Void, which after a couple of seconds sends the tank into the Twisting Nether, onto a stone island floating in it, from which you can get out if you kill the demon located there. A zone is formed around the tank. If located in it, the player will move along with the tank. Essentially speaking, this is how everything should happen – they use exile on the tank, he stands still so as not to take anyone extra, pre-selected players approach him and help him survive in the whirlwind and kill the demon, everyone returns to the boss and continues to beat him. But usually it happens like this – the tank is exiled, but due to the fact that he is standing far away, or Archimonde somehow interfered, the tank teleports alone. He doesn’t have enough damage to kill a demon solo, and the latter has a platform repulsion spell. The tank falls and dies, plus the boss recovers 5% of his health. If less than 3 people teleport, they restore their health. For me, Archimonde turned out to be interesting, but in terms of mechanics it seems a little strange. Not bad, no, fighting with him was generally interesting, but there was something wrong with them. It’s hard to explain, so take it as you will.

I won’t torment anyone with my painting anymore. Therefore, look better at the work of a more gifted person than me.

If anyone thought that I wanted to say with all this: “How difficult it was for me, and all because of others. I am a sufferer and about MLG, and all the rest are idiots, noobs and generally non-humans!"-then please throw these ideas out of your head. I just want to tell you what happened so that people would be interested in reading it, especially considering the volume (I hope I succeed). I was also sometimes stupid, which is why wipes happened. I didn’t want to accuse or condemn anyone just like that… Although no, I still want to condemn and blame someone. I’m talking about those people who immediately drain after 1 or 2 wipes. Why the hell do they do that?? Are they confusing this with LFR or something?? We just recently assembled a raid, one wipe and half of the raid is gone. I don’t understand people like this.

And don’t think that only DD made mistakes. For example: in one of Archimonde’s battles, the tank accidentally grabbed a player with the same role during the “Exile”, leaving the rest to be torn apart by the boss. They began to accuse and insult each other until one of them poured. Fortunately, no one followed him, and we found a replacement a little later. Unfortunately, after the next wipe both tanks died.

By the way, since we touched people, let’s talk a little about them. During the time I was trying to get the moose, I probably met every type of player in this game: casuals, Mythic raid conquerors, toxic individuals, very friendly individuals (They were usually healers), companion lovers, collectors, lore experts, PVP players (!?), lovers of classics, etc. d. It was easier to communicate with some people, more difficult with others, but it never caused me any problems.

In addition to problems in the raid itself, I had problems outside of it. The fact is that I did not spare any consumables. Stones, food, infusions, repairs, etc. n. I spent without thinking, and all so that my DPS did not drop. I have never been a good gold miner, so I always had little gold left in my pocket, and no one will give it to me just like that. As a result, during a break from raids, I farmed in old raids. I even had to connect my two twinks to this, and also retrain them for the professions needed for raids.

I think it’s necessary to clarify, just in case, that I went into all possible heroic fears. That is, it didn’t matter to me whether they killed those bosses that I had already completed in this raid CD or not. If they intend to go to the end, then I joined them. Of course, if there was a choice, say, between a raid that had not yet been cleared and only Archimonde was left, I chose the second option. Also, I didn’t care whether there were Russians or foreigners there. If they were at least English-speaking, then I tried to join such. Unfortunately, I was rarely accepted by foreigners.

I had to overcome all this for almost a month, but even so, I never had the thought of giving up. I set a goal for myself, and that meant I wouldn’t give up! To go to the end without doubt in my heart – this is my path (Closes a book with phrases from anime)! At some point, it was rewarded to me.

Remember I talked about one special pug? It turned out that almost all of its members were members of the guild and they needed more people. There were significantly fewer wipes and, thank Yogg-Saron, no one left after them. As I said earlier, it was with them that I went through the entire raid and Archimonde fell!

If you thought that this was the end of my suffering, then you are mistaken. Now I’ll explain everything. This is the last day of the raid CD, after which all dungeons and raids, including the DAC, are updated. All I had to do was click the boss and pick up the quest item. But… apparently fate had other plans, because I disconnected from the servers and could not connect again.

The Internet was connected, but I did not have access to it. I tried to reconnect it, checked if everything was working on the computer, turned it off, letting it cool down – no result. Started calling Tech. Provider support. They said that they don’t know what the problem is, but they will try to fix it. Two hours passed, there was no response from them, and the Internet still did not work. I call again – no answer. As a result, the Internet started working only the next day at about 1 or 2 p.m. By this time, all raids had been updated, along with Archimonde’s corpse. Then I see that I received something by email in the game. I thought that because I didn’t pick up the item, they sent it to me by mail. I quickly go to the mailbox and… it turned out to be the ore that I was putting up for auction..

I think this would be appropriate here.

I was very angry then. I worked towards this for almost a MONTH, spent so much effort on it, and everything went down the drain. Then everything quickly changed to sadness. After a couple of minutes, I looked at the calendar. There are about two weeks left until the pre-patch. I turned on WoW and started looking for a suitable pug or static. I still wanted the mount and some failure wouldn’t break me. With an even greater fire in my heart (FIRE, WE HAVE A FIRE HERE) I began to raid, telling myself all the time: “I still have time left!"That’s what I told myself until the last day came before the pre-patch. It was already night, I was very tired, there was almost no gold, there were few consumables left, I didn’t see any suitable pugs. Here I realized – this is the end. I went to bed upset, consoled by the thought that as soon as I woke up, a renewed hunter would be waiting for me.

Three days passed, by this time I had learned the new mechanics of my character and decided to check how it would work in a raid. At first I wanted to go to LFR raids for this, but then I changed my mind and decided to watch it on a higher difficulty. In the list I see a scare on the heroic DAC, in which they called everyone who wanted to kill Archimonde. I thought this was what I needed. I asked and was accepted into the raid. After a short wait, we started the boss fight. Suddenly, everything went like clockwork and we killed him, albeit for a long time, but without losses. To my great surprise, we killed him the first time. The results that I received from this battle about my class were not encouraging, but I was not upset because I assumed that it was all the fault of the artifact weapon that was missing from me so far. By the way, I was right, but it’s not that important. The raid leader set a personal distribution of loot (And, sort of randomly), so I wanted to check if I got anything from Archimonde. And I got the Eredar Gloves from the Fel Rings and Residual Chaos.. RESIDUAL CHAOS!?

As it turned out, the pre-patch, according to the developers, does not count as the first patch of the Legion, so the moose could still be obtained until the release of the add-on (08.30.2016). To say I was happy then would be an understatement. I quickly completed the quest and received the coveted mount.

I don’t even know… What is the moral of this story? Maybe it’s that when you’re alone, anything will be a challenge? No matter how cool people the group consists of, if they are not united, then they are of no use? If a person strives for his goal, he will definitely achieve it sooner or later? Choose for yourself. In fact, this story has one more moral about Akado (My provider who betrayed me), but I’m afraid I’ll then violate the rules of the site related to swearing, insulting others and a couple of others, so I’ll refrain.

I have long wanted to share this story with at least someone and I hope you enjoyed reading it