After the servers had their tantrum and locked the vast majority of us out on the 5th of February, we hung around in ts chatting about life. Some of RT1 were in their channel in the same dilemma as us. Communicating through the ts general chat with them they decided to gatecrash and make noises and leave again. Most didn’t have a clue what was going on as they couldn’t see the ten people come and go, Djinna took it upon herself to mobilise the counter attack and hopped into their channel, make and animal noise and come back amid much laughter.
Our channel name then changed from ‘Raid 2’ to ‘brb. Attempting to kill Butcher Heroic’.
“Hey! We’ve killed him!” Was typed out and it was quickly changed to ‘mythic’.
Time got on and the realisation that we were not going to raid that night meant that many started to log out of ts. The channel names were changed back swiftly to avoid any confusion from the shenanigans. It also meant that we didn’t get our last planned run through Highmaul and instead would be battling it out with the nasties in Blackrock Foundry on Sunday.

Sunday wasn’t a good day either! We were missing a few raiders and had a selection on alts or off specs to fill the gaps.
I got into the Foundry to find nearly everyone dying and this huge mob breathing at me. Between dying and ressing in a near constant circle, my pet being one shot. We hesitated by the door.
“The trash is worse than the bosses”
“Were going to need some cc’s”
“Yeah you can’t charge into this lot like Highmaul”
A small group of adds were pulled, I had been silent on ts as I was having a rather late dinner but the sight of the huge add lumbering towards us made me swallow fast and splutter “can we back up” over ts.
“ELLA!”
“She speaks!”
“Yes back up a bit”

The last small mob went down and the large one was pulled. Then something that hasn’t happened since our first attempts on Spoils occurred.
We used hero.

Blasting everything at it we pulled it up the ramp. So that when we died we could join the fight almost instantly. It got lower and lower in health. The tanks died one after another, running back in just in time to collect the mob after the other tank died. It was messy messy messy. But, it died. And dropped some leather wrists.

We moved on round to the right and after I died and finally loaded back in I was greeted by some ‘things’.
“What are those swirly things?” I asked, creeping closer to them and seeing if they were targetable.
“Their ravagers. Don’t stand in them”
Making a hasty retreat, I skipped around the side of them and joined the group at the entrance to a tunnel.

“This is the corridor boss” Rawls announced to several groans over ts.
“Don’t stand in the swirls on the floor”

We ran through, almost. The gauntlet of big Tectus like spikes meant that we were shuffling around trying to get into the best viewing position for the run to the next clear space.
“This reminds me of that corridor in Heroic Deadmines with those swirly crap…” I said. Thinking back to how I never managed to make it through that alive. This one however, I did.

We all skidded to a halt at the bottom of the tunnel to look at a group on a small platform. They appeared to be watching a brawl.
“We need a tank to take one each” Rawls said putting markers on the big mobs. “The little ones won’t be a problem”
“Well Marvv had just gone for it…” I pointed out as we watched him run at them in a true Leeroy Jenkins style.
These ones didn’t prove that much bother. Dotting them and then being unable to control myself I let off a Barrage. Once they were dead I noticed I had a lot of aggro.
“I’m being targeted by the big thing downstairs” I said, panning my camera to see who wasn’t very happy with me.
“Oh god. We’ve pulled a mini boss” Rawls declared.
I ressed my pet (stupid Raidwiper) and moved out of its sight.
“Feign death” Rawls suggested.
I did and then giggled.
“Oh good now he’s on me!” Rawls sighed.
“He can’t get us so we should be ok if we go out of range” I added.
“Yeah, once were out of range it will be fine”

We carried on to the right, heading for Gruul. Clearing the little trash which didn’t seem to hurt that much for the tanks. As we rounded the corner some more and caught our first glimpse of Gruul we managed to pull something that we 1- didn’t have any clue what on earth it was and 2- hurt like hell.

It turned out to have an actual name (which is always a bad sign) and like 90’s wrestlers, had a signature move that was painful as it was impressive. Shards of rock came splashing out at us and because we had no idea what was going on, we just stood there and promptly died. This went on for three rounds before we got our heads together and decided we might actually need a plan. We ate, flasked up and for the second time, used hero. Unfortunately, again there was a pull while I was naked apart from one solitary trinket. This time I could not equip anything, so resorted to trying to kill it with murder of crows, RaidWiper biting it and with me punching it in the backside. Due to not being able to shoot anything, my dislike of melee was reignited as the stupid thing kept flashing around the corridor. From the good work of the rest of the team, we killed it without much of a hiccup!

This was now the time that we were to face Gruul.

While we were going over tactics, hero dropped off so we were technically good to go. Food was put out for those who had died and we got into our positions. We had an attempt and got him to 70% which wasn’t horrific with all considering. Fenrir logged in at that moment and was making his way over…

We were just getting ready for the next pull (with Fenrir finally finding the entrance to one of the biggest buildings in Draenor) and there was a ‘brb’ of epic proportions, the kind you find on lists of most ridiculous reasons that people go afk…

Rawls was displeased at the laughing that had erupted over ts.
“Don’t laugh! A dog had just been sick!”
We still couldn’t help it, to which I had to explain the reason behind our laughter.
Worse still, Ant then explained that one of he dogs had thrown up on the sofa. Eeewwwww!

After this we went into ‘raid mode’ and kept the shenanigans to a limit. I had also realised why Raidwiper was being one shot by the mobs and possibly the reason that the tanks kept dying. I’d left growl on during the trash. There was ocassional constant miss-directing on Fenrir for… reasons. Which lead him to putting on a neutral silencer rather than having to macro ‘cancel MD’ into all of his spells. On the whole though, we behaved and educated ourselves with the boss and what we should be doing. We knew that we wouldn’t be getting him down tonight as we really were missing Blunnerz and his shields but we gave him a good go and did get the boss down to 11% at one pull.

We logged off happy, next time we were on, it was going to be pretty much everyone there on their mains. And we have high hopes for the first kill!