Posts with tag heroic-ragnaros

Expansions come and expansions go, but death knights are eternal. It took cross-realm raiding to unite enough death knights into a cohesive team, but renowned DK solo artist Raegwyn has done it again, conquering 25-man heroic Dragon Soul with a team of death knights.

Finding enough strongly geared English-speaking DKs appears to have been the primary challenge for Raegwyn and fellow death knight Valacar, who have already taken down heroic Ragnaros with an all-DK 10-man team. "Russians, Austrians, British (love zonestar ;D), Poland, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Spain, France and and and ..." Raegwyn wrote on the YouTube posting of the event. "Pretty much any nationality was in this raid so leading this bunch of europeans was damn hard because i am as raidleader wasnt that good at english speaking myself."

The group's main setup included:

• 4 tank blood DKs
• 17 DPS blood DKs
• 3 DC heal blood DKs (to assist tanks with Deathcoil Glyph)
• 1 DW frost DK (for buff)

The team also called in a druid and priest for the Spine encounter to beat the dispell mechanic.

If you're a rare mount collector and haven't gotten your hands on the mounts dropped by heroic Ragnaros or Deathwing, you might want to hurry. On the release of Mists of Pandaria, the drop rate for these mounts will be reduced. The same thing happened at the release of Cataclysm to the rare mounts that dropped from Yogg-Saron on his highest difficulty setting and the heroic version of the Lich King encounter, if you'll recall.

This means you have a month and a half to get a group together and kill these encounters on heroic for a guaranteed drop. Please note that, according to Draztal, this change will occur on the release of Mists itself, Sept. 25, and not with the pre-release patch 5.0.4 that comes out this month. So even after the talent systems change, you'll still have some time to farm for your mount. Get cracking.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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You knew death knights were overpowered, right?

Death knight gurus Raegwyn and Valacar took a team of 10 death knights and defeated the heroic version of 10-man Ragnaros. No healers, no casters with epics, just 10 amazingly badass death knights showing off their skills.

Their raid composition was as follows:

• 1 frost DK
• 6 DPS blood DKs
• 3 tank blood DKs

Raegwyn notes that the kill took six hours of wiping, but that's a small price to pay for this epic achievement. Take a look at some other accomplishments of his teams, including an all-death-knight clear of 10-man and 25-man Firelands, plus this interview we did with him back in February 2010.

Meanwhile, 10 warlocks announced today that they were able to take down a bunny in Elwynn Forest.

Grats all around!

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GuildOx, one of the premier guild ranking and data sites for WoW raiding, reports that 1,000 guilds have defeated the heroic Ragnaros encounter in Firelands. This number represents 2% of the entire pool of active raiding guilds, as well as 4.2% of the guilds that are raiding heroic Firelands content. If that doesn't put things into perspective for you with regard to Blizzard's trying to make raiding more accessible, I don't know what will.

Interestingly, 76% of the heroic Ragnaros kills have been completed in 10-man raids, with 24% of the kills in 25-man groups. Ten-man raiding has certainly made endgame raiding significantly more accessible, and 25-man only guilds seem to be struggling to keep their numbers as high as they once were, especially when the 10-man versions of the encounters are more accessible.

Earlier this month, Paragon earned the high honor of world-first heroic Ragnaros kill, downing the Firelord after over 400 attempts on his fight. Heroic mode encounters add something new and difficult to the mix, but it is rare that we see an entirely new phase to an encounter. Paragon's heroic Ragnaros kill video shows the final stage of the heroic fight, in which Ragnaros submerges in his lava pool and emerges at full strength on new legs allowing him movement all over the encounter room.

The final stage of the fight involves Archdruid Hamuul Runetotem, Malfurion Stormrage, and Cenarius assisting players in dealing with the entirely new mechanics this new heroic mode phase presents. If you've been trying Ragnaros or have killed him, you already have experienced the hilarious Living Meteor ability. In that new phase, meteors must be kited over patches of ice on the ground to freeze them, and then players must DPS down meteors to control the number up at any time. At that point, players are also frantically running around extinguishing ground fires and trapping Ragnaros in roots on the ground.

All in all, it looks incredibly fun and challenging, and it's very nice to see Ragnaros putting his new legs to good use kicking the crap out of guilds across the world. My favorite part of the video has to be the end, with the custom death animation for Ragnaros. Watch until the very end -- it's worth it. Congratulations again to DREAM Paragon for their heroic first kill and for this awesome video of the accomplshment.

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After just a few weeks of Firelands raiding, DREAM Paragon has defeated Ragnaros on 25-man heroic mode, earning them the world first and the Firelord title. DREAM Paragon announced the news on their website, promising their kill shot and comments in the near future. Congratulations to Paragon for this world first.

The heroic version of the Ragnaros fight adds a whole new phase to the encounter in which Ragnaros regains his full Firelord strength, steps out of his swirling molten pool, and becomes mobile around the platform with his new firelegs. Cenarius, Hamuul Runetotem and Malfurion Stormrage assist the players in tackling Ragnaros' many abilities in this new phase, finally putting out the Firelord's lights for good.

Heroic modes for the Ragnaros fight and others in the Firelands were also not available on the public test realm, making it that much more difficult for these hardcore raiding guilds to get time in on these encounters.

I am excited to hear about Paragon's time with these bosses in the Firelands. At only seven bosses, the Firelands is one of the more accessible raid zones, with a time commitment that feels far smaller than the monolithic endeavors of the past, like ICC or Ulduar. Has Firelands presented enough of a challenge to the top of the top guilds? Whatever the case, congratulations again! I hope that my guild will be at heroic Rag's door in the near future.

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