If I had to describe this raid week in three words, it’d be “short but sweet”. And yes, I arbitrarily chose three words so I could use that phrase.

Last week was a pretty big disappointment with us failing to secure a follow-up kill on Heroic Majordomo Staghelm after spending most of the second night working on him. We got close so many times, at least four wipes around 1-4% health, and definitely two that were in the decimal percents. It was rough.

As a result, the goal this week was not to repeat that travesty. And on top of that, this week marked the end of Zilga’s tenure as raid leader as she prepared to step down from raid leading entirely to attend to her proceeding maternity. In her place Antigen and I would begin swapping off on raid leading duties. I was taking this week, so I used the opportunity to make one major change to the strategy.

This time, I’d give a 2 seconds warning before Leaping Flames were to occur, ensuring that everyone was moving, and hopefully preventing any damage from the “standing in bad” ticks as people would clear puddles immediately, rather than being stuck in them for a second or two.

I mean, it wasn’t as good as people just — perish the thought — looking at their screen and seeing if the cat was headed their way. But, if you’re going to smash tunnel visioning into tiny kibbles, baby steps are required. This would do.

We managed to kill Domo on the third attempt, with the first two attempts ending ignominiously but hopefully. The movement change definitely worked, as the first orbs phase went flawlessly. Didn’t even need a battle rez, in stark contrast to preceding weeks. The second orb phase was a little stacked against us. North side had two orbs right next to each other, the south had three. RNG strikes again.

Still, ranged handled them pretty well, only getting overwhelmed at the very end, right before they despawned. I called for the collapse, we switched it to Scorp, and then attempted to shave off the last 6% of his health before the enrage 30 seconds later. We easily pulled it off, marking our cleanest kill yet. And, more importantly, proving we can easily steamroll the fight — “farm!” the Rogue called out — and thus devote a lot more time in the second night to Heroic Alysrazor.

On top of the great progress we had on Alys on Tuesday, that portends an imminent kill.

Of course, the shoulder token I wanted did not drop. With my occupying the top of the PR chart, that was bound to happen. Fate refuses to allow me to have peace, no sir. On the bright side, Sulfuras didn’t drop off Rag for Antigen as well, so I’m firmly convinced at this point that we’re locked in some kind of death pact where neither can get our desired gear until the other does, and then when we finally do we’ll get run over by a bus the following morning, at the exact same moment.

Yes, these are the weird things I think about ever since I started raid leading again. Coincidence? I think not.

Sidenote

I’m trying to make a point of blogging more often, and one of the ways I plan to do that is removing the laziness concurrent with forcing out a huge post regularly through the clever deployment of microblogging. Basically, posts like that erroneous stub I spit out last night. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to do substantive posts, but if I catch a small little thing, or see an interesting and pertinent video or quote, I’ll throw it up all-tweet-like on the blog.

I’ve been slacking a lot over the past few months because pounding out 200 words or so for a PTR patch note felt like a titanic requirement. This should remove that malaise from the equation a bit. Apologies in advance if this comes across as me half-assing! I assure you the entirety of my ass is involved in everything I do.

The last two weeks have been building weeks for us in heroic Firelands. The Shannox kill came much, much too easily thanks to the undertuned-ness of the fight and the impact of the general nerf. Ever since our first kill, every subsequent one has been a simple one shot. I always catch myself suddenly noticing his health at 30%, and then a heartbeat later he’s dead.

Unfortunately this set up some rather insurmountable expectations for the rest of the hardmodes. People didn’t initially give them the proper respect, so as we began to work on Rhyolith some were expecting a road paved with cakes to lead them to a pot full of 391 iLevel gear. That… did not happen. To put it lightly.

Our first night with Rhyolith last week was painful. The shots we put in on him Tuesday went similarly. There are foundational issues with how we’re doing the fight, between driving not being as crisp as it needs to be, to dps attempting to lone wolf which leg they are attacking (rather than following the directions of the driver), to target swaps happening excruciatingly slowly or not at all.

So after Tuesday it was decided to put that fight on the back burner, our heads just weren’t in the game for it. Instead we pivoted (much more quickly than Rhyolith, may I add) to focusing on Heroic Majordomo Staghelm.

Hello, Domo

Our exploration attempts last week were hopeful. We hit the hard enrage timer once, so it was possible for us to eventually close the deal with another night or two of work. Though, our biggest obstacle was going to be Burning Orbs, which we’ve never handled with any particular agility. The orders came down — the name of the game was going to be communication, communication, communication. Mumble was going to be a cacophony, if that’s what it took.

So we talked, and talked, and talked our way through each Burning Orbs phase. And each time it got a little better. Finally, in our latter attempts, we were hardly losing one person. As opposed to throwing our hands in the air in disgust each time four people died to Orbs.

Also starting that night, Falowin and I began handling the Orb that invariably popped up in the dead center of melee. I’d park myself under it, hit five stacks and drop out, and Fal would take it. We handled the Orb flawlessly and it had no noticeable impact on my survivability, since Cat phase is usually a cakewalk. Indeed, any attempt with a melee Orb was usually much easier than the opposite.

It was getting close to the end of the time we had allotted for heroic Domo and we were still dancing with the kill, while the hourglass was slowly running out on us. With Ragnaros still up, we really wanted to not close the week without getting his Smouldering Essences, tier tokens, and remaining loot — even if that meant a Domo kill. So, at 10pm we called for the last attempt, and wiped at 3%.

Dark tidings

Of particular note on that attempt was that previously a shaman had reincarnated after the wipe to cast Mass Resurrection. A couple of us have been trying to break that habit for the longest time, but only with hardmodes has it begun to have the chance to screw us. I asked him why he would waste a battle rez he can use after we use up the three normal battle rezzes, which could potentially affect the outcome of an attempt.

He protested, claiming that he never dies. I affected a voice of prophesy and informed him that one day — one day — he would die after we used all our battle rezzes, and his reincarnation cooldown would be used up from a mass rez and that I would be there to see to see it. Oh yes, I would be there.

So yeah, three people died, then the shaman did. So he couldn’t battle rez himself and in an alternate universe we scored the kill because he was able to do that 3% dps we needed. Of course, in another alternate universe those three other people didn’t die either. But that’s neither here nor there.

I was just amused because I’ve never been proven right that quickly before.

(That’s a joke, before Vili fires up the snark machine.)

And the triumph!

In any case, determined, Antigen said we’d do one more — evoking the classic ES magic of performing best on your very last attempt of the night. We proceeded through the fight like normal, everyone taking care not to make dumb mistakes that would cost us DPS. Approaching the end, we lost two dps in the Cat phase after Orbs. The enrage timer was looming. We told everyone to buckle down and we could mathematically come ahead, we just needed to focus.

Finally, at the very end of the attempt, I prepared to do what I could to buy us a few seconds. At one second to go, I taunted for the fixate effect and popped Divine Shield. Of course Staghelm then leaped away, eating up any time I bought. I popped GAnK and then Ardent Defender, doing what I can. I got rocked pretty quickly thereafter.

As people got picked off, the dead shouted encouragements in Mumble. Those seven second beyond the enrage last seven eternities until finally that little bastard expended his last life, keeled over, and coughed up his purples. The kill felt infinitely better than our post-nerf normal Ragnaros kill a few weeks prior.

We’ll have see if we can repeat the kill this week with many fewer attempts. I think we have a good shot from all the new ground we broke on communication and Orbs this week. For the first time since our normal kill, we don’t have to just stumble our way through it, we’re actually doing it correctly!

The first round of hatchlings died with 37 seconds left on the clock. The second round I delivered the death blow with 30 seconds left. We never got a second round of tornadoes.

Majordomo was perhaps the most pitiable boss in there, as we entirely skipped his Burning Orbs phase. We killed the poor bastard in the Scorpion phase right before. In the lead up to the fight, we were figuring out what to do while missing one raid cooldown that we usually had, when I pointed out that the whole damn raid now has a 25% Divine Guardian up the entire time thanks to the nerfs.

It was embarrassing for poor Domo. The guy used to really give us a run for hit money. But now he’s been completely declawed.

Bottom line on the nerfs: Too soon, Executus. And too far.

It’s great that some guilds will finally get to see the bosses they’ve been stuck on forever. But at the same time, it really feels like the place has been outright cheapened. “Victory at what cost?”, and all that.

Ultimately, Firelands yesterday felt more like 30%-nerfed ICC. It was eerie, the deja vu.

On the bright side, we’ll probably kill Ragnaros tonight. About two weeks ahead of schedule, thanks to this handicap that’s been shoved down our throats.

I expect this will be our reaction when we’re standing over Ragnaros’ defanged corpse:

Let’s be honest, Baleroc is supposed to be an homage to the Balrog. And, much like how it took the Fellowship to throw their token old guy at its fiery foe to overcome the challenge it posed, so too did Enveloping Shadows have to sacrifice Falowin on the altar of victory Wednesday night. Along with most of the rest of the raid.

Much like our best attempt the previous night, I ended up buying the farm in the single digits, leaving just Ronada to tank. He did his best to stay up, and even lucked out by having the next blades phase being an Inferno one. But, he couldnt’ last past the high damage and bit it around 4%. DPS started frantically plinking away at the boss while those of us who perished cheered from the sidelines. Then the boss enraged around 2% and it looked like we were going to suffer the same disappointment of the night before.

I watched Baleroc’s health as it trickled away. Suddenly, it passed the 400k point around when we wiped in that amazing, heartbreaking attempt on Tuesday. I allowed myself to hope. Then it was under 100k, well within the range of one dps to take care of and we still had several warm bodies up and kicking. It was going to happen.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity later in what felt like bullet time, Baleroc keeled over dead and coughed up his purples.

And one of those, unfortunately, was that accursed shield. (I know, woe is me, an upgrade. It’s still ugly as sin.)

I’m really looking forward to writing a column about tanking this fight. It’s probably one of the more intense, reactive fights I’ve ever tanked which requires a great degree of trust and communication between you and your co-tank. It’s very rewarding to have the amount of synergy required to watch each other’s backs and successfully make it to the end. Well, not that we’ve done that yet. But, we all know that’s the healers’ fault.

What a close wipe.

We steamrolled through our farm bosses last night, two shotting Beth, one shotting Shannox, one shotting Rhyolith, and then lined up to face Baleroc with a few hours left on the raid clock. Plenty of time to really learn the fight and get some good licks in.

It was hard going for a while, getting everyone on the same page, but piece by piece it was coming together.

For the tanking, Ronada and I worked out how to mitigate the Decimation Blades phase where I’d taunt off him if he ate a hit until I ate one as well, to buy him some time to get topped off. I would also reserve the right to blow Lay on Hands on him if the timing was right.

Second to last pull of the night and we had this amazing go, getting him crazy low and doing a great job on crystals and healing. Finally, at around 13%, I bit the dust with all battle rezzes expended. Ronada bravely soldiered on through a Decimation phase that just had to occur as soon as I died. He managed to get through most of it but died on the last swing of the duration.

With Baleroc at 9% or so, he turned to start murdering the raid. Plate dps did their best to hold him off while people tried to whittle the boss down. It was looking like it would be close, like we might actually get him down.

Then, at 2%, he enraged and just finished us off. The last straggler and the remaining DoT ticks signed off with the boss at around 400k health.

The pain was unbearable. Though, it gave us hope.

We’ll get him tonight.

On the last night of the tier (I think/hope) we accomplished our latest raid goal and bagged our latest turkey: Heroic Maloriak.

This fight initially gave us a lot of trouble, working to hit the dps benchmarks, nailing down the red phase cooldown timing, the kite pattern for the dark swills, etc. Over the past two weeks that we’ve gotten serious attempts on him, we progressed more and more, ticking off those little boxes next to every aspect of the fight as we figured out how best to overcome them.

Last Wednesday felt like it was going to be the kill night, but despite a few 5-7% wipes, the death of Maloriak eluded us. It was slightly devastating since the expectation at that point was still that Firelands was coming out the following Tuesday and thus that would have been our last shot at Heroic Maloriak while he was current content.

We found out shortly after that it seemed 4.2′s launch was pushed back another week. We’d have one more week to down the sucker. We were going to make it happen.

So there we were Tuesday night, lined up once more against the dragon alchemist. The attempts that night were technically progression, but they were rough. Very rough. Melee was dying left and right in the puddles, swills weren’t dying fast enough, Maloriak’s health wasn’t where it needs to be. We did some roster swaps and the result was dps tightened up markedly and we were hitting exactly the points we wanted to. Swills were dying before the phase transition giving extra dps time on Maloriak, so that was fantastic. Those in the melee melange weren’t dying any less to puddles however.

After Tuesday night, officers spent most of Wednesday figuring out where we could improve our strategy. One of the biggest things we did was cut down on how many melee we brought, though most of that was via chance. Some people dropped out for Wednesday’s raid and that allowed us to bring in more ranged to compensate, rather than forcibly dragging some melee out of the building.

When Wednesday started, our first attempt was a good solid attempt. It exploding rather unceremoniously about halfway through, but right off the bat we were hitting the dps benchmarks, which was a great sign. As the night marched on, dps on the swills got even better and we were cleanly finishing them off with second to spare every time.

Initially we were attempting to blow bloodlust at the beginning of the fight, and then have it available towards the end, but as our raid dps improved we had to wait long and long for the opportunity to re-use it, and that just wasn’t working. We weren’t having it up when needed most, at the start of the last phase. So the plan changed to saving bloodlust for then, which meant we couldn’t depend on the crutch of that extra x% dps we initially got on Maloriak from the blowing BL so early. However, we worked through that and still hit the dps benchmarks, completely validating the change in strategy — at least in terms of not being disastrous,

The last hour saw attempts reaching into the last phase, and after a particularly good one we took a break to focus and shake off any panic. The biggest enemy we had this point was lack of experience with the last phase — every time we hit it, people would invariably panic, make mistakes, etc. These words will come back to haunt me, shortly.

So after the break we get some more attempts in. Before the next pull, Lofaz (who has been MTing Maloriak) offers that he thought it’d be a better idea for me to tank Maloriak in the last phase for survivability reasons. I suspiciously accepted, and when we hit the last phase that attempt, I ran over to pick up Maloriak after my aberrations had been dispatched in the verdant haze.

I immediately start thinking, “ok, don’t panic, focus on the flame jets. Don’t get hit. Don’t get hit…” And the first flame jet then hit me. Landing with an embarrassed thud, I recollected myself and proceeded to side step only to get hit again. This wasn’t a glorious first attempt on my part.

After those two fails, I got the pattern down and managed to evade further jets. However my positioning was terrible and I fired two out into the raid at different points. Panic ensued and the wipe was short but brutal.

I apologized to raid and indicated I knew the score know and would suck less the next time around. And, thankfully, I didn’t lie. The next attempt I did much better, keeping the flame jets out of the raid and dancing with Maloriak between flame jets like a nameless, nimble fella dodging the meaty hooves of some aging actress on Dancing with the Stars.

However, last phase panic still took over and we ended up wiping.

Finally, we came to the last attempt of the night. Zilga emphasized it was the last attempt and implored people to keep their heads on straight, to focus and do their jobs. The attempt proceeds in earnest and in no time we’re facing the last phase. I pick up Maloriak and begin our waltz. I kept flames jets out of the back, Antigen and Lofaz did their best to avoid the crushing, stacking damage from their Prime Subjects, the healers held it together, and the dps churned out as much pain as they could stand to cast.

The health on Maloriak trickled away as I unleashed a torrent of obscenities outside of Mumble while doing my best not to do something utterly moronic, resulting in my death and the squashing of the raid. Sidestep, sidestep, sidestep, flip, etc. That’s all I could focus on between intermittent activations of cooldowns to ease the pain I was inflicting on the healers.

As more dps began to die, someone had the well intentioned but supremely unhelpful idea of calling out Maloriak’s remaining health in Mumble. Zilga immediately putting the kibosh on that, yelling “EFF YOU, STOP COUNTING THE DPS AND KILL HIM!” I’m glad she did, that counting was distracting as hell.

Anyway, finally, to the relief of the raid and my spasming adrenal gland, Maloriak finally keeled over dead and coughed up his purples.

A mighty roar rang out from the guild and we all basked in the glory of our new titles and the glorious loot. I managed to snag the heroic Mace of Acrid Death (the glories of being the only shield tank in the tanking corps) to my great excitement.

As a portal for Orgrimmar was thrown up and we all departed Blackwing Descent for what would probably be the last time in a progressional capacity, I thought back to the first time I set foot in its halls at the beginning of this year. ES felt like a far different guild back then, the first time we downed Omnitron in 10man mode while wearing all blues. More innocent, perhaps. This has been a rough tier for us, with lots of hiccups and half-steps, though we managed a respectable dismount.

We attempted to goad Zilga into delivering an end-of-tier speech, with a resounding cacophony of “speech! speech! speech!” but she would have none of it. That cheer after Maloriak died was all the inspiration you needed, she explained.

I enjoyed the ten minutes I spent after raid in Org, fielding whispers of “where did you get that title from?!” All thanks to the best debuff ever.

Glad to be of service Nef!

¤ Tuesday night we dipped our toe a little deeper into the heroic modes pool, this time taking a swing at Chimaeron on hard mode. We managed to down the fight after six attempts — though, admittedly, we probably could have done it a little sooner if not for my constant confusion of who was tanking what when and why. It was like “who’s on first”, but without the timeless humor.

Feud tanking was definitely not as terrifying as I was preparing myself for. I probably over-did my cooldown usage, which led to me going into phase 2 on our kill attempt with no cooldowns remaining. And thus quickly dying. Not my finest hour, but it’s practice.

Indeed, on the kill attempt, going into the tail end of the fight both myself and the other tanks died pretty quickly (I’m assuming we all had burnt through our cooldowns) which didn’t leave much of a layer of protection before Chimmy got to the creamy middle of the raid and started ripping through dps faster than Antigen through a can of hairspray.

It was close — so close! — to being a wipe. Maybe seconds away. I was just bracing myself for the horrible disappointment of a .1% wipe, barely denying us the kill. But, somehow, we pulled it out. Not sure exactly how, but we did it.

I’m sure we’ll have a much smoother kill the second time around.

¤ Though, speaking of clean second kills, on Wednesday we opened the night on our second shot at Nefarian and it was ridiculously well. Our kill was a full minute and a half earlier than our very first kill the previous week, which resulted in a much, much easier time tanking adds. I hardly needed that paper bag for my panicked breathing at all. Moreover, Lofaz and I really have the hang of add kiting at this point. At one point we had 75% of the adds just drop at the same time, since their energy was so depleted by being so cleanly out of the fire. I was so proud of us, we make a fantastic team at this.

Likewise, when we kept doing phase 1, I made it my mission to make neater and neater piles of adds so that they’d all get revived at once by the first shadowblaze spark. I felt a little like Aldo Raine. You know how to get to Carnegie Hall, dontcha? Practice.

¤ Lastly, just want to speak a little about the current PTR turmoil. As you might have seen, Blizzard has reverted the nerf to Holy Shield on the PTR, restoring it to its previous incarnation.

Some folks on the official tanking forums (including the Pagliacci that seems to be the ringleader of the QQartel there) are chalking this up as some fantastic victory for rampant complaining in the face of oppressive game design. Or something. I’m not entirely sure what their justification for their jubilation is, exactly, since they didn’t actually accomplish anything. Nor can the reversion ever be tied to their grinding of teeth. Correlation not equaling causation, and all that.

In any case, I hope they have the foresight to realize this is not the end of anything. Blockcapping is still possible, and from the sounds of it, Blizzard does not want that to be. Much like the Tusken Raiders, the nerfs will be back, and in greater numbers.

As for yours truly, I’ve got burned once and I’ll hardly risk another singe until something very substantive ends up on the PTR before offering any further grand pronouncements like blockcapping received the royal assent, or any similar nonsense. Unlike Pagliacci the pally, I have the humility to know when I’ve made a fool of myself!

Hi all, been a while! The last time I posted was April 8th, which feels something like a lifetime ago. As I mentioned in my last post, I was going away to Paris on a work trip. Well, I brought my girlfriend with me, and on the last night there I proposed to her. She said yes!

In any case, my relationship with the game has shifted a bit since then. I haven’t been as enthusiastic as I was even a few months ago, and combine that with a news drought, the WoW Insider gig, and now (on top of that) wedding planning, I have a pretty full plate. So — what I mean to say is — I’m not sure what the future of this blog is. I’m still wrestling with that.

(I mean, I love this space and being able to write for you folks… but timing is tight. Just getting the weekly column done feels Herculean, forget anything on top of that.)

But anyway, I digress. Happy stuff. The other side of catching up is last night the guild finally down Nefarian, after about six weeks of Nefarian farming us. The last two to three weeks in particular were excruciating, marked by a major nadir in the roster. We had two weeks of being forced to 22-24man various fights, on top of various raiders having serious connection issues post-patch. Not our finest hour.

This week though, the tide seemed to shift a bit. We had two new recruits start this week who have both been absolutely phenomenal. And really nice guys to boot.

Likewise, we managed to fill a raid Tuesday for the first time in two weeks — right off the bat, no waiting for a 25th to log on — and as a result went to try heroic Halfus to kick off farm night. The last time we tried the fight is was a bit terrifying, to put it lightly. I was crushed faster than Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions.

This time, we tried a set up where I had Time Warden and the whelps, Antigen tanked Storm, Slate was left alone, Ronada (the bear) tanked Halfus, and Lofaz (the DK) tanked Nether Scion. Right off the bat I hit GAnK to eat the initial pain of the pile I was tanking crashing down upon me. After the initial shock I rotated cooldowns, and WoG’d whenever it seemed crucial, meanwhile keeping Holy Shield up as much as possible.

The first attempt went shockingly well, with us only wiping when somebody accidentally unlocked Slate, who then ran off and began eating non-tanks. Meanwhile, right before I bit it, both my quarries keeled over dead. Main take-away: it was totally doable.

Second try, we did the same formula. This time not releasing Slate. Went smooth as silk, though leaving Slate down the entire time made for an interesting run at the enrage timer. Plus we didn’t pile up the various mobs, out of a desire to play it safe. Next time we can be more adventurous.

Funniest moment of that fight was when one of the priests, Holydd, called out in Mumble, “oh god, someone’s at my door! … Go away!! … Oh geez, what do I do?” After a few more moments of agonizing, he was told to go get it, someone could cover for him. My targets were dead and by then I was running off to pick up Nether, so Lofaz could just focus on Halfus trading with Ronada. With us past the Danger Zone, Holy runs off, but is back a few seconds later to report it was some guy taking a dog around the neighborhood looking for the owner. Yeesh.

The Halfus kill was a nice morale boost, and we rode the wave of euphoria all the way through the rest of BoT and into Blackwing Descent to knock out all the bosses leading up to Nef. That lined us up nicely for Wednesday for the final showdown with Blackwing himself.

Spoiler alert:

Our very first attempt on Nef was 30%, solidly into phase 3. Which was incredible for starters. After that we avoided many clusterfrak attempts (that we were usually plagued by) and kept reaching into phase 3. Our fourth attempt or so got as low as 6%. The attempt after that, another 6%-er. Hell, that might have been the kill attempt except for a major flub.

We decided after the previous attempt to blow Armies of the Dead at around 10% to give Lofaz and I some breathing room while we dealt with adds. Even if the adds tore right through the ghouls, those brief hits we didn’t take would give us a brief respite as everything rocketed past 11 in those final few seconds of eternity.

Unfortunately, one of the DKs blew Armies while standing next to Nef. The Armies taunted the adds over to Nef, meteor drops in the raid, game over. After I was done pulling out my hair, Lofaz and I made it abundantly clear that DKs need to pop Armies where the adds are.

For the next attempt, I retinkered the Cardboard Assassin onto my belt, for another “respite tool”. Antigen offered to do the same, so we could alternate them a tad. The other thing I did, which I think was a gamechanger (for me) was moving some gems around to effectively block cap with procs/food/elixir. Truthfully, I was at .01%, which WoL bore out as only allowing 10 melees through. I think that near-guarantee of 40% damage reduction made it so, so, so much easier to heal me/for me to stay alive while trailing a pain-train of adds engaged in gnawing on my face.

The last attempt we did — the kill attempt — began innocuously. I got the adds to die in a neat pile in P1, P2 went by without much in the way of horribleness. No Blast Novas went off, Crackles were smooth, etc. When P3 started we all vaulted down to begin the eternal dance.

I grabbed the first major grouping of adds and began to move them as needed. After a few meteors, they reached the point where they would constantly fire, so Lofaz and I were constantly moving. Cooldowns were blown every crackle: alternating glyphed DP, the Mirror of Broken Images clicky, and then adding AD and GAnK to the mix as we moved on. Towards the very end, the last few percent, I was poised to self-Lay on Hands as a last resort. For what little good that would do.

If you have yet had the singular joy of add tanking for Nef, let me tell you, you’re in for a treat! Bring Depends, my friends.

In the final few seconds, Ronada died, and Nef turned to begin murdering the raid. I taunted him to buy the dps a few seconds, though truthfully, I hadn’t looked at Nef’s health in about 30 seconds, so I had no idea where he was health-wise. So imagine my surprise in my moment of Ultime Despair, when the lights were going out, the walls were closing in, and I thought we’d surely wipe — and Nef falls over dead and coughs up his purples.

A cathartic cheer rises up from the raid and those listening in from the guild who came on late. The result of six weeks of grueling struggles –sometimes depressing, sometimes heartening, but altogether nearly spelling the end of our 25man raids. Nef had taken so much from us this past month and a half. It was joyful to take a little something back from him in return.

I honestly can say that watching Nefarian fall over was, for me, like Admiral Akbar watching the Executor tip over and crash into the Death Star. That moment of despondent relief, followed by the realization of utter triumph. There’s nothing like it. It hurt so good to finally win.

You know, if that’s the last story I tell in this space … that’s not so bad.