Tooth and Claw

Well last night was our first 10 man Rotface kill.

Man is he hard.

We cleared from the start of Icecrown and downed up to Saurfang, then Festergut. We still had 20 minutes to go in our normal raid window, so we decided to give Rotface another attempt. We wiped the first time but miraculously got him down to a million HP. Bouyed by this first hint of potential success we decided on one more final attempt.

With only 3 people left standing we actually killed him. So next time it’s on to the Princes, which we should take down without too much trouble. We might actually be making some headway into Icecrown now by the looks of it.

Who knows, in another month or two we could be wiping on Arthas :)

I also just want to give a big shout out to all those people who participated in yesterday’s 25 man Icecrown.

Congratulations to all those who won something!

It was a mammoth effort by all involved, with its fair share of ups and downs. However we did have the satisfaction of downing 3 of the events. Which is no mean feat for a random assortment of 25 disparate players.

We quite easily downed Marrowgar on our 2nd attempt I believe.  Our biggest issue was with Deathwhisper and add management. However we persevered and were rewarded on our 5-6th? attempt with a win. Gunship battle was the usual pushover and was downed in our 2nd attempt. The first attempt wiping with some confusion at a transition, the DPS launched before the tank and were taken out quite handily by the defenses.

All in all, a very good result and proof that a decent pug can cut it in the new 25 mans.

Last Thursday night was the first night we had an attempt to get to the new content (Rotface et all) in Icecrown.

Except Saurfang was being annoying and not letting us pass. Now I remember Blizzard saying something about how they don’t want to restrict people to having certain types of groups or requiring certain classes in order to be able to pass content. Sure, it was a while ago (probably at the release of Wrath infact).

However the nature of the Saurfang encounter demands ranged DPS. You could do the entire fight with all ranged DPS if you wanted even (excepting the obligatory tanks/heals of course). Our group on the night was very melee heavy (only 2 warlocks for ranged dps), and this meant that we couldn’t manage the blood beasts.

Tonight we’re up for round two, and our first attempts at the new content. Seeing we will have our usual group together (fingers crossed), I’m not expecting Saurfang to give us any trouble (seeing as how we pretty much have him down usually).

I’m more commenting on the fact that this encounter does seem to be at odds with the previously announced Blizzard philosophy of being more lenient on the balance of your raid.

Perhaps the long overdue Icecrown Citadel is nearly on its way.

http://bit.ly/5k2DYP

Blizz has just released some new pages detailing some of the bosses to expect and the dungeon layouts. Initially, I was confused as to why they would release the layouts before people had even been in there when I remembered they now have that map feature. So as soon as someone sets foot inside it will display the whole zone.

They have also put out some new videos, see them here

http://www.bit.ly/5haEg0

I’ve set up a a Flickr Group so that we can share screenshots. You can find it at http://www.flickr.com/groups/toothandclaw If you already  have a Flickr just click the “Join?” link & I can approve you so you can start adding photos to the group. If you don’t have a Flickr account, but have a Yahoo account you should be able to join up with that & then join the group.