Another abortive night in the ol’ citadel

I love my guild, let’s just preface everything with that. However it gets infuriating how we can swing from being a highly honed raiding machine to a bumbling Keystone Kops-esque circus depending on the phase of the moon that night.

Two weeks ago we full cleared Naxx25, and last night we stepping into the dread citadel for the last time this raid period with Thaddius, Gothik, 4HM, Saph, and KT still up. It’s pretty embarassing.

We started the night with a guild meeting that changed some important stuff. We modified the loot system (justifiably in my opinion) so that you get that one main spec win per night, but if everyone declines to roll on something main spec, it goes to a minor main spec period where it doesn’t count against your “class A” roll to win the item, assuming the raid leader determines you are the most worthy recipient of the loot and you get it. If no one can take the item in that round, then it goes to a free-for-all offspec roll.

Much better, imo, although I’ll probably be at the mercy of the main tank if I get anything in that second round of not.

The other huge change is we’re shifting from a weekday raid schedule to a weekend one. While our best attendance seems to be Tues-Thurs, this will be much better I suspect, because we won’t run into situations like last night where we start raiding at 9 server time and wrap up at around 11 server time because people have work the next morning.

Starting raids at 6:30 server time on Saturdays will give us a lot more breathing room. Of course I now need to a do a shuffle with my social schedule and find a good excuse why I’m in every Saturday night… but such is the price of purples.

Last night was pretty disastrous, and like I said, pretty illustrative of why weekend raiding will benefit the guild. Post-meeting we all sauntered into Naxx at around 8:45-9 server time and it was decided that we would head to the military wing.

We only had Thaddius left to down in the construct wing, so personally I’m not entirely sure that passing up a good hour or so of attempts on a boss with definite T7 for some half-hearted runs into a wing that would require at least two hours to see a set token.

We burnt through the trash while making our way to Razuvious. While doing so I’m sure I was starting to annoy the other tanks since my usual MO with a large pack of undead is to shield toss, run in, holy wrath, and then drop a consecrate. Typically by the time I do all that I’ve got a threat lead on every mob, and the other tanks (a warrior and druid) then have to taunt off me to grab a mob. It’s a jerk move I need to stop, but I mean, come on. That’s what Paladins do best.

In any case, we got through the trash and made our way to Razuvious. My usual role in these fights is to grab the back two understudies, or one of them, and just hold it until it’s needed for a mind control.

Easily done, just hand of reckoning during the pull, shield slam, drag aside. Then seal light, auto attack and keep holy shield up. By the time they need my mob it should still be over 90% health. Always drives me crazy to see other tanks beating away on their understudy considering how important it is to keep those mobs alive.

We kept running into issues where second priest who was trading MCs with the first was being killed. Then an understudy would bolt for the healer with the highest ambient threat and suddenly the healers would start going down like flies.

It took us five attempts to finally get the pull clean and not lose a priest. In the last attempt I had to constantly keep an eye on all the understudies just out of general paranoia that they didn’t have enough threat on them to keep them from dashing to the nearest healer once dropped from MC.

Raz finally down we made our way to Gothik. By now it was around 9:45 server time, and usually 10 is when the quality of the raid noticably tends to drop due to general tiredness. It being a Monday did not help, I’m sure.

Nonetheless, the raid split up for each side and we did one brutal attempt characterized by how overwhelmed the undead side because. We were knocked out pretty fast because live side refused to slow down despite our repeated pleas in vent. So we wiped. On Gothik.

Attempt number two, and it was made clear this would be the last one. Split up again, undead side got an extra dps to help get adds down. We lasted longer this time, but we quickly got overwhelmed again.

The adds just came too fast and became impossible to pick up before they beelined for the healers. Heals went down, everyone else slowly followed. It was funny though watching all the spectrals and death knights line up against the gate, and then as the door opened, they all dashed into the live side and tore the other half of the raid to pieces.

Well, not ha-ha funny, more like eat-it-jerks funny.

But I love my guild.