So a few days weeks ago I was cleaning up Proving Grounds: Tank Gold while wondering what all the fuss was, and somebody asks The Question.

"Hey Kain, what about that front page update? Wasn't having it up before next patch part of the deal with that whole 2 weeks off thing?"

Fuck.

Luckily when I actually sat down to write it things moved along smoother than a Metamusil-fueled toilet-experience, mostly due to me having found The List called "shit to write about next time" and for once said list being intelligible.

Lei Shen was a pretty good encounter, certainly better than last tier's Sha of LFR, and probably better than Deathwing if we go back a little. The transition AKA "Now Begins The Most Dangerous Game" phases are a welcomed throwback to Lady Vashj, where the raid breaks up into 4 groups to each handle their own section with MANDATORY RADIO SILENCE since giving orders to a single quadrant will also activate the Autists in the other quadrants that are already fiercely struggling to suppress their disability for the 45 seconds that the phase lasts.

Going back a bit further we have a wonderful fight called Dark Animus, one of my favorites this expansion, since 95% of it happens before the boss is even pulled. There are then about 15 seconds of very hectic "Who's In My Butt?" during which either (a) victory is cemented and we start building a runway for people to slide down and catch balls in their mouth or (b) I glance over to the other side of the room and see two Small Golems LEAN in to whisper some secrets then turn around and cockpunch 3 people and immediately "Emergency" by Steve Aoki starts playing through my speakers as I stop tanking and turn my camera into the corner and await my fate in quaking, rodent fear.

Other encounters of note include Iron Qon which can be summarized entirely by: "There is a goddamn CLOUD 2 feet away from you ok and lightning EVERYWHERE ok listen you fuck I am gonna eat a BOWL of hot chili cheese fries with jalep and beans and I'm gonna squat over yer face and let loose and scream THUNDER STOOOOOOOOOOORM and maybe THEN you'll notice and click it off if by some miracle you don't accidentally click the ground instead and end up moving there."

Durumu is a somewhat unique and exciting one, featuring mechanics that haven't really been seen before elsewhere. It's a bit like Heigan except now you (a) run through a shifting maze and (b) often have your path blocked by delicious purple poop-treats that your fellow raiders left for you because instead of doing the responsible thing and getting themselves to the VERY CLEARLY MARKED TOILETS when the urge hit them they instead opted to lay on the ground and angle themselves upwards such that the Void Zone rains down upon their person and they not only get to wallow in it contentedly but also ensure that their fellow raiders do not miss out on the enjoyment later in the fight. I hear that this approach is good for DPS.

Speaking of which, by FAR my favorite mechanic is the one that fits into the category of "risky but high-reward play", or as I like to call it, "you dumb piece of shit your odds of survival are ABOUT equal to the chance that the Mutes are actual females". I understand perfectly well that running along the much smaller inner ring lets you continue to dps as a melee. I do not say "everyone run along the OUTSIDE ring" because I enjoy inefficiency or because I hate winning, it's because I KNOW with unshakable faith that due to raging autism and aggressive incontinence several of the Slow Ones will make the inner ring into their personal latrine. I see your point of view PERFECTLY, but please try to understand that your perspective involves a clear runway that will make you a DPS hero, while I see the reality and the BEST CASE SCENARIO is you convincingly portraying a hungry outhouse.

Indeed, the first time a person told me "fuck you, I'm doing it MY way" then proceeded to select the inner ring despite the floor not actually being visible beneath the leavings I immediately violently Void Zoned with enough force to be propelled from my computer chair and eventually crash into the wall on the other side of my bedroom.

Megaera is a fight that I will (shockingly) NOT compare to my daily 2pm bathroom break, and instead simply call it a "situational awareness fight". In this case however it is not like other fights of this nature where a million things are going on at once - all that is asked of players is to be aware of the location represented by two raid markers and their own buff situation. Predictably, being in the right place to be dispelled is an INSURMOUNTABLE challenge that I fear we will NEVER overcome, and this is only reinforced when I look at the person with the dubuff, then look at the ground markers and the dispeller 200 yards away, then look back at the person about to explode as they realize what has happened and make a face that says "sum1 pls halp" before becoming one with the floor.

Moving on, because the other bosses are not particularly interesting and because I am quickly running out of bodily-fluid-metaphors.

Luckily now our server population more resembles an affluent urban downtown and not a possum + alligator swamp in Quasi's backyard, meaning that the Attendance Boss appears rarely. However he is replaced by a what I like to call the Recruitment Roulette Boss, where you get applications and interviews from well-spoken young adults in smart blazers, tie clips, and perfectly gelled hair, who actually end up being apes screaming "The Club Can't Even Handle Me Right Now" when given Trial rank and a ticket into the raid. Apparently some had such a profound effect on existing raiders that people's first response to new trials is to throw poop at them until they leave, then spend hours complaining to me using specious arguments about why we can't field enough people and why poop is gross.

Ultimately it's not too big a problem, since the server move has upgraded our woodchipper such that it is now ALSO a food processor, so instead of useless pulp the "poop end" of the device now produces perfect portions of what is commonly called "paper-wrapped chicken", thus allowing us to recycle failed raiders into raid feasts and noodle carts. We held a small cookout towards the end of the tier, and now we don't have to worry about raid food ever again. The only exception to the cookout was Amber. For those that inquired concernedly she indeed did NOT get made into a tasty raid snack - in the waning days of Throne of Thunder I sent her on a mission to Alabama to lift Quasi's tail and describe what she found there, but I fear that Quasi was ready with a cast of Power Word: Cholorform and Amber woke up to papier-mache wings, a dragon-tail buttplug, and a canister of PCP. In the words of Mordral the day he tanked the Sound Dragon with no video card: "No Bueno".

That's about all I have in the way of actual guild news. I apologize for the copious poop jokes, but you must understand that my girlfriend hits me with an actual rolled-up newspaper every time I talk about poop in real life, so this is pretty much my last outlet for toilet humor. At least, until someone brings THIS to her attention, at which point I may or may not be absent from raiding for an indefinite amount of time. As a parting gift here is at least some useful information on the subject:

And now, we proceed with this expansion's last tier, the Siege of Orgrimmar: Battle of the Rectal Shelf. What new challenges await us? Only time will tell!

(Ok that last part is bullshit since we've already cleared half the instance and actually know exactly what awaits us, but pretend for a second that Santa is real and that this update was actually released on time.)