While there isn’t as much drama as last week, the March 27rd raid week still had fun tidbits I’d like to share with you.
First off, we have a new recruiting class. It felt like just yesterday that we got the new ex-EG applicants, but now our group of recruits consisting of Illidius, Xdoctor, Eviljoe and Solys are here to try to join our ranks. One of the things we recommend our recruits try to do is hang out with guildies in mumble or other games. This is important because it lets us see how the recruits would work with our members. Is there chemistry? It’s important to find good players for progression, but an amicable player who clicks with the team is huge since the tough part of progression is the 500 head-slamming-into-wall wipes we spend with each other. That said, here’s a short clip of us talking to Solys:
Per usual, we started off our raid week in Baradin Hold so that we can score some tier pieces for our alts that we intend to use in MoP. There’s a rule that Graf tends to adhere to when it comes to our raids: no friends or family are allowed to join even if there are open slots. It’s a good rule because if the officers let one girlfriend come then they’ll have to let all of the girlfriends come along too. Things will eventually get messy and annoying to deal with so it’s just better not to allow anyone outside of the members into raid. This week however, Nykez was able to sneak hig girlfriend into the raid and this is what happened:
Anyways back to what happened in the raid. If you haven’t heard yet, Blizzard upped the zone-wide buff to 15%. While I understand why Blizzard is nerfing current content so that a greater range of its player base can get access to it, for us raiders it really cheapens our efforts and experience. Give us something to remember a tier of raid content by like server first titles. Bring them back! As of right now, the thing that most hardcore raiders will remember this tier for are the countless LFR runs we had to do in order to compete in progression. I’m sorry; I digress. This week instead of enjoying an additional 5% to the zone-wide buff, we decided to turn off the buff and put our new recruit class through the paces.
Adam and Rabz are the leads for our healer core, and whenever we pick up a healer recruit, they usually explain what we expect of our healers and how we divvy up assignments for every boss. Our usual division of labor is that the paladins keep up the tanks and the shamans/druids raid heal, which leaves the priests to swing and do as they please. These are not rigid assignments, but more of a set of guidelines. The golden rule, of course, is to not let anyone die, but we do our jobs more effectively if it’s clear who should be focusing where. One of the running jokes in our guild is how our new paladins tend to let our tanks die. Here’s a combo sound clip from the main and alt raids:
There’s about a 10 second pause between the two, but they are relevant to each other. In the second half, that is Tetsuro, our off tank, who says “I’m dead” and applicant Eviljoe was the paladin on his side.
Clueless applicant paladin aside, our main raid one shot everything with ease except for Madness without the 15% zone-widebuff.. We wiped on Madness because we tried to heal it with 1 healer who had not done it on heroic before and with only 1 shaman. My dream of being able to play enhancement on Madness with double heroic Madness axe was short lived. The axes are exceptionally good for that fight because the proc is able to proc spellweaving, a mechanic of the encounter where your attacks are able to proc an aoe ability. Speaking of role reversals, here’s a quick clip of what we were discussing in order to deal with how boring raiding is right now on our 13th week of farming DS:
Unless you’re totally clueless of the world around you, April Fools’ Day came and went and in vodka, you can expect pranks to happen. The day before April 1st, a lot of the guild was pleased to see this post by Rabz:
Now remember there will be no Blizzcon this year, and we have been talking about an East Coast Bash to replace it. Also, rabz edited in that meme towards the end of April 1st after the post drummed up a lot of excitement. Most of us only found out AFTER Adam yelled April Fools on mumble. It’s okay though, Adam’s mother got him good by calling his cellphone to tell him that she accidentally crashed his baby, a sports car, and needed to be picked up from the autoshop. As he was leaving the house, he found her in the kitchen in a fit of laughter. Like mother, like son.
The officers’ April Fools East Coast Bash wasn’t the only one that got me good. Blossomz, the paladin healer for our guild RBG team, sent me this:
At first I freaked out a little bit since we don’t have any other healers for the RBG team, but then realized what day it was. WELL PLAYED GRIGOR. I should’ve known about you and your schemes:
