Bert managed to get 4 server resets in the space of two weeks which, coupled with a 3-day SoC spawn timer, kept us from him.
Four previous attempts, all spawning him -- never *quite* a clean enough attempt, and we'd have probably died anyways on each even if we didn't run out of time.
I have to applaud SOE for some very nicely-done events.
The High Priest event, to even get down to CoDb, puts heavy demands on your raid: one single person dying and you've basically lost to Avhi, only the second mob of that cycle (although tonight for the first time we recovered from a single death!) Vindor and Raex both have incredibly high damage for a mere keying event, and they take some learning to manage to pull them.
All in all, the HP event is a pretty fast-moving, varied event with boss after boss -- you don't get bored.
Then the Bert event itself, which is non-stop pulling for two hours, where you need to always be thinking and planning several steps ahead. If you wait for the pull to be cleared each time then you're going to lose -- at least with only a 40 person raid force.
Finally Bert: rampage so bad we can't keep our top paladins alive through it, AE mana/drain dot of a splurt variety, and such fast respawns that you end up with 6 or more in camp before he's dead. Couple that with a melee so hard you can't keep a tank alive after defensive drops, and you have a helluva ride after.
It was not a clean kill. We didn't have enough plates, so his ramp was eating into the raid by around 40%. And little added gems like an accidental total plow (i.e. to 0%) by the main tank during enrage made it look like we might not win.
But finally, on a druid killshot, with only 4 druids left in zone:
The whole area looked like this:
Grats Avelyn:
Grats Gumgak: