Raiding, etc.

First off, I should probably explain something briefly for the person (possibly non-existent) reading this who doesn't know me. I am in a pretty new guild formed by Frostheim (of warcrafthuntersunion.com) and Hrist (the Haterade). Many of the current members are people who are native Icecrowners, in particular people who are part of Frost and Hrist's ten-man team MNK and people from their old guild (significant overlap here). Because it's a new guild advertised on a widely-read intertube site though, there are quite a few server transfers as well (including me). These transfers obviously left behind most of their e-friends/raid teams/whatever. Thus many of us have begun to band together into a second ten-man team, known as TBD (To Be Determined or To Be Disconnected, depending on how things are going).

The main problem that TBD has had so far is the issue of getting a decent raid comp and finding a time that works for people, reliable attendance, etc. This is not at all surprising, to be honest; people planning to join Wyrmfoe checked that the Friday/Saturday raid times worked for them, no one filled out a little form that also asked if they would happen to be available on such-and-such random day for a ten-man team. It seems likely that going forward our strategy will have to consist of picking two days, having at least a couple people capable of raid-leading, and going on those days at the appointed time regardless of anything else. This will likely cause most people to miss at least one day on a semi-regular basis, but it will probably lead to the greatest overall amount of time spent in-instance. (Please note that I have certainly not been immune to the issue of attendance, and am not trying to imply that this is a criticism to be leveled against people. RL > WoW, but for the purposes of the raid team, we need to be able to forge ahead even if 4 people can't make it)

Monday the 15th's TBD raid was really fun though. We almost canceled it simply because quite a few of our regular people were unable to make it (and thoughtfully posted on our forum) but decided to press on. Though we certainly started later than we wanted to, we actually ended up filling the group quite nicely, with a quite decent comp, using only 3 PUGs. Moreover, our PUGed players were very high quality, including a Frost DK who was kicking my ass in DPS. We one-shot our way up to Saurfang, which is where things get interesting since we haven't killed him as a group before. We had a couple wipes which were more about seeing the fight and working out the kinks in our strategy and then we got down to serious business. After the third (?) wipe our PUG DK had to go, but one of our healers from the guild stepped in on her alt DK. Her Chains of Ice combined with a slight adjustment in strategy really cleaned things up, but we were running low on time. What should technically have been our final attempt was a heartbreaker, since our Resto Shammy (Marked) died with the boss at 4%, sadly ending it. We all gathered up again and gave it another shot, got the boss down with only one Mark going out. It helped that it was on me (not only did I have about 8k more buffed health, but I could afford to throw SS and instant FoL on myself pretty often with fairly low DPS loss). As a sidenote, Saurfang was at something like 95% blood power when he died, which meant he looked MASSIVE when Papa Saurfang carried him away.

Anyway, it was an awesome night, and it was really great to see the group carry on in the face of attendance issues. Big thanks go to the healers, the ranged, and the very mature and helpful PUGs. Great night of raiding, and I can't wait for us to get into some of the later stuff. And for Lady D to drop that damn trinket another time or two. As a quick finish, picked up the sword from Marrowgar (which I can't use since it has so much hit) and the Holy legs from him as well. My Holy set is over 30k mana completely unbuffed now, I should probably use it once in a while.