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It’s Sunday and time for heroic Tichondrius! The first thing to learn was Brand of Argus which hadn’t been present on normal, and it didn’t turn out to be any major obstacle. Instead what we struggled a little with was having enough dps on the boss while dealing well with the adds. After making some assignments and getting more used to the fight – we sorted it all out. Heroic Tichondrius is dead, Star Auger next!

After killing Trilliax last reset we had a raid and a half more with possible progress on Spellblade Aluriel. However we ended up having a wonky setup on the Monday wish made the fight so much harder than the night before, and we ended up having a wipenight. Today we were back again for a few new tries, and the difference was like night and day. Spellblade Aluriel died in just a couple of tries. Onward to Krosus who turned out to be a much easier fight. We had some bad pulls but then we sorted it all out. Krosus dead, more to come!

Nighthold is finally here and we’re here to claim our tier pieces! We already killed some bosses on normal last night, so we knew roughly what the bosses would be like today. We had to alter our tactics from normal on Skorpiron, as it turned out we had misunderstood how to deal with the adds slightly, but normal was so easy that it wasn’t noticable. We had a few wipes before we sorted it out. On Chromatic Anomaly we spent some time wiping as well, mainly because we were too careless with avoidable incoming damage. We thought he was the hardest of the first three bosses. And then there was Trilliax who we took down pretty swiftly. Three down, Soulbender Aluriel next!

Mythic Il’gynoth was a fight we had heard in advance would be hard. Early on we realised the rumours were true. One difficulty was deciding how many ichors to kill, who should do it, and when. Should we kill one at a time always? Should we try to gather up many and burst them down with healing cooldowns? Should everyone dps them, and was it only ok to single target? And how should we handle the second phase one? We didn’t try that many different ways, and pretty early on we settled for killing 8 at the start of phase one with cooldowns, and after that killing them two by two. We did a lot of mistakes, bringing them down unevenly so they didn’t die at the same time. And when we with some luck had good tries with the ichors, then we missed standing in a Death Blossom and got the debuff. We had to spend several evenings sorting out this encounter, but tonight we had a feeling he would die because we were close last raid. And we were right! Il’gynoth dead! Nighthold next!

On the very first pull of Dragons of Nightmare we knew we liked the fight. It seemed easier than our last progress bosses and also more fun. At first we were unsure of how many people to send through the portals, and we had some variation in the setups, but soon we figured out we wanted four people. It seemed like a boss we could have killed already last reset, but we had one less healer than we wanted on the outside and we were struggling to stay alive. The changes in setup also made the bosses go down differently fast which messed things up for the tanks. Today we managed to have enough healers and to sort out the third phase slightly better than before – and wham bam the bosses were dead! Il’gynoth next!

Once in a while there are encounters that people just dislike so much they almost want to sit out of the raid to skip it. Helya heroic was, for several raiders, one of those encounters. It’s a long fight, and to begin with we had a lot of wipes in phase one. We tried altering the tactics a few times to make things easier, but it seemed to just complicate things. In the end we went back to the same tactics we had in the beginning, and then we started to more reliably pass into phase two and three. Once we modified our plan for phase two the end of the fight came together pretty quickly and we started seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Then finally we made everything work, and she was dead. Yay! Now we can focus on Emerald Nightmare mythic again!

We had heard that Elerethe Renferal would be a pretty easy mythic encounter, even though there would be a lot of changes to the tactics. We decided early on how we wanted our positioning, and never really altered our tactics much. However knowing and doing are two different things, and it took us some tries to get better at the mythic execution. The release of Trial of Valor stumped progress a little, as we were choosing between Elerethe and Helya heroic. In the end we decided to go back to Elerethe Renferal tonight, and surprisingly enough she died on one of our first pulls. Good job everyone. Dragons of Nightmare next!

After killing Odyn last reset we had very little raidtime left to look at Guarm. However the few pulls we had it seemed like it would be a quite easy fight if we could just cope with the high damage of his charge. We quickly sorted out cooldowns, and even used Ingekek’s Darkness to stand in. With a few more tries Guarm was dead! Only Helya to go!

Trial of Valor is out! The rumour beforehand was that the level of difficulty of these three encounters would be significantly higher than the ones in Emerald Nightmare – and we noticed that already on normal mode. Three resets later and we have pulled Odyn quite a few times and have continuously been stomped towards the end of the second phase – right around the point when Heimdall comes down we would start losing people. Today we were however doing better right off the bat, and started getting into the third phase. Luckily that phase was easy, and we wrapped it up in just a few more tries. Odyn down, two more to go. Good job everyone!

The next mythic encounter was Ursoc. We realised early that although the fight was easy tacticwise, it wasn’t as easy to pull the right numbers. The dps wasn’t really where it should be as far as the berserk timer, and the healers were struggling keeping everyone up, especially after the enrage. The first nights of trying we were coming up short. Tonight we were back and finally it all worked better. Ursoc is dead! Renferal next!

Finally the mythic raiding begins! Nythendra is the first available boss, and supposedly not an easy one. The first night we tried we however got her pretty low, and when we were back tonight we had high confidence. The tricky thing in the fight was to handle the mindcontrols, and to avoid extra stacks from bugs in the second phase – and we felt we had both things under fairly good control (most of the time). Tonight we had some bad pulls, but then suddenly there it was. Most of us died, but so did Nythendra! One mythic boss down, six to go!

Observe: The artdepartment had a small accident with the killshot of Nythendra, so they opted to publish a midfight image of Thûngdil messing up in phase two instead!

Only one more boss left in heroic Emerald Nightmare and it’s Xavius. Having killed the boss a few times on normal we unfortunately had very little practice on performing tactics, as we had just stomped him on the first tries without ever discussing more than phase 1 tactics. Now we quickly realised we’d have to actually learn the fight. The main difficulties would turn out to be pushing the boss into phase 2 fast enough, without getting a third add, and to make sure people weren’t getting corrupted unnecessarily. Once we had figured out better positions, to make sure small adds would explode on dreamers, things started going better. The second night of trying, we finally got all the phases down. Xavius is dead and Emerald Nightmare heroic is cleared. Good job guys!