Whole guild · Meet the team

They gave him the officer rank and then, with no supervision whatsoever, the loot council. Frost death knight, never misses a raid, colder than the spec. If your name is on the item you get a fair hearing and probably the item. If you are a balance druid you get a fair hearing. Somewhere in the middle of Norman's explanation he will ask Findruid, not quietly, whether someone can fucking mute him. Nobody ever has.

The stone is up before anybody asks, every single week, and he calls it putting the wardrobe up. Then the cookies come out. This is the fifth time tonight the cookies have come out and the fifth time nobody has touched one, and he has told the channel so, and he will do it all again on Sunday. Nobody in this guild has walked to a raid in four tiers because of him.

She has watched the same warrior stand in the same acid for four tiers, said nothing about it, and quietly undone it every single time. That is the entire job and she is superb at it. The one thing she ever asks for is an innervate, and Findruid has it on her before she has finished typing the word. Put her in balance and she does lovely damage right up until something looks directly at her.

The healers went down one after another and Ázteco held the entire raid up on her own for ninety seconds, shields going out faster than the boss could take them off. Then she typed 'was that ok' and logged onto the alt before anybody could answer her. There is one word beside her name in the officer notes and in four tiers nobody has needed a second one. It is 'solid'.

Twenty people, eight tiers, one voice holding the whole thing together through the worst connection in Europe. A child gets out of bed two rooms away, he walks them back, and picks the sentence up exactly where he dropped it. When the channel talks over him he says 'right, that's it, you're muted', and twenty grown adults go quiet like it's assembly. Then he dies to the mechanic he was explaining, and every one of them follows him in anyway.

Four tiers in and this guild still calls him the new mage, which he stopped correcting years ago, which is the funniest part of the whole thing. He is an S tier frost mage. He is a D tier arcane one. He has played arcane all season without one complaint, because arcane is the meta and somebody had to fall on it. Say the word frost to him and watch a man remember who he used to be.

Whatever the class discords got excited about this fortnight, he is already playing it, already geared and already three and a half thousand rating, and he will mention all three. Arms warrior today. Was not last tier. Will not be next. The guild has stopped asking what he plays and started just checking the meter, where he is near the top of it in a spec he has owned for nine days.

Beast mastery hunter who stands in melee. The pet waits at range where the hunter should be, the hunter is in the middle of the pack where the pet should be, and after six tiers this is simply how it is done here. Six tiers ago she pulled a boss early by accident and the raid killed it anyway. She has been chasing that feeling from two yards ever since and she is not stopping.

Eight tiers, never missed an invite, never once fed the pet, and there is no version of this raid that works without him in it. Welsh, and treats every England result as a personal event, in the channel, at length, with receipts. Throws a punch the moment you leave one open and does not hold back on the follow-through. A committed baiter and, by unanimous agreement of everyone here, the master of it.

S tier, and the best player in this guild by a distance that is frankly rude, four tiers running. When a pull has completely fallen apart and one person is still upright with the boss at four percent, everybody knows who it is before they look. Phonchick does not get to the end of the word innervate before it lands on her. Ask Findruid about any of this and she will start talking about your cooldowns, which she has also noticed.

Top of the meter, five tiers, and it has never once been a conversation. She dies most weeks to something she has personally explained to two other people, which she would like recorded as unrelated. Then she is straight back up and needed for the next pull before anyone can get a joke out. In lieu of flowers the family asks that you stop standing in her poison and stop asking how she does it.

For the record, and he would very much like this on the record: three thousand two hundred and fifty-five Mythic+ rating this season, filed in response to certain remarks about whether he does keys at all. He has kept this raid breathing for five tiers, largely by putting a totem where nobody is standing and moving it before anyone notices. Runs on sarcasm and spite, neither of which has shown any sign of running out.

He came here to blast. They made him an officer, so now he takes the raid whenever nobody else will, and he is good at it, and he has forgiven nobody. Shadow priest. An eighty on Nek'zali one week and single figures on the Explorers the next, and four tiers later nobody can account for the gap. He also does not like the robot writing this, and has made that abundantly clear.

Stryke. Flint. Whichever one you shout, the answer is the best tank west of anywhere this guild has ever been, and every person here would put money on it. Stands between twenty people and a golem four times her height for three hours a week and has never once asked for a thank you, a mention, or any credit at all. The only way anybody knows she has had a rough night is that she says absolutely nothing about it.

Holy Priest — seven tiers, one hundred and seventy-eight nights, four guild rosters, no gaps. Duties: healing; also remembering what happened in Aberrus, which nobody else can. Key achievement: outlasted every raid leader she has ever had. Reason for leaving previous tier: it ended.

Twice a night he picks up a balance druid who is standing somewhere completely safe and sets them down somewhere with no floor, and it is funny every time, including to the druid, eventually. Then about once a tier he catches somebody already off the edge who had no business surviving, and says nothing about it afterwards. Same button, same face. Nobody has worked out how to get one without the other.

Arrived this tier, said almost nothing, and started healing like she had been here for years. Eyes on eight health bars, does not move for four minutes at a stretch, and dies about once a night to something she never saw, because she was watching everybody else. Still on trial, technically. The write-up is going to be one line and the officers already know what it says.

They still tell the one about the demon hunter who leapt blindfolded into a pack without checking what was in it, cleared the lot, and landed facing entirely the wrong way. They tell it because he did it again the following week, and the week after that, and is fully expected to do it again this Sunday. The healers no longer flinch. They have simply built the evening around him. He has never seen it coming, and has never yet been wrong.

Alfie takes the job nobody else wants and leads the raid on the nights Norman is on bedtime duty, and he is good at it, which is the one part he will never accept. Arcane mage, nine invites out of nine. The second he stands in something orange the channel gets 'Alfie. Alfie, you' and then a word we are not printing, out loud, in the third person. He has never once aimed it at anybody else.

BEAST MASTERY HUNTER (Orc). Range: everywhere, for years, without interruption. Habitat: the same spot on every fight, very slightly to the left. Diet: whatever the pet does not want. Distinguishing feature: quietly outranks most of the people who assume he is just some bloke with a bow. Behaviour when threatened: sends the pet. Behaviour when the guild is threatened: also sends the pet, then fixes whatever went wrong without mentioning it. Migration: none recorded, and none expected.

Marksmanship hunter, quietly excellent, and nobody can remember formally inviting them at any point in five tiers. They simply appear, at range, on time, already near the top of their bracket. Five tiers in that channel and not one unkind word about a single person. What they do instead is tell Phonchick she is doing a lovely job, roughly once a night, whether or not anybody asked.

Mousaios once held the raid together through an entire phase with a mace, a lantern and what he later described as 'a strong feeling'. Four tiers on, the troll still opens every night the same way: he checks everyone's health, decides it is fine, and then quietly moves three feet to the left where he can see them all.

FROST DEATH KNIGHT (Blood elf). Habitat: melee, four tiers, thirty-four recorded nights. Plumage: two runeblades, permanently frosted. Behaviour: appears without warning at the boss's feet; will occasionally vanish and be replaced by a near-identical specimen answering to Nancometa, which the colony treats as the same animal. Call: silence, then a very cold noise.

WANTED, A BOSS: large, ideally stationary. Highmountain warrior, thirty-one nights, one axe, no questions. Will hit it until the situation resolves. Does not require the fight explained, though he will sit through the explanation out of politeness. Antlers included at no extra cost. Cannot be reasoned with once committed.

AVAILABLE: one haranir druid. Will bring starlight to your raid and a lantern to your problem, whatever the problem is, without being asked twice. Happy on either team, happy on any boss, visibly happier when somebody else gets the loot. Does not roll on things, which the loot has noticed and taken personally. Enquiries after nine in the evening server time; before that she is asleep and will not be moved.

Reports of the frost mage's death were filed early again. He stands further back than anybody has ever thought necessary, on the entirely reasonable grounds that nothing can reach him there, and is therefore killed roughly once a tier by the one thing that can. He is survived by an ice block he did not press in time, by several people who told him so at some length, and by himself, on the very next pull, standing further back.

Take one dark iron monk, aged eight tiers. Add mist, generously and continuously. Do not stir; he will circulate on his own. Season with a hundred and sixty-one nights of knowing exactly when the damage lands. Rest briefly between pulls. The dish improves the longer it has been in the guild, which is the whole trick of it.

One nightborne warlock. Steep in fel until the colour is wrong. Add a demon, unsupervised. Leave to reduce over six raid nights, stirring only to reapply. Do not open the lid to check on it — she will have moved the pot and it will be fine. Serves the whole raid, unless you were standing near her, in which case it does not.

The dwarf has fallen, shield first, exactly as he would have wanted. Twenty-eight nights across three tiers, every one of them spent between the raid and something considerably larger. Mourners are asked not to loot him, as he is only briefly dead and will want his hammer back.

New this tier. On his first night the paladin popped every cooldown he had on the opening pull, ran out of everything by thirty percent, and asked, in complete sincerity, whether that was 'about right'. Five nights later he is doing it again, and the boss is dying faster, so nobody has had the heart to answer.

Would do more damage if they didn't keep having to move, as they will explain at length.

126 parses deep on 19 bosses, which is either dedication or a lack of alternatives.

Turns up for 18 raids a tier, all of them somehow the important ones.

Sitting at 2/8 M this tier and counting, loudly.

4 raids on the armory, the pick of them 2/8 Mythic in The Venomous Abyss.

Career best is still Soulbinder Naazindhri at 60 percentile (Manaforge Omega, Mythic). Every tier since has been a rebuilding year.

Every guild has one boss they cannot parse on. Theirs is Ula'tek, at a stately 7.

Word is the nightborne turned up two tiers ago already knowing every fight, and has never once admitted it. Word is his bow is genuinely, on the tooltip, in writing, called P.O.W. x3, and that he has declined to explain this to officers, to friends, or to anyone who has ever worked up the nerve to ask. The prevailing theory in the channel is that he is a great deal better than he lets on and finds the whole thing funnier this way.

Put him on the monk and he is exactly what you want in a raid: inside the green spinning circle, fists genuinely furious, doing the assignment and the damage at the same time and mentioning neither. Then once a tier he brings the demon hunter out to see how it feels. It feels bad. Everybody agrees it feels bad. Somebody always walks over and quietly asks him to go and fetch the monk back.

Tanking from South Africa on five hundred milliseconds of ping, which means he is holding a boss the rest of us finished watching half a second ago, and he still has it. Drags everything within ten yards into one pile and reports that he is fine. He has been right about that every single time. Nobody has ever been able to check fast enough to disagree with him.

INCIDENT: Sunday, pull six. 1. Subject arrived four minutes after the invite went out. 2. Subject apologised, at length, unprompted, twice. 3. Subject was then the last one standing for eleven seconds of a fight nobody had expected to survive at all, surrounded by his own ghouls, doing his level best. FINDING: the lateness and the eleven seconds appear to be unrelated. RECOMMENDATION: keep inviting him. Send the invite earlier.

In her second week here she held both golems for an entire pull and afterwards could not tell anybody how she had done it. 'There was a lot of green' is the complete account and she is sticking to it. She has twice asked the raid politely to stop standing behind the one that bleeds red. Still on trial, which is the only reason it was asked politely. Nobody expects that to hold.

Scattered appearances across seven tiers, tending towards brief but heavy. Twenty-eight nights recorded. When present, expect sustained storm activity and a shield in the wrong hand. Absence should not be read as a front moving out; she has a habit of arriving precisely when the forecast is worst.

Exists to make a number go up, and to make sure everybody hears about the number.

New enough to still be enthusiastic, 16 raid nights in.

Has 2 Mythic bosses in The Venomous Abyss to their name, and the receipts to prove it.

A steady 58 percentile. Not the biggest number on the meter, still standing at the end of it.

45 logged kills across 10 different bosses, every one of them a matter of public record.

Turns up for 16 raids a tier, all of them somehow the important ones.

Owns exactly one 81 parse, on Sszorak, and has built a personality around it.

Interviewer: There is a paladin on the roster with your name on it. — Pawnstaar: There is. — Interviewer: People say that is where all your good gear went. — Pawnstaar: People are being generous. He is wearing what I found in a bin two expansions ago and he has never been invited to anything. — Interviewer: So the mage is the main. — Pawnstaar: The mage is the one who owns trousers.

ELEMENTAL SHAMAN (Orc). Range: six tiers, a hundred and thirty-six nights, always the same three feet of floor. Feeding: lightning, mostly. Notable behaviour: does not chase keys, does not chase parses, does not chase anything — the boss comes to him, or it does not, and either way he is signed up for Wednesday.

Take one dark iron warlock. Apply curses liberally and walk away; they keep working without supervision, which is rather the point of him. Add green smoke until the tank can no longer be seen. Should the mixture separate he will reappear as a pandaren monk called Viamisosalty and punch things instead, and the guild has agreed not to ask which of the two is the real recipe. Serve either. Both work.

Nobody can find a record of recruiting her. The trial invite went out and she was somehow already inside, imp out, standing on the mark, waiting. Two weeks in and no one has seen her sign up late, or early, or at all, and the damage has been immaculate throughout. The officers have her down as new. Not one of them looks confident saying it out loud.

Job description: be hit by the largest thing in the room, on purpose, repeatedly, without comment.

Peaked at 84 on Nek'zali the Soulcoiler, a screenshot that still exists somewhere.

Mythic+ score of 3868, topping out at a +20 Den of Nalorakk that is still discussed.

24 logged kills across 10 different bosses, every one of them a matter of public record.

Carries a 6/8 M on the armory, and has opinions about every one of those bosses.

Turns up for 15 raids a tier, all of them somehow the important ones.

Sits at a 65 average parse: quietly good, which is somehow more irritating than loud and good.

Keeps 2 alts on standby (Artesta, Artresto), one of which is definitely better geared than the main.

First month with us. Assigned to the left side on his second pull, went right, and the boss died anyway. Nobody asked him to explain it and he did not volunteer. The officers have quietly decided to keep putting him on the left on the grounds that it appears to work, which is more trust than any new starter here has been handed. Nobody is certain who invited him either.

HOLY PALADIN SEEKS PLACEMENT. Eight tiers, eighty-nine nights, one beacon, permanently on the wrong person for the first four seconds and the right one thereafter. Comes with a second character called Mickevoker, sold as seen. Will heal your raid. Will not heal the warrior who keeps doing that.

On one of her first nights with us Billadin bubbled at eight percent, ran the sword back in and finished the boss on her own while the entire rest of the raid watched from the floor. There was a respectful silence. Then somebody asked how long she had been playing paladin. She said she wasn't completely sure, and that she had mostly been reading the tooltips as she went along.

In the age of the world-tree there stood a tauren who drank deeply before every pull, and the elders said this was unwise, and the tauren said it was a brewmaster thing. Three tiers he has held the line this way. The elders have stopped commenting. The keg is now considered part of the strategy.

Would do more damage if they didn't keep having to move, as they will explain at length.

The logs hold 37 of their kills on 18 bosses. There is nowhere to hide.

15 nights over two tiers since Manaforge Omega: officially past the trial and into the resentment.

6/8 M on the armory, every boss of it earned on a Wednesday night.

5 raids on the armory, the pick of them 6/8 Mythic in The Venomous Abyss.

3163 Mythic+ score and a +15 Voidscar Arena best, achieved with only mild shouting.

Sits at a 62 average parse: quietly good, which is somehow more irritating than loud and good.

Main tank last season, then vanished into a game with worse graphics and better fishing, and everybody quietly assumed that was the end of it. He is back at the front of the raid, tanking on pure instinct, having never in his life watched a recording of anything he has done. He is also Popmama, Popka and Poppka, all of whom kept his spot warm for him.

The tauren tanked five tiers under one name, then quietly rerolled, and half the guild spent a month asking who the new bloke was. He never corrected anyone. He just kept holding the boss where it needed holding, until somebody eventually noticed that the pulls had been going fine the whole time.

Fully committed to the damage meter, and only loosely committed to the mechanics around it.

New enough to still be enthusiastic, 12 raid nights in.

Career highlight: 80 percentile on Nek'zali the Soulcoiler, brought up at every opportunity.

Mythic+ score of 3145, topping out at a +16 Kings' Rest that is still discussed.

Personal raid record for this tier reads 2/8 M, which they will happily talk you through.

62 percentile on average, achieved with the calm of someone who has read the log first.

30 parses deep on 9 bosses, which is either dedication or a lack of alternatives.

The young paladin, new to the herd, five nights old. Watch how he waits for the more experienced healers to commit before he moves — this is not timidity, it is learning. In a few tiers he will be the one they wait for. For now he holds the flank, quietly, and nothing on his side of the room has died yet.

Fully committed to the damage meter, and only loosely committed to the mechanics around it.

Has an ongoing disagreement with The Twin Fangs, who is winning.

A 85 average parse. Mentions it roughly once per pull, entirely unprompted.

A 26% attendance rare spawn. Sightings are usually on progression night, never on farm.

Carries a 2/8 M on the armory, and has opinions about every one of those bosses.

2844 Mythic+ score and a +12 Murder Row best, achieved with only mild shouting.

The logs hold 27 of their kills on 9 bosses. There is nowhere to hide.

Exists to make a number go up, and to make sure everybody hears about the number.

Armory history runs to 2 raids, topping out at 8/8 Heroic in The Venomous Abyss.

Turns up for 9 raids a tier, all of them somehow the important ones.

Politely requests we skip Entombed Sentinels, where the logs read 16 and the memories read worse.

Personal raid record for this tier reads 8/8 H, which they will happily talk you through.

3138 Mythic+ score and a +16 Altar of Fangs best, achieved with only mild shouting.

15 logged kills across 8 different bosses, every one of them a matter of public record.

Two nights, and the Discord is already convinced. They say the dark iron mage set fire to the tank on purpose. They say he has been playing since the beginning and only just decided to bother us. Neither has been confirmed. What is confirmed is that both nights went well and he said almost nothing on either.

Exists to make a number go up, and to make sure everybody hears about the number.

Nymrissa Wavecaller is where it clicks: 44 percentile, achieved once, referenced forever.

49 logged kills across 18 different bosses, every one of them a matter of public record.

A 19% attendance rare spawn. Sightings are usually on progression night, never on farm.

A 31 average parse and a flawless record of being alive to complain about it.

Has, on record, a 92 parse on Entombed Sentinels (The Venomous Abyss, Heroic). The rest is just consistency.

10 raid nights across 3 tiers, dating back to Nerub-ar Palace. Nobody has told them they can leave.

Subtlety Rogue. Duties: appearing behind the boss. Appearing behind the raid leader. Appearing in Discord ten seconds after the pull has already gone out to ask whether there is an invite going. Notable achievement: nobody in this guild has ever seen him walk anywhere, arrive at anything on foot, or still be standing where he was a moment ago. References available, though none of them are entirely sure where he went.

Keeps the raid alive in spite of its life choices, then gets told the healing was low.

121 logged kills across 18 different bosses, every one of them a matter of public record.

2655 Mythic+ score and a +11 Voidscar Arena best, achieved with only mild shouting.

76 percentile on average, achieved with the calm of someone who has read the log first.

Career highlight: 94 percentile on Vashnik the Malignant, brought up at every opportunity.

Has been turning up since Nerub-ar Palace: 4 tiers and 81 raid nights of accumulated grievance.

8/8 H on the armory, every boss of it earned on a Wednesday night.

Job description: be hit by the largest thing in the room, on purpose, repeatedly, without comment.

Career best is still Vashnik the Malignant at 88 percentile (The Venomous Abyss, Heroic). Every tier since has been a rebuilding year.

Vashnik the Malignant is where it clicks: 69 percentile, achieved once, referenced forever.

Averages 54, and has never once let a good parse get in the way of doing a mechanic.

A 16% attendance rare spawn. Sightings are usually on progression night, never on farm.

New enough to still be enthusiastic, 7 raid nights in.

Ula'tek remains the nemesis, and the logs are not kind about it.

Bronze light over the whole raid, rising steadily. Six nights recorded, all of them measurably better for everyone else than they would otherwise have been. The dracthyr himself reports no change in personal conditions and cannot say why anyone is thanking him. Outlook: everyone's numbers go up and nobody knows whose fault it is.

Presses buttons, produces numbers, blames the healers. The circle of raiding.

Armory history runs to 3 raids, topping out at 8/8 Heroic in The Venomous Abyss.

26 logged kills across 13 different bosses, every one of them a matter of public record.

+14 Voidscar Arena and a 2664 Mythic+ score, in case the raid logs were not enough.

Has, on record, a 36 parse on Nek'zali the Soulcoiler (The Venomous Abyss, Heroic). The rest is just consistency.

Every guild has one boss they cannot parse on. Theirs is Sszorak, at a stately 1.

Turns up for 7 raids a tier, all of them somehow the important ones.

Popqa's paladin, and everybody knows it. She appears for two nights at the end of a tier, when the roster is thin and the officers are working the phones, brings a sword taller than she is, puts the boss on the floor and goes again. The guild still talks about her in the past tense out of respect, while she is stood directly in front of them.

Contributes damage, opinions about damage, and a running commentary on everyone else's damage.

New enough to still be enthusiastic, 6 raid nights in.

Runs keys properly: 3302 score, best a +16 in Ruby Life Pools.

16 logged kills across 8 different bosses, every one of them a matter of public record.

A steady 39 percentile. Not the biggest number on the meter, still standing at the end of it.

Armory history runs to 3 raids, topping out at 8/8 Heroic in The Venomous Abyss.

All-time peak: 80 on Vashnik the Malignant back in The Venomous Abyss, Heroic. They have not stopped chasing it since.

Would do more damage if they didn't keep having to move, as they will explain at length.

109 logged kills across 18 different bosses, every one of them a matter of public record.

Averages 29 and measures success in survival rather than percentiles. Frankly, fair.

Runs keys properly: 3000 score, best a +13 in Altar of Fangs.

Has been turning up since Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible: 6 tiers and 169 raid nights of accumulated grievance.

A 14% attendance rare spawn. Sightings are usually on progression night, never on farm.

Has 2 Mythic bosses in The Venomous Abyss to their name, and the receipts to prove it.

Believes deeply that most deaths are preventable, and can name exactly whose fault each one was.

Has 5 Mythic bosses in Tier Mn 1 to their name, and the receipts to prove it.

+12 Voidscar Arena and a 1390 Mythic+ score, in case the raid logs were not enough.

Turns up for 6 raids a tier, all of them somehow the important ones.

8/8 H on the armory, every boss of it earned on a Wednesday night.

40 raid nights across 7 tiers, dating back to Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible. Nobody has told them they can leave.

Nymrissa Wavecaller is where it clicks: 37 percentile, achieved once, referenced forever.

Contributes damage, opinions about damage, and a running commentary on everyone else's damage.

Runs keys properly: 3169 score, best a +15 in Murder Row.

A 12% attendance rare spawn. Sightings are usually on progression night, never on farm.

Once put up a 59 on Sszorak. The guild has heard about it. Twice.

New enough to still be enthusiastic, 5 raid nights in.

Their high-water mark is a 77 on Sszorak (The Venomous Abyss, Heroic), and it comes up whenever the meter does.

A steady 50 percentile. Not the biggest number on the meter, still standing at the end of it.

SHAMAN, AVAILABLE. Five nights in and already on the sign-up sheet for the sixth. No armory, no Raider.IO page, no profile of any kind — the guild is fairly sure he exists because he keeps turning up and things keep dying. Enquiries in game only. He will not be answering the whisper; he will simply appear at the summon stone.

Contributes damage, opinions about damage, and a running commentary on everyone else's damage.

Their best night is Kith'ix at 62, and they can tell you exactly what they pressed.

23 parses deep on 10 bosses, which is either dedication or a lack of alternatives.

A 12% attendance rare spawn. Sightings are usually on progression night, never on farm.

Averages 28 and measures success in survival rather than percentiles. Frankly, fair.

New enough to still be enthusiastic, 5 raid nights in.