Zul'Gurub Entrance.

Time to get cracking if you’d like to visit the old bosses there or work on that Zandalar rep faction (they do have patterns!) or those 2 very rare mounts (Swift Razzashi Raptor and Swift Zulian Tiger).

Hadronox Denied.

Oh Novos!

Better Off Dred.

And because Nyhm is my hero, here’s the perfect song for working a hard heroic

Flame Leviathon is the first (and non-optional) boss in Ulduar and there are 3 weekly raid quests that involve killing him. I didn’t want to pug anyone for it so we could learn without ridicule and figure it out at our own pace. I read that some insane people had soloed and 2-manned Flame Leviathon so I thought… pfft we’ll just do it with who ever we can get to go then.

And that’s what we did

Flame Leviathon.

With 8 people

(The achievement on the screenshot is the Shutout one.)

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t perfect but we didn’t expect it to be. The first wipe was mostly figuring out the controls. One wipe came from an accident of starting it too early. Another as we figured out how to set up the area pre-fight with blue jars, and the final one as we got better at picking them up and kiting him through the tar.

But in the end, we actually learned the fight, and we should be significantly more able to handle him next time. And some of our people really had a blast using the machines

The other boss we went to kill, XT, well for that we had to PUG and like nearly always happens when we pug people… it fell apart. I also should have brought a third healer, in general, hope our XT fight goes better next time, but we did manage the more important one to learn even if we didn’t get the quest done.

So thanks to Berengaria, Huntinall, Kibz, Kneedoom, Kregleskon, Logicalheart, and Shablani for coming along to learn how to do the fight

WOOT!

We headed back into Naxx and finished the quest again!

We had a few ‘firsts’ in there as well!

It was the first raid encounter in which Freesafety joined us in healer spec to provide off-healer back, go Freeeee! You rocked out your first time. It was also the first time Berengaria tanked a raid boss – she took the hits like a pro! And with old man Nexian back in the crew, it’s also his first time back in the raiding scene.

We’re slowly starting to learn how to work together and it’s really beginning to show in how we pull together for fights.

Movie Time!
Click the link to watch cause the guys did a little happy-dance after…

First I have to say thank you to him for going through all the effort to set up the event. It was nice to do something together as a guild that most of us had never seen before.

The Lurker Below.

The actual raid was very interesting looking although it was easy to get lost among the maze of walkways and pipes (which we had a couple of people do unsurprisingly).

Someone in the raid, can’t recall whom, fished up a boss for us in the water fight which was totally new and odd to heal for. The water is apparently all ‘hot’ and does lava-like damage, and the boss is fished up right in the middle of a large water area.

Of course, there’s a brownish metal circle of floating stuff that you can stand on to fish. The boss, however enjoyed kicking us back a lot into the water and those floating bits became both salvation and something to get trapped under.

Lady Vash'j.

We had no problem taking down all the other bosses in the place. In fact cake-walk is a good description. Of course, the big easy always comes to an end… and Lady Vash’j was our end.

Lady Vash’j, what can I say about that fight. They should make the employee who created it have to rework it without pay… I think that’s the nicest thing I can say about it.

Let me try to describe the fight as technically as I can so you can understand, visualize a bit.. what happened to us.

Obviously Lady Vash’j is the main boss and does damage on her own, but she has helpers. Four types of mobs spawn during the fight, each with different special abilities.

The first, and easiest type, is the Coilfang Elite type mob that is pretty much a straight up melee sort of add. Thank goodness for old fashioned mobs.

The second type is the Enchanted Elemental who spawns on the sides and tries to reach Lady Vash’j. If they do, they increase her damage output by a stacking 5%. Of course, the goal is to kill them before they reach her since they are immune to stuns and snares.

The third type consist of the Tainted Elementals which spawn on a 50 second timer and don’t move. However, you only have 15 seconds to kill them and then loot a Tainted Core from them. The mere looting of a Tainted Core renders your character paralyzed, so you have to open your bag and throw the core to someone in a 40 yard range by selecting them and using the object in your bag. This part, we didn’t fully understand and it’s where we tripped up I think. We were under the impression you had to open trade with someone. Anyhow, between the point at which Lady Vash’j is at 70% health to the time she is at 50% she gains a shield that makes her unhittable. These cores are used to throw at that shield, so you have to football pass them until they are with someone close enough to throw at one of the 4 shield generators. For my part, I didn’t even know where those generators were. Unfortunately, if you cannot get through this football pass period she will stay forever at that health and not move onto phase 3.

The final type of add she spawns were the nail in the coffin for us. The Coilfang Striders are mobs that spawn every 60 seconds and cast an AOE fear called Panic Periodic. Not only does this boss cast this fear in an 8 yard range – they cast it every 2 seconds (which might as well be constantly). The fear lasts for 5 seconds, but just for extra fun, the fear happens to increase your run speed by 150% so that 5 seconds can get you clear across the other side from killing the thing. Go figure ranged casters are going to be the only thing to take these down.

So… let me put an image in your head. We had around 20 people on that platform, most geared in shiny level 80 epics, ready to take on the world!

Pre Lady Vashj.

And then came this fight.  Suddenly we have 20 people feared all over the place running back and forth on the platform. We have people permanently standing in paralysis because they’re trying to get someone to come close enough to them to open a trade window and pass a tainted core. We have others who are racing to keep those elementals from reaching her and making her stronger. The healers are standing on the platform and trying to keep everyone healed but people keep getting feared out of line-of-sight, and we didn’t know about the fear range so we didn’t have casters taking down the Strider fear-machines so they’re starting to pile up on us fearing everyone around. At this point, no one can tell what’s going on, it’s just one big mess. The next thing we know some of those elementals have made it to her and she’s gotten a major boost, the melee adds are eating us up cause we’re hardly fighting.. just running.

We tried it a couple of times, and it was just one big terrible fight.

I wanted to have words with the designer of that fight. Serious words.

But! In the long run, we went there to see something new and we did. We trashed out the rest of the place no problem. We just stumbled on this one lady and perhaps… well perhaps she can keep the cavern to herself…

Here are a couple more images from our adventure:

Path Leading to Lady Vashj.

Leotheras the Blind.

I’ll make sure and post an update if we get her down!

For anyone who raided in BC this is probably a ‘who cares’ kinda thing. Unfortunately, I never went to Kara in BC. I was a chicken about joining pug raids because I had never been in a raid or heroic.

It wasn’t until our guild started hitting 80 that we started going back to see old stuff. Recently we’ve been to Zul’Aman and Kara and a few of us went to Zul’Gurub, but I know for sure the best moment was in Kara last night… and Knee totally owned it.

Knee Red Riding Hood.

He wore that red riding hood cloak like a pro as he dashed around like a little girl

Of course, massive thanks go to Dyscordia and her man – both of whom made it possible for us to actually navigate the labyrinth that is Kara.

He shattered my faith in my abilities, he took the smile from my naive face, and he laughed at us when we failed.

My people on Velen changed all that.

Hall of Lightening.

We conquered the beast. He died badly, but we persevered. It was a day of rejoicing, a moment of euphoria, and a time of closure.

Best of all… it was on HEROIC!