I filmed a guild kill of the first boss of wing 3, Stronghold of the Faithful. Even though I was in a somewhat lol spec, I thought it would be good to post it anyway. My laptop is now three years old and the summer heat is not being kind to its performance; my desktop is unavailable at the moment thanks to some problems with Asus's motherboard utility software.

Escort is the boss I wanted in w3, a pug-friendly boss that is accessible to all levels of raiders and gives them something to do besides wipe on Vale Guardian, boss 1 of wing 1, all day long. Boss 1 of wing 2, Slothasor, is widely regarded as the least puggable boss in the entire raid. Unfortunately, wing 3 failed on my other expectation, that its final boss--the final boss of the entire raid encounter--would be more difficult than the other bosses. Instead, it is easier than the second boss of Stronghold of the Faithful, and I'd guess the majority of wipes aren't due to lack of healing, dps, tanking, or fight mechanics, but the sheer stupidity of falling off of (or failing to be on) ley lines, a flying -style mechanic in the open world that's also necessary in wing 3 of the raid.

Anyway, Escort has two challenges: the tower group needs to perform through some burst healing and dps challenges, and the ground group needs to use their cc, has enough burst dps, and perform the fight macro in the correct order. It took us, as a guild, about an hour and a half to down the first time, about an hour to kill the second week, and this was a one-shot (hence the horribad spec). 

Another nice thing about the boss is that it doesn't necessitate comps. Sure, I wish the final boss fight was harder, but the fact that we could include some new people without class flexibility was very nice. Our tower group traditionally consists of a chronomancer in stealth/blink spec (hence why the revenant isn't in his subgroup for boonshare), a dragonhunter, and an auramancer tempest. We don't blow up the tower mobs as quickly as some groups, but we are also completely self-sufficient.

The ground group brings a lot of immobilize, cripple, and a druid healer to control Glenna and keep the group alive. Dragonhunters have some very nice cc they can use on the wargs, and syvlari can use grasping vines on something other than Gorseval spirits. We had to reset our composition once we swapped to other bosses, but I'm very happy that people have learned the fight and we can rotate new people in and out as a guild.

I'm very busy this week trying to finish Campnanowrimo and other activities, so here's some short bullet points:

• I had a great raid night in GW2 yesterday in which we cleared Spirit Vale with little fuss.
• My poem, 'To the Idea of War,' has been accepted in Route 7 Review.
• I'm working on finishing up pieces for my writing classes.
• I should have a painting update this week!
• I'll be sending out the very first round of acceptances and rejections for Hapax shortly.

I hope everyone is having a good week and can get all their to-dos done!

Super Adventure Box, Guild Wars' new/old event, has returned for the month of April and eaten into the economy, raid pugs, other activities, and guildies's time.

It's really fun. It captures all the nostalgia of old-style games and provides an absurd contrast with Guild Wars' art style, while at the same time embodying Guild Wars and making perfect sense.

​It's also really annoying for those of us who are trying to get anything else done. Not only do I feel like I *should* be doing it on top of everything else, but tons of other people are trying for the achievements and cosmetic items associated with this limited time event and can't do other activities.

​In short, it's awesome and awful at the same time. I understand why it's not year round, but it's here for such a small time relative to how long it takes if you're learning it that it's hard to spend only a little bit of time on it.

I'm debating just paying someone to take me through the course before the devs patch some of the LFR/selling aspects away.

And I'm looking forward to May, when I don't have this nagging feeling of guilt for not being able to enjoy or grind an event that impedes almost everything else I'm trying to do.