After many months of effort, countless delays and false starts, hundreds of fish feasts and bad jokes, we finally succeeded in killing Lich King Heroic. Certainly the hardest (non-nerfed) fight in the expansion, to the point where it felt out of place. Definitely a test of our willpower, but in the end, in the battle of Head versus Wall: Head prevails!

As we spent longer learning each individual phase than we do learning a typical boss, I did a little something for each:

Phase 1

Phase 2

Phase 3

Drops were:

Fal’inrush, Defender of Quel’thalas - Grats Tilesohh
Royal Scepter of Terenas II - Grats Xtermz

A satisfying, if draining boss to cap off a somewhat lackluster expansion. One of the few kills we actually had to work for in WotLK (as predicted). Cataclysm (and the Ruby Sanctum), hooooooooo!

A kill this long in the making calls for a truly epic backlog of quotes:

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Thanks to some uncharacteristically good luck (and a very strong random seed), Aramul the Loremaster gathered the last Shadowfrost Shard he needed tonight to complete Frostmourne’s long-lost half brother (and secret lover to Arthas), Shadowmourne:

Here are some pictures of him looking manly (or Draenei-ly):

Congrats!

Aramul, being Aramul

Back in my day, we had to actually ask a real live person to about which classes to take and which to avoid. Nowadays, enterprising students just do everything online:

Just one dude left, should be a push over, right?

ENTRU’S LEAST FAVORITE PART OF THE FRONT PAGE

This is the worst fight possibly ever designed for WoW. Any fight which has a core mechanic which keeps half your raid from being able to hit their fun buttons for a good 40% of the fight is NOT GOOD DESIGN.

An impressive kill after some rough nights.

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Not since Scholomance has a fictional name wrought so much uncertainty in the hearts of RP-obsessed nerds everywhere:

First hardmode fight we’ve spent any real time on that actually had some tuning to it. Even so, the biggest obstacle was keeping our healers online during the encounter.

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Vampires aren’t really a big thing in Warcraft. Really though, it was only a matter of time until Blizzard ran out of pop-culture tropes to steal. A single boss with some vampire-ish abilities would have been reasonable. A whole wing? Is one of the game designers a tweenage girl, scrawling encounter designs in her Lisa Frank notebooks?

With a legendary killing blow by our tank, we put this hard mode to bed.

We got some more Protector tokens, and grats Lifeforce on Dying Light.

Obviously, we’ve also done a few other hard modes, but nothing particularly notable. End bosses get front page treatment though!

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We completed our ascent to the top of Icecrown Citadel today, killing Arthas and getting a cool title and a server first! Here is an artists rendition of the citadel and our progression through it:

Congrats to everyone! Loot was:

Archus, Greatstaff of Antonidas - Grats Xtermz
Heaven’s Fall, Kryss of a Thousand Lies - Grats Baltraz
Plus two Vanq tokens - Grats Shelendil and Smoothie!

On to hard modes!

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We finished up the normal-mode Frostwyrm Wing of Icecrown Citadel today after a bit of work on Sindragosa. I’m not quite sure how to feel about this fight: on the one hand, the mechanics of the ice blocks are pretty cool and the fight itself is a pretty cool fight. On the other hand, the debuffs prevent me from playing my class for like half the fight, which isn’t exactly fun. In any case, I sort of wished I were a mage for this fight: the potential for fucking with people is high.

Onto the Lich King himself!

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With no new post-worthy content for nearly three months, the front page had been looking a little dead! Why, with all the casualization of the game, I’d nearly forgotten how to chop a picture. No matter, you’ll really enjoy what I have for you!

After farming that terrible excuse for a raid instance ToC into the ground, we finally got some new content in the form of Icecrown Citadel. We’ve plowed through all the easy mode bosses, and with hard-modes still weeks out on the horizon, I worried I wouldn’t have a good excuse to update the front page. Luckily, clearing the second wing gave me some good material.

Here is a picture of our intrepid tank Ikonic sucking up Slurm, erm, Slime, during the encounter:

Loot was:

Rigormortis - Grats Smoothie
Two Vanquisher tokens - Grats Apeschat and Chickenfeet

The best part about having a raiding alt is I can put myself in twice as many quotes! Now, for the backlog you’ve all been waiting for:

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