We are the Machine.

In one of our biggest accomplishments ever, Tyranny defeats Mythic Kil'Jaden, 9/9M! 67th US kill! And pre-super-nerf!

I usually do "funny" frontpages. We're known for that. I considered doing one for KJ, but upon reflection, I realized that it was not 'just another boss' and would take away from the magnitude of our achievement. And killing Mythic Kil'Jaeden in Tomb of Sargeras and going 9/9M this tier was one of the most difficult and biggest things Tyranny has ever done.

In many ways, Tomb of Sargeras was 'full-circle' from the get go. 'Modern' Tyranny reorganized and in early Sunwell (whose final boss, and of the entire Burning Crusade expansion, was also Kil'Jaeden) which is about the time semi-modern "ranked" raiding started to become a thing. Blizzard intentionally designed the instance and the gear within it to evoke a mishmash of Black Temple and Sunwell, the former of which was released 10 years ago. In that same vein, it is somewhat fitting that this was one of the most difficult tiers they ever put into the game.

Sure, there have been instances with harder single encounters and merciless mechanics. There was nothing quite as obnoxious as defile (Heroic KJ), or as complicated to handle as merciless set of abilities on Paragon of the Klaxxi. But those were the exception. In this instance, nearly every fight had a "1 mistake and the attempt is over, no second chances" design during progression. Recouping and trying to push through was almost always a non-starter. The raid had to do it with extreme precision or it didn't happen. An entire tier of extremely tough mechanics, that because of new limitations on the game could not be easily modded again, with such a high requirement for success was unprecedented. There are so many mechanics. 1 person failing will kill everybody. And you have to do them for 8, 9, 12 minutes. It's borderline unreasonable for a human being to do. This was a very, very hard tier to complete.

Tyranny had no favors done for it this tier. Usually Summer isn't a big deal for us. This one stretched us very thin. We had some very unexpected roster losses. We had major role and class transitions through the tier. We made some really bad mistakes in strat. We got badly stuck on a couple of bosses at various points. We had technical issues left and right. We had to deal with goddamn natural disasters. Our website even got hacked. It was like the universe had it out for us for a while. The full size frontpage kill picture in fact has just SOME of the things we went through this tier. This might litterally be just a quarter of it. We fought through difficult hands getting dealt and got better every step of the way.

And yet, here we are, with the 67th Mythic KJ kill, and our best end-tier finish in years. How the hell did we pull that off? We persevered and worked our assess off, that's how.

Tyranny got a fine start on the first three... faltered a little bit on Sisters and Desolate Host, and then really screwed the pooch on Mistress. Theres a lot of reasons why that was the case, but we recruited a lot of great people, enthusastic about the game and the guild, when paired with the vets, rallied together. We sunk badly (130s) on Mistress. We said though, the tier would becided how we did starting then. And what was the outcome? We climbed back up with Maiden about 20 ranks, then on Avatar, another 40 ranks, and finally on Mythic KJ another 10. We generally speaking made good decisions and had few wasted nights. On Fallen Avatar, the wasted night total was 0. On KJ, it was 3-4, depending how you counted it.

But most of all, we built a guild of people who cared. We got a lot of young raiders - people whose first experience in the top 100 was this tier. We got a whole roster of people deeply invested in how we do. We have perhaps the most technically competent roster we've ever had. Despite catastrophe, through grit and focus and a good attitude, we built a machine that is in an extraordinarily strong place going into Antorius.

Usually, at this point in these end-tier posts, I go through the people who made the biggest contributions. I can't this tier. The only reason this even happened is because everyone - literally everyone - contributed in a massive way. Be it by recruiting an amazing raider to the roster, or swapping a class or role, or taking a key job in a fight, or having a brilliant idea at the right time. And it's not even just KJ. There was a KJ group sure, but that was made possible with a climb back that started at Mistress. Some folks who play, as the meme goes "not a rogue and not a boomkin", said 'fuck the meme, and made key contributions that pushed us to the next boss.

10 years or raid leading Tyranny you'd think I'd have seen everything. I'm still amazed and still stunned by what the people who join this place are able to do. We've been Top 100 for 10 years. We've finished US 19th. We have a world first (Razorscale, haha!). We have so many fightback stories. But this is the one I'll talk about. Once before Tyranny did what we just did, at the very start of Sunwell, and it launched us forward to a decade of unbroken success. And here we are again, with Kil'jaeden dead again, standing tall.

Oh and KJ himself? Let's talk that. We tried the "bouncy bear" strat. Abandoned that after a night. Had Juls go guardian for 13 of the 16 nights. Swapped classes around hugely. Geared up rogues just for it (and Fallen Avatar). We had mostly a string of productive nights (probably 3-4 of the 16 were wasteful). Folks new to the guild in just the last 3-6 months took key leadership jobs. And in the last week, we knew starting Thursday 10-12-17 we were getting close. This was paired with a Sunday raid where we saw Phase 3 a lot... and the raid DEMANDED that we return in a special Monday raid at 9pm to bring it to a close. And what happened between those raids? A night of people staying up late, coming up with a new Phase 3 strat, and drilling of light laying for P3. The post-raid redesign of the phase single handedly made the difference between getting the kill Monday and on the other side of the reset.

And 2 hours was all we needed. And with a string of AMAZING pulls that bonus raid night, we sealed our US67th kill... and thank heavens because the next day , 10-17-17, they nerfed KJ Phase 1 and 2 badly. We did it before they broke it, making our win all the sweeter.



So what now? THe benefit of a revitalized guild mid-expac, rather than the start or the end is that the ball keeps rolling, and this is what historically has carried us to our biggest 'rankwise' successes. We wanna make a big push next tier, and we have the roster to do it. We got some things we need to work out the next month, but I can't imagine a group of people more capable or enthusastic as to meeting these challenges. Together, we're going forward to Antorus, with Tomb of Sargeras, like Sunwell before it, a foundation of great raid tiers to come!

Congratulations Team Tyranny

Kill Video (Feral Druid PoV)
Kill Video (Shadow Priest PoV)

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