The Beasts Are Down

We finally downed Northrend Beasts on 25 man heroic yesterday, and it was a darn good feeling. Getting the heroic version of the tanking chestplate was also a good feeling (and adding the stamina trinket from normal Faction Champions just an hour before that made my loot day complete). That chestplate has three sockets and insane stats and will make a nice addition to my gear collection.

The reasons for our success yesterday were mostly better dps and better survivability. We reached Icehowl several times with only one or two dead, and the last worm almost dead. On our kill, Dreadscale was even dead before Icehowl entered the arena.

We run with three tanks; a warrior, a druid, and yours truly.

I pick up Gormok at the start, popping wings and swinging away all that I can. Even with stamina gear I can keep our dps behind me on threat (when they start catching up, it's time for the first tank switch). When the worms enter, I grab Gormok while the other tanks get a Hand of Protection from our two holy paladins. As soon as Gormok is dead, I bubble off my stacks of Impale and taunt Dreadscale off the druid, who by then should have the first Burning Bile, which he spreads to whoever needs it (often the warrior tank).

The druid and I switch tanking on Dreadscale depending on Burning Bile application. When he enrages, I usually pick him up. And when Icehowl enters the arena, I pick him up as well (Dreadscale should be dead by then).

On our kill, we actually failed on one of Icehowl's charges. I watched him go all big and red, quickly popped Bubble Wall, saw Ardent Defender's self-ress proc, and then I was finally topped off and could continue tanking. That was a couple of sweaty seconds...

We had a couple of attempts on Jaraxxus, but the portals and volcanos were not killed fast enough, and poor me was swamped in mistresses and infernals on every attempt. We then called the raid early to celebrate our progress.

In our 10-man on Saturday, we got heroic Anub down to 23% even though we had switched out half the team. We always leave him with more than 20 attempts remaining, since it's just a "fun raid" that has a stricked time limit, but it's nice to see that we can get that far with a casual raid.