LOTRO: Turn of the tide

Yesterday evening, we were on Saruman again. Tiger had spend the weekend with a friend (who is also in our raid group) gaming and theorycrafting, and they came back with a slightly tweaked plan for the last phase. Yesterday we tried that for the first time, and it was clear it worked. Of course, not everything went all according to plan...

First, our tank DC'd and didn't come back. Luckily, a warden just came online in our kinship and wanted to help out. It was then that we made a new record in 'amount of Sarumans taken down in the last phase before wiped' and we became a bit enthusiastic. It was getting late, though, so we only had time for one more try - the fourth of that evening. We had a new idea, another small tweak, that I tried out last minute in the first phase, found out it worked, and applied in the last phase. There were three Sarumans down, it was going well... and that was when our rune-keeper healer DC'd. Strangely, our morale didn't drop (the healers probably went into a healing frenzy at this point), we took the fourth Saruman down and everything was still sunshine. It was then that it dawned on us that we could actually make this. But fate had something else for us in store. Two fire Sarumans turned around and simultaneously casted their fire cone in the same direction. This, combined with I think it was an attack from a frost Saruman, one-shotted three people that were on full health and we lost the challenge. It was a tricky moment. However, our rune-keeper friend returned from his DC, we got the people up and we proceeded very carefully - luckily we still had loads of time left. The rest was a smooth story. We all were very focused until the end, I just couldn't believe we were actually going to do it, but we did - we took down Saruman T2!

It's hard to express my joy at this feat, but it felt super good. Tiger and I have been there every serious attempt, we raided many days a week for the past month and worked on the strategy. We worked hard for it and finally making it was simply amazing.

On the picture: the lore-master in white-and-red, that's me, and Tiger is the vertically challenged gentleman's thief with the top hat at my side. The warden seems to have broken down from exhaustion. Meanwhile the eagle is keeping an eye out, making sure the loot is fairly distributed.

So what was in the box?

First, there was the obligatory first age symbol, cloak clasp and 'warden loot' plus a teal bow, but there were also some useful drops. There was a nice tank pocket item, the Ancient Onyx Key, and an agility/crit earring, Olloch, that made Tiger really happy - he won it on his burglar. I think that, strangely enough, most of us weren't that interested in the loot, though. I certainly wasn't paying that much attention. We were all very happy, even the raid progression thread was happy, and we were already making plans to work on the challenges we have not done yet. With all these happy thoughts, I could safely go to bed and fall asleep.