Set Team Kills All Regular Ulduar Bosses, Starts Icecrown Citadel in the Dungeon's First Release Week, Begins Farming for Sarth 3D Drakes, and More

Yogg Down!

Well, it's been a while since I've had time to write, but with so many exciting achievements and so much good work, I had to take some time to post a few items. The FR Set Team triumphantly completed all the normal bosses and wings in Ulduar, with the crowning achievement being the defeat of Yogg Saron on Nov 23, 2009. We worked on him for months, but were persistent, and that persistence paid off!

He is a very complicated fight with 3 phases. In the first phase, the mobs we face blow up and do AOE damage to everyone near them. In order to progress to the next phase, we have to cause a set amount of damage to Sara, an NPC, in the middle of the room. This meant grabbing adds and dpsing them down next to Sara as these explosions are the only things that damage her.

In the second phase, we are faced with Yogg's Tentacles and Brains. To get to phase 3, we have to do a certain amount of damage to Yogg's brain. However, there are various obstacles in the way of this. First are Tentacles that we need to DPS down - 3 different types of tentacles with different abilities, including one type which places curse, poison, magic, and disease debuffs on us. It's a cleansing frenzy! At specific times, portals open to Yogg's brain. In these areas, there are "illusions" to dps down first while avoiding the "gaze" of some mobs that cause us to lose "sanity". Once the adds are down, then we gain access into Yogg's brain, the only place to damage the brain directly. However, this is all on a time limit and if you don't exit these areas fast enough or you lose all your sanity, you proceed to become mind controlled and kill your friends (Mr. Nath who has the highest kill count for Friendly Fire! LOL).

Finally in the third phase, more guardians spawn which must be killed while also dping Yogg himself. In addition to this, more sanity issues! But we made it with most of our sanity intact! Grats for a job well done!!! Here is a picture of us:

Here are shots of us with the Keepers and the defeated General, those defeated along the way to Yogg. With the Keepers, when enough damage is done to them, they are restored from their mind controlled states and will stand to help you in the fight against Yogg. They stand ready with us:

Hodir:

Freya:

Thorim:

Mimiron:

General:

1st 2 bosses in ICC Defeated!

On Dec 14, 2009, we began Icecrown Citadel in its first week of release. We only had 1 day this raid week, BUT we certainly made the most of it! It was a packed night, where we grabbed another Sarth mount (yippee! it was mine!), got the raid quest done, and then also made significant progress in ICC.

After Sarth and U10, we rushed over to ICC. There we cleared some trash, set off some traps, wiped a few times, and faced Lord Marrowgar, the first boss of the first floor of ICC. He has abilities similar to other fights we've done before - Kill the spike that is doing damage to the raid member and freezing him/her, get out of the firewall, tanks stand together for the cleave, watch the whirlwind. It was a bit chaotic, but we did manage to 1-shot him. Here we are with Lord Marrowgar's corpse:

We then proceeded to Lady Deathwhisper. After clearing her trash, we started to move into position and somehow errantly pulled her. It was unexpected and we fought bravely, but she eventually took too many of us down. We revised our strategies and ran in. There are two different types of adds that can transform to doing more damage if they are not dpsed down fast enough. One type of add must be killed with Physical DPS and one with Caster DPS. There are also various curses and such. In our 2nd attempt ever on her, we were triumphant! We were so excited (but had so little raid time left) many ran off to see the next encounter, the gunship battle! Some ran back (err...fell back), and we took a quick screenshot:

The 1 attempt we had at the Gunship battle was chaotic. We had only about 12 minutes to clear trash and try it. We ran over and I VERY quickly gave abbreviated directions to the three subgroups within our raid. Needless to say, we ran into some crazy issues. (Why is she wearing that jet pack that way? How do I use this jet pack? Wait! Don't go there without the Tank! Yes, please kill these that are aboard our ship and killing us. Shoot that mage!) It was a lot of fun, and we look forward to going back!

Defeat of Sarth with All Drakes Up!

On Sept 25, 2009, we once again attempted Sarth with all 3 drakes up. We had been doing this on and off for some time, but on the 25th, we were victorious! Here is a shot of us with the defeated Sarth and some of our achievements scrolling up on screen:

Since then, we've been working to get everyone on the team a mount. We've gotten 8, and have just 3 more to go!

Soon we'll be able to regale you with more of our adventures in Icecrown Citadel.

Kori

On Halloween morning we assembled at the door of Medivh's tower to exorcise some ghosts - oh, and to get an achievement. Most everyone was in costume, which lent a festive air.

It took us two hours to finish, mainly because we kept having to run around for quest turn-ins and because we kept getting lost. It's amazing to me that after running this weekly for over a year in Burning Crusade, I had forgotten so many things about the bosses. Amusingly enough, the main thing I forgot was how many of them were immune to taunt, which led to a near-wipe on the Prince after he decided to enfeeble and kill Valaevil.

All in all, we had a great time. My thanks go out to the attendees: Amareec, Antropos, Blueberi, Mariance, Miicha, Narlexia, Valaevil, and Xassana.

I'm still planning to put up a run for AQ40 but the holidays are making my schedule crazy for the foreseeable future. But that will be forthcoming, never fear!

Thanks to those who came to BWL a few weeks ago. Mariance was kind enough to tell us the real strategies for each fight and then we mostly just zerged each boss. It was great to finally see Nefarian and get the achievement. That fight must have been killer at level 60!

Here we are with the defeated Nefarian:

I still plan to put up an AQ40 run so we can complete the classic raider achievement. That will probably be in the next two weeks so look for it.

We ventured into the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj last Saturday. The day turned into more of an extended skirmish than a battle, as the resistance we met was much more feeble than we had anticipated. Within 40 minutes all the bosses had fallen to our onslaught. Guild members Falarelle, Fazia, Koriander, Mariance, Mixtel, Narlexia, Nathelien, and Nestra were in attendance. Congrats to all on your achievements!

Here we are beside the body of Ossirian the Unscarred, on some of our favorite mounts:

Thanks for making it a fun raid and keep an eye out for more runs!

Force Recon entered Zul'Gurub last Saturday with an impressive group, determined to discover the fate of the High Priests and to stop Hakkar. In attendance were Draenevil, Falarelle, Fazia, Katagana, Koriander, Lurik, Mariance, Moxe, Narlexia, Nestra, Whien, and Zendorf. We dressed in disguise, hoping to fool the trolls.

Here we are at the entrance:

As we moved through the ancient capital, we kept our eyes and ears open for signs of the High Priests. Unfortunately they had not met a kindly fate. We discovered that they had not been able to resist the influence of Hakkar, and had been subverted into his champions. To free them from this servitude, we were forced to slay them.

Finally only Hakkar remained. We fought our way to his platform to see that he had already been summoned! We were just in time. As a group, we rushed him, determined to end his evil influence over this beautiful city. Down he went!

Here we stand, for a victory shot near his body:

Thanks to all who answered the call for help and came with us on this mission. As always, it was a lot of fun.