So I said to myself “I’ll make a new blog post everytime we kill a new boss.” To that I only have to say; well, shit.

So here’s today’s yet again belated uninspired post: Heroic Will of the Emperor, Blade Lord Ta’yak and Garalon down. The big bug guy was shockingly simple compared to other heroic bosses so far and went down in a total of 12 pulls, including a few at the start where we weren’t even aware that pheromones debuff lasted longer on heroic. After rectifying that and sucking a little less, we killed him at enrage with 3 healers. Next week I’ll just battle healer it up or something. CORNY, GUYS! Also, forgot to take picture of Ta’yak. Nobody cares. Not even Shelly.

… or the art of slowly catching up to speed.

We’re just about two months into the expansion and the dust has settled from the initial stampede engulfing WoW and its players. We’ve done our dailies, our dailies, and… our dailies? Aside of that beaten horse, what we’ve done is bashed our heads against bosses in raids.

It is difficult to describe T14. It’s one of their biggest tiers to date, and it offers a mind-boggling mixture of old proven raid mechanics and new unique features. But most importantly, the tier is enjoyable. This is not only crawling out of a year long grind of Dragon Soul, arguably one of the biggest hiccups in WoW’s raiding history – and finding something better – but stepping into raids and fighting bosses that promote a genuine drive to keep trying and progress further.

We had a rough start on any sort of heroic mode. We may have been rusty and out of the loop, or just incredibly shit, likely both. We cracked our skulls against heroic Stone Guard the first week, and quickly killed the within the first hour in the next reset. Feng did not offer much of a challenge, but after this the show started for real. We tried both Gara’jal and Spirit Kings, getting a feel for their general design, and ultimately downed the former.

After clearing up Terrace of Endless Spring on normal on its release week, we decided to return to vaults and get back at the Spirit Kings and beyond. Spirit Kings on heroic is an interesting fight with very little change from normal in theory, but in practice it creates one of the more complex bosses they’ve made for a long time where every single small mechanic matters. It gave flashbacks to other highlights of fights from past tiers, and it’s great to see that they’re still capable of challenging us in intriguing ways.

Great job everyone on the kill and the Elegon heroic two or three-shot afterwards. I can’t remember and to be honest nobody cares about that sparkledragon. Tomorrow, Will of the Emperor and then Heart of Fear/Terrace of Endless Spring on heroic mode awaits us!

No, this is not a fairy tale per say – but now that I’ve got your attention there is a couple days overdue news for you!

Dragon Soul Heroic cleared. Yeah. That was it? Kind of. Firelands was far from the perfect raid, but Ragnaros was close to a perfect encounter – more than can be said for Madness of Deathwing where the Spine part prior to it was a more overall gripping experience (and that isn’t even a pun on the tentacles squeezing people). The concept of moving from platform to platform with rising difficulty is cool, now if all the platforms weren’t almost identical. At least the final phase added some interesting elements on heroic, with knowing when to hold DPS and go nuts or over the top raid damage. Still, overdone raid damage is kind of the concept on every boss in this instance to the point they even made every tank’s 4-set tier bonus a raid wide cooldown. I’m not bitter, but could surely have been more impressed.

We used barely a fourth of the tries we needed to down Ragnaros Heroic, and I leave the opinion on this chapter in WoW raiding to the individual to decide. What now until Mists of Pandaria? Time will tell.

So here you have Ksav’s mage wearing the Dragon Soul as an afro.

Well, on normal at least. Madness of Deathwing was fun from a dps perspective, but seemed a bit underwhelming for tanks and healers. I personally enjoyed the sense of urgency and the lack of need for a traditional enrage timer with the recurring raidwipe timers. Even if it only took 10-11 pulls to finish the last boss of Dragon Soul, thanks to everyone that attended both today and on wednesday earlier this week!

Oh yeah, forming a circle between the NPCs after the fight for a kill shot proved more difficult than the actual boss and his chin despawned. Why do I bring these people to raids again?

Before the yadda-yadda about the amazing feeling once the trickiest boss since heroic Lich King finally went down, let’s have a recap of the past months.

THC entered the Firelands patch in a bit of turmoil, in the wake of our retirement from 25man raiding and the reformation and re-organization of a 10man group in its place. It was a rough start, with players having to adapt to new roles and assignments – all while we stepped into a completely new raid instance. Shannox went down pretty quick on heroic mode, and after many ends and turns (left and right, mostly right…) we got down Heroic Rhyolith before any significant nerfs, and steadily tried our way through the other bosses. Eventually, we found the order of success in going Alysrazor, followed by Staghelm, going onward to Baleroc and finally Beth’tilac before the way to Big Daddy Rag himself stood clear.

It took a lot of sweat, tears, reassignments, tactic talk, repairs, cries, laughs, lots of fails on the lava worms that kept respawning, and a daunting 3% wipe – but finally it all paid off and Heroic Ragnaros tumbled down in what was a perfect try where it all lined up in the final phase.

I’d like to thank everyone for the efforts and support through us pulling back up into the raiding scene, our current roster of myself, Stoke, Ayatara, Taelos, Ksav, Saevir, Yukela, Zhumda, Ashwa, Tairi and Zohryn.

A special call-out to Ksav for prophecizing the kill. Prior to the pull we killed Ragnaros, he whispered me telling he can feel the kill is coming now, and asked me to screenshot it for proof. I did.

Once again, thanks everyone! Now Dragonsoul and patch 4.3 awaits us!

As we plunge down through the cracked floor to the hidden reaches beneath us, the victory rush from defeating the lord of the Twilight’s Hammer pales in comparison to the fact we’re mere minutes away from standing infront of Sinestra. Congratulations to everyone that attended the progress raids and ultimately led us to killing Cho’gall!

Also good work ninjapulling Sinestra and getting her down by 1%. Okay, not really. I blame Ksav.

Cataclysm is certainly offering a completely different level of challenge on its first tier of raiding than what its prior bastard cousin, Wrath of the Lich king, had in store. After renewing the roster with a sleuth of promising recruits and scoring a long-due kill of Nefarian on heroic mode, progression once again kicks up properly when we turn our eyes to the next obstacle in our conquest of Tier11 heroics – Cho’gall. The man, the ogre, the legend. The guy that did questionable things with the dead husk of a God. Yeah, that guy. We all love him.

At first glance, reading a rough summary of our favorite doomsday prophet’s heroic mode it appears to have very little actual differences in terms of boss mechanics – boiling down to three things:
1) Two Adherent adds instead one
2) The ability to damage elementals that show up to buff Cho’gall
3) An extra type of tentacle in last phase. Schoolgirls unite.

Things are not as simple as they seem, of course. The requirements of the raid for just about all of the mechanics are a massive step up from what the fight asked of a raid on normal mode. After attempting multiple different ways of defeating the encounter for a couple of raid days, it now falls down to the coming serious nights of progression for us to judge if we got what it takes to unlock Sinestra.