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.