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Next on the list was The Queen’s Court! Before we even pulled we had some deaths just from tricking people into doing /rude to Azshara. But once we pulled the bosses they didn’t seem too hard. We had some wipes where we slowly lost more and more people to various mechanics, but soon enough we got better and it all came together! The queen’s court is dead! Only two bosses to go!

Sunday night and we’re back to the Eternal Palace. Lady Ashvane took us a minute, and then Orgozoa was a real tank-killer! We spent some time there, but finally the tanks figured out when they wanted to taunt, and it started getting better. A while later the squid was dead! More to come tomorrow, unless we go kill Azshara on normal mode that is!

And finally it’s here, the underwater naga raid that we have been waiting for since patch 4.2, when Abyssal Depths was originally supposed to be released. That was quite a wait! Tonight we entered the Eternal Palace heroic and killed the first three bosses without much trouble, and then got stuck on Lady Ashvane who seemed to be a step up in difficulty. But we’ll get her on Sunday!

After the death of Grong we went onwards to Opulence. We knew already that the Opulence fight was the first difficult fight in Dazar’alor and that we would have to spend a lot more time learning the encounter than any previous boss. This turned out to be very true, and for more reasons than just a sheer step up in difficulty. To begin with we were mainly failing in the gauntlets, and perhaps progressing a bit slow. But soon we had issues with numbers, people were going on Easter holidays, and when we were finally ready to continue progress; five fairly new raiders, and one older, left the guild because they got called out for creating a clique within the guild. And then summer was around the corner and other raiders were going on holidays. During this iffy period we rekilled the first 3 mythic bosses every week, but seldomly had a chance to progress on Opulence. But finally we sorted our numbers out, right when we have the next raid around the corner, and we finally got this encounter down. Good job everyone, this was a rough one!

After killing Jadefire Masters we went upstairs to face Grong the Revenant. To begin with it was really hard to keep everyone alive, especially the ones carrying the orb, and the healers were pretty much OOM at 60 %. After the healers made a better cooldown rotation, and we made some alterations to how we dealt with the second add, we however started seeing results. We got closer and closer to a kill, and then finally tonight we sorted him out once and for all! Good job guys! Grong the Revenant is no more. Opulence next!

After killing the mythic Champions of Light the very first week, and having them on farm ever since, we were now back to go further into mythic mode Dazar’alor. The first stop would be Jadefire Masters. Initially it was clear that the very little practise we had of doing the Multisided Strike, from the first night we pulled the heroic mode and didn’t really know to KILL Ma’ra before the last phase, was going to come in handy. Pretty much the part of the raid that had practised the move weeks earlier were almost instantly mastering it, while the people that weren’t there that night were taking a while longer. Once we stopped having deaths to the strike, or had just a few, we quite quickly sorted out the other elements of the fight. Quite soon they were dead!

The last boss in Dazar’alor was Jaina Proudmoore, which felt interesting for the ones of us that wanted her dead for years. The encounter had a lot of phases and abilities on paper, but when faced with it we soon realised it wasn’t a particularly difficult fight. Up until the very last phase of the fight it was pretty smooth sailing (pun intended). The very last % of the fight was however something we had to work on. Primarily we were bad at getting out of the Shattering Lances, which made people stack up too fast and become iceblocked too often. With everyone being more alert to this ability, and the tanks adding movement to bring most melee out of the lances, we however started to sort our problems out and soon enough Jaina Proudmoore was dead! Well, not dead. But she teleported out and left us loot, so we’ll count that as a win! More mythic modes next!

After entering transmog hell as horde characters, we faced Mekkatorque! The fight on normal mode had been quite easy but the heroic mode felt like a big step up in difficulty from the Rastakhan encounter. Especially the second phase hurt a lot. We quite quickly decided to increase the amount of healers, which instantly helped. Soon enough Mekkatorque was defeated! We then went onwards to Stormwall Blockade and it turned out to be a bit of a pushover. Two bosses down in one night! Jaina Proudmoore next!!

Rastakhan’s encounter in Dazar’alor turned out to be more complicated than we first thought, mainly because it was so tricky to say “Bwonsamdi”. It then turned out that his phase was significantly trickier than on normal mode, which meant we had to say the name quite a lot as well. We quickly decided on a tactic of hiding behind Death’s Doors in that phase, but it took us a while to decide where exactly in the room to put the doors. At some point we realised that anyone who could clear stacks without using the doors, should do so, and at some point there we started taking much less damage in that phase. And then we got to the last phase and it was a kill. Good job everyone!

Last reset we had some time to work on Conclave of the Chosen, which seemed to be the first harder boss in Dazar’alor. We struggled a bit on the Sunday, and then we had a wipenight on the Monday. Today we were back and suddenly it seemed a whole lot easier, mainly due to us using three tanks and Belldandie calling the taunts. After a few pulls they were dead! Onwards to Rastakhan!

Second day in Dazar’alor and it took us a little while to get past Grong the Revenant. Next on the list was Opulence. We split the group, discussed tactics and assigned all the gems… and then once we got to the gemroom half the raid picked the wrong gem anyway. The second try went better and the third was a kill! We had some time at the end of the raid to look at the Conclave of the Chosen but only enough to notice they really hurt. Four bosses down, more to come tomorrow!

Battle of Dazar’alor is open and we’re excited for some new scenery! Yesterday we whisked through some normal modes and today we thought we’d do the same with the first four or so heroic modes. But we were mistaken! It turned out the Jadefire Masters gave a bigger resistance than we expected, and we spent the majority of the night trying to push them over. Once we finally moved on to Grong, he have up a fight as well and we ended the evening with only two encounters down! More to come on Sunday!