The Burning Crusade

It's been almost 2 years since TBC was released, which brought about big changes to raiding. We went from 40 man raids to 25 man raids, new professions, skills, talents and those dreaded attunements.

Yes, attunements for just about every place. Ridiculous consumable requirements, even harder dps and coordination requirements that were too much for even the majority of hardcore guilds. They couldn't kill Gruul or Magtheridon and thus couldn't move to SSC.

At the same time when the hardcore were struggling with that, AoT was still doing normal instances, heroics and Karazhan. It was hard for us. Any illusion of the some positive effect that attunements might bring were soon shattered as guildies progressed at very different paces. We took a quick look at Maulgar, wiped a few times and left the instance for months.

Patch 2.1 brought many changes, the best of which was the nerfing of consumables - flasks and elixirs didn't stack any more and it helped just about all guilds. At the same time, AoT changed how we approached raiding and we soon cleared Karazhan for the first time. A major stumbling block at the time, however, was that we couldnt get enough raiders together for 25 man raids. It was at that time that we approached a fellow guild on Dragonblight called Tumpton Riot Squad, and very soon after we established a successful raid alliance with them. Almost immediately we killed Maulgar, and very soon after Gruul fell too. 25 man raids had finally started again, after nearly 6 months hiatus.

In next few months, AoT raided and constantly recruited to keep our raiding pool at healthy levels. Trumpton Riot Squad also merged into AOT. Karazhan was cleared weekly and we got our first outdoor boss kill - Doomlord Kazzak. Magtheridon was our first real challenge and we spent many weeks and countless wipes while trying to figure out the art of clicking at the correct time.

We moved into SSC and Hydros gave yet more of that increased raid awareness training. Lurker died very quickly. After that.. we met AOT's 4th hardest boss in TBC raiding for us - Mr Blind, aka Leotheras. Magtheridon was hard, but it was Leo that really showed us how hard TBC rading can be. Five weeks and many many wipes later we finally dropped that raid blender. After that we made steady progress (with sometimes usual AoT good raid, bad raid speed bumps) through Voidreaver (in TK) and Morogrim (in SSC). Zul'Aman was also released around this time but we didn't make good progress in it until months later.

We farmed early SSC bosses for some time until in late January 2008 we killed Karatheress. Solarian and Al'ar died in the next few weeks. It was time for the 2nd hardest boss in TBC for us. Lady Vashj.

After many weeks, the second highest number of wipes for AoT and supported by probably the loudest yells ever, Vashj died and AoT had beaten the first long instance in TBC. We even had a 1% wipe earlier and that finally proved that AoT can kill VERY difficult bosses if we try hard enough and have patience for it. This was also a time when Blizzard had said they'll drop Mount Hyjal and Black Temple attunemnts just like they had did with SSC and Tempest Keep earlier. We managed to kill Vashj before that happened but just missed the opportunity to do so with Kael.

So we moved to Mount Hyjal and it was a slaughter fest. Rage Winterchill died on first raid and Antheron in the first week. In Black Temple we killed Naj'entus and Supremus very fast too. It became clear that SSC and Tempest Keep were more difficult instances for their intended gear level then tier 6 instances. But no matter, AoT progressed fast for the first time since mid Blackwing Lair. AoT focused more on Mount Hyjal and in 5 weeks, we met our hardest opponent ever, Archimonde.

Well over 100 wipes before our first kill and probably another 100 after that. Archimonde is the hardest boss we had ever faced - it took that one really special try to beat it and countless wipe nights after that proved that a normal try just won't do. But we killed it anyway.

It was summer again and in retrospective, we could be really happy that WotLK was pushed back to the 4th quater of the year. We had time to enjoy the content and make good progress in both tier 5 and 6 instances. While some might feel that the Kael kill was robbed from us, it still felt great to finally kill it. Sure we might have over-geared it by now and 5 man instance messed up the space and time continuum, but at least the bastard died. And we can't forget that Kael still was 3rd hardest boss for us based on the overall number of wipes. We went back a few times to make sure that everyone could experience this epic fight.

In Black Temple, we killed bosses at a steady pace up until the Council. Actually even Council didn't take that long, but as the 2nd last boss of the instance, it required a lot of clearing to reach. Council was a real bastard of the fight - boring as Supremus but with longer corpse run and faster wipes. *shivers*

With Council dead, there was only one boss left for us. Illidan... and by Illidan we actually mean Illidan phase 2 because just like in Vashj and Kael fights, there had to be an absolutely trivial first phase to waste our time. And a non-skippable talk-a-tron.

Illidan 2nd phase turned out to be really hard and we couldn't beat it. It didn't help that we had to clear all 8 bosses to get there and usually only have 1 full raid night (or even less since sometimes) to try it. Patch 3.02 was released before we could kill Illidan but it didn't change our overall TBC raid goal. Illidan must die. And on the 23rd of October, he did die.

Despite all the issues with TBC raiding, AoT managed to reach it's goal. It did require a lot from everyone of us, but we did it. Good job everyone who's been part of the team, from officers to raid leaders, from DKP team to cheerleaders, from regular raiders to everyone else.

Let's make it a good one in Northrend.

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Thanks to Spuge for the core of the above article.