(WoW) Defender of a Shattered World

I have the most minor regret we didn't get a chance to really try out Cho'gall and Al'Akir before the nerfs of 4.2, but that's okay.

Tonight we started late, stymied by a lack of critical people. Eventually, we pugged a priest healer and moonkin dps to fill in. We lined up to start with the Twilight Ascendant Council. The trash pull beforehand was... a total clusterf- but not a wipe, even if we pulled practically every mob save one in about three awkward waves with no break. That was telling. The Council itself went down in our first attempt with no real problem in spite of poor coordination at the end.

Cho'gall's trash was awkwardly pulled, but put down without serious trouble. Cho'gall himself went down in one. I feel it would take another two runs or so to get better at the timing of the swaps and moving the adds. I think we were a bit slow on that overall. Still, we only saw... what? Two adherrants? Three? Then it was phase 2 and a fairly quick burning down. Our shaman got his tier 11 shoulder token with no competition.

We then hopped over to readied up for Chimaeron to clear on the way to the end. Only our second time on him, but we did it okay. The tank swapping didn't go as cleanly as I'd have liked. I think I got my taunts off at the right times (with DBM warnings), but we seemed to get out of sync and the other tank had to be rezzed mid-fight. Still, one-shot.

Then Nefarian. He's still a punk. It took us several attempts to get the mechanics worked out. Balance the DPS? Check. Don't leave the skeletons scattered? Check. Don't have multiple people die in the lava? Check. Don't distract me with one end of a dragon and let me walk into the other? Check. Okay, done and done. Our shaman also got his tier 11 helm token. Lucky guy - everyone wants a new hat!

Then off to Throne of Four Winds to down the Council there. It took a couple tries to get the DPS balanced out, but down they went and we lined up for Al'Akir.

I... actually find the Al'Akir fight to be fun. There's awareness and movement and... almost no concern for threat. You barely seem to need a tank there, save perhaps the first phase. This was proven as - after getting timing down and doing really well a couple times when everyone else died - I got blasted off the platform, died in the air, and watched the rest of the raid finish the encounter from far below. How many raid bosses can you win with the tank down less than halfway through? It was neat to watch.

So... Tier 11 cleared, earning the title "Defender of a Shattered World." It looks nice, but I'm still attached to "Crusader" personally. As a minor annoyance, though, because only 8 of 10 people were guild members, it didn't count as a challenge and it didn't count toward the guild achievement (which unlocks a dark phoenix mount). So if we want that mount, we need to go with a true guild group and do it again.

So now there's talk of moving on to Firelands next weekend, though that might be tough for us yet. Though it hasn't been said, there's also the possibility of doing one or more tier 11 bosses on heroic - which is supposed to be similar in difficulty as Firelands what I hear tell. We'll see.