Now that Team Z has conquered Highmaul, I had a conversation with the other raid leaders about not getting in one another’s way. Team PM and Team Z and Flexorama are all currently able to take down more or less the same content. The teams have different players, so fighting the same boss multiple times during the week is not necessarily a terrible thing, however some people participate in multiple raid groups and in order to mitigate burnout we’re going to try not to overlap content too much.
With that in mind, this week I took the flexorama team into normal mode Blackrock with the idea of working on a harder boss than we normally look at. We killed Darmac without any trouble whatsoever, then we took 3 tries at Operator Thogar, aka the Train Boss. We got him to 22% on our third pull, a respectable level, and people discovered that (unlike LFR) when you do this on normal it actually hurts when you’re hit by a train. We then adjourned to the garrison where Thanael had an item that lets us summon a raid boss. When we tried this with 10 people the week after garrison bosses were available we got completely pasted, so we over-prepared. Let me tell you, he dropped so fast I think I didn’t have time for a cooldown.
Thank you everyone who came out for the flexorama. Next week I hope to visit the train boss again with a little more time on the clock, and we’ll run over him this time!
Team Kaels had a banner week as well. We had been talking about going back to Highmaul and killing the Imperator, but the lure of Blackrock gear had been proving too much. But we set aside last Monday to see whether our vastly improved gear level would make enough difference to let us roll over top of the Imp. We were inspired by Team Z’s one-shot (after, er, some practice attempts) of normal mode Imperator the night before. So inspired that we oneshot him ourselves. It was an epicly screwed up beginning. Tay had to go take care of a family mini-crisis. We got bored with waiting and decided to lifegrip Tay out of the encounter space and take a practice run. While we were moving Tay around, Lynera accidentally pulled. Carune was away getting a drink. I said to myself, what the heck this is practice, so I grabbed the boss and started my rotation. Transition in an instant, and I notice that Tay and Carune were back. So maybe we’ll get a look at phase 3 or 4, that would be cool. Transition again, over in a flash. Suddenly it’s the last phase and somehow everyone was alive. And before I had time to take a potion or use my cooldowns a second time,the Imp was dead on the floor.
This was very early in our raid night, and we were left with a bunch of raiders and no plans. Aeggonn or Sipsy, I forget who, suggested, we grab whoever is online and take a shot at Mythic Kargath! So we asked in guild chat and Tvath came on board. She picked up the phone and found us 5 people at the drop of a hat. We went in with 19 out of the 20 people required. I want to say a special thank you to all of you who joined our spontaneous mythic attempts. There was no actual explanation except ‘don’t let the kitties catch you, set them on fire’. A few people got eaten by kitties, I think we should have said that you’re supposed to DPS them as well. Sorry to say that we didn’t get a mythic kill this time around, but it was good practice.
So, buoyed by our Imperator kill, Team Kaels went back to Blackrock with renewed purpose. Tuesday night was a bit of a struggle, though. We had a tough time with the boss we had one-shot the week before, Flamebender, and then we had a frustrating set of attempts at Kromog aka Mr. Grabby Hands. A good night’s sleep was all that was needed though. We went in last night and one-shot Kromog. OK, two-shot. Maybe three but the recording wasn’t on for the first one so it doesn’t count. We still had over an hour left on the evening, so we decided to work on heroic Thogar. Our first pull was a bit disastrous. Both tanks went to the wrong side of the tracks so we canceled one another out, but there were also other people on the wrong side and it was a complete mess. We took a look at our actual assignments, adjusted our talents, remembered to re-flask, and worked on the fight for a few more pulls. And then there was a pull when it worked in spite of a spate of potential disasters. I died and got an incredibly quick resurrection, Sipsy died and I was able to hold out long enough for the res timer to come back up so he could be revived, I died again but the boss health was ticking down, ticking down, just concentrate everything on him (so many adds!), Sipsy died again (dot everything! Kite!) and then BOOM! Thogar lay dead on the floor, and another encounter was defeated. We had a total of 4 tank deaths and we still won. Because our team is awesome.
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