Warmaster Blackhorn went down mid-January, and two weeks of pre-nerfed Spine fun were to follow. Having heard so much about the insane DPS burst requirements needed to kill the Burning Tendons, our DPS'ers hit their theorycrafting workbenches in order to provide the maximum possible for their class. Spec's changed, reforges changed, gear-sets changed: we even brought alt-characters. It started to look like it would pay off, as we removed the first armour plate multiple times, but I imagine that had this encounter not been nerfed we might have been on it for at least another month.
Patch 4.3.2 went live on February 1st. Spine had received a 15% health reduction to the Tendons, along with the raid-wide 5% health reduction on all mobs inside Dragon Soul. So, we knew that this would make the Tendons considerably easier, and allow us to focus on the very tricky add-handling that would come later on in the fight.
Sure enough, when we reached Spine on Wednesday after a quick 6/8 Heroic clear, we were able to lift the plates off straight away, and by Thursday we were already on the final plate. With the Tendons no longer a problem, we began to focus on our new friends: Corrupted Bloods. On the kill we ended up with well over 100 on Deathwing's back, with a tank kiting around 85. Incredible kiting was needed, and was, indeed, provided. As the last plate lifted up for the final time, a few stray adds killed one or two people, but the remaining 20 or so players were enough to finish off the Tendon and trigger one of Dragon Soul's irritating cut scenes. A very good kill, excellent progress, amazing effort from our raiders, and super organisation from our officer team. Congratulations to everyone on 7/8 - now let's go finish Deathwing off once and for all...
Check out two preliminary kill videos
here and
here. There should be at least two more PoV's to come, and in all likeliness a 4-PoV video coming soon!
Update: Hürst's Rogue PoV video is now available
here.
Update 2: Jinxed's 3-PoV video is now available
here.
Additionally, in a double-whammy of realm-first's, last night's raid saw one of our longest-standing members,
Hürst finish off his legendary daggers quest. We finished the raid with a Madness kill, and around ten minutes later Hürst was rewarded with the Fangs of the Father,
Golad, Twilight of Aspects and
Tiriosh, Nightmare of Ages. Many congratulations to him - I'm sure everyone in the guild would agree they are very well deserved.
And so, the expansion is one boss away from being drawn to a close. Madness of Deathwing is the last encounter that lies between us and that 8/8 mark. Despite everything nearing completion, we are still recruiting some classes. Any exceptional applications will be considered, so don't hesitate to make an application.
Tonight, we hit Gurubashi Arena for a battle royale. Since we're not that renowned for our PvP prowess, we thought we'd throw a little social event to determine who had the chops to survive a 15 player fight to the death. To put everyone on a level peg (gearwise), we all had to be naked. It was a lot of fun, and lasted quite a bit longer than we anticipated. The final two competitors alive were Foki and Cuddly, and this final face-off lasted around 20 minutes. However, in the end Cuddly just got the better of Foki, and claimed the 20,000 gold prize. Congratulations to her!
