With the end of one expansion vodka is already looking towards the future. With the start of a new expansion comes new challenges and new opportunities and there is no better time than now to become a part of vodka.

Our guild recognizes that we have a lot of room for growth and improvement and that hard work and preparation starts now. None the less vodka still has a lot to offer potential applicants. Vodka is a guild with focused goals, strong leadership, and a fun and friendly community atmosphere. If you are looking for a guild with stability through the good and the bad then this is the place for you. If you are looking for a guild that will help you develop and improve as a player then this is the place for you. If you are looking for a guild that does more than raid then this is the place for you. This is a place that you can call home as our guild community fosters a variety of interests for players to enjoy both in WoW and other games.

If any of the above interests you we strongly urge you to click on recruitment and apply. We understand with a new expansion many players are interested in “main switching” or playing a Monk and these are all things we are willing to consider. If you have any additional questions please feel free to contact an officer via our forums or in game. Expect a timely response on your application.

A long overdue update but vodka did manage to take down both Deathwing encounters thus completing the current tier and Cataclysm expansion. Props to all the guilds especially KIN Raiders for taking down these encounters before us.

As for the Spine of Deathwing encounter there really is not much to say other than the fight is not difficult or fun. Actually with the right strategy and raid composition the fight is rather simple and systematic. It is a shame that the only way to kill the boss is with a stacked raid of specific classes until you obtain a substantial amount of gear. None the less after countless attempts and dozens of strategies we finally got the dragon to roll over.



Madness of Deathwing was an encounter that left a lot to be desired. Seeing as how the fight is a ramped up version of normal mode with a few twists it was rather simple and straightforward. For us the feeling was more boring and monotonous rather than epic and exciting as we worked through and finally took down the destroyer. Certainly not an end boss to remember despite having cataclysmic potential.



I wanted to thank all the members of our guild for making it through another tier of progression. This may be a tier of raiding to forget between Looking for Raid farming and subpar encounters but I know the good times and memories will stay with us. In particular shout out to those who played alts for the good of the guild and our hunters for keeping the bench warm throughout progression. I know many of our members have been enjoying the time off from raiding but soon we will be back at the weekly grind and I look forward to the future expansion and things to come for our guild and the game.

Below you can watch our Madness of Deathwing kill video. Videos from the rest of the bosses are coming soon so be sure to check back! In addtion many of our members will resume streaming live raids in the upcoming weeks so tune in to watch all the action!

With week two now in the books it is time for a quick recap of the action. As of right now vodka is currently 6 of 8 through heroic 25 player Dragonsoul. Without a doubt most of these encounters have been an absolute blast, creative, and well-tuned. It is a shame they are being nerfed already. The guild favorite seems to be Yorsahj. While the long hours and lack of sleep have made this week a challenge what has really made this tier more painstaking then ever is LFR. The ability to farm gear upgrades using this feature has absolutely ruined the competitive raiding experience because it becomes a necessity. Nothing makes the bosses more stale or the game less fun then mindlessly running countless LFR clears to help your guild and hopefully this is something blizzard can address in the future.

After anxiously waiting through the server maintenance delays we were finally able to log on as soon as our server was up to start raiding. We quickly dispatched of Morchok and headed straight for Warlord Zon'ozz. Not sure there is much to say about Morchok other then it is likely a well-tuned but straightforward entry level heroic mode.

Warlord for us was as expected simply because we had a solid strategy which we were confident in. It really just came down to execution for us as the enrage is not even that tight. After making some adjustments we were able to take him down balls in hand.

When a "hardcore" raider is looking to describe the perfect heroic mode I think Yorsahj would match that description exactly. This is a fight that is not only tightly tuned but has interesting and challenging encounter mechanics. You need a combination of well thought out strategy and execution to take him down and that to us is fun. I don’t think our guild has enjoyed a fight more in a long time and when we finally took him down it was awesome to see everything just come together. Tasting the rainbow never felt so good.

Hagara for its place in the instance is a very easy and under tuned fight. Really it’s the idiot check of the raid instance and I guess on our first go around we failed. Holding hands and dodging ice spikes can be hard I guess but after we went full retard we took down the boss. For us this was a major disappointment not only because the boss lacked the proper tuning but we failed to easily take it down despite having the proper tactics from the get-go.



Ultraxion…well after seeing it briefly on PTR we knew what we were in for. This was going to be Baelroc 2.0 with insane healing requirements and an enrage you cannot extend. While it was not as bad as Baelroc was last tier we still had a number of soul crushing low percent wipes. After many hours and many pulls we came back fresh off a break and crushed him on our first pull. It felt good but I think for us it was more damn we should and could have killed this so much sooner saving ourselves the headache.



Warmaster Blackhorn was an encounter we were looking forward too as it had the potential to be quite challenging. After breaking down the individual mechanics and deciding how to deal with each of them we were able to adjust our dps balance to fly through the encounter. The fight was enjoyable but ended up being far easier than we expected. It wasn’t long before we shot him out of the sky. Without question it is amongst the best encounters in the zone.



The Spine of Deathwing encounter has proven to be quite the challenge so the race next week should start to heat up as guilds become unbanned and join the battle to take down the final two Deathwing encounters first. Enjoy the screenshots for now as we look forward to another action packed week.

P.S. Stay tuned for some awesome videos!

vodka was recently invited to take part in a special podcast with members from other top raiding guilds. This was an opportunity for players from these guilds to get together and discuss current hot topics surrounding the raiding scene. Be sure to click the link below for more information and to listen to the recording.

The Round Table Podcast

P.S. vodka's full heroic mode week one recap is coming up soon!

Well with week one almost in the books I thought it would be great to recap vodka's trials and tribulations within the Dragonsoul. Breaking vodka's tradition of racing to take down Deathwing with his release, we went for a more laid back and methodical approach in the week of normal modes. I think our guild has had a lot of fun already with the patch and we have not even started heroic modes.

Without a doubt most of our fans would want to know about the controversy surrounding our guild and the Looking for Raid system. Let me assure everyone that we did not abuse the LFR system for multiple chances for loot per character. As has been stated in other places, we did in fact use LFR aggressively to help gear our players, but we did so in a carefully planned out manner where only 3 "mains" were in per clear to obtain loot. It is a shame that we have been lumped into the "every top guild" has cheated category because of the ignorance of people but we know the type of guild we are.

I think all these week one shenanigans could have easily been avoided by allowing heroic mode to be accessed right from the start. LFR and normal mode difficulties clearly are not designed with "top tier" guilds in mind and as a result these guilds will do anything they can to prepare themselves for the following week because it is just too easy to execute. The truth is it is getting out of hand, having to run LFR or split raids just so you have every gear advantage you can get. I can see how other guilds would feel pressured into abusing the LFR system as our guild was faced with the very decision simply because we would not want to fall behind. How is that fun? I guess what I am wondering is, what happened to the "do what you want, when you want" mentality that was mentioned at Blizzcon. I guess all the forum trolls would be out a job if things actually made sense.

Ultimately vodka accomplished everything that we wanted to in this first week and had a good time. We enjoyed the things beyond raiding that the patch had to offer and the drama proved to be quite the late night read. Thanks again to all our supporters and we eagerly look forward to next week and heroic modes.

P.S. Enjoy the screenshot of our server 8th Deathwing kill.