.

The wait was long but we finally got something else to do raidwise than farm ToC. But was it worth the wait? So far my opinion is yes… and holy crap we got trash again! How cool is that?! Anyway.. difficultywise the first four bosses were nothing that special.. once you got the tactic ironed out that’s it. In my guild the first four were all cleared during the first week. But this does not mean they would not have been fun. Oh I absolutely enjoyed all of them..

Lord Marrowgar

On normal mode this comes down to killing the spikes fast enough, which isn’t hard. Fires don’t hit hard and are easy to avoid when you see them slowly creeping up to you. Bonestorm doesn’t hit for much either if you just run away from it. But when you think of it… do you ever completely avoid the Bonestorm? No and the room is very small.. so I would guess doing this on hardmode will be a whole lot different thing.

His model is really, really, really, really cool though.

Lady Deathwhisper

Ok this is my favorite one so far. Trick is finding the right balance between DPS on adds and DPS on boss, switching quickly between targets and getting a smooth transition to last phase.

How we did it was pretty much the casters mainly on boss but helping out with adds from time to time, everyone else.. melee and hunters are full time on adds. This fight brings the evil side in me.. finally after months of ToC where it’s always the ranged who get the annoying job of switching targets constantly while melee happily just sits on boss and tops the DPS meters. Well.. guess what guys.. revenge is sweet. <3

Well okey I am not completely just on boss... what I like to do is as I am shooting the boss I'll be constantly panning my camera around the room to see when transformed adds spawn and be ready to run if you get the green stuff under your feet. Really fun fight where you have to focus on reacting very quickly.

I bet this will be a nightmare on hardmode too.

The Gunship Battle

This was actually one of the fights I was looking forward to most. And well… it’s kinda disapointingly easy. To be honest this is the new ‘chess’ encounter. Everyone remembers it from Karazhan don’t we? It’s fun, but it’s also very easy.

Rocket pack is pretty fun too.. except when I use it my Moonkin form disappears. Hrm. The loot issues are very bad.. if player is on the enemy ship when encounter ends he probably does not get loot. This seriously needs a fix.. done this two times now and both times we’ve had people who were not eligible for loot in the end. How about something simple as when you start the encounter the game checks and tags the people who are on the boat, and when it ends all of those players get the credit if they’re at least somewhere inside the instance.

Not much to this.. just queue up ‘The Airship Pirate’ by Abney Park and have fun.

Deathbringer Saurfang

Now we’re starting to see some difficulty here. The room is very small for 25 people so you don’t have much room to spread which can make it a bit frustrating.. I know I have been. The adds are not a serious trouble if they got at least some sort of slow effect on them. Focused fire can take them down very fast. Other than that there’s not really anything else to it. Swap between boss and adds and keep your position.

I liked the little cutscene after the fight. What kinda confused me was Varian showing sympathy towards Saurfang (the elder, not the one you just killed). This has to be a trick.. he was just trying to fish some ‘hey I’m not that bad’ points. Well d’uh.. I’m not impressed.

All in all it was pretty entertaining start for the new instance and I’m looking forward to the next wing opening in.. err, I’m guessing 6th January. That’s couple more weeks but since there’s Xmas in between it doesn’t really matter since most people are away and we could not hassle 25 together anyway.