The Lich King is Dead – HCB Update

My brother (whom I call hard core brother or HCB) has taken many forms under the name of Grim. His latest is a blood elf paladin. He sends me this update about him and his guild Juggernaut.

The name of the mount is “Invincible“, and is a guaranteed drop off of LK25-H.
For obvious reasons, it’s the rarest mount in the game :) I was fortunate enough to be awarded our first one.

Where are we at?

We just recently downed the insanely difficult Lich King 25 (Heroic). Most people would agree that it is the toughest encounter ever, surpassing the likes of Yogg-0 from Ulduar and pre-nerf M’uru from Sunwell.

Let me talk a little about Lich King…

Blizzard saw how quickly people were burning through the heroic versions of all the other bosses in the instance, and hotfixed Lich King’s health to the point where he essentially became unkillable. Usually, Blizzard will apply fixes and/or nerfs (over time) to encounters to put them more in line with their intended difficulty. This time around, Blizzard decided to leave the Lich King in his over tuned state, and instead introduced progressive zone wide buffs of +5% damage, +5% healing, and +5% health every 4 weeks or so. It is attempt-limited at (currently) 45 per week, which is shared with the end bosses of the other wings of the instance. This isn’t a big deal now, but at first, the attempt-limit was at 10 or 20. Only 1 guild killed him with the +5% buff, and that guild (Paragon-EU) put in an unprecedented amount of time, effort, and most importantly skill to be able to do so.

How crazy, you might ask?

All of their main raiders had alts of the same class/role, and as a guild they ran 3 instances of ICC-25 along with 7 instances of ICC-10 PER WEEK. Not only did this leave every main character with the best possible gear they had access to, but it also put their alts at a gear level that they could comfortably make real attempts on the hardest bosses prior to doing it on their mains. With all that gear and with so many attempts at their disposal, they were able to quickly develop a strategy that worked for them. However, having a strategy is one thing, but executing it flawlessly over and over again is another thing, and this is where Paragon shines. Their efficiency and execution is on a whole new level. They are so good at the game it’s hard to put into words. Watching their 5% LK25-H video really illustrates just how big of a skill gap there is between Paragon and the rest of the world. I suspect that how you (Ethic’s note: he is talking directly to me with this comment) might feel when watching us play is how I feel watching them play.

So, whats next?

We are reportedly getting 1 more mini-raid zone, known as The Ruby Sanctum, which will include 1 boss with 3 mini-bosses. In the not-too-distance future, the expansion will be coming out, known as Cataclysm. I’m personally looking forward to leveling up a goblin shaman with engineering.

What do I like about current end-game content?

I’m a pretty big fan of the mechanics Blizzard is putting in place to prevent guilds from brute-forcing their way through content.

What do I dislike?

Sebudai (the guild leader) hit the nail on the head when he said the following:

“It’s sort of ridiculous that we can demolish all of the other bosses in 2-3 hours without a single wipe to anything and then spend the next 2-3 days failing to get halfway through a 20 minute long, 5-stage encounter in the same fucking zone after months of practice. Sweet ramp-up in difficulty you’ve got there, Blizzard.”

– Ethic