Ups and downs.

I’ve (re)discovered that the life of a guild leader (be it GM, officer, class lead, what-have-you) is full of ups and downs.

Supremus down last Monday. I didn’t even get into the raid, because I had to go to my brother’s college graduation. So I got home and told the officers I was on standby… and they’re like “uh. Supremus down.”

Which, you know, is great. And I’m proud of them and I’m glad they could do it without me. I was called in after a pally had to go so there we went, clearing to Akama (we accidentally poked our noses into Gorefiend’s room first, oops) and gave it Shade of Akama a few tries before ultimately calling it. Good night, though. Progress!

Tuesday, it was back to Hyjal for some beating up of bosses, only we had a lot of trouble on Anetheron, which left me wanting to throttle most of the DPS, but eventually he went down and we went up and wiped on Kaz’rogal due to a bad initial pull on him. Meh, it was late, we called it.

Thursday… we cancelled. Because we had something like 10 cancellations and some “I may not be able to make it” type signups.

Then this Sunday was my mother’s birthday, so when I got home, they had just killed Azgalor. Again, a first kill without me there! I’m beginning to feel superfluous. ;)

Monday saw two tailors and a blacksmith hit honored with the Ashtongue Deathsworn as we killed Naj’entus and one-shotted Supremus and tried Shade of Akama a couple more times.

Don’t get me started on how we’re failing at “the chess event of Black Temple”. It’s the easy fights we have problems with. Lurker? Bitch and a half to learn. Vashj? Learned it quickly, took a while to execute, but ultimately, we got better just about every time we tried. All of Hyjal? Easy mode, thus far. (I have no illusions about Archimonde…) But BT is proving challenging for us. Naj’entus – people are killing others by not waiting for the heals to finish. Supremus – people are standing in fire. Shade of Akama – things are getting loose and eating mages and healers.

Practice makes perfect, I suppose, but it also makes for one hell of a rollercoaster ride.

In other news, Season 4 comes out today. I don’t much care for my own toons, except that I put up 37 gems last night and have a ton of enchanting mats, so I might make a fair amount of cash over the next day or two.

Wow.

We did it. We actually did it. We downed Vashj and cleared SSC on Monday, June 2nd, 2008.

http://files.filefront.com/apotheosis+vs+vashjavi/;10483306;/fileinfo.html

I HIGHLY recommend you download the full movie to your HD and watch it full-screen.

Notable moments:

4:40ish – Dayden (whose POV this is from) takes a second from tanking a Naga and hammer of wraths the leaked elemental.

East side had the first tainted, but I believe all three others were on the west. Go Toga and Mass and Kam!

7:00 – Phase 3 – enrage in 4 minutes. You’ll note the length of the video is 11:12. Hehe.

The pallies do a good job of keeping Blessing of Freedom up on the tanks, too!

8:50ish – You can start seeing sporebats, oh dear.

9:05ish – Warthon starts getting beat on and eventually goes down. In the span of three seconds: static charge from a nearby raid member, a swing, a shock blast… with very few heals because we were all chasing them around.

He gets a battle rez about 10 seconds after he dies… and the druid who rezzed him had static charge. 3 hits of that, bam, dead Warthon.

10:40ish – 15865 heal from Madrana. That’s me. Lay on Hands. It crit. And, according to the logs, only overhealed for 7%. Ahahaha! This is my favourite moment and makes up for me dying in the green goo shortly thereafter. Like, 12 seconds after. Popped my SS, jumped out of the goo… and died in the goo again.

Vashj down.

Over 70 wipes, over 35 different raiders, way too many hours to count…

But Vashj down. SSC cleared. WOOT.

For anyone curious as to our raid makeup:

Druids: 1 (Resto)

Hunters: 3 (2 BM, 1 MM)

Mages: 2 (2 Arc/Frost)

Paladins: 4 (3 Holy, 1 Prot)

Priests: 4 (1 Imp DS, 1 CoH, 2 Shadow.)

Rogues: 2 (2 Combat/Swords)

Shaman: 5 (! 2 Enh, 1 Ele, 2 Resto)

Warriors: 2 (1 prot, 1 fury)

Warlocks: 2 (2 0/21/40, Destro/Demo)

How we laid it out for Phase 2:

West side: 1 BM Hunter, 1 paladin healing. 1 warlock going over to help with spawns whenever a tainted spawned.

East side: 1 BM Hunter, 1 MM Hunter, 1 paladin healing.

North side: 1 Enh shammy (w/ poison cleansing totem down), 1 priest (Imp DS) healing.

South side: 1 fury warrior, 1 paladin healing.

NW Generator: Resto druid

NE Generator: Resto shammy

SW Generator: Resto shammy

SE Generator: CoH Priest

Center: 2 Tanks (1 warrior, 1 pally), 2 rogues, 1 enh shammy

Striders: 1 ele shammy (kiting), 2 mages, 2 warlocks (one peeling off for west if needed), 2 shadow priests (for blackout, mindflay)

Here’s the anonymous report from WWS:

http://wowwebstats.com/pk445h5rn1uv1?s=7673-8333