The Anatomy of a World First Kill by Kid Arctica

This is a copy of the original article done by Kid Arctica for worldofraids.

 

In December 2009, Icecrown Citadel was entered for the first time. Last Friday, over three months later, the Finnish guild Paragon from the EU server Lightning's Blade cleared the instance by becoming the first guild in the world to kill the Lich King in 25-player heroic mode and the only guild to kill it before the 10% buff was implemented. What exactly does it take to achieve a world first kill?

 

PTR testing

 

For most hardcore guilds, the work starts on the Public Test Realms (PTRs). While they present a chance to get valuable information about bosses and their abilities, the PTRs also bring with them a lot of frustration. "It is something that must be done, but we really don't like it because of the bugs and lag. And there is always the inevitable 'test the door' boss when the developers forget to open some door and we spend one hour in front of it," says Lazeil, paladin tank and raid leader of Paragon.

 

Back during Ulduar testing, Paragon never got through the door for General Vezax. Lazeil also remembers pulling Flame Leviathan again and again, only to have half the raid instantly disconnect each time. Fortunately, Icecrown Citadel testing wasn't that bad for the Finnish guild. "Icecrown Citadel wasn't a cruel experience in my opinion, just a few hours per boss and they took them down pretty quickly. Most of the normal mode bosses were 20 minute sessions," says Sejta, guild leader and feral druid tank.

 

"The only time I was starting to get frustrated was when Lord Marrowgar heroic mode was about to be tested. We cleared the trash four times, and every time we got to the boss, the instance server crashed," says Rakez, rogue and officer of Paragon.

 

While on the PTR, Paragon stay for as long as the bosses are available. Even when they see that a kill is possible, they choose to wipe in order to be able to go again and get more information about the encounter. Still, they didn't feel they gained that much information about hard modes in Icecrown Citadel. "We didn't get to test hard modes that much, and the normal bosses ended up being very easy," says Lazeil.

 

Gearing up

 

In Icecrown Citadel, Blizzard used a gating system. The instance's four wings were opened one by one, and only normal modes were available until the Lich King had been defeated. This made for weeks of farming for Paragon. "We knew the normal modes would be easy, so our goal was to farm gear with multiple raids. Gating sucks though, because guilds have to get alts to raid with multiple raids to gear mains for hard modes," Lazeil says.

 

Each week, Paragon had three 25-man raids going in order to gear up their mains. The raiders in the guild were divided into three groups. In order to make looting as optimal as possible, each of the groups had more or less the same amount of mains needing each of the three different tier tokens. The raids were then filled up with mostly primary alts, but also with some secondary alts.

 

"We didn't force anyone to level an alt. Everyone did that out of free will, well, not everyone. Some people didn't even have primary alts," Sejta admits. Most of the members did have at least one alt character though, and others again chose to level another in order to try raiding with a specific class.

 

Paragon started their alt raiding back in Trial of the Crusader. With alts that had gotten the Tribute to Insanity achievement from 25-man ToGC, they had a very good starting point as their alt characters were very well geared. With three 25-man ICC raids going each week, they could funnel loot onto their mains. On top of that, they ran six or seven 10-man groups to mostly gear up their alts further, and at the same time get those few pieces of 10-man loot that their mains needed.

 

Still, they ran into some problems. "Most of us probably had a decent amount of the random loot drops, but we kept getting Protector tier tokens from every raid. At least for me, the Vanquisher tier was quite hard to get," Rakez remembers.

 

Alt attempts

 

Once the hard modes were released, having well-geared characters paid off. "I would be surprised if any other guild had better gear than us, and no one had better gear than our alts. That was a huge benefit," Lazeil thinks.

 

For hard modes, all the mains were finally united in one raid. While the US servers had a one day head start, Paragon eventually caught up with them. Downing boss after boss at a pretty impressive pace, they eventually turned out to be the only guild that cleared eleven out of twelve bosses within the first reset.

 

"We started raiding when the server came up, and by then we had already decided some tactics for the upcoming hard modes," Sejta remembers.

 

Paragon knew some of the hard modes, yet others they knew very little about. Still, bits and pieces of information could be deducted from the progression of the US guilds. "Wowprogress gave away some stuff. For example, we saw guilds one-shotting Gunship Battle and struggling on Lady Deathwhisper, so we knew beforehand which bosses might be hard," Lazeil explains.

 

After being behind for all of the bosses without limited tries, it was time for the Finns to take over. They became the first guild to kill the three end bosses in each wing, much thanks to their well-geared alt raid. For those bosses, they went in with their alt raid first, which gave them twice the amount of tries.

 

"The alt raids won us the race, pretty much. We could practice the mechanics, get the hard mode ability timers and so on from alts, and not waste main raid tries on that stuff," Lazeil says.

 

"Also, we used our alt raid to warm up the main raid for the encounter, even though we knew everything there was to know about it, just to get the feel of actually doing it and then come with mains right after," Sejta adds.

 

Handling mistakes

 

While Paragon's alt raid could take them far, it couldn't take them all the way to the last boss in the instance - the Lich King. The alt raid never made it that far, so all the Lich King tries were done with the main raid. "We could have gotten there if we wanted to push it, but it wouldn't have made any difference on the result. It would probably just have burned out a few people. The encounter would have been too brutal for our alts to handle," Sejta thinks.

 

With limited attempts at stake, the pressure goes up. Each personal mess-up that leads to a wipe means one less try for the guild that reset. In such a situation, handling mistakes becomes crucial.

 

"We have never given negative dkp for anything. People know when they mess up, and they get instant feedback from other members telling them how bad they are. Usually that is enough," Lazeil reveals.

 

"People usually admit their own mistakes, and when they don't, we just fish the information out of them about what went wrong," Sejta says.

 

In spite of that sounding kind of harsh, nobody has ever been kicked out of Paragon because of messing up. Only in rare occasions, someone has been removed from a raid and replaced by someone else. And there have been mistakes. Back in ToGC, one of the shamans cost the guild an Insanity kill as he forgot to put down Healing Stream Totem and his whole group died. And in ICC, the officers once spent half an hour discussing tactics in front of Blood-Queen Lana'thel, only to pull just as everyone got a huge lag spike that wiped them instantly.

 

With a Lich King kill within reach, the temperature definitely rose in the raid. After some really good attempts at the start of their raid, the guild knew they could get a kill if everything went perfect. Then they wiped to a lot of mistakes.

 

"It raised some emotions. When that happens, we try to calm people down. If stuff really got out of hand, we would probably just stop raiding. There is no point in raiding when you are angry, people will get angry at themselves and others if they mess up. But pretty much everyone failed on Lich King at some point. The encounter is so unforgiving that even when reacting perfectly, you can still fail because you aren't at the right spot," Lazeil says.

 

"One fail on Lich King usually resulted in a wipe, and everyone had their moments," Sejta adds.

 

Tuning tactics

 

To come up with final tactics for a boss, everyone in the guild pitches in. When trying a boss for the first time, Sejta and Lazeil usually give out the tactics they want to try, and after a few attempts, everyone will give their opinion. Then they evaluate and make a decision on what they want to use.

 

"All our craziest strats have ended up working out pretty nicely," Lazeil says.

 

"Kiting Freya in the pool using seal form certainly didn't work - oh wait!" Rakez laughs.

 

"More of a joke, but we tried that," Sejta admits.

 

The Paragon officers think that having the entire guild being Finnish has become a big plus, even though it used to be a burden. "It is harder to get recruits, but once we are able to find the right people, it is a huge advantage. Everyone can speak their opinions more openly, and the guild atmosphere is better. Even the shy people can come out and speak in Ventrilo. If the guild was international, certain people would just stay quiet. And personally I can trust people more because they are from the same country, so I would imagine the trust is on another level compared to international guilds," Sejta says.

 

Rakez thinks that one of the strengths of Paragon is that they have good communication during and between pulls, plus the ability to think new. "I would say that if the boss is really challenging, the main thing you need to do is to keep thinking of new tactics and things in the fight that you can do better, even if the boss seems impossible at first. Brute forcing tries is not the way to go," he says.

 

For the Lich King, the guild started out with seven healers. When they reached the Val'kyrs, they dropped down to six, and finally the week before the kill, they dropped down to five in order to try and get the dps needed with only the 5% buff active. "We made some changes the last week to optimise dps, and we made changes all along the way when we discovered something new that had to be dealt with," Lazeil explains.

 

At 23:28 on March 26, Paragon could reap the rewards of their efforts. The Lich King died, and the nerd screams filled their Ventrilo. "It is a relief that all the hard work wasn't for nothing. Usually the first kills require nearly perfect execution, and even if the tactics are in place, you need everyone to perform," Sejta says.

 

Still, he doesn't think getting world firsts is the most important thing for Paragon. "We played the game before the we got world firsts and as our guild became better and better, our goals got higher and higher. It doesn't make or break our guild, but everyone has the same goal, to be the first guild that kills the boss."

 

"Obviously it is something we aim to achieve every time, but I don't think anyone's world would come crashing down if we miss a few here and there," Rakez says.

 

Few sacrifices

 

One of the common misconceptions is that in order to play in a hardcore guild pushing for world firsts, each player has to make a lot of sacrifices and sit in front of the computer all day. For Paragon, that is not the case.

 

"In ICC, on normal mode weeks it took us seven to eight hours per week to clear ICC three times, ToC heroic two times and ToC normal three to four times. The only time we had to make sacrifices was the heroic opening week. Everyone was skipping school or work the best they could to be on when the servers came online. That lasted three days, and we only started the raid early the two first days," Sejta says.

 

Since then, the guild has raided four days per week, each time for about five hours. Now the Lich King is dead, and the guild will go back to raiding one day per week for about three to five hours, which is a lot less than even the most casual raiding guilds. "Everyone can relax now and focus on other things. Then they will be hungry to raid when the next content is released," Sejta says.

 

The Paragon officers are not afraid of losing raiders. "Taking a small break just makes you want to play more when it's needed. At least in my own experience," says Rakez.