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Blackrock Foundry has opened and, after having our Thursday Raid ruined by server issues, we managed to make a raid for the Friday to clear most of the normal content. We decided to go back and keep clearing normal for tier now on the Sunday, but as we reached Blackhand we decided to save him for another week and swap to heroic and look at Gruul. As it turns out Gruul wasn’t much harder on heroic than on normal, as we already knew would be the case, and he went down without much struggle! One boss down, tomorrow we’re back for more!

We had done some research and concluded that Twin Ogrons appeared to be the next easiest mythic mode. However as we started progressing on the fight it was apparent that easiest didn’t necessarily mean easy. We were already prone to get stacks during Quake, and now with the sucking Whirlwinds we were doing worse. We spent a good amount of tries progressing slightly, and then messing up again. At the same time there was different ideas presented, about where to tank the bosses and where to stand for Quakes and how to run with debuffs, etc. We tried a something by the door and discarded it again, and then we tried out standing in an exact point behind the weapon for Quake. In the end that exact point was a really good idea for us, and as we implemented it we got much further in the fight with everyone alive. First we reached berserk, and died. And then we did better and killed the Ogron instead!

We finally have enough raiders to go mythic and the first boss is Kargath Bladefist! We had some time last night to do a few tries with a special tactic for Berserker Rush, including a paladin and a warlock portal. Today we tried something else, basically to handle his Berserker Rush like we do on heroic and normal and just kite him into fire. Turns out that was a winning concept! Kargath is dead, and now we can go to any of the next four bosses! We think it will be the twins, Atemm says he likes twins and we trust his judgement.

Christmas is over, and we’re back to Highmaul to kill Imperator Mar’gok before the new year! After some talk about new tactics where we would walk in a circle around the boss we decided not to do that and just go for our normal tactics, like we had tried last time we were here. After making all the different mistakes possible, such as being knockbacked into mines, going through the last Force Novas too many at once, and killing all the transition adds at the same time; we started improving. A few times we had him down to very low percentages, and then finally he was dead! Highmaul heroic cleared! And we might even be able to go mythic because we have just enough raiders! Yay us!

Last reset we had some tries on Ko’ragh after killing Tectus! Our main problem then was that we were a little low on magic damage and the shield was going down slow, leading to problems once more balls started dropping at the same time. Today we made some hunters go survival, to solve that. We also had an issue with too many ideas about where to stand in the room to make sure it was easy for tanks to pull adds into the pools, and we spent some time trying different solutions until we decided to just drop the whole positioning debate and just stand still and kill him and adds as best as we could. I guess some gear improvements helped as well, because tonight there was not much to debate. Ko’ragh is dead! Onwards to Imperator!

Back again for some more Tectus! Since the fight is the same as on normal mode there’s not really much to learn, it’s just about killing things fast without dying, unlike other bosses where the aim is to not die while killing things fast. Within a few pulls it’s already noticeable it will be a kill, and one or a few tries later the mountain is crushed! No more Tectus and friends!

Observe: The art department would like to point out the screenshot is taken before the last pull, when we were just a few percent off a kill, and that is why Tectus looks especially angry and threatening!

New reset, and since we all have a bit better gear since last week we decide to make a try on The Butcher. First try and we get him to 2 %, and there were several mistakes. It seems pretty clear he will die in a few tries, so we stay, and two or three tries later he’s dead! Gear certainly was the issue on this one! We move on to kill the Twin Ogron, who go down much quicker this week, and with some time left on the clock we move to Brackenspore. We put Rysca and Luria on flamethrowers and let Kihel call for mushroom healing, and within just a few tries it already seems close to a kill. One or two tries more and the mushroom guy is also dead! Two new bosses dead in one night. We have a swift go at Tectus too, and he seems a bit harder, but hopefully we’ll get him down tomorrow! Good job everyone!

Last night we spent a lot of time at The Butcher, trying different set-ups and variations and basically arriving at the same results over and over again: We didn’t have the dps to do it, in fact we were far off the mark. Today we decided to go look at another boss instead, at first we were leaning towards Brackenspore, but then Thyrah suggested Twin Ogron. So off we went to see the twins. Pretty soon we noticed that the fight wasn’t that hard, it was just that pesky business of not getting hit by fires and staying alive that were tripping us up. We first managed to get them to berserk with 2% health left, and were a little disappointed. However, we did better with the fires and killed them on the next try, quite comfortable within the berserk timer! Two heroic bosses down! More to come next reset hopefully!

Since we’ve forgotten every other guild anniversary, we thought the round number 7 was important to acknowledge!

Heroic mode raiding has started and the first boss was Kargath Bladefist. There’s really not much to say about this fight other than: it seemed easy and it was easy. It wasn’t an accomplishment to kill him, but then again it’s the first boss and it’s nice to get one freekill. We spent the rest of he raidnight on The Butcher who’s berserk-timer was quite unforgiving. The Monday raid will maybe go back to The Butcher, and maybe go to Tectus, we will see.

The art department want to apologise the bad timing of the screenshot. Just as the photo was snapped Kargath sped of in a Blade Dance and the only thing that ended up on the picture was a small part of his head and a flame pillar; and since he died so fast there was no time for another picture. The art department promises a better screenshot next time.

The first raid has opened and it’s Highmaul! We decided to try out the normal mode first and perhaps get some upgrades before we went to heroic. We added an extra raidday to see if we could comfortably kill all the normal bosses in two days, and we almost did. We killed six bosses and saw the majority of the last boss, even if we didn’t particularly handle the tactics well, or were close to killing him. On Sunday heroic raiding will start and we will probably be helped by the fact that we’ve killed the bosses in easymode already.

The first boss we expect to have problems with on Sunday is The Butcher!

Warlords of Draenor is here and straight off the bat it’s the worst launch in history. People are stuck, lagging, queueing, cant move, cant quest, can’t level, can’t do anything. The lag will get sorted out eventually, but the queues will remain for a good while. Bad news for us possibly, but we’ve been around this block before and we think it’ll be fine.

The art-department saved a screenshot from launchnight, after a disconnect threw us into queues. Judging by the number it’s clearly Luria’s queue.