Dragon Soul

11/30/2011
Dragon Soul – 8/8 Normal

Killed Deathwing normal tonight and completed DS normal. We spent about 2 hours on the PTR, but in reality it didn’t matter. The first 6 bosses are easily 1 shot or killed within 3 pulls.

Special shout out to Kronn for not realizing we had no resistance aura on Deathwing for an hour today. It actually made that fight challenging?!

Ragnaros heroic was also nerfed into the ground, so 1 shot that as well. Two nights of raiding, 8 new bosses dead and firelands clear.

Heroic race starts next week!
12/15/2011
Dragon Soul – 2/8H
12/15/2011
Dragon Soul – 3/8H

Downed 1 boss last week, but it is very easy so didn’t make a post. Then spent about 2-3 hrs each on the remaining bosses, without any kills.

This week we killed Yor’sahj and Hagara. Yor’sahj is a decent fight, but Hagara is a bugged out piece of shit. Apparently blizzard’s system is incapable of calculating the effect of a stacking 10% increased damage debuff. She is particularly fond of targeting dart with an attack that should hit for 100k + 30% = 130k, yet hits for 180k and one shots him most of the time. GM response, “Working as Intended”.

3rd on server right now, top 500 world. Obsidium is also no longer server first thanks to the other 10 man guild. Though in all fairness 10 man is actually easier, at least on a few bosses…
12/21/2011
Dragon Soul 4/8H

Killed Zonozz pretty quickly. Helps when you come in with a complete strategy.

Hagara got fixed this week, so have to do legit Frost Phase, hopefully get her down and then 5/8H this week if Christmas attendance doesn’t screw us.
12/29/2011
Dragon Soul 5/8H – Ultraxion Down (kill shot missing)

Beat Obsidium to server second by about an hour tonight. DPS requirement is more lax on 10 man, but, then again we were pretty far ahead.

We forgot to take a screen shot, so this is courtesy of miggie*.

*Couldn’t find what he provided, so I replaced it -Mish
1/5/2012
Dragonsoul 6/8H – Warmaster Blackhorn Down

Killed Blackhorn, server 2nd, top 50 US10 kill, top 400 world, our highest ranked real boss kill this expac.

Definitely the 3rd hardest fight (maybe 2nd) of this tier. All that remains is Spine of Deathwing and Madness. A disappointing tier as once you finish Spine, Madness isn’t bad. Sadly in its current state Spine pretty much requires a raid full of legendary staffs + class stacking. So while we are not in a state to kill it right now, we will either in a month of farming, or when a nerf comes our way. We shall see which.
2/6/2012
Dragonsoul 7/8H – Spine of Deathwing Down

Finally got spine down tonight, server 3rd. We would have easily killed this 6 days ago, however, with two people out of town until today we had a horrid raid comp. Still ranked ~500 world, though disappointing as we easily would have been ~300 and probably server 2nd had we had a legit comp earlier this week. We killed this boss with about 80 less attempts than server 2nd guild, and close to 150 (half) less than Obsidium.

This fight also unfortunately was nerfed far too soon. I am quite confident with a full raid week we would have killed it this week. For some reason blizzard thinks its a good idea to nerf 2 month old content even though there is 5+ months until the next expansion.

Heroic Madness of Deathwing and we are done. Unfortunately Obsidium managed to down this fight in about 1-2 nights of attempts, as it is incredibly undertuned on 25 man. Thus, even though they are by far the worst of the 3 good guilds, they got server first. I suppose it helps when you play 2x more than everyone else too.
2/20/2012
Dragonsoul 8/8H – Madness of Deathwing Down

Finished up the tier tonight with a server 2nd, US10 50th kill of heroic Madness of Deathwing. Like last tier we lost the race with Nerds to reach the final boss, but managed to kill it before them. Further, we managed to beat Obsidium to a kill this tier (6th boss), but due to their 5 night raid schedule and the fact Madness is a joke on 25, we got blown out on server first.

Congratulations to Faize for completing his legendary rogue daggers tonight. While a Madness Heroic kill isn’t required it just worked out that way.

This was by far the hardest fight for 10 man of the tier, and was still very challenging even after the nerf. This fight and Ragnaros remind me a lot of what Kael’thas Sunstrider was like in TK. Mainly, you have to go through a long boring part of the fight to get to the challenging part. In this case it takes about 11-12 minutes to get to the final phase, and the first 7-8 minutes aren’t even remotely difficult, though a small mistake can easily cause a wipe. That aside, this fight is like many 10 man fights, where 25 man brings 2 tanks, 10 man can only afford to bring one, making the fight significantly more annoying as gimics must be used to survive solo. Definitely an annoying anti-climactic end to perhaps the worst tier since ToC.

I’d also like to mention to get this kill I leveled and geared a Blood DK, and Steve used his shaman that he leveled for spine. In the future maybe blizzard can design their fights to not favor certain classes so heavily.

During the next couple months we will farm DS and start looking towards setting up our roster for Mists. A few of us will most likely not raid MoP, so we most likely will recruit a couple of players. If you are raiding on another server at the moment and want to come back to Kinetic feel free to post on the forum or just talk to us in game.
3/28/2012
Dragonsoul 8/8H … again

Kinetic has officially stepped back into the 25 man raid scene this week. Our roster consists of the raiders of our former rivals Nerds, and 6 or so new recruits to round out our roster. In true Kinetic style, we managed to kill a 25 man and a 10 man while picking up our new recruits (apologies Platypus Den and Ego Trip).

This week marked the 15% nerf to Dragon Soul, so the bosses are pretty easy now. However, many of us haven’t raided 25 mans in years, and we were still very successful, clearing the instance in less than 5 hours, with one shots on half the bosses.

All commentary from the original forums by Nerv