The Die Is Cast

TDC has (once again) saved Azeroth. Deathwing is dead. The Cataclysm is averted. The Dragon Aspects are mortal. And Thrall is going to be a baby-daddy. Here's how we got to this point in the story...

The Deathwing encounter is the culmination of the Dragon Soul raid instance, and is a fight that puts any raid team to the test. Add control, buff management and tactics, environmental awareness and movement all are critical in navigating this encounter effectively. The battle takes place near the Maelstrom, with the four Dragon Aspects in support of the final assault on Deathwing. Each of the Aspects provides a buff, and as you move from island to island killing tentacles attacking each aspect you lose the buff provided by that aspect, making the fight more difficult as you continue. Adds are summoned on each island which require rapid destruction, making target switching paramount. Once the fourth island is cleared of tentacles, the raid must move back to the original island to attack Deathwing's head, while managing a new mess of adds (which if not killed quickly damage the raid beyond healing ability). This last 20% is hairy, as the raid most manage the adds all the while keeping dps on the head to beat the enrage timer. A challenging fight to say the least, and a good encounter to bring the story of the Cataclysm to a close.

This is the last (normal) raid encounter scheduled for the Cataclysm expansion. It's been a fun time raiding, with TDC performing better than ever, clearing each of the raid tiers when current. We will continue to explore DS on heroic modes, and may go back and have fun with some earlier encounters we didn't experience. Great job everyone!

DARY!

With one last kill of Ragnaros last night, TDC completed our first Dragonwrath, which is also our first legendary completed during current content. This is a great accomplishment for all of us; the transition to 10 man has clearly been a success, as we've had our best performance in Cataclysm, clearing all content before nerfs at each tier. We've been able to keep our team focused, while still providing the flexibility everyone was looking for with a rotating team.

Congratulations go first to Meghana, the proud new owner of Dragonwrath. You look FABULOUS as a blue dragon! Congratulation are also due to the rest of the raid team, as this is clearly a group success that is only possible with the long term committment of the guild as a whole. It speaks volumes for the cohesion we show raid in-raid out to accomplish this. We took Dragonwrath for a quick spin last night on the first two bosses in DS, and it's clear that Meg is going to be the chart-topper to beat. This will help all of us increase our success in DS, and continue clearing content like nobody's business.

This is truly a legendary accomplishment. Barney Stinson would approve.

The Rage of the Firelands is upon us, and TDC has started working through the early bosses. So far we've been treated to some unique mechanics and a fair bit of fiery death. Now its time for us to dish it out.

Shannox has hunter-like abilities, including two pets. Riplimb likes to play fetch with a giant spear. Rageface views the raid as a variety pack of chew toys that he can play with at random.

There are a few keys to surviving the first phase of the fight. One is smacking Ragey hard enough to distract him from the player he's currently chewing on during 'Face Rage'. The other is avoiding traps and luring dogs into them to stall and damage them, especially Riplimb when he runs to grab the spear.

Once placement and dps assignments are nailed down, its just all about consistency , watching for traps, managing the health pools to transition at the correct time, and some bursty dps/healing once both dogs are dead and the boss is enraged. All in all, a fairly problem-free first kill in the Firelands. Rags, we're coming for YOU!

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One of the most enjoyable aspects of WoW is your ability to interact with characters who have significant roles in the lore of the world. Lord Victor Nefarius is one of those characters we all love to hate. We first saw him in UBRS, as he pushed us off on Warchief Rend Blackhand and Gyth. We next encounterd Victor in BWL in vanilla WoW, where he manifested his true identity as Nefarian. He was conspicuously absent in both TBC and WotLK, so one might be forgiven for thinking that perhaps he was defeated once and for all. Lucky for us, and for the enjoyment of any who get to encounter him in BWD, that wasn't the case.

The Nefarian encounter is extremely challenging, requiring each member of the raid to play their role flawlessly. There is chaos aplenty in this fight, and any mistake can cause the raid to wipe. The fight is divided into three phases, each of which puts significant strain on the entire team.

P1 consists of engaging both Onyxia (raised from the dead by Nef, who clearly doesn't have a lot of filial love for the old girl) and Nefarian. This is a lot harder than it sounds. Onyxia starts on the ground in the arena, and must be tanked to the far side of the room. Periodically Ony shoots lighting from her sides, which requires the tank to turn her face to the wall, which has the unfortunate effect of exposing the raid to her tail swipe (many whelps, handle it!). 30 seconds after engaging Ony, Nef lands and must be tanked on the opposite side of the arena, as if the two are too close together they buff each other. While this is going on, a number of Animated Bone Warriors spawn in the room, which must be kited back and forth for a period of time before they despawn, only to be raised again in P3. We used a mage to do this (run Sniffle run!), which worked very well for us. A further complicating factor in P1 is that Ony gradually increases her lightning charge, requiring that she be killed before the counter reaches 100 and she overloads. In addition, for every 10% of Nef's HP he loses, he casts Electrocute, which deals massive damage to everyone in the raid. Timing dps to kill Ony while getting Nef to around 75% HP is critical in order to be in good shape to finish the kill in P3; we focused DPS on Ony until she hit 40%, then shifted fire to Nef (with the exception of one DPS'er), transitioning through 2 electrocutes. This allowed us to kill Ony before she overloaded, watch Nef take off into the air, and transition to P2.

Once phase 2 starts, the room fills with lava, and the raid team must divide up into 3 groups, then jump on top of the corresponding three pillars. Each of these pillars is now the home to a Chromatic Prototype, which periodically casts a Blast Wave that, if not interrupted, will wipe the raid. Each team must burn their Prototype down while interrupting each cast of Blast Wave, all the while healing through Nef casting Shadowflame Barrage like a spam-happy Fan-of-Knives AoE rogue. The trick in this phase is really about getting out of the lava quickly, while never missing an interrupt. Once we mastered this, the lava drained from the room and we transitioned to P3.

At the start of P3, Nefarian lands in the center of the room and re-animates the Bone Warriors the raid killed in P1. These mobs must be picked up by one of the tanks and kited around the room. We eventually settled on an approach that had our add tank moving slowly around the edge of the room, staying out of the flames dropped by Nef (which empower adds), while our Nef tank slowly turned Nef in order to keep both the raid group and the add tank on Nef's left flank. This allowed us to keep steady dps on Nef, while positioning our healers well to manage both the raid and the tanks. From here we needed to manage electrocutes effectively as we worked to stay ahead of add spawns (getting progressively stronger as encounter time went on). Once we hit 30%, things started getting even more tense. 2 electrocutes to go! 20% - only one more - Klobberer, our add tank healer, is throwing everything he has at our backpedaling bear Lua to keep him alive. 10% - almost there - healers are out of mana, all cd's are popped, burn burn burn HE'S DEAD!

This is a fantastic encounter, and one that will test the ability of any raid group. I'm very proud of our team, and our guild overall; we consistently live up to TDC's founding principle, which is progression on a limited schedule. TDC continually shows that it's not about time, or gear, or tricks, it's about a bunch of people working together towards a common goal. Well done folks, we Got'r Dun!

Now we just have to go spank Al'Akir...

For TDC, the penultimate boss in BWD turned out to be Chimaeron. For some reason, we jumped immediately to Atramedes after Magmaw/Tron, ending up with Chimaeron and Maloriak as afterthoughts in our progression plan (it seems we like to take the difficult path...). After less than an hour facing off against Chimaeron, it's clear we could have boosted our boss kill numbers earlier had we chosen a different sequence of bosses.

Chimaeron is a fun fight that centers around a raid healing team being on their game. The encounter starts with freeing Finkle from yet another misadventure (damn gnomes) by activating his Bile-O-Tron, which causes Chimaeron to aggro. The first phase focuses on the healing team keeping the raid above 10k HP, which is the amount of damage inflicted periodically by Caustic Slime and Massacre. Eventually the Bile-O-Tron drops offline for a period of time when Chimaeron starts arguing amongst it's three heads, which is very healing intensive and requires the raid to collapse together. Once the 'bot is back on line, the team can spread out and go back to managing the encounter. The real fun starts at 20%...

Once Chimaeron reaches 20% HP, he becomes untauntable, and the raid becomes unhealable. This means everyone goes balls to the wall on dps, and uses aggro dumps and kiting kung-fu to dish out as much damage as they can before they die. Even the healers get in on the fun, wanding the old hydra for all they're worth. It's a chaotic end to a fun fight, and one that proved little challenge to the TDC team.

Only Nefarian remains allive in BWD. We think it's time to change that.

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With Cho'gall dispatched, TDC moved our attention back to Blackwing Descent. We had three targets left there, and Maloriak, Nefarian's mad scientist, was first on the menu.

The encounter has similarities to the Putricide encounter in ICC, what with alchemical vials being tossed around, as well as an emphasis on add control. Maloriak tosses three different colored vials, each of which has a different set of requirements when it is active. In every vial phase, Mal summons Abberrations twice during each vial; these can be interrupted or allowed to occur. The caveat is that whatever adds are unsummoned when Mal transitions to P2 will be summoned in mass, in addition to the Prime Subject adds that spawn. When Mal used the red vial, the raid grouped up on the tank to mitigate flame damage, with the OT picking up adds as they spawned (we chose to interrupt every other add spawn, which made add control more manageable for us). During the blue vial, we spread out ensuring adequate spacing to mitigate frost damage, while breaking affected raiders out of ice tombs as needed. During the green vial, the raid is provided with a damage buff and a damage taken debuff, which is also applied to the adds; this allowed us to AoE the adds down during this phase.

Once we hit 25%, Maloriak transitions to P2. In this phase he was tanked against the wall to minimize the potential damage to the raid via his Magma Jets. Additionally he spawns two Prime Subjects, who randomly Fixate on a raider and must be kited until the Fixate changes target. This is a hard burn phase, that requires the raid to be very aware of surroundings and to maximize dps in order to overcome the Chaos.

Maloriak was a simple encounter for TDC; we spent no more than an hour and a half before we downed him. He is no Professor Putricide indeed! On to Chimaeron!