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!