Babies, Floods and World War Three – The Sepulcher is Open! 6/10N

Wow! Hi Friends, it’s been *checks notes* six months since the last Roak Poast and my what strange times we live in. As the two year anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic waits just around the corner, Onineko has been busy working away in the shadows creating the next generation of raiders to stand in floor candy and eat mechanics to the face. Yes that’s right, we have had not one, but by my count four new starters join the extended guild family as myself, Saamiel, Greg and EvilTeddy all celebrated some births in the past month or so.

Meanwhile as half the country is underwater we’ve also had a couple of refugees convert to the boat people lifestyle, boarding a canoe and setting sail from the rooftops of their houses to begin a life of piracy or fishing or whatever boat people do. We wish Saamiel (that name again) and Neuro the best in their new nautical lifestyles and pray to the wind god that their sails stay full and their toes stay dry.

But enough light-hearted wankery – we’re not here for any of that wholesome nonsense. This is a Roak Poast and that means pulling the gloves off and saying the things that need to be said without fear or consequence or retribution. So without further ado, let’s get into the Poast and review the first week of raiding.

The night began as it usually did, with some new guy, (I think his name was Phillip or Stanley or something) banging on about how his dick was bigger than everybody else’s and that Enhancement was now an S-Tier spec and that I needed to acknowledge it. Not wanting to sound rude, I gave Stanley a pat on the back and told him I’d be keeping an eye on his efforts over the course of the evening.

Spoiler Alert – Stanley’s enhancement spec was only good at reminding me that Enhancement truly is the joke spec of WoW (Are Survival Hunter’s still a thing?) and that Facey only tolerates him because of Windfury.

First up on the raid chopping block was The Vigilant Guardian, which makes total sense because if I was building an entrenched stronghold of fortressness the thing that most accurately describes what I’d want watching the front door is a vigilant guardian. Unfortunately it seems this particular Vigilant Guardian is anything but. In typical “first boss of normal” style, we spent 15 minutes “listening” to Facey waffle on about things before ignoring everything and zerging it down first go.

Now I know Roak Poast is typically about bringing people down, but a special mention needs to be made here to Mcwet who achieved a 98 parse on this fight and has broken the Onineko drought of never having a talented and capable Resto Shaman since that time Roak used his free boost on his Shaman back in Legion or whatever. So well done to Mcwet, welcome aboard!

Boot also said we weren’t allowed to take screenshots in normal mode. So I defied him like the rebel I am and took a series of solo screenshots for each boss.

2/7 Roaks

Diving deeper into the instance, we came across a way gate with two options. East and South. Instead we were told to “go right” and it became quickly apparent who in the raid understood their lefts from their rights.

At the bottom of this next cavern we pulled up to the next boss in the instance – Skrillex.

(Before we go any further, I tried listening to Skrillex on spotify but couldn’t get through one track so from here on out the Skrillex references will stop.)

Skrillex is a worm. We’re in a sepulcher. Worms eat dead people. It makes sense, trust me. This fight (like most) has a unique tank mechanic that is the sole reason you need two tanks in the raid. This particular flavour is the kind where the boss does two big whacks in quick succession and the tanks must coordinate to split each swing between the two. Normally this is a pretty trivial difficult task, tanking is hard. However the lovely folks at the DBM company have included a new hard mode in the 9.2 version of the mod which gives incorrectly timed warnings causing your tanks to fuck it up the first couple of times because we’re programmed to blindly follow orders really intelligent free-thinking players. Exploit and I played scissors paper rock and he lost so he had to use his brain, then we killed it.

4/7 Roaks

Wrapping up the first night of raiding, we crossed the road and found ourselves in front of Artifical Xanax. Unlike most guilds, Onineko had some insider information on this boss that would give us an edge over the others. Apparently, sometimes after the add phase, the boss will fail to drop his invulnerable damage shield and will be bugged out, with the only way to fix it being to wipe and start again. Armed with this knowledge we stepped up to the plate and… still got stuck and had to wipe it, making this particular piece of insider information ultimately useless.

Xanax was a pretty intense boss, with the added DBM pressure of being required to press a defensive cooldown every 0.24 seconds. Fortunately our hero Shaman was here to carry the raid yet again. Mcwet landing a 99 parse on this fight and really cementing his position as the best Resto Shaman that Onineko has ever had.

Approximately 24 hours later we found ourselves back in the Sepulcher to continue our raiding campaign for the week. Unfortunately, being the important and highly sort after person that I am. I had to take a break from hand holding Onineko through the next two bosses. Holdo the Something or Other and Sausage the Fallen off the Table. Rest assured we killed them both and it was probably great or whatever.

Instead, I will detail the events of the unique boss I faced. Dubbed simply “The Poonado” .

As mentioned above, my son was born about a week ago. For those that are already parents you’ll know that the first few days with bubs are precious as their little bodies adjust to the outside world. For us, the little one was doing well in all areas except for one – the bowels – which after a couple of poops in the hospital, had suspiciously disappeared from all nappies for the past five days. That is, of course until about 9pm on Thursday night. The first was big, but was contained within the recovery of a single (raid) wipe. Little did we know it was only the beginning. The very next attempt at Holdo – Poonado swept through my living room in a landslide of yellow green sludge, marinating my young son in his own excrement.

In spite of my best efforts to assure the wife that she had it and that I believed in her, intervention was necessary and I had to excuse myself from the raid to take care of business. Drawing a warm bath we dunked poonado off till green-yellow returned to soft pink. This battle took a few wipes to get through but the little guy recovered well and was asleep in his bed in no time.

7/7 Roaks

Wrapping up a pretty successful week, Onineko pushed on for one more boss – The Prototype Pantheon. Alas, this boss definitely does seem like a bit of a prototype because it wasn’t even remotely challenging. We one shot these four guys with unexciting abilities and then spent the rest of the night banging our dicks (or clits) in a desk drawer against the buggy next boss, but that’s a story for another time folks!

1/7 Roaks

…and that’s a wrap folks! If you made it this far, thanks for reading and we’ll see you next time on The Roak Poast!

<3
Roak

-Addendum:
We don’t often make mistakes here at the Roak Poast but when we do we fix them immediately. Onineko stalwart Evil “the other warrior” Teddy was also part of the baby squad. Teddy’s burrito (affectionately referred to as Bill) will join the rest of alumni in this generations OniBabies.