Best Laid Plans...

A couple of mental weeks and all plans of more frequent posting went out the window!

So... what's been happening?

First up, gratz to Navi and the Frostwolves on their Socrethar HC kill and apologies to Navi for all the comments I have missed on the blog (I have now changed settings so I get notified of comments).

Closer to home... after the dps check of Velhari and the awareness check of Zakuun, Mannoroth was a bit of a damp squib. 
Less than 10 attempts in total and we were at 12/13 Heroic!

It's one of those fights with lots of mechanics that don't really matter, kind of like Paragons of the Klaxxi (normal, not heroic) in SoO. 

There are lots of things going on, and you have to deal with them, but there is no real precision needed.  Nothing that really tests your skill, or punishes you greatly if some of the raid don't handle it well.

Bit of a let-down for the penultimate boss really.  Maybe, like Paragons, it's on the higher difficulty that the fight really comes into it's own.  Alas, unless (god forbid) HFC lasts as long as SoO, I doubt I will ever see it.

Archimonde, on the other hand, is a much sterner test!
The last boss in a raid always tests all aspects of your raiding and this is no different, what a fantastic fight!

Before we tried Archimonde though, we decided to dip our toes into Mythic and have a go at Hellfire Assault. 
By all rights, I probably shouldn't have made it into the Mythic team, I am still some distance behind the other raiders and most of them got their Legendary ring this week.

However, on normal/heroic, this boss feels like an elongated trash gauntlet and if there is one place that the Elemental Shaman excels, it's on the trash!  :-)

Mythic needs a little more care than normal/heroic, pushing a Felcaller to 50% at the wrong time caused us many wipes so the great strength of the Shaman was drastically reduced... and it made the fight really enjoyable for me.

Trying to maximise dps with careful placement of Earthquakes to hit as much as possible without pushing the Felcallers until the right moment all added a new dimension to what is a pretty boring fight on Heroic.

Some of the dps were complaining that their numbers were restricted because they couldn't AoE freely but I relished the challenge.  I, and the other shaman, could have dominated the meters while wiping all night given the free rein to AoE but this was so much better, so much more challenging, and so much more fun because of it.

With a 'famous last go' at just after raid end time, it all came together.  We had been pushing it close without quite making it and, when both tanks died at the same time close to the end of the fight we thought it wasn't going to be our night... but some frantic kiting, stunning/slowing of adds allowed us to scramble over the finish line!  :-)

12/13 Heroic and 1/13 Mythic, 4th place on the server.

I decided to leave the guild.