Part Two

We had a guild flex raid. RT1, RT2 and some casuals joined us to complete the second part of SoO and the first boss of the third. Vinzlage (The voice of reason) was sorting us all out to make sure we knew exactly what was going on, when, where and how.

We defended Jaina (who is a secret bitch! After seeing the Alliance ending after killing Hellscream) and co. Most people who were whispering me while we were sorting out groups for the tower were seemingly praying in a ‘not me, please don’t pick me’ kind of way. I have never been up there, all I know is that last time we did this, it got really messy! As I have never been up I did a little check to see what exactly happens as the only thing I know is that they go up after the first Demolisher is downed. Here is the low-down on the towers thanks to Icy Veins.

When the mini-boss appears on top of a tower, the gate blocking access to that tower opens, and your raid can start climbing up (through a stairway located inside the tower). Raid members who enter the tower will notice a Tower Control bar appearing on their screen. It starts out fully red, meaning that your raid has no control over the tower whatsoever. As your raid members make their way up the stairs, they will be met by various types of (relatively weak) adds, which they must defeat. Each add that your raid kills will push the Tower Control bar slightly in your raid’s favour. Killing the mini-boss on top of the tower will affect the Tower Control greatly, ensuring that it becomes fully controlled by your raid. When your raid controls a tower, you can use the Anti-Air Turret located on top of it to shoot at Galakras.

Having access to both towers, and using both Anti-Air Turrets to shoot down Galakras at the same time will cause the boss to come down and engage your raid, starting Phase Two.

We got through it fine. Every time we do it, it seems easier and easier (probably more that we know more of what were actually doing)

Next we faced the giant piñata that is Iron Juggernaut. With ranged all stacked up against the fence by the entrance and the beast being tanked against the wall it was at some points a mass of bodies, after all the melee got thrown our way. With people screaming “get the bombs! get the bombs!” on TS it was a pain free boss fight. We ran through to Orgrimmar before the Nelfs had even landed by the front gate.

We went in and started clearing everything. We were going to do a big circle of clearing but we accidentally disturbed a Horde party going on in the pub and ended up with one too many trash than we could handle (ok, maybe ten more…) “Oh dear. This is bad” said the Voice of Reason. Yep. It was… hello corpse run! After that hiccup we got rid of pretty much everything, had a brief conversation about how we wished we could use the transmog service like we could use the guild bank (Hang on guys! I just need to get dressed for this kill!) and then made our way up the hill to get prepared for the pull. There was talk about doing a soft reset of them to get them outside for easier pulling but were too pro for that and with Marvv off to get them, Vinz set out some feathers to aid him back in one piece, we stood on the ridge with baited breath.

Our tactics for this fight vary slightly to the Icy Veins version. Where they say to pull them out and go directly into the massive open space thats by the entrance gate to Orgrimmar, we have them up the hill, near where you go through to the final boss. This is to make sure that we can then pull them slowly down and give us more space and time to get away from the Toxic Mist and then the resulting Toxic Storm.

I think we had a couple of wipes here, not anything major. A tank would go down and then a healer etc. But eventually we got going again and they died. Onwards to the General!

Things did get a bit hairy when the Horde tanks blew half our raid to smithereens. We metered out some vengeance on them for our fallen brothers and got to the entrance to Ragefire Chasm. “This is the dungeon, right?” Said Chizal on TS. After confirming that it was it was decided that Blizzard had decided to make this particular dungeon a Heroic for us to enjoy! We left Gamon where he was so that we could get the achievement ‘Gamon will save us!’

Some of the comments are hilarious about this:

Now we should stop killing him.

Hahahaha… No.

STOP DPS
STOP DPS 
STOP DPS

I think only a few people died. Ive slept since this happened and died so many times myself on that night that I can’t be sure! Gamon did indeed save us though!

On to Part Three!

Part Three

We were only going for the first boss, Malkorok. We were all too overexcited/needed to leave/not concentrating/dealing with real life goings on at the same time. (delete as appropriate)

We entered the hall (see below for image of it after our oopsy) and were instructed to pick off the groups of Horde minions and dispatch these before moving on to the next ones. After taking out the first two groups, one on the left and one on the right, someone (name no names *cough*Rolypoly*cough*) said “they don’t hit very hard, pull more”. Famous last words.

Marvv pulled the entire back row. Death gripping his heart out. Melee died instantly. “This is bad” said Vinz. Marvv dropped next. The screen lit up like it was an exploding christmas tree. Ranged bit the dust. ‘Whos idea was that!” After much conferring, it was announced that we were blaming it on Zinta’s pet. We ran back and then went forward again slowly. We ignored the group on the left, killed the group on the right and then got the group in the middle, where the exploding christmas tree thing happened again “I feel like I’m having a fit” was quipped on TS, I can’t remember who said it but it was hilarious. We then made our way up the stairs and tried to sneak past the majority of the minions but we failed. We got the group that we were supposed to kill and pulled a few more in for the ride. Eventually, we made it up to the top to meet Malkorok.

This boss was fun and a complete headfuck all in one go. Usually you get screamed at if you don’t move out of the shit on the floor. This boss, you get screamed at if you’re not standing in shit on the floor. (ok, no one screamed, but you can imagine what lfr is going to be like when that opens up) Usually you’re told to stand on a colour. This time AVOID THE COLOURS ON LITERAL PAIN OF DEATH. The healers got into a panic when they learned that an certain phases you can’t heal anyone you can only shield them. I got into a panic as at one point I was so low on health I could have been one-shotted by a lvl 1 and all I was getting was shields, and so many of them I couldn’t see anything that was going on. I died so many times on this. We wiped god knows how many times but every time we got him further and further as we were learning about the game play. It was frantic and messy. We soldiered on until the last wipe was when we had him at 9% health. We had got to grips with the standing in shit part, the healers were spam shielding the tanks (and noobs like me) and everyone who had the Displaced Energy debuff was running away at the right time. On the fight where we did actually kill him, I died (standard) and had to get ressed. So I did enjoy the fight to its full entirety and from a thinking outside of the box fight, it was immense. Imagine doing this with no guide, how many times did raids wipe before they realised that the purple shit on the floor needs to be stood in!?

The screenshot above, which was taken after our first wipe when we had all run back and spread out, showed the calm before the storm. The screen shot below is mid fight (and of my UI so everything can be seen!) Im pretty lazy with my UI and haven’t changed much. ‘Busy’ is what Roly kindly put it. ‘Shit everywhere’ was the more direct version from Aska!  I like to think of it as driving a car where there engine is temperamental. You know that it could get a bit much for said engine and it fails you, but if you talk to it nicely and stroke the dashboard occasionally, it will get you there.