And thus Mannoroth has died. Mixed feelings and a whole lot of different views on this fight. Back in the first half of Hellfire Citadel, when we were having a high-level look at the various fights, we had a feeling that this particular encounter would be, well, boring. That definitely turned out to be false, it was quite exciting, with a lot going on. Another opinion was that it would be extremely setup dependent. That proves not to be the case, even if some classes have some small advantages. Then there was the aspect of it being a gear-intensive fight. Hard to say really, we almost got the boss killed just before the recent item level inflation, so we thought it would be matter of few pulls only once the gear got better. That, however, proved to be false entirely, since the new timing of various abilities made it feel like a whole different fight and we had to change the tactic quite a bit, including some damage throttling.

Finally everything has been sorted out, we knew what we want to do, things “clicked”. And then what? And then a plethora of redundant, borderline believable mistakes, one step ahead, three steps backwards. Because of that, it took us a whole lot of time between sorting the tactic out and finally killing the boss. Could be better.

In any case, first mythic chests looted, two players happy with new weapons and no items disenchanted. So that is nice. Only the big kahuna left now.

As per a recent suggestion, here is an alternative screenshot, with player names displayed. Everyone is welcomed to leave a comment saying which version we should use from now on.

One of the more colorful bosses in recent raids is done with. Good encounter, but so very, very far away from the “bring the player not the class” logic.

This time it did in fact slow us down considerably, so quite irritating. Two fights left and both have a reputation.

Tyrant Velhari is now officially dead and that is a major relief. Such a weird learning curve on this encounter – last phase on day one of attempts, then everything went to hell, strange ideas tested, back to the original tactic, a whole lot of fine-tuning and then at long last a kill. By no means a smooth kill either, hardly anyone alive by the end, but that only adds up to the charm.

That is ten out of thirteen bosses dealt with now. Not unlike Siege of Orgrimmar, rumour has it the last three are a whole level harder than the rest. First few pulls at Xuel’horac makes that sound very, very likely.

As expected after last week, it didn’t take us much time to get rid of Shadow-Lord Iskaar. Not your standard type of a fight, but on the other hand nothing excessive. In all honesty, it took us more time then it should have.

Next stop Fel Lord Zakuun, commonly referred to as the fissure guy. A short, action-packed fight to be expected. Once that is done, it’s the serious bosses time.

With Gorefiend out of the way, it didn’t take us much time to score the next mythic clear. A tad disappointing, but we will take it after all the time spent at Gorefiend.

Twenty pulls or so, mythic tier gloves. Easy money. Iskar should have died as well,  but one of “these days” happened. Next reset.

So even if we are fighting the summer more than the bosses, we managed to get ourselves a new kill. Not bad, felt hard and chaotic the first time we reached it, but then the next time things started to fall in the right places sooner than later.

Kill video available at our wowprogress profile, linked on the right side.

Then some pretty amazing struggle to get the raid going, few more pulls, obligatory 1% wipe and it died. Four down, one more easy to go, then it gets real.

Very cool encounter, pure fun to learn. We opted for doing it the harder way, i.e. used a standard a mount of healers and did not brute-force nor skip any mechanics. With hindsite, perhaps that was not the smartest way to go, but in any case – we had fun and we did it.

Kill video already available at our wowprogress profile, linked on the right side.

Screenshot as green as any other to expect in Hellfire Citadel. We did not have too much time to try the next encounter, High Council, and it feels like that will take some doing. The fact that the next few resets just happen to be the peak of the holidays absences surely does not make it seem any easier.