Raidus interruptus

I was so pumped about our first visit to Black Temple this weekend. I mean this is the once in a not so distant past end game instance. Big bad Illy waiting to be gibbed. So now we have Sunwell, but hey it's now the penultimate end game instance and that's still pretty d@mn hot. It wasn't so long ago that BT seemed like a dream goal, something that only the uber raids saw.

I did my homework and read up on the fights, watched boss kills vids and got myself organised with plenty of flasks and pots and bandages and all the accoutrements of raiding.

My but it was exciting stepping inside the instance for the first time. The raid was in high spirits and we proceeded in our usual manner: oh look we should kill these guys *face pull* oh these ones have nasty poisonous little buggers that spawn *pewpewpew* owwwwies *multiple people go splat* ok let's consecrate and AoE them down next time. *Repull and mobs go splat* Next!

I love the fact that our raid does awesomely on bosses by regularly gets roflstomped by trash. It makes us all giggle schoolgirl like in vent. Probably because we get our game on after that rather than wiping repeatedly. It might be a different story otherwise.

One of the things that is awesome about our group is that we have people who are quick learners. Something happens, we learn from it, adjust, and success follows. We had our first attempt at High Lord Naj'entus and got him down to about 36% before wiping. We discussed what wasn't working - which was basically our raid positioning and then fired up the encounter again and BOOM boss down.

We gleefully tripped over to Supremus clearing trash on the way and then had our first shot at the big ugly 'warlocks wish they had him as demon-form' dude. Of note for hunters on this fight is having an MD rotation set up to swing the boss back to the main tank at the end of each phase 2. We wiped a couple of times and decided to get our druid tank to main tank with our normal warrior MT soaking the hurtful strikes. On the third shot BOOM another boss down. Similiar to Naj'entus the key was the raid movement - it's important to kite Supremus around the edges of the main tanking area during phase 2 so that there will be no volcanoes on the middle interfering with melee during the tank and spank and phase 1.

Legionkiller dropped which once would have been a 'WOOT' moment for the hunters, but in these days of 2.4 badge loot it was more a 'meh'. The choco-bow is actually better for BM hunters (which all four of the hunters in the raid are). It went to open roll and I won it - it'll actually be good for PVP with that stamina so I'm looking forward to trying it out - and general wootiness for my first T6 level loot even if it's not an upgrade :P

So two bosses down and we're on our way to Akama when *Emergency claxon: WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP* the phone rings, the answering machine picks up and it's Em's sister leaving a message asking where the *bleep* we are since it's her and his dad's birthday lunch and we're an hour late and they are all waiting for us. OH *BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP*!!!! So we quickly explain to the raid what has happened, apologise and bail so we can get down to Em's sisters place. Man! Family > Warcraft always but D@MN we were in BT man, on our way to (hopefully) down a third boss on our first visit there. Raid first's are exciting and we had to bail >.<

Emelin is completely to blame for getting the dates mixed up. Still we made it down there and had a fun afternoon eating good food, drinking good wine and surreptitiously discussing our wonderings on how the raid was doing in our absence *grin*

I can report that Akama was downed too so that puts the Badger raid at 2/5 Mount Hyjal and 3/9 Black Temple after one visit to each. Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.