Taking Your Shot...

A Story

Let me start this out with a story. A story of a young man, on a soccer team.
An away game. On the field. Back and forth game. Score is tied, 1-1. The home team is pressing hard at the young man's team's goal. A shot is taken at the goal, but the defender gets in front of it and kicks it back out onto the field, between the young man and the home team's goal.
The young man takes this opportunity to break through the home team's defense line, leaving the defenders behind him! He dribbles as fast as he could, towards the goal. The only thing stand in the way between him and the goal, was the goalie.
The young man dribbles into the penalty box, having the clearest shot for the goal any soccer player can hope for. One shot. One, well placed shot, and the game will turn their way. The young man though "Left? Right? High? Low? Which way is the goalie going!?"
As he dribbled towards the goal, he hears his coach and teammates on the sidline. "Go go go!!" yelled the coach. "Take the shot!!"
The young man was pulled out of his world. He noticed the world around him. "What if I miss?" thought the young man. The dissapointment... The embarrassment... The game...
Long story short, the young man ends up kicking the ball too far ahead of him, allowing the goalie to catch the ball comfortably into his arms because he hesitated.
One moment. One shot. One opportunity. This experience turns out to scar the young man forever in his life.

The Shot

The moral of the story? Take the darn shot. It doesn't matter what the outcome is. It is better to have tried and regret the outcome, than to regret not having tried at all.
"How does this relate to Risen?" one may ask. This relates to Risen, because Risen just took a shot at clearing Ulduar 25 on the very first week it was released. Could we have hid behind the fact we only raid two nights a week to give as a reason for not being on the top of the list on progression? Sure. But were any of us willing to take an easy way out? Of course not. We did not hesitate. We did not overthink it. We just did what we love to do the most. Raid hard and well.
With no clear picture of what we were up against, it was quite a challenge.

Ulduar

Ulduar has a good mix of fun fights with relatively simple mechanics, while keeping each fight entertaining in some way.
Flame Leviathan was fun in a "aaaamg, let's blow everything uppppp!!" sort of way. Unfortunately he was such a pushover and unimpressive in normal mode, that we forgot to take a screenshot. We're not falsely claiming victory over Flame Leviathan... I swear...
For our first Ulduar run, we decided to run straight for Yogg-saron, so XT-002 Deconstructor was up next.
We had kept ourselves in top notch raiding shape. We had trained long and hard to tackle these new bosses. We drank raw eggs. We did alternating one handed pushups. We trained our clicking and keystroke fingers against frozen meat. We were ready for anything. Or so we thought. But Blizzard had us right where they wanted us. We weren't quite ready for... "NO NO NO NO NO!!!" I think we may have wiped once due to the healers being unable to heal while laughing so hard.

The Antechamber

The next on the list was Kologarn. The gigantic guy, who was best appreciated for his ability to allow a tank to not have to look at close up of feet (or the crotch for Hammerfell, according to Bryant) and bending over backwards to allow us passage and hand over his cache, literally.


Auriaya was just such a pushover in the 10 man version, that we had naturally gone in with a "let's pull them all and see what happens" approach. We underestimated the four kitties a little bit, and ended up with a raid full of squished people. Let this be a lesson to us. Never underestimate a pack of kitties. Approach with caution.
90% of cat related injuries in the veterinary medicine field comes from a result of improper restraint of them. With proper handling, the fight goes quite smoothly.

The Keepers

First up on the list of the keepers for us was Hodir. This fight is very graphically chaotic, and can be summed up by this for the most part, at least on my end. Jump out of icicle drops, jump onto snowdrifts, jump up and down to avoid biting cold, jump off the draining sewer pipe eluding Tommy Lee Jones while finding out the true killer and getting into a final brawl ending in the death of Hodir... or at least Yogg-saron's influence on Hodir.

Next was Thorim. Since the 10 man version was a one shot, we took him a bit too lightly. This fight is one fight where we were happy about how the 25 man encounters were tuned. Of course, doing this fight the way it was intended to... keeping up with arena spawns while taking 3-5 mins getting Thorim to join the fight... was too easy to satisfy the Risen folks.
So what did we do? Instead, we decided to get through the hallway fast enough to have to wait for the 3 minutes, off tank about 8 Champions, and then AE them all down when Thorim landed. Nothing like a good ol' Risen style artifical hard mode. What was our extra reward? A Server First Thorim kill.

Freya made us all think, "Another Sartharion 3d?". Obviously we now know this is not the case, and each elder being left up gives her extra abilities and damage buffs. We do have other adds to the fight to deal with, though. The adds are where the fight became interesting. Besides, what fun is a raid without the ability to call for a spread too late on the detonating lashers leading to a massive instant wipe, or not resetting the buff stack on the snaplasher getting Sorrun one-shotted, amirite?
Eventually, we overcame our childish urges to see guild members, and especially gnomes, dying.

So.... How the heck do you pronounce "Mimiron"? With this very crucial question on our minds, we could not move on. Do not worry! We decided to just call him... "Mimi"
We ended our first week with Mimiron. Mimiron, as you all probably know, was the first of the Ulduar bosses that required good coordination, high dps, awesome healing, and unfaltering execution of the strategy to get him down. At least the first week. There have been many nerfs since then, but we can always hold our chins up high, knowing we have accomplished something many in the world cannot claim they have. We took Mimiron down the very first week, devising the strategy on our own, server first.

Many Thanks

This calls for another moment of recognition for the dedication and commitment Risen members have to the guild and its raiding endeavors. Thank you very much for once again, putting in 110% in order to make big strides in our raiding history.
We could not have accomplished what we accomplished the first weekend after Ulduar was released without the efforts of every single one of you. We were given a chance to show ourselves what we are made of (Here's what Nahid is made of), and we went in swinging. It doesn't really matter that we didn't meet our ambitious goal for the weekend. What does matter, however is that you all are pure awesome. I am once again very proud and honored to be allowed to be a part of Risen. Thank you.

We Took the Shot

Going back to the original story...
We didn't hestiate. We didn't think about what it meant, if we couldn't clear Ulduar in the first weekend. It did not matter. We took the shot, raided two extended raiding sessions of 20+ hours total. We started on Ulduar 4 days late, but finished that week claiming two server first kills.
Were we willing to raid that much every week? Heck no. There is a reason why our schedule is set the way it is. But this serves as a proud reminder for us, that if we had the ability to spend the 5-7 days a week 4-5 hours a night schedule that many of the top guilds in the world do, we'd be competing right up there with them. Hats off to those who raid so much, but we prefer the way we raid. The Risen way.
Have you taken your shot?

-Parn
P.S. Obviously this isn't all the progress we've made since Ulduar was released, and I'll post updates for them soon?, along with the most recent funny screenshots!