A Val’anyr Story

Several weeks ago, the leaders of two guilds met together. Both had a serious problem. Both guilds had 2 players that had 30 fragments for Val’anyr but did not have the drive nor the personnel at the time to pull it off. An agreement was made to launch an operation into Ulduar to finish off and complete the weapons of mass prevention.

A plan was hatched to take the best from both guilds and launch repeated assaults on Yogg-Saron. The instance ID was already cleared having been saved and unused for the past 9 weeks.

The first such attempts were designed to gauge how this hybrid raid group would function together. DPS checks were made followed by threat and healing checks. It certainly seemed as if the group had the DPS to do it. It was felt at times that 6 healers was one too many but it wasn’t a significant issue as the players outgeared the boss. Even then, people were dying left and right for unfortunate (and in most cases preventable) reasons.

After 2 and a half hours though, the raid managed to buckle down. On the last attempt, I fell not once but twice against Yogg’s early minions. Both battle res’s were burned and we were fresh out of pick me ups. A guardian was burned too early but there was nothing we could do but grab another. Phase kicked in. Yogg reared his ugly head and tentacles began sprouting. Portal teams were finally in sync and hitting the right portals. They were getting there early ahead of time (to make sure no one was jacking their portals).

It was frantic non-stop action. The amount of running and tentacle dodging might have rivaled a really cheesy hentai movie. Surprisingly this Dwarf’s agility managed to survive and escape the clutches of Yogg (although losing part of the beard in the process). Soon, we advanced to the final phase.

Guardians began swarming all around us as the brain team emerged from Yogg. We held fast to our positions as the rest of the strike force rallied to our position. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a Ret Pally thrust his spear into one guardian before another guardian came up and struck him from behind. He crumpled to the ground from the unexpected blow. I muttered a curse and inched back towards the entrance of the room while motioning to the other healers to do the same. No sense in getting caught off guard ourselves.

When I wasn’t too busy firing off heals and shields, I would steal occasional glances at Yogg to determine how much longer we had to hold the fort down for. The reserves of the healers were all but expended. A sudden warmth and glow filled the raid. Heroism had been activated for the last minute. The raid fought back with renewed vigor. It felt like an eternity.

But it was done.

Without Hodir.

Who needs him anyway?