A Most Epic Encounter

So the Midsummer Fire Festival began yesterday. I was up early that day so I was able to take advantage of being one of the first people to take down the new summer boss, Lord Ahune, the imposing frost elemental pictured above.

We entered Slave Pens with a party consisting of my hunter, a mage, a druid, a paladin, and a rogue. Our first crack at him went horrifically wrong. We only barely made it to the second wave. The basic idea of the fight is to have the tank hold aggro on a big ice elemental while the DPS attack the smaller ones that attempt to kill the healer. Meanwhile Ahune is laughing in the background and causing icicles to jut out of the ground that pop you up into the air.

Getting back to that encounter, now we're on our fourth try. We've been getting progressively better at fighting him. Every time the big ice elemental minion is down for awhile, his core is exposed. It happens a few times during the fight and you have to burn him down as much as possible. Because Lord Ahune can't be tanked, it's okay to blow everything you have on him. Unfortunately we weren't able to kill him. We were close to leaving when we found out we still had one more chance. The healer was able to summon him once more so everyone prepared for the fight. A few people needed repairs and some enterprising players brought potions and I brought food consumables and Mana Oils.

We were ready.

My job this time was to kill all the little elementals while everyone attacked the bigger one. Once the core was exposed we burned him down about 35%! On the second wave of elementals, we knew that I couldn't handle them alone so now the mage assists me in protecting the druid. At this point we understood our roles and it was just a matter of doing it. The core is exposed again and chip off another solid block of his health. The third wave has the same results but he has a little too much health left to kill at this wave. We leverage our full might but at 10% we can see that Lord Ahune will surface once again. 3%...2%...1%...0! Lord Ahune is destroyed and Azeroth is safe once again.

Well not quite because it seems we were so close to the fourth wave that Lord Ahune actually summoned another big ice elemental to kill us. One of my party members remarked that it was "One for the road" and we all took that to heart and killed him together. While I may not have gotten anything other than a new tabard, I had alot of fun. It was a great feeling being able to be the one who explain the fight to someone who's like "WTF just happened?!" and experiencing new content before anyone else.

P.S. Crypt is doing fine. He even joined in on the festivities.