Lich King 25-player down!

[maky]

We finished the first round of Icecrown Citadel in full force! A very happy moment for us all.
I`m a bit nostalgic in this article so excuse my silly WC3 references and the tendency of going a bit emotional

Prophecy defeats the Lich King in 25-player mode!

After 6 years...

I think I`m speaking for the majority of WoW (and especially ex-Warcraft 3) players when I say that killing Arthas is quite a hystoric moment. I know I have been waiting for the outcome of this ever since I finished the Frozen Throne campaign for the first time, roughly 6.5 years ago. I won`t forget the first time I completed A Symphony of Frost and Flame (the last mission of the Frozen Throne campaign). I totally loved the story, and the end cinematic was great.
After waiting so long, the time had finally come to see the conclusion of the storyline, and we were prepared!

Our (latest) adventure in Icecrown Citadel

We began our journey in Icecrown Citadel as it was launched, and slowly (or quickly) overcoming challenges (and gates!) one by one. The other topics in this board detail our previous victories, so I`m not going to repeat them here. I will, instead, focus on the past 2 weeks.
Getting Sindragosa down in the first week it was released, and actually reaching Arthas before the attempts got removed was a great moment. We took photos around the frozen throne and swore to come back to conquer it! We only had 2 attempts left in that week, it was almost midnight and we weren`t really prepared, so we just pulled for the giggles, to make an idea of the fight. Didn`t see much, but we were eager to go again.
We were quicker in clearing all other bosses in the following week, and managed to get 2 nights on Arthas. The fight is a very long, consisting of 3 phases and 2 transitions between the phases which are special as well. Each phase is different and has a significant learning curve; the fight is also quite intolerant to mistakes because some of them aren`t recoverable.
Our first real night (Sunday 14 Feb) wasn`t much success though; the "disconnect plague" was following us and we were also missing key roles in the raid, but at least we figured out the tactic for the first phase. We went there again on Tuesday (16 Feb) and made better progress (with an adequate setup this time), we came to see phase 2. This phase is the hell in 25-man, in my opinion. I find it the hardest, it`s also an enjoyable and very interesting phase. I liked the challenge and the way it was implemented, kudos to Blizz. In a few words, some Val`kyr spawn periodically, three at a time, and grab one raid member each. They fly at the edge of the platform, and if they reach it, they drop the member to a very long fall. This is unforgiving because you can`t combat ress the people who fell; if you can`t handle the waves you`ll lose people very quickly and get overrun. In addition, the new type of void-zone™ grows in size every time someone takes damage for it, making it very taxing for one bad step!
This phase clearly took us the longest, we spent the following nights on it figuring and perfecting a strategy. After some serious practice, we got the hang of it and last Tuesday (23 Feb) we hit phase 3 (the final phase) a few times, and quite reliably. We weren`t entirely prepared for it though, so we just experimented things around. It was a very smart move, because after analysing the logs, we came back last night with a winning plan.

This is the moment of reckoning...

We started our raid last night with Blood Queen Lana`thel. We still had the Shadowmourne quest to do (more details on this too, below!), so we had to be extra careful. We got her down quick, and moved to Sindragosa. Also had a Shadowmourne quest here, but people performed really well and she fell down too.
We were happy to reach the Frozen Throne again with a bit more than 2 hours of raid time left, and things were already going good. We completed both quests, which were the last 2 "attunement" quests for Shadowmourne. We can now collect the orange shards, so let`s all keep fingers crossed for Azgul (or Row, as we call him). Let`s get alot of oranges next week, Row!
This was very good for our morale. We started the evening with a promising 30% try, but there were things do be taken care of still. We still struggled a bit with phase 2 (one small error can wipe you very quick), and it was getting late as well. After more than 3 hours of raiding, it`s hard to play properly a very demanding encounter. The good news for us was that the adjustments we made for phase 3 and some other little things we did "as homework" went well, so we pretty much had the whole fight on paper at that point. It was just down to solid execution and fights tend to go down quick at this point. We had almost everything accounted for.
We reached midnight though, and our raid time was over. However, we were eager to have one more good try at him, so we went in for the last try of the evening, with full ambition.
When Arthas was around 55%, something wonderful has happened. I was so incredibly happy when I saw this, and I think others too. At least for me, it was the event that "tipped the scales" in our favor and totally motivated us all to play good. Mainly, we had to adjust our position due to some void zone placements, and we had about 2 seconds to do so (due to an upcoming Val`kyr wave). The moment I saw everyone in the raid playing so amazing and literally choosing the perfect spot without anyone having time to speak more than 2 words on Teamspeak, I was so happy and suddenly got way more confident. That adaptation was just awesome. It was one of the best teamplays I`ve seen in a long time when it comes to coordination.
It was clearly a good sign! There were some cheers on TS about it, so people were enthusiast. We managed to get a very clean P2 done, advancing into the transition (and then P3) with all raid alive.
Now the hilarious/comic part starts. We didn`t practice much P3 itself, because we had some issues with tanks and range. In fact, the previous longest try of the evening we lived about 2 minutes without a tank. Hunters and mages had a very good exchange of Distracting Shot and Overaggro™ combined with iceblocks and feign deaths, but the time we "bought" like this was very good to get used to the mechanics.
We ended up using soulstones and 2 combat resses on tanks It was chaotic and hilarious, hunters did an awesome job with "taunting" the boss for a few seconds just to give time to the tanks to accept ress and get buffs His HP was slowly going down and we got the rhythm of the phase, and a few minutes later he was at 10% and TS was covered by screams.

Kingslayers!

The 10%-0% phase is a free win phase so we were already considering it a kill. We won!
We`re very happy to be the first guild on the realm to defeat the Lich King in 25-man; we`ve "completed the circle" of very good performances in Icecrown by scoring a realm first on all the end-wing bosses, including Arthas.

Below, is our kill shot (click here for full-size image)



We`re looking forward to attempt heroic modes next week. I`m sure they will prove to be good challenge and great fun.

[Knox]

Guess certain Alliance guild got bent