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Onwards to Varimathras! Immediately we figured out that the fight was the type where everyone has to execute tactics completely right throughout the whole fight, and any mistake would wipe us. The tactics to execute however ended up being bad, and we altered our tactics about five times before we settled on “the bearface” seen below. We pre-practised the tactics in the back of the room, used three tanks, and then wiped and wiped while learning the fight. And then it just happened, from wiping after 1 minute we suddenly had a try where we got to 20%! And then that happened one more time! And then all of a sudden everyone nailed the bearface and Varimathras was dead! Coven next!

Arriving at Kin’garoth we were under the impression that the fight would be easier than Imonar, but as we started progressing that changed. Imonar was difficult in the sense that we had to survive step by step, but when we finally hit the berserk timer – we were not far off from killing him. On Kin’garoth we soon realised that the dps requirement to kill the adds was skyhigh and it initially felt like we were nowhere near reaching the right numbers. We tried planning the addphases out, mapping out which cooldowns would be up when, when to pop potions; and meanwhile we were getting good practise at the fight. And things started to move forward. For a while we were stuck at the 3rd addphase. We would do everything right up until that point, and then after the 3rd addphase we’d mess up and start dying. In the end we decided to swap the order of which add we killed last, and that helped. A few more wipes and Kin’garoth was dead! Yay, good job everyone!

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Next was Imonar the Soulhunter. We knew he would be the first hard mythic encounter, and we were not mistaken. Early on we wiped on the first bridge, then we wiped on the second platform, and then the second bridge, etc. After a while it started going better and we started getting further – once in a while. When we entered the raid tonight we had died from every single ability of the encounter, more than once. But the upside was that we knew every phase, except the 5th, really well. And Ingekek could probably clear the even bridges in his sleep. And then he died! Not Ingekek; well, him as well; but Imonar the Soulhunter! Good job everyone, it was certainly a group effort!

Portal-Keeper Hasabel was next on the agenda. We made plans for who would go to which platform when, and who would stay down. Teldryn, Toebi, Kailyn and Voicíes were the ones in charge of getting buffs on other platforms and bringing them to the current one. We had expected the fight to be hard, and we started out not killing imps fast enough and having explosions. The buff-people however acted exemplary and almost immediatly had their jobs down. We had an idea that the third platform would be hurtful, but it turned out that as soon as we got there the fight was over. First time on third platform and Portal Keeper Hasabel is dead! Imonar is next!

Next on our list was Antoran High Command. On the very first pulls it already seemed like an encounter we would get down fairly quick, but we didn’t quite get there. The next raid we had high hopes that we would kill it, but we ended up having huge issues with healing meaning that we didn’t get much progress at all. Today we came back again and with the healing sorted out we soon got really far into the fight. Just a few more tries and they were dead! Good job everyone, 4/11 mythic down!

We had heard that Felhounds of Sargeras were easier than Eonar and thus should have been our second destination in mythic. We were thus hopeful that we would kill them quite quickly, but simultaneously we were getting into big number-troubles. To be frank this whole expansion have been a long series of having too few raiders, as every time we have fixed it something new has happened. It feels like we have been recruiting non-stop really. We managed to pull the hounds one night for about 30 mins with pugs and we almost had a kill in that short time, but not quite. Today we were back for the second time, with some fresh blood and no pugs! Lo and behold they went down in just a few tries, and we are finally 3/11 mythic. Podpeople next!

We decided that Eonar the Lifebinder would be our next stop! We thought it seemed like an easy fight, and it also had tier dropping, so it seemed like a good idea to pass on the dogs and here first. We were very organised with who would go to the Paraxis and when, and we had really good communication during the fight. But still we had issues, primarily in the end of the fight where the last few energy was always the place where we would wipe. We just didn’t kill the last mobs on time. After some cancelled raids due to numberissues we finally pushed through the last part as well. Eonar is alive! Good job everyone!

Mythic modes have started! First up is Garothi Worldbreaker. We soon passed the start and middle of the fight as those were the easy parts. We had some issues with losses from Eradication, but we soon sorted that out with cooldowns. However the end of the fight we struggled more with. The Empowered Annihilations were really difficult to handle, and we seemed to mess up every time we got there – missing one or more annihilation. But with a bit of practise, and with all the melee also involved and getting jobs, we finally defeated the encounter! Garothi Worldbreaker mythic is dead! More to come!

We’re up to the final boss, Argus the Unmaker. Because Luria’s computer decided to break a few days ago, we went with Teldryn as raidleader and a quite decimated team since Christmas is around the corner. As it turned out Teldryn did a stellar job leading, because the boss went down in just a few pulls.

Observe: The kill-picture is sadly missing since the art department was stuck on trying to load Windows. The moment was however captured with a print screen as Argus was defeated.

Two bosses left to kill, and the first is Aggramar! Yesterday it seemed our healing wasn’t up to par, because even if we were in control of the adds in phase 2, we were still dying. Today we were suddenly doing much better, and it early on felt we’d soon have him down. In the end we managed to kill him at the very same second that we wiped, so… I guess he’s on farm now?! Good job everyone, Argus is next!

The second week of Antorus and we have reached Coven of Shivarra. The normal mode was easy, but we noticed straight away that the storms on heroic mode create a big step up in difficulty. Especially depending on what order the Torments come in. Because of the novelty of the storms we had a few pulls where we forgot everything and just ran about like headless chickens dying on all different mechanics. However, we soon picked ourselves up and things started running smoother. A little while later, they were dead! Ten down, two bosses to go!

Last day of the first week in Antorus. We started at Kin’Garoth and immediately did better than last night. The main issue was killing the adds on time, and failing to kill them – dealing with the leftover adds when the addphase was over. It felt like a big step up from the other bosses, both in dps requirements, but also in damage the raid was taking. However we didn’t need that many pulls tonight to sort him out. Kin’Garoth down! Next on the list was Varimathras. We thought he was really easy on normal mode, and we had heard that Coven was hard on heroic, so it seemed clever to do Varimathras first. However the tactic we had read up on was not working whatsoever. We had read Icy Veins about how to deal with the Necrotic Plague and were trying to have friends with immunities follow the player with plague and we spent a lot of pulls with 2 people trying to make something work that clearly didn’t work. After the break we decided to try and see what would happen if we just let the one person run off alone and lose their plague. Turned out that was the way to go and a few pulls later he was dead. Eight bosses down in the first week. More to come!