Into the Rift of Nurz yo Daddy

Well Friday night I ran the rift with my brother and some friends who needed a spare minstrel and tank, and we one shotted each boss up till the Balrog who we didn't have time to face, including Thrang. Our tank did die on Thrang once but it was early on in the battle so we resed him and let him build up agro. Thrang is no joke but the other bosses we faced weren't to much to squawk about,. they were fun and the loots were phat all right and there was strategy that let the champions shine big time or the off tanks.

But Thrang was a different matter... kinda reminded me of wow. The tank has to pull him from fumarole to fumarole because hes only vulnerable while they are erupting right next to him. This hazardous to him and the tank, so it gets tricky. I was healing like nobody's business and so were the other two minstrels, for a good half hour. The poor lore master we had had his hands full replenishing us. He was funny though, he said he liked out group because we had just the right mix of anal retentive and laid-backness. I thought it was a pretty cool group as well, mostly due to my awesome dwarven battle-cries (jk).

Umm the Rift is interesting though, though as the name implies it is fairly linear, with a series of challenges proceeding each boss and you have to fight them all in order. A certain ugly orc called the overseer interacts with each one after you get past Barz and Zurm. (the first two Troll bosses who are sometimes harder than the later ones except for Thrang) There are fumaroles that pop up and threaten to blow you to kingdom come if you don't destroy them, and there are rickety stone bridges made by fire giants over lava where the heat is so great it hurts just to be on it. No dawdling. Lastly there are dragons, flying around here there everywhere in some places, and ugly little creatures that suck power and light called darklings.

I'd say the Rift took 4 hours to do 3/4 of it so I estimate Barz and Zurm being another half hour and the balrog maybe being a half hour if you don't wipe at all it can be completed in 5 hours. Not too shabby, and a lot more fun and rewarding than MC ever was, or ZG. I give it props for being the first raid difficulty dungeon I have enjoyed very much, other than UBRS.