We’re #1

Heart of Fear. Amber Shaper Un’sok. Many deaths, mainly from missed interrupts, failure to exit constructs, or other various vehicle-related issues. In the final pull, I was transformed twice in phase 2. Miraculously, I managed to interrupt the Monstrosity, interrupt myself, AND spam 4 to gtfo before I ran out of willpower. Twice. Apparently, everyone else did too.

Everyone dead except me, Lyss, and the tanks? Yep sounds about right.

Left to right more or less: Liyhe, Lyssianna, um … I see Gurgie behind her so Adoe must be hiding back there somewhere, Sorak, Arvash, me (Vanicus), Zugzuug, Zarm in the back, Shadeey, and Wok.

Go us! First guild on the server to kill Un’sok. Moving on …

I did zero preparation for Grand Empress Shek’zeer. I had planned on it, but I got distracted. So I did a really quick strat study during our 5 minute break. See, I’m weird about this. I don’t do LFR. I might, now that we’ve cleared it. But I’m old and stubborn. I want to see the content for the first time with my guildies, the way it used to be.

First couple pulls Slice and I are all like, yeah this is easy. Ok well, phase one at least. We had issues keeping tanks alive when phase 2 started and they had to gather all the adds. We got that worked out though, and, on our 10th pull, we downed her.

I spent all of phase 3 praying for more mana, until I got feared twice in a row, ending up dead clear across the room from everyone. Wok got transformed in that phase and we had to kill him and rez him. Thank the Light no one else had died and been battle rezzed or that would have been a wipe!

Left to right sort of: Zarm in the back, Slice in front, Sorak, me (Vanicus), Arv, Arv’s pet, Zugzuug, Lyssianna, Wok, Adoe in front, and Shadeey clear off to the right.

These kills put us officially on top of our realm for progression. Of course, there’s always joking about how we are default leaders because everyone else left the server, but we’d be fourth on Winterhoof, so it’s not like we are the least sucky of the suck … we’re pretty good, guys! Really.

Only four more bosses stand between us and completion of the tier. We can do it!

Breaking Wind Lord Mel’jarak

Don’t ask me what we changed to make this happen. We did have to adjust which ones we CC’d in the beginning though. Too many menders out with only a single priest to mass dispel, and quickening would demolish our tanks. Combinations of attacks could easily take out a player quickly with no way to save them. For example, take this kill shot …

This was my second death of the fight. The first occurred when the Blademasters hit me with Kor’thik Strike right after a Rain of Blades when my health was already low. The second time was also during Rain of Blades … my health was low going into it because he had just tossed the Wind Bomb on me. Totally not a fan of Rain of Blades; everything else we have no problem healing through but dang that thing does a lot of damage, and to the entire raid. Blech.

Hey look, I think I got all 10 of us in the shot for once.

L to R: Zarm, Shadeey, Wok, Arvash on the pedestal with me in front of him, Lyssianna, Sorak, Zugzuug, Liyhe, and Adoe.

We are the first guild on our server to kill him. Go us!

Twilight is Coming

Finally, after how many years and how many lost rolls …

Big thanks to JD as well as the rest of the regular LBR crew, who insisted we run another on Alliance after we had just run it on Horde. At least with these drakes they are guaranteed, so all you have to do is keep coming back.

Sinestra down … wait … what?

I know .. she’s not in Heart of Fear. But we were one short last night. Our original plan was to progress in Heart of Fear on Tuesday when Zarm was available, and do Mogu’shan Vaults on Wednesday. Well, Zarm was going to be late Tuesday, so we hit Vaults first. We had just pulled Elegon when he logged on, so there was little reason not to just finish Vaults then.

We made good progress on Mel Tuesday night, getting to the enrage. We just need to fine-tune and he’ll be down. So last night, missing a healer and with Vaults already cleared, we decided to go back to the first tier of Cata .. on heroic.

We all had a good laugh when the floor opened up as Cho’gall died, dropping his body … and Arv … down into the depths. The rest of us soon followed and came face to face with Deathwing’s conniving consort, Sinestra.

None of us had ever faced her before, so we died a few times before deciding that a break to check out strats/videos would be a good idea. Once that was done, we disposed of her fairly quickly, although not without casualties.

Yay, Dragonslayer titles for everyone!

From there, we moved on to Throne of the Four Winds. They were dispatched posthaste …

although I’m not too sure anyone was all that excited about it. But hey, it’s one more title and guild achievement for the collection!

Hm … plenty of time left … what next? I’m sure I’m not the only one who was floored by Arv’s suggestion that we go kill Nef. I mean, he’s the one who had nightmares about kiting Animated Bone Warriors! I really thought he was just joking.

This did take a little bit of recall and coordination. We still had to make sure every blast nova got interrupted, and make sure Onyxia was killed just before hitting 90 energy. We killed her too fast at first, and let her blow up the raid once as well. Good times.

So we got 3 titles and guild achievements. Not bad for a night of old content. Maybe we can go back and clean up the things we need to get the mount …