Shannox Heroic

So we finally decided to start our hard mode progress, after farming for normal modes several weeks in a row, just so that we would have better gear when we began. Shannox turned out to be almost identical to the normal mode and kind of a pushover. It is absolutely undoable unless you can communicate well and coordinate the way the dogs are pinned in the crystal traps but after you’ve solved that the fight almost takes care of itself.

On normal mode you can basically ignore resetting the jagged tears debuff stacks on the tanks but on hard mode, it is essential. The dogs are not killed on hard mode, just trapped in crystal traps as often as possible to reset rageface’s feeding frenzy stacks, as well the jagged tear stacks on the tanks. It is made a little bit tricky by the fact that both dogs become immune to crystal traps if they run over immolate traps. Riplimb also runs faster and the jagged tears take longer to reset. The way we solved it was keep Riplimb close to max distance from the boss and a short distance from a crystal trap. When the boss hurls the spear, I would quickly kite the dog the extra distance to the trap and lock him in before he goes back to fetch the spear.

This maximizes the distance Riplimb needs to run and gave us just enough time to reset the stacks. Beyond that, just nuke the boss and rejoice in victory :)

Ragnaros Video

Zafiere has come through for and edited a nice video from our last week’s Ragnaros kill. The only small problem is the contrast, which is a bit dark but the music and timing are all working really well.

Enjoy.

Ragnaros Down

Took us a bit longer than I expected but after couple of weeks of trying, he is finally dead; Ragnaros is down. It was a properly epic battle, especially for our first kill and hopefully our guild master can managed to put together a video of what he recorded. My own decision to not fraps it was primarily based on the nature of the fight, which is that you will not be able to, really, see a lot from the tank’s perspective.

Now I wish I had though because I was one of the last alive when the boss finally hit 10% and the feeling for that is awesome. Like a lot of guilds, our first kill was fairly messy because we failed to take advantage of the second transition and get extra damage on Ragnaros, thus causing us to suffer a lot of meteors. For those who have experienced it, two meteors in the final phase is something of a goal. Three is not bad but is beginning to be pushing it, and taking up to five or six, like we did, is just insane. I have no idea how we managed to dodge so many of them, for as long as we did, but it made the kill feel appropriately epic.