Archive for October 12th, 2009:
And we did move on
Yesterday was raid day. We were in the middle of our first real Trial of the Crusader since all bosses were released when our hunter says ‘Hey Kadomi, you’re on WoW Insider!’ I quickly had to check on that and indeed, there it was, discussing the post I made last week of when it’s okay to move to the next raiding tier. Hi wow.com visitors!
As you can tell, I made the decision to schedule a Trial of the Crusader raid just to see how we would do. We had been there before when only Beasts and Jaraxxus were available, and we had struggled with the Beasts quite a bit. But yesterday we just breezed through. Yes, compared to Ulduar bosses, ToC is pretty relaxed. None of the fights has the intensity that I connect to our firstkills of any of the Keepers in Ulduar. The only fights we struggled with were Faction Champions, which is an encounter that fills me with rage. I don’t PvP, so it was very difficult for me as raid leader to suggest any working strategy. We were facing the pretty unpleasant combo of resto shaman, resto druid, shadowpriest, arms warrior, retribution paladin and warlock. It took us forever trying to figure out how to get the healers down, but the first time we got both of them down, the fight was ours. I was busy keeping the arms warrior under control, which was not as easy as it sounds in theory. HATE BLADESTORM! Ugh.
The Twin Val’kyr fight was two-shot, I kinda liked it, but I also thought it was somewhat confusing. Anub’arak took us like four or five tries learning it, but we steadily progressed through it, and thus, 2.5 hours after the start of our first full ToC raid, we cleared. Go us!
As is par for the course, there was not a single tank drop in sight, but our casters got to ooooh and aaah about shiny drops. Most raid members got a drop, which is always nice. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean full-time ToC now for us, next week it’s back to Ulduar. That gives me time to figure out how I can permanently weave ToC into our raid schedule without crippling our Ulduar progress. That one boss has got to fall, you know?
In my current raid gear, I broke 34k health unbuffed yesterday. That was a real high for me. We’re doing great. I have cleared ToC-10, VoA-10 and Onyxia-10, all this week. Our raid is pretty damn successful. It’s a fabulous feeling. Go go DotH. 
Three Car Garage (10 player)
Volazj's Quick Demise
Storming the Citadel (10 player)
I've Gone and Made a Mess (10 player)
Nerf Gravity Bombs (10 player)
