Evidently we DID want it, you nefarious wanker!
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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...