Da Trolls, mon

I got to run the newly revamped ZA last night. I have to say that after all the hype and build-up and such...

...it was the most fun I've had playing this game in a long time.

ZA as a raid instance was always in tight competition with Kara as my favorite, and the winner usually depended on my mood that day. So having an excuse to go back in there with an appropriately-geared group and run through it again was a dream come true.

My group went in semi-blind. Meaning none of us had really read up on how anything had changed, but we still had at least vague ideas of what it was like before. (I'd actually gone through the old version on Grevioux a couple weeks ago so I could tame one of the dragonhawks on the way to Jan'alai.) Trying to reconcile what we could remember, what we'd forgotten, and what was new--all on the fly--made the whole experience seem very frantic, but never in a way that was overwhelming.

The biggest on-the-fly adjustments were on Nalorakk (realizing how his charge mechanic had changed and how we needed to deal with it) and Malacrass (figuring out what abilities he was stealing and how to compensate). We one-shot both of them, but it wasn't without a some breath-holding going on...that is when I wasn't shouting frantic commands at group members that may or may not have really been prepared to deal with them. Whatever. They handled it. That's why I like running with them.

Oh, and I snagged one of the coolest looking shoulder models in the game. Always wanted a pair of those back when it was current...

Tonight's raid night for me, but I'm looking forward to trying to tackle ZG before the weekend is out. We haven't had a guild group get through that one yet, so it would be nice to ding that achievement.