Now that the blog is back up and running again (thanks a million, dag) it's time to bring y'all up-to-date on our latest progress and general impressions of the 4.2/tier 12 raiding content. Long-time readers might still remember that our posts from the 4.1/tier 11 raiding content featured illustrations of our progress (rather than the traditional and conventional screenshots most guilds use) so without further adieu (or is that "a meow") and in keeping with our "cat"aclysm theme, I give you....
Shannox and Beth fell to us quickly and with relative ease. Baelroc and Lord Rhyo were the next to die by our hands. In relatively quick succession Alys, Domo, and Rags came afterwards. We even had some Rag dead on 10man before the nerfs came.
I think it's fair to say Alys was the most difficult encounter for us to master out of the lot. Everyone surviving the pre-nerf tornado phase, getting dps balanced on Aly and getting the birds dead before the tornado phase were both issues for us.
Rhyo was a fun encounter for team melee. Tons of peeps live "driving" that boss. The mechanic seems to be a lot of fun for them. I wouldn't know since I'm busy slaughtering fragments upon fragments upon fragments at the time.
As a tank I enjoyed the ballet that Shannox represents. Moving in coordination with the other tank, trapping riplimb at just the right time, etc. Over time it's lost it's charm as it's become rote but doing it all over again on hard modes lately has brought a new dimension to relearning that dance.
Baelroc is the closest thing to a tank and spank in the instance but even that's fun (esp. pre-nerf) in terms of the speed taunting to save one another from evil, vile, decimation blades. Add-tanking on Beth is fun (particularly) as a warrior since it's always nice to see victory rush light up like Christmas.
Domo and Rags were both fights that we picked up surprisingly fast. I think the concepts around the abilities in both encounters are generally quick to pick up and since -- especially in the case of Domo -- the control is really in the hands of the players, it's in our wheelhouse. Rag is all about stepping out of "teh badz" with the added wrinkle of this badz not only burnz it also knockzbackz. and upz. Non-hard mode the fight is a bit anti-climatic what with Rag being all "Oh, hey! Did I leave the oven on? I gotta go check" and then distracting us all with shiny purple candy.
Still, all in all, a fun raid instance. Some of the loot drops all together too much (Funeral Pyre anyone?) and some of the rest not enough at all (hello! Censure and Tanky shield) but we're used to that by now I think.
Looking forward to 4.3 and Deathwing. Seeya then!