Frostbyte

Another update hiatus, yes, but that's because I'm saving news for sets of three.

First, on the 15th of September (that's pre-firelands-nerf, doubters!), we took Majordomo down. An indecisive boss, he couldn't work out which was the best way to dispatch of out unique raid makeup. This indecisiveness proved to be his downfall, as we powered through both his cat and scorpion phases, including his second transformation phase - something we don't see post-nerf.

This opened up Ragnaros to us, who initially proved a challenge. With positioning key, this fight takes a fair bit of learning, even after the 'adjustment' we saw late in November. As with all good fights, it started appearing impossible, and slowly became easier and easier over time. By the time of the nerf, we were almost into the final phase. This made life much easier post-nerf, and on the 26th of September, we saw a kill.

Since then, another of our raid teams has also killed Ragnaros, which has allowed us the opportunity to attempt hard modes. We'd heard they weren't actually that hard, but for us, that didn't prove to be true, having seen 2 wipe nights on Shannox. However, after these wipe nights, it took just 2 attempts to kill Shannox on heroic.

Next stop, Heroic Majordomo, by all accounts. Wish us luck!

The silence .. what you think it means, it doesn't. We've not given up. In fact, we have made progress in Firelands with multiple 10-man teams.

We were told that, once Shannox and Beth'Tilac were down, the natural progression was to Lord Rhyolith. Trust me when I say that this is not the case. While we did eventually get the kill, it turned out that the 'next hardest' boss, Baleroc, is not hard AT ALL.

On the 18th + 19th of July, 2 teams killed Baleroc.

We were TOLD this was a healer-heavy fight. We were TOLD to take 4 healers. This is TERRIBLE advice. You need 2 good healers, or 3 at a pinch. With 3 healers, you will be running very close to the enrage timer. With 2, this is of no concern at all. Even a healer in off-spec can mitigate this problem.

Once Baleroc is down, Lord Rhyolith should be approached. In what seems like a highly random fight, frustration can easily set in, but once you work out your lefts and rights, things get a lot easier.

This is a highly gimmicked fight, but one which can be repeated, once you completely separate your melee from your DPS, into 'steering' and 'add' groups respectively. Once that's done, a bit of spatial awareness is all you need to get to the final phase. If you have the ability to get to this phase, you should be able to complete the fight, and take your rewards.

Things take a step up once you move onto Alysrazor, from a difficulty perspective. Everyone needs to be on the ball, and able to avoid whirlwinds which move faster than you can move. Tanks need to be able to position adds with pinpoint accuracy, and, well, the raid leader needs to explain that there's a final burn phase, which caught us out once!

To date, I've found this fight to be the most enjoyable. There's very little RNG, and if anything goes wrong, whoever made the mistake is immediately aware of that. In the end, all that was needed was a bit of care in triggering the final phase, and BANG, the gates open, and Majordomo Staghelm sits between you and Ragnaros.

Congratulations to all raid teams progressing in Firelands. We'll see you beyond the breach!

Patch 4.2 has landed, and with it the opportunity for us to spend even more guild gold on repairs following the inevitable wipes on the newly available content.

The Firelands raid starts with the requirement to kill trash. A lot of trash. Once enough trash has been killed (and hopefully rewarded the raid team with the occasional epic item), Shannox the hunter, and his 2 pets. A highly mobile fight, which becomes more complex as time goes on, this is a challenge for all involved. After a night wiping on him, team Fapulous managed to get a kill after just 2 attempts the following evening.

After Shannox (or before, if you're that way inclined), we have Beth'tilac the spider. A fight which requires careful splitting of DPS between 2 areas, this took a while to understand, and develop a tactic for. In the end, we trusted our healers and DPS to manage to take Beth'tilac down from around 90%, in the final DPS-race phasem which sees increasing raid damage as time goes on. Literally 10 minutes after Fapulous got their kill, La Pistola duplicated the achievement in an all-round successful night of raiding.

In other, slightly delayed news, we can also report a kill of Chimaeron 10 heroic. This fight seems to require a lot of luck, unless you seriously out-gear it, but luck can be earned by simply repeating the effort multiple times.