So I’m reading up on the Razorscale fight in Ulduar.
And I’m like: “Crap, crap, crap, I should have read about this sooner. I don’t know who to assign to what and … and.. wait… wait just a second here. I don’t have to assign anyone to anything. I’m not an officer. I’m not a guild master. I’m not a raid leader.”
Relief actually flooded my body. I get to stand there and be told who to heal. I haven’t done that in new content since the first few bosses in Karazhan, in March or April of 2007.
And then, I realized, with a bit of sadness, that I won’t be leading the charge through new content. I was usually a raid leader who’d done research on upcoming bosses. I’d sat there for hours, pouring over our roster and figuring out positions and jobs for Vashj. I told the healers where to go to begin for Karathress and who to switch off to once their tank was done tanking. I organized Bloodboil and eliminated cross-healing from that fight pretty much on my own, especially when I realized at least one of my officers was cross-healing.
I won’t need to worry about healers spreading out, the way I did for Azgalor and Anetheron. I won’t need to pick a warlock tank, if such a thing is necessary. I won’t need to do any number of a dozen things within a raid that I’ve always done when faced with new content. I haven’t had to do anything behind the scenes, either. I haven’t worried about policies or DKP resets or anything like that. The only thing I’ve had to say about the legendary mace drop is that I’m likely going to be interested in it, and that ultimately, so long as it betters the guild, it’s fine if I don’t get it.
It’s kind of sad, to be honest. I’m going to miss organizing people the way I did in T4, T5 and T6 content. I’m going to miss being the one to sit there and analyze the mistakes we made as leaders and the mistakes raiders made as cogs in the greater machine.
So Ulduar starts tonight. New content starts tonight. The Wrath equivalent of SSC/TK starts tonight. And while I’m totally ready for something new, I’m not sure I’m ready to not be someone to lead people through this. Which is funny, because I’m not ready to lead anyone through Ulduar yet.
What’s also new is that my current guild has the possibility of getting server-first kills. We’ve done Flame Leviathan on 10-man on the PTR. We one-shot him, once the PTR was stable. This is entirely new and foreign to me. My first guild started raiding ZG two months before Naxxramas came out. Apotheosis started raiding Karazhan well after SSC and TK had received nerfs. We’d only been raiding as a guild for 19 days before they removed attunement to SSC and TK.
I’ve ALWAYS been way behind in the progression game. We usually made up for it with some burst progression at the end, but we were almost always months behind top guilds. We were even a month behind in Wrath content.
Tonight, if the servers ever come up… I might be part of a server-first kill.
I kinda like that possibility. But I’m still kind of sad that I’m not leading the charge. I’m sure I’ll feel less sad about that and happier about being a cog in the machine after our first 15 Ulduar wipes.