I am still working on the Wrath Raiding Wrap-Up will posted it as soon as I'm done. Until then, there is more exciting news on the FR Cataclysm Raiding.

The Set Team has been working hard on additional bosses and I'm very excited to report that we have defeated a new boss for each raid week of the last 4 raid weeks! That is 4 bosses in 4 weeks! Excellent work and a big congrats to everyone who's participated - Nestra, Nathelien, Terreis, Falarelle, Koriander, Narlexia, Valasca, Mcsquizzie, Dakoran, Caritheri, Brenda/Aridonna!

We are now 7 of 12 for this tier of raiding in Normal Mode!

Now, let's talk a bit about how we got there.

First up is the Conclave of the Winds Encounter. This is an interesting encounter with 3 enemies standing on 3 different platforms. Each of the bosses has different abilities, and must all die within 1 minute of each other. It is interesting in that you cannot see at all what is happening on the other platforms and we have to have a lot of trust in our teammates to keep it together or to let us know if they need something.

It wasn't uncommon for us to hear a lot of, "I just fell off!", "I didn't jump in time!" and "I missed the platform!" It's also good to note that for the most part, everyone but Narlexia, is jumping between platforms during the encounter to be on other platforms at specific times, timed to the boss abilities and changes.

This one required a lot of movement and different types of raid work depending on what platform you were on and depending on which phase was occurring.

Here's a picture of us on Apr 17th, 2011, by one of the corpses of one of the djinn on the center platform. You can even see one of our future targets, Al'Akir, in the background:

Next up, we returned to Blackwing Descent to hunt down our next target, Maloriak. There is one side "boss" after Magmaw and Omnotron before getting to Maloriak's area. It is reported to be the most dangerous encounter and supposedly has killed more people than anything else in raids in WoW, This is the new elevator boss, the BWD Elevator!!! It really is only at the top level for a second. If you're not moving on it right away, the floor literally drops out from under you and you come crashing to a halt at the bottom, where either your friends are attempting to rez you, or are laughing at your expense....Or sometimes both....

I must admit, we have not all escaped this side boss unscathed, but we won't name any names here....(especially those who think they have a fool proof way to make it down....until the other unbeatable boss, Lag, kills them.)

The first part of Maloriak himself reminds me a bit of the potions boss in Shadowfang Keep. He has different color potions that he throws into a cauldron in the back of the room. Depending on which potion is used, the raid had to do slightly different things. In addition, all through these potions phases, he casts Arcane Storms which do a TON of raid damage and must be interrupted, AND he also summons adds. The adds are summoned by a cast, which can be interrupted. There are a total of 18 adds, generally released 3 at a time. Each add has a buff that reduces damages to the other adds near them so if too many are up, they cannot be killed easily until Maloriak utilizes a "Green" potion which temporarily removes this buff.

Controlling these adds is similar to the dragonhawk boss in ZA and the panther boss in ZG, in that when a specific later phase hits (when Maloriak gets to 25% health), all the remaining adds are released in addition to 2 "Prime Subjects". It is generally best to have all the adds down before this phase starts.

We did notice an odd thing in this encounter, which might be a bug. Maloriak would sometimes interrupt himself when he moved to the cauldron. We kept asking in raid to see who was doing the interrupt since we needed to release the adds at this time, until Narl noticed he was interrupting his own cast!

I'm pleased to announce that we were able to get our first kill on Maloriak on Apr 22, 2011, on our first raid night of that raid week and I believe only our 2nd week at attempting him. Here's a picture of us:

Our next goal was the Valiona and Theralion or the twin dragons fight in Bastion of Twilight. You might remember Valiona as the dragon from Grim Batol who escapes us. This, like many other Cata flights, has multiple bosses in the same encounter with different abilities. In this encounter, one of the dragons is on the ground while the 2nd is in the air. Both dragons have different ground and air abilities and they switch back and forth. This fight has a lot of raid movement, collapsing in on a raid member, running out to be at least 6 yards away, running out of blasts from the sky, running from flame breath, running from puddles of all types of color on the ground. Let me tell you, our toons have lost a lot of weight from all the running in this encounter.

We were able to defeat these twin dragons on May 1, 2011, and you can see this screenshot of the day:

The fourth downed boss in four weeks is Atramedes, the blind dragon in Blackwing Descent.

This encounter has an interesting twist in that everything is revolving around sound. As soon as the encounter begins, a sound bar is added to your UI. It starts at 0, and increases with damage taken from the various abilities that Atramedes uses to try and "find" you. If your bar ever gets to 100, it's an insta-kill. There are also a limited number of gongs around the room that can be used to interrupt Atramedes and reset the sound bars on the entire raid.

He has various abilities in his different phases, ground and air, where he tries to zero in on someone chasing them with breath abilities. If you get caught, you take a ton of damage. So either don't get caught, or use one of the precious gongs to save yourself or your teammate. In his air phase, it is surprisingly easy to get caught and die to his breath, even with some of the speed enhancing abilities. We are still going to need more practice on him to get through it without anyone dying.

We did managed to kill him on our 3rd attempt of the night on May 8, 2011, which was our 2nd day of trying him. Here we are with his body:

The Set Team has now set its sights on Chimaeron and the Ascendant Council. I hope to have more good news to share soon from the Set Team journeys.

Meanwhile, I also have some news on our other teams and their runs. On Apr 15th, we happen to have quite a few people on and by some luck, the alliance had Tol Barad, so we put together an group and made fast work of Argaloth. Here are Sigmos, Falarelle, Aridonna, Ephany, Ifer, Marlette, Melosa, Valaevil, Mariance, and Eriene by Argaloth's body:

Last, but not least, we had a 2nd Team do a raid on Apr 29. 2011. This raid was also successful in downing Magmaw. Grats to Maxtel, Melosa, Sigmos, Ifer, Aridonna, Marlette, Jaylo, Ephany, Eriene, and Valaevil for their accomplishment seen here:

Man that is a big worm!

Grats again to everyone who has or is participating in the Force Recon raids. Great work everyone and I look forward to more tales to come!

Kori