Hello ladies.  Look at your guild leader. Now back to me.  Now back to your guild leader. Now back to me.  Sadly, he isn't me.  But if you join Grounding Totem, he could be me. 

Look down. Back up. Where are you?  You're in a raid with the guildleader your guild leader could be.  What's in your hand?  Back to me.  I have it.  It's loot from raid content.  Look again, the loot is now EPIC!  

Anything is possible when you join Grounding Totem. 

I'm on a chicken. 

Three new bosses owned in one night.  Alysrazor, Rhyolith, and Major Domo Staghelm - OWNED, baby!

Good job. 

Last night we managed two bosses in Firelands; Shannox and Beth'tilac.  Sadly, in all the excitment, we forgot to grab screenshots of the victories and FRAPS was turned off!  

Sweet loot was dropped, and we moved up to 35th place for realm progression.  

Not bad for one night's work.  See you tonight, totems! 

Edit:  Images courtest of Seasecon.

Totems;

We have finally completed the guild achievement [Glory of the Cataclysm Raider]!

The time has come for us to move to Tier 12 content.  This means that as of tonight Wednesday, September 14, 2011 will be our last official raid of T-11 raid zones.

Wait, what? 

This means it’s all Firelands and above for raid nights.  

But Unkle, didn’t they just announce Firelands getting nerfed?   Yes, but that’s not why it is time to make this shift. In the time we’ve been doing T-11 raids, more than one of us has leveled up and geared up 2 (or more!) fully raid-ready characters.  This means it’s well past time for new challenges for those folks. It is long past time we began hitting content that will challenge us, provide more upgrades, and be more interesting than repeats of content we’ve been doing for most of a year.

We spent a lot of our summer re-building a raid team.  We’re usually running about 8 people and 1-2 pick-up raid members per raid.  We’ve got a couple of regular people who like to fill those spots.  We’re recruiting to fill spots full time and to relieve folks who are always stuck in crucial roles (i.e., Tank or Healer). 

Oh, we’ll still occasionally revisit T11 content for off-nights, or to help someone find a piece of special gear.  But it’ll be off-night activity, or nights where we just don’t have the numbers for progression content.  Perhaps we’ll try some stuff on Heroic Mode.

But for now, count on seeing a lot of Firelands in the future. 

Unkle

I want to point out some interesting things about Grounding Totem of which we can all be justifiably proud. 

• Every single member of our guild is a friend, not just someone we recruited to fill our ranks.  There's a deep bond here, and I'm happy to share it with all of you. We have a real community, and it's awesome. 
  
  
• On raids where more than half the raid has never seen the conent or is learning an entirely new role, we still clear it. You guys do a heck of a job and learn quickly.  
  
  
• This guild has successfully cleared all of the Teir-11 content now, and we have done the whole thing often with only two healers. As I was told last night "You guys are f**king crazy, you know that?" Well, yes I do, and I'm proud of us all. Two healers for Cho'gal?  BAM! Done.  Two healers for Al'Akir?  BAM! Done.   Two healers for Nefarian?  BAM! BAM!  Double, no TRIPLE done.   This isn't just the healers doing. Avoiding raid damage, pushing for faster kills/phase transitions all make that work.  

I know you guys get to hear me when I'm disappointed, angry or otherwise unhappy about something.  I just wanted to share the good things too. Take a moment Totems.  You're awesome! 

Tonight, we defeated the Throne of the Four Winds! 

Yes!

Woot!  Cho'Gall down! 

POV: Scrubtastic Rogue! 

POV: Scrubtastic Feral Druid who says, "Firstly, I would like to apologize ... I was not with it that night and as such, stood in fire and did pretty much every other dumb thing known to man."