Friday (1 Apr) - Efnm Raid Showing Staying Power

Friday (1 Apr) - Efnm Raid Showing Staying Power

Wild couldn't be happier that he stayed with the MM guild. The guild may have started slowly in getting back into raiding after the split, but that has proven to be a good strategy by not pushing things too fast too soon. The guild has two raid groups. The Efnm group runs on Friday nights and Ld's group runs on Saturday. Efnm is focusing on the Bastion of Twilight while the Ld group is focusing on Blackwing Descent. Both groups have killed the first boss in their respective raids. Even more importantly, both groups have a solid core of raiders who are showing up on time and ready to raid.

Fn, the raid leader for Efnm, is now considering adding a second night to our raid. We need that second night, as progress would be painfully slow at just one night a week. But the guild has been cautious about adding more nights, wanting to make sure it could be sustained. This coming week we'll be determining if there is enough interest in a second night, and if so what would be the best night.

The MM guild is now level 21. The newest perk allows guildies to Summon other guildies to wherever we are - without the need for a Summoning Stone. That is truly cool - and convenient. Our roster stands at 284 total members with 95 level 85s. We are 3/12 in Cata bosses (Argaloth in BH, Magmaw in BWD, and Halfus in BoT). [note - BoT has been shortened further to just BT, even though BT was also used for the Black Temple in Burning Crusade. But then who remembers BC?].

The MM2 guild is now level 7. Their roster stands at 155, which is pretty good considering they started with around 40 members jumping ship from MM. The number of level 85s has also shown growth, and is now at 66. The main difference in the two guilds, however, is in raiding. MM2 is 1/12 in Cata bosses, having downed only Argaloth. The cabal of friends that form the core of the new guild has, for whatever reason, not been raiding. Among the rest of the 85s, no one seems to have taken an interest in running raids. Lady Hunter announced on the guild website a week ago that she was starting a raid group. There has been nothing seen about it since then. Wild is used to being sweetly badgered by Lady Hunter to come to her raids, but Wild has sadly not heard a word from her. Wild's friend, Rs, who is part of the cabal, has remained in MM and been a steadfast member of the Efnm raid, despite Wild being told that Rs was "definitely" going to jump to MM2. I don't wish MM2 to fail. I hope they accomplish great things. But I have to wonder if members are starting to wonder if they made the right call; specifically those who came to MM2 to raid. Who knows, MM2, once they get started, may push past MM in a hurry. MM isn't moving forward all that fast. But I'm sure glad Wild is raiding in MM.

And speaking of raiding, Efnm was in game and accounted for on Friday night. We even had ten guildies sign up for it, a first! Let me introduce our core team:

Tanks: Fn (pally) and Rs (druid)
Tank/DPS: Bb (warrior who switches roles as needed)
Heals: Wild (druid) and Fl (pally)
Heals/DPS: Sw (priest) shadow priest who heals when 3 are needed
DPS: Kz (hunter), Yd (hunter), Sk (rogue), Wt (mage)

There are a couple of others, but this is the group that makes it most often.

Tol Barad was in the hands of the Horde Friday night, so Baradin Hold (BH) was our first target. We have that fight pretty much in the bag and the boss, Argaloth, went down on our first attempt. A pvp plate piece dropped and a pvp healing ring dropped.

No sooner did Argaloth fall that we started making our way to Bastion of Twilight (BT). Wild saw the roll on the plate gear but didn't see a roll for the ring. Wild wanted that ring. Wild and a couple others asked if we'd missed the roll. The guild leader said no. He had forgotten to set the loot criteria to Master Looter, which won't allow anyone but the Master Looter to award boss level gear (rare gear). It happens, and it's not a big deal. Everyone simply checked "Pass", someone would get it (random choice) and it could then be rolled on and given to the winner. There was a catch. Fn had set his loot rules to automatic disenchant on all pvp gear. When we all passed on the ring, Fn's rules automatically DEed it. That is, destroyed it. Wow. What a bummer. It was an i365 ring.

Fn felt really bad about that. He decided to put in a ticket with a Game Master (GM) to see if they would restore the ring. It's an iffy thing. Usually there has to be a bug that caused the issue, or someone stealing loot, etc, not an avoidable mistake. But it was worth a shot. Fn asked for rolls on the ring, and if we were able to convince a GM to restore it, it would got to that person.

Four players rolled on it, with Wild winning the roll. A minute later, Fn asked for a roll again, wondering why he should bother to submit a ticket if no one wanted it. A whole chorus of folks chimed in that we had already rolled and that Wild had won the roll! A confused raid leader checked his chat log. "How did I miss that?" He said sheepishly. He submitted the ticket.

Onward to BT! Wild likes BT. The many trash mobs to bring down at the beginning serve as a great warm up for Wild, even better than BH. We also have a chance for BOE drops from the trash mobs, and for that reason we kill all of them, even ones we could safely bypass. We did get a little complacent about the mobs, though, and wiped twice while pushing through them. Wild was the cause of one of the wipes, although I couldn't figure out how. We had pulled a group where nasty black holes form on the floor that have to be avoided. Wild seemed to get a chain of them near him, pushing him further and further away from the center of the battle, toward another group of mobs that we did not want to aggro yet. You know what happened - that group aggroed, rushed into the raid, and killed Wild. And then killed everyone else.

"Wild!" the raid leader called out in vent, in a voice like the wagging of a finger under my nose. But he was also laughing.

"I couldn't have been that close!" I countered, defending Wild - or whining, take your pick. Seriously, though, there was no way Wild should have aggroed those mobs. Not that it was all that important, but we did figure out that it wasn't Wild who aggroed the mobs. A hunter trap had been set too far back, and when the trapped mob finally released it was close enough to bring the other group into the fight with him. Wild just happened to be the closest raider to them when they came storming in. Lucky Wild.

We cleared the mobs, getting a nice sword to drop that made our rogue very, very happy.

Halfus Wyrmbreaker is the first boss in BT. We had a slightly different set of dragons this week. Time Warden and Storm Rider were the same, only this week we did not have Slate, we had Nether Scion. This was a slightly easier combination of dragons to deal with than last week. Slate has a very nasty stacking debuff that we would not have to deal with this week. The Scion dragon increases Halfus' attack speed; nasty, but not nearly as bad as those stacking debuffs.

On our first two attempts we tried it with two healers and two tanks. That didn't work so well, as the incoming damage was still too high for two healers to manage. We were releasing two dragons (Storm Rider and Time Warden). Fl and Wild could keep the tanks alive, but not the rest of the raid. And if we tried to keep the raid alive, a tank would die.

We switched to three healers, and that helped on our third attempt, but it was another wipe. We changed tank assignments, and on our fourth attempt we killed all three dragons and then took halfus apart. The DPS get really excited when that third dragon dies because they know they'll be doing 300% damage on Halfus. That makes two straight weeks we've killed both Argaloth and Halfus. It was only 7:30pm. Plenty of time to see what the second boss encounter was like.

Halfus dropped a fine off-hand called [Book of Binding Will]. The i359 piece, although it had +hit on it, would be a great replacement for Wild's i346 O/H. Wild rolled as off-spec and won the roll for it. However, Sl, our shadow priest who was healing, is really a shadow priest main and was the better raider to get it. Wild passed it Sl. She was one happy shadow priest.

We had to clear some more trash mobs before getting to the second encounter, and there was a second BOE drop, another plate piece I think.

We moved on to a large chamber with a dragon at either end. On one side was Valiona, and on the other was Theralion. The jokes about these two could on and on. Supposedly they are a pair, but inevitably they are referred to as "sisters" or "brothers" or "gay." I'm not real clear on the lore, but I think they have to be a couple, as their spawn helped populate the dragon race. The truth is that Valiona is female and Theralion is male. Everything else is up for grabs.

I'd explain the fight, but frankly Wild doesn't have much figured out yet, despite six attempts. I can say that we fight one dragon on the ground and one shoots fireballs at us from the air. The two switch roles at confusing moments. There are attacks where we MUST be scattered away from each, and attacks where we MUST be stacked together at the dragon's rather unpleasant tail. But we can't stack too soon. And when the dragon swivels around to breath fire in the the faces of the raiders hammering it's nether region we have to run away at just the right moment. And speaking of nether regions, in the second phase large purple swirlys form that suck raiders into a void zone if we don't get out of the way fast enough. I hear that inside that void zone the caught raider has to avoid flying little balls while trying to catch the big ball that would let him out. Touching a little ball is instant death. So who got fixated on nether regions, dragon backsides, and big and little balls for a boss encounter?

The good news is that we did get as far as the second phase, and made small but steady progress, getting the pair of dragons down to 68% on our best attempt. Wild is going to read up on the strats again now that he's seen the fight. This is a fight we can definitely do.

That wrapped us up for the evening. We talked for a bit about adding that second raid night. We all want a second night; the issue is whether our various schedules can coalesce on a night we can all make.

Right as Wild was getting ready to log, Fn announced that he'd gotten a response from the GM on the ring issue. That was fast. Wild wasn't expecting to hear back for another day or so. The GM told Fn that Wild would be getting the ring in the mail. Woot!

By the time Wild got back to Orgrimmar it was waiting for Wild in his mailbox. Equipping that i365 ring pushed Wild's gear score from i350 to i352.