My guild killed Nefarian for the first time tonight. Almost precisely two months after we killed Ragnaros. This accomplished our major goal of clearing Blackwing Lair before the expansion. So the guild was happy. No shaman loot dropped.[1] So the guild was estatic.
One interesting thing about this guild is that our raid leader spends a lot of time explaining things and going over the fight. He makes us do things like practice running to different spots during transitions. We spent over half an hour going over the full Nefarian strategy. (We earlier spent 15 minutes on Phase 1 only, because the raid leader thought it would take us a few tries to get to Phase 2.) Heh, sometimes I joke that the reason we do well is because we want to avoid going through the lecture again.
But it really works. It's one thing to be told, "When X happens, run to the collapse point", and quite another to actually do it. Actually practicing the moves before the fight starts helps give you an idea of how long the transition will take, and what the range will be like (very important for healers, who need to keep a moving tank alive). Dry runs are a very useful tool, and this is the first guild I've been in that has really made use of them.
[1] Unlike Ragnaros last week - 2x Ten Storms Legs for the loss. :(
Congrats Coriel! Nefarian is a crazy fight, definitely not for the weak-willed. And you're fortunate that no Ten Storms dropped. My guild has been seeing more Ten Storms than any other set recently in BWL. Just this week we watched Chromaggus drop double Ten Storms Epaulets, to the dismay of our entire raid, in addition to the Ten Storms bracers and Ten Storms gloves we ended up disenchanting. It's very disheartening for me especially, as I've been waiting for a while for some Judgement to drop :-/
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, dry runs are very helpful. I wish my guild did a few of them instead of wiping a few times to learn the transitions - but then again, there are lots of fights where you have to first down the boss and clear the room in order to be able to make use of the boss's room for dry runs. There are only 4 boss fights in raid situations that I've encountered that you can do this with:
1) Ragnaros; 2) Nefarian; 3) Twin Emperors; 4) Instructor Razuvious.
Anyway, congratulations on downing Nefarian! Plan on moving into AQ40 now? Or just concentrating on farming what you've got down and then moving into the expansion content?
-Baelor of Runetotem server
Level 60 paladin of the Alliance
Well, depending on where you fight him, you can also do a little practice for Chromaggus. It's just part of what I was trying to get across though. This guild puts a lot of effort into thoroughly explaining a fight before trying them. It's actually a bit of annoying for paladins, 'cause we'll buff and then the buffs will run out while they're still explaining.
ReplyDelete(You'd think we'd learn to buff at the end, but we never seem to able to hold off.)
I'm not too sure what we're going to do now. We're taking Christmas week off raiding, so that only gives us two weeks before the expansion hits.
I expect we'll give AQ40 or Naxx a look one night, just to see what it's like. I'm not sure how many people are in a position to get attuned for Naxx, and it's a lot of money for only going in there once or twice.
But a lot of us would like to at least step foot in the zone and see what it's like.