Sunday afternoon we put together a group of guildies and went to ICC.
“Wait,” you might say. “ICC? That’s old content! Bah, casuals!”
Well, yes, it is old content but there’s a lot of people who never did kill Arthas. And we had our eyes on the prize; a shiny title for killing Arthas on heroic, and that darn Frostbrood Vanquisher mount. It sure is one sexy dragon…
So after a little while to convince people to come, wait for them to get out of heroics, find someone capable of off tanking, we were off. We summonsed those who were lagging behind and off we went. Reversion said at the outset, “As long as we take these fights serious, they’ll be a cakewalk. If we treat them like a cakewalk, we’ll wipe.” So we explained each fight – we had several people who didn’t know the fights, didn’t know them on heroic, didn’t remember them any more, you get the picture – and if we were trying to do an achievement as well as the heroic mode, told people that strategy. For many of the fights we did do both at once. Other fights were just too much of a pain; Lady Deathwhisper’s achievement we left for another time and a couple we screwed up, like Boned! and Portal Jockey.
It was really sad to see the epic purple shiny loots drop and be useless now, incidentally.
Three hours in and we faced down Sindragosa, having wiped only on the Princes and then only because the off tank didn’t realize who he was tanking. But Sindy has always been harder, we had one person who wasn’t in vent and about four who didn’t know the fight at all..
First try we got a frost tomb in raid right off, boom, wipe. Second try we nearly got her but again had some carelessness with tombs at the end. We were close – but we were out of time.
We plan to go back until we get those drakes. It’ll take several weeks since I think we’re going to have to kill Arthas on normal for his achievement, coordinate getting people bitten or not for “Once Bitten” achievement, and “All You Can Eat” looks like a pain in the butt. Ugh.
We had tons of fun, it was a great guild activity and we’re looking forward to finishing it off. The fights are still a good time and you have to pay attention to mechanics at least somewhat – not as easy to cheese as BC raids are now – and honestly I would recommend it to any group looking for something a little different. So our titles won’t mean as much as those who earned theirs back in the day; it’s still achievement points!
“it’s still achievement points!”
Ha! I went from fifth back up to third in the guild over the weekend with all the achieves we did.
I’m still crying over finally seeing the heroic Spyglass drop, now that I don’t need it anymore.
I think Rossini just disenchanted his recently.
I actually won the greed roll, too … but I had to vendor it last night so I’d have bag space for the fishing tourney. 😦
You just have to arrange for someone else to be our healer every time and then, bam, achievement points! This Sunday, our superbowl party is finishing Northrend Dungeon Achieves!
Well that won’t get points for Kar. hehe.
Kerick needs one achievement in VH … then I’ll either bring Rags or San, depending on which ones we do and what they need.
My (quite casual) guild did the same about a few weeks ago. Many of us had never been to ICC, and only 1 had seen the Lich King.
We actually only wiped 4 or 5 times before the LK (2 of those on the ship as many at first didn’t understand that it was the SHIP we were trying to kill). Our Sindragosa kill was incredibly epic; 2 DPS (and my pet) got locked out of the fight, and a single paladin one-manned it for a full 3 minutes for the last few percent for the kill.
Then we stood before the Lich King. Definitely one of the most epic moments in my 3 years in the game. We wiped over and over, got closer and closer (but never made it past the Val’kyr/black pools of death phase). We called it, and have extended it every week, but I doubt we’ll try again for awhile.
Highly recommended.
You should import a decent raid leader for one night who has done that fight. Not to insult anyone there, but that fight is much easier with someone that knows the timing well and can call out the instructions. Our first LK kill we had Ado (who often comments here) giving the ‘stack up’ and ‘run out’ instructions. The key is to spread out before the black goes off, move out of it FAST, gather in the center when the valk is about to come, and target the valk fast with slowing effects and high dps. It requires everyone in the raid to do the right thing at the right time with no hesitation at all.