Thok Chomp!

Pull number 50 proved to be the lucky one. The grand dinosaur with a tendency to eat running people is very dead. This is a good thing, the fight is, delicately speaking, designed in a non-flawless way. It’s very punishing for some classes and strongly against the whole “bring the player not the class” logic.

WoWScrnShot_112113_203803Regardless, it needed to be done, so done it is. No more chomping of cute Enigmas for now, Jurassic Park cleared.

We all know what it means though. Siegemaster Blackfuse. We had some first pulls and to wrap it up – the ressurection cooldown proves to be an issue.

To the victor go the Spoils

We’ve cashed in on the time spent learning Spoils of Pandaria. It turned out to be one of those fights where we started of with one tactic, but then over time shifted to something entirely different. Took us some time because of that, but it’s always enjoyable to try an encounter in more than one way and then pin-point what works best for your particular raid.

WoWScrnShot_111113_195415We had this nerve wrecking raid where you know the kill is so close, but you just can’t quite get the job done. The atmosphere reached its peak when we had a perfect attempt going, everything on tracks for a kill and then our idiot of a raid leader decided to open wrong box and completely decimated his group. Oh well, at least he’s a gnome, so it’s all forgiven.

So while that raid didn’t end up with us scoring a kill, the very next one did and ironically enough, a one shot it was. Next stop is overgrown dinosaur and quite frankly, it’s more of a “let’s hope we get him out of the picture rather quickly” mindset, rather than excitment about a new fight. Here’s hoping he proves more enjoyable than it first seems.

Malkorok finally down

After three raids of extensive training, we finally got Malkorak down. I believe I will express the opinion of the majority if I say that few pulls more and it would become irritating, just in time for it to feel like a job well done and a deserved kill. Funny enough, he dies on hundreth attempt. So 99 wipes and then game over.

WoWScrnShot_110313_195507Having killed him early on that day, we wasted no time and moved on to Spoils. First impression wasn’t quite as brutal as we were told to expect, with one of the teams clearing the side in time. More to come tomorrow, however we opted for clearing from the start next reset, balancing gearing up with progression that way.

The General has left the building

The moment the Dark Shamans died we relentlessly proceeded to the following boss, General Nazgrim. Now while we knew he had the reputation of an easy boss, we had some very bad experience when approaching fights with such attitude, hence we were careful not to get carried away.

Admitedly though, it appearch this time the reputation is well deserved, for a second boss to drop tier items, this wasn’t exactly breathtaking of an experience. For that reason no kill movie here either.

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This puts us at 8/14 heroics killed. Safe to say the progress is better than we hoped for. Again, not to get carried away though. The easy part is done. Now it gets tough.

Haromm and Kardriss – The Dead Shamans

Haunted by some small setup issues early on in the reset, it felt like new heroic kills were slipping out of grasp this week. Farm bosses refused to get farmed, a few people played offspecs for the sake of filling the neccessary raid roles. Not the best week overall.

However, later on we cought wind in our sails and got the right momentum. Most of the Sunday raid was spent toying around with Haromm and Kardriss, the Dark Shamans. best attempt had them at sub 10%, but things weren’t going smooth enough. Monday proved it was mostly due to suboptimal assignments and as soon as we tried the small ammendments we prepared overnight, things started to click right away, resulting in a smooth kill on the second pull.

WoWScrnShot_102113_201152Sadly, this cought us slightly unprepared, thus we do not have a kill movie to share this time.

Pride of Sha kill

Second of the bosses we decided to skip in the start and dead it is on the first proper day of practice. Another very satisfying encounter, both thanks to very good design as well as some tactid adjustment that we figured out.

WoWScrnShot_101313_225631An execution type of an encounter this time, so not the sort where new gear made a great difference. Entertaining learning curve too, with the obligatory 1% wipe and some enjoyable fine-tuning of the tactic. Ironically enough, the kill wasn’t the smoothest of the attempts we had with some avoidable early deaths. A kill nonetheless.

Mourne-ushen

Third boss in the natural order in the instance, but fifth for us to face. Things actually started to “click” quite early, so it felt like we were in for a smooth kill. However, few attempts later it turned out that the same reason that made it somewhat smooth – a third tank – also made the dps requirement fairly significant.

WoWScrnShot_101013_230927This actually made the fight quite entertaining, with some close-but-not-close-enough attempts. We didn’t have ou standard 1% wipe this time, technically, however the kill itself was equally exciting, with the boss and the entire raid dying at the very same moment.

So far so good, safe to say we’re satisfied with the progress. However, we are slowly running out of the easier bosses, so soon enough things might get a little more entertaining.

Iron Juggernaut

Those involved in Brawlers shady endevours are no strangers to this business. If we are meant to solo an elite forsaken with Arcanite Ripper, who is riding on a elite devilsaur, which is riding an elite flying shark with two rockets and a laser, than a heroic metal scorpion ish shredder with a flamtethrower, driller, lazer, cannon and whole lot of badass attitude is all in a day’s work.

Very good, fun fight. We heard about some unorthodox (to be very polite) tactics, but that didn’t work for us so we took it head on, just that with an extra healer. This extra healer was definitly the key to success here, a proper gnome sacrifice no one even bothered to ressurect for half of the encounter tells the whole story.

WoWScrnShot_100713_212942Regardless, after some near-death attempts, the dead gnome finally got the job done for us and so surprisngly enough we celebrated our second heroic kill this reset.

Galakrasaray Smooth Kill

Having defeated the first 2 bosses in the previous reset, we faced a dilemma which ones to target next. Obvious choice was to simply follow them in the natural order, but we chose to proceed otherwise. Since the third boss, Norushen, is in part a gear check and we previously sacrificed some farming time for the sake of progression, we chose to skip that for now and targeted boss number 5, Galakras. The fact that Norushen was hotfixed, if not redisgned, just recently only backed that decision up.

Galakras proved to by quite an entertaining encounter, much more so than in normal mode. It took some attempts to figure out the optimal dps division, priority of targets and general timing for the first phase. Then, to our satisfaction, we managed to get the second part of the encounter sorted out after we only saw it once. Soon after, a kill followed.

WoWScrnShot_100613_211347One not very positive aspect of the raid that killed the boss was that we had quite a few signups that day, hence choosing those to sit out was fairly unpleasent. Big thanks to those who did end up on the bench, I realize it’s not satisfying to participate in the learning process, but then miss the kill.

Oh yes, and the title of the post IS indeed a smart reference to Galatasaray Sporting Club!

The fallen Fallen Protectors

First some pulls to get the hang of how the mechanics feel in practice, then some to eliminate personal mistakes. Then an extra healer, because the damage is just impossible to heal through, only to realize it’s in fact bad handling of the debuff that’s holding us back. Once that is fixed an enrage wipe. Next raid some toying around with the tactic, but then back to basics, fair few attempts to fine-tune everything and then a kill.

WoWScrnShot_092913_223510Somehow we can’t force ourselves to really consider Immerseus a proper heroic kill, however Protectors felt appropriate for an early boss in hard mode. We are glad to have it done in first week after killing Garrosh.