Can everyone who intends raiding with us please download an install the Omen addon as a replacement for KLH Threatmeter.

DOWNLOAD FROM HERE

Clarification of how Karazhan works in this guild.

Firstly, the guild simply does not have the resources at the current time to reliably run two groups into Karazhan.  We hope to at some point soon (and are working behind the scenes to make this reality) but at present this is just not a viable proposition.  We do not have enough sufficiently attuned or geared healers for one thing, and another geared tank and mage wouldn't go amiss either.  We hope to have both soon and all the help you give to helping healers or tanks (and anyone else for that matter) gear up is greatly appreciated - I know you all are already.

That said, we are able to put a single, well-geared group into Karazhan each week and we all should support that as it brings benefit to you all in the long term. 

So what's happening atm? Over the last week a group has been concentrating on pushing on as far as it can in both learning the instance so those people can then pass that experience and knowledge further into the guild, and also for gearing as much as possible.  As that group gains gear the fights in future become a bit easier and we can bring in more of the guild for those in future.  The alternative to this way of doing it is we take less well equipped/planned group in, spend half the night taking down a single boss for just one or two people to get gear.. and then get stuck on the next boss.. exactly what has been happening so far and causing such frustration to many.

Once a member has no reason to kill a boss for loot and the rest of the group are geared enough to support a less well geared person or a class that is not so suitable for that boss then they will sit out that boss fight in future and be replaced by someone else.  I shall be demonstrating this myself by sitting out the Maiden fight in future as I believe I no longer have gear I requiire from her.  That way we will eventually rotate EVERYONE through Karazhan and EVERYONE will get their gear.  However, we will not compromise our chances of getting the boss down and go into Karazhan with a group that stands little chance of getting the boss down, which is what happens if we try and stretch ourselves to running a second group at the moment.

Running Karazhan itself is not a two minute thing.  Karazhan will be farmed by us for a long time yet... several months at least.. probably longer.  I truly hope nobody thinks that as soon as some of us have finished Karazhan we will be rushing off to Gruul's Lair.  It's not going to happen that way.  For starters, we are going to need around 35-40 fully Karazhan equipped people before we can regularly think about going on to a 25 man raid.  One or two exploratory raids might happen once we hit the 25 person mark, but the pool needs to be bigger to ensure we can do that regularly.  I don't intend on bringing in 'ringers' to help us, which means that you guys are the ones that are going to get geared up.  Which means you have to do Karazhan.  Which means you will get your chance I promise.  This will not happen for all of you at once though as it compromises our chance of success and slows things down in the long run for everyone.  We learnt this lesson in Black Morass.. we initially tried taking three people at a time through for attunement.. it didn't work.  We now do one at a time.  Luckily it only takes half hour of course and we can do it five times a day if needed.  Unfortunately Karazhan isn't so accomodating.

By quickly swapping people in and out of the group each week i'm hopeful we will soon be dropping three or four bosses on a Wednesday night.  That's a minimum of eight epic items for the guild which means the following week we can bring more people in for those bosses to get their gear.  You must agree that's a preferable scenario to struggling the whole night on Attumen and maybe getting two drops.

I am very sorry if some of you feel you are on the fringes at the moment.  It is not an intentional thing but it is unfortunately an unavoidable step in our progress as only 10 people can be in the raid at one time.  I know you are all doing you best to get gear and rep and think about your spec.  That is all positive stuff and is not going to waste I assure you - I'm very encouraged to see so many of you take notice of what I and others have written over the last week.  I'm hopeful the situation will begin to resolve itself shortly (starting Wednesday this week) and you will all feel equally involved.  This is a group effort - none of us can get anywhere without help from others.  Don't get disappointed if you don't make it into Karazhan one week.. it will happen soon.

-Tankker-

The Soul Assassins returned to Karazhan to face up to The Curator once again and after a slight change of tactics we managed to get The Curator down relatively quickly. The turmoil of the previous attempts was forgotten and the group turned in a very smooth and successful attempt which, i hope, highlighted to us all the importance of having the right people in the group for the right boss.

High ranged-DPS proved far more effective at handling the flares than melee DPS who who suffering from forever having to chase the flares around and in doing so suffering a lot of damage from the chain-lighning effects when their 10 yard radius was compromised.

Special congratulations to Jacqueline who became the recipient of her first T4 set piece! Gwars recieved the other epic legs that dropped from Curator.

We then moved onto to the trash and cleared the way to Shade of Aran which after 3 or 4 attempts we finally called a night on. Shade of Aran is a very precise fight where everyone must know exactly what to do in each situation. There are quite a number of different spells and effects cast, each of which requires everyone in the group to react accordingly too. We hadn't quite co-ordinated this well enough yet but I'm sure a few more practices will see Shade of Aran down!

The date is set! Friday 29th June will be Soul Assassins first foray into Karazhan. 
This will also continue on Saturday 30th.  We'll hope to be regulars after this date.  The week beforehand is therefore designated Karazhan Prep Week during which we should aim to get as many people completed on their Karazhan key's as possible.  We should also make efforts to ensure we have the consumables we will undoutably need.  I look forward to seeing you all there.  Please sign up for the raid in the calendar.