The Fall of Naxxramas

During the course of the past week, my Guild cleared four wings of 25 man Naxxramas. This was motivated by many players' desire to push forward in this instance. The floodgates were opened and we swept into the Ziggurat with great enthusiasm.

There were only two nights of Naxxramas 25 scheduled for this week. Due to difficulty with signups on a Friday Malygos run, we managed to buy more time to conquer the remaining bosses in the first four wings of the Heroic instance. This left the portal open to see Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad on Heroic difficulty on our first real push into Naxxramas. Getting this far was not seriously expected by anyone. Maybe it was meant to happen.

Always Bring a Parka to a Sapphiron Fight

The Raid Leading team has been spamming Guild Chat and the Guild site non-stop during the 48 hours before the Sapphiron encounter. One of our biggest concerns was getting stuck on Sapphiron due to too much Frost damage on the raid.

Raid invites went out, the attendance for this raid was the best to date for a 25 man. It looked like the raid will be starting early. These are already good signs. We all gathered in Sapphiron's room and the 25 man Raid Coordinator asked everyone to put their Frost Resistance gear on - *drum roll* Bam! Check ORA2: Everyone in the raid was over 350 except for the MT (me, ~300FR) and most of the Raid was Frost Resistance capped. This level of preparedness was a good omen.

The leader decided to put the majority of the raid on one side of Sapphiron. This worked well with the amount of resistance that the raid had. The fight mechanics are the same on the Heroic and Normal versions. Everybody had no problem hiding behind the ice blocks. Sometimes certain raid members would get dangerously low on health when Sapphiron's Blizzard was on top of half the raid who were stuck hiding behind an Ice Block with no room to escape. Perhaps an unfortunate series of events like the Blizzard+Ice Block, range issues and low mana led to my death when Sapphiron had less than 10% health. No worries, the Druid off-tank picked up the dragon and we managed to kill Sapphiron on the first try. The raid's preparation for this fight really made this fight easy. Congratulations to all who helped out in this endeavour!

Kel'Thuzad's Destruction

The efforts of the raiders in this guild have accumulated to bring us to this point - the final boss in Heroic Naxxramas. We discussed all the strategy in detail before we engaged Kel'Thuzad. There was not a lot of melee in this raid (perhaps a guild first); the melee groups were split and will fight on each side of Kel'Thuzad. I would be tanking Kel in the vacant spot of the triangle. The healers and casters will spread out around Kel'Thuzad to have full coverage of the entire room. We were all set and headed in - let's kill him! Well he killed us. What happened?

This fight has many components and everyone must focus on their job. The raid did well, however some casters were too close to eachother and got a double ice block (while being out of range of a couple of healers). The healers also had to get into the habit of sharp fast heals especially when the melee group got ice blocked. When the Melee group would die from ice blocks then there were no interrupts, and the frost bolts got out of control. I got killed by a 22K frost bolt (immediately after I was blocked due to someone being to close to me grr). This is a fight of discipline and practice. No one seriously expected to get Kel'Thuzad on the first attempt anyway.

We make preparations and tried again. Some of the same things happened again, but the raid positioning and spike healing was getting much better. During the fight, someone would occasionally exclaim "uh oh" (or some variation) into vent; no one has to ask what it is, we know they weren't paying attention and annihilated by a Shadow Fissure.

Controlling the players who were mind controlled was very challenging. They were often accidentally killed. It was unfortunate when the off-tanks for the other MC'd players and add were killed (oops). We also learned to control positioning and find safe spots for mind controlled players.

Eventually all the components of this busy fight fell into place and we killed Kel'Thuzad. This is such a huge morale and confidence boost for this guild.

Upcoming events: More Naxx, maybe a Malygos in the next couple of weeks and maybe even a Sarth+1 Drake attempt.


On a side note, I picked up [Last Laugh] off of Kel'Thuzad. It's the best tanking weapon in the game for Warriors and Paladins. Thanks all, Woot!