Unity Path Defeat Ragnaros! (Realm First)Posted on | July 10, 2011 | No Comments
Firelands is a quirky place. Some bosses are very straightforward, some quite challenging for the difficulty level they are pitched at. Ragnaros itself isn’t super tricky, but it is quite a long fight – which then means many, many minutes until you get back to sharp end of the learning curve. However, now the Heroics will start in earnest – and we’ll soon see the mettle of the instance. Unity Path Defeat Sinestra Heroic! (Faction First)Posted on | June 24, 2011 | No Comments
It has to be said that we threw the kitchen sink at this boss, racking up 377 pulls over 15 nights – betting on perfect execution winning the day, rather than farming additional gear, or reworking the tactics as we’d usually do. In final 3 days we kept missing by the most infuriating amounts, but in the end Sinestra fell to the final pull of the night – just when no-one expected it, we got an almighty run when Essence of the Red finished and everyone remained standing. And with that, Tier-11 is pretty much finished as regards progression content. We skipped Omnotron Defense System Heroic in order to go after Al’Akir, and the Ascendant Council made way for Sinestra. It would have been nice to get everything done, but it wasn’t to be. In hindsight, there were a few wrong turns taken in the last six months and those just cost us a bit too much time – but I think now is the right time for 4.2. We were the only team to complete all three end-instance bosses in Heroic (Nefarian, Al’Akir, Sinestra), taking two out of the three Realm First! achievements. We finished first on the Realm, with a WoWProgress score of 21561.12, and (as of 24/06/11) a world ranking of 306 in the 10-man format, and 813 in all formats. Unity Path Defeat Cho’gall Heroic! (Faction First)Posted on | May 30, 2011 | No Comments
There are some quite strict DPS requirements to get the phase transition right and power into Phase 2, and for one reason or another we were mired on 4% wipes for two weeks – which is even more vexing when the boss gives up at 2%. In the end, the boss fell to more of a “good riddance” grunt of frustrated annoyance and an eagerness to set eyes on Sinestra. Our time spent on Al’Akir, coupled with the above delays, put us behind the Realm First curve on this but we at least took the spoils next in line. Congratulations to our Horde counterparts on taking the honours. Unity Path Defeat Al’Akir Heroic! (Realm First)Posted on | May 15, 2011 | No Comments
Al’Akir is very front-loaded in the brutal phase 1 – giving an almost vertical learning curve and the impression of very little progress. So much so, that you could have passed the razor blades out after 4 days and circa 120 wipes, however things then slowly started to fall into place as more and more phase 1’s were negotiated and the rest of the fight opened up. In fact, once you’ve got a proper handle on phase 1 then the rest of the fight isn’t all that much different to the normal version in mechanics, just the numbers are larger. Phase 3 fell within 5 or so proper attempts, phase 2 a little trickier. This marks our second end-instance Realm First, complete with satisfying server-spam. Only one more left in this batch of content, but first Cho’gall is in the way – and he’s next. Omnotron we’re now likely to leave until the end, as there are more interesting and deserving bosses demanding of our time. Unity Path Defeat Nefarian Heroic! (Realm First)Posted on | May 2, 2011 | No Comments
The fight is best categorised as brutal numbers – damage needing to be done, and damage needing to be healed and it feels a lot longer than the two weeks since we added The Conclave of Wind Heroic to the list. A very draining encounter and one which is really a healer centric fight. The instance isn’t quite clear yet – we left Omnotron in preference of taking on the big man, but we’ll be back soon enough to clear our first instance in this expansion soon enough. Unity Path Defeat The Conclave of Wind Heroic! (Realm First)Posted on | April 15, 2011 | No Comments
However, it hit the deck with a very satisfying thump within a couple of pulls on the Thursday – after it was Dead Man Walking late on the Monday night of the same week, but we just couldn’t seal the deal at that late stage. But job done. Unity Path Defeat Valiona & Theralion Heroic! (Realm First)Posted on | March 27, 2011 | No Comments
After a fair bit of work and wipes we might add. A well-tuned fight, with the pressure very much biased to those in the Twilight Zone. Unity Path Defeat Magmaw Heroic! (Realm First)Posted on | March 22, 2011 | No Comments
Unity Path Defeat Atramedes Heroic! (Realm First)Posted on | February 28, 2011 | No Comments
However, most notable for us was our first Realm First since finishing Icecrown Citadel Heroic. Cataclysm saw the whole structure of the team change, and we’ve been around a week behind other other realm front-runners since raiding started again in December. However we took back the crown with this kill to the delight of everyone. Unity Path Defeat Maloriak Heroic!Posted on | February 20, 2011 | No Comments
This brings us level with the other Realm contenders – so the game is once again afoot! Category: Unity Path News
« go back — keep looking »
|
|
 |
     |
Like at the turn of the expansion there wasn’t much point in front page updates re: the kills of the nickle and dime bosses, but we’ve now cleared our Firelands on normal difficulty with the Realm First dispatch of Ragnaros.
Killing Sinestra in the 10 man, and known to be harder, version of the fight would be challenge enough. Add to that not having the services of a warlock, boomkin or shadow priest (one of the three considered essential by virtually all 10-man tactics) and further complicated with the Firelands 4.2 patch likely to arrive within three weeks of the first proper pull of the boss made for a quite insane challenge.
Compared to Al’Akir, this was a relative straightforward fight – except that it just didn’t go our way.
Two weeks to the day of the Nefarian Heroic kill, the next end-instance boss fell – Al’Akir.
And Nefarian fell, for the second time. We’ll ignore the Cataclysm Normal version, we’re referring to the 40-man raid boss and now it’s revised Heroic version. The history of the group stretches back to 2005, and a great shout went up when the old fellow was put away again.
We probably made a bit of a hash of this boss chasing at least two different strategies at various points during the learning phase, rather than rote-learning a single technique. This was never going to play to our strengths as a team, which is why we left it as long as we did in the progression order.
We elected to go an alternative route to the common wisdom, and went after the second boss in Bastion before finishing off Blackwing Descent – and were rewarded with this fine kill.
A definite step-up in difficulty, this was highly tuned and deserved it’s reputation as a gear-check. It took us a little under two weeks to put this one behind us, and the kill was highly rewarding. Again, a Realm First to add to our first kill of Atramedes – however the 10 man campaign now gets significantly harder.
Similar to Maloriak in that the route forwards was quite obvious from the opening night of action, but the final execution took a few more evenings to perfect.
Both fun and frustrating at the same time, we had the actuals sorted within an evening or so – however, the first-kill execution just kept going wrong around the 30% mark for another evening. Once we got into the enrage phase, a few more pulls saw it bagged, tagged and stacked.