Alysrazor VS God Mode...

My guild has been working on hard modes the last month or so. At first, we were moving along very steadily, at least getting one new boss down each week. Shannox, Rhyolith, Majordomo Staghelm all fell at our hands. Then we moved on to Alysrazor. Now, I remember pounding our heads against the wall against her on regular back before the nerfs. It felt so incredibly impossible that most of us wanted to give up. Eventually, we got used to the pattern of things.

The hatchlings were a major problem back then. Tank dps wasn't high enough, survivability was seriously in question while a Tantrum was going on. The main thing that was maddening to me was the tendency for the game to give either tank Gushing Wound and then, right when we were about to hit 50% health, Tantrum. Then 4-shot in something crazy like 3.5 seconds. What's with that? Both tanks would look at the log and see around 200k damage in such a short period of time. All from melee swings from the hatchling. Eventually we go the pattern down. Tantrums didn't last more than a few seconds and while they were going on, our healers spammed their fastest heals on us while we fed them.

Now that fight is trivial with the nerfs on regular. But heroic isn't the same cakewalk for us. The changes on heroic are interesting. On paper, it seems like a ton, but it really isn't so bad. Hatchlings have less health, but you get three waves of them before the tornado phase. Meteors to watch out for and kill to create a line of sight element for her Firestorm attack. Meanwhile all other mechanics are going on. Initiates cast Fieroblast faster, everything does more damage, you know, the usual heroic stuff. The thing that makes the fight interesting to me is picking up the hatchling. The meteor lands directly in the middle of the 2 eggs. It's anyone's guess which direction it will choose to start rolling. Keeps me on my toes.

Last night, we were beating our heads pretty hard on this fight. There's so many things moving around you have to avoid, making one mistake is sometimes pretty fatal. I know I get hit with brushfires and the occasional lava spew from the worms. But I usually can avoid most everything. My movement is probably a bit annoying for whoever happens to be healing me though. On heroic, my hatchling rarely tantrums for more than a few seconds. Usually I'm either right by a worm or it's about to die.

On one attempt, the one my guildies know I'd be blogging about, someone went down before the first tornado phase and we used a battle rez on them. Later, the other tank went down right before his hatchling died. Oh no, we're screwed, right? Nope, at least, not right away. With two healers on me, I picked up both hatchlings on the next part of the cycle. Managed to feed them all the worms and had to tank one through a firestorm. Survival cool downs and amazing heals for the win there? It died soon after the storm. Well, now we have the third wave of hatchlings. Let's do it again. Sure enough, managed to do the same thing again. One left over when the tornado phase started. Tanking a hatchling during the tornado phase is bad. I'm sorry, it's extremely bad. But, with some more stellar heals, managed to kill that one too. So now she's down. Got some help from melee for interrupts on the casters, then had to solo tank her while she regained Molten Power from 50-100. I managed to survive there as well.

Unfortunately, people started dying at this point and we couldn't continue to see if we could keep this going. But man, did that make that fight interesting. To be honest, I'm usually pretty bored for that fight. I feel I've got it pretty well down. I make mistakes here and there, who doesn't? But it doesn't cause a wipe. So that was a lot of fun for me. Kudos to my amazing healing team on that one. Making me feel like a god.

Although I know of guilds reporting they have successfully one tanked the hatchlings, we had never tried it before with much success. Once a tank goes down and we don't have a rez for them, we pretty much wipe it. I pride myself in being hard to kill and always try for the moral victory. If there's a hatchling up and almost everyone is dead, you better believe I'm over there trying to kill it before it kills me. I may be a spikey bastard, but I think I hold my own.