You Face Jaraxxus!
Our raid group fired up Heroic Trial of the Crusader Monday night. Northrend Beasts were difficult as always. A couple of times we actually got to Icehowl, only to have someone in the raid get hit and Icehowl would enrage and start hitting tanks.
The most tense moment for me personally is right after the Dreadscale comes up from submerge. It's an aggro wipe, but you can't target him until he's all the way up. A little bit of lag is all it takes for the big worm to kill one of your raid members seemingly before you could do anything about it.
But the important thing is we got them down.
Next up we faced Lord Jarraxxus. I'm beginning to hate this guy as much as I did Malcheezar back in the day.
First problem we were having was I was losing a melee to the Sisters of Pain. Whirlwind is a huge part of our DPS Warriors rotation and we are trying to get the portals down as fast as we can because 2 Sisters up usually spells disaster. Sometimes his whirlwind hits the Sister and she nails him before I've locked her down good.
We mostly got that solved. The next problem is the Kiss that the Sister puts on one of our casters. They either have to use instant cast spells or cast a spell from a minor school. Our Druids would cast Starfire so the Kiss would lock out Arcane and not Nature. Our Shamans used Lava something. If we had had any Holy Paladins they would have been in a really tough spot. The only school they have access to is Holy. Getting the Sisters down bunched us up a little bit which caused Fel Lightning to be a big problem. Losing anyone meant we wouldn't have the DPS to get the next portal down in time.
Periodically the Sisters fly up into the air and come smashing down on someone. I don't think it's an aggro wipe, but I had to get right back on them.
The next problem was the Infernals. The Volcano spawns an Infernal almost immediately, so I can't really help out on geting the Volcano down at all. We usually get 3 to 4 Infernals. I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get them under control. Half the time, one of the Infernals targets Boston (DK) who is tanking Jarraxxus and I use Righteous Defense to grab him (because Hand of Reckoning and Avenger's Shield are on cooldown and I've already got two on me so I can't very well cast Exorcism). Of course, I end up taunting Jarraxxus as well.
Then the Infernals go all Blanka on me, tuck into a ball and charge someone. They stop and start AoEing right where they were. Again, I don't know if it's an aggro wipe, but it seems to be.
Usually, by the time all 4 were down we had lost someone.
The ramp up from Normal Trial of the Crusader to Heroic is quite severe. Where you almost have too much room for error in Normal, you basically have none in Heroic. At least that's how it feels to our 10 man group. I'm sure the guys attacking it in 245/258 gear have a little more room for error. (What I mean here is that if you are a 25 man guild, you problably have more room for error in your 10 man runs. Doing 10 man Heroic for a 10 man guild is about the same room for error as a 25 man guild going 25 man Heroic).
We definately made some progress on learning the fight, and I'm confident we'll get it down soon. Of course, I don't even want to THINK about what Faction Champions are going to be like on Heroic.
The most tense moment for me personally is right after the Dreadscale comes up from submerge. It's an aggro wipe, but you can't target him until he's all the way up. A little bit of lag is all it takes for the big worm to kill one of your raid members seemingly before you could do anything about it.
But the important thing is we got them down.
Next up we faced Lord Jarraxxus. I'm beginning to hate this guy as much as I did Malcheezar back in the day.
First problem we were having was I was losing a melee to the Sisters of Pain. Whirlwind is a huge part of our DPS Warriors rotation and we are trying to get the portals down as fast as we can because 2 Sisters up usually spells disaster. Sometimes his whirlwind hits the Sister and she nails him before I've locked her down good.
We mostly got that solved. The next problem is the Kiss that the Sister puts on one of our casters. They either have to use instant cast spells or cast a spell from a minor school. Our Druids would cast Starfire so the Kiss would lock out Arcane and not Nature. Our Shamans used Lava something. If we had had any Holy Paladins they would have been in a really tough spot. The only school they have access to is Holy. Getting the Sisters down bunched us up a little bit which caused Fel Lightning to be a big problem. Losing anyone meant we wouldn't have the DPS to get the next portal down in time.
Periodically the Sisters fly up into the air and come smashing down on someone. I don't think it's an aggro wipe, but I had to get right back on them.
The next problem was the Infernals. The Volcano spawns an Infernal almost immediately, so I can't really help out on geting the Volcano down at all. We usually get 3 to 4 Infernals. I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get them under control. Half the time, one of the Infernals targets Boston (DK) who is tanking Jarraxxus and I use Righteous Defense to grab him (because Hand of Reckoning and Avenger's Shield are on cooldown and I've already got two on me so I can't very well cast Exorcism). Of course, I end up taunting Jarraxxus as well.
Then the Infernals go all Blanka on me, tuck into a ball and charge someone. They stop and start AoEing right where they were. Again, I don't know if it's an aggro wipe, but it seems to be.
Usually, by the time all 4 were down we had lost someone.
The ramp up from Normal Trial of the Crusader to Heroic is quite severe. Where you almost have too much room for error in Normal, you basically have none in Heroic. At least that's how it feels to our 10 man group. I'm sure the guys attacking it in 245/258 gear have a little more room for error. (What I mean here is that if you are a 25 man guild, you problably have more room for error in your 10 man runs. Doing 10 man Heroic for a 10 man guild is about the same room for error as a 25 man guild going 25 man Heroic).
We definately made some progress on learning the fight, and I'm confident we'll get it down soon. Of course, I don't even want to THINK about what Faction Champions are going to be like on Heroic.
Comments
@Blue: It was just as much my inexperience running with Fury as it was anything else. Once I started thinking of your Whirlwind like a Divine Storm, it got easier to pick her up. Honestly, it's that blasted Infernals that seemed to be doing us in.
I understand your pain. We've found that more than one mistress is usually a wipe too. I haven't tried the different school of magic trick yet, but I'm going to tonight likely.
otherwise it's either a 15 second debuff or 8 second lockout.
Mind you this is only in reg 10, so not sure if it is still applicable for heroic or not.
Having said that with 3 members of our 10 man hard group having no gear except 10 man we didnt have too much problems with Jaraxxus 10 hard, mainly I suspect due to good dps.
Now faction champs was another story, but we ran out of time for the week:(
As for the faction champions, it was pretty late when we got Jaraxxus down, we pulled the faction champions, and they focus fired our raid down with remarkable efficiency. We decided to call it a night after that.