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I'm happy to be able to bring you an update on our Heroic Throne of Thunder progression. Our latest target was Heroic Iron Qon and like most things that get in our way, we knocked them down to size:


Everything in the heroic version of the encounter share the same characteristics as the regular version - namely everything hits harder and then there's the "bonus" mechanics that you have to contend with. In this heroic mode, that means that while each of the sub-bosses flies away at 25% health, they all come back (along with the main boss) when the last sub-boss is at 25% health, turning what is already a hectic encounter into a full-fledged whirlwind of chaos.

It took us a while, but we eventually sorted through that chaos and defeated the Iron Qon and his minions!

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There's really no way to spin this - this was a tough, tough fight for us. Tons of pulls. Lots of deaths. Run backs so long that we developed an extremely sophisticated mass resurrection survival system.

But then again...I do get to post this =)


This fight is a maelstrom of adds, environmental dangers, and one extremely large dinosaur thingie. Everything can kill you, yet mustering the damage to kill it all before you're overrun requires an extremely coordinated group executing near flawlessly. It took us a while to pull it all together, especially when we were running group compositions not particularly suited for this encounter, but as usual, we kept plugging away and came out with a kill!

We're now off to focus on the heroic version of the Iron Qon encounter, so hopefully we'll have some news for you there soon.

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Normally we'd put a kill picture here, but our resident kill picture guru apparently now has a social life (read: a girlfriend) and doesn't have as much time to polish our kill pictures to a high shine like we demand =)

No matter though! We killed a turtle! Just visualize a dead Tortos....surrounded by a bunch of skeletons...and some triumphant raiders! Ahh, isn't it a glorious mental picture?

EDIT: We've got an actual picture now!


The fight itself isn't far different than the original, but adds in the concept of a chargable shield to help mitigate the amplified damage that's par for the course in heroic raiding. The shield absorbs healing up to 75% of the maximum players' health - effectively becoming a giant Power Word: Shield. The catch is, of course, without properly managing your ...