For Harry !

Following many months of hard work and toil, several hundred wipes and undoubtably a few grey hairs, The Lich King, formerly the traiterous dog Arthas Menethil, fell at the might of The Gryphon Hammers of Aerie Peak !

Many brave Gryphons died along the way, never to be seen again. Their efforts were not in vain as the best of the best lead by our fearless and epicly skilled tank, God King Giobhniu, layed siege to the Frozen Throne.

The Magnificent Markkan as always was on target with his arrows and special mention goes to Chann who avoided shitting on the floor thereby giving us the maximum amount of poo free space to run about in!

Dependable Drail was on hand as ever with his healing boughs and branches to help keep us all alive, whilst the Daring Draenei Drahlz and his medicinal totems gave us that extra-terrestrial healing edge we needed. These two complimented by Harnum 'The Shield' Firebelly ensured the team survived our toughest foe yet!

The power of Elune was with us via Notkayler who outdid himself hurling all manner of moonly magic at the lord of the Scourge, whilst our own archmage Bellendios provided more chills than even the King of the Frozen Wastes could withstand.

From the Shadows, Sevage conjured his dark magics and diseases to aid the fight and significant face melting ensued.

The beasting Balaim, wielding his newly aquired Shadows Edge steamed into Arthas with reckless abandon and special mention goes to our off tank Dynomite who proved to live up to his name in both excellence and execution, sucessfully keeping Arthas' minions at bay until we could deal with them in a focussed manner.

We dedicate this victory to the fallen Gryphons of old and especially to our brother in arms Bromson, who was not able to be with us to the new arrival of his baby son Harry.

THIS ONE WAS FOR YOU! (AND AERIE PEAK)

VALITHIRA - DEAD
BLOOD PRINCES - DEAD
BLOOD QUEEN - DEAD
PUTRICIDE - DEAD

All in a weeks work!!!

Fester!@3#$ED !!

Our unstoppable (sort of!) march into Ice Crown Citadel continued this week with the slaughtering of one half o' the putrid twin Fleshbeasts by the name o' Festergut !!

We purposely avoided this brute in previous weeks as we had received word from our IQF agents operating inside the citadel that this monstrosity of a being had some serious flatulence problems and without the proper breathing aparatus we might all have succumbed to asphixiation by farts!

Having banged our sorry noggins unsucessfully against his even uglier brother Rotface for many weeks, further rumors surfaced that one unfortunate IQF agent had gone SO deep undercover in Festerguts lair, that he was last seen vanishing up inside Festers smelly sphincter!!

Outraged at this news, raid leader Dandriel consulted with Thane Torgar and an all out "arse-ault" was ordered to rescue the Gnomish IQF agent codenamed "Clinger" Cleggnutt.

The engineers at Aerie Peak had no where near enough time to prepare gas masks and the like so the rescue squad practiced for hours beforehand on holding thier breath to try and avoid inhaling the rancid gas.

Eventually 10 Gryphon Hammers marched into the Plagueworks, determined to free the lost Cleggnutt.

The smell in the place was beyond imagining. Even repeated afternoon exposures to the extra-terrestrial bum bangs of Drahlz could not have prepared us for the assult on our senses as rotten clouds of 'bot-grot' filled the room.

A combination of quick wits, rotational breath holding and sheer perseverance saw us take down this foul smelling monstrosity. Having prised some useful magical items from his stash, we proceeded to use Dranei magics to dissect Festergut and find the lost Agent.

To our shock and horror we discovered the source of Festerguts festering guts - a plethora of our beloved gnomish IQF had agents met their sorry demise inside his poo-shute having clearly taken the instruction" to boldly go where no gnome had gone before" a tad bit too far.

Funeral services for the fallen will be held at the Aerie Peak graveyard on Sunday and gas masks will be provided for all attendees!

The march towards Arthas continues next week!

Tankin 101 !

By Thordar Icebane

A tank is an essential part of any raid environment

They keep the DPS and Healers safe !

There are a few key elements to tanking which can create the base for a great tank

The number one most important factor is Knowing your class!!!

Without class knowledge there is very little hope for you being a successful tank several factors fall into this class knowledge area this includes Itemisation, Talent Speccing and Rotation

Getting to know these will benefit you greatly in battle and will lead to victory !

Lets get stuck in then !!

Itemisation:

* MAINTAIN OVER 540 DEFENCE AT ALL TIMES [UNLESS YOU'RE A BEAR TANK] *

Tanking is all about surviving taking damage by using abilities to reduce damage taken and also having your talents specced so you take less damage.

Key stats you should go for in terms of survivability are Dodge, Parry, Armor, Stamina and for warriors and paladins Block [Agility is also a viable stat since it gives both dodge and armour]

How you balance these stats is your own call but make sure you dont focus on one stat more than others because of diminishing returns.

Another thing to maintain is threat holding ability, This is very useful in making sure that the mobs/boss is attacking you and not the DPS or Healers

Your threat can be increased by a combination of: Hit rating, Expertise and Strength/Attack Power but these come with gear so its not greatly important to gem for these stats especially Strength/Attack Power

Threat:

Threat is important to a tank as its what they are designed to create and maintain, but threat is not the be all and end all of tanking, it doesn't matter if you pull 5,000 threat per second or 15,000 as long as you maintain enough aggro to keep the mob from the dps without them having to hold back it's all good.

Rotations:

It is also important that the spells you choose to use are used efficiently to both keep aggro but to maintain your own survival which is vital as a tank. Power management is also very important because if you dont have any power you will be unable to use any offensive or defensive abilities [this also applies for dps]. As a rule i would always start combat against a boss with the highest threat move i have available since the DPS will probably go all out from the start and you dont want a threat wipe after all :)

Heres the big one....

**SPACIAL AWARENESS**

This is vital for a tank, without it you are nothing. Spacial awareness in a nutshell is knowing what to do, where to do it, when to do it, and how to do it. If you master this you'll be amazing other key factors include knowing positioning of not only you but other party/raid members and other mobs/adds in relation to you and the boss. And remember in a raid environment its not only you tanking, so sharing out responsibility is key, dont try to grab a group of adds in a 25man instance on your own, its unnecessary and is a strain on the healers keeping you up rather than steadily healing 2/3 tanks with minimal effort considerationis key !

Combining all these factors together will help get you on your way to becomming an imbah tank who will be worshiped across the server and people will kneel down before your awesomeness !!

If you have any questions regarding class specifics or wish for further details relating to this guide then dont hesitate to whisper me in game !!

Commander Thordar Icebane signing off !

Kel Thuzumped !

After much plannin' and organisation, a brave band o' Gryphon Hammers made their way into the filthy stinkin necropowhat'sit known as Naxxramas!!

Knowin' the task ahead to be a dangerous one, tha Hammers came well prepared bringin plenty o' healin' and damage dealin ! Makin' camp in the centre o' the putrid abode, we slowly purged the place o' its evil taint!

The first night saw us tackle the Arachnid quarter, takin' down Anub'Rekhan, a bizzare Crypt Lord, who just looked like a big angry beetle! Next up was a poor deluded lass by the name o' Faerlina - word had it she was a widow? Maybe her fella saw fit to top 'imself wakin up next to that ugly wench every mornin! Lastly was a mighty fearsome lookin' giant spider named Maexenna who tried hard but couldnt keep us under wraps no matter how hard she spun her evil webs.

Second night had us at the Plague Quarter where some o' the foulest monstrosities resided! Noth the Plaguebringer fell swiftly to our might and was soon followed by Heigan the oh so Unclean who tried in vain to scupper our merry dance but the fleet of footed Giobhniu and Gendundrup led the Hammers to the ultimate victory! We rounded the night off in style by givin' a good spankin' to a big steamin pile
o' moss who called himself Loatheb.

On a roll by now, the next night we plundered the Military Quarter and put paid to some Death Knight types starting with Instructor Razuvious, even turnin his own men against him to ensure victory. Next up we clobbered some fool named Gothik the Harvester who thought splittin' us up would make life (or undeath) easier for him - FAT CHANCE! We just dished out twice the hurt! Last up was rag tag bunch callin' themselves the Four Horseman. Well.... after a run in with the Hammers they were nothin' more than the Four No-More-Men !

After a short weekend break we returned to test our mettle against the Construct Quarter which gave us our first real challenges, starting with a warm up against the uggliest punchin' bag we ever set our eyes on by the name o' Patchwerk. After makin short 'werk' of him we moved onto some pervy lookin' freak in a gas mask and wellies called Grobbulus who had a terrible wind problem! Despite his fouling of the very floor around us, we dodged and moved around and burned him down quick smart and rushed onto face the evil guard dog o' the place known as Gluth! GAH !! - we banged our heads against this ugly puppy for an hour or more but couldnt quite get our act together so back we came the next night to sort him out, doing so in double quick time!

Havin' laid our toughest foe up to this point to rest, full o' confidence, we went to town with some bizzare creation named Thaddius who tried to exploit our positiveness and mess it with some o' his negativity - but he cocked it right up and took a good thumpin in the process.

On we marched on to the Frostwyrms Lair and home o' Sapphiron and her master Kel Thuzad!

Operatin' with speed, accuracy and deadly grace we showed Sapphiron the might o' the Gryphon Hammers and before he knew what hit him, he was back to being a rotten pile o' bones leaving only the dreaded Arch Lich to tackle!

Relentless in the pursuit o' our quarry we marched into the throne room o' the founder o' the sodding Cult o' the Dammed himself - Kel'Thuzad!

Despite some underhand attempts to bamboozle us with his undeathly pals, we waded through his trash and unleashed the might of Aerie Peak upon his scrawny bones!

Word is that he and his minions are only weakened for a time so more trips back to the cursed place will be required!

Congratulations to all - Giobhniu, Cordax, Gendundrup, Drail, Savaraco, Dantenes, Valku, Coldwood, Gnarls, Shrissa, Borlin and yours truly ensured an epic victory for the Gryphon Hammers in only our first week in the joint!