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At first we thought we'd need a ton of healers for this fight, but once we figured out the secret strategy* I felt rather sheepish at having brought even eight, so we had two of the holy priests start smiting, a paladin got to put the sweet ret loot he'd grabbed from the trash on the way to good use, and we sent our druid outside to start farming primals for SR gear for Mother Shahraz. At least that way the rest of us got to experience some kind of challenge.
*There is no secret strategy. Gurtogg does, however, enjoy cuddling with bears:
Still juggling attunements, we've been able to field a proper Black Temple raid this week, and are really enjoying the feel of the zone and the design. (Turn on the music at least once, seriously.)
Looking forward to wrapping up the bulk of our attunements this coming week and focusing on the new content.
Not much else to say about the fight that hasn't already been covered by others, but it was a pleasure to learn, with a nice learning curve and a surprising degree of complexity that ends up feeling familiar by the time all is said and done. Definitely "epic."
(Oh, and we went and killed Rage Winterchill afterwards. Doing the trash waves as one of 5 healers total was actually very intense and not at all the cakewalk I'd expected after all the Hyjal anti-hype. Too many waves, though, but we know that already.)
I'm really bad at remembering to take screenshots (and I take bad screenshots when I do -- see below for examples). Anyway, I forgot to take one of Al'ar, but I figure a picture of the toy we got from him/her/it, which is probably the single coolest model I've seen in the game so far, will suffice:
The feathery talons wave back and forth, and the whole thing glows. The fact that it's a pretty badass rogue mainhand doesn't hurt either.
Anyway, fun fight, and as with Vashj, while I definitely don't regret putting these fights off until 2.1, I do feel for the guilds that struggled through the untuned versions. Al'ar right now is a lot like Hydross in terms of feel and difficulty, which is probably about right given where the fight falls. It's fun, though, and the changes prevent it from dragging on for so long that it becomes tedious.
Looking forward to checking out Kael'Thas on Monday!
Very fun fight. It's obvious how insane it would've been pre-2.1, and doing it now makes Method's kills look all the more impressive. It's definitely properly tuned now though (although the entire fight really is phase 2) -- harder than the other fights in the instance, and more complex on a raidwide-coordination level, but it's not on a whole different tier. Just a shame it took 4 months to get there. If the past few days are any indication, though, I think that most of us can manage to put the initial SSC implementation behind us if the fun continues. Hope it will.
Nothing special to report, but I figured I should probably post something here since it's been so long. We've killed stuff, are having fun, and are looking forward to seeing much more of SSC and TK.
Oh hey, haven't posted here in a while. Haven't had anything to post about, of course. The last couple of months in Naxx have been a bit bumpy, with summer ending and attrition slowly taking its toll, leaving us without enough people to even really clear Naxx some weeks. Not quite the outcome some of the more competitive amongst us hoped for, but perhaps even more satisfying in the end.
For the past few months, we've been plugging away and keeping spirits high. After a point, it became a mark of pride and stubbornness to get this done without turning to outside recruitment. Months behind, to be sure, but there's something to be said for being able to reflect upon how far we've come with the same group of people that surrounded us as we first saw Ragnaros tell us that it was, in fact, TOO SOON.
Huge thanks to all my guildmates for their perseverence and dedication in holding our group together, and particularly for their extraordinary lengths on this recent push to get through the zone. Thanks and congratulations to those who were integral to our efforts thus far, but who could not be here for the kill today: Mhedic, Mochiloc, Om, Zerena, Zoid, and many, many others.
And, of course, it wouldn't be a front-page update without the obligatory....
Elitist Jerks
