ARK-i-mond

Take note of the pronunciation. Nail, Requiem's guild leader, kept pronouncing it "ARCH-i-mond" in vent the other night, forcing me to nickname the boss "Archie."

Which is not good. Nor dignified. Not very menacing either.

It could be Nail is pronouncing Archimonde's correctly, but his slight effeminate lisp is making it so I hear Arch(ie) instead. I was thinking about calling him on it, but he's been a bit trigger happy with the rank demotions lately, especially since he's developed a new favorite rank, "Quiet Time."

Who says you can't raid and have fun at the same time.

It's not every day you waltz up to Archimonde as he's in the middle of sucking the life out of the World Tree. A Requiem diplomatic entourage attempted to strike up a friendly conversation with him the other night as he was busy committing foliage genocide. I think I speak for all of Requiem when I say we're no tree huggers. I mean, it's no business of ours if he wants to harness the power of the World Tree to end life on Azeroth as Emanee knows it. But out of no where he attacked us! Didn't even pause to listen to what we were saying! I mean, I was like, "Yo yo yo, Archie, nice green power stream you got coming out of that tree. Looks like you're kickin' 'round 200k btu's there. How ar-- Argggghhhhh!"

That "Arggggghhhh" would be from Archie assailing me with trailing molten fire, air bursts, and (my personal favorite) the Grip of the Legion, a five minute debuff that ticks for 2.5k damage every two seconds.

Once we figured out that Archimonde wasn't interested in chatting with us, Requiem got down to the business of kicking ass and writing "Archimonde" on a piece of paper later. As much as it sucks to wipe over and over, it's a necessary first step in eventually taking him down. The fight resembles Vashj in that every raid member has to stay alive through the entire fight. Even one death can set off a chain reaction of mayhem and carnage that inevitably wipes the raid. In between heavily lisped ARCH-i-mond's, Nail commented that some guilds don't even dps Archimonde at first. Instead, they focus on everyone staying alive for the first five or six minutes of the fight. After they've mastered that, they move on to authentic attempts. Like many Burning Crusade boss fights, Archimonde is a nightmare for shadow priests. Everyone is constantly on the move, dodging molten fire trails and recovering from air burst that hurtle a raider high in the sky, to their death if they don't time the use of their Tears of the Goddess correctly. I tried to follow my established spell cycle, but that went to hell pretty fast. 500 dps FTL!

Earlier that night, Emanee scored the best belt in the game for shadow priests, Anetheron's Noose. I consider this my first Mount Hyjal loot, since that ice cream cone I recently obtained fell off trash and doesn't count. It's crazy to think that Requiem is harvesting the very best loot in the game right now.

Even better than scoring phat lootz is rounding a hill, peering down into a plush valley, and seeing Archimonde being naughty to a tree. Requiem's going to defeat Archie, save that mamby-pampy Sequoia, or die trying. Or get really pissed off trying.

Whichever comes first.