After collecting the required twenty-five [Primordial Saronite] all on his own, Hanane has become the first player in the guild to create the [Shadow's Edge], moving him one step closer to [Shadowmourne]! Congratulations, Hanane, we’re all pulling for you to earn that sweet legendary as quickly as possible!

For a change of pace, Aegis Hestia has returned to 10-player Ulduar for the “hardmode” versions of the boss fights. We were briefly stymied by Mimiron’s Firefighter encounter, but we managed to clear through to Yogg by the second night. Unfortunately, Thorim was not the best choice as the lone keeper, so we reset the instance and cleared through the instance again. This second time we chose Freya, which simplified the fight immensely. After a couple of tries, we defeated Yogg and earned One Light in the Darkness, Glory of the Ulduar Raider, and the [Reins of the Rusted Proto-Drake]. Not bad for our second-ever kill of Yogg in 10-player mode! Congratulations to everyone who participated and to those who’ll continue working to earn more drakes for the guild.

This week marked the beginning of the Strength of Wrynn buffs, which helped us push through the Lower Spire in record time. This gave us plenty of time to take down Festergut and to work on Rotface. There were lots of ups and downs, but each attempt was cleaner and cleaner until finally it all came together and resulted in a new boss downed! Great work on downing Rotface, Aegis Hestia!

With the weekly raid target once again in Ulduar, Aegis Hestia decided to try the hard mode version of the Flame Leviathan encounter rather than just blasting through on our way to Ignis. It took a couple of attempts as we adjusted to the changes with the additional towers, but everyone pulled together and we won the fight, making Aegis Hestia the tenth guild to earn the 25-person version of the Orbit-uary achievement! Congratulations! Following up on that success, we also earned the Stokin’ the Furnance achievement for defeating Ignis in under four minutes.

Aegis Hestia continued moving forward through the 10-person version of Icecrown Citadel, this time facing off against Blood-Queen Lana'thel and her Blood Prince Council. We had downed the Council before, so it was smooth sailing up until the Blood-Queen herself. She proved a little more difficult, but after several attempts, she too fell, adding The Crimson Hall to the list of wings cleared. Congratulations to everyone involved and good luck in the Frostwing Halls!

After a rather slow start at the beginning of the night due to server lag, Aegis Hestia picked up speed as it continued through the Lower Spire. Despite the rumors that Saurfang’s blood rage gain had increased, the guild defeated him with a one-shot, once again earning the I’ve Gone and Made a Mess achievement. Encouraged by our high DPS for the night, we decided to pay another visit to Festergut to see if we’d have a better chance of beating the enrage timer. After wiping with less than 800k health left to go, we came back and downed him with several seconds to spare. Great work, everyone!

Continuing on our previous successes on 10-player mode, Aegis Hestia downed the two abominations in the Plagueworks before turning to work on the final boss of the wing, Professor Putricide. It took us several tries to perfect our strategy for the first two phases, but after pushing him into the final phase, it only took two tries until we stood over his not-so-”un”-dead corpse. Congratulations on being the seventh Alliance guild to clear the Plagueworks on 10-player, and good luck on the next wings!

After cruising through the first three bosses in Icecrown Citadel (made even easier by the nerf to Lady Deathwhisper), Aegis Hestia turned its attention to Deathbringer Saurfang. It took us a while to tweak our strategy to work for our particular raid composition, but in the end, the guild walked away with the Storming the Citadel achievement for clearing the first wing. The final kill went so smoothly, we even wound up getting the I’ve Gone and Made a Mess achievement. Great job everyone and good luck in the next wing!

After a light schedule due to the holidays, Aegis Hestia returned to Icecrown Citadel once again. Cruising past Morrowgar, we then spent some quality time with Lady Deathwhisper. We tried a couple of alternative strategies, but eventually returned to our original setup. Several tries later, we blew past her shield and switched her from undead, to dead-dead. It was truly a great effort on everyone’s part!

With only half an hour left in the raid, we pushed on to the top of the Citadel to try our hand at the gunship battle … and nailed it on the first try! We even took a shot at Deathbring Saurfang and despite hardly any instruction or explanation, were able to get him down to 30% before we wiped. We only had one day for ICC this week, but with the kind of success we had in that one night, he’s definitely going down this week as we push on through to the Plagueworks. Great job, Aegis Hestia!

Aegis Hestia sent a small contingent into the 10-player version of Icecrown Citadel this week to gain some experience with the fights before attempting the bosses in full 25-player mode. Overall, the instance was a bit more challenging than Trial of the Grand Crusader, but the end result was the same - a full clear of all available bosses in the Lower Spire, culminating in the death of Deathbringer Saurfang and the Storming the Citadel and I’ve Gone and Made a Mess achievements.