this brings me to our latest kill and last boss of the trial of the crusader. firstly let me start off by saying we would have one shotted him but had the misfortune of not getting him to 30% before his 4th burrow and we hit his enrage timer with him on 3% but alas 2nd try was easier and we got some loots. i must also add that this past week the loot drops were all in favour of plate and clothies and i didn’t get any new upgrades

anub’arak is exacly the same boss you fight in the dungeon azjol-nerub. wonder what makes him so special that the lich king uses him. hhmmm…anyhoo back to the strat.

you need a tank and 2 offtanks for this fight. the main tank will tank anub and the other 2 offtanks will pickup adds that spawn and each offtank will take 2 adds. these adds place an expose armor debuff on the offtanks which increases damage taken and can stack up to 10 times. in the room there are frozen orbs flying around which when dps’d down ( can assign 1 or 2 ranged dps to do it ) leaves a permafrost on the ground which the tank needs to tank anub on and then the offtanks will bring the adds to the ass of anub so that dps can aoe, cleave, swipe and whatever else. if an add is not tanked on on permafrost, this add will burrow and will pop up at a random time which could result in havok later.

every 90 seconds or so anub will burrow and this starts phase 2. he starts chasing people with spikes. when he is chasing you try to kite him away from the raid but very importantly, stay on permafrost otherwise when he impales, you will die from it. being on permafrost prevents him from impaling you but make sure you stand in the center and not on the sides.  when he does a impale on a permafrost it will despawn and you will have to continue going to the next permafrost which should not be a problem as the assigned dpser for it should leave enough of these laying around. while anub is burrowed, little scarabs will spawn which should be taken down as well. after about a minute he will come back up and you are back to phase 1.

at 30% phase 3 starts. it is advisable to kill all the adds before he reaches 30%. in this phase he will cast leeching swarm. what this basically does is the more health the raid has, the more anub heals himself. so the lower your health is, the better. this does get very tricky when you have 7 or 8 healers raid healing because it’s just too much damn healing and you keeping everyone topped up. you would ideally want to have raid memebers health at around 20%-40%. what we did was assign 2 or 3 healers on the main tank. the main tank has to be healed all the time  of course. we assigned 3 healers to only raid heal with 2 druids using wild growth and a priest with circle of healing which did the trick. even a shammy’s chain heals will do the trick.

the only this about this fight is that it is very important to watch his enrage timer. make sure you get him to 30% before his 3rd or 4th burrow otherwise anything after that you will reach his enrage timer.

so it was a good week for our 25 man and also our two 10 man groups downing anub on normal. we are currently in progress of 10 man heroic and next week will start on 25 man heroic mode.

the next 3 bosses are all encounters on their own also taking place in the colisuem.  they can get messy at times if things are not communicated correctly.

the next boss intro is actually very funny. a little gnome warlock enters the arena and attempts to summon a doomguard but knowing gnome and their magical skills he summons a powerful instead and for releasing him  he turns around and zaps the poor gnome who should have seen that coming.

lord jaraxxus appears from the portal the poor gnome summoned and he wants to escape but you are there to stop him.

this fight is easy as long as you stay out of flames, get healed by healers when you have incinerating flesh, make sure that tank #2 pics up the adds popping up, mistress of pain and fel flame infernals.

he will also, every 60 seconds, summon a portal on a player (player needs to move away) or a fel volcano (also get away) otherwise you will die and people will call you noob for not moving or you just giving the healer extra work.

the next encounter is by far the most difficult of the lot. here you will be fighting horde pvp style! it’s one of my favourite “bosses” in this instance and also one of the hardest as you will get random classes each time. in other words there is no set strat for this other than a few pointers i can give you.

1. CONTROL THE MELEE. have a tank or 2 keep the warrior, death knight or whatever class that annoys the crap out of healers and range, control, smash, play tag or do whatever it takes to have them do as little to healers as possible.
2. BANISH, CYCLONE, ROOTS, SHEEP, CC, ETC anything that is not the dps target. especially when they have a resto druid, resto shammy or holy paladin. remember, this is pvp…your CCs will not last for long periods and you also sit with the issue the target will become immune to it after 2 or 3 times you try it.
3. MARK THE TARGETS. every second dps’ing is vital so make sure every player knows what their priority is.
4. PURGE, purge, purge, purge, decurse, decurse, decurse, depoison, depoison, depoison. i can’t stress it enough.
5. AOE does not work. they get a buff on them that they get 75% damage reduction from aoe abilities. e.g blizzard

i might have left a few out but i will add once i remember them. what we usually do it go straight for a healer and dps it down asap. if there is a paladin we go for him first so that he uses his bubble. then from there we take out the most annoying ones.  it’s actually easy when you control it and you know what your role is. sometimes things do go horribly wrong when the warrior or death knight has his fun with the clothies and healers.

this brings us to the val’kyr twins. this fight can get very confusing when you first see it but once you have the strat down is easy peasy.  you will have 4 colour portals. 1 black top left, 1 white top right, 1 white bottom left and 1 black bottom right. the raid will be spilt into 2 groups, 1 tank in each.

when the encounter starts edyis darkbane will be on the left and fjola lightbane on the right. the group assigned on the left while have to click on the white portal which can be clicked on before the encounter starts. the group on the right will all click on the black portal.

the tanks tank the where they spawned and everyone moves to the bosses (white) on darkbane and black on lightbane. during the fight little orbs will be floating around the room. orbs that are the same colour as you gives you a buff that reduces opposite colour damage taken, and increases damage done on opposite colour targets.

now for the abilities. this is where the confusion plays it’s roll and people need to understand what colour they are and how to react to the different abilities. each twin does the same ability called twin’s pack and vortex.

twin’s pack can be cast by either, they cast a shield on themself in an attempt to heal. what the dps needs to do is, if it is darkbane casting it, all dps needs to go black and dps the shield down and then only can you interrupt the heal. once that is dne all those that were white, go back to white and dps the target they were dps’ing. if lightbane casts twins’ pack all dps goes white and dps the shield down and interrupt the heal and then goes back to original colour they were.

vortex is an 8 seconds cast and the whole raid must be sure to have the same colour as the boss who’s casting, else they take a crap load of damage when it’s finished. so when darkbane begins casting vortex everyone in the raid needs to be black and once the cast is done go back to your original colour. same as when lightbane casts vortex, everyone needs to go white until cast is finished then go back to original colours.

so the last 2 weeks have been a tad rough raiding wise due to extended server maintenance, server restarts, people not showing up for raids, people just not concentrating and just your regular excuses.

but alas…another successful week for insurgence.

even though i’m posting this now, we managed to down the bosses in the same week they came out.  i’m not gonna put all the bosses in one post as it will seem too cluttered and messy.

trial of the crusader is relatively easy when you put your head together and work as a team.

you start off in a coliseum fighting different bosses and best of all, no trash between them.
the first encounter consists of 3 bosses, you fight then one after each other until all three are down. each boss spawn after you killed one boss.

welcome the beasts of northrend!

Gormok the Impaler

he is tanked by 2 tanks who need to taunt the boss off each other when they get 2 stacks

of the impale debuff which causes a crap load of damage the more stacks you have.

he also does a staggering stomp which inflics damage to everyone in a 15 yard radius and interrupts spell casting for 8 seconds.

little snobolds spawn which “latch” onto players and those players cannot do anything until someone kills them off you.

and last but not least, fire bomb. the snobolds throw them on a player and it deals a tremendous amount of damage to you and people in an 8 yard radius.  so stop whatever you doing and gtfo.

other than that this is a very easy boss to take down.

the next boss can get a bit tricky.

two jormungars will pop up.  firstly:

dreadscale is mobile and can be moved around the room. the tank has to pick him up  and  face him away from the raid.

he casts burning bite at random players and they get a debuff called burning bile. this deals damage to the player and to anyone in 10 yards of him.

acidmaw starts off stationary, burrowing up from the floor and the 2nd tank needs to pick him up and also face him away from the raid. he will leave acid clouds which are similar to the grobulus encounter in naxxramas. so kite him.

he also injects a random person with a debuff called              paralytic spray. this debuff does a crap load of damage and will eventually drop your speed to 0% and if you don’t get rid of it, you will die. the only way to get rid of it is to get the burning bile debuff from someone who has it or wait until dreadscale is nice enough to give you the debuff himself but you will probably die from waiting. usually the tank tanking dreadscale has it. communication is the key.

also during the fight they swap places meaning, dreadscale will become stationairy and acidmaw will become mobile. they swop and change during the fight. be sure to pick them up and face them away from raid. the key to the fight is to take acidmaw down first as he has the debuff of paralytic spray which only burning bile can get rid of so if dreadmaw goes down first you have no counter for the spray. when either one of them dies, the other will go enrage.

last boss of these beasts is icehowl

he can be tanked by 1 tank but it’s always safe to have the 2nd one incase the first tank does die accidently.

this is a very easy fight as long as people run away from the person he targets. he does a arctic  breath  which is a conal effect which freezes those caught in it does a nice damage over 5 seconds.

he also does a massive crash where he jumps in the air into the middle and inflicts a load of damage to everyone and then does ferocious butt on a random target and that target needs to run away to the left or right and this also includes everyone in close proximity to the target. when he doesn’t hit the target he crashes into the wall becoming stunned for 15 seconds which is a window to dps the hell outta him. if he does hit his target it is an instant kill and he gets a frothing rage which just increases his damage towards the tank. as long as someone calls out on vent who the target is and which way to run, this fight is easy as pie.

now  we can do hard modes for these. the difference now is, you have 3 minutes to down each boss before the next one enters the arena and of course, they hit harder and all that.