<Fidelity>

Heroic Oregorger turned out to be quite the dramatic affair. We had 13 raiders on deck, and 4 healers. As we rotated cooldowns and tanks for Acid Torrent, the healing requirement was well in hand. Hagrim and I were fortunate to each have our own personal druid for Iron Bark as well.

Having plenty of practise at the Hunger Drive phase in normal, it didn’t take too long for people to adjust to the increased health of crates, and the extra healing required. We had our healers stay on the center corners and pleaded with DPS to manage their health and time away from the healers.

The most difficult part of the fight was coming out of Hunger Drive, and getting people into a position that mirrored the start of the fight. Making sure everyone stacked quickly, the boss snapped into the correction position (with melee and tanks in range and in line of sight of the healers). Once we had that sorted we were well on our way to a kill …

… until at the very end of the fight, the boss threw a tantrum and started jumping up and down. Health bars started heading south, even through the faint sounds of a tranquility in the distance… People started crumbling, and those that remained tried to rob Oregorger of the last of his life. Until, only the two tanks remained. I didn’t die to Oregorger’s Earthshaking Stomp, despite what the combat logs might suggest. As I slamed my shield with all my might into Oregorger, I heard the cries from a fallen ally, “Go Hagrim!”… and my will to live faded as quickly as my shield barrier.

Fortunately, the man-mountain Hagrim, and all around stoic tank isn’t given to fits of hysteria, and so calmly dispatched the boss, rendering his loot available to all. Three cheers for Hagrim, and Dwarves everywhere.

After picking up some new raiders (and friends) and hitting 7/10 in normal Blackrock Foundry, we were overdue for our meeting with Gruul on Heroic. Gruul didn’t disappoint, hitting significantly harder than on normal and beating us about a little bit. However, little did Gruul know, the raid had become a little attuned to the difficulty of normal. Little by little our execution was refined and by the 9th attempt he almost felt like we switched it back to normal.

We had 13 raiders in for the kill, and while the flex mode system means we can take a variable number of raiders… it feels like our healers are bearing the downside of that flexibility. We have both over and under healed encounters which each has its own challenges. The highlight so far has been two healing Operator Thogar on normal for our first kill, with our two druid healers Jondayla and Shakers bonding over fast moving trains. Pieorcake has also switched from Elemental (or Enhancement) to Restoration depending the fight and attendance which has helped out too.

Onwards and upwards, we are coming for you, gorger of ore!