As the title says, we are indeed back with more sooner than later. We knew in advance we are supposed to expect Xavius to be easier than Cenarius, but we did not quite see that coming. Cannot say for a fact, but I would not be surprised if the final boss of Emerald Nightmare took less pulls than the first one.

Normally killing the last boss is a sign it is time for us to do some brain-storming, see what went well and what went wrong for us, but this time it honestly did not feel like an actual last boss. Besides, for the most of it we know exactly where we are at and what to do next.

We are now officially Dreamers, however that does not mean we are about to sit back and wait for Nighthold. Trial of Valor has only just been released and while it only has few bosses there seem to be a consensus they are a considerable step up compared to Emerald Nightmare.

We shall know soon enough.

Different tactics, different ideas, quite a few pulls – all signs of actual, meaningful progress checked. Unusual situation for the second last boss to be by far the hardest in an instance, but what do you do – it needed killing anyway. And so killing we did.

Did not have much time left after this one died, so only pulled Xavius, the final boss, few times, but it does indeed appear he won’t be too much of an issue. Hopefully we will be back with more sooner than later.

We killed The Eye.

It’s dead now.

So, so much more enjoyable than Ursoc!

The previous bear-boss sort of brought the mood down for us, but thankfully Dragons of Nightmare were just the breeze of fresh air we needed. Much more engaging, interesting fight, more going on, room for some strategizing – good stuff all over!

A point could be made, again, we killed it later than we should have, but oh well, at least this time it was just simply a matter of more practice, no silly issues with raid composition, gear, servers or whatnot. And it was fun through and through.

(find the gnomes in the tall grass)

Now having slayed the lovely Dragon-gang we proceeded to the respectable Eye-boss. Because, I mean, who in his right mind will remember a name like Il’gynoth? Anywho, the fight has a reputation for being the second hardest in the instance, so we did not expect too much. It is not quite dead yet, but there have been some rather promising attempts made already.

So this is basically where Legion launch caught up with us. Ursoc was not supposed to be the next target for us, we wanted to push the gear check encounter further down the line. We also most certainly did not expect some pretty bad server lag at that point.

Sadly, due to temporary absence of certain key players we needed to smack the bear and with an absolutely ridiculous raid composition. Even more sadly, we fought the servers just as much as the actual encounter. We would of course not be ourselves if we didn’t secure a sub 1% wipe and then never managed to kill the boss that reset.

(a keen observer will notice an alarming lack of bear-corpses in the background; let’s just say we were a tad too eager to distribute the loot and the boss gone POOF!)

Because of all that the kill felt very late, but at the same time we knew there was not really much we could have done better. As a result we took a ridiculous dive in both world and server rank. That is not nice, but it is also not too big of a deal – it is not what we are focused on and, again, we had a good plan, just that circumstances made it impossible to follow it.

What matters is that the somewhat bearing unbearable bare bear is just barely dead. And from here on it will only get easier each week to slay him. Now things are looking brighter as well – next stop, Dragons!

First week of raiding still and not one, but two mythic kills to share with the word.

Quite an unpronounceable name for a boss, so we took the liberty of baptizing her with a christian name of Spiderbird. Pretty good stuff, we are happy that for once we decided not to play it overly safe and whilst many guilds decided to three-tank the boss, we opted for a standard, two-tank setup. Worked like a charm and never felt like an issue, proof below.

Having killed the boss with good time left, we moved on to the next target on the kill list. Feels like even if without the temporary roster shortages we are about to experience, this is going to be a tougher nut to crack.

Kill videos as usual available through wowprogress, link on the right side.

However as of late, one dragon less. With heroic stuff cleared early on, we stepped into the mythic Emerald Nightmare and found a sleepy, infested dragon blocking the way. The dragon had a bad breath and was a little rotten, so we removed her out of the way.

First mythic items to be had, a journey of thousand miles begins with a single step. Now that the first guardian has fallen, we get to choose which encounter we want to tackle next.

Arch-demon decapitated, Hellfire Citadel cleared, Draenor saved. And what a long, strange trip it has been! Tier of content that started on the almost exact same day as the incredibly sunny summer holidays (saying that a lot of sweat went into killing the bosses was never more accurate) and lasted until just after Christmas holidays. As always, some very good and memorable fights and some that will be soon forgotten, rightfully so. First things first though.

Even the final boss himself was a little bit of a roller-coaster. In particular the second-last raid before the kill is to never be spoken about again, while the very next – and final – one was just pure gold and you could feel the kill is just around the corner. Obligatory one percent wipe notwithstanding! Some minor adjustments to the tactic for the last few percents and boom! The boss dies, mythic trinkets for the people, Axc gets the mount.

We have conflicting reports as far as the wipe counter goes, so we cannot be absolutely sure how many attempts exactly it took us to get the job done. Going by mine, pull number 385 was the lucky one. A few less than Garrosh required.

As usual it was a team effort, so a shout-out to the guys who participated in the progress, but ended up on the bench for the kill.

And finally to an anonymous, yet tad scary person who is no longer part of the raiding gang due to circumstances beyond control, but who participated a great deal through the majority of Hellfire Citade and is trully missedl. Find the German at the picture!

Now that the job is done, we will fall back to a relaxed schedule and kill the mount bosses weekly. Meanwhile, a whole lot is going on behind the scene – there are many ideas floating around concerning Legion, we have our people in the beta (or alfa, or friends and family closed… test, complicated nomenclature). The plan is, as usual, to maintain a good raiding atmosphere, but at the same time kill things at a satisfying pace.

Over and out for a while, by the looks of it next post only very near to Legion release!

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.