Yesterday I was talking to guildies about doing the new heroic 5-mans when I realized it was the last day to complete the weekly raid, which this week was Razorscale in Ulduar. Now, I'm no raider but I've done a few Ulduar bosses here and there, including Razorscale twice in PUG raids. Hell, I even did the weekly raid earlier this week on Mardak and we breezed through both Flame Leviathan and Razorscale, with only one tank at that. It's never seemed that hard so I figured we should try it. And because I knew that unless I started grabbing people and running it, it would never happen...I became a raid leader.

Amazingly, we filled out the group in minutes. We headed in, and judging from comments many of us had never stepped into Ulduar, let alone killed Leviathan or Razorscale. But both fights have never struck me as particularly difficult, so I figured it would be easy.

I was wrong. Leviathan was such a pain. Just getting organized with the vehicles was a hassle, but eventually everyone was aboard and we headed off to smush iron dwarves and topple strange storm beacon things. Both times I've done this before we've just waltzed down the center, killing everything, and then proceeded to whup Leviathan. But this time we headed off to the sides to destroy some Towers? I've heard that doing Leviathan on hard mode involves leaving some towers up, but I don't remember killing them before...so I didn't really know what was going on. But we spent a few minutes wrecking them and then went over boss strategies.

In retrospect, perhaps my explanation of "When it chases you, run away and use your speed boosts. If it's not chasing you, DPS it!" was slightly lacking. Especially since some of the guildies in the run are not great at reacting on the fly and tend to /flail when they can't tell what's going on.

We wiped, fast and hard. I was surprised, but someone pointed out that his flame jets need to be interrupted. Someone else pointed out that more pyrite needs to be shot down from the sky so the vehicles have the juice necessary to speed boost when being pursued. Both valid points, we vowed to work on these things and headed in, only to wipe again. Better progress this time though, but still not close to killing it.

Some people pointed out again firmly - not yet angrily, but a little annoyed - how important it was to interrupt the jets and shoot down the pyrite. I made my first tactical decision as a raid leader here, moving myself and another person who knew the fight from bikes (which are the easiest vehicles/roles, but are also almost useless) to driver/gunner. We switched with two guildies who, while nice people, aren't the quickest at reacting or adapting to new things.

Sure enough, this time it went smoothly, with lots of pyrite down all over the place, the melee vehicles starting to flee before a target change in case they were pursued, tar everywhere on fire...it felt very satisfying to destroy that stupid machine, as we definitely earned it.

Razorscale was a cakewalk. Some of the people were concerned that the main tank grab the adds on one side and the offtank grab the others, and that we be split up in equal halves (like Thaddius in Naxx) but I didn't worry about it. The tanks just grabbed all the adds between them and it was fine. If any stragglers got away, well that's what Misdirect is for!

I was on javelin duty, which was another first for me, since both times I've killed Razorscale before we just had a healer sit back there and do it. But it worked fine, especially as BM for ongoing damage even while I was using them, plus Aspect of the Cheetah and Nitro Boots.

Razorscale went down easily and we all high fived and celebrated. The win felt great, probably because we had to struggle to learn what to do and overcome inexperience/adversity. Even better, our mage even got a nice caster sword upgrade from Leviathan, and our rogue got a nice fist weapon from Razorscale. Overall a very nice raiding experience (albeit somewhat stressful with the wipes).