Yes, it certainly has been a while since the last update.  Here’s a quick recap of what we have been up to.

On Aug. 20, 2009, we clear the Faction Champions.  Just like in regular PvP, the protection warrior gets completely ignored and is chain crowd controlled.  Nice…

On Aug. 30, 2009, we cleared the Twin Val’kyr.  Who doesn’t like twins?

On Sept. 3, 2009, we cleared Anub’arak.  He is just as annoying in a raid as he is in the 5-man.  That concluded our run through the Trial of the Crusader.

On Oct. 18, 2009, we completed Yogg + 3 and crafted our first Val’anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings.  Congratulations to Yann!

While waiting patiently for Patch 3.3, we continued to work on the Trial of the Grand Crusader and completed 3 of the 5 heroic encounters.

Icecrown Citadel has been a blast so far.  The encounters so far have been pretty fun and interesting.  It is also good to see Blizzard return to having hard boss encounters.  The gating on the new encounters and the end wing bosses is a little gimmicky, but I think it is the right approach.  It keeps people looking forward to how the story will unfold.  The gating also puts some emphasis on focusing on execution and strategy instead of brute force attempts until people “get it.”

Currently, we have completed the Lower Spire and through the first bosses of The Plagueworks and The Crimson Hall.  Hopefully, we will have new updates to share in the coming weeks.

It took us a lot longer than expected to get this screenshot.  After months of on and off attempts, we finally made a concerted effort to put a checkmark on this guy.

What really helped was to be able to do the 10-man version of this encounter first.  A group when in with the mindset of beating him and found him to be pushover.  Granted we were in 25-man gear and he had already been nerfed, but it was useful to collect some data on the encounter, which we used to modify our 25-man strategy.

We are disappointed that we did not beat him pre-nerf and pre-Patch 3.2, but he is done and over with now.  We have had more than our fair share of ups and downs these past few months.  With any luck, we are on the upside of the next cycle and looking forward to completing the Coliseum.

It wasn’t quite a one shot this time around, but close enough.  There is a lot more going on with Lord Jaraxxus and it is a bit of a step up from the Northrend Beasts.  This one was more of an endurance encounter and handling the various adds more than anything else.  We actually spent a good portion of the fight down several players, but managed to stay focused and pull through to the finish.

Another Crusader boss down and we’re still waiting on Yogg…

Patch 3.2 has landed and with it the new Crusaders’ Coliseum.  We still have Yogg in our sights, but wanted to see what all the fuss was about with the new token system and encounters.

We had a general idea of what to expect with the Northrend Beasts, but it proved a bit easier than expected and we rolled through them in a single try.  We figured we would give the 25-man heroic a try immediately after.  It let us zone in, but it told us to come back later.  Boo!

I am guessing a lot of people have enjoyed the lighter moments in WoW like comedy wipes against a new boss.  Sometimes these wipes are unintentional like how I got the entire raid ported to Yogg-Saron while everyone was clearing to Ignis.  Yes, I zigged when I should have zagged.

What about a comedy screenshot?  A couple of people went a little crazy with the bunny costumes and before you know it, the entire raid looked like the rabbit bin at a pet store.