Ahh, Anub'arak. Didn't we kill you before? Twice even?

While we'd probably disagree with Blizzard in calling Heroic Anub'arak one of the "hardest" WoW bosses to date, he certainly was no pushover. As with the rest of (10-man) Heroic ToC, we found him to be well tuned and a tough, but beatable, challenge for a 10-man strict guild like ourselves.

All in all, he required about 3 full raid nights worth of work to finish. During our work, we tried virtually every well-known strategy and our own variations thereof, but came to settle on a single submerge strategy that utilized our high raid DPS to push Anub'arak into P3 a little over halfway through his second ground phase. We continued to polish our ice patch placement, kiting, and add handling and were soon pushing consistantly into P3.

As anyone who has done this on Heroic will attest however, P3 is a pressure cooker. Tanks take massive damage, straining healers to their limits while DPS does their best to relieve the pressure by controlling adds and burying Anub'arak for a final time. Thankfully, our folks were up to the task and we took out Anub'arak shortly before the end of our raid this past Sunday.

Hurry up Blizz! We need some new content!

The release of hardmode ToC did provide us with something of a challenge, which was refreshing after the disappointing ease of normal-mode ToC. We had a turn of poor luck on the faction champions, getting what is reportedly the hardest combination, forcing us to pure pvp specs in attempts to survive. We adapted and finally overcame the faction champions this past week, though admittedly with an easier combination of enemies; we hope that upcoming faction champions fights will become easier with time.

With the ever so stressful Alliance Champions now resting peacefully 6 feet under, we invited 2 fine young ladies in Fjola Lightbane and her marvelous sister Edyis Darkbane to join the fray.

After a very cordial introduction on our first night, we reconvened to share our opinions of them more thoroughly. Our second attempt of that night became their last. With perfect synergy and lightning reflexes, even our fumbling Taurens seemed like ninjas.

Lightbane and Darkbane now rest below with Anub'arak. Or as we like to call him... our next target!

One of our big goals since the release of Ulduar has been to secure the Rusted Proto-drake that comes from completing the "Glory of the Ulduar Raider" achievement. For those who aren't familiar with that achievement, it's a meta-achievement comprised of nearly all the hard mode encounters in Ulduar (with the notable exceptions of "Observed" and "Alone in the Darkness"). The title "hard modes" do them justice - they're not easy. Certainly some are easier ("Disarmed") than others ("Firefighter"), but they're altogether pretty challenging.

Vortex had been stuck on the "One Light in the Darkness" achievement for roughly a month after completing "Firefighter" back in mid-August. We've given it a bunch of attempts, but could never bring it together for whatever reason. Still, we're stubborn and kept plugging away despite a great deal of frustration and ridiculous repair bills.

Earlier this week we had cleaned up a couple sections of the fight where we were sloppy and had pushed into the final phase of the fight a couple of times, so we knew we were close coming into the final day of this raid lockout. Sure enough, after one warmup pull, we slaughtered Yogg, losing only one person during the attempt and finishing well in front of the enrage timer (despite my forgetting to use our Bloodlust).

This kill (a server first among the ten-man guilds) and the associated "Glory of the Ulduar Raider" meta-achievement (also another 10-man guild first) leaves only two significant undefeated encounters in Ulduar: "Alone in the Darkness" (Yogg-Saron with no Keepers up) and "Observed" (Algalon). While we're not sure when we'll work on "Alone in the Darkness," Algalon is definitely on our hit-list and we hope to have some news on that front soon!

I'm lacking creative things to say at the moment, but suffice to say that the heroic version was the challenge we'd been looking for after the breeze that was normal ToC. Anub'arak was one-shot and dispatched of quickly, but we have no doubt that the heroic mode will continue to test us and force us to play at the top of our game.

Lord Jaraxxus was taken out with relative ease, though only on the second pull, as we discovered having one regular healer and a ferret wasn't enough to keep the raid alive, though the ferret did her best to press our afk priest's keyboard buttons and convince us she could heal it!

(pic inc!)

Afterwards, we took our usual Tuesday jaunt over to Ulduar. This Tuesday was a bit different from our other Ulduar Tuesdays, however: we decided to make use of the new 3.2 raid lock extension to leave up Mimiron and Yogg for hardmode work.

It was our first night of real work on the Firefighter achievement, and I'm proud to say we knocked him out amidst the blaze of the self destruct sequence! Amazing work tonight. Mimiron was the last hardmode we needed to unlock Algalon, and 3 of our raiders are now keyed to reach him!