I find the new stats on Hungering cold extremely amusing, on one hand it's the best tanking sword in the game, on the other, it's the best rogue offhand. Should lead to some interesting loot drama at least =)

Also, what the hell is with that staff? It doesn't really seem to be an upgrade from loatheb staff/wraith blade+offhand, a bit underwhelming for a kel'thuzad drop.

The old Hungering Cold is now called Gressil, Dawn of Ruin.

I found a copy of the kill shot up and mirrored it on a web server. That's pretty damn awesome - congrats to Nihilum.

Any word on Ati'esh? I'd imagine that they would be doing whatever needs to be done to create it shortly after that kill.

Snazzy.

All that work for a Staff of the Shadow Flame +40 damage.

So sad.

I don't think they had someone with 40 splinters, or if they did, the head did not drop.

Argh, you deleted my retarded one-liner while I was editing.

What do people think of the amount of time it took to kill Kel'Thuzad in relation to the expected arrival of TBC? Is Blizz willing to let the expansion hit with only a tiny fraction of people seeing the totality of their content thus far? Guilds who have been "top-tier" throughout their history but are not in the highest echelon of that group, and who have not already started explicitly anticipating challenges like the Four Horsemen and Loatheb, just might not make it.

Was it intended this way? Basically, "Naxx is going to be hard, and it doesn't matter who clears it and who doesn't, because the slate gets wiped anyway?" Or are more people going to get him than I think?

So is this a congratulations thread or...? Whats the point other than aknowledging that they achived this feat of daring do? Granted I could have said more than "AWSOME", but I just said it with one word instead of a sentence. :P

Also, was I just out of the loop but when did Gressil become a tank sword? :(

Edit: ugh never mind, I thought Hungering Cold was removed and replaced with Gressil.

I'm about to go walk into oncoming traffic, now. Thanks.

Maybe there is both Gressil the DPS sword as well as Hungering Cold the tanking sword.

Given that the publicity push for the expansion is in full swing, I'd say the kill came just on time if not a little bit late. However, we've still got, oh who knows, lets say conservatively another 2 months or so to go right?

Oh ok, being an ignorant Paladin I wasn't aware that there were now two swords from Kel.

Thanks for the clarification :)

Gressil was still on KTs drop table as of the 1.12 PTR, so yeah, he drops two swords.

Wow, that staff is total trash.

On a positive note, Gressil + THC looks like it's going to be an insane combo.

Soulseeker vs Brimstone is almost identical to the old Shadow Flame vs Qiraji Acolyte debates.

I'd imagine that a large number of guilds who didn't anticipate Four Horsemen and Loatheb will be stuck there for a while - due to the nature of drops (a guild on our server has been in Naxx ever since opening day, has cleared one wing and almost two others - and has had ZERO DN piece drops). I don't know if that's the way that Blizzard intended it, but it almost certainly seems like they intended encounters like those to stall the progression of all but the absolute highest echelon of raiding guilds.

Totally going out on a limb here, but I'd imagine we won't see THAT many more KT kills before the expansion. I expect everyone who has killed the Four Horsemen will proceed to get KT kills within the next week or two and everyone close to beating the 4H will go on to finish it up, but the guilds stalled at Four Horsemen will probably stay stalled for a significant length of time. I suppose it all depends on how soon the expansion is released.

I'm sure gressil is still there since it was changed in order to make this graphic/name available.

Cant wait to have 2 73 dps 1hs :O

IIRC:

Hungering Cold was changed to a tanking sword with the current model.

Gressil WAS the old Hungering Cold, but got the old Iblis model (the straight blade, purple glow, clattering teeth hilt) with the heavy DPS stats.

Both should drop off Kel'thusad.

They didnt. The first person to get around 20 splinters quit. On this raid, they had someone sitting around ~24 and another around 20, perhaps due to attendance issues.

Keep in mind the top four guilds who have killed Sapphiron also have likely farmed a significantly larger number of Frozen Runes than the rest of us. I obviously can't speak for the FrR requirements of the fight, but if they are as high as rumored then I can foresee a good number of guilds stuck at him solely due to a lack of runes for FrR crafting.

Nihilum only has 24 splinters. So we'll have to wait for a DnT (or any other guild with 40 splinters for that matter) kill. And as DnT's Kel'Thuzad has been respawned that will be pretty soon.

I'm some what disappointed, i was hoping the fight would of taken a little more than 2 weeks to figure out. It seems that 4H encounter is the real challange in Naxx considering Sapph and KT were taken out quicker than Patchwerk.

On the matter of a Horde guild getting the world first, i'm more interested in what buffs were used. I can see the Z'G buff standing in for BoK, everyone being flasked up and out the ass, and i think the Dark Moon Faire is in Mulgore this week.
Not trying to discredit anyone's acomplishments here, but I disagree with Alexmeria's post. I think that the imbalance between factions can be evened out with massive world buffs. The differance, however, is that Alliance wouldn't need to go to the same lengths to gain a similar level of performance as their Horde counter-parts.
The second thing to consider is if KT is an agro sensitive fight, if not, i see it entirely possible for a Horde guild to blow him away after several minutes of total, unhindered, worry-free DPS burning. As a fury warrior (orc, duel axes, edgemasters), i find that most of the time i cant push to my full potential unless i have TA which usually means i wont have WF.