Breaking in a new off-tank, &c.

This weekend Anafielle, of Twitter and Tankadin Errant, joined our happy ES family. Tonight’s her first raid with us and I’ve been sitting on a rock, all Rodin-like, think-think-thinking of ways to properly welcome her to our band of misfits.

Now, if I were some kind of jerk tank I’d relegate her all the annoying odd jobs. Like Rotface kiting, maintanking Putricide, holding Valanar, absorbing the Blood Mirror damage on BQL, playing D on Gunship, etc. Problem is, I like those jobs, so that won’t work. We’ve already had our first debate over who gets to tank Festergut first.

Truth be told, I’m really looking forward to this. The two guys that I’ve been forcing to tank our raids since Demogar went on hiatus have been doing a great job, but they were always dps at heart. It’ll be fun to have someone to talk shop with again.

More recruitment

I can feel the Summer Slump’s hot breath on the back of my neck. His sweaty hand clamped firmly on my shoulder. Whispering sweet nothings of doom and raids with only 23 members. I’ve been actively attempting to recruit some more dps to add to the much-needed buffer so even as we shed a raider every two weeks or so, there’s someone ready to step up and get the party going.

The addition of Anafielle and her two healer friends will be key, since it frees up those dps guys so both can stick to dps every raid, rather than one being forced to tank. And the two healers were a load off my mind as to how to deal with one healer burning out and the other going away for a few weeks for her wedding/honeymoon. So that’s one crisis averted, now to add to the raid core.

Anyway, my guild is recruiting dps. If you read this blog and are on the Hoof already, or wouldn’t mind a potential server transfer, check out our recruitment post and maybe app on our guild site if you’re so inclined.

Keeping us rolling

I think right now we’re in a pretty good place in terms of interest from the raid core. We’re knocking on Arthas’ door, so that’s keeping everyone engaged, and we have some ancillary guild goals like Nordic’s Shadowmourne. Once we unlock heroic modes we’ll have that to keep people coming back every week as well. I’m hoping we accomplish that sooner rather than later so we can start rolling in 277 gear.

In the meantime, to add some other activities for some non-ICC fun, I have a list of off-night stuff to drop on the calendar. For example, I think I’m going to push for a white item run of Kara where everyone loads up on common-quality gear then we raid in that, equipping any epics we win along the way. I think it would be fun in the sense there’d be very little danger thanks lvl 80 resists, while not being a complete steamroll if done in current endgame gear.

Things are pretty “steady as she goes” right now. I can live with this.