Night of blood and glory: a raid recap

So as you might have guess from my post late Thursday night, we finally (finally!) killed Anub’arak on heroic 10man mode. Hallelujah.

The night itself started in a way you knew we were clearly meant from great things. The first wipe of the night happened on Beasts, the worms specifically, because we lost a few too many dps to silly crap and would never have beat the enrage timer.

49.

We went back in and had a clean run through Gormok, the worms also went smoothly, and then lost a dps to an acid cloud. We kept going though–only one dps down, couldn’t hurt us that much, right?

Get through worms, Icehowl comes out. We’re plugging along, dodging charges and getting our licks in. Getting a little too close for comfort to the enrage timer. 30 seconds left before we all go splat and Icehowl goes for a massive crash. He leaps back to the middle, faces Cendra and charges. I get the hell out of dodge, but Cen doesn’t make it. He gets one shot, Icehowl gets all red and inflammatory and immediately goes after Demo.

I don’t know why but I through myself on the sword, taunting Icehowl, bubblewalling and popping trinks and doing my best to live through the enrage. He of course squashes me, but by the time he gets back to Demo the soft enrage dissipates. 11% left, easy mode. Two dps and yours truly are dead, though, so it’s going to be close considering how close the enrage is looming. Of course, at like 2% left he hard enrages, and leaps back to the middle to massive crash. We lucked out! We just need to dodge the charge and we can finish him off with ease.

He then slammed into the ground and killed everyone except for Demogar. Shit.

Icehowl charges the only one left, Demo, and slams into the wall, stunned. 41k hp left. Make or break time. Demo plugs away with what little damage a tank can muster and just as Icehowl stands up to crush Demogar under his blood-spattered fists, he falls over dead.

I wish I had a screenshot. Obviously that means none of this happened.

We all run back in, buff up, and start Jaraxxus. This fight goes well until we lose a dps to Legion Flames and another melee getting zapped by an undispelled Nether Power, and then a portal spits out two Mistresses of Pain. I manually wipe the attempt with a DI. Obviously, it wasn’t going to go well.

48.

Another attempt on Jaraxxus which did not go much better. Lost a melee dps to a Legion Flame, barely got a portal down. It looked like we weren’t going to make it but somehow by the skin of our teeth we pulled out a kill. It was really sloppy, but a kill is a kill.

Once the loot is distributed we pulled down the champs to mark them up. And oh boy did the comp we were facing look like it was going to hurt. There was a Ret Pally, Holy Priest, Resto Shaman, Warlock, Rogue, and Boomkin. The order I delineated was priest > ret > rogue > shammy > lock > boomkin.

So we pulled and while we were focusing down the priest, the paladin snuck in the back and one-shot all the clothies. Game over.

47.

Ok, new kill order: ret > priest > rogue > shammy > lock > boomkin.

We barely manage to kill the ret pally, but by then we’d lost a lot more folks to the other dpsers.

46.

Bah, another wipe. It’s obvious now that our damage wasn’t being done fast enough.

45.

DPS needs to die first: ret > rogue > lock > priest > shammy > boomkin.

Switched it up a little. I stayed as prot and did my best to lock down the shaman (but mostly focused on cutting down his totems). Demo went Arms and helped bring down the focused target. This time the Ret blew up almost instantly, then the rogue, the lock, etc. The shaman was getting heals off, but he couldn’t save his buddies.

I think the valuable lesson here is on heroic mode to ignore the healers in terms of kill order and just have them be hassled so you can focus on bringing down the heaviest hitters.

So champs went down and then we knocked out the Twins in short order as well. No wipes on that boss, which was a nice change of pace, haha.

After Twins we made a quick roster shift and one of the healers stepped out to let another dps come in since we like to two-heal Anub.

Once down in the cavern below, we get buffed up, everyone got pumped, and then we ran screaming into the fray hoping to shatter Anub’s confidence and make him flee the battlefield. Alas, he stood his ground.

We pushed it to phase 3 in short order (Anub was at like 55% when he first burrowed) and things were going somewhat swimmingly, but we got overwhelmed and wiped at 8%.

44.

Suddenly it dawned on us: holy hell, we can do this.

Formed up again and started the next attempt. Another quick push to phase 3, those we only got it to 13% this time. No matter, it was obvious we could do this.

43.

Alright this was going to be THE attempt, dammit. Pull out all the stops, just get it down.

DPS was amazing, getting Anub to 50% when he burrowed for the first time. Scarabs were decimated quickly, spikes were kited expertly. It was like a ballet of pain.

Once phase 3 hit, we all kicked it into high gear. The adds that were up were ‘sploded and dps turned their wrath on Anub himself. We got him down to about 3-4% when Demo bit it and I taunted Anub only to die in about two hits from trying tank a new set of adds and the big guy all at the same time. People started shouting in vent encouragement to the dps still up–2%!! 1%!! .5!!

And then that disgusting creature reared up and keeled over dead. It was done. Anub was dead.

Everyone cheered with a passion I haven’t heard since the first time our ragtag 25man raid killed Kel’Thuzad for the first time. What an amazing feeling. No tanking stuff dropped unfortunately, but it’s ok, Anub was dead.

I sat there in my chair, grinning like an idiot, for about 20 minutes.

(Side note: I know I said I was going to do a strategy guide, but I don’t feel right writing it until I have some nice screenshots and diagrams to go with it. It will happen this week. Probably Thursday since we’re doing heroic 10man on Wednesday this week. Many apologies for being a tease.)