Raiding redemption
This week has been quite the rollercoaster ride. Tuesday was probably our best raid night yet, killing up to Saurfang and then Festergut and Rotface, all in the span of about two and a half hours. And then putting some shots in on Blood Council before calling it at the usual time. We were all pumped to get the farm stuff done in one night and have the next two for some honest-to-goodness progression. Nothing could stop us now.
And then nobody showed up on Wednesday.
Actually. not entirely true. About twenty regular raiders showed up Wed, and we couldn’t scrape together enough fillers to make a full raid. So, we called it after standing around while trying to work everything out. We broke into 10mans instead and farmed badges/killed some bosses/destressed a little.
Last night I was getting worried that the poor attendance monster would rear his ugly head. On top of a few other absences, Demo couldn’t make it due to some madlibesque family entanglement–though, on the bright side, this did spawn a new guild meme of using “wife’s [familial relation]‘s [familial relation]‘s [asian nationality] [random relation]‘s [event]” as a reason for not being able to make raids. I predict great things for that joke.
So I threw together the raid and Cendra got the dkp in order and we all headed in. The raid was composed of 22 regulars and 3 fillers, and generally wasted bad looking. Not our Tuesday night prime, but you can’t win them all.
We immediately head for the Blood Wing and start going through the trash, wherein I successfully demonstrated my model of Sap Tanking (ie. tanking both the Tacticians while being stunlocked for the duration of the pull).
On the Council itself I gave a (not so) brief rundown of the fight and how it goes for the people who didn’t see it last week or Tuesday. I was tanking Valanar on the stage, Purraj the Druid had Taldaram over to the right, and Slyke the Shadow Priest would ranged tank Keleseth.
Our first pull went, as you’d expect, chaotically. Keleseth was the second Prince and he quickly dispatched poor Slyke who didn’t have enough dark nuclei. One of the raiders, who despite being a nice guy has a major tendency to insist on raid changes–loudly–in vent, suggested vociferously that Slyke couldn’t cut it and we needed a warrior tank on Keleseth. Considering that was the first try of the night, I wasn’t prepared to shift strategy, so that avenue of discussion was cut off and we buckled down to work on the strategy at hand.
The second pull went a lot more smoothly and when it came Slyke’s turn to tank and empowered Prince he did a fantastic job and easily survived his phase. Unfortunately the melee had to muddle it up by getting blown up by an empowered shock vortex.
Third try we had an Empowered Conjured Flame take out a huge chunk of range that was too close together. On that attempt though we got them to ~60%. Progress was obviously being made. I played the optimist for the crowd, told everyone they were doing fantastic (which they were), and re-emphasized positioning to minimize Conjured Flame damage.
Fourth try we had another mishap with the Empowered Shock Vortex, but still got them down to 37%. We were definitely getting there!
Fifth try everything seemed to click. Melee switched fast, hunters were on the ball (literally) getting pets onto the Kinetic Bombs. No one died to ESV, no one died to ECF, and when we were on Valanar with 5% of his health to go I suddenly realized we were about to score the kill. At about 1% the Invocation of Blood jumped to Taldaram though, and Purraj ended up finishing him off, I think.
Anyway, we got the kill and an achievement to boot!
After the Council we went to work on Putricide a bit since we were somewhat familiar with that fight (as opposed to going in blind on the Queen). Our best attempt was something like 65% out of the six attempts we did, so not awesome, but we’ll get there.
I just need people to actually show up, dammit.
Armory Feed
Raid attendance problems are hard even for 10 man guilds. My guild had issues around the holidays starting at Thanksgiving. We went 3 weeks without hitting ToGC hard before ICC was released. We are a strict 10 man so recruiting is a bit tougher.
Work schedules also changed further complicating things for us. We raid 2 nights a week, tues/wed from 9-12 server and our Rogue can’t get online until about 10 server. Thankfully we were able to recruit a full time raiding paladin, and our feral druid who is back in school has been rotating in. She raids with us the first half of the raid then the rogue steps in for the second half. So far since Christmas we have made every raid, and solid progress in our short raiding window.
I would hate to think of the logistics of herding 25 people into a raid zone. So far the only drawback to the strict 10 man is the lack of frost badges. It has taken me longer to farm certain pieces.
Tijeras’s last blog ..Protadin: wait for clouds. He hit 30% too fast one attempt. /facepalm
This post sounds almost like it was written by someone in MY guild. We are in the same boat. Grats on the kill and the achieve!
@hazmacewillraid
29 January 2010 at 4:12 pm #
Grats on the kill!
When we did Princes, I had no idea what was going on because I’ve yet to troll Tankspot for strats, so after 2 attempts, our successful third seemed like perfect chaos. The hunters were shouting things out in vent in between vortex calls and target switching. All in all, a fight I’d love to do again.
Off topic – The first image you posted, is that a photoshop? o.O
@Rhidach
29 January 2010 at 4:28 pm #
@Lanaka: No, but it looks pretty cool eh?
Yeah, it does, I’m just asking because I’ve yet to kill Putricide on either 10 or 25, and I wasn’t aware Archmage Vargoth’s image appears after killing him…that is the case, yes?
No someone in the raid still has his staff from his BC quest in Netherstorm and summons him once in a while.
Ohhhhhhhhhh…lol. I completely forgot about that staff. I was starting to get confused as to why/how he’d appear there after clearing the wing. Thanks!