Well, last night’s third ever Ulduar raid was an exemplar of how our guild can take something that’s working great, and make it go awry.

After one-shotting Loot Leviathan twice, the last thing you’d expect is for us to wipe two or three times, and the one where we won was a just-barely affair. But there you have it. Typical of how we do things sometimes. Similar to the Naxx before last where we stalled on Grobbulus – almost the same crowd put him down like a bad habit the next week. When we have off nights, we have off nights.

People were late. People were dropping offline. People had places to be with the kids, were distracted, or otherwise … meh. One guy had a shooting on his street AND his cousin die within the same hour, and the hunter’s cable modem had to be reset by his ISP. We spent longer looting Leviathan than we did on the whole gauntlet.

XT and Metalbird were oneshot. I got a nice bracer off of Razordrake, too.

Did we attempt Ignis? What,  are we stupid? I swear, if the boss had suggested that, I would have possibly run for the hills. Fortunately for my sanity, we had to call it early so that people could take the kids out trick or treating.

This was very frustrating from a healing perspective. Metaldrake was almost a wipe since everyone thought that that blue crap was a great place to stand, and “healing through it” was becoming less of an option by the second as my mana bar headed for the basement. Early on I had to make a choice between a retpalli that knew better and the MT. I finally had to blurt out on Vent, DON’T STAND IN BLUE STUFF, GUYS!  I probably should have added YOU KNOW BETTER but I didn’t.

I want to go stand at the far end of the circle, where the guides show, but I’m not convinced everyone’s playing by that same game plan, so I’m worried that I’ll cause a wipe if I do.

Maybe I’ll just say screw it and do it anyway, and then cajole people into the right places retroactively. Progression means sometimes you wipe.  And if this bunch can’t be arsed to watch a video, maybe some pain will convince them.

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I finished the evening pleasantly enough, well, the whole crowd did, really, as we made our final attempts at the Big Burning Horsie. It did not show, but the Helm of Even More Awesome Laughter did drop, and our Gnome DK received it. It was the only thing she was looking for.

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Ever read the story of the Headless Horseman? It’s pretty sad. A knight of the Silver hand, he went mad when he accidentally slaughtered his own family.

He turned against the Scarlet Monastary and was beheaded. But he was reanimated by demonic magic (thus the fel fire), and once a year he is brought back to life to suffer for his attack on the Crusade. During that time, he sees us as walking dead, and believes himself alive.

We returned to Ulduar this weekend and I’m happy to say that XT, Razorscale, Kologarn, and Loot Leviathan all dropped respectfully before us, one shots all.  I seem to be having a problem staying vertical, though.

It also seemed – at least to me – that we didn’t bring our ‘A’ game. There were more than enough people to fill it out, but I didn’t feel the energy. Maybe it was just me.

Ignis did not light my fire

The MT had a thing he wanted to try, so we gave it a shot. I’m not entirely sure if everyone grokked it or not, considering that nobody ever started out where he said to. And as usual our DPS (which was rip-roarin’) had a tenancy to start as soon as he made contact. I finally suggested that he call out when he was settled, and THEN they attack. We promptly had two DPS start early anyway.

One officer offered to drop out to make room for a better DPS. We were pretty sure, however, that DPS was not the issue. As with last week, getting the adds together and killing them is the big thing, and we’re failing on execution.

The Iron Council

Eventually the boss decided it was time for a change of pace, and we went to test the waters with the Iron Council. Initially we failed to manage too well because we were using a 25-man strategy; once we had the chance to realize that we started making headway; phase 1; phase 2 (revenge of the phase); eventually we were left with one guy to take down, the dwarf caster. We had a bit of a deadline which we intended to meet, but we had that ‘five percent go fever’ going, in which nobody wanted to leave it at 5 percent, or 4, or 3. So we made two more attempts…

Iron Council is Down!

Now about that mana thing …

This is a LONG fight. There is easily time for two shadow beast evocations in there, and that’s without a shadow priest talent tree. I had pots. A druid innervated me. I had elixirs. And still, mana – not so much.

I have been doing homework. I’m starting to see that I need to change my habits.  One of the first things, probably, is to get my HoT off of a hotbar.  My mechanic is skewed towards direct heals and bubbles. I need to learn now to drive that better.

Until then … :: sigh :: … MP5 is back on the table as a major player in my gearing decisions.

Saturday was our first ever attempt on Ulduar. It went far more successfully than I would have predicted. We had our ‘A’ team and ‘A’ game – other than the seeming inability to be on time, including myself.

We one-shotted Flame Leviathan and XT-002, and two-shot Razorscale and Kologarn. We were unable to down Ignis, probably because of add management – hard to tell in all the confusion.

Overall it was a fairly pleasant experience considering that drama occurred right before and even during. Boy, we sure can get it.  We don’t have that many people logging it at any time, how can we generate that much drama so constantly?

Well, I’m not sure where this puts us now for raiding. We’re running out of nights to raid everything. We still need to work out Sarth with drakes up, and EoE and VoA are taunting us, and some people have actual lives to attend to as well.  I feel if we keep pushing for naxx raids that we’ll lose the more ambitious toons that want to focus on Ulduar now that we have made our first steps.

I guess I can see that. Nobody raids Molten Core anymore, except for lolz.  Still, those getting geared up are going to have to resort to badge runs and scrounge what they can get, looks like.  The good news is that as small as this guild is, that won’t be many people.