After a bit of debating, we arbitrarily chose Blackwing Lair. Only one of us had ever been before, and that was back during vanilla. It was awesome. Blackrock Spire is an amazing instance. Huge, by modern standards, and incredibly life like. My favorite remains Blackrock Depths (a full city of dwarves surrounded by lava! It's real and alive! None of these little 20 minute dungeon runs with three bosses placed in ludicrous positions.), but the Spire was pretty cool and I'd forgotten how massive it is inside, in the vertical direction.
Forgotten, that is, until our tank got knocked off a ledge (the trash mobs still knock level 80s back a good distance) and fell all the way into the Lower Spire. He survived, of course, because he's a magic bear. Actually, he landed in lava. Only in WoW do the laws of physics state that a huge fall into lava goes to the runner. It still took him 20 minutes to find his way back up to us though.
After that, we killed the General, nabbed the UBRS achievement on these toons (we got Jenkins too...Leeeeeeeroy!) and got properly attuned so that we can just use the Orb of Command next time (the quest had amazing flavor text, including "Good luck storming the castle."). Which is almost a shame, given how amazing the Spire is.
We burned our way through the raid. And I do mean burned. If the bosses weren't on fire, we generally were. We got to the corrupt red dragon and the chatter over vent was immediately concerned. "I hear he's hard!" "Is he still a raid-wiper?" No. We destroyed him. He barely had time to feel sorry for himself as his face was melting off. He wept tears of joy. But only for 15 seconds. Then he died.
The suppression rooms were hilarious. Having no clue what was going on (our rogue tried to disarm them once, but couldn't figure it out), we simply ran through, killing everything in our path, never stopping, never tarrying, very....very....very...slowly. While humming the Chariots of Fire intro music over vent. "Epic" barely begins to describe it.
Nefarion himself is on a stunning ledge, looking out over the desolate landscape below. Very far below. We couldn't jump. I tried. More than once. I handed out cloaks so we wouldn't need to worry about shadow flame, and we were off and running. He was actually tricky, and managed to destroy our hunter's bow. Oops. He shouldn't have made her mad. After he died, she took pleasure in skinning him. And I sat on the throne and lorded over my
All in all, a good night.
After that, four of us went and killed Hakkar in Zul'Gurub (I still needed the achievement on my alliance toon). We only took down the raptor boss first, and by this point the rogue was fairly drunk and the hunter was pretty loaded with opiates. Hakkar was a bit of a challenge. The rogue died. Twice. That'll teach'm.
As a side note, I always go resto and stay tree form during fights where the boss can mind control. You see, a mind-controlled tree still can't do any damage. There's always a second when the spell is first cast when I simply stand there. I imagine the algorithm in the depths of Blizzard's servers is going "Damn, a tree...what now? Aha, he'll heal the boss! Damn! He doesn't even have any good burst healing abilities. What a schmuck."
The only classic raid most of us still need is the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. The Ruins were epic and utterly stunning in terms of scenery and setting. Four of us tried the Temple and couldn't make it past the first boss. Mind controls turned us into our own worst enemies. But I'm guessing eight of us could down him, and after that it's clear sailing to the Twin Emperors, or so they tell me. Should be fun. Maybe next time we come up short, I'll push for that...
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