Wednesday (1 Feb) - JB's Test

Wednesday (1 Feb) - JB's Test

The RG2 raid filled on time Wednesday night, a raid which included our former raid leader, Bd, back from his RL crisis and playing WoW again. He did not ask for leadership of the raid back, and Vl remained our raid leader. Bd also expected to have to earn back his tanking role, but one of our regular tanks was pressed into service in the G1 raid on Tuesday night and wasn't available. That left a spot open for Bd. Wild really hates other raid groups poaching our raiders, and Wild will have a talk with the player about making a commitment to our raid. This is our third straight week of fielding a raid and we should be recognized as a real, honest to goodness raid group again.

In battling Dragon Soul, however, we looked a lot less like a fully functioning raid. Morchok went down without much fuss. We then spent the rest of the evening wiping 6 times against Ozz and 4 times against Yor.

On the positive side, we made progress on both bosses, our raid composition is firming up, and raiders seemed happy and determined to make it work. Now we need to keep the momentum growing, and we have all Thursday night to take down another boss.

The raid leader, Vl, has given Wild charge of the healers. Even so, after our raiding night ended, Vl might have been a little surprised when Wild asked to speak with her about healing. She was doing a raid debrief with the tanks, and Wild waited patiently for that to finish.

Wild has been waiting to see Vl flourish as a healer. I've been reluctant to assign her to tank healing because her hps was quite a bit below the other two healers, no matter who they were. Despite some gear improvements, though, on Wednesday night her numbers were only half what Wild and our priest, Pl, did. Wild dug through the recount stats. What immediately jumped out at me was Vl hardly used the AoE heal Wild Growth. WG is the MAIN HEAL for a raid healing druid, and she wasn't using it. That made me wonder if anyone had ever spent time with her talking shop about druid healing. Her druid was her second main; her first main was a DPS.

Wild and Vl talked. I asked if she had someone to talk to about healing. Nope, she didn't. I asked if she used an addon like recount, which Wild used to monitor how I and the other healers were doing. She used a similar addon called skada. What did it show her, Wild asked? Vl could see that her healing was well below the other two healers, but didn't know what to do about it. We spent the next half hour talking about spell priorities, how to use spells to proc Harmony and how important that was, the proper use of lifebloom, haste mechanics, what efflorescence was (she didn't know!), and a lot of other things. All this information got a little overwhelming, so we focused on the main things she should practice on for Thursday night. Her gear is definitely good enough, but it was really focused more toward tank healing than raid healing, which is all she was doing. She really wanted to tank heal. Inwardly, I was a little reluctant, worried about the impact on the raid, but agreed to see how she would do. I worked with her some more on tank healing mechanics, and will be watching closely during the raid. Wild will give himself raid healing duty so I can help with the tank healing as well. It might even work out better this way. Both bosses do a lot of AoE damage, and keeping raiders alive may be a harder chore than keeping a tank up.

So what's this about a test? It started with a simple request. JB knew that the guild sometimes ran Firelands raids on Friday and Saturday nights for anyone that wanted to see the content and have some fun with guildies. The problem was that JB couldn't sign up for them. JB did not have the guild rank needed to access the raid calendar. I probably approached that a little nonchalantly. After all, Wild had Raider rank in the guild, why not JB? She was my alt. I could also mention that given how hard it's been to fill guild raids, so having JB available for fill in should be a good thing, right?

It doesn't work quite that way. Even alts have to prove themselves before being allowed into guild raids, or given access to the raid calendar. Ok, so what needs to be done? Poor Bd got the question. Welcome back, Bd, I need some guild officer help.

Bd directed JB to the Raider Bill of Rights. There were the expected requirements for being ready to raid, on time, properly geared/enchanted/gemmed etc. JB had all that down. Minimum ilevels and DPS were also stated there that JB would have to show she could meet. Ok, JB told Bd, but the information was based on the Firelands: i355 gear, 12k dps on the raid target dummy. Bd was surprised it hadn't been updated, and got that fixed right away. The Dragon Soul minimums: i365 gear, and 15k dps on the raid target dummy (self buffs only, no flasks or food buffs, and no bloodlust either).

JB's equipped gear is i366. Barely there, but there nonetheless. JB practiced on the target dummy to see how she would do before she would ask to take her test, which is five minutes attacking the dummy doing at least 15k dps. After several practice runs, JB was just barely able to hit 15k dps, but there was little to no cushion. JB didn't think that was good enough, at least for DS, and would go after a couple more gear improvements to make that a solid 15k plus.

The Firelands are a different story. JB hasn't caught up with Bd since her practice on the dummy, but she still believes she should get access to the raid calendar since they are running FL raids and JB is more than qualified gear wise for that!

JB isn't waiting around, though. She's headed back into the Twilight dungeons and lfr DS.