Last week we were able to race through the normal modes of Dragon Soul.  Tonight, we met our real challenges in the Heroic Mode.  We started with Morchok based on his ease on normal, and what seemed to be a fairly modest difficulty increase.  It was enjoyable to approach a fight without a trove of information already published.  We got to test various strats from the raid and then focus on tweaking the final strat.  We spent a total of 31 pulls, but many of those were immediate wipes testing some specific mechanic of the fight.  The kill pull went very smoothly and I think this will be a fight some of us enjoy weekly.

edit: Now that the WoW Progress ranking have settled, we were credited with the 292nd kill in both us/world ranking for 10 man and 382nd in combined 10/25 kills.

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…

One of the best parts of the achievement system has been recognition of completing raid encounters some unique and challenging way.  It’s been a blast working through these meta achievements as we moved through the Firelands.  Blizzard did a great job with this set.  Some were really challenging and pushed the awareness and performance of the group while others were simply fun!  Congratulations to the Raid Team and to everyone in the guild who made this possible.

What an amazingly smooth kill.  Our first kill looked like a farm boss.   It’s really something to watch what happens when the whole raid is on point. Great job folks!

We made quick work of Staghelm this time through.  While I wish the mechanics worked a bit differently, the “Subzero Strat” (no Scorpion) worked really well for us.  Great job handling the balls >.>

Now that we’ve killed it…I’m not even gonna pretend on this one.  This fight sucks.  It’s a great idea just really terribly implemented.  The drivers did a great job of dealing with volcanoes and props to the dps for quick adjustments.  Glad we are past this one.  I don’t think this one will ever enjoy ‘farm status.’

Heroic Shannox went down last night and Acheron begins the heroic progression this tier.  We spent more time than necessarily on the fight making it slightly harder than it really is.  We’ll just call it the “Acheron Achievement System.”  Grats to everyone who made this kill happen.  Much more fun coming!

Ragnaros Down!

That’s right, Ragnaros has been taken down and the hunt for heroics begins.  After a very frustrating 6% wipe, the raid hustled back into the Citadel to give it another go.  Things felt really solid right from the start and the pull as a whole was one of our smoothest.  We have our two least favorite hammer positions for the transition phases but handled them well.  Meteors started dropping and it looked like we were gonna be ok.  There was a brief time in which two healers were kiting and they did a great job of handling their assignments and their meteor.  Rags made a last ditch effort to save himself and managed to kill a couple of us just before he bailed.

In the end a great encounter that really feels like a boss fight.  A big thanks to Blizz for this one!