4/5 Netherblade

Before I write my post containing all of my wild thoughts on this latest patch, a bit of news on the 25-man front for our guild. Last night was our first one-shot of Gruul’s lair, with HKM going down in under 4 minutes and Gruul himself falling dead in just over 6. The best part? Only one person died during HKM (the mage tank), and only one died during Gruul (the other rogue took a hateful by accident…). Well, wait, that wasn’t even the best part. I got my T4 pants! GG Blizz for not updating armory yet, or I’d have a screenshot (because I forgot to take one after logging last night). Well, Ok. Fine. The bestbestbest part of last night? Our raid dps was fantastic. 4 people at or over 800, 10 between 550-700. Yours truly? I settled into a groove early, and managed the ground slams and cave-ins (definately helps when your tank understands the importance of moving Gruul out of melee range cave-ins) better than I have before.

A completely different story for the HKM fight, where I only came in at 13th overall. Why? The mechanics of the fight. I assign myself to spam shiv to keep up applications of wound poison on Blindeye, as well as do my best to keep him stunned and saving energy to kick-interrupt his heals. Aside from that, the whole encounter does not lend itself to consistent melee attacks, what with all of the running around and running away. Anyway, here is an example of just how much the specifics of a boss fight can affect your dps.

Since we did so well in Gruul’s, our raid leader decided to preempt our scheduled Wednesday night raid for Magtheridon’s Lair and go take a sneak peak! After about 20 minutes of clearing (wewt for being able to use mind-numbing in raids again!), we spent another 30 minutes going over strategies, since none of us had ever been there before. I was assigned to control the shadowbolts on the fourth warlock, along with our best geared ferlol tank. We did a fantastic job, and would have killed him all by ourselves had we another interrupt for the damn heals. As for the success of the raid? C’mon. We were just happy to be there, but we managed to get 3/5 locks down with moderate efficiency. Good to get a look and experience the first wipe before we go in for real tomorrow.

Leaving Maggy’s, our GM noticed that the Horde had taken the southern most tower of the Hellfire Peninsula PvP objectives. He flew over to take a look and, with glee, shouted over vent, “There are 6 flagged Horde over here! Everyone! Now! Kill!” I got there second, saw a 58 Blood Elf hunter, and just couldn’t wait for the other 23 people arrive. Gankfest ensued.

Good times with good people.