Patch 4.1 Mage Changes!

I love this new patch!  They are buffing my favorite spec, Arcane!!  Here are the changes below:

Arcane Blast cast time has been reduced to 2.0 seconds, down from 2.35 seconds. In addition, the stacking effect of Arcane Blast now increases the damage done by Arcane Explosion, and Arcane Explosion does not consume that effect.

Arcane Explosion damage has been increased by 30%.
Arcane Missiles damage has been increased by 13%.
Blizzard damage has been increased by 70%.
Frost Armor has been reworked:
    *         It now reduces physical damage taken by 15%, instead of providing 20% additional armor.
    *         The Chilled proc from Frost Armor can no longer proc Fingers of Frost.
    *         The attack speed slow from the Chilled proc is now 20%, down from 25%, but it also affects ranged attack speed.
    *         Frost Armor also no longer increases Frost resistance.
Frostbolt damage has been increased by 10%.

Talent Specializations
    *         Arcane
                       Arcane Barrage damage has been increased by 13%.

                       Improved Arcane Explosion now also reduces the mana cost of Arcane Explosion by 25/50%.
    *         Fire
                       Combustion no longer has a global cooldown.

                       Ignite is no longer triggered from periodic critical effects.           
    *         Frost
                      Fingers of Frost bonus damage applied to Ice Lance has been increased to 25%, up from 15%.
                      Ice Barrier base damage value has been increased by approximately 120%. In addition, the benefit from spell power has been increased by approximately 8%.
                     The root effect from Shattered Barrier now shares diminishing returns with the root from Improved Cone of Cold.

Glyphs
    *         Glyph of Frost Armor (new glyph): Frost Armor also causes the mage to regenerate 2% of maximum mana every 5 seconds.

Pit Lord Argaloth

Pit Lord Argaloth is the first and only boss currently in Baradin Hold. Whichever factions controls Tol Barad has access to this boss similar to Vault of Archavon from WOTLK.  This is a pretty easy fight especially for us mages. 

Split your raid in two equally-size groups, one on each side of the boss. You can use the metal grid on the floor to align the groups. Every time Argaloth casts Meteor Slash, you want the tanks to switch. Half of your raid being stacked will help minimize the damage, and the tank rotation will make sure that nobody eats a second Meteor Slash while the increased Fire damage taken debuff is still on. Consuming Darkness is a fairly nasty DoT that should be removed as quickly as possible.

At 66% and 33% Argaloth will start channeling Fel Firestorm. Simply run around (individually, not as a group) without stopping for the duration of the spell, making sure you are back near your assigned position when it's over.

The 5-minute Berserk timer requires each one of your 6 DPS to pull about 10k on average.  This fight is basically a DPS check with fairly easy mechanics.  This is defiantely puggable as long as you have DPS that can put out the required amount.

Both 10 man and 25 man drop the same loot.  Make sure your doing this every week so you can get awesome PvE and PvP gear!

Heroic Wands Cataclysm (RARE!!!)

My suit is really coming together for my mage finally. She has four 359 item level pieces after finishing off Exalted with the Earthen Ring and Ramkahen for Flamebloom Gloves and Desert Walker Sandals and making the Breeches of Mended Nightmares and Dreamless Belt with tailoring. Her gear is looking good with all those other pieces colored in blue. There is a problem though I still have that stupid 318 item level wand from a quest in Twilight Highlands. You might think I’m lazy and not running enough heroics? Well that’s simply not true!


There are only two wands to choose from with a 346 item level. I figured by running Blackrock Caverns after my random each day that would basically guarantee Corla’s Baton to drop for me. Over twenty runs later and I still have never seen it drop and I am now starting to question its existence. I can’t even go run the regular over and over to get the 333 item level wand because the one that drops is only a 308 item level which is 10 points lower then my green quest wand.

The other boss that drops a wand is deep into Deadmines which so far has proven to be one of the longest heroic dungeons in Cataclysm. Cookie’s Stirring Rod is a really nice wand, but after running a random and Blackrock Caverns nightly that is usually all I have time for during the week.

In case anyone else saw the Wand of Dark Worship I thought I would let you know that only a normal version drops. Even if you’re doing heroic Stonecore you will still only get the 316 item level wand if it drops.

I could be getting so much more done every night if only I had a wand so I could stop running extra heroics. Has anyone else seen one of these?

Heroics Dungeons are Hard!

Below is an interesting article posted by Ghostcrawler yesterday.  I agree that Heroic dungeons are much harder then WOTLK.  I personally like that you can't burn threw them and ignore all of the fight mechanics.  This was the most likely cause of so many pug raids to fail.  No one had to learn anything because we all had full suits of purple gear and no practice with real boss mechanics.  The post is below if you haven't had a chance to read it.

Ghostcrawler:


We've seen and heard a lot of discussion about the challenge presented by the Cataclysm Heroic dungeons, and to a lesser extent the raids. I'm not sure this is the kind of issue where we're going to be able to change anyone’s mind on the subject, but I can try to provide more insight into our point of view as well as offer some suggestions for success.


First, let me state that we do hear you. We understand some of you aren’t having fun and preferred the Lich King paradigm, or at least something closer to the Lich King paradigm. We greatly appreciate the feedback and it always makes us sad when players aren’t having fun. We're not ignoring you. We get it. We may not always agree on every point, but we understand where you’re coming from, and we want to try to help you understand where we're coming from.


The bottom line is that we want Heroics and raids to be challenging, and that is particularly true now while the content is new and characters are still collecting gear. They’re only going to get easier from here on out. We want players to approach an encounter, especially a Heroic encounter, as a puzzle to be solved. We want groups to communicate and strategize. And by extension, we want you to celebrate when you win instead of it being a foregone conclusion.


On the other hand, we don't want you to stumble your way to victory. We don't want you to be able to overwhelm bosses without noticing or caring what they’re doing. We don’t want healers to be able to make up for all of the mistakes on the part of the other players. While at the end of the day, dungeons may just be gussied up loot vending machines, we want you to do more than push a button to get the loot.


Ultimately, we don’t want to give undergeared or unorganized groups a near guaranteed chance of success, because then the content will feel absolutely trivial for players in appropriate gear who communicate, cooperate, and strategize.


We didn't like that the Heroic dungeons in Lich King and early Naxxramas had become zerg-fests. It made the rewards feel like they weren't earned. It made all rewards except the best-in-slot items feel transitory -- why enchant or gem an item when you don’t need the performance boost and you’ll quickly replace it anyway? Furthermore, it set the expectation that everyone would eventually earn all best-in-slot items rather than those being rare and treasured goals. It made class abilities feel less useful and interesting. Who needs that crowd-control or survivability talent when nothing is hurting you? Who needs a mana-conservation talent if you’re never going to run out of mana? Who needs a crit talent if your heals often overheal anyway?


Finally, the encounters, even the bosses, ended up having a sameness to them because you could ignore their mechanics. It didn't matter -- in fact, you didn't even notice -- if the dragon breathes or silences or drops a void zone. The fights all felt the same.


In Cataclysm, the Heroic dungeons and raids are intended to be challenging -- and they are, at least until you overgear them.


So what can you do if you find the Heroics too challenging? Here are a few tips and alternatives.


Strategy and Communication


Tanks, you can’t pull and AE every group in a Heroic (again, until you overgear the content). It’s a good idea to crowd control at least one target -- and sometimes two. As long as you have someone with a long-duration and/or renewable crowd control and someone else with a short crowd control such as a stun or even a snare, you should be fine. We don’t have anything like Heroic Shattered Halls, and you don’t need 3 mages for CC. Caster mobs, which are weak but do a lot of damage, are good choices for crowd control. So are mobs that buff other mobs or debuff your group. Don’t waste the CC on non-elite mobs or others that will die quickly. The responsibility for marking and setting the pace often falls upon the tank, but sometimes other experienced players are happy to take the mantle. If you are setting the pace, you need to keep an eye on healer mana. Healers will generally have enough mana to keep you alive in any given fight, but you need to be careful not to chain pull repeatedly if their mana is low. Tanks tend to have good situational awareness and are experienced at reducing incoming damage. Where I have personally seen them get into trouble is when they slip into overconfident “I got this” mode and try to tank too many things at once.


DPS specs often get blamed the most for not knowing what is going on. It should be your business to understand the mechanics of the fights. You’re a member of a team, not a follower who can always rely on someone else to tell them what to do. Which are the spells that need to be interrupted? Which are the void zones that you absolutely must get out of? Which are the adds that must be burned down (and conversely, when should you ignore the adds and focus on the boss instead)? If you aren’t sure, then ask. Almost every group would rather take the few seconds to explain a fight than to wipe because you failed to dodge Glubtok's wall of fire or tried to AE Vanessa’s spiders or didn't understand what "Downwind of Altairus" meant.


Healers seem like they largely understand that Heroics are challenging, and sometimes get penalized when the rest of the group doesn’t understand that. If you feel like you can’t cast anything but your efficient heal or you’ll run out of mana, then something is going wrong with the fight. Likewise, if you feel like you must spam your inefficient heals to the exclusion of all else, then your group is ignoring key mechanics or is just undergeared. Boss fights in 5-player dungeons generally shouldn’t last more than two minutes or so (the last few Deadmines bosses can be longer). If you’re running out of mana because the fights are going too long, that is a problem with the DPS or tank in your group. Gear also makes a huge difference for healers, which leads to my next point.


For everyone, regardless of role, I suggest running the dungeons on normal mode until you feel more comfortable with the pulls. Those runs can be quick, the penalty for mistakes isn’t as high, and you can often still earn a little reputation, cloth, or enchanting materials. As a bonus, you’ll probably make a group really happy if you’re geared for Heroics but helping them out in a normal dungeon.


Improve


If you just can’t make progress and you are literally wiping on trash pulls over and over, it may be time to analyze your gear. The Dungeon Finder's Heroic item level requirement should be considered a minimum -- and remember, it doesn’t look at enchants or gems or even if the gear is appropriate for you. We are assuming an entry-level Heroic player has a lot of item level 333 gear from Twilight Highlands, normal dungeons, or any of the reputation vendors. These 333s are probably mixed in with a few 318 quest greens, but offset by a few 346 items. If you finished the Hyjal quests, you are probably Revered with Guardians of Hyjal and have access to their 346 items. Questing might only earn you Honored with some of the other reputations, but that is easily rectified with daily quests or dungeon tabards (and don’t forget the Tol Barad reps). There are some nice crafted items. No, the weapons aren’t purple, but when you look at their stats, they are quite competitive.


The item level requirement is intended only to keep out players who have no idea what is appropriate content for them. We know you can game it by getting PvP gear or hiding off-spec gear in your bags. Congrats on being sneaky! If you’re sophisticated enough to try and game the item-level requirements, you should be sophisticated enough to know if you can actually handle the content.


Don't be stingy and decide you aren’t going to mess with gemming, enchanting, or reforging until you have epic gear. Note that you don’t have to always apply the most expensive enchants or gems. Gear matters a lot. It increases DPS, survivability, and mana sustainability. Healers who get, say, 1750-1800 Spirit notice that they can go a lot longer without gassing out. Go ahead and get enchants or gems or reforge to get a lot of Spirit. Some DPS specs who don’t reforge hit at those gear levels would struggle a lot as well. The new Cataclysm flasks are fairly expensive, but the Lich King ones aren’t, and there are elixirs and food consumables you can use as well. Archaeologists can even unlock small bonuses in the new dungeons.


Furthermore, once 4.1 comes out, you will have access to more powerful gear that will let you then revisit the content you couldn’t do before. Your Justice points will let you purchase epic items at that point, and Heroics that were challenging will become a lot easier. Players who have raid gear currently are already starting to burn through the dungeon content again, which is totally expected. You’ll get there too. In Lich King, the content patches tended to completely invalidate the previous tier of content. We don’t want players to feel like they need to farm Naxxramas when Icecrown Citadel is out, but at the other end of the spectrum, it was unfortunate that we largely killed Ulduar raiding when Trial of the Crusader came out.


I love the Dungeon Finder. I worked on it a lot personally. It is quite successful at finding you a group. It doesn't guarantee a successful group. It's a huge improvement over spamming trade chat trying to find a tank for your three-rogue party. But throwing together up to 5 strangers and asking them to do challenging content that some of the group may have never seen before is always going to be risky.


World of Warcraft supports a lot of solo play. However, we want dungeons to be a group experience. In fact, we think the game is more fun overall when you play with friends, which is why we put so much effort into encouraging players to join guilds for Cataclysm. Running a hard dungeon with friends tends to be a much better experience. Communication feels less awkward, and everyone is generally more supportive of mistakes. You learn the strengths and weaknesses and nuances of players that you run with regularly. There tend to be fewer loot arguments as well. PUGs have their place -- don’t get me wrong. But we don’t want to sacrifice dungeons being fun and challenging for organized groups in order to have everything be conquered by any possible group. Make sense?


I’ve PUGged the Cataclysm content a lot. So have all of the designers. We want to stay in touch with what players are experiencing. Heroic PUGs are definitely harder than going with groups of people you know, but they aren’t impossible. If things start to go wrong, you might want to take a moment to analyze why they are going wrong before you bail. I do weep for those players who join an in-progress Heroic Rajh attempt (with suspicious player skeletons everywhere), immediately pull without any discussion, and then have the tank leave the group following the first wipe. That’s not fun for anyone and not going to lead to success. These aren't the original Scholomance or Arcatraz runs that could take four hours with respawns. Making a couple of concerted attempts on Rajh is probably going to be faster than going into the queue again.


Mistakes?


We've seen a few threads that suggest that we're too proud to admit mistakes. I find that logic strange, because we do it all the time. Example one: we reverted the 10x honor from Tol Barad pretty quickly. It was a mistake. Example two: Heroic Strike is too dominant an attack for warriors. That was a mistake. Example three: the Lich King Heroic dungeons (and Naxxramas) were too easy to zerg, setting up an expansion-long expectation that purple gear would come easy and often. In retrospect, that was a mistake. We don't at all view the Cataclysm dungeon and raid balance as a mistake.


However, I can name at least three things related to dungeon difficulty that we either did wrong or could do better. We're our own worst critic, and we are very hard on our own decisions.


First, item level is a necessary -- but not sufficient -- hoop to jump through when using the Dungeon Finder for Heroics. We should have also made sure players had at least seen the content on normal mode before. Maybe we should have had Burning Crusade-like attunements. Maybe we should have made the item level requirements pretty relaxed if you’re going with a premade group and much stricter if you’re going with a pick-up group. We’d love to implement (and have some long-term plans that include) better ways to detect if you know what you’re doing other than just the gear you’ve accumulated. Overall, we just needed to state more clearly that Heroic dungeons are intended as a destination, not a first step.


Second, there are only a few level-85 normal dungeons. For a level-85 player who isn’t ready for Heroics but wants to run dungeons, these can get old pretty quickly. Perhaps another way to handle it would have been to have introductory Heroics and harder Heroics. We’ve also flirted with having three difficulty levels before, but that does add an extra level of content to develop and complexity to explain.


Third, the game could do a better job of telling a group why they failed so that so much blame doesn’t fall at the feet of the healer. We talk a lot about not standing in fires, but equally important is the number of bosses that spawn in adds that must be gathered up and/or burned down quickly, or in some cases ignored. We’re also asking a lot of DPS or tanks in those situations, but that information isn’t always conveyed well except through trial and error.


In Conclusion


We do understand that some healers are frustrated and giving up. That is sad and unfortunate. But the degree to which it's happening, at least at this point in time, is vastly overstated on the forums. We also know that plenty of players like the changes and find healing more enjoyable now. Both sides need to spend a little less effort trying to drown out the other side claiming that everyone they know -- and by extension, “the majority of players” -- agree with their point. You shouldn’t need to invoke a silent majority if you can make an articulate and salient point.


As always, we're keeping an eye on things. There are a few bosses that seem responsible for more wipes than the others: Commander Springvale, Beauty, Altairus, and Admiral Ripsnarl perhaps. By the time you read this, you might have seen us implement Restoration druid buffs intended to keep them competitive in raids. We also just tend to nerf content over time because the original players hitting that content have moved on, so we want to open it up to a wider audience.


In any case, we want to ensure that everyone is having fun and enjoying their time with the game, and I hope that this post may serve to some as the "tare" button that helps you zero in on the intended dungeon difficulty scale. For others, just know that we are actively reading feedback. For everyone offering constructive posts and points about their experience, we thank you.


Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street is the lead systems designer on World of Warcraft. He has four dogs: three epic retrievers and one green terrier suitable for disenchanting.

Cataclysm New Mage Spells

It's been almost a month now since Cataclysm was released and I can't stop playing!!  I am going to start dedicating myself to making more quality in-depth posts about mages from this point forward.  The first thing I need to do is start covering some of the changes to our class.  This post will cover the new abilities that have been added with the new expansion.

Portal: Tol Barad.

Unlocked at Level 85.
Creates a portal, teleporting level 85+ group members that use it to Tol Barad.
18% of base mana, 10 yd range, 10 sec cast, 1 min cooldown.
Reagents: Rune of Portals.

Teleport: Tol Barad.
Unlocked at Level 85.
Teleports the caster to Tol Barad.
8% of base mana, 10 sec cast.
Reagents: Rune of Teleportation.

Time Warp
Unlocked at Level 85.
Warp the flow of time, increasing melee, ranged, and spell casting speed by 30% for all party and raid members. Lasts 40 sec.  Allies receiving this effect will become unstuck in time, and be unable to benefit from Bloodlust, Heroism, or Time Warp again for 10 min.
                        26% of base mana, Instant cast, 5 min cooldown.

Ring of Frost
Unlocked at Level 83.
Summons a Ring of Frost, taking 3 sec to coalesce. Enemies entering the fully-formed ring will become frozen for 10 sec. Lasts 12 sec. 10 yd radius.
7% of base mana, 30 yd range, Channeled, 3 min cooldown.

Flame Orb
Unlocked at Level 81.
Launches a Flame Orb forward from the Mage's position, dealing 228.01 Fire damage every second to the closest enemy target for 15 secs.
6% of base mana, 40 yd range, Channeled, 1 min cooldown.

Back for Cataclysm!

Like many people I took a well needed break in between expansions to clear my head and catch up on real life.  I bought Cataclysm the day after it came out and finally logged into the game on Monday.  To say a lot has changed would be a big understatement.  I love the changes that I've come across so far!!!

I love Questing! 
I have always hated questing.  It always felt like work and when they put in random dungeons I just ran instances to level up my low level alts.  That has since changed.  Everything seems streamlined now.  I run an instance and the quests pop up to let me accept it when I hit certain areas in the dungeon.  No more searching all over the place to find them.

The quest hubs seem to have just the right amount of quests and when you finish one in a string of quests you can automatically go onto the next one without going all the way back to the quest giver.  This saves a ton of time going back and forth constantly.  Even though it seems every cloth reward piece has spirit on it I still think they did a good job of giving us a good selection of choices.  I even got a companion pet from a quest without searching all over the place.  I chose the Blue Mini Jouster!

I love Flying
One of the main reasons I did not complete a lot of the achievements in the old lands was because I couldn't fly!  I hated traveling via horseback from place to place.  Being a mage I had it easier then most classes, but come on I shouldn't have to suffer to get the achievements I was most interested in!  I even hated the fact that I would port into a town and have to ride to get to the bank or auction house.  How very nice it is we get to fly in towns now!

I love the Talent Tree
Gone are the days of not being able to choose the fun talents.  The fact we had to basically choose certain talents to be competitive just wasn't cool.  Now I can choose improved blink and not get picked on by my fellow guildies.  How cool is it that we get Time Warp too!!!  Basically a Bloodlust/Heroism clone! 

I love the Instances
Running dungeons and raids has always been my favorite part of WoW so it wasn't hard for me to love it.  I have only run Blackrock Caverns so far, but 6 bosses, some cool mechanics and some good loot.  How could it go wrong?!

I'm only level 82, have only quested in Mount Hyjal, ran one instance twice, and haven't tried the new PvP battles yet, but so far this is shaping up as the best expansion yet by Blizzard.  My love for the game has been reborn all over again!

ICC 25 Tuesday

What an awesome night we had in ICC 25! We wanted to get everyone their Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher mount so it was an achievement run! I missed the Heroic Professor Putricide kill so I was one of the few who wouldn't get it till next week.

The first achievement was Full House on Lady Deathwhisper which we did have to wipe it twice before we got the right combination of ads. The trick is to kill the ads we didn't need then burn her down as fast as possible once we had them all.

We then went to Plague Wing and did the Dances with Oozes achievement on Rotface. I knew from 10 man that this achievement was fairly easy. We ended up 1 shotting it and moving on.

Next up was Festergut and the Flu Shot Shortage achievement. This was another easy one. Just have the people that get the first spores run away from the raid and then not go near the second one. With our guild's DPS we only had to worry about the first Pungent Blight before he was dead.

Professor Putricide's achievement is Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion...which is a pretty easy one as well. The person controlling the Abomination couldn't use Regurgitated Ooze to slow down the ads. So everyone basically just had to run faster and not get hit by the Orange Ooze and stack faster on the person targeted by the Green Ooze. Another one shot.

Portal Jockey was the next achievement which involved someone going into every portal that spawned while healing Valithria Dreamwalker to full. So we had three healers go in and the rest were DPS. The fight goes by so fast with our geared healers that I don't think there were many portals that even spawned. It was super easy and another one shot. I actually ended up getting the Frostbinder's Shredded Cape to replace my Lich Wrappings. Always nice to get an upgrade!

Sindragosa's achievement was one of the two I had a feeling we might struggle on. All you can Eat required us to never get above 5 stacks of Mystic Debuff during phase three. The hardest part was for the tanks because they had to clear their stacks every single ice block. We did wipe a few times getting this one, but eventually the tanks had the switching down and we were able to complete it.

That's all we could get done before Midnight. We did a few attempts on Neck-Deep in Vile and came very close many times so I'm confident tomorrow we will finish Glory of the IceCrown Raider 25 Man.

Murkimus the Gladiator and Vanquisher Title

After a few months of waiting our Arena Tournament team finally received our Vanquisher title for finishing in the Top 1000 teams and Murkimus the Gladiator pet for playing in 50 games!  Woohoo!

The 50 games were easy, but I wasn't sure about getting into the Top 1000.  It was a tough road, but we finally finished near 800th place :)  We didn't even play the next week to see if we could qualify for regionals.

3v3 Arena 1515!!

Last night our 3v3 team got together and played 33 matches.  We started at 1406 and ended up at a 1515 rating which is awesome.  Our matchmaking value continues to rise and is now well into the 1600's.  We started to get into our groove towards the end of the night, but it was approaching midnight and some of us had to work early today.

My team consists of a Discipline Priest - Healaryduff, Boomkin - Kona, and an Arcane Mage - Monelle so were not the average team.  I like our synergy though with our excellent burst damage, CC abilities, and awesome healing.  We usually are able to get the first target down quickly, but when we don't it's a very tough road from that point on. 

We seem to be having some problems with double healer teams which have been consisting of a Discipline Priest, a Holy Pally, and an Arms Warrior.  We tried a few different things last night and it seemed the best option was to cyclone the Priest, Fear/Silence the Pally, and burn the Warrior down as fast as possible.  Surprisingly it did work a few times last night which is great because I have a feeling we are going be facing more double healers teams the farther up the ladder we go.

We had a few matches last night that were within a split second of us losing and then all of a sudden our burst took one of them down, our healer kept us alive, and we were able to pull out the win.  I think the hardest part for us is that we aren't exactly pros in arena so a lot of our matches are trial and error when deciding on the kill target.  Sometimes we make the wrong choice and when we aren't able to burst down that first target it becomes a very tough fight for our combination.

I can't wait to get the Three's Company: 1550 Achievement which will only be my third arena achievement.  The only two I have now are the Mercilessly Dedicated and World Wide Winner achievements so I'm excited to add another one!  I'll also get Vengefully Dedicated with 35 more wins! 

ICC 25 Wednesday

I missed Tuesday's raid because my girlfriend was in a small car accident and of course my guild got down Heroic Professor Putricide. I knew it was going happen this week and was really sad I missed it! They were able to clear 10 of 12 bosses on heroic mode Tuesday.

Last night was still good though because I still haven't had a chance to beat Heroic Sindragosa. It took us 4 shots to beat her. Mostly because I didn't notice until after I wiped our entire raid by stacking 22 charges of Unchained Magic and dealing one million damage in friendly fire to my guildies that my Deadly Boss Mods add-on wasn't working.  As luck would have it I was just telling someone how I've never messed up on Unchained Magic. Sometimes its better to not say anything at all :P

Well the very next attempt we were able to down her. It was surprisely very smooth considering my old guild, Suppression, wasn't even able to get to Phase 3 and probably wouldn't for many more months. It was a good feeling to down her.

We then went to Lich King and decided to get a little practice on heroic mode. We only worked the first phase for two attempts, but it didn't seem much harder. Basically whenever Shadow Trap was cast all of us would move as one away from the throne until hopefully we had him at 70% and then move to the edge for Remorseless Winter.

After the two attempts we decided to do it on normal and get the Been Waiting a Long Time for This achievement so that next week we can work on getting the last achievements we need for the Glory of the Icecrown Raider 25 Man achievement. I already have it in ICC 10, but would really love to add a new mount to my collection.

We then proceeded to Ruby Sanctum and one shot it on normal. I am really starting to hate the trash in there! We can one shot the boss easy enough, but for some reason we always wipe a few times on the trash!! No more guild raiding this week unless I decide to do a run in the ICC 25 Alt run on Friday. I'd probably bring Thangrim or Tyru if I'm able to go.