Frostbyte blog

Frostbyte is a World of Warcraft guild on the european Bloodhoof server.

The guild was started as an offshoot of the Frostbyte Clan (which has existed through many years and games), but has since grown to be just about the largest guild on Bloodhoof. Admittedly, the size may be linked to the staggering numbers of alt characters played by some of the members.

A relaxed yet successful raiding environment, regular guild meets and an appreciation that real life can come first, make Frostbyte one of the least conventional guilds around... but in a good way!

This site is run using ClanWiki (written especially for Frostbyte) and PHPBB2.

Dragons! With frickin lasers!
Posted by Mark on Wed Jul 21 17:32:33 2010

It's been a dragonny few weeks here at FB HQ, as we both attempted to conquer our old foe, Sindragosa, as well as one we've just made the acquaintance of.

Firstly, Sindragosa, who'd been causing us problems for a few weeks. A dragon that requires a MASSIVE amount of group organisation, as well as individual heroism. Repeated struggles left us inclined to leave her until the end of the raid, when concentration was at a low point, and alcohol saturation high.

Eventually, sheer determination saw us win through, allowing us our first peek at the Lich King on 25-man. This could take some time...

Secondly, Halion. Without the huge boost we've grown accustomed to courtesy of Varian Wrynn, it was immediately obvious this was not going to be a walkover. From repeated trash wipes to multiple attempts on mini-bosses, even getting to see Halion was a challenge. Once we'd managed to clear to her, there was but a short time to get used to the fight, a multi-phase fight with instant deaths, myriad opportunities to kill your fellow raiders, and a controlled final stage to contend with.

In the end, a combination of our new Teamspeak system allowing our raid leaders to be heard over the usual cacophany of "Heal me!", "My cat's just been sick!" and "brb, cyclone", and a can-do attitude saw a fairly neat kill with hardly any deaths. Congratulations to all involved!

Frostbyte Group

Glorious!
Posted by Calyx on Tue Jun 8 18:56:40 2010

After bashing their heads fiercely against the 10 man player Icecrown instance, ten Frostbyte members were brought into a local hospital with severe head injuries.

Their situation is stable and they seem to be recovering at a healthy pace. The mount acquired in the process of their head smashing shenanigans is somewhat relieving the pain. One deathknight did suffer minor cosmetic damage to his face and may never look the same again, our prayers go out to him.

The group reports to venture yet again into the instance when their wounds have healed. It seems they still have some unfinished business to take care of.

A thank you is in place for those that helped us along the way when we were short on members. And of course congratulations to all the players with their newfound glory!

Stormfist

She dreams, she walks .. she lives!
Posted by Mark on Thu May 27 07:22:51 2010

In a nod to the unsung heroes of most raids, our healers were given the opportunity to shine, by way of resuscitating a friendly dragon.

Unused to this kind of pressure, it took a good few attempts to get used to actually having to run around, but as always, we persevered, even seeing some of our healers hitting 60,000hps

This leaves us with only 2 bosses remaining in ICC25 - Sindragosa, who we had a quick look at, and the Lich King himself.

Speak soon ... I hope!

Lanathel-icide
Posted by Mark on Mon May 3 21:01:19 2010

Hmm, that doesn't work quite as well. Regardless, I have news!

As is usually the case, once we master a boss, they become almost trivial. The learning process which we relish so much proving to be where the real challenge lies.

Our latest challenge has been Blood Queen Lanathel, who needs a great level of communication to master, and we've spent a fair few goes trying to get the hang of this fight.

Eventually, positioning and communication became less of an issue, and simple DPS became the limiting factor, as can be seen by our eventual kill, which occurred 2 seconds after the enrage. Had we not lost a mage to MC earlier in the fight, we'd probably have comfortably killed her in time, but that's not the Frostbyte way. Bodhishatva's sacrifice energised the team, seeing 23 of us alive at the end with 20% health, as the enrage took effect.

With an hour to spare, we made several attempts on Valrithia Dreamwalker, who we managed to heal to 93 and 95% before the raid ended.

All in all, not much loot, but a good progression night.

Putricide-icide
Posted by Mark on Tue Mar 30 22:12:17 2010

After a rapid clear last week of almost all the bosses we've previously killed, we were left with precious little choice, but to embark upon a PROGRESS NIGHT.

Finding ourselves in front of Putricide as the raid began was a fairly novel experience for us, but we kicked off the night with a 10% wipe. Every attempt shaved more and more health off of him, and we even saw a wipe, having had him to less than 1%. Eventually, an hour before raid end, and with only one healer left alive, we took him out. Good news, everyone!

With time to spare, we quickly dispached the Blood council, and took a free badge from the gauntlet leading up to Dreamwalker.

I want to see us clearing to Putricide in one day from now on, leaving us more progress nights, which we relish so much.

Blood Council 25, Lich King 10 no more.
Posted by Mark on Mon Mar 22 18:52:47 2010

Man, these things get away from me .. too much to do! I can now report that the Blood Council have been fairly quickly dispatched by our 25-man raid team. It took only 3 goes from first sight to the kill, on a fight which requires good communcation, and a high degree of spatial awareness. We've also seen 3% wipes on Putricide, which we hope are a portent of things to come for the poor Professor.

Frostbyte Group

I can also report that, after 5 solid wipe nights, we have our first 10-man Lich King kill. In what I consider to be one of the best fights in the game (I should hope so too), we saw gradual progress from initial wipes in phase 1, to getting phase 1 down. A wipe night later, we could see towards the end of Phase 2, and into Phase 3. A couple more nights pass, and we're regularly seeing phase three and tuning our tactic, to eventually be rewarded witth a kill.

Reporting for progress. Sir, yes, sir!
Posted by Mark on Tue Mar 2 23:06:10 2010

It's been a while, but don't think for a moment that we've been slacking. On the contrary, we've seen great progress - one 10man has recently killed Sindragosa, and sat on the Lich King's lap (just before his friends threw them off of a platform to their deaths). Another has made great progress, killing both Putricide and the Blood Princes.

Enough of that -- it's the 25-man progress I'm really here to report on. 2 well-tuned fights have been causing us issues over the last month or so - Festergut and Rotface. We've spent whole evenings on just one of these, but thanks to the Frostbyte spirit, we've not given up.

Last night, for example, all our 'farm bosses' were dead from the previous raid, which left us battling against Festergut for the majority of the night. Things looked promising when we wiped at 5% on one of the first attempts of the night, then 3%. We even saw a 0.9% wipe. A final push saw us snag a kill with 10 short seconds to the brutal enrage.

By now, it was late. We had to clear trash to get to Rotface, but we still had time for 5 or so goes. Repeatedly, we saw things getting out of control around 10%, but true to our ethos, our last attempt was to be the best. At 5%, the main tank died, and our kite tank took over. The large slime meandered around the raid, and our valiant team dextrously avoided it ... for the most part. The last 0.5% seemed to take an age to take off, but eventually, and with around 7 people left up, Rotface succumbed to our attack, giving us 2 new kills in one night, and a handy morale boost.

With luck, our skills will transfer to the next reset, and we'll be able to spend some serious time on a new boss.

Saurfang .. what a baby
Posted by Mark on Tue Feb 2 21:18:30 2010

Coo, things do happen quickly when you're otherwise distracted. On the 18th January, we assembled a crack team of commandos to take out Operative 'S' and his marauding Blood Beasts. Changing tack from the original zerg approach (never a good idea when attacking new foes) to a more measured, almost balletic attack seemed to help, and after a couple of goes, we saw him run away, not even leaving a corpse for us to mock.

Since then, we've had looks at Rotface, Festergut and the Blood Princes, which have, to date proven a little too much for our gallant heroes, but we can report a 3% wipe on Rotface, which is encouraging.

Onward and Upward ... Quite literally!
Posted by Mark on Wed Dec 23 14:47:47 2009

That Lady Deathwhisper. She dies easily, but she has friends. LOADS of friends. I'd like to put our reluctance to kill her down to the fact that killing a vicar (even a creepy vicar) seems wrong, but realistilcally, our vim and vigour for her downfall was met with adequate defence by her faithful congregation. As time progressed, though, our theological disagreements empowered us to the point where we were able to destroy her before she finished her long, repetitive sermon. Slightly disconcerted by the fact that she barely left a corpse, we moved through her vestibule (heh!), took her heavenly lift to .. an airship.

If this battle could be won solely via ostentatious use of jetpacks, we'd have won the fight before we even engaged our enemy, but that was evidently of little concern, as we easily dispatched of the Horde ship, and docked outside Saurfang's house near to sundown, leaving us just 2 attempts on this notorius fight. Our first attempt was basically a shambles, albeit a fun one, but our second worked far better, seeing him down to 20% when he hit 4 stacks of runic power, and overwhelmed us. I foresee a kill within 3 or 4 more attempts, assuming our memories don't fail us in the new year!

Wilkommen bei Icecrown
Posted by Mark on Tue Dec 15 08:30:16 2009

We thought the instance capacity issues were behind us. We thought there would be no rush to get into Icecrown on patch day. We were wrong. As everyone and their Perky Pug flocked to Icecrown on the day the gates opened, we were among the unlucky few not to make it.

Eventually, we made it into the instance, half an hour before raid-end, which gave us the opportunity to check out the trash on the way to Lord Marrowgar, but not, unfortunately, to look at the fight.

Thus we returned last night, ensuring we had an instance ID, to see what we'd missed. The trash to Marrowgar was as annoying as it was on Wednesday, but we fought our way through it valiantly, and were presented with our first look at 25-man Marrowgar (20 people managed to get past him on 10-man over the weekend). Tactics were hurried, and it was decided that it's better to live the fight rather than attempt to learn it from instructions, which turned out to be the correct choice. After 2 wipes at around 50%, our 3rd run was almost flawless (until the last 5%, when almost everyone died). Luckily, this coincided with a whirlwind, and our remaining heroes managed to take him down, despite the lack of tanks.

As loot was distributed, we considered how best to approach Lady Deathwhisper's trash, deciding on the safe tactic of LOADS OF CC. This worked perfectly, and we hardly lost anyone to the groups of trash.

Lady Deathwhisper, on the other hand, provided too much for our valiant group on this night, and after 5 wipes, we called it, having just made it to her second phase. with luck, Wednesday will see us motor through Marrowgar, and Deathwhisper, and allow us to see the epic gunship battle.