Blergh

So remember a few months ago when I outlined my philosophy of utter pessimism? Yes, well, we’ve been in one of those upward ascents for a month now, but I’m getting the impression we’re starting to go down the spiraling ramp of the dramacoaster. Blergh indeed.

Despite all this, last night was a great night raid-wise, second only to last week’s roflstomping of ToC, Ony, and VOA. While all in all I’m really proud of how everyone has mastered ToC25, I’m perturbed at how awful people were being on time for the raid. Invites went out at 7 server, Ony was declared the first destination, and everyone was told to start hoofing it in case there was pvp. And sure enough there was, an Alliance squad was camping out on the hill just behind the stone and jumping anyone that went to summon.

Slowly the minutes ticked by and by 7:30 we still had about 5 people scattered about the world. It takes all of five or eight minutes to hearth, port to TB, and fly to Mudsprocket. What the hell takes 30 minutes? Lazy bastards.

When we get to Onyxia we wiped the first time because a couple of people bit it on Deep Breaths (lol) or stood in front of the big adds (lolol) or got cleaved by Onyxia (lololol). I think next time we go there I’m going to have to pass around Amber’s guide to Onyxia. It basically says all that needs to be said about this encounter.

Second attempt we down the old lady. Gear went out and everyone headed over to ToC. By now it was 8 server time, two hours on the clock remaining.

We did two strategies differently from previous weeks. One was on the worms we just burnt down Acidmaw and let Dreadscale soft enrage. I personally found that having the poisons removed early was a huge dps boost, although some perpetually aggrieved healers (ahem) might disagree. This new strat allowed us to kill the beasts faster than we have yet. I’m wondering how well it will translate into heroic 25man…

Other new strategy is a carry-over from the heroic 10man. On Twins we tanked both in the center and let splash damage hit both. We didn’t get the Salt and Pepper achievement (mostly cause some dopey folks got gibbed by orbs) but we did an impressively fast kill. Most of the Twin Pacts were interrupted by the time they hit halfway through their cast bar, and that was without the opposite attuned people changing colors.

All in all, we one-shot the whole place, so well done ES. Now I just wish people could be on time. /grumble

Tonight’s our first foray into Grand Trial of the Crusader (25). I’m cautiously optimistic about how we’ll do, but we’ll see.