Mythic Fallen Avatar...

There was a lot of confidence in the team when we started Mythic progression in Tomb of Sargeras, we honestly felt like we had a good shot at the Cutting Edge title even on our strict 2 raids/week schedule.

It started quite well, we pushed through the first 5 in reasonable time and still thought we were in with a shot as we approached Mistress Sass'zine.

Talk about a brick wall, ours was 3 bosses thick!

Mistress was the first to really show how little some of our raiders actually took in from Heroic kills with the basic mechanics failed over and over again, before we even got to any of the Mythic mechanics!
Maiden of Vigilance was no better, only serving to highlight an almost complete lack of awareness in the team.  We finally resorted to the RL calling out "ORB!" every 8 seconds through the fight.

Fallen Avatar... was a combination of the two!
Repeated failing of Heroic mechanics and lack of raid awareness to an almost comical extent, it was too much for our RL who lasted about 5 pulls before taking a break for the rest of the tier.

The fight is incredible! 
Without doubt the biggest challenge I have faced while playing WoW... and with our RL on sabbatical, it needed someone to step in.
Can you see where this is going?

Yes, I volunteered my help. 
After managing to avoid any form of responsibility in the guild for two years, I was sucked in by a combination of wanting to help out the RL who I really like, and flattery from the GM.
He talked me into the job just as I was talking myself into it!

The Tomb of Soak-geras meme is typified by this fight...
4 Touch of Sargeras that need to be soaked, preferably solo, once per minute (You've got 4 rogues, right?)
The reason you want to solo those is because you have 12 people (2 teams of 6) soaking 2 beams channelling into the boss.  Soaking this beam gave you a massive reduced healing debuff meaning you couldn't be healed back up from any damage making every mechanic even more dangerous.

Looking back on it now, I think the real difficulty of those mechanics were that they forced you into specific positions. 
The other mechanics in the fight, the ones from Heroic...
Rupture Realities - Get away from the boss
Daggers (5 on mythic!) - Drop them at back/sides
Maiden Shield - Follow Maiden to burn through it or wipe

... also pushed your positioning, forcing you into areas of the room you didn't want to be in.

"Why does it matter?"  I hear you ask.
Unbound Chaos, that's why!

Easy to deal with on heroic, a series of bombs dropped on each player, you just ran and you could avoid every hit.
You don't deal with it any differently on Mythic to be honest but it was the architect of our downfall on the vast majority of our 300+ wipes!

All of those other mechanics forcing your positioning made Unbound Chaos extremely difficult to handle.  It became one of those mechanics that made you hate your fellow raider as they repeatedly ran across your line and killed you.

We tried so many different approaches to make it easier but, in the end, there was nothing we could do about it.  You either had to develop some positional awareness or wipe.
It is so disheartening as a Raid Leader when, after many many wipes, your only recourse is "Git Gud Scrub!"

And it was draining!  Trying to watch so many things all at once whilst still doing your own part (16 people soaking, no room for passengers!) and throw in some dps (very little from me in the end) was exhausting.
Phase 2 was an absolute relief in comparison!

We knew for so long that it would just take a clean run through P1, then keeping concentration in P2 , and the kill would be ours.  When it finally came, there was a moment of almost stunned disbelief that we have done it... then the nerdscreams began!  :)

There might not be any fights as taxing as this in Antorus but it was clear to me that I would struggle to lead Mythic raids while playing my Mage, I'm just not good enough to split my concentration that well.
Playing Shaman though, that I can do!

Back playing Shaman, I missed it so much, and back on the blog!

Good times!

(Now... where is that chain lightning button?)