______________________________________________________________________________________________

When we reached this boss on normal mode it took a few pulls before we realised that the adds always spawned in the same corners and with the same pattern. Now that we were back on heroic we already had the tactics figured out for which add to save when. Instead the difficulty came to be the overall damage and healers going oom. We had a few pulls at the end of last reset, where we didn’t do that well, but tonight it was a different story. Cenarius dead! Xavius next!

Back to Elerethe Renferal. This is the boss we had liked the least on normal, since it felt the most chaotic, and thus we saved her for as late as possible. We had a few wipes, mainly due to bad placement of poison patches. We didn’t immediately realise that the tornadoes spawning at one of the bridges was picking up poison from the platform if placed closed to the bridge. Once we got past the flying poison it turned out the fight wasn’t as difficult as we had initially thought, and within a few more wipes Elerethe Renferal was dead! Cenarius next!

After killing the dragons last reset we didn’t have much time to look at Ursoc, since we had spent so much time on Il’gynoth. This week we came back with more time. We struggled a little staying alive and doing enough dps, at first, but tacticwise it was a very easy fight to learn. After some late % wipes, we finally got it right and Ursoc was dead! With some raidtime left we went back to the heart of corruption. It was immediately clear that the upgrades we had received since last reset made the Il’gynoth encounter fight feel a lot easier. Soon the heart was down as well. Two bosses down today, Renferal tomorrow?

The next fight we went to look at was Il’gynoth. We spent more than a whole raidnight trying to get that fight to work, but in the end it seemed we just didn’t have the dps. Late in the Sunday raid we finally decided to move on, since we had an impression from the normal modes that at least two of the other bosses would be easier than Il’gynoth. We went to the Dragons of Nightmare, and after doing a few pulls it was clear that we weren’t far off a kill. We had so little raidtime left though that we had to save it for the next day. And the next day it didn’t take long before they were dead. Good job all! Next is Ursoc.

Observe: The art-department would like to inform that the above screenshot is in fact not of the bossfight. Influenced by the current American elections hype they instead chose to sculpture the dragon’s faces on a mountain and screenshot that.

The Emerald Nightmare has finally opened. Yesterday we did a sneak preview on normal and killed five bosses. Today we’re back to try the heroic modes. The first boss in the Emerald Nightmare is Nythendra. We noticed already on normal that she wasn’t that complicated, although we confused the fight completely by spinning the boss and it ended up looking like we were headless chickens running about. Today we changed that tactic to having the boss be stationary, and after two wipes she was dead! First boss down, more to come. We went onwards to Il’gynoth but it seemed we’ll need a little work to get him down, we’ll be back for more on Sunday!

See you all in the new expansion!

Once again we’re off on a raidbreak. We didn’t kill Archimonde mythic, though we did get him to the last phase, but at least we saw all bosses in Hellfire Citadel before we went on holidays.

We’ll be back for more in Legion!

Next on the list was Xhul’horac, who would turn out to be the hardest boss in the whole citadel. We knew already when we started working on him that he would be tricky and that other guilds had specific setups. Unfortunately we didn’t have anything near the setup needed, which made us have to think of alternative tactics to the most commonly used ones. We also started off with failing on every small part of the fight, such as not placing green fire right, and not moving when a void would jump to you. We had countless painful tries, and we altered the positions many times to try to make things easier. Meanwhile we were trying to recruit the classes needed but without much luck. A few mages came and went. Eventually we decided to try to get at least close to the setup needed through alts, and Partam, Dailyheals, and Schwepz all tried fixing up their alts as best as possible – which made things a lot easier. We started getting further into the fight, and in the end, after 150 wipes, Xhul’horac finally died! Good job everyone! Mannoroth next!

Next on the list was Tyrant Velhari. We knew ahead of time that she would be hitting hard and that it wouldn’t be an easy fight. We had a tactic in mind, where at the start of the fight the ranged would make two separate groups and soak Edict of Condemnation together. After some deaths we remade the tactic to have one group that would gather in the middle instead, after all the Aura of Oppression didn’t really do that much damage. Following some more issues in phase one, mainly with Annihilation strike, we started getting to phase 2. At first we had some dps issues getting her down to 40% fast enough. Our solution to that was to not let any of the “three minute cooldown people” pop their CDs at the start, and instead wait for phase 2 to pop them. From that point on everyone continuously remembered to pop their cooldowns at the exact right moment, and we soon had the boss dead. Excellent job everyone!

Next on the list was Fel Lord Zakuun. We had heard that he would be the last “easy boss” on mythic, but we soon realised there was plenty to mess up on in this encounter. Especially towards the end of the fight when he enrages. We were a little bit unsure if we should soak the 4th puddles or leave them up and burn the boss. Once we decided to do the latter we got enough dps to kill the boss before he killed us.

Observe: Since the art-department were a tad slow getting the screenshot for this kill, I had a hard time remembering how we actually progressed on the fight. I asked Ingek and he explained it very clearly: We hit him. He died.

Next on the list was Socrethar the Eternal. However a few of the resets after first killing Gorefiend, we spent a lot of time on rekilling him. We had an inkling that killing Socrethar wouldn’t be that hard, but we never really got there to try. Once we finally did, we realised that it was all about killing the first add. We assigned Nilet to be the kiter and soon phase one was coming together. After that phase two was not very tricky, especially since Thyrah has had a lot of practise driving the robot while we were still trying to get heroic Conqueror gloves to drop. Within a few tries Socrethar the Eternal was dead!

When we reached Gorefiend we knew he was trouble. It was the boss we would be stuck on for weeks. However, already the first night we had some significant progress. Then we had a less successful reset where we had to cancel a raid, and this week we’re back again. What we’ve wiped on so far is generally everything you can wipe on in the fight and we know what we should do. The mantra of the day is “Absolutely no dps on the boss!”, which sounds counter-intuitive for killing a boss. But we started having some good tries and then we got him! It wasn’t a clean kill by any means, but the Gorefiend is dead! With time left on the clock we marched up to Shadow-lord Iskar to see what the encounter was all about. And after a few wipes, and carefully distributing our cooldowns in the best way we could think of, the shadow-lord was also dead! Two bosses in one night, yet again. Good work guys!

Observe: The art department ended up with only blurry screenshots of our kills, and has thus decided to print a pre-pull picture of Hithroc posing with Iskar.