Not us, we were blinded by brilliance. BRILLIANCE!!! I was all prepared to head back into EP and kick Queen Azshara in the face, especially since I finally finished the storyline to open up the raid but we started at heroic. First, spoiler warning – if you haven’t completed the scenario handed to you in Nazjatar, I am going to back track a little.
I only just completed the entire story thanks to my food poisoning, I felt well enough on Thursday/Friday to shuffle my way through it. I cannot express how this game makes me feel, suffice it to say when you get Baine out of the dungeon and Jaina and Thrall are standing across from Thunder Bluff wondering why they are working together because nothing changes and Jaina touches his arm and says, “We have.”; I lost my mind. Tears starting streaming down my face, I couldn’t stop them. This is not the first cinematic to bring me to tears (most of them do) and should the next xpac be about dragons you can bet I will be bawling constantly.
I started Alliance so I have a soft spot for Jaina as any long time reader would know. She was a mage, like my character, and she was amazing. Thrall was my second love when I switched to the horde and discovered his story and his deep sense of honour. They are my two favourite non-dragon historical figures in the Azerothian lore.
To see them on screen, fighting together to save Baine who also has a deep sense of honour and dislike for the way Sylvanas has been acting, my heart just couldn’t take it. Then after the scenario you head off to find the tidestone and once again work together with the alliance and whilst killing naga they are saying to each other how impressed they are with their fighting skills and had there not been a faction war they could have been friends. Oh my heart.
Anyway, after having done all that I was finally able to get to the raid without having to be summoned and I had a quest to kill the Queen. So I was super excited for raid thinking we would be going back in to kill Zaqul and her. Instead we did heroics and smashed Shivara and Behemoth (I have discovered I can use barkskin on almost every single shocking pulse if I time it just right!). We then did Radiance. I still hate this fight. I think it is stupid and has crap mechanics just to piss off any and every single class that needs to cast. I hate it. But on the more positive side Nelly has found a strat that seems to work when done correctly. Just keep moving when the whirlwinds get dropped, bunch into melee and stick together. It actually works really well if everyone moves when they need to. It removes a lot of the randomness of the encounter. Unless you get the bomb twice in a row and get too far from the group because you don’t get dispelled. Boo stupid bombs. Stupid fight.
So after just a couple of attempts. we killed Radiance in heroic!! We are now 3/8H!
We did also go back and do the other two in normal; I had to go down through the portals into the fear level for the first time on Zaqul and I pretty much just spent the entire fight going “WTF?” – I need a few more runs on that one before I will understand it. We also had an issue on Queen and wiped a couple of times but I am not sure what happened. I thought we had that one down, but it was just a little wonky. Either way we are moving through the new raid and getting gear – this is a win win!!