Monday (5 Sep) - Raid Group Eenie Meanie Minie Mo

Monday (5 Sep) - Raid Group Eenie Meanie Minie Mo

Now that the guild's various raid groups have cleared all of Bastion of Twilight (BoT) and Blackwing Descent (BWD) they seem to have entered a twilight zone where no one knows what to do next. For Wild, it would seem to make sense to combine the three groups into two groups, which should curtail the endless waiting around to fill a raid each night, and establish a regular group where we are not always having to explain things to newcomers. I honestly don't think anyone would be left out, either, since a fair number of our raiders raid with two toons. I doubt if we have any more than 25 guildies total who raid.

Of course, that won't happen, because we have three people who want to run raids and a group of guildies who can't agree to or commit to specific days of the week to raid.

Wild's regular group (using the word "regular" very loosely here) is run by Bd, who is having real life interference again. I love Bd. He's the best raid leader I've ever raided with. However, since Cho'gall went down he has simply not been around. There is no sign up for the Thurs/Fri raid, and raiders are going to make other plans if he or his secondary don't get the raid on the schedule and state where it is headed.

Wild wasn't really expecting to raid Monday night, and didn't even get in game until close to 6:30pm. Mf's Mon/Tues raid starts at 6pm. But they were still short on raiders and asked Wild to come along, which I was happy to do. They had saved their BWD raid from last week, and they were starting on the fourth boss. More on the raid below. The issue, though, is that Mf's raid had been looking the most stable, but now seems to be having attendance trouble again. It's troubling. Mf announced after the Monday raid that starting next week they will be raiding full time in Firelands. Wild is strongly considering asking Mf if Wild could become a regular with his raid. The Firelands is where Wild wants to be.

Lady Hunter's raid group is slightly more stable, although her raid nights are Tues/Wed which would butt up against Hunter Fortress. She has been considering Thrones as her raid target, since the guild hasn't bothered to kill the final boss in Thrones, Al'akir. Wild would be up for that, but so far that has only been talk.

In fact, tonight's raid is going to be our monthly 25 man raid in BWD. Wild is really looking forward to it. Twenty guildies have signed up, and there will almost certainly be unfilled slots that will need PUGs and could take in lesser geared players. Too bad Sinstar isn't quite ready for that yet. If we take this even half-way seriously we should tear this place apart in 25 man. Wild wants his T11 Helm and Nefarian has it. It's the last under i359 gear slot Wild needs to replace.

The bottom line is that Wild is still mixing and matching his raid nights depending on availability and where the raid is headed. That's sometimes a good thing, since Wild is getting 3-4 nights of raiding each week. Wild would really like a permanent, dependable raid home, though.

So, the BWD raid Monday night was pretty forgettable. The bosses that they had already downed last week were Magmaw, the robots, and Maloriak.

We started on Chimaeron. Wild no longer needed to have any of the fights explained, but there were couple of others who had not seen the fight yet. It should have been an easy romp, but it took us three tries to kill the two-headed dragon. Atramedes was next, and Wild had particular interest in this fight since Atramedes might drop an i359 helm. We were terrible, there is no other way to put it. We got the dragon down to 2.5% on one attempt, and down to a gut wrenching 0.8% on another without killing him. We finally killed him on our 7th attempt. It was like we had never seen this boss before. It could have been the third attempt if we'd finished him on that 0.8% try. We had three healers and frankly I think we'd have been better with just two and gotten the extra DPS. Our third healer, a very good paladin, was well below Wild and the shaman healer in hps not because she wasn't good, but because the two of us sucked up most of the healing. By the way, Atramedes did NOT drop the helm.

We didn't even have enough time left to tackle Nefarian, so Wild finished another raid without his helm. Ah well. If things go really, really well Tuesday night, Wild could get two more chances at a helm.

On the topic of Hunter Fortress, Wild earned enough honor points to buy holy paladin Jocy an heirloom weapon, [The Blessed Hammer of Grace]. Wild doesn't have the +22 int enchant, so he had to buy it off the AH at a price of 1300 gold. Jocy had better appreciate that. The WSG's Wild had to endure were absolutely brutal. In level 85 BGs healers are mercilessly stalked and focus fired on, and there are few players who bother to defend them. Wild could almost hear the Alliance BG commander sending word to his DPS - Kill the druid, kill the druid! Matter of fact, in one match with only two healers, the Horde DPS complained constantly about not getting heals, when they could look and see that both of us were dead.

Wild actually made a mistake on the weapon enchant buy, accidentally buying a +50 int bracer enchant for 750g (which would have been a really good deal if it had been the weapon enchant). Wild was initially furious at the mistake. Then he realized he'd never upgraded the enchant on his i378 bracers, which was still set with a +50 spi enchant. The +50 int is a huge upgrade over the +spi, so it all worked out for the best.