Critical Mass

We’ve been crafting stuff…

… and achieving stuff

Grats Senju on Frostmourne Shadowmourne, and grats to everyone else who got Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25)!

Lich King’s proving a little challenging… /cough

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Note: our recruitment needs have been updated.  Specifically, we’re looking for a Feral Druid (one that can put out good dps as Cat but is willing to tank on rare occasions) and a Retribution Paladin.

We’ve had a rough time lately, with a number of Paladins coming down with Pre-Cataclysm apathy.  We’ve been recruiting for a while, bringing new talent on board, and last night new talent and old combined with a lucky number to produce some fantastic results.

First, Heroic Putricide.  We began the evening with 7 attempts remaining, hence the title, because we spent 28 earlier in the week.  I honestly didn’t expect us to do any better last night, having reached phase 3 infrequently and gotten to sub-10% less than a handful of times.  Yet.. we somehow pulled out a kill on the first attempt of the night.  There was only five people left standing at the end – all of them melee – being healed by hots, procs and a Spirit of Redemption.

And then we went to try Heroic Sindragosa.  After checking our block placement on normal, we pulled her on Heroic and the contrast couldn’t be more clear.  Putricide is execution.  Sindragosa is a compositional check.  Bring lots of healers or wipe.  Fortunately, the berserk isn’t too bad, and to my fevered expletives astonishment and delight, we pulled off a kill on Sindragosa after just 5 attempts, killing her on what was certainly the last Heroic mode pull of the night.

Then we went to Lich King, laughed at his 100m hitpoints on Heroic, and called it after some normal wipes because it was getting late.  ~28 attempts for Putricide, ~5 attempts for Sindragosa, what?  And after all that, we finish up the night and the raid week in a really good place, having locked ourselves into WowProgress at #32 US, #101 World, and there we will stay until people start killing LK and/or the deliberately overtuned boss gets trivialized by a zonewide aura.

Really, I could just post pics of the normal mode kills and it would look the same other than some new faces – who I think have proven themselves worthy of being in the pic.  Great job, all, particularly to those of you who got thrown into Heroic ICC and really went above and beyond to get it done.

Edit: As you can see I finally managed to upload images.  Thank god for Google Chrome.

Busy week!  Without needing to sink time into Deathwhisper or Saurfang we were able to clean up some of the other wings including (all Hard Mode):

Festergut (#44 US)
Rotface
Blood Princes
Valithria Dreamwalker
and (drumroll please) …

Blood Queen Lanathel (#63 US) … triple vanq of course.

This puts us firmly in the top 50 US, with one more night and > 10 attempts left on Sindragosa.

BQL is notable simply for a well tuned berserk timer (which we hit, and won), but the fights aren’t really all that different or very much harder in execution.  The numbers involved are just bigger.  Deathwhisper is in some ways worse than a lot of the upper spire.

It’s also a good time to repeat that we are recruiting.  Currently seeking a solid tank, Holy Paladin and Warlock or other ranged dps.

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Edit: It appears as of this Tuesday the buff aura is in.  So I guess we’re now supposed to say “we were 9 of 12 pre nerf” or some such?  Now i’m even more irritated by the fact that we had bad disconnect issues last night…

Let a beaten hard mode pass.

Storming the Citadel complete in Hard Mode.  One step closer to drakes and more importantly, in future weeks we can snap up the free loot from Marrowgar and Gunship Heroic and work towards the stuff that’s important, like clearing the wings on hard mode.  Almost got Festergut, oh well…

Been some great progression so far.  #108 world Deathwhisper and Saurfang, with both kills ranking in the top 50 US.  And i’m pretty sure that’s the server first 277 tier token