Grass is always greener on the other side. Halion Hard Mode down. Very clean kill. Special thanks to Chico for bear tanking! Hardest parts of the fight in order:
Keeping tanks up while moving from environmental hazards.
Feeding adds to the add tank
Keeping DPS balanced around 50 in phase 3
Coming up with lots of witty banter as we wait for our raiders to get past the 25 minute full loading bar of doom.
Trying to keep the guild from devouring itself when discussing Hockey and Baseball.
So that's it. The end of Wrath of the Lich King! We still have a huge backlog of movies to put out, and a whole lot of media and odds and ends, but from here on out, it's cruising to Cataclysm. It's kind of funny, we started Wrath with a come-from-behind kill of Sartharion on Lothar (sorry Edge!). We end Wrath by putting another dumb dragon to bed, with an former Edge member (Folde!) being a critical part of that kill (and LK too!), taking real control of the healing. World's a funny place. Who knows what Cataclysm will bring. :)
Grat's Lithid on Shadowmourne #3! He was one shard short of it before our first Lich King 25 Hard Mode kill last week and sure enough, he got it off of Marrowgar today. Still it helped, and later on we managed to get Protigee an Invincible off Lich King hard mode.
Maybe if A-Rod had a Shadowmourne, he could hit #600 sometime before the end of the season.
This is our video of our very first Lich King 25 Hard Mode kill from July 20th! This video is part 1 of 3 and has phase 1 and phase 2 in it.. Below are links to part 2 and 3!
Part 1 (phase 1 and 2):
This fight caps of Wrath of the Lich King, so we figured the video should to. As always you can see all our videos by clicking on the media button at the top. Enjoy!
Last night, after over 3 months of work (since April 11th), 236 individualized man-hours, some five hundred attempts, tens of thousands of gold, dozens of raid members, strat redesigns, and dozens of pages of discussion later, Tyranny has defeated the Lich King (25-player) on Heroic Mode, thus completing Heroic 25-player Icecrown Citadel and the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. This is ranked as the US 80th Kill, meaning Tyranny exits Wrath of the Lich King nearly 40 spots higher ranked than it entered. Two videos will be released in coming days of the kill, with music and with vent.
The long fight against the Lich King represents the single biggest investment in time and resource this guild has amassed since it's founding shortly before the release of the Burning Crusade, and historically (if Ruin/Demolition count as its predecessor guilds), perhaps only C'thun represents an equal investment. The amount of work, time and effort we put into this fight dwarfs our work on Yogg+0 (October 2009), Firefighter (July 2009), Kil'jaden (August 2008) and even mighty M'uru (July 2008). By persevering this long, the membership of Tyranny set new high watermark within this guild for devotion to a common goal that will not be equaled for years, if ever.
The list of credit for this kill is so expansive, it is hard to do it justice. Every member of Tyranny from April 11th to the present participated in a major way. From the group that was there to the kill to the many loyal and hardworking members who had contributed on our many previous wipe nights, Lich King Hard mode was the very definition of a collaborative project.
First credit must be given (because if nothing else, the forcoming video is from the tank Point of View), to our tanks: Rehn, Kimah and Arij. All three played invested near equal amounts of time and rotated through roles. From the intricate rotation of cooldowns and large group of Jobs Rehn handled in Phase 1 and 2 to Kimah's ultra precise boss movements, to Ari being the jack of all trades on the fight, doing everything from tanking Lich King, Shambling Horrors, stunning, leading in Sword Room and so forth, I cannot think of a fight we have done that we've benefited from such talented and smart tanks. Tyranny was lucky, in that unlike many guilds, we began Wrath of the Lich King with Kimah and Rehn as our tanks, and we exited it with them doing the same job.
I cannot praise our healing team enough. One of the great tragedies for Tyranny in Wrath was healer turnover and the inability to build a group that could last and collaborate with each other. With Lich King, we finally have that as our healers have truly forged themselves into a cohesive team that is quickly becoming the very heart of what makes this guild great. Our healers, most notably Nytsua, Protigee, Briss, Folde, Weep, Booger, Silverbranch, and Annatom all joined the guild after we transfered from Drak'tharon. They built a community. They designed the healing solution as a group. A truly comprehensive Lich King 25 Hard Mode strat is impossible due to the countless things that these, and indeed all, our remarkable healers, figured out and repeated across hundreds of wipes. I believe what our healers have built here is but a preview of their greatness to come. I think back to where our healing team was individually and as a team in April, and see where you are now... you all have grown so much.
Special recognition needs to be given to several individuals in particular from the rest of the guild. Eref is our recruitment officer and is in many ways just doing his job (in addition to being one of the top DPS in the guild). But it needs to be said that this period right now is the most difficult period there has ever been for guilds in World of Warcraft. With 11/12 guilds dying left and right, unable to get past Valks in Lich King, we entered this fight in April asking a very basic question: how do we not let Lich King kill our guild. That we could absorb and surge past what losses we did have, and come out the other side with a larger, better, more hardcore guild than we entered is a testament to Eref's ability as a recruiter for this guild. With many guilds limping into a silent decline, in large part because of his efforts ensuring our future, we thrive.
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