Results tagged “humor”

Within the Ravens we have a tried and true method of fighting known as "windmilling in." We were trying to explain the nuances of this approach to one of our new members, when we realized it was was much easier to demonstrate it. The following instructional video does the job nicely

(caution, considerable profanity)

 

I have to admit to not being a Paul Kaye fan (better known for his roles as Dennis Pennis and Mike Strutter) but I do find "British Martial Arts" somewhat amusing and it did lead to the "windmilling approach" which, if you hadn't guessed, is basically running in and beating the living daylights out of the targets (tacticless tactics as it were). While its generally a bad idea, there are times it's very effective. I remember back in Burning Crusade days trying repeatedly to down the Black Stalker in Heroic Underbog and failing miserably. After 5 or six attempts at finessing the boss we decided, "charge in and windmill the sod, and if that doesn't work lets give up." Cue one dead boss.

Windmilling: For when coordination and finesse just aren't cutting it :)

One of my fellow Ravens is a draenai shaman named Shanda. Colour me a little surprised to bump into this lady while out in Loch Modan farming eggs for cake-making at the weekend. Something you're not telling us miss Shanda? Are you one of the Ananasi, moonlighting as a rare mob in your free time?

 

 

As an aside, I already knew my own Buliwyf had a doppleganger in Ironforge (he was may day 1 character and was named Buliwyf - Beowulf - after the character in 13th Warrior before I'd ever set foot in Ironforge)

My guild, the Shattered Ravens, isn't particularly large and so we don't always have the optimim parties for 5 man instances, let alone raids. As a result, we take a degree of pride in coming up with "non-standard solutions" to encounters, whether its "ghetto crowd control" (using stuns and fears rather than sheep/sap/shackle/banish), slow-kiting (mage gets aggro and then runs around being chased by the mob while the party kills its friends) or the now-infamous "Windmill" (which I'll come back to in a moment).

Of course, many encounters can only be overcome by knowledge of the encounter - the Curator, Nightbane et al - and a degree of effort is needed to familiarize yourself with the fight before victory can be assured; I recall when both Moroes and the Curator were pains to do but now, thanks to knowledge of the encounters (and gear) they're fairly routine.

Not so encounters like Blackheart the inciter (with a very high random factor) or my current pet peeve, Kargath Bladefist (damn those random charges) which can be very frustrating as a random factor wipes even a well-equipped and prepared group.

And then there's the windmill. No matter how much you analyze some encounters (such as the Black Stalker in heroic Underbog), killing the target quickly is perhaps the best solution (and in fact over-analyzing things is a recipe for disaster). We call this "windmilling" (i.e. run in and hit the target) as explained in this educational video:



Of course, many encounters mix these up - a random element with a bit of windmilling, or a scripted encounter with some random aspects, but its scary that (in five mans at least) sheer, unadulterted aggression is often the way forward. The gauntlet in Shattered Halls is a good example - slow and sleady is a war of attrition the party will loose, but blasting through them (using pally-tanking to hoover up the mobs and then liberal AOE) is scarily effective.