Eventually there comes a time when most of us grow out of stamping our feet and throwing our toys out of the pram. Sadly XT never seems to have developed on from this as the large piles of junk in his room prove.

Did you ever wonder what would happen if the Action Man/He-Man/My Little Pony that you casually hurled into a corner or against the wall took exception to this and decided to shove its gun/sword/ erm tail (?) where the sun doesn’t shine as a sign of its displeasure? Well it was time for XT to learn that toys should be respected too!

The XT hard mode is a variation on the normal one with a much higher damage output and the removal of the adds (which sadly removed the fun of letting bomb bots reach him ‘deliberately’ to see which melee were paying attention) and drastically increased light bombs/gravity wells. Nothing about the fight can be deemed hard but it is good for seeing people who can’t change targets fast! The enrage is fairly soft and now that Blizzard seems to have sorted out the lag this is a nice introduction to the world of hard modes - and now poor Flamey has been reduced to his current pitiful level is the first fight which makes you die but not too much!

Next up for hard mode spanking was Thorim and after a day of trying to see what it would be like doing it without any aura of celerity we decided to let one of our shadow priests have a giggle and find a new friend. This fight has quickly become one of the least favourite hard modes - mostly because it is just annoying, blizzards, frost novas and frostbolt volleys all combine to make it intensely annoying, especially as it is one of the few fights which does seem capable of randomly killing people by bolting them repeatedly in a ridiculously short space of time. We like tentacles however, so any fight with them in gains bonus points. With the second of the four keepers having surrendered his sigil we have looked at the hilarious Mimi hard mode and the less entertaining Freya & the happy huggy tree friends - certainly two fights which will keep us occupied.

One more hard mode lurked in the shadows, awaiting our attention - it was the turn of the Iron Council. Having killed Brundir last the first week of Ulduar and the Runemaster shortly afterwards this fight has been a little neglected and just finished off as and when for loot and badges. The fight with Steelbreaker last is certainly interesting - and from a healing point of view somewhat stressful especially as it quickly became apparent that melee just love taking huge amounts of damage while killing Brundir. For the dps the first part of the fight is reasonably slack but then they have to earn their reward in phase 3 as it turns into a massive burn before Steelbreaker either kills the tanks by hitting them for 60k or lobs static discharge onto some poor sod incidently dealing them 30k damage. While Hodir provides a gear check with some randomness (lucky buffs can give you a bit of an advantage) there is no such trick for this fight - just a race against the fat giant. To be fair to him he won the race a number of times but slowly the dps got closer to that magic number and the healers managed to get the tanks to live longer and longer.

Recruitment remains open in the following classes:

Protection Warrior
Enhancement Shaman
Elemental Shaman
Mage

We will consider applicants in other classes but, as ever, it would take an exceptional applicant to succeed. Please see the forums for additional details on how to apply and who to poke for any further information you would like.

Ulduar 10 man has provided some entertainment and post-nerf Mimi, while considerably easier, is still a challenging and fun fight. The most fun seemed to be had by Fail Mod but everyone else had a little giggle. The moment was immortalised in the below video which is well worth watching to get a overview of the fight.

Umbrage vs Mimiron Firefighter 10 man

This left the way open for our first trip to Algy, the start of the enocunter was met with a mixture of joy (from those with high end computers) and groans (from those with hamster powered computers). The encounter looks superb - although the healers did not particularly appreciate his direct damage. As most encounters seem to gain complexity and fun on 25 man this promises to be an awesome fight. Just Freya and Mimiron stand in our way - although no-one is under any illusions about the time it will take to master those encounters.

For those of you who have followed us for a while you will note that one thorn in our side has always been the lack of a tree-friend to help us out. Recently things reached desperate levels as we investigated all possible options to try and find one. Annoyingly it turns out that not every tree will do…..

There has also been a recent addition to our officer team - something some of our trials have been quick to notice and have suddenly become a lot more pliable….