It's good to be the King(slayer). Here's how we got there (not the actual strat, our phase 3 was still pretty messy and I want to clean it up before I post a strategy.)
With our second extension, we walked up to the Frozen Throne.
For the first time, we had a full guild run, on a fresh night with our three best healers, two tanks who knew the fight well, three ranged DPS pushing 9k on stand'n'cast fights and two melee DPS, only one of whom was here for the first time.
I was feeling good about it.
We spent 15 minutes talking about the whole fight, and then pulled. Phase 1: easy. Phase 2: just about perfect. We have a valk spawn just at transition and pick up a healer, the healer drops due to being in the AoE as the Valk slowly flew out and we started loosing people in the transition as tanks failed to pick up the adds fast enough and we hit Phase 3 down three or four folks and then exploded.
At that point, my feeling good went up to, "The cat's in the bag."
Every attempt there after was cleaner, and cleaner and we got to Phase 3 every single time. An hour in, on our fourth or fifth attempt, we wiped in Phase 2 for the first time due to a messy Defile and I called a 10 minute bio/walk/afk break, took a much needed stretch, walked about the apartment, and then when I sat down again, I broke down how to go from Phase 2 into transition - we stop at 43%, wait for the next Valk, kill it, move to the edge, and transition.
Bang. Phase 2 transition with no deaths, very clean. We pop hero, tanks grab the adds, DPS burns like crazy the phase transition goes perfectly and we hit phase 3 with only one spirit up and no deaths.
Lichy starts casting Soul Siphon on our ranged over and over which gibs us a bit on Vile Spirits but we manage. Defile dodging in Phase 3 is a piece of cake. His health plummets pretty fast - 40% gets to 30% and then sinks to 20% and suddenly Hammer of Wrath lights up before I realize it... and then inexplicably healers start to OOM.
We start loosing people in Frostmourn. Tanks start chaining CDs as he starts to soft-enrage and suddenly we loose our OT and I realize it's down to me, two healers and one DPS.
Behind LK I see our Holy Priest blossom into an angel and LK starts to cast Vile Spirits. 11%. With DP on CD, I pop wings, pop trinkets, and call for everyone to start DPSing, healers too. 11% dissolves to 10%, then painfully crawls down, 10.8%, 10.7%, 10.6%. The spirits are starting to come down and I'm out of CDs. 10.5%
Raid chat is going nuts. Vent starts going crazy.
I move him away from the spirits. 10.5%. 10.4%. My brain tells me to watch for any CDs, my finger hovers over Holy Wrath to hold off the Vile Spirits for another second when BANG. I'm dead.
0.4% to go? Really? What? How? We had ages to go on Enrage, I had AD up still, what happened? My heart sinks.
But then I realize he hasn't despawned and someone on Vent is screaming "We did it!"
I look up from a frantic scan of combat log and see him start his monologue - " No question remains unanswered. No doubts linger..."
Vent. Explodes.
After much squealing, /hi5ing and so forth, we collect loot, and with an hour and change left on our raid timer, we go do the weekly, try to pull the entire first room in Military Quarter and... because I forgot to rebuff RF after the rez, we then wipe on Naxx trash.
It's good to be brought back down to earth sometimes.
To make up for it, two days later, we decided to go in on our second raid night of the week and delivered what I had been promising the guild once we cleared through Lich King - an Algalon kill.
Half the raid had never seen him. First attempt was great but our Starkiller DC'd. Second attempt, he DC's again, I ask our lovely Elemental Shaman to switch to kill stars, but we still wipe to enrage at 5%. We swap out our DCing Boomkin from Australia for another healer, switch a healer out to shadow to kill stars, and then bang, down goes Algalon with a good 40+ seconds on the enrage.
After Lich King, the Algalon fight seems ridiculously easy.
We preened around Dalaran for a while with our second set of shiny new titles (Starcaller) and then went back in to Ulda and cleared all the way down to Yogg, doing a handful of hard modes along the way, and as it was an hour over raid time at that point, we called it after a messy swipe at Yogg with Freya down as our Keeper to guard our Sanity.
A bunch of us are one achievement away the Rusted Protdrake (One Light, wouldn't you know it)so maybe we'll knock that out one of these nights.
I'm very pleased with the way things are with the guild right now. I'd love to continue this sort of progression for the next few weeks in ICC Hard Modes and hopefully we'll see 3.3.5 on live servers in a couple weeks, and that will carry us through to Cataclysm.
My goal for the day Cataclysm drops?
Hover over the gates of Stormwind on a Bloodbathed Vanquisher with a Bane of the Fallen King title.
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