Thursday (9 Feb) - Earnest Rabble

Thursday (9 Feb) - Earnest Rabble

Yesterday Wild was lamenting about all that was wrong with raiding in his guild, as opposed to what little was right. Silver, an alliance cousin with unquestioned raid leader credentials and success wished she could come and straighten it all out. Wild would have invited her right that second, but knew that the guild wouldn't listen to any advice but our own. It reminded me of how we got to where we are as a guild that raids. The story has been told so many times Wild can now encapsulate it in a parable called The Tale of Three Raid Leaders.

Once upon a time there were three Raid Leaders named Lady, Knuckles, and Kicker. The Three Raid Leaders were Happy in their guild, and all was well. Each raid leader had the same task: to defend the realm and conquer common foes, but each accomplished the task a different way. Lady loved everyone and made us laugh. Her followers were competent but not exactly well drilled. Knuckles was much more serious but tried to be inclusive and give everyone a chance to help the cause. Kicker drove his followers hard and demanded complete obedience. When the guild came upon hard times there was friction and rancor in the ranks. Kicker ostracized the more social followers of Lady, took control of the guild, and said Good Riddance to Lady and her followers when they left to form their own guild. Kicker and Knuckles did not get along, however, and soon Conflict came again. Knuckles tried to hold things together, but a new Raid Leader arose, Rhon, and led a small following out of the guild to form their own. Knuckles, unable to restore harmony in the ranks, also slipped away with his remaining followers and rejoined Lady. What was once one guild became Four, and each Raid Leader still performs the great task of defending the realm in their own way.

Ok, so it needs work. 

Anyway ... what was I talking about?  Ah yes, raiding. Silver nailed the issue we have in our guild - Consistency. We lack consistency in both the composition of players in our raids, as well as our strategy and approach in defeating bosses. With Bd now back and engaged, things are changing, at least with our own raid, RG2. The other raid, G1, supposedly the stronger raid, remains 3/8 against Dragon Soul despite having the "better" raiders and a lot more time against those bosses than RG2.

RG2 can't boast, since we have been stuck at 1/8 since the dawn of Hour of Twilight.

Raid attendance and composition was still a problem. We were 45 minutes late getting started due to having to hunt down guildies to come to the raid. Two raiders we usually count on had RL issues, and we aren't flexible enough yet to manage that without a struggle. We almost didn't raid Thursday night. We had ten raiders, but one too many DPS, which left us short either a healer or a tank. Ultimately, we decided to take on Yor with an extra DPS, and only one tank. Yor puts a stacking debuff on the tank that gets deadlier and deadlier, so two tanks are needed in order to swap and remove the debuff. With only one tank, healing that tank would be a huge challenge. Two of our healers were Wild and the priest Pl, as usual. Healer Vl was still out because of the death in her family, and our fill in from Wednesday could not make the Thursday raid. So it was that our second tank switched to his druid healer alt to round out the healing. Bd was our main - and only - tank.

Wild was tasked with keeping Bd alive, with help from Fn, the druid alt. Fn is as well geared as Wild, and we were determined that a dead tank would not be the cause of any wipes.

Wild provided the tension relief at the beginning of the run. The trash mobs around Yor are small oozes in groups of three and four. With our two tank setup, the excitable St usually leads those romps through the oozes, leaping directly into the middle of them, as Wild runs in to set up his healing, and the rest of the raid follows and stacks up on the oozes. Of course, we only had the one tank on this night, and it was Bd leading us in, not St. Bd gave us the Go and Wild charged in. Only Bd didn't Leap into the mobs, he sauntered in (at least that was Wild's excuse) and Wild got to the oozes before Bd did. Dead Wild watched while the rest of the guild killed the first ooze pack. It was pretty hilarious, actually. Bd proceeded to leap into the ooze packs from then on, although Wild remained suspicious and took a more cautious charge into the fray.

Our first attempt on Yor went exceptionally well. On our third or fourth ooze spawn, however, we got a really nasty combination of oozes that confused the raid and wiped us.

RG2 has been stuck at 1/8 since the dawn of Hour of Twilight. Well, not anymore. Thursday night, on our second attempt, Yor'sahj the Unsleeping fell to RG2. It's just the second kill out of eight bosses, but it was a major step forward for RG2. Instead of giving up when we couldn't field the raid we wanted, we changed the strategy and did it our way. The extra DPS gave us that little extra push, a lot of credit to the tank for doing everything a tank could do to help his healers, and pats on the back to the healers for refusing to let the tank go down. The tank didn't die, and neither did anyone else. 

We made progress against Warlord Zon'ozz, getting in five attempts. RG2 is now 2/8 against DS. No more, no less.

[Dragonfire Orb] dropped off a trash mob. The i397 off-hand is an awesome piece that had every healer and mana using DPS drooling over. One of the DPS won it. Other raiders got drops off the two bosses we killed. I'm hoping that the kill and the drops draw more guildies to sign up for the raids.

Next week we'll be at it again. I like our earnest rabble, and I like where we're headed.