Blackhand’s (also referred to as: Bluenose, Redface, Greyhound) cruel reign over the Blackrock Foundry is no more. We celebrated Children’s Day in style – after many near-death experiences on the day before, all it took was a grand total of two pulls to get the job done. By no means a smooth kill, hardly anyone left alive by the end, but that only made it more thrilling and memorable. Screenshot to prove it did indeed happen!

There are certain issues with the wipe counter for this encounter as we have been reseting a whole lot, but it seems that pull no. 247 was the lucky one. The screenshot above clearly proves that what was missing before was the gnome power! It is now a matter of hours until we get a few kill videos uploaded – if you want to check them out, look them up on our wowprogress profile (link on the right hand side).

On a more serious note – good fight, not extremely long which was a nice variation from the usual end-boss marathon. With the tactic we used, however, the raid composition requirements were quite extreme. Because of that a whole lot of good people was on standby often during the progression. These guys very much deserve the credit, just as much as those who got the first kill.

Having killed Blackhand we have now cleared the entire tier 17, so both Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry. This granted us some nice little side-rewards:

All the good stuff shown above – from left to right: Blacksteel Battleboar (ugly boar for completing mythic tier 17), our first Faultline (Blackhand’s mythic-only mount), The Enigma Order banner, the raiders’ garrison monument and an alliance banner behind it.

With all that hard work done, with summer around the corner and with the next tier undergoing testing on the PTR already, now is the time to relax and enjoy some laid back raiding. Surely we will want to kill Blackhand weekly for quite a while longer to get us some mounts, but luckily we now have access to him directly, without the need to clear the entire instance first.

Second tier in a row we managed to clear in a timely manner with our reasonable schedule; tension rises. Over and out, but back in a bit!

Good job team.

Kromog has a reputation. A well earned reputation for putting dps to a test. And indeed so, having tried him few times after our somewhat surprising Gruul kill, things did not exactly look super-optimistic. We thought we had a pretty solid routine sorted out as far as damage cooldowns went. That got put to a test quickly and…

…it turned out we were not too wrong on that. Some fine-tuning, some trickery with positions and things started to look positive. Again though, the kill came as a surprise, with the both tanks dead for the last few percents of the fight.

First few pulls of Thogar, commonly referred to as the train-boss, show that it is simply a very fun encounter. Good stuff.

We knew things were heading in the right direction at Gruul, however it did not seem like we had the kill just around the corner. To our surprise one more reset of mythic gear proved to be all we needed. With the assignments set up carefully and a few people new to the fight we were about to get started with some solid attempts.

It turned out all we needed was a grand total of two pulls. Truth being told, we were not exactly prepared for that and so we spent the rest of the raid killing the bosses we have already slain previously. The very first few pulls on the infamous bridge keeper, Kromog, suggest we will need every last bit of gear possible.

Lovely, lovely, lovely!

It is just too much fun to get stomped to death or get burned by a lava-hot pop-tart. Now needless to say the kill could have come earlier with some decent attempts ending up in major panic and silly deaths, but oh well, a style is a style!

Sheer stubbornness and gnome power of will got us this kill really. It was not only famous last pull syndrom, it was also an extra pull, past the usual raid time, just so that “we can say we did all we could”. And so we did! Only a handful of people left alive at the very end, yet that was enough to get the job done. Rumor has it the bosses in fact dropped dead at the site of the head-gnome’s latest transmog, but that cannot be right, now can it? Can it?!

And all that in a reset where we really did not start well. Like, not well at all! What’s done is done though, three down, two of the rather simple ones left, then it gets a tad harder. We can’t wait!

A few days left till the Blackrock Foundry release and we have slain the second last villain in mythic Highmaul, mister Ko’ragh. Very good fight with both ride wide assignments as well as a fair bit of personal responsibility, so all the more pleasure to win it. If anything, one would hope that “physical versus magical” dps thing doesn’t become a trend, like melee versus ranged. We have already had a fair bit of setup problems on this single guy, we would hate to have to toy around with that more often.

That said, still a very good encounter. Now that we have cleared the way to the final boss, Imperator Mar’gok, we can’t help but regret there is not enough time left for us to stand a realistic chance of killing him. Despite that, we shall put our best effort in training the fight, should we decide to revisit it at a later stage.

To quote a classic “don’t you love it when a plan comes together?”. Now the leader of The A-Team could not be wrong even if he tried and so our plan of hunting Butcher down as the fifth of Highmaul bosses was not only set in motion, but also promptly executed. Literally.

An exciting kill just a day after Tectus, close call at that, dead just outside of enrage timer, but we had it all planned out in details. Multiple kill videos available at out wowprogress profile, with some amusing end remarks on TS.

The gnome is not happy with how setup/class dependant some of the recent encounters were though. It is not a non-hardcore friendly design when you feel forced to bench particular players only on the basis of the class they play. Next step Ko’ragh and a gut feeling says it will harder, yet the same issue will arise.

As already mentioned Tectus was next on the hit list. Didn’t take too much time now that we have the gear. A classic first kill as well, with only few people left alive, just the way you would anticipate at this particular encounter.

As it happens he died on the second pull of the raid and so we have ample time left to try out our next opponent, mr. Butcher himself. We are still not entirely certain if it is really a smart choice to take him next – the encounter is simple (and that’s a vast understatement), but does put your gear to a test. So far we’re a fair bit from cutting it.

Back in business after christmas and sure enough a new kill to share with the world.

Some toying around with the setup, some fine tuning to the tactic and eventulally a very dead boss plus some happy flamethrower operators. The Living Rock is next on the kill list and you just can’t get rid of the feeling that that nickname comes straight from the world of wrestling.

Since the release of the expansion we have been hard at work and so little time was left for keeping the site up to date. Looking at what happened so far real quick, we have cleared the heroic mode of Highmaul and started mythic.

The first mythic boss, Kargath Bladefist was a fun entry level encounter and took few tries to beat.

Next on the menu for us are Twin Ogrons – mostly so that we can, again, say we are doing twins with clear conscience. They’re not quite dead yet, but we’re seeing them enraged consistently, so it won’t take long from here on. Back with more news shortly.

We pulled Garrosh heroic. Then we pulled it 403 times more and he died. Well ok, rumour has it he didn’t really die, but he dropped dead nonetheless.

Elementios and Waratthh got the mounts, some others got heirlooms, Pandaria has been saved. All in all a good day. We ended this tier at position 409 as far as 25 man guilds go. Been considerably higher recently, but no surprise here, not with the mupltiple 10 man merges in preparation for WoD.

The prospects right now involve some laid back farming, more mounts, gearing up some new people and generally having a whole lot of fun without any pressure. Good times.

Good job everyone. Except for the monk kiter. He failed.