Hi all,
I was recalling memories of Vanilla WoW to myself today, and some of the great stories we used to share with other players about those days. /roseglasses
One great story I read that stuck in my mind was posted in the blog forums of Elitist Jerks by a guy called DeeNogger.
After spending a little bit of time digging through some of the Elitist Jerks forum archives, I found it.
I will repost it here, it’s a great read.
(Warning: there is some offensive language)
“A Nef Kill” by DeeNogger- posted 09/14/2008
The One Sided Race
Our 2nd week of killing Nef we became in battled with a time trial, so to speak, with our at-that-time rival guild <Iron Fist>. Both raid teams started the instance at about the same time – them farming Nef for ~month and us fresh off our first kill. Most people within both guilds were still very friendly, communication was open and we knew on which boss they were on and how smoothly they were running and thus able to keep the raid updated. It was a battle that went blow for blow as both raid teams were cruising through the instance, Neither raid wiped until late into the instance.We both hit Neferian at the same time and KF dug in for what would hopefully be a fast kill and beat IF, for no reason other than if you are in a meaningless foot race, you want to win that meaningless footrace all the same, even if it is meaningless. We check the colors and get Red/Blue.
Fvck.
Red and Blue, for those that never did Nef (shame on you!) is easily the worst color. Red is immune to Fire, and Blue to Frost, meaning you cant easily AoE down either side – something that throws the mechanical cog-like raiders that most 40mans were populated by for a loop. Instead you gotta depend on an increased use of brain power and a significant help from your hunters; the special children amongst retards. To add further difficulty, I can count on one hand the number of quality raiders KF was running with way back then. Not all of us were retarded, though we had plenty of those: DPS warrior that would intercept into melee range on C’thun to perfectly chain a beam onto all of the melee? Yup, we have THREE of them! Most of our raiders were like me back then: still pretty bad, but building into formidable raiders that could be depended on to heal something and not die to fire. Back then, however, I wasnt the borderline genius, gum chewing, a$$kicking, retarded spelling, raiding juggernaut that I have become today.
Instead we had 2 amazing tanks, 1 top notch druid, and 1 amazing priest. Drop any of these 4 raiders into the worlds best guilds today and they would be welcomed with open arms as that guilds new best tank or healer. They were titans amongst us mere mortals. To paint an accurate image of how amazing these raiders were via comparison to the status quo in KF at the time, imagine them as Godzilla and Mothra fighting in the city of Tokyo. With every movement they make, every blow they exchange, sky scrapers tumble, roads are ripped apart, the entire city is destroyed. Now the rest of us KF raiders? We’re the fleeing Japanese. Our efforts are futile. We dont know what the fvuck is going on, we dont know where we are, we say stuff – but we’re not really sure what it is we’re saying or why we are saying it. Its complete pandemonium**
After checking the colors (get naked, pull, run around trying to get as many of the hunters and rogues killed too) we suited up for battle and checked in on our competition: they had gotten Green and Black, quite possibly the easiest color. Sh!t sh!t fvck god dammit. Losing was not an option, even if it was in a meaningless race. A quick strategy was hashed out for how to divide the dps evenly and handle the anti-AoE colors. I wont go into the details of how we did strategy back then, but suffice to say there was a lot of coin flipping and “if only we had paladins, we could just use [made up paladin ability] and win easily. QQ” Cause thats pretty much all we knew how to do. We talk to Nef, and hope that everything will go alright.
Taunt Tardation
Nothing goes alright. The first warrior that was supposed to taunt after our MT, didnt. The mob goes careening towards the healers and now, 2 mobs deep into Phase 1, things are getting ugly. The healer is, fortunately, a Druid and he snaps into bear and is now a tank. Each side has loose mobs flying around in such random directions it invoked the image of one of those cluster fire works that fire 40 or so small rockets all at once giving the, typically, red neck viewers minimal time to hide behind their motor home and/or mullets before being scorched in the face. Mobs were going everywhere, and I was pillar humping like a crazy mother fvcker to stay away from them.At this point we probably would have been fvcked had it not been for our 2 great tanks and a Thunder Fury. Legendary’s go a long way when they are packaged with an AoE lightning shock that does tons of tps. Clearly, in the event of a retard being involved in your taunt rotation for Nef Phase 1, please break glass and equip Thunder Fury.
We manage to continue through phase 1 in this style. But things are slipping so far out of control (yet we arent wiping, go figure) that the entire balcony is being occupied with stand-alone pockets of raiders fighting isolated groups of Dragonkin. Its so fvcked that we are at the point of not knowing what other groups are doing. No one knows what the count is at (the mods were bugged and claiming that the Dragonkin kill count was at upside down dolphin) and everyone has gotten all turned around they arent even sure what side they are on, who they are supposed to kill, or even what fvcking day it is. …Until Nef lands.
Neferian’s landing is like the coolest scene from every movie you have ever seen only you are in the movie . No matter how many times I did the fight, and no matter how dire my target needed heals, I would always stop. Turn. and stare at Neferian as he breathed on the raid. If my target died, and we wiped because of it, fvck it. That sh!t is too awesome to miss. If I ever quit this game, Ill do it 5 seconds after I see that one last time. I wont even finish the fight, that would just be anti-climatic. Breath on some a$$hole without his cloak, land, and ill just log out, never to be seen again.
Nef’s landing is like the exclamation point at the end of “We are so Fvcked!” as every single raid member is spread out, there are easily 20 Dragonkin still up, and no one other than the previously mentioned 4 have any fvcking clue what to do. The tank team runs in like the on-the-ball raiders they are and quickly control Nef before he can murder the hapless idiots that are running all around the balcony. Dps tries to bring down the dragonkin before the first fears and class calls, but fall woefully short as their dps was, well, sh!tty: whats slice n dice do? However, we once again manage to continue the fight in utter chaos, but without wiping.
Phase 2 continues as normally as possible. Hunters manage to swap in their white bows to prevent becoming 100% useless (well… most of the hunters) while druids and mages tend to the important tast of decursing the MT before all the healers have a heart attack. Mage class call gives our Tank an aneurisim as the OT is polyed when he needs to break a fear but(!) just in time the only Priest with half a brain is able to run over and clear it, preventing the would-be horrible wipe. All the class calls go smoothly and we a cruising to ~50%. Certainly not a text book kill but hey, we havent wiped yet.
Warrior Class call was the 2nd Gun man on the Grassy Knoll
Fvcking Warrior class call. If boss abilities were people, Warrior Class call would be that guy at a stop light that pulls up to the turn lane like he is going to make a right turn, but when the light goes green, he jams on the gas and jumps in front of you. You know what he did, he knows what he did, and there is nothing you can do to fvcking stop him. He even gives you a little smirk right as he crosses in front of your right fender. Bastard. If you do see it coming, and cut him off in return, he’ll probably scream at you for the next 10 blocks until he has to take a right, for real this time, down to Scooters Show girls to tug one out.Warrior class call hits and our hapless healing team is, somehow, caught with our pants down. Despite the fact that this ability was not only regularly used, and that its a well known fact of the fight which we have already beaten, I always remember a surprised reaction in the raid. Like “Oh my, whats this tom foolery here? +30% damage and cant use defensive stance abilities? When did they add this!” Warrior class call hits, the vast majority of the raid takes a few seconds to process this enormous change, and we come out of our stupor to find our completely buffed, 7/8 T2 tank sitting at a cool cool 20% hp and Nef is about to start breathing in to shadow flame the sh!t out of him. Nef’s shadow flame with warrior class call will hit nearly 7k damage and a lvl 60 T2 warrior at 20% will be lucky to have 2k health.
Two important things happened next. First, Nef was about to land a cleave that would hit for 2.5k, killing our poor tank. Me, and just about every other healer was too stupid to do anything about it. I was sitting in my chair, both hands grabbing the sides of my massive CRT monitor shaking it back and forth yelling “DONT YOU DIE ON ME SOLDIER” instead of simply pressing ‘5’ which would have cast a Power Word: Shield and save the tank. But someone did cast that crucial spell, and followed it up with a max rank flash heal. That raider, Damien, was one of the 4 good raiders in our guild. While the rest of us screamed obscenities at our keyboards and monitors, he continued to heal. A novel idea that I think even some of contemporary KF’s healers forget in times of need.
The MT comes out of the cleave with a few 100 hp to spare but with Nef’s shadow flame now being loaded up. The cast bar is ticking down from 2.0 seconds. A simple PW:S or Flash heal isnt going to save the tank, our Nef kill, and our race with IF. We needed a miracle. We needed Jesus.
Jesus of California
What we got was Beefsteak. Beefsteak, the then Co-Raid Leader of KF and the 4th member of the “we are actually good” raiders of KF was one of two druids from MC till Twin Emps that werent completely stupid, and the only one that was actually amazing. The status quo for KF druids at the time was to be recruited to KF, get 8/8 T1, and then never be heard from again. Sometimes, the really big winners of the druid recruits, would cast a Mark buff or two, and even an Innervate, if they were feeling chipper, but that was optional in what was expected of a Druid. Beefsteak, however, was a for sure thing. One of the most polarizing members in all of KF history, loved or hated, everyone knew he could fvcking play.When the calls of terror and agony went out from the armies of hapless healers, it was Beefsteak that answered the call. Having become a resto-druid-turned-tank in P1, and haveing been OTing forgotten about Dragonkins in the back since P1, Beefsteak made a mad dash for the tank. Time slowed down as he came dashing into range.
1.5s left on Shadow Flame cast…
Beefsteak shimmy shacked past pillars and raiders alike. Stretching for the tank in trouble. The tank that needed healing. If there was a health bar that wasnt filled, Beefsteak was going to fill it or so help him he will kill someone.
1.0s left on Shadow Flame cast…
Beefsteak, with a few Dragonkin in tow, approaches the rest of the raid, just on the outskirts of the raid. Hes almost in range as the Shadow Flame cast time is painfully low. The rest of the healers have finally begun to cast emergency heals, but it will be too late. My Max Rank Inner-Focused Gheal will be almost a full second late. In the corner of my screen I am able to make out Beefsteak’s mad dash to get in range of his heal before doom is vomited up onto our MT. Inching closer as tenths of seconds are chewed away.
With less than half a second left on the cast bar, Beefsteak snaps out of bear form and jumps, jumps as he enters range on the MT. Like an explosion of light his max rank Healing Touch, Trinketed Nature’s Swiftness macro goes off. BOOOM! My entire screen shakes from the impact of the heal, the MT is momentarily buffed to that of a God, and grows beautiful Angelic wings that blind the KF raiders staring in awe at what just transpired. With one massive HT crit Darkwulf is brought from a bloodied nearly beaten heap at the feet of Nef begging to be finished quickly to the walking God in robot armor he is. Instead of dieing to Shadow Flame Darkwulf proceeds to shove the majority of his foot firmly up Nef’s a$$hole and body slams him to our second Nefarian kill.
The fight was over, the race was won (IF wiped for a bit before getting the kill) and the talk of the raid was some mages “epic” dps. The four raiders that made the kill possible; Damien, Beefsteak, Darkwulf, and Toughluck were, as always, humble and silent. They didnt care about the near impossible feat of taking 30 idiots and molding them into a workable group. Always happy to just see bosses die and the guild growing, they didnt even take loot or brag about their epic exploits. A fight worthy of the history logs of Keen Formation, completed by only a handful of raiders that new what they were doing. Most people in that raid are long gone, unable or unwilling to keep up with the growing expectations of KF raiding. But some of us are still around and if you’re on vent late enough you just might here one of us mention that fight.
“How about that heal?”
“Fvcking hell of a heal man”
“Hell of a heal”
**In my heart of hearts I miss those days. I truly believe that the most enjoyable moments of my long raiding career were in that first night of MC. If you are reading this, you’re probably a hardened raider and EJ follower and thus have just snorted an elitist “pff, yea right” when reading the following sentence. But no, elitist reader, I am right! Can you imagine, for just a moment, the thrill I had when standing in Rag’s room and having no idea what was about to happen. I listened eagerly to the words being poetically decreed by Domo and wondered, with increasing anxiety, what was going to come out of that bubbling lava. Logically, I remember thinking, it would be another Naga, as they had seemingly taken over the majority of this never ending cave me and my friends had explored. As Domo bit off the final words of his speech my hands began to quiver in anticipation. And then, erupting from the lava like a red hot lightening bolt, an enormous flame elemental – No! A god of fire! Bigger than I could have ever imagined, more awesome in his size, and terrifying in his speech all while wielding the most amazing weapon I had ever seen. “Fvck me” were the only words I could possibly put to speech as I stared, slack jawed, at the coolest thing my eyes had ever seen.
props to DeeNogger for the post
someone posted an image of Nefarian landing as well, to jog the memory-
imgur dot com/a/SkIlVKr
hope you all enjoyed