A picture is worth a thousand words...

Once again, I've been slacking with page updates. Things happen too fast that by the time I want to blog about it, it's long past. But I'm gonna keep this short...

Both raid teams have been having a staggering amount of success! Up until last night, Team 2 had caught up to Team 1's progression. This is the Little Team That Could...1-shotting (healing?) the Dreamwalker fight and learning Blood Princes (despite the glitch where the disco balls weren't spawning in the raid area) and Lana'thel very quickly last week. To clear ICC, they just need to take down Sindragosa and the Lich King.

Since I'm not on that team, it's hard for me to go into further detail. I also don't have screenshots for obvious reasons. I'd love for a member to submit some to me to show off here! (Hint hint!)

Team 1 just took down Sindragosa tonight! Seems we've been plagued with technical difficulties (such as people's internet going on the fritz in the final phase) or required out-of-town trips (RL comes first, of course) that interfered with our raiding, but we finally got her!

Arthas has been put on notice. Portent Alliance is coming for him!

Again, I apologize for not keeping up with posting to the front page and the guild Twitter. I really need to keep my netbook nearby for tweets, and keep a list of things we've accomplished (or post more often) so I can remember everything that we've been doing instead of trying to catalogue them from memory at the end of the week.

First of all, we've gone back to 10-man progression. Sacrificing our Strict 10-man standing was a mistake, but we'll get back to 25's in the near future. Long story short, twisting yourself into a pretzel (bending over backwad a million times over) doesn't do much good when some people just hold onto negative attitudes until they explode. It takes everyone involved to work together, and unfortunately we had some people who were investing more energy in being angry over "not having something" than in helping us work with them to earn it. But we've weathered worse "drama bombs" and it's just part of the growth cycle. The guild's been around for over six years...we've learned how to channel those "explosions" into forward movement.

Team 2 was struggling, it's true. But Ktok has taken the reins (temporarily--he's looking for the right person for the job to train as their raid leader) and shown them that there was nothing wrong with the team itself. In the days after the peak of the loldrama, they were able to prove to everyone that they were perfectly capable of success! They downed Sarth3D and all of the Lower Spire in ICC with only a few wipes that were typical of learning new fights. This past week they were able to do it again, and faster...to the point they were looking for new challenges. The challenge they picked? They took out 5 of the Ulduar hard modes in one night! FL+4, [Stokin' the Furnace], [Heartbreaker], [Disarmed], and [Crazy Cat Lady] fell to their newfound enthusiasm! We really think that they have Rusted Protodrakes in their future. And with a few more gear upgrades from running Lower Spire and getting frost badges, they will soon start clearing the Upper Spire too!

Everyone is incredibly proud of Team 2. It's amazing how injecting a little bit of positive attitude can help folks reach their potential...and I have a feeling we'll be seeing more achievements spam guild chat on Team 2 raid nights!

Team 1's moving along as well. Over the past few weeks, we took out raid nights from working on ICC to finish up our Rusted Protodrakes. Team 1 had enough setbacks of its own since Ulduar launched, and we'd always wanted to finish that achievement because those mounts are just beautiful. So we finally buckled down and took it out! Firefighter gave us the most trouble...it's fun, but it's not a "gear fight" and relies a lot on RNG, execution, and reaction. If one person zigs when they should have zagged, it's a wipe. Better yet, we were taking people in there who had never seen the fight before or only saw it a few times, so they were learning it, and the rest of us hadn't seen it in ages so we were all very rusty. We spent a night wiping on it as we were getting used to the phases, and then the next night we went in and one-shotted it like pros! [I Love the Smell of Saronite in the Morning] was a 2-shot. Like Firefighter, [One Light in the Darkness] had a steep learning curve. Two people had never seen the fight and the rest of the team only saw it a few times and downed Yogg once before we went to ToC. We had two nights of wipefests, making progression as we re-learned the fight, and when the kill finally came, it was picture-perfect. I wish someone had FRAPS running!

Our attention has been turned back to ICC now, and we're aiming for Arthas and then hard modes. The Plague and Blood Quarters are both down, and this week we're focusing on learning the Frost Quarter. Real life is merely a set back!

Again, I need to go through my screenshots folder to post our boss kills.

To everyone who's stuck it out and trusted us, thank you. We're all in this together.

And if you're not feeling the warm-fuzzies I'm sending your way, then maybe this will help:

Okay, I've been slacking on posting the news.

Portent Alliance is no longer eligible for the Strict 10-man rankings on GuildOx. We have officially begun 25-man progression in Icecrown! We've switched to a 4-night/week raid schedule where we're doing 25's on Tuesday and the following Monday, and 10's on Thursday and Saturday. This schedule may be adjusted as we are adjusting the teams to give them more balance and fit in the new members.

That said, 10-man progression is still churning ahead. We have just about completed putting together a third 10-man team, and those 10-man teams come together for the 25's.

We really hate calling our teams "Team 1," "Team 2," and "Team 3" as they hint at some form of heirarchy or status that was never intended. Teammates: feel free to make suggestions for a team name to identify yourselves.

Progression-wise:

We have cleared TOC on normal in 10's and 25's. We've also done some TOGC(10), but haven't gone back to finish it since ICC came out. Others have pugged some TOGC(10), so we know we can do it, but our focus has been on new content.

At this point, both raid teams have cleared the first four bosses/events in ICC. Team 1 has also downed Festergut, and has been working on Rotface.

We do have a desire to go back and finish our Ulduar achievements for the Rusted Protodrake. At this point, we're paused at Firefighter. Just three achievements away! We were also doing regular-ish Sarth3D runs on 10-man. Both of these have been put on the backburner for new content. Frostwyrms have been capturing our attention.

Team Level Appropriate has been chugging right along. We're now in our late 60's and working on the Burning Crusade dungeons. We love our Warchief, but Thrall is still the worst groupmate and will retain that title until we meet Arthas in Culling of Stratholme. At least he doesn't monologue for a year. My theory is that until this point, Thrall has always soloed his content so he doesn't know how to function in a group.

Speaking of gladiators, Maenus and Lothloren have put Portent Alliance on the map for the server Arena rankings. They're looking forward to the new season starting soon!

Bosses have been killed, loot has been won, and pictures have been taken. I just need to find those screenshots now....