So we finally managed to kill the Maiden yesterday! It felt like it was a bit too long time coming, which made finally managing it feel rather nice. At the same time, the kill was also rather anticlimactic because of how the fight works. Since it’s only the two phases rotating the whole time, there’s no real escalation built into the fight, it only requires concentration and clean play the whole time. While yes, having 20 people make close to zero mistakes during a whole encounter is challenging and that’s what led us to having so many wipes as well, it means the encounter is rather monotone. I didn’t realize we were killing the boss until a few seconds before she was down, which is strange because usually one can see the escalation in incoming damage or the like as the encounter goes on, a perfect example being Mistress Sassz’ine or the Desolate Host. Both become much more dangerous as far as incoming damage is concerned and that adds a certain tension.

It is kind of nice with a more I guess relaxing fight in there, though at the same time the almost zero tolerance for failure does introduce tension into the fight. Will be interesting to see how the rekill goes, assuming we don’t extend the ID.

In other news, killing the Maiden meant we got to poke at Avatar a bit. We just practiced phase two, and that fight seems like it will be messy. Theoretically we’ve now played through the whole phase two, though we definitely need to do it better if we actually want to end up downing the boss. Damage looked okay considering we’ll be in execute range in reality but there were a few too many avoidable deaths and failed soaks. Something I’m sure a few more tries will fix. Of phase one I still have no idea though it seems it’ll be something of a pain, since once more tons of movement and trying to keep people healed up in that time. Especially with the different sources of damage that actually require us healers to keep people topped so they don’t get one-shot by mechanics while also dealing with movement. At the same time, I think that promises an interesting fight, so hope to be progressing there next reset again (and not spending the whole reset on rekills).

But in the meantime, some rejoicing that the Maiden is finally dead and we got some progress done!