From progress kills to farm ...

... can be a rocky road. In my experience while second kills may not take quite as long as firsts they can be more frustrating and more depressing than firsts. Not that I'm saying that killing something twice moves it from "progress" to "farm" but a clean second kill is definitely a big step forward.

Last night we went into TotGC (25man) 3 shotted beasts - anyone who complains about Sunwell Radiance Version 2 - please go and tank heroic beasts, where randomly not avoiding the hit immediately before impale seems to cause certain death, unless you've got CDs available. The other thing I've noticed is that as soon as I get paralysis-debuff (I'm on acid worm) before he burrows, everything spirals out of control very quickly, we split our melee (8 in total last night excluding the tanks) onto both worms and with careful positioning avoided getting me paralysed - but still 2 wipes before downing them wasn't bad.

Jaraxxas took a few more tries (4 wipes) before we got our second kill, I was on DPS duty and our pally tank took the adds, something he hasn't done in heroic mode before, that and the high number of melee were probably largely responsible for the wipes. In the end we even got the 360 pain spike achievement, as the last portal wasn't killed fast enough, mainly due to some dead DPS and everyone trying to kill Jaraxxas - he must have been under 3% when the portal spawned.

Next up was Faction Champs, and after our fairly easy first kill last week I was not entirely sure that lightning could strike twice. We didn't have the holy priest (first time ever I think) but still we stuck with a similar order: "squishiest" healer, warrior, rogue, DK, hunter, other healers, casters. Our poor RL (who is ill) gave himself the task of babysitting the tree (banish and fear) and kept it up for over 7minutes! We lost 2 deathknights (one of whom was battleressed) but it was still a one-shot! One trick that works really well for us is to do consistent damage on their pets, this time we put all the hunter pets on the cat and it means, due to their AI, that their healers spend a lot of time healing the pets and not the people, this means that despite not perfect shutdown on the holy pally and tree, we can afford to kill 1 healer and 4 dps'ers before the other two healers. For example last night 70% of the trees healing went on pets and 40% of the pallys

As our RL was ill and not up to progress wipes on Twins and with an hour left of our raid we headed out and back in to TotC normal. Despite an enraged Icehowl (who decided that little gnomes were too good to be left alone) we one-shotted all the bosses; we even nuked the Faction Champs tree first as our RL couldn't face more CC. We tried a different tactic on Twins, with 4 groups (2 melee and 2 ranged) by each of the portals, the idea being the ranged all swop to kill shields and the melee stay on their mob, moving, changing colour and changing back again when needed. I thought it went very smoothly and was a lot less confusing than the soaking strategys (not the doorway one) that require a lot of changing colour and positioning. Aparently there are videos showing this strategy for heroic mode, so I think we might give it a try next time - Reez if you're reading this go to bed and sleep, we need you better by Sunday.

All in all it was a good night, despite healers complaining on normal Twins and others that they had nothing to do! Shorty got a trophy and has bought her tank helm and also got the heroic cloak drop from Jaraxxas (our MT got the heroic monstrosity chest and our pally a new non-heroic neck), Shorty's pally sidekick also got his heroic Justicebringer.

In other news on Wednesday night I attended our usual 10man swip through VoA, Ony and TotC - getting Ony's head (thanks Nor!) to help towards my unhittable set. Afterwards I tanked TotGC 10man for the first time in several weeks, we one-shotted the first four bosses and then took 5 wipes on Anubby, but still finished with 45 tries left. This week the guild is aiming to run two 10man TotGC groups for the first time and the gear and trophies earned will definitely help in gearing us for Icecrown. Shorty was spoilt rotten in her run, getting a tank mace and shield (from Anubby and the tribute chest)!