Meet Binky

Binky says hi!

On April 26th, the last person signed the charter and <Soulbound> was officially born. We had two goals: kill the Lich King and get frost wyrms.

The Lich King died on May 19th. On September 2nd we got the wyrms.

I knew that we could do it, but it seemed hopeless at times. Small roster and people going on holiday, starting school, finishing school. Really bad nights when staying out of the fire seemed impossible. Wiping for hours on “easy” bosses. Saurfang heroic had our ranged for dinner repeatedly and P3 healing was a special kind of hell (not helped by the general lack of ranged in the guild). We went from constant 10% Putricide heroic attempts and a kill on the first night to wiping for 3 hours to killing him in 5 tries, from one week to another. Valithria heroic had everyone raging, and it felt like she’d never dielive. The next reset we were wondering why the hell we ever had a problem. Sindragosa heroic seemed to be the end of it; I’m still surprised we managed to kill her.

Last night we were 2 achievements away: All You Can Eat and Been Waiting a Long Time for This. We had been trying Sindragosa for a couple of nights. The normal strategy had failed in a bad way, we hadn’t even managed to get past the ice block. The zerg strategy kept getting us the 6th stack at 4-5%, even with my boyfriend brought in to help with his ICC25 heroic gear. Then tonight something clicked. After a couple of failed zerg attempts we gave the normal strategy a shot. And we got to 10% before people started fucking up the ice blocks. I was expecting a new horrible wipefest and… it wasn’t. Everyone was resetting their stacks in time. We fucked up the blocks (well, mostly I did) and people still killed the right one. I healed on auto-pilot and didn’t even see the health bars, only the stack counter. Then, 15 minutes before the raid end, achievement spam and yelling on Vent.

Only the Lich King stood between us and the wyrms. It was late, but it was also our last 10-man day for the reset, so we voted to give Mr Lich a try. Unfortunately we still had the Plague Wing up… but that was the fastest clear we’d ever done, they were all dead in 20 minutes. I was convinced we had no chance of getting the achievement: we’d wait for the 30 stacks, waste time and then wipe. One of the healers hadn’t even tried LK before so I kept imagining huge Defiles killing us.

First attempt, 30 stacks, dead people on phase 2. Release, run, rinse and repeat. I kept whispering strats to the new priest and watching the stacks of plague (tip: MyGhoul is a nice little addon that counts them for you). We got 30, we went to transition, the plague was still going strong at almost 40 stacks, we ran, we spread, we collapsed, I ran out of mana, I healed my roots out on Vile Spirits, I died, I was ressed, I went into Shadowmourne and I was so stressed I couldn’t find the guy at first, I couldn’t see the HP percentage… and then it was 10% and we died (yelling to the new guy to DO NOT RELEASE!!!). It was the longest RP we’d had. My hands were shaking and I kept thinking we fucked something up and we won’t get the achievement.

And then…

If you squint you can see our new priest getting Kingslayer

Vent was LOUD. My boyfriend got to show off his Jaina’s Locket and teleported us to Dalaran, where we, of course, promptly went to Krasus Landing for pictures, then we hovered above the “fly” spots for the next two hours. (One thing I discovered last night is that wyrms are an awesome means of recruitment. Spamming trade got us 2 or 3 unimpressive apps. Within 10 minutes of getting wyrms, we were getting whispers from 3-4 different people asking about recruitment. We’re not about to recruit and boost some random guys, but it’s nice to know.)

My new drake is called Binky – like the horse. Death’s Binky was specifically non-skeletal, and the wyrm is a girl, but I think the name fits her perfectly.

Getting the wyrms is a huge achievement for us. From three friends unhappy with their guild situation we became one of the best 10-man guilds on the realm, we raid with a great group of people and we have a blast. Glory of the Icecrown Raider is the end of the expansion for me. We’ll probably try heroic LK and heroic Halion, but I won’t be sad if we don’t get them. If Cataclysm dropped tomorrow, I’d be fully satisfied.