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Treasures Among the Stars

We returned to the Throne of Thunder to take on the final obstacle to Lei Shen: his Twin Consorts, Suen and Lu'lin. We played among the stars and with the help of the Four Celestials, took Lei Shen's favorites down! Turns out they aren't very tough. The easiest boss in the instance! It's a fun fight, even if I did spend more time in the "Star World" trying to draw constellations than actually fighting the bosses....

All that remains is the Thunder King himself. The Storm is coming and the Sky itself will crash down upon us. Yet, we will persevere. The Thunder King will Fall.

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The Gates are Open and the General is Dead!

After killing many trolls (again), working our way through a sewer and dealing with some bizarre creations, we've made it to the final rooms of the Throne of Thunder! We faced off against Lei Shen's General of his armies, Iron Qon. Qon brought some crazy elemental quilen with him, throwing all sorts of fire, ice and electricity around, but it wasn't GOOD ENOUGH.

We beat down the quilen, killed off Iron Qon and all that remains is the Thunder King and his Consorts! Let's finish this.

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Breaking the Thunder King's Toys

Lei Shen makes some weird stuff. A funky eyeball that shoots colored light. A mutating lizard that sleeps in ooze. A bunch of toy robots? Wait, they're powered by some sort of blood, ooze stuff? Lei Shen's gotta rethink his toy making business. There are going to be massive recalls when some 3 year old drinks the blood Anima and leaves their own "Crimson Wake." A noble effort to make some cool toys, Lei Shen! Then again, maybe that's why they are stuck in your basement?

Dark Animus is a very interesting fight, but also a very odd one. A huge chunk of the fight is just setting it up right at the start. After that it's very simple and the boss himself is nearly a Patchwerk-style burn fight for the DPS. (Healers are more challenged.) The concept is very cool, but it doesn't seem to have worked out the way Blizzard wanted it to. Oh well! I like that they are mixing it up, this one made us think differently, which is pretty cool. Onward to the final Mogu!

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Nasty Creatures, Precioussssss!

They have ssspiky things and pointy things and burny things, Preciousss! Mean, nassssty creatures, yesss, what do they want? Why must they bother usss? We just want to swim in our sssweet pool of muck and ooze. Ssso greedy these creatures! Taking all our ssshiny toys! They didn't get YOU, Preciousss! They think us dead, but we know better, yeesssss!

(I think we killed him, but I'm not so sure now!)

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A-maze-ing Sight!

What looks so good? Game Theory next to a dead Durumu! Or is he sleeping? First boss I can remember that looks like he's just sleeping, not dead... He'll wake up in a minute and yell at us crazy kids for having a party on his lawn. PHASE FOUR!

Durumu is a cool fight. I like the randomness of the Light and Maze phases. They are different every time, but the random is easy to adjust to. It helps keep the fight fresh without being frustrating. He turned out to not be very hard! Practicing in LFR and Blizzard's changes to the maze must have helped because we downed Durumu in just a single night! From what I hear, the next four bosses aren't very hard either. The only challenge left is Lei Shen himself! Boss kill post spam incoming.

Awww, he looks so tired! He was just lonely and wanted friends to play with. WHAT HAVE WE DONE??

Skarn's picture

Poached or Scrambled?

Fried or Over-Easy or Sunny-side Up or...how do you want 'em? We smashed a bunch taking down Ji-kun! We need to do something with all of them! The fight itself is sort of two fights in one. The Boss Crew and the Flying Eggbreakers. I thought the flying part was pretty fun! The boss is fairly easy if you don't stand in green goop and don't get knocked off. She took a little over one night to beat, so not long at all.

Now who wants an omelette?

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The Vorpal Blade went Snicker-snack!

With her many heads we went galumphing back! So it was that we slew the deformed cloud serpent in the depths of the Throne of Thunder! After trying a few different head-kill orders, we discovered one that worked really well for us. We used GRBRGR to minimize tank damage, AoE damage and kiting needed. It was extremely successful, getting us a kill in only two (real) tries! There are a lot of different combos for this fight, which make it totally different from one guild to another. Megaera is an interesting puzzle that has been solved!

Now...SNAILS! (Oh and feathers.)

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Punted!

What do you do with a giant Stone Turtle? Kick smaller turtles at it! Tortos is a different fight with an amusing turtle-punting twist. He was easier to kill than the previous two bosses. A few rough wipes with no progress, but we figured it out and got him down fast. We've cleared a third of the Throne of Thunder! Now to see how many heads we can handle...

Bones of Tortos previous visitors
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Meeting Adjourned!

This Council of the troll Elders is no longer in deliberations. They're sequestered now. In their graves. That's the end of the trolls for this raid! (Blizzard will have more trolls later, they're endless.) This was the most surprising fight so far. Our first strategy was viable, but turned out to be very tough and resulted in a lot of frustrating wipes. We made one tweak, which seems fairly minor, by having the Mar'li tank (Swipe) get aggro on her and then attack Sul. The difference in the fight was incredible! Just two pulls with that change and the trolls died easily! It's amazing how simple the fight is when Sul doesn't empower.

A good example of questioning strategy. Shifting something small can have a big impact. We should remember to not be afraid to try different things. Next up: Turtle punting!

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Flight of the Phoenix

For about 3 months, a small group has steadily been working on Challenge Modes once a week. Last week we finally finished all Challenge Mode dungeons with at least a Silver medal! It's been a lot of fun and an interesting challenge. We got sweet pandaren phoenix mounts out of it too!

Now we try for Gold and cool armor!

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