The very first thing I'll say is this: Holy Crap they were not kidding about making LFR tourist mode. I don't think I saw my health dip below 90% except on a trash pull where I did not know what I was doing.
I don't think we lost a single person in any fight.
So: LFR: quick and painless, just as we kind of all wished it had been.
Honestly, I think this is the right way to go with it - make LFR super easy, and then encourage people to run Normal mode through the group finder. And if Normal Mode is as easy as Wrath's 10 man difficulty, we might actually see raiding at its healthiest since, well, Wrath. I'd love to see a World of Warcraft again where just about everyone can do actual raiding, and let the hardcore do Mythic if they want a serious challenge (and I hope that Mythic is utterly brutal in difficulty - that's its point.)
But the actual raid, you ask?
The introduction to Highmaul is super-cool. You arrive in the pits below the gladiatorial arena, where Cho'gall is locked up in a cage. You talk to the ogre guy there and he puts you on an elevator to raise you up into the stadium itself.
You get some nice commentary from the guys at the Ring of Trials and then you face down Vul'gor, who is really your only trash pull. Just kill the ogres before you kill the sabreon. Then Kargath Bladefist shows up.
Kargath Bladefist:
No, there aren't any callbacks to his fight in Shattered Halls (you probably forgot that we had fought him already in Burning Crusade.) There's a simple tank-swap mechanic (though the debuff involves getting impaled for a few seconds, which stuns the tank.) The main two things to bear in mind in this fight are Chain Pull and... I want to say it's called Frenzied Rush.
Frenzied Rush, or whatever it's called, will have Kargath fixate on a random person and run after them. There will be several flame pillars around the arena. If you run him through one of them, he'll stop, otherwise he'll gain a speed and damage buff. Everyone who's in his path while he rushes will take damage, so get out of his way.
Chain Pull (or is it drag?) is the most interesting one. He'll grab a tank, a healer, and a few DPS and toss you up in the stands. Your job then is to pull as many adds as you can (especially the bombers and the ogres) and kill them before going back down into the arena. These adds will toss nasty AOE stuff on the ground that can make things harder on the raid.
Trash before the Butcher:
With Kargath dead, Cho'gall escapes and unleashes his Pale Orc minions on the city. You'll have to fight past some of these guys, but it's a pretty short jaunt over to the Butcher - I think we just had to kill some pig near him.
The Butcher:
Honestly, other than a tank swap, there wasn't much to this fight. I'm sure there are subtleties that we ignored given how easily tuned the fight was. Tanks should stack up, and I believe DPS should as well.
Yep, moving on already.
Trash before... no, not Tectus, but Brackenspore:
You might think Tectus is the third boss of the wing, but you'd be wrong. Nope, it's Brackenspore. You'll have to fight through some Pale Orcs fighting Ogres, and then make your way into the swampy part of the zone, where you'll encounter some Iron Horde guys. Pretty simple.
Brackenspore:
As a tank, there are only a couple things to bear in mind. First off, there's a tank swap debuff (four stacks is about how long it'll take for your co-tank's debuff to fall off.) You'll also get adds that pop out of the ocean called Fungal Flesh-Eaters. When you're not tanking the boss, tank these guys. They have a cast called Decay that should be interrupted. Essentially it's just about swapping between these two. There are other adds, but as far as I can tell, they don't need to be tanked.
And before you know it, the Walled City wing is complete. I think our run took only a half-hour or maybe forty-five minutes. Given that we were brand new to this place, I honestly think it was actually easier than even the normal-mode level 100 dungeons.
So I'm excited to try the place on Normal.
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