Friday (18 Mar) - Starting All Over

Friday (18 Mar) - Starting All Over

It was a pretty ragtag group of guildies that showed up for the Friday night raid. There were seven guildies and a guild friend, which made eight. One was a shadow priest (Ya! Wild loves the mana regen buffs) but was not all that well geared. We had a shaman playing a hunter, but who didn't know how to be a hunter and was really undergeared. We had a druid tank who was asked to play his boomkin offspec. And we had only one healer - Wild. But at least we all showed up, and on time. The druid tank/boomkin was Rs, Wild's good friend, who so far has stayed in MM and not joined his real life friends in MM2. Wild was very happy to see him in the raid.

We did run late after that because we could not find two guildies or friends of guildies to fill the last two spots - we needed healers. The raid leader, Fn, decided we were too close to call off the raid and went to the trade channel and looking for group (LFG) to find us two more healers. Surprisingly, we did not have to wait long, getting a nicely geared lady holy paladin and a druid healer in even better i351 gear that she said was her alt - her priest main had downed all but one boss in BWD. Her guild was the hard core raiding BlackBlades, but tonight she decided to come slumming with us.

We went straight to BWD as the pvp battle in Tol Barad had just gotten underway and Baradin Hold was not open. Since Wild was the lead healer this night, I made the healing assignments. Wild assigned the PUG paladin as the main tank healer for Fn, Wild took healing for the off tank (the warrior By), and the PUG hotshot druid was assigned raid duty.

Once we were inside BWD there was a delay when the shaman turned hunter (Cw was the name) didn't know where the entrance to BWD was. We got that sorted out. Then he asked the other hunter if he could help him set up his button bar and tell him what spells he should put on it. Oh dear. He said he had recently come back to the game after a long absence (he missed all of Wrath). It was a guild run and we needed bodies and we needed ranged DPS so we were patient. Wild did cringe a little inside, wondering what our two PUG healers were thinking.

When we were all ready to go, we killed the closest solo mob with ease. We then faced the difficult pair of trash mobs that are just in front of the boss, Magmaw. We gooned that first attempt pretty bad, wiping early. On our second attempt, however, things went smooth as silk and both mobs went down on queue. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves. Wild was getting used to being a bit of a slow starter, and it showed on the meters with Wild at 7k hps and the other druid doing just under 10k hps. The pally did 5.6k but didn't have any problems keeping his tank out of trouble.

Then we started on Magmaw. We wiped four straight times, all of it ugly. The hunter, Cw, pulled before the tank engaged on our first attempt. Wipe. We then wiped on the first Pillar of Fire on our second attempt, with Wild struggling with the timing along with the rest. The third attempt was no better. After the 4th wipe we sat back to assess. It was pretty clear that Cw was not cutting it as a hunter and he was pleading with the raid leader to switch to his enhancement shaman. We already had two enhancement shaman in the raid - but Cw was doing barely over 2k DPS (which Wild could do in his healing gear) and was therefore useless for what we needed him for. Three of our DPSers were doing fine (over 10k DPS), but the three others were falling short of 6k and there was no way we could kill all those spawning parasites without improving on that. It wasn't all the DPSers fault, though, as the rest of us could not get the timing straight on when to change positions. We let Cw switch to shaman, losing a ranged DPS, but had the warrior switch to his mage for better AoE on those parasites.

While that was going on the hotshot druid healer logged out of the game without even a wave goodbye. She'd apparently seen enough and wanted no further part of us. We were now short a healer. We then caught a small break when a guildie logged in - a pally healer. We nabbed him and got him to join us. The other PUG pally healer stuck with us.

We made two more tries, and got Magmaw to 87%. We weren't close, and Cw didn't do much better as a shaman DPS than he did as a hunter, but at least we were starting to look like a raid again.

We saw that the Horde had won at Tol Barad, and it was an easy vote to turn our sights on Baradin Hold. Our visiting pally was already locked to BH, but she offered to bring her hunter if we'd have her. Sure!

We quickly reassembled at Baradin Hold. We had one false start against Argaloth, primarily because the raid leader switched healer groups right before the start and neither Wild nor the other tank healer noticed - we were confused and couldn't figure out who was healing who. We wiped. We got that sorted out, even though Rs teasingly complained that Fn has stolen "his" healer (Wild). On our second attempt we brought Argaloth down. He dropped cloth and mail gear, so no new goodies for Wild, but it was nice to get that kill.

Fn invited our PUG pally healer to come back next week and offered to send her an invite to our raid. I hope she comes.

In some ways it was a rough night, but not a bad night. It's like the old days, with a guild just getting into raiding. MM is that kind of guild now. I'd say that there are five of us truly serious about making this work, and the other five could change week to week. Fn is trying to bring new folks into the guild who want to raid, but we have the same problem as many other guilds - players want to join raiding guilds that are already successful.

We are going to fail a lot at raiding. But then the taste of victory is that much sweeter when it comes, and all that hard work is rewarded.

Weekend Update - There was a small flurry of traffic on the guild website on Saturday. It started with a complaint about Cw, the hunter who couldn't hunt. The poster added that while it was great to get enough raiders to actually raid, some came unprepared - such has having to ask for potions and food from other raiders. The guild can now make powerful flasks that last two hours using the guild Cauldron. That should save raiders 100-200g in flask costs each week, so there's no excuse not to have everything else needed to raid.

The guild leader (GL) replied to that post, agreeing with the poster and then commenting further on the specifics regarding Cw. The story was that the guild leader and Cw had often pvped against each other back when they were level 60s (the GL was alliance at the time). Cw not only had not played Wrath, he missed Burning Crusade, too! Knowing how good he'd been at pvp as a level 60, the GL asked if he'd like to gear up for raiding. Cw said yes. What the GL never expected was that Cw would level from 60 to 85 - in a week. And then signed up for the raid. How can you not invite someone who went to all that effort when asked to help out? And that's also the reason he was so unsure of how to play his hunter - so much had changed between level 60 and 85. The GL also repeated what he had reported a couple of weeks ago - very few guildies have showed any interest at all in raiding, and many of the few that did say they wanted to raid never sign up for them. We're going to have to recruit raiders into the guild.

On the MM2 front no raids were scheduled - at least none that invited Wild, and I have no way of knowing unless they put Wild on their invite list. Lady Hunter hasn't been in game at the same time as Wild in several days, nor has Bd. It doesn't look like they are doing much or any raiding, either. MM2 has a 145 members and 59 85s now. While I didn't recognize the new members, MM2 does seem to be doing a better job of recruiting (unless they are all alts). They are at guild level 5 and have a Baradin Hold kill of Argaloth, but no progress in BWD or other Cata raid. Just like MM. MM has 285 members but actually lost 85s, dropping from 98 to 93.