The post you’re about to read is from the past. I wrote this post on Saturday hours after we had taken down Deconstructor on hard mode. It’s the 10 player version.
Going in there, I figured that this was a boss well within the crosshairs of what our guild was capable of doing.
The adrenaline rush and feeling the entire raid got was immense. It’s been a long time since I had a feeling like that wash over me. I could tell it was the same thing for the others in the group. The challenge, the wipes, and all the little things added up and resulted in a big giant virtual fist pump when we took him down.
Some of these hard modes really transform the fight into a whole new level. The complexity, the demands and requirements transcend everything. Sometimes I think to myself what would have happened if I was in an organization that was way more involved then what Conquest is now. I’d imagine one of the requirements would be doing everything on hard mode first before dialing back. Could you imagine? I tried Thorim on hard mode a few times. It made me appreciate just how much simpler and stress free the easy mode was.
If you’re looking for a pre-nerf Hyjal, Black Temple, or Sunwell type of experience, give hard mode a shot. They do drop Badges of Conquest after all.
That feeling can be replicated on 10 mans. I found it similar to hitting the Zul’Aman bear timer.
Expect a post sometime later this week with a tactical break down of how Syd, myself, and the rest of the raid handled the walking bunch of bolts.
An early teaser
Quick notes though for those of you wanting to get some attempts on him.
- 1 tank
- Doable with 2 healers
- Position at the front of the stairs not to the sides
- No bots to worry about at all
- Priority on life sparks that spawn
- Designate positions for players to run to with gravity well (they spawn void zones)
Congrats!!!
I knew exactly what you mean. Hard modes are satisfying.
My guild did a triangle positioning with the MT and melee opposite of each other and the ranged to the side, forming a triangle. When a DPS/healer got a lightbomb they stood in front of the ranged, next to the boss so they could continue DPSing but far enough from everyone else so that they didn’t hurt them. That really helped keep the DPS up because melee could dps when they had lightbombs. Overall, not a bad fight. (As long as your DPS doesn’t decide to start killing themselves…)
Long time reader, first time commenter Matt. Love the blog, even if I bemoan your decision to abandon the glory that is Holy in favour of Disc. (I jest).
We did this last week in a fairly casual guild (we’re on Mimiron in our 25s, but we push hard in our 10 man group). Our setup was holy priest (myself) and resto shaman on heals, DK MT, prot pally OT, MM hunter, destro lock, ret pally, rogue, ele shammy, arcane mage.
I’m going to be entirely honest – we decided to go for the achievement on account of regular XT being rather boring and by some bizarre fluke, we got it on the first go. It was easily one of the hardest achievements I’ve ever done though and only a healthy dose of luck saw us through. There was a moment where the boss was on about 15% and I was completely OOM. Tide used, Hymn used, pot used, fiend used, even popped the Dark Rune I keep in reserve. It was utterly terrifying and all I could do was wand the boss for mana. We did it again last night, and this time I was better prepared. A few things that worked well from our kills:
* Co-ordinate with your shammy if you’re lucky enough to have one, and Hymn at the same time he drops tide. Tide is based on max mana, and the +20% mana from Hymn helps squeeze a bit extra out of your mana pool.
* We tasked ranged DPS only with burning the life sparks. Melee stayed on the boss. This kept DPS high throughout.
* My heal rotation for Tantrum was PoM (before the tantrum starts) CoH, Serendipity-hasted PoH, PoH, CoH. I let the shammy spot heal up everyone else afterwards. Regen mana periods are crucial.
* We tasked the prot pally with fetching the sparks, rather than debuffed DPS taking it to him. Extra DPS.
* Don’t be afraid to wand the heart during the burn phase to get yourself back up to as high mana as possible.
I’m really keen to hear about your experience healing it as disc.
In a somewhat unrelated note, We tried Vezax hardmode last night (again, partly on a whim) and found him very manageable. I’m not keen on going disc to heal it, so I’ve respecced and glyphed to abuse lightwell. Should be interesting.