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Blackhand Crumbles

This was back on June 10th, but we did take down Heroic Blackhand when he was current, before Hellfire Citadel came out. He was a SUPER rough final boss with some nasty mechanics. It took a LOT of work and some extremely frustrating wipes, but we got him and VERY glad of it!

Game Theory, you rock!

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Bridge Over Troubled Lava

Here lies a Bridge. Beyond it, Blackhand! Game Theory has had a fantastic time raiding Blackrock Foundry and just this week we extinguished the Blast Furnace on Heroic difficulty. That puts us at 9/10 Heroic!

We are very glad to have many new members in our ranks and look forward to fighting and defeating Blackhand. We already know it's an intense, tightly-tuned fight, but we are up to the challenge. Onward!

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Raiding in Draenor

It's been a long while since Garrosh fell, but he is still making trouble for us. Despite the lack of posts, Game Theory has been in Draenor fighting the Warlords of the Iron Horde. The expansion has been fun with some great story going on and entertaining raids. Currently, we have cleared 7/7 Normal and 6/7 Heroic in Highmaul. We are also 9/10 Normal and 5/10 Heroic in Blackrock Foundry.

Some old faces have returned, others have moved on, and brand new people have joined us! Our newest members are a pleasure to have and we are glad you are here. The Flex system is working fantastically for us! We often run 15 player raids, but some nights drop down to just 10-11. It is amazingly nice to have everyone raid with us and not make anyone sit.

We are having a great time and will continue to raid Mondays and Thursdays in Draenor, from 8:30pm PST to 11:30pm PST. Old friends and new are always welcome! Stand as One for the Alliance and Game Theory, for friends and fun!

(Oh and here is a shot of our Blast Furnace kill. Crazy boss fight, fun and intense!)

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The Mighty Have Fallen

It's been quite the journey for Garrosh Hellscream. From a whiny nothing orc in Nagrand to an orc bent on racial purity as Warchief of the Horde! Yet, here he lies at our feet. The final fight of the expansion is a very good one. Took us several weeks to get all the pieces just right and finally win our Wolves. I'm glad that Garrosh was a challenge. Satisfying end boss in a fun raid with a good progression curve.

It's been quite the journey for us this expansion too. A lot of raid group changes along the way. We know that Garrosh's story isn't yet finished and ours isn't either! Though we've cleared Normal modes, there is still quite some time until Warlords of Draenor. Until then, we have Heroics to clear! At the moment, we are recruiting to fill out our raid group and hopefully get HEROIC Garrosh down before things get wibbly wobbly.

Congrats on all the raid success this expansion, Game Theory! Here's to more success in Heroic Siege of Orgrimmar and beyond to Draenor!

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Golden Glow

Just after the Siege of Orgrimmar was released, we managed to complete another goal: Challenge Modes! We've been working on them off and on over the expansion and we finally got Gold Medals in all 9 Challenge Dungeons! They are a solid challenge and a lot of fun. An excellent addition to the game. We look forward to more in Warlords of Draenor!

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Clearing Out the Halls

With access to the lower levels of Orgrimmar, we faced off against Garrosh's strongest supporters, secret weapons and crazy creatures. Taking out Garrosh's lieutenant, Malkorok, didn't take long. A short adjustment to the healing trick and he fell quickly. Busting through the security system around the Spoils of Pandaria took more effort, but not much. It's a big departure from normal raid bosses. As a DPS, I enjoyed the change of pace! Not sure about the tanks and healers. :)

Thok, the hungry dinosaur, was a big change from the previous two bosses. He was a big challenge! A lot of raid damage and a lot of HP to get through. Sounds like Thok has generally been harder for 10-player guilds than 25-player. When we finally got him down, there was only one person left alive. Way to go Swipenrake! Siegecrafter Blackfuse is a fun fight with a lot of moving parts. Not as hard as Thok, but trickier than Malkorok and Spoils. It's a good fight with jobs for all roles in the raid. The last fight in this section of Orgrimmar is the Paragons of the Klaxxi. There's a lot of moving parts to this fight, but it's actually very simple. It was sad to kill my old bug buddies, but they were always clear they would turn against us to help the Old Gods!

With the Paragons exterminated, all that remains is Garrosh himself and his big, purple heart!

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Tear Down the Walls!

Assaulting Orgrimmar itself is hectic! There is a lot going on in these fights. The Tower/Add phase of Galakras has a lot of parts, but not many surprises. Biggest tricks are to keep the Bonecrushers off of Varian and don't get knocked off the Towers! Galakras itself is a quick burn: Either the drake dies fast or you do. Helps a lot to split the raid into two groups on the left and right. Iron Juggernaut has a LOT of AoE damage going out! It gave a really rough time at first and we finally beat it by using 4 healers! The enrage wasn't a problem at all, staying alive was the trick.

Once inside, we found out that everything had been calm before. I saw elsewhere that the Dark Shaman is "the Olympics of Not Standing in Stuff." That is an apt description! Poison and Tornadoes and Slimes and Elementals EVERYWHERE! An extremely crazy fight, probably the most nuts in the entire expansion. Darkguns may have died. Often. ;) Nazgrim is quite tame by comparison, except he is VERY ANGRY! We got a very close kill, down to 3%...then he stood next to a Healing Totem and went back to 30%. That one HURT. He went down cleaner the next time.

What horrors lie below the streets of Orgrimmar?

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Cleansing the Vale

The first four bosses in Siege of Orgrimmar went down quickly. Immerseus is extremely easy and barely a boss. The only interesting part is at the beginning. The Fallen Protectors looks complicated, but is quite straight-forward. An easy fight once you learn you can just toss the Mark of Anguish to a tank. Much better second fight than Horridon!

Norushen probably gave us the most trouble, with the tightest enrage timer and highest healing requirements of the four. We found sending DPS to get Purified earlier made it much easier. Sha of Pride was an interesting fight, except for the tanks! They were pretty bored. Like the Protectors, it appears very complex, but is quite manageable. (Letting the tanks take care of one Prison made it significantly easier too.)

Overall a good start to the Siege! A little bit of challenge, but no brick walls. Progress is much smoother than in the Throne of Thunder. A fun raid instance so far, but it hurts to see the noble Protectors of the Vale, and the Vale itself, so twisted!

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Storms and Feathers

The Siege of Orgrimmar is coming up soon, so to keep busy we've been smashing things in the Throne of Thunder. Since the death of Lei Shen, we've taken down the Heroic versions of Jin'rokh and Ji-kun!

Heroic Jin'rokh was a big pain. Most of the fight didn't take much adjusting, but his Lightning Storm is substantially different. We had a LOT of wipes to that before finally getting through with enough people alive to kill him. Heroic Ji-kun was quite a bit easier! I'd definitely recommend her to any guild just starting Heroics. The main difference was finding someone to tank the extra adds on the Nests, so we pushed Darkguns to do it. :) He did a great job and even stayed alive! It felt great to get a couple Heroic kills in. We've got two weeks left, so we'll see if we can get any more!

Also, here is a FLYING BEAR.

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Thunder Fades and Silence Reigns

With one final Crash, Lei Shen has fallen. The Thunder King rules no more! After some good pulls - and many bad ones - we took Lei Shen down in a glorious, amazingly clean kill. The fight is truly an epic one with a lot of moving parts, including many ways for the raid to mess up. We used a lot of those, but I'm sure we could find more! Definitely a cool fight and a fun one, when it all clicks. Frustrating when it doesn't click, but that's normal!

Thus we have cleared all the bosses in the Throne of Thunder on Normal mode! Fantastic job, Game Theory! There are several weeks left until the next raid, the Siege of Orgrimmar, so we have some time to relax a bit, re-clear for more loot and kill some Heroic bosses. See you in Azeroth!

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