As has been well documented in this blog, Empyreal Fray has been plagued with attendance problems all throughout Cataclysm. Now, we have seen the return of one of our originally planned healers, and times are looking up. However, we still missed two out of three raid nights due to lack of attendance last week. My co-tank, and our regular raid leader was on vacation for one night, so that night was expected.
Anyway, I didn't want another soul draining raid cancelation, so I suggested that we go do all of the hard modes in Ulduar. Sort of a night off, while still spending time to gether as a raid team. Most people in our guild never got their Proto-Drakes out of Ulduar, so I thought that this would be easy, and fun. And, we could knock out the Guild Achievement for Ulduar while were there.
Also, only a couple of the guildies had seen Algalon, so this would allow that as well.
How did it go?
In a word, fantastic.
Flame Leviathan was easy sauce, even with all four towers up. Razorscale only took three attempts to finish off the Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare achievement, and only that because the boss has an enrage timer, and you don't get 25 dwarves in a single fight to begin with. Ignis keeled over without much of a fuss. XT-002 was a snoozefest. Steelbreaker was chosen, and found to be lacking. We got robbed of the Disarmed achievement on Kologarn, but would come back and get it on our second night in Ulduar. The crazy cat lady went purr-fectly. Hodir's hallway trash took longer than Hodir himself. Thorim, was interesting, because the debuff he puts on the tank still reduces defense skill by 200, even though no tank has defense skill anymore. And, to close out the night, we killed Freya, after having to remember the fight mechanics on the fly.
On our second night of the week, We blew through Uludar at a record pace. We skipped Razorscale and Ignis. Disarmed Kologarn, and did the hardmodes of Hodir, Thorim, and Freya again, as I was collecting the parts for the Algalon key. Then we moved on to do Firefighter. Afterwards we continued on to General Vezax, where we smelled saronite and loved it. Then Yogg fell.
We closed out the night with me completing the key to Algalon, and then us killing him as well. Guild Achievement gained, personal achievement gained. New mounts and new titles for most of us. But most importantly, we had a really good time doing it. It was a nice break from Cata raiding. I know, for me at least, it sort of re-filled my tank.
I am chomping at the bit to get back to raiding current content this Sunday night.
