Deathwing has been destroyed and Azeroth is safe once more. This past week Raid Tier 13 was released and Acheron dove in with both feet. When the dust settled, Deathwing was dead and we had managed a full 8/8 clear in a week only adding 38 minutes to our raid schedule. Morchok was the loot pinata we all expected. Playing ping-pong with Zon’ozzwas harder for us than it should have been. Yor’sahj has some really annoying trash but a nice change in the way the mechanics work. Hagara allowed us to progress the rogue legendary for Adarrin and then fell over. Her fight reminds some of us of one of our favorite fights, so that’s a plus.
Ultraxion brought us our first challenge of the tier. Sadly, it’s simply a numbers game and all out burn. Once we sorted out the /click ExtraActionButton1 macro for folks it was pretty smooth sailing. There was a small learning curve on timing for the tanks. I think we’ll hit this fight with only two healers in the future.
Following Ultraxion (worst boss name in a long time, btw) we jumped onto what some expected to be Lootship 2.0. It’s the same boat, right? It might be the same piece of skyship, but this boss is a lot more engaging. Zosima really enjoys fights which test both individual responsibility and group play in the same fight. Blackhorn certainly does this. There’s a lot of choas and the fun is reining in the spaz and making it something smooth and elegant.
Now for the Deathwing fights. Grats to Blizz for more innovation in the area of what is possible with this game engine. Sadly, the fight is fairly boring on normal. Thankfully, we weren’t plaqued by the DC bugs that many raid groups were and we passed on without too much work. There is a serious timer on the tendons, though. We learned quickly tha we couldn’t dork around with that phase.
And finally, we meet the destroyer himself. The Madness of Deathwing was a real let down for a lot of the raid members. The sentiment seemed to come from doing the same thing 4 times, then an add filled burn phase. We did with the standard 2/3/5 raid comp and I’ll think we’ll bring more DPS next time just to get through the fight faster. Many of us have come to expect more from the final boss in the tier, especially the last boss of the expansion. I’m sure heroic will kick our teeth in. To be honest, it did take us a little over 3 hours of raid time to kill him, but it still fell short of expectation. At least in normal mode, Ragnaros was a lot more engaging and certainly more involved.
Grats to everyone in the raid, both in the kill and ready on the sideline. It was a great week of raiding! Now to see what heroics bring…
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