A Wild Roak Poast Appears 10/10N 9/10H

Dearest friends,

Thought it pains me to say, I have been derelict in my duties of writing nonsensical geek drivel on the internet to reflect our heroic deeds inside the World of Warcraft. In an attempt to make up for this slight, I have attempted to write this mega poast detailing the exploits of Onineko in our 9.1 Chains of Domination raiding campaign. Unfortunately the State of California sent the Roak Poast office a cease and desist letter over the culture of the Roak Poast studio citing claims of sexual misconduct in the shockingly named “Rapey Roak Room” and we’re fresh out of college interns to write that poast. Instead, please enjoy the following content:

I don’t really know how it first started, but like a frog in a pot of cold water on the stove, the sheer racism and inappropriate comments from Facey’s mouth that, while subtle at first are now accepted in our guild day to day in the form of “Boss Mechanics” that only go so far as to highlight how low the once proud name of Onineko has fallen. None of the examples that come today, highlight this more than the first boss on the kill list today – Remnant of Ner’zhul

This round shaped arena hanging precariously over an edge with no safety barriers is often, as Facey would put it “covered in Black Shit” – which is an obvious reference to former African American slaves who were ripped from their homes and villages to be put to work picking cotton for rich Chinese moguls like Facey make – this the hardest boss in the instance. Not because he hits particularly hard or the healing/dps requirements are anything challenging. This is the hardest boss in the game because it requires individual raiders to not get themselves in a position to be knocked off the edge. If Facey’s constant racist battle cries weren’t enough, the fight also spawns “Black Balls” which is another of Facey’s horrid racist insults – this time referring to the testicles of Negro slaves which were often dipped in black tar and served as a delicacy in many chinese restaurants.

This boss just sucks, not just because Facey has single handedly set back interracial peace and justice by at least 20 years, not just because of the number of times I’ve seen Calt hanging out in the wrong place (literally all the times), not even because our healers (looking at you Saamiel and Ez) – even after reminding THEMSELVES not to spam cast dispel immediately, still manage to do this at least once per week. but almost exclusively because everytime the boss is about to do a breath that’s gonna hit three balls, Facey will call the dispel too early and we’ll end up hitting no balls.

2/7 Roaks

From one side of the raid to the other, we hop the bridge to take on Soulrender Dormazain the bloke who’s been keeping Garrosh busy since the end of MoP.

Speaking of Garrosh, MoP was a pretty good expansion right? Remember when Blizzard made games that worked and had mechanics that were cool and interesting? Personally I can understand Soulrender’s fascination with Garrosh. WoW was a wild time back in MoP, I remember the huge controversy at the inclusion of Panda’s in WoW, how dare this fantasy universe that has talking cows and Space Goats include sentient Pandas that live on a giant turtle?

Garrosh himself was a bit of a controversy with half the Horde population loving his dedication to the Blood ‘n Thunder days of the Horde, while the other half just wanted to pick flowers with Anduin. Four expansions later and Anduin is the bad guy while Garrosh hangs out in Soulrender’s BDSM dungeon.

What does all of this have to do with the boss? Nothing really, but this boss was so underwhelmingly easy (2nd attempt kill?) I had to think of something to fill a few paragraphs. In any case, the period boss as he will now be known as due to his monthly cycle of shedding the lining of his uterus was easy and didn’t trigger Facey’s racism because apparently Red is ok as a colour, even if Black is not.

1/7 Roaks

Moving on, we hit up the greatest disappointment in the history of WoW (and I played during WoD) – Painsmith Whatever.

When we first fought this guy in NORMAL. I thought, damn this is a cool fight. A shit load of gear later and the normal version of this fight became quite trivial, leaving myself (and many others) salivating at the thought of a difficult heroic fight. Unfortunately, we must have picked up a bit too much gear because again I think we 2-shot the boss.

The only difference worth mentioning in this fight is the inclusion of traps that are periodically thrown at raid members and must be detonated in a timely but controlled manner to prevent accidental deaths. The hardest part of this mechanic being convincing Facey to pretend Painsmith is a disadvantaged young black man so that he’ll keep hitting him while a tank can go around and pop the traps.

That all said, being an easy boss means little when you’re a raid team full of retards, none more retarded than our very own Co-Tank Bob. Now, to be fair on Bob, Paladins are very slow and it’s not like they have any movement speed increasing abilities like being able to summon a holy steed for increased temporary movement. So the next time (and trust me, there will be a next time) Bob decides to send out waves of spikes in the centre of the room, remember this – Bob is special, and not the good kind.

2/7 Roaks

Three bosses in and we’re only half way folks! After clearing this tier of bosses, we teleport up to the almost but not quite top of the top of the Sanctum of Domination (not a typo) where we faced the next row of bosses.

First up, Guardian of the First Ones – or GOFO for short. Is another boss with heaps of potential that just fell a bit short of the awesome factor. The changes this time – obviously struggling for ideas – Blizzard introduces a second type of tank swirl on top of the already baseline tank swirl from normal. The pattern, which took far too many wipes to learn – is single swirl, group swirl, group swirl, single swirl. Single swirls are swirls that the tank must soak on his own, while group swirls need to be soaked with other people. The caveat, once you’ve soaked any swirl (single or group) you will basically die if you eat the same swirl immediately after.

Our intelligent strategy, forged from years of experience playing this game, was to have Bob soak with the melee, while yours truly would soak with the ranged. A brilliant, but flawed strategy when your raid group is unfamiliar with the concept of “stacking”.

Alas if that were our only problem.

The same as normal, the boss needs to be taken to the orbs where he does some explodey bits. In normal, if you leave the circle, you’re 99% likely to die. Somehow, this learning did not translate into heroic and we had many raiders leaving the bubble of safety only to die screaming in agony seconds later. Further, GOFO shoots his beams while in circle of trust (new from normal) causing even more chaos as idiots fled certain death by charging headlong into certain death.

Thankfully, Blizzard made getting gear so much easier in this game and we were able to offset our lack of skills with pure numbers.

4/7 Roaks

If you’ve made it this far, well done we’re almost at the end! Our next boss is among my favourite of most stupid bosses ever. Fatescribe Rolo, best known for his impersonation as a candy bar isn’t that much different in heroic, meaning the retarded mechanic of lining up circles against runes unfortunately persists in this version of the encounter.

Rolo cuts deep at some of Facey’s old wounds, with more instances of “Black Shit” appearing in this fight, often the “Black Shit” is “Bad” and we are in a bad position by being in close proximity to it. Onineko members like myself who have been playing with Facey for a number of years will understand all of these expressions to be curse words in Facey’s native tongue.

But back to Rolo, what I think shits me off most about this fight is that Rolo has a tonne of health and it takes far too long to get to the complicated final phase of the fight where some dickhead rolling the wheel the wrong way means certain doom. That and Bob’s fascination with his own reflection, an add that spawns periodically and explodes over the entire raid if Bob touches himself – not unlike real life where we each feel a cold shudder run down our spines every time Bob reaches down below for a cheeky wank in the shower.

This is a shit boss and is a perfect example of why Blizzard needs to focus more on making good content and less on sexually assaulting young vulnerable women in the workplace.

-7/7 Roaks

At last we come to the finale (of this Roak Poast) and fortunately we have saved the best for last. Kel’Thuzard who I’m fairly sure we’ve killed 3 times by now in his final final final form, which is the same form he’s always taken, but is also able to take it another 3 more times over the course of the fight before he becomes dead for real real (or at least until enough time passes that he can be safely recycled in a new expansion).

KT is actually a really fun fight and it’s a real shame it took till the 9th boss of the raid for us to find a significant challenge, but alas, here it is. The fight doesn’t feel all that different to normal in terms of mechanics, but everything has been turned up several notches. Even by the second phase the number of adds and the damage from mechanics have already ramped up and there’s still multiple more phases to go.

This fight could have been a lot easier if we had four healed it, but as you’ll see from the below screenshot, Lic was really just a passenger this entire fight.

Other failures include resident giant burrito eater: EvilTeddy who was ressed in time to die just slightly over a minute later. Why are you always the first dead in every fight Ted?

And of course…who can forget the greatest failure of all time Bootloops – The Hunter with a legendary bow and legendarily poor dps. Not even Blizzard RNG could save you from being terrible.

I could sift through more logs and find out how each and every one of you fucked something up, but you all know what you did already and if you don’t already feel bad about it, take the next few moments now to do so. I’ll wait.

6/7 Roaks

With KT down, we’re staring down the final boss of the instance. Sylvannas Windrunner in what might be the final patch of WoW if the game ultimately implodes due to the actions of a few old white men. In any case, it’s been an absolute pleasure writing the Roak Poast all these years and maybe one day we’ll come back as the FFXIV Poast.

With Love,
– Roak