Raiding: It’s whats for dinner!

Or not in my case.

At least not last night.

Throughout the day Slice likes to armory stalk, err “look up” our raiding roster and the calendar (BTW take your authenticator home babe) to see what we have for raids that week.  Up until recently we actually had to sit people because we had too many sign ups.  My brother and his friends had joined our raiding roster and had really helped with having raiders.

Unfortunately that didn’t last very long.

At first one of his friends (who was a tank) left to play Ultima Online (yes, seriously) then got my brother playing again.  One of the others is the roommate of the tank and he stopped logging in when the tank did.  The other dps/healer had quit logging in a while back; he was hooked on League of Legends.  Most of them now play LoL, UO or in the case of Dub (the tank) Rift.  We also lost Moog to Rift.  He keeps trying to get us to quit WoW and play with him in Rift.

Sorry Moog, not going to happen any time soon.

So that is 5 people gone.

From a 10 man raiding group.

We lost a tank, a flex healer, a melee dps, a ranged dps and a caster dps.

Luckily we have an awesome friend in Repgrind and she has been tanking for us on her DK and leveling a holy Paladin.  On top of Arv (our awesome MT!!) we have Lion as a tank.  Lion has really stepped it up and has made fantastic progress in his playing.  He recently told me that he wants to become AWESOME and the only way to do that is to make sure he is tanking both nights.  Since Lion has been able to tank both Tues & Wed we have been able to allow Arv to come in on an alt and for Rep to not tank both nights.

On farm content we have been able to bring in geared alts and other guildies that haven’t been able to raid with us from the get go.  This has caused some unneeded stress on bosses that are on farm.  Wiping repeatedly to Magmaw and Omnotron when we usually one shot them is NOT fun.  A large part of that is teaching the people the strat if they haven’t seen it, or just not seen it from that role.  It just makes raid nights painful.

Some nights we have no choice but to bring in people who haven’t been farming the content just so we can raid.  With the loss of the guys mentioned above we just have no flexibility.

Anyway!  Back to last night.

Originally we were short a person.  Arv was going to be really late, Lion had a last minute delay and Zug hadn’t signed up.  Luckily Zug could make it (the slacker just didn’t sign up in time) and he got his sister to come in to dps (she is 12 and can’t always stay up late enough to raid with us but is still an awesome dps) because for some reason we thought we were short.  Turns out she would have been replacing Zug but since he was there we didn’t need her and she got to log off.  Lion was still running a bit late so we made Zug tank. ^_^ That’s what he gets for not signing up on time!

We had Arelin (Rep) and Zug tanking.  Slice and Zarm are OP healers and have long since been 2 healing Omnotron.  Sorak came in on his mage, I was on Lyssi.  We had our usual raiders Vysh and Zerl on their mains.  We also had Shirl on her lock and lo and behold we had Zari!  We got to pop his Cata raiding cherry!

Despite some snags (someone hit Magmatron’s shield 3 times >.< and I ran the wrong way from a slime causing me to almost die) we one shot the trons and loot was had.  Zari got a chest piece and Rep got a tanking belt.  I believe she was still using her DPS belt Tel had made for her.

We cleared the trash in front of Magmaw with no issues then moved on to the worm.  We used to 2 tank this but now we are able to 1 tank it.  We decided last night to 2 heal it.  They had tried in the past but the raid damage was just too high and we usually had to play it safe and 3 heal.  Last night we had so much ranged AE/AoE that we felt we could 2 heal.

The first attempt went well up until the chain phase.  Chains went down and Magmaw bent himself backwards OVER the lava.  Everyone was just kind of standing there in shock.  I could target his exposed head but it was showing out of line of sight.  It was the weirdest bug.  By the time he came back down we had already decided to call it a wipe because the lost dps from the head phase killed us.  At this point Lion had logged in and it was decided to bring him in to tank (he needs more raid tanking practice) but that meant we were at 11.  I really hadn’t felt up to raiding so I offered to sit out.

Apparently I am not allowed to do that anymore.  LOL

After I left they wiped 7 more times on Magmaw before they finally got him down.  They 2 shot Maloriak then spent the rest of the night wiping to Chim.  They did finally get Chim down, but at that point it was raid time.  Usually we one shot Omnotron, Magmaw and Chim.  Maloriak tends to give us troubles.  We can typically clear up to Atramedes with over an hour (usually longer) left in raid time. 

Hey it happens when you have people who haven’t seen the fights.  It is the only way for them to get experience.

For a while I had been telling Sorak and Slice that we needed to recruit.  They kept telling me that no we were fine, we had plenty of raiders etc.  Well now they have seen that we just don’t have enough people.  We’ve gotten 3 new people in the guild, but none of them seem to show any interest in raiding.  One is a tank that I recruited through the lower level LFD.  He said that he wanted to tank raids for us, but I think he has been having computer issues.  He hasn’t been online in several days.  The other two don’t even want to run heroics with the guild, not because they don’t like us but because Sorak is scary.

True fact.

So yes, SR is now recruiting.  Ideally we would like a dps with a healer/tank offspec, but if you are pure dps we will not say no.  We would like to get some more casters (preferably a boomkin cause Zarm needs competition for gear) and maybe even a rogue.  We currently only run with one person who can use leather gear.  A mage or another warlock would also be welcome.  When we run with our normal crew I am the only DPS cloth wearer.  Yes technically Slice could use the gear, but he gets all the healer cloth.

Some info – Shadow Rising is on Drak’Tharon Horde.  DT is a PvP server.  There isn’t usually any world PvP unless you are in TB.  Horde VASTLY outnumbers the Alliance on DT.  Drak is a low pop server with a CST time zone.  We raid Tuesday and Wednesday night 7:30 pm – 11 pm CST.  We are looking into doing a 3rd night (possibly Monday night) but that is still up in the air.  We are currently 8/12 and are working on Cho’Gall / Nef.  We haven’t gone to Throne of the Four Winds yet.

We are an adult guild.  This means cussing, sexual innuendos, coarse language and teasing.  We do not tolerate bashing of any kind, except when it comes to goblins and Sorak, those are fair game.  All teasing is in good humor and we all give as good as we take. 

While we are NOT a hardcore raiding guild, we do have several people with hardcore mentalities.  We will not tell you what spec you should play but we will expect you to perform at your best in your choice.  We do not have a “Raider” rank.  Everyone is a Member.  We do have a special Vet status.  For a 500g weekly donation you get your repairs paid for by the guild, you also get enchants and gems paid for by the guild.  We provide flasks/feasts during raids.

We are currently Guild level 21 (the last I checked).  We are a fairly small guild with about 30ish members.  Most people have several alts and can usually be found on them or controlling the auction house with them.  If you have any other questions or want to roll an alt to see how we are in game please feel free to contact me through this post or at our guild website (yeah we don’t use it as much as we should).  In case you are curious here is our armory link.

Even if you aren’t interested in raiding with us you are always welcome to come roll an alt on Drak’Tharon and hang out with us.  I promise not to bite . . .

 . . . hard.