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.

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.