Big Kick at the Bell...

With the first raid coming to a close, we returned from our Christmas break ready to bash through some more bosses.

We were 4/7M in Emerald Nightmare but hadn't even looked at Trial of Valor since the first week when it was heavily overtuned.
Some of the guild had been pugging it here and there but I'm not interested in pugging progress, I don't mind it much for farm bosses but I like to learn fights with my guild.

So...we decided to have a look at ToV on Heroic.
At this stage, the first two fights were not much of a challenge.  The raid is sat at around 880ilvl and pure numbers overcame any issues we may have had.

Helya, on the other hand, was much more resilient!  A true 'end of raid' boss!
Even comfortably out-gearing it as we did on Heroic it proved difficult and took us about 20 pulls to get the kill.  Another achievement for the guild though and, with around two and a half raid nights to go, we went back to Emerald Nightmare.

I was hoping we would jump straight in at Il'gynoth, our progress boss, but we started a fresh run.  Our rustiness showed with some silly wipes on each boss so it was probably a sensibly decision as we limped to 3 boss kills.

Now entering the final week before Nighthold was released, we had one last chance to push for more progress, one last chance to improve on our 4 Mythic kills... so I was astounded when we reset and went for another fresh run!

I think everyone gave up at that point... we might get one extra boss down but clearing our farm bosses then killing three progress bosses all in one week was asking too much.
Oh well, at least it would give me chance to try out the (amazing!) Elemental Shaman changes.

The sloppy play from our last raid continued as we scraped through a 1-shot of Nythendra with only 5 or 6 people alive at the end.
Elerethe has never really caused us any issues since the first kill and we cruised to another one whilst laughing at Coatsy, our Ret Pala, as he tried to fly across the platforms without picking up any wings.
Likewise, we laughed as someone hearthstoned to avoid a repair bill from an accidental pull of Ursoc.
Val (GM, RL, Boomkin) decided we should have a go at Il'gynoth... partly to see how far we would get and partly because he was a bit worried about Dragons.

The class balancing, plus the fact that most of us had reached that 35th artefact, had definitely left us with a net dps gain but I like to think it was the relaxed atmosphere that then allowed us to lift our performance on EyeTree boss.

Our first attempt was hilarious as we just had a go without refreshing tactics or anything, to see how much people remembered.
This boss reminds me of Mythic Gorefiend in HFC... it's as much about not hitting the wrong target as it is about hitting the right one. 
We struggled with it in HFC and we struggled with it here but we finally convinced all of the dps not to AoE.
From there we made amazing progress on each successive attempt!

It was after only 5 more attempts that we saw the second heart phase, and only 3 more for us to be celebrating another Mythic kill!
5/7 Mythic! 
And the legendary ring (the good Shaman one, not the rubbish universal one) for me!

There wasn't much time left in the raid but we headed off to Dragons buoyed by our success.  Val's fears were unfounded as they crashed to the ground at the second attempt!
It was back on! 
We only had one night left and two bosses to go but could it be done?

The final fling...
I've never seen the guild so pumped up for a raid, chat was flowing with tactics discussions, buying runes, helping with pots/flasks etc. as we felt that we had a big chance.

Everyone 'knew' it would be all about Cenarius with top guilds laughing at Xavius from day one.  OK, we are not one of those top guilds but they didn't have all the gear in the world for their first kills.

Using our gear advantage, we decided on the zerg tactic of blow everything on the pull and push into phase 2 before the third set of adds.
In practice, we had an astounding amount of dps and were slowing down at times to make for a cleaner transition or to help healers manage certain high-damage moments.

Fatboss stresses over and over again... Don't be shit at brambles!
And, if you have the dps for this tactic, it is without doubt the only thing standing between you and the kill!

Silly mistakes aside, almost every wipe was down to brambles being out of control but we improved our positioning and refined our cleaning tactics and improved a bit more until we were hitting phase 2 with a clear platform.

I'd like to tell you that we were perfectly composed as we repeated what is essentially the heroic strategy for P2 on our way to a kill. 
I'd like to tell you that.
Nah, it was a clusterfuck!  :-)

All of the neat positioning of brambles, the controlled cleaning, the resetting stacks and everything else just went out of the window as everyone just tried to pour as much damage as possible into the boss.
Luckily, after a couple of attempts, a few people remembered the tactics and kept the rampant brambles under control buying us the breathing space we needed to get the kill!

Xavius up and an hour left to get the kill, plans were already being made to extend the raid if needed.
I remember the top guilds finding Xavius easy and underwhelming... unfortunately, they were right.
A total of 10 attempts needed to kill the final boss, even if we do overgear it, is a little disappointing but it didn't stop the nerdscreams as "Cutting Edge: Xavius" flashed all over the screen!

On to Nighthold!