The View From Down Here

Pride comes before a fall

In order to get some idea of how the upcoming bosses in 25-man Ulduar work, I’ve been running the 10-man version on Sunday afternoons. And our latest run was nothing short of specatularly successful – we ended up wiping on  Mimiron’s Trash by the end of the raid (aside: I see what you did there, Blizz.  Hoho.).

And there’s the rub. Because we’re 25-man geared, we were afforded the opportunity to screw up far more than we otherwise would have. Things like missed interrupts on Iron Council, me forgetting to equip my frost gear on Hodir until the split second before it was too late. We still one-shotted him, but I’m sure that healing would have been easier on me if I’d remembered what I was doing in time.

Thorim was a walkover – we killed him on our second go; Freya too was a fairly straightforward encounter, her trash taking longer to kill than she did.

So, after a few hours’ break, it was back to Thorim again, full of expectations of a kill. After all, the main difference was that we had more people, right? Then reality showed up to provide a much-needed kick in the arse. Much like Yakra had done once before, I’d forgotten just how much more forgiving 10-man Ulduar would be to those raids who were almost entirely geared up in 25-man Naxx gear with a fair bit of 25-man Ulduar gear thrown in there.

Of all the attempts in the evening, we got as far as Thorim’s balcony a grand total of once. The most frustrating thing about the fight is not knowing what’s happening to the other group, in the arena – all we can see are the steady stream of raid frames turning black. It’s hard to offer suggestions when you can’t see anything of what’s going on.

So, next week, back to it. Will we down Thorim? Of course. Will it be a pushover? Hell, no.