[WoW] Archimonde

Today's blog is brought to you by the letter I (and the parenthetical phrase).

I wasn't sure what my role was going to be heading into raid night. I'm the FNG and the guild has several capable tanks, plus near the end of the last raid, one of their old tanks had come back. But that tank was no where to be found as we formed up, so the raid leader asked me to go Prot.

Mannoroth


We started with Mannoroth. I'm not sure the exact mechanic, but something allowed us to skip all the earlier bosses and go straight to him. Last time, I had died to the orbs that Mannoroth shoots out in the last phase and I was determined that would not happen again. We got to the final phase, I got knocked back and started tracking the orbs immediately. I dodged to the left avoiding the orb, and ...

I died.

What?

I looked at my Recap. I knew I had dodged that blasted orb, and I had, but it turned out I had a pretty nasty DoT ticking away on me and it took me down. Once again Rhea (Warrior main tank) was able to handle the rest of the final phase and Mannoroth went down.

Last week, after Mannoroth, we took out some tier bosses, but this time, we ported staright up to Archimonde's room. This guild had not taken him down before. I missed the DCs first Archimonde kill so I reveled in the chance to get a progression boss with the guild. This was really the last progression kill of Warlords. Sure, we can move up to Heroics, but those are the same bosses all over again.


Burning Crusade Archimonde


Archimonde and I have a bit of history. In Burning Crusade, he was one of those bosses where you were heavily disadvantaged as a Paladin tank. One of his main mechanics was a fear. Warrior's could 'stance dance' to make themselves immune, but Paladins needed external cooldowns and even at that, you generally couldn't get enough to safely cover every fear. Even missing one risked wiping the raid.

I had no choice but to go Holy or Ret to get my Tier helm, which I did three times until I got my hat. After that, I left the raid after Azgalor, partially so I wouldn't have to change specs (which required 50 gold, a trip back to Ironforge and someone to run out and hold the summoning stone on the PvP server - no Warlock summons back then), but also to give other people a shot at their tier helm.

Warlords Archimonde


I was more than a little excited to finally be able to tank Archimonde.

The first thing I noticed as soon as we zone in was my old 'friends' Antheron, Kaz'rogal, and Azgalor. They were the other bosses mobs (along with Rage Winterchill) in the Hyjal raid, but now they've been reduced to trash mobs.

After dispensing with them, it was Achimonde alone against our team.

Phase 1 went well. Rhea (warrior main tank) and I swapped on Death Brand and with all the Avenger's Shield procs I've been getting from my 4pc, keeping up Shield of the Righteous was fairly simple. I may go a long way in Legion before I break that bonus. Whichever one of us had Archimonde would hot foot it between two designated points for every Allure of Flame. On our very first attempt (the guild's first ever attempt on Archimonde outside of LFR), we cruised through Phase 1.

I barely noticed the NPCs fighting with us (Khad'gar, Yrel, Hellscream). I think that would have been cool and its definitely something I'll watch more for in future attempts on him.

In Phase 2, we added picking up the big demon add that spawned and it was on the Phase 3.

Were we seriously going to kill this guy on our first attempt?

Rhea had Archi for the first Nether Banish mechanic and I took the second. By the fourth, there was very little room to maneuver with all the Nether Tear void zones around. We wiped not long after that.

So no, we would not defeat him on our first pull. I switched over to Long Arm of the Law to help with both Allure of Flames and with getting more distance after a Nether Banish. I'm pretty sure I killed a couple of melee DPS the first time (sorry guys!)

The next attempt I did better with moving away from Nether Tears and we had more room to maneuver. You can read about a mechanic all you want, but sometimes it takes actually doing the fight to get it down.

Second pull and Archimonde went down. HFC Normal cleared. We went and knocked out Heroic Hellfire Assault for good measure. We took a couple of shots at Iron Reaver but I think everyone was spent. It was pretty sloppy and we didn't get close.

One of our Shamans recorded the Archimonde kill. Enjoy!

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