Third time’s the charm

Last night we killed Horridon for the first time, which felt like a real achievement. Jin’rokh is a real tease, leading the uninitiated on to later drop their guard and then eventually their corpse. Horridon is where Throne of Thunder first really grabs you by the hair and says, “you eyein’ me, boy?” (Shoutout for Shaen, there.) In short, here’s where the raid begins to get real.

Anyway, little more than 12 hours ago we were staring at that massive engine of meat and headbutts for our third “real” night of attempts on him. No, I’m not counting our first night of post-”oh, hey, Jin’rokh was pretty easy” wipes nearly a month ago. That was a lifetime and 20 average iLevels ago.

Sizing up the fight before we pulled, we went over the few changes of strategy we were going to make — mostly dealing with positioning — and then steeled ourselves.

First attempts were rough. Shaking the rust off (accumulated since Wednesday) necessitated a few quick wipes on the early doors. Voss commanded us to buckle down and get to work, because he was sick of doing the first three doors and wanted to start getting some progression in. Then, fourth attempt we busted right through door 3 and then on through door 4, with only a smidge of terror-induced self-urination on my part. I don’t know what changed in the previous week, but the BEARS seemed to be somewhat declawed.

That attempt saw us fall apart just as Jalak hit the floor. The fight, obviously, became infinitely less chaotic when the adds were out of the picture. I think it’s safe to say that the difficulty of the fight is really concentrated in doors 3 and 4, eh? (At least in 10N.)

Next attempt was obviously the kill (I admit, my narrative structure here is being a tad obvious). I wish I could say I eeked the kill out with some derring-do or something heroic, but I can’t help but feel I wasn’t playing anywhere near my normal level. Maybe it was the quantity of adds and the rapid shift in gears between doors or how my weak snap aggro resulted in playing whack-a-mole with taunts from door to door, but I was on pins and needles through most of our latter attempts. And I’m fairly certain my play suffered a bit as a result.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t BSODing or anything — I just feel that my reaction times weren’t as good as they could have been. With lining up Shield of the Righteous and Triple Puncture, I dropped the ball a few times. Mostly because as DBM’s timing was elapsing, Horridon would turn to get Double Swipe off, pushing back Triple Puncture, and thus completely waste my ShoR buff. Generally piling up enough holy power — between banking and the 25% haste I have now — for an emergency ShoR isn’t difficult, but I managed to futz it at a critical point.

On our kill attempt I was holding Horridon as Jalak hit the floor and the dino Rampaged. As one of the Triple Punctures was coming up, my timing was completely off and I missed hitting my Q key (ShoR) before the attack occurred. I instantly dropped, bone and sinew torn asunder. Voss picked up the dino while I shamefully took my battle rez.

When Voss accumulated enough stacks of the debuff, I offered a switch and took over for him. I think it was around 20% health on the boss at that point. Driven by pride and divine right, I was determined to bring this flight down for a gentle landing in an field full of loot.

I was extra cautious and — it’s really incredible how much more attentive you can be when you get to stand still and don’t have to chase BEARS everywhere — just focusing on doing my rotation as best I could. I lined up a ShoR with each Triple Puncture like a peg in the appropriately shaped hole. It felt so good in that moment to just be zen and work through my active mitigation.

After an indeterminate amount of time (see: zen state) Horridon apparently lurched over and coughed up his purples. Sadly no haste/mastery legs, but the kill was a good enough reward, I guess.

Then we spent the last 20 minutes of raid throwing our corpses at the Council of Elders, but that’s a problem for another day.

So, goal for the future: be better at Horridon the next time around. A kill is no excuse for ‘good enough’!