Monday (25 Jul) - Raiding with Strangers

Monday (25 Jul) - Raiding with Strangers

Our BoT raid leader is out this week, so there will be no scheduled Thurs/Fri night raid. So Wild checked in with the BWD raid group on Monday night to see if they might have a spot for me. Yes, they did. The raid was scheduled to start at 6pm. At 6:30pm we were still short three DPS raiders. I don't really understand how a guild of this size can't find three DPS guildies who want to raid. The BoT group is well established with regulars compared to the BWD group. We continued to wait, finding one more DPS. Then a healer had computer problems, went offline, and never came back. The raid leader called it after waiting almost an hour, not wanting to PUG a healer. At least Wild was able to fish up more than two stacks of raid food while he waited. Sigh.

Wild didn't waste anymore time. After the raid was called Wild started checking trade chat and volunteered for a PUG Firelands trash run. They had eight already when Wild joined them, but Wild was the only healer. Wild was asked if I was ok with two healing it instead of the normal three healers. Wild already had experience doing the trash run with two healers, plus I didn't want to wait around for a third healer, so I said sure. They found a priest healer who could only stay an hour. Good enough.

Thirty minutes into the run I had a pretty good idea what we had. The raid leader did no leading. Tank roles were defined but the tanks did not work out who did what and tended to run after the next mob with little thought to the state of the raiders behind them. DPSers blundered into patrols while we were fighting other mobs. Despite all that we were still killing things, and had wiped only once. Wild stuck with them as I wanted to build up rep with the Avengers of Hyjal faction. We did a decent clear and then reset. Our second healer had to leave, and Wild was very disappointed when they grabbed a resto druid to replace the priest. Dang, now Wild had competition should leather healing gear drop. Two DPS left as well, but they were quickly replaced.

Wild need not have worried. No gear at all dropped. The other druid healer kept pace with Wild on the healing meters, but the tank he was supposed to be healing died five times. Wild's tank died only on the two wipes. Not to mention that the raid leader went offline right as we started the second run and never returned. We nine manned the entire second run.

After the second run four players dropped out, so we called it quits. Wild got no goodies, but he got something just as good. Wild reached Honored with the Avengers of Hyjal. His reward was the i378 belt [Firescar Sash], replacing his i359 belt. Wild loses more spirit/mana regen with the new belt, but gains gobs more +int. I just hope Wild's staying power under real raid conditions against real bosses holds up - assuming I get a chance to do that any time soon.

Wild's gear is now ilevel 363.