Category: guild

Legendary Fallout

Kurn / / apotheosis, guild, patch 4.2, ramblings

Well, the nightmares I’ve had about a chain reaction of /gquits upon the announcement of who is getting the legendary staff did not actually materialize, which is a bonus.

Having said that, I’m sure some people are unhappy.

Awarding a legendary is, in my opinion, often a lose-lose situation. There are always people who will be disappointed, always people who will feel slighted. I’m still annoyed that I didn’t get Val’anyr in Ulduar. I was very new to the guild, yes, but when I look at who ended up getting the mace, it still makes me want to cry and/or smash things.

The process they went through to determine Val’anyr in that particular guild was, well, shrouded in secrecy and subject to a lot of drama because quite a few people left the guild before the announcement had been made, for some reason. (I was new, I was keeping my mouth shut so I didn’t ask why, but the guild lost at least 2 healers who would have been awarded the mace before the priest who got it.)

Obviously, I felt I deserved the mace, but I knew I hadn’t been there long enough to show them that I was actually more deserving of the mace than the priest who got it. Essentially, that was the difference. The priest who got it had been there for, well, I believe it’s years.

That didn’t sit right with me. I mean, don’t get me wrong — I value loyalty, myself, but when the person you’re giving the legendary to is clearly someone who does NOT understand their class… well, you’re doing yourself and your guild a disservice. The priest in question may have been an officer (strictly in an advisory position, not a role lead) but he didn’t have Spirit of Redemption back when it was GOOD and gave you 5% extra spirit. What priest wouldn’t want 5% extra spirit back in Wrath of the Lich King when it added to your regen AND to your spellpower? I mean, to me, from my perspective, the recipient of Val’anyr was in no way worthy of the mace.

What I did in setting up the legendary distribution for Apotheosis was open a thread for people to express their interest. We had 8 casters who did so. 3 mages, 3 warlocks, 1 shadow priest and 1 elemental shaman.

After several days, I closed the thread, so everyone had plenty of time to throw their name in the hat, so to speak. I was sure to inform all new casters joining the guild (a shadow priest, a moonkin) that they wouldn’t be considered for the legendary at this time as the candidates had already been decided upon. I felt it was important to let them know that before they joined. (The number of people I saw apply to guilds hoping to get Val’anyr crafted/finished was hilarious.)

We were fairly transparent in the way we did things. As I said yesterday, the officers on the selection team ranked all 8 of the casters.

We ended up with a tie. Two of our mages ended up with 25 points apiece, followed by a shadow priest, followed by an elemental shaman.

So while instance servers were borked last night, we had the mages roll off.

Now, being a sociologist, a simple /roll would not, to me, be sufficient in awarding the staff. You can’t just have it be one roll. So the selection team had okayed a series of 5 rolls each. We’d take the high roll for each and throw it out, take the low roll for each and throw it out and then add the three numbers that remained, then divided that number by 3 to get the average (mean) and that would be “the number”. The highest number would win.

Here’s what happened, because this alone is freaking legendary.

Can you believe that? They both rolled a 60, Mabriam rolled a 74, Majik rolled a 73 and they both rolled an 81 at the same time. My stats background wants more rolls between these two guys, to be honest…

I feel as though we handled the tie well and I don’t think either Majik or Mabriam are upset with the results of the roll-off. That was as fair as it could be and it was honestly down to the wire. The difference in their final numbers was 0.67.

Of course, given our expectations of crafting at least one staff, probably two, the reactions of Majik and Mabriam are not the ones to worry about.

It’s everyone else, ranked #3 to #8, plus the guild as a whole.

One of the issues I am anticipating fielding is why one of our top performers is not in the top two. Night in and night out, our shadow priest is pretty much right up there on the meters.

If it were based strictly on damage output, the shadow priest in question would have been the #1 selection for the entire selection team. In fact, if it was based on pure damage, there wouldn’t have been a need for a selection team at all. As it was, the shadow priest was in everyone’s top four, but even if he had been in everyone’s top three, he still wouldn’t have been in the top two, based on the points per ranking.

I can’t tell you why people ranked the candidates the way they were. I’m not those people. Nor am I going to discuss my own choices or my personal reasons for my choices, because I feel there would be a conflict of interest in sharing that. There’s a reason we were neatly sequestered away and discussed the legendary and the candidates privately. In part, it was to prevent hurt feelings among the candidates who were ranked lower and in part, it was to be able to discuss the pros and cons of each candidate honestly and bluntly. But there was no collusion or anything of the sort. We had our discussions, then I had the selection team send me, via PM, their ranked selections. I’d made my list before looking at any of theirs and then posted everyone’s selections to the private section of the forums for the selection team to see that I wasn’t cooking the books or anything. In doing so, I was transparent to the officers and they could hold me accountable by saying “Kurn, that’s not my selection!” if I’d messed with anything. But obviously, I didn’t.

What I will say is that the legendary selection process was based on performance, attendance, participation and attitude. I’ll say it wasn’t an easy decision (although anything was easier than actually coming up with a legendary selection process!) and I struggled with my own choices. As an officer, I routinely ignore friendships and personal relationships with people in the guild when looking at performance and the like in a raid setting. I feel as though I evaluated each candidate appropriately and I feel that I have an explanation for each of my personal rankings that is based on facts, logic and evidence. I would hope that the other officers on the selection team can back up their decisions as well. I believe they can.

It’s not enough to say “hey, casters, you guys are awesome anyway!” in the wake of an announcement like this, though. No matter what, no matter how defensible the decisions are, there will always be hurt feelings because a legendary is viewed as a status symbol, as recognition for going above and beyond.

So it’s only today, more than two years after the announcement came down from my then-guild that a priest would be the first recipient of Val’anyr and that I would be the second, that I really, truly understand that there’s no winning when it comes to handing out a legendary. I feel that we maximized transparency in the process, that we were as open and honest as possible with people at every step of the way and ultimately, I’m satisfied with the decision that was made from an empirical point of view.

As a guild master, I think that I have to look at the process and be satisfied with what we did. As a person, I’m happy that Majik got it, obviously, but I think that I put in checks to prevent my own bias from having too much of an effect, such as having other people making the decision with me. I was one of four voices. And then, most notably, there was the roll-off, which acted as a final check to protect anyone if they came up against Majik at the end. Clearly, the selection team as a whole was comfortable in both of those mages receiving the legendary and the roll just determined the order. The roll was clean, unbiased, and gave Mabriam a chance to get the first one.

We could have just given it to someone without all this hullaballoo. We could have just had the 8 interested people /roll a single roll. We could have just done “eeny-meeny-miney-moe”. But we didn’t. We invested a significant amount of time, effort and discussion into the process and I think that’s the best we could do.

In a way, I’m not thrilled that Majik won out, because no matter how much effort was put into the process, it still LOOKS like we just favoured him over everyone else, when that’s really not the case. But I can’t control what people think. I can’t control what people do. I can only do what I feel is best for the guild at any given time.

Matticus said this, the other night, on Twitter:

And no, I’m not getting myself worked up over a game. No sir. I’m worked up over people and situations, that is all.

How right he is. This isn’t about the game. The crux of this game, for me, is raiding. Raiding is allllll about people and situations.

With any luck, we’ll get through without any overt drama from the legendary announcement, but I’ll tell you right now that just because my nightmare of a chain of /gquits didn’t happen at the time of the announcement doesn’t mean that I’m not still sitting on the edge of my chair thinking that it might.

So much to say, so little time to write it all down.

Kurn / / apotheosis, guild, healing, raiding, ramblings

As I write this, at 8am on Tuesday, June 21st, 2011, I have 18 drafts in my blog draft section.

Seriously.

I always start to write stuff down and then get interrupted or fall asleep (this has happened three times, no joke!) or something.

I’d like to get to those blog posts at some point, but before that, there’s other stuff to discuss, including a 4.2 loot list. (I hate loot lists, but I know they’re very popular.)

I also want to talk about the recent blue post about holy paladin healing.

But right now, I want to talk about something completely unrelated to any of that.

I want to talk about the legendary caster weapon, Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest.

Ultimately, hammering out HOW to select any recipients of the staff was more difficult than actually selecting the person.

And yes, that does mean that we have a very good idea as to the first two recipients, as well as a potential third and fourth. (Guildies, you’ll find out after the raid tonight.)

We did not do the big, long, drawn-out process that I had suggested weeks ago. We used a trimmed-down version of it where four officers were put on the “selection team” and we ranked all 8 candidates from 1-8, where 1 was your first choice and 8 was your last choice.

A first-place candidate got 7 points, a second-place got 6, a third-place got 5, all the way down to 8, which got 0.

So four officers shared their thoughts and ideas in a separate area of the forums, neatly sequestered away, then the other three sent me their ranked list in a private message, which I then ignored until everyone’s PM was in AND I’d made my own selections.

Then I tallied up everyone’s results and posted them to the selection team along with the original selections, so they could see I wasn’t fixing the numbers.

It wasn’t a bad process at all. We looked at candidates based on performance (because a legendary will enhance what’s already there), attendance (gotta BE there in order to build it!), participation (teamwork and such!) and attitude (don’t be a douchecanoe!).

Honestly, it only took a few days of deliberations and such and we’re just about ready to make our announcement as to the top choices.

So that’s a huge responsibility taken care of. I call not it on the next legendary selection team. :P

While that’s been going on, I’ve still been doing a near-weekly podcast! Last week, Majik and I talked to Beruthiel of Falling Leaves and Wings during Episode 23 of Blessing of Frost and this week, we talked to Fog again with regards to the Midsummer Fire Festival.

In terms of raiding, Apotheosis is 6/13 with Heroic Halfus, Chimaeron, Maloriak, Magmaw, Atramedes and Conclave of Wind down and we’re working on H V&T for 7/13 before 4.2 drops, with any luck. So that’s always, well, entertaining? ;) I do love raiding with my guild and I do love doing all this stuff together. I do get tired of the leadershippy stuff on occasion, though. Still, it needs to be done.

Thankfully, Toga is going to be taking over the bank. Fog is stepping down, so I took the bank as an interim holder and now Toga’s going to take that from me, hooray! :)

Speaking of leadership stuff, I was curious as to how people felt we handled things during T11 content, so I decided to use my sociology background and I made up a survey.

The questions asked people to rate the officers in their primary roles on a scale of 1-10, where 1 was really bad and 10 was excellent, and I got a second question about my performance as GM, in particular. I asked people what they felt we’d not handled well and what we HAD handled well, which officer they might want to replace and with whom, how satisfied they are with our progression, if they like how loot/food/flasks/etc is done…

Out of about 33ish active raiders, we had 20 responses, which is great. I need to go through the results, but I’m going to learn a lot. I am kind of thinking about installing SPSS on my desktop and inputting the data so I can run stats equations on it… but that miiiiiight be taking things a bit far. ;)

The survey was anonymous (ostensibly, anyways. I’m fairly sure that if I allowed myself to make the connections, I could link about five respondents to those raiders) and I think that really helped the raiders to know that this was something I was taking seriously, at least. I made it clear on our forums that I would be the only one reading the responses, but that I would summarize the results and make sure the officers saw them. I think they liked the idea of me as a filter — so they could talk to me, without fear of retribution or whatever, through the survey and know that no one else will see what they said, but the overall idea will be conveyed to the other officers.

Overall, the survey seems to have been a success. :) I strongly recommend any guild go through the same thing. Google Docs does a great job for you. Look into it.

Yet other news: EPGP is normalizing values! So if a regular-mode pair of shoulders costs 750 GP in T11, a regular-mode pair of shoulders will cost that much in T12, while the T11 one will drop in price. This almost certainly means we don’t have to change how we do EP or GP! Yaaaaaay!

In still more news: Raiding on the baby pally is fun. I get to just heal. Heal through encounters I know the basics of. It’s lovely not to have to assign or organize people. It’s great to just be told where to stand on Al’Akir and NOT spend 45-60 minutes just planning out that one fight.

On Monday, I got: neck off Halfus, mace and tier shoulders off Cho’gall, legs off Al’Akir (fuck you mastery! Where was “of the Undertow” when I needed it?!) and then picked up a cloak from Valor Points. Still not up to the spirit, intellect and haste my “real” paladin has, but that’s a lot of gear and should help me hit harder. I’m also going to be JP capped so that I can … well, I can’t do a lot, really. My last blues are my helm (Ascendant Council or Nef), my bracers (Cho’gall) and my gloves (Maloriak or, if I’m feeling desperate, tier — but that’s a crapton of mastery!).

So, I’ve been busy.

This Friday is a holiday in Quebec — La Fête de la Saint-Jean Baptiste. While I am a die-hard Canadian and have not a drop of separatist blood in me, it’s always nice to have two long weekends back to back. St-Jean Baptiste has always been a holiday for me, which marked the very last possible day of the school year, back in high school, and while a lot of separatists have sort of adopted it as a “national” holiday, it’s a day where I can usually be proud to be Québécoise without feeling terribly guilty about it. ;) While growing up, my parents would always take me up north to the cottage for the long weekend, both St-Jean and the following week’s Canada Day. So, despite the fact that we will be right ahead of a patch, I’m going up north on Friday with my dad. If it rains, so help me God, Mother Nature is going to get an earful from me. I want to go up north, relax, read a book or two, go swimming in the lake, go canoeing on the lake, get some sun and the like. Maybe play some chess against my dad, play some cards, eat some barbecue… Man. It could be very awesome.

I will, therefore, endeavour to put WoW out of my mind for Friday through to Sunday. With any luck, it will be gloriously sunny and just warm enough to coax me to go swimming to cool off.

If it’s pouring rain, I’m gonna be cranky. :P

But yeah, that’s what I’ve been up to, that’s what I’m going to do this weekend.

This week:

– reaction post to blue post about paladin healing
– T12 loot list
– hopefully downing H V&T for 7/13
– do research on Firelands bosses >.>
– answer comments!

Whew.

On that note, time to grab a few winks. I have got to remember that editing the podcast EARLIER is better than LATER!

The Raiding Adventures of the "Baby" Paladin

Kurn / / apotheosis, baby paladin adventures, bastion of twilight, blackwing descent, guild, healing, raiding, ramblings, throne of the four winds

Wednesday night was my first night raiding with Choice of Skywall again. The last time had been in late October, just before I brought Madrana home to Eldre’Thalas.

Well, Madrana II (or Saerani III, as a certain Football would put it), is back on Skywall and raided on Wednesday night.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my guild, Apotheosis. I really, really do. But at the same time, it’s SO NICE to be led by someone instead of leading people! Letting someone else organize the raid roster for the night rather than be the one to do it.

We blew through regular Bastion of Twilight in about an hour. My fellow holy paladin applicant got tons of loot (no Cho’gall bracers dropped… what a surprise…) and I’ll have to wait to be eligible until the next raid I attend, so I’m glad for him and glad for me.

It’s always interesting to acclimate to a new raiding environment. On the one hand, it’s a bit scary and nerve-wracking because you desperately do not want to screw up. And they do things differently than you’re used to, most of the time. I mean, sure, I know to hug people when I get Twilight Meteorite on Valiona and Theralion, but am I normally hugging people in melee anyways? In Apotheosis, yes, in Choice, no.

So Halfus was pretty simple and V&T went okay and Council was fine. Cho’gall was a little rough for me. I glyphed Cleansing for that fight and got 20 dispels, more than anyone — even the priest who was in the raid. /flex. But I was totally oom at the end of the fight. And I’d even taken a Potion of Concentration, too. Eesh.

Then, it was off to Blackwing Descent! And to Magmaw and Omnotron.

Magmaw was… entertaining. They were attempting to practice heroic positioning by virtue of having everyone clump up in melee and have a tank kite. The tank was… a prot warrior. I had never heard of a prot warrior tanking Magmaw parasites before, but by golly, it happened (albeit on normal, so there was no fire to dodge) and though there were some tank issues (mangle deaths — they happen everywhere, it seems!), Magmaw was still a one-shot.

On Omnotron, we had the person about to be fried to a crisp *not* moving in preparation for heroic mode, where they cannot move. A few people got nicked by the Flamethrower, but very nice positioning for the most part.

I was thinking maybe we’d poke around at heroic Chimaeron or something and I wondered if my gear could handle that or not, when all of a sudden we’re told to go to Uldum.

Okay. This was not something I had anticipated. The prospect of doing Throne of the Four Winds twice in a week with two different guilds is not cool. I don’t know WHY I hadn’t recognized this as a very real possibility, but apparently I am dumb. ;) No, seriously, it’s okay. I just dislike that instance intensely. And guess what Apotheosis is working on during Thursday’s raid? That’s right. Heroic Conclave.

So there I am on Conclave and I get to heal with Fugara, the GM. We had an easy job, staying on Anshal’s platform the whole time, so it was pretty chill and relaxed. Conclave was a one-shot. Beauty.

And then… Al’Akir.

Let it be known that I have killed that jackass just twice on Madrana (er, the original one) so it’s not like I’m a pro or anything. And they put me in a different spot than I’m usually in. On the bright side, I didn’t have to do the positions for Al’Akir!!!! Many commiserations to Zarethorn, Choice’s raid leader. He had planned that all out ahead of time.

So we wiped on him twice and called it a night. Having said that, I did NOT get blasted off the platform, I did NOT eat Squall Line and I totally used my CDs appropriately. All this from a brand-new (to me) spot, just one section to the right of the tank. (Normally, I’m at the tank’s spot but have also been two to the right.) I had one moment of panic as I saw the oncoming Squall Line and Wind Burst was casting. The moment of panic was not “how do I navigate this awful combination of elements” but rather “shitshitshitshit where is my bubble OH THANK GOD.”

(Madrana II has a different UI than Madrana I. It’s much less cluttered and yet I STILL had to search for my bubble.)

It was really fun to be back in that raid group. A lot of people have come and gone, but there were some familiar faces: Fugara, Ygg, Aidan, Zare, Acid, Baatezus, Banorind, Beezle, Cyber, Daemyn, Sane, Sham, Thorn. It was great to be back there with a lot of the same people.

A lot of people are worried I’m going to burn myself out with this crazy scheme of mine. I admit, that’s a possibility. But I feel energized by my night with Choice. I feel like going in to Throne tomorrow and handing Heroic Conclave their asses. I feel fired up and ready to kick ass with Apotheosis and then to go kick some more ass with Choice on Monday.

Also, I totally fixed my borked Raeli’s Spell Announcer on Madrana II. It refused to work at all throughout the raid, but I fixed it up afterwards. And then I realized I had enough Valor Points to buy an honest-to-goodness healing ring, so I did that, too.

All in all, a really productive night. A fun night.

Helping out some friends…

Kurn / / guild, ramblings

When I was getting Apotheosis together, one of the things I kept hearing over and over was “you are passionate about your guild, you can tell from your posts about it!”

I’m definitely invested in and passionate about Apotheosis. What good GM wouldn’t be invested in and passionate about their guild?

Before I restarted Apotheosis and after I spent 10 months being abused by a jackass of a GM/RL/MT… I joined Choice of Skywall.

It was exactly what I needed at the time. I knew I didn’t want to be done raiding before the expansion came out, so I joined them in June of last year. It was strictly a temporary thing — I made it clear in my application that I was only there until 4.0 dropped or slightly after. Definitely gone by the time Cataclysm launched.

These people embraced me. They knew I was a player who was more advanced (I was 11/12 25-man in heroic ICC and I had my drake) than they were but I was careful not to be too bossy (well, mostly!) and I LOVED being just a cog in the machine and doing what they needed me to do.

I don’t normally talk too specifically about people on my blog, but the GM of Choice, Fugara, is far and away the best GM I could have ever had. She’s the reason why I joined Choice over this other guild on Hyjal. I cannot say enough good things about Fug. Go read my Day 13 post about people I admire for more about why Fug is awesome.

Choice is made up of more than just Fug, though. Beez, whom you may have seen posting comments here, now and again, is a great tank and was just promoted to tank officer. He’s solid, knows his stuff and is a nice guy, to boot. I had good times healing him both in-game and in the Cataclysm beta. :)

Geng… is one kick-ass arcane mage. Of all the DPS in Choice, Geng is one I miss a lot! His exceptional play, his hilarious stories and him accidentally keying into Vent while bitching at someone who was sitting on his car (or, alternately, had done something bad regarding something to do with the March of Dimes) has to be heard to be believed. You just sit there and pray Geng never gets that pissed off at you. ;) He’s a great guy and a great player. He ALWAYS had my back when I had the Unbound Plague on heroic Putricide. The downside? He’s a gnome. But he’s awesome. I love Geng and I miss him bunches.

The warlocks were pretty awesome, all of them. Sanevink’s a good player, he’s polite, nice. Daemyn’s a competitive one and she’s fun to be around. Jorik, who is now playing a DK named Forek, was similarly polite and nice and we’ve chatted some since I’ve left. Good people, all of them.

Thornstar is a great moonkin who’ll pitch in to heal if needed. Hell, he pitched in to tank sometimes, too. Great team player, great guy.

Shamownia… with his deep voice and usually inappropriate comments, I would get a case of the giggles pretty frequently. He made raids fun. Excellent player as well.

Mylana was a rogue and he now plays his holy paladin for the guild. Mylana’s a great player with a lot of attention to detail and he has sucked it up and switched to his paladin for the guild, without being asked to or anything. Very nice guy, very good player and hopefully following in the grand tradition of, well, me and Walks.

Speaking of healers, Fugara is, of course, an excellent healer, but the others who are still there from when I was include Yggdrasil (officer/healing lead, whose dulcet tones can relax you oh so well!) who is a kick-ass resto druid and Vvtra who’s a great resto shaman as well.

Yeah, four healers are still there from when I was. Turnover sucks, but it happens. That is a solid core and they need more healers. I’m trying to level another paladin to try to help out on my offnights, but they need help NOW.

They’re 11/12 25-man (just need Al’Akir) and have done 12/12 on 10, so they know the fight, they just need the reliable people, especially healers!

These people embraced me when I was bitter, jaded and pretty close to quitting the game for a time. They made me feel wanted and useful, they forgave my BOPping Bonsey the bear instead of LOHing him on heroic Festergut during my very first raid with them and they’re just a really good bunch of people who could use a couple of solid healers. (But also some DPS.)

So if you’re not happy with your guild situation, please, please, please check out Choice of Skywall. They’re an Alliance guild who raid from 9pm-12am ET on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. They’re 11/12 on 25 and do loot via EPGP. They have amazing leadership and a fantastic GM.

Give them a shot. Tell them Kurn (or Madrana, I suppose!) sent you. :)

Defender of a Shattered World

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, guild, raiding, ramblings, throne of the four winds

It’s almost 7am as I start to write this. Apotheosis killed Al’Akir almost 8 hours ago. I went to sleep and woke up at about 6:30 just because I couldn’t stop thinking “Holy crap, we killed Al’Akir!”. Most of my guildies in the raid, myself included, got the Defender of a Shattered World title. Apotheosis is now 12/12 on normal modes to go with our pretty, shiny, 1/13 heroic modes.

That is one hell of a fight. And I don’t mean it in a good way, either. Hands down, my least-favourite fight in Tier 11 content. That said, I do feel pretty smug after having beaten this guy. :)

It was on our 59th attempt that we killed him, although, to be fair, 16 of those attempts were in February. Our work on Al’Akir really feels like it started in the last couple of weeks.

This brings us to 12/12 normal modes, as I’ve mentioned. I know, it’s just like clearing T7 and getting Champion of the Frozen Wastes, right? But it’s doing it at the proper, that’s to say “intended”, gear level. We’ve done it in 346 and 359 gear, not in T12 or T13 or T14. We’ve cleared the normal modes of entry-level raiding in this expansion with a group of people who largely didn’t know one another six months ago.

And then, there’s me. I just posted a long-winded, sappy post on my guild forums about how I basically love everyone, but something I didn’t say there (but will obviously get back to the guildies — and that’s okay) is that I’m relieved. I am SO relieved. I almost can’t even put it into words.

So many people who joined the guild did so because of me. I’m the one who started asking around if people wanted to come back to Apotheosis for Cataclysm. I’m the one who was talking excitedly about her old guild on her blog and, for some unknown reason, got a lot of responses and applications because of it. Really, if Apotheosis didn’t make it out of T11, it was almost certainly going to be my fault. I would have let down my old crew, I would have let down the people I’d drawn in, I would have let down the people who had, collectively, paid hundreds of dollars to transfer. And, of course, its success has very little to do with me — it’s a lot more to do with everyone I’ve assembled here. I would take all the blame if things hadn’t worked out, but the credit for it working out goes to the ladies and gentlemen of Apotheosis.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that Apotheosis is through T11 normals. The pressure is off me. I’ve put together a team and the team is performing. The guild has a personality, it has a life of its own, now. If things go to hell now, chances are, it wasn’t my bad. ;)

It’s still intimidating, though. While I’m not terribly concerned about everything falling apart, this is the most progressed I’ve been in my own guild, ever.

In Burning Crusade, we cleared Black Temple, but only ever pulled Kalecgos in Sunwell Plateau three times before calling it an expansion. We also only formed on June 1st, 2008 and the expansion had come out back in January, so we were constantly working our way through content that had already been nerfed and used the 3.0 patch to steamroll our way past Reliquary of Souls, Mother Shahraz up to the Council and Illidan himself. (Much less steamrolling when we hit the Illidari Council.)

In Wrath, Apotheosis didn’t even kill Thaddius on 25-man. Attendance was awful, people were unhappy, progression was bad due to attendance and recruitment was bad due to progression. We had the potential to kick some ass, but it just didn’t pan out.

So now, my guild is the #2 25-man raiding guild on Eldre’Thalas. Overall, we’re still something like #11, if you take all the 10-man guilds into consideration, but… well, I don’t. It’s not that I don’t take 10s seriously (really!), but I really think 10 and 25-man raiding are very different beasts and so I don’t think of us as the #11 guild on ET. I see our 10-man guilds on the server as doing their thing and the 25s are doing our thing.

And, to my utter shock and delight, Apotheosis is doing WELL at “our thing”! We finished at #9 guild progressed guild in Burning Crusade, #6 Alliance guild, and that was with a 5 month delay on anything guild-related. We farmed Karazhan for three months before we got Maulgar and Gruul down. And even with that, we finished pretty well.

This time, we had our shit together. This time, we had a team ready to go. This time, we are SO much smarter than we were in Burning Crusade. (Seriously, who puts a moonkin in the tank group, back when the 5% crit buff they brought was party-wide only?) And this time, we don’t have the progression or attendance issues we had in Wrath.

Rank doesn’t mean a lot to me, truly, whether it’s server rank or US/world rank, but it’s always nice to see where you fit in. GuildOx says we’re the 706th ranked 25-man guild on US servers. So we’re not vodka or Premonition or Midwinter or Edge. We’re still here, we’re still kicking and we’ve cleared 12/12 normal modes, ready to add to our heroic Halfus kill with more heroic kills.

So freaking relieved. And so freaking proud of my peeps.

Progression Rocks

Kurn / / bastion of twilight, blackwing descent, guild, raiding, ramblings, throne of the four winds

So last week was a bit rocky, with someone leaving the guild and with us having trouble with Nefarian. It was the first reset we actually left Nefarian up since downing him and it felt pretty terrible.

We decided that we’d extend BWD into this week so that we can spend some time actually progressing, because, frankly, it’s been a while.

This is what I’d planned out.

Tuesday – Heroic Halfus all night.

Thursday – Finish up Nef from last week, get Conclave and work on Al’Akir.

Sunday – Blast through Bastion on normal, work on Al’Akir.

Once again, my guild never stops astounding me and almost always seems to prove to me that I shouldn’t underestimate them.

What happened on Tuesday?

Heroic Halfus down in 6 pulls, Bastion of Twilight cleared.

And here’s our kill video, too!

 

 

So, the new players we’ve pulled in (two healing priests, an elemental shaman, a fire mage and a prot warrior) seem to be acclimating well and we got Heroic Halfus after 10 rather educational pulls back on March 8th. We decided to use our feral druid who’s usually a kitty and made him be a bear for us for most of that fight, so we could better handle the Malevolent Strikes debuff, plus we blew heroism at the start when all the drakes were pulled together. As a healer, this was a godsend. Well, it was once I realized how quickly I’d go OOM after casting so quickly. ;)

So, with Heroic Halfus down and with Bastion cleared (Cho’gall, once again, mocks me and Walks in his death — does ANYONE have those damn Shackles of the End of Days??), we’re left re-thinking what to do.

I think we’ll probably go do Conclave and Al’Akir on Thursday. While a lot of people don’t like the fight and a lot of people feel it’s worthless in general, it’s a new boss and would bring us to 12/12 on the regular modes. It’s worth it for that, if nothing else.

Depending on how Thursday goes, Sunday could be Nefarian OR, if we get Al’Akir down… we could play with a heroic BWD boss. Typically, I know Chimaeron, Maloriak and Atramedes are the “easy” ones. Chim… I’m gonna need to think about that one for a bit. Atramedes on NORMAL isn’t “easy” for our guild. But Maloriak? Hmmm. Maloriak… That’s an idea. :) So we’ll see how Thursday and Al’Akir go and let that determine our Sunday for us, basically.

It’s entirely possible that in one reset, we’ll go from 11/12 to 12/12 and 1/13. Definitely an exciting time.

(And we’re recruiting, so go check us out!)

Why Nefarian Sucks

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, blackwing descent, guild, healing, raiding, ramblings

Before I begin, I’d like to state that I actually quite enjoy the Nefarian fight. At least I do on 25-man difficulty, which is what I’ll address here. (I don’t imagine I’ll ever see it on 10-man and I’m okay with that.)

However, the fight sucks on a wide variety of levels. Why is this?

The encounter requires almost perfect execution. This, in itself, is not a bad thing. Perfect execution is something we should always strive for in every encounter. The problem is actually that it requires almost perfect execution from ~9 people at separate times and sustained good execution (even very good execution) from everyone else.

1) The tanks. If your Onyxia tank isn’t turning her appropriately, your raid will be fried by her lightning. If your add tank isn’t despawning the adds appropriately in P1, your P3 add tank is screwed. If your Nefarian tank doesn’t drag Nefarian far enough away from Onyxia, they get the Children of Deathwing buff and will pretty much 2-shot both your Ony tank and your Nef tank.

2) The interrupters. While this will be somewhat alleviated in 4.1 because all interrupt abilities will no longer miss, that’s not the case today and it hasn’t been the case since the launch of Cataclysm. That means that, right now and up until 4.1, you need people able to interrupt every single cast of Blast Nova in P2 who are reliable. In the 25-man version, Blast Nova is cast every 8 seconds, so unless you have 3 enhancement shaman lying around, you probably need 4, 5 or 6 dedicated interrupters. Tanks generally have low hit, so they miss. Healers are generally the same, plus they also have this thing called “healing” to do while on the platforms. Granted, the amount of hit needed is only 5-6% since the mobs you’re interrupting are level 85, just like us. So in some cases, a tank would be okay for this. For the most part, however, in order to have interrupts that don’t miss, you need a mix and match of melee DPS who are probably going to be hit-capped. If one of them misses one interrupt, you may be able to pull through, but in our raid group, 2+ Blast Novas means an immediate wipe or means that some people die due to the extra damage and leaves us wiping somewhere under 10%.

3) The healers have to push in P2. Honestly, you’ve got to pull out all your tricks, especially if you’re planning on pushing 1-2 Electrocutes (see below) in this phase. I take 7 healers to Nefarian and put two on each platform, along with one of our three tanks on each platform, meaning there’s five DPS on each platform as well. The extra healer generally gets dropped on to the NE platform and is usually an Atonement disc priest, so they’re able to smite the add and heal that way. However, the tricky part is that we have to keep up this insane kind of burn phase for ~3 minutes and, in the case of my guild, two Electrocutes. All the while, we’re dealing with Shadowflame Barrage (which inflicts pushback — and while I try to make sure a paladin and a shaman are on each platform, they’re both using Resist aura/totem so that we get the Shadow and Fire covered from the paladin and the nature covered from the shaman), healing people up after they pop out of the lava —

  • A word about the lava. Getting out of the lava is not hard. The lip of the platform sucks and, yes,  there have been times where I’ve jumped around, flailing like a jackass. The lava does not suck. What sucks is Blast Nova being cast right as most people are jumping up out of the lava on to the platform. What we tend to do is have everyone with an interrupt try to get the first one except the person designated to be the second interrupter. But it still sucks.

— and generally trying desperately to make sure people are topped off just before Electrocute hits. I pop everything — Aura Mastery, Guardian of Ancient Kings, Divine Favor, Avenging Wrath, Holy Radiance, even sometimes Lay on Hands, though I prefer to hold that and my mana potion for P3. I also try to sneak in a Divine Plea right at the P1/P2 transition so it’s up again sometime in P2. It’s one of the crazier healing moments in the game and, the way we do it, it lasts almost the full three minutes.

This isn’t bad, but it sure means we’re pretty taxed as we push P3, with Electrocutes coming every 20 seconds or so, plus the healers chasing the add tank don’t get a chance to rest. Further, because I’ve had to blow all my CDs in P2, most of them (Guardian of Ancient Kings in particular) don’t come back up in P3. That’s why I try to save my mana potion and my Lay on Hands for P3, because I know that’s all I’ll have left to help me out with maybe two Hands of Sacrifice, if I’m lucky. So yeah, healing in any role on this fight can suck.

4) The add tank in P3 has got to be on top of his or her game. Running the adds around, dodging Shadowflame, stunning (and not stunning) as is appropriate. I have not healed the add tank so I’m not really sure what this insanity looks like, but I understand that the basic concept of this boils down to “making split-second decisions over the course of about 3 minutes, the results of which will either kill you and wipe the raid or will save you and the raid.”

5) Electrocute is nature damage. Okay, this is probably more of a pet peeve than an outright reason why this fight sucks, but it just didn’t seem to be a complete list without this as a mention. As a paladin, my Resistance Aura resists Shadow, Fire and Frost damage. Aura Mastery boosts those resistances, normally at 195, effectively doubling those resistances to 390 for six seconds. (According to this scary, yet useful, math post on Elitist Jerks, this means our base resist is ~20% against a level 88 and Aura Mastery bumps it up to the 35% level.)  Shaman are the ones in the raid (generally) who bring nature resistance in the form of Elemental Resistance Totem or glyphed Healing Stream Totem. (Hunters can also help with Aspect of the Wild, but who wants to give up the RAP from Aspect of the Hawk?) Shaman do not have a burst resist mechanic like Aura Mastery, so 195 Nature/Frost/Fire resistance is all you get from their totems, or, as noted before, ~20% resist. That means, on average, about 20k of that ~100k damage is resisted if you’re in range of a shaman’s totems or a hunter’s Aspect of the Wild. But short of personal cooldowns, there’s not a lot you can do to mitigate Electrocute damage beyond relying on someone’s totem.

6) Due to the unreal reliance on a specific handful of people, finger-pointing is hard to avoid. On the one hand, I enjoy clearly-defined roles so I know who screwed up. On the other hand, boy, does this fight piss people off and BOY, does it make people leap on each other, many armed with poorly-interpreted log data. (Pet peeve: people reading the logs who have no idea what they’re reading.)

Seriously, tempers get frayed, strategies are questioned and really, it’s just a matter of finding the right variations that work for you and then executing them. Execute the fight, we win. If any of those people (interrupters, tanks, healers) screw up, that’s almost certainly a wipe. And then you have to trace the root of that failure. So someone died to Electrocute because they weren’t topped up by the healers. Did Blast Nova contribute to the low health? Was the healer completely oom because of healing through Blast Nova? Who let the Blast Nova or Novas through?

The key to analyzing this fight is finding the root cause, not just saying “oh, so-and-so died to this”.

Wait, Kurn, you LIKE this fight?

I do. I like the feeling when Nefarian dies, knowing that the people we relied on were (almost certainly) on their game. I like knowing that we beat a tricky encounter. I like pushing myself in P2 and I’m constantly pushing to make myself better at it so I’m not practically oom when I start healing the Nefarian tank in P3.

We didn’t get Nefarian down this reset. Some roster changes, some changes in roles… we had two 1% wipes, but couldn’t seal the deal.

I don’t like it, but I’m okay with what it means. It means that we probably extend Blackwing Descent until next week. If we do, it means that we have 5 less bosses to kill, which means more time on other stuff. Heroic Halfus, normal Al’Akir, these are the fights we’ll be looking at, and because we’re probably extending the instance, we’ll have the time to do so. With only 9 hours of raiding a week, we can easily waste a lot of time. Maybe cutting out 5 farmable bosses is a way to do that.

All I know is that Nef will die this coming reset and that I’m looking forward to some new stuff, too.

Oh yeah, and the Defender of a Shattered World title, too!

Peaks and Valleys

Kurn / / apotheosis, bastion of twilight, blackwing descent, facepalm, guild, raiding, ramblings, throne of the four winds

This game is full of ups and downs. One minute, you’re on top of the world, the next, you’re nothing but food for Deathwing.

Apotheosis has had an interesting week, to say the least. While I don’t want to be constantly talking about my guild, I do want to share what’s happening in my WoW life. I hope that what I’m sharing has some resonance with others, despite the specific circumstances we’ve experienced.

The Peaks:

– We took a fury warrior app, turned him into a prot warrior app, threw him into the fire and he did remarkably well.

– Despite not having two of our main-spec tanks on Sunday and only six healers available to us, we still cleared Bastion of Twilight that night.

– Even though he gave us fits at the end of the raid on Tuesday and all of Thursday, we killed Nefarian again. It’s always tricky to introduce new players to a fight that isn’t quite on farm. It’s somewhat embarassing to wipe as often as we did, though, after previously 4-shotting him.

– Due to the generous donations of various guildies, including the ever-awesome Toga, we got the Better Leveling Through Chemistry achievement and, therefore, access to the Recipe: Big Cauldron of Battle. (I never want to make flasks again, I swear to God. I probably made about 700 of those flasks over the last 2-3 weeks.) This is going to allow us to provide the vast majority of raiders with flasks every raid night, although we’re looking into ideas as to how to make it sustainable. For this first week, we’re not requiring anything of anyone, since we have a ton of flasks in the bank due to pushing for the achievement, but making it sustainable would be lovely. (Would love to hear your suggestions, too!)

– We hit Level 20, so we have access to the new heirloom helms and we get 30 flasks per Big Cauldron of Battle versus 20. (My 44 mage alt has the helm, the shoulders, the cloak, the chest, the staff, the trinket and the ring. She has +40% experience from killing monsters or completing quests. How ridiculous is that?!)

– We got a new holy/disc priest app who interviewed very well and so we extended a trial position to her. She transferred over on Sunday evening and will be in the lineup tonight!

– We got our balance druid back after he had to be away for about three weeks due to visa issues.

– We got another healing priest app that we have an interview with tomorrow.

It was a pretty good week for the guild, given all those peaks, right? Some stabilization of the roster, clearing content, getting gear for people, getting shards for the bank and people’s enchants, pushing the guild level and getting that cauldron… Really, on all fronts, that was a pretty decent week. But then… Then you have the valleys.

The Valleys:

– While we did 5/6 BWD in about 90 minutes, Nefarian took us the next 4 hours of raiding to get down. After 4-shotting him on the previous Sunday. That sucked. Off nights happen, but ugh.

– No progression. The plan was to play with heroic Halfus on Thursday. That was assuming that Nefarian would be dead on Tuesday. When he wasn’t dead on Tuesday, we still figured we’d easily get 90ish minutes on heroic Halfus on Thursday. Except we didn’t, because we spent the vast majority of Thursday night on Nefarian.

– Sunday, without two main-spec tanks (our tank officer is on vacation for a week and my brother was out celebrating at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade), was not the optimum moment to go back to heroic Halfus attempts, so we did it on normal and it went fine. Valiona and Theralion were one-shotted as well, but oh God, the messiness. /facepalm I don’t know what it is about this fight, but people just do not do it well. It’s so bad that last night, I dreamt that we wiped on them 8 times and that a specific warlock was eating some ability every single attempt and they were completely unaware until I was like “Yo, what is UP with you eating (ability) and dying on every single fight?!” and the response was “Oh. Is that what’s killing me? Huh.” (My guildies are not like this, but there are people who do struggle with the fight.) Council and Cho’gall were similarly rough, but we persevered and got through, despite only having 6 healers and our new prot warrior who’s never tanked those fights before, never mind killed those bosses with us.

– There was an incident between two raiders between Council wipes that required Darista and I to tell them to cut it out. The incident led to the officers and I debating what to do with one of the individuals involved, who had previously been warned about their behaviour. As the GM, I wrote to the individual and explained to them that they’d been previously warned and that the officers were now going to take action, although we didn’t know what that would be and were currently deliberating. Rather than wait for our decision, the individual declared their intention to leave the guild yesterday. They did so later in the day. As a result, we are a weaker raid group, without question.

This is the first incident of a raiding member of Apotheosis /gquitting and searching for a new home due to circumstances within the guild. We’ve had a couple gquit due to their own personal availability issues that they had not informed us about previously, which is fine. We’ve had a few people just stop playing the game, too, so losing a member isn’t new. But losing a member due to conflict is just not cool.

In general, if you leave my guild, you are dead to me. I don’t take kindly to people moving on to greener pastures, nor do I tolerate impulsive /gquits that stem from anger or misunderstandings. This was neither of those; this was the individual in question choosing to take their fate into their own hands. Rather than wait even 24 hours for the officers to discuss the issue, the individual took the decision out of our hands and into their own.

While I’m not happy with how things went down, I wouldn’t do things differently. Warnings only go so far before action must be taken. Threatened action must have that follow through, lest no one take said threatened action seriously in the future. Similarly, the individual must have thought they were doing the right thing for them, and I can’t fault them for doing what they felt needed to be done, despite the fact my team is weaker for it. But it still sucks.

– Relatedly, someone who was almost certainly from my guild then chose to troll the aforementioned individual’s new “hey, I’m available!” recruitment post. This is probably the most disheartening part of it all, so I hope they’re reading this. This troll is a coward, a jackass and someone I don’t want in my guild. They made me act like an adult and intervene in the individual’s recruitment thread to indicate that the troll’s comments were not my feelings about the individual, because it was the right thing to do, both personally and professionally. News flash: having to act like an adult when I’m already pissed off and already struggling to be civil in general is one of my least favourite things to do, so on a personal level, I’m seriously angry. To this troll I ask, why not let sleeping dogs lie? You didn’t like the person and you were rid of them. Congratulations, you won. It could have, and should have, ended there with a quiet celebration on your part.

But then you had to post in their recruitment thread like a gloating 12-year-old? Seriously? You’re an ass if you feel you have to get in the last word just as someone’s left the guild and try to prevent them from getting guilded elsewhere because you happen to not like them. Get the hell out of my guild immediately. You are not the type of person I want in my guild. That’s not how we roll. We try to treat people with respect, dammit, and if I ever find out who you are, I’m gkicking you for being such a stain on our guild’s reputation and culture.

It’s seriously disappointing to discover that someone who is apparently so insecure about their own sense of self-worth that they need to troll a former member’s new thread is almost certainly in my guild. I honestly feel dirty.

– Right. Back to the valleys… Our tank officer is still out of town until Saturday so he won’t be around until Sunday’s raid, which means we may not get a chance to do any progression until then, unless things go very smoothly in BWD, which would open up some time for Conclave and Al’Akir on Thursday.

– One of my healers is in the hospital at the moment (should be back home maybe as early as Thursday?), another is halfway out the door (for life-is-busy reasons. He’ll continue to make most raids just in case until April, but not tonight.) so various circumstances mean I have 5-6 healers for tonight. Good times?

So…

It’s been an interesting week, sort of in the Chinese curse sense of the word (“May you live in interesting times.“), but an interesting week nonetheless. Seriously. This was my inbox yesterday:

Anyways, up next for us is probably either heroic Halfus, Al’Akir or maybe even a peek at heroic Maloriak, if I can convince people to do so tonight. ;)

Finally, Apotheosis is still recruiting a second elemental shaman, a second moonkin and would consider a second restoration druid. None of these are bench positions; we swap people out pretty equally and even I’m sat out now and again. Apply today!

Lord Victor Nefarius and Lady Katrana Prestor

Kurn / / apotheosis, blackwing descent, guild, raiding, ramblings

I’ve been playing WoW for a long time. More than five years, now. One of my earlier memories is getting the Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer. I remember being VERY confused about it when I got it and that’s when I started researching stuff.

And that was my introduction to Lord Victor Nefarius (better known as Nefarian) and Lady Katrana Prestor (better known as Onyxia). Brother and sister, both children of Deathwing, Nefarian was the end-boss of Blackwing Lair in vanilla WoW and Onyxia was the only boss in what is appropriately named “Onyxia’s Lair”, a raid instance in Dustwallow Marsh. Ony was a 40-man raid and then retuned during Wrath of the Lich King to be a 10 or 25-man raid. Personally, I loved the Ony raid. I only killed her twice on Kurn at level 60, once in a pug run by some of the better players on the server and once with a bunch of my guildmates at the time, although we had a lot of outside help.

I never did kill a Blackwing Lair boss at level 60, so I was nowhere near getting to kill Nefarian.

So why all the background?

In Blackwing Descent, the end boss is Nefarian. And he has resurrected Onyxia. And we did our first 17 or so pulls last night.

For all of Phase 1 of the Nefarian encounter, you’re dealing with Ony and then Nefarian lands partway through and you are fighting BOTH of them. Hilarity and awesomeness!

They get a buff called Children of Deathwing, hilariously enough, if they’re within 60 yards of each other. Also hilarious and awesome!

I’m not a huge lore person, but because I KNOW these characters, and especially because I unmasked Lady Katrana Prestor to be, in fact, Onyxia, at the end of the exceedingly long attunement quest chain to be attuned to Onyxia’s Lair, back in the day, it means more to me than some random dragon.

The Valiona and Theralion fight in Bastion of Twilight means very little to me, despite the fact that you actually fight Valiona in Grim Batol. There’s no history for me.

But Nefarian? I spent a long time in vanilla WoW wondering if we’d ever get to set foot in BWL as a guild. (We did not.) I spent time inspecting those awesome T2-geared hunters and paladins (Judgement is still the coolest set of all time, despite the fact it’s all healing gear now. Whatever happened to the strength, spirit and agility that was on that set?).

I’ve killed Level 60 Nefarian a couple of times since 4.0 dropped, while Football (our gnome warrior we used to get to pull the Beast in UBRS, who would then get punted, hence the nickname) was farming up mats for his Thunderfury, but I never killed him at the appropriate level.

Apotheosis got Nefarian to 47% last night.

That’s with:

– one no-show
– one very late cancellation by a tank
– one late “oh crap, I’m going to be late” notification
– three officers missing

So we ran with two offspec tanks (an Unholy-turned-Blood DK and a Retribution-turned-Protection pally). Didn’t have a feral druid in the raid. Didn’t have a frost DK in the raid. We were missing some pretty important buffs: 3% damage, increased melee speed and increased bleed damage (until I realized the bleed damage thing and got Toga to pull out his hyena).

And we still got Nefarian to 47%.

Not only that, but I’m dogsitting at my parents’ house for a week while they’re away and I have had nothing but computer issues. My laptop refuses to stay connected to the wireless network here, while my dad’s desktop refuses to run Mumble. So I was on Mumble on my laptop and on WoW on the desktop and kept dropping off Mumble but then also got dropped out of the game a couple of times. /facepalm. So I eventually said screw it and just plugged my laptop directly into the modem (using the one ethernet cord my father apparently has in the entire house) and played from my laptop, as I normally do.

So even with my ridiculous technical issues and despite our DK DCing a couple of times, we did great. 47%!

There was this one attempt where we’re in P2 and I’m on my pillar and I look and neither our elemental shaman nor the DPS DK who were interrupting were still alive.

I then realized that it was up to me and the Blood DK to interrupt Blast Nova. And while my Rebuke was on cooldown, I would be healing the crap out of the people on my platform, along with one of our disc priests. Believe it or not, we got through that attempt without me or the DK screwing up and/or missing. And I don’t mean “oh no, my attack didn’t hit”, since even with just one point in Enlightened Judgements, I’m melee hit-capped for a raid boss (… is Rebuke a spell-hit roll or a melee-hit roll?) and the Chromatic Prototypes we’re interrupting are level 85, but with zero communication between us, the DK and I managed to keep that sucker locked down, in a proper rotation. It was pretty awesome. :D

Well, it’s awesome in retrospect. In the moment, I was like “Oh God, he’s dead… she’s dead… OH GOD I HAVE TO INTERRUPT. ShitshitshitshitREBUKE.”

Still, makes for a good story. ;)

So Nef to 47%. And we can clear out 5/6 BWD in about 2 hours, with any luck.

I think our priority this week is a repeat Cho’gall kill, a quick run to Conclave for a repeat there (?) and definitely some more Nef work.

At some point, in the not-so-distant future, I will finally kill Nefarian at the appropriate level.

This makes me giddy. :)

Have you pulled Nefarian? Killed him? What are your impressions on the fight?

Proud GM Ramblings

Kurn / / apotheosis, bastion of twilight, general, guild, raiding, ramblings

All right, this is the part of the blog where I transform from a source of holy paladin information into a proud GM and proceed to spend the next 1700 words talking about my guild and being a GM.

We got Cho’gall 25 on Tuesday night.

Let me say that again: WE GOT CHO’GALL 25 ON TUESDAY NIGHT. And then promptly went 5/6 in BWD. Oh, and we did Baradin Hold before Cho’gall. Seven bosses in a single night. Our best raid night ever.

Two years ago, we were struggling to recruit and were literally two weeks away from ultimately calling it. At the time, we thought it was forever. I resigned myself to never leading these people again, maybe never even playing with some people ever again. I transferred toons every which way — Kurn to Proudmoore, Madrana to Bronzebeard. The guild was done, but we didn’t disband. I checked in now and again (very rarely, but occasionally!) and saw familiar faces and old friends and always felt so damn sad. I had let these people down. I’d let my own cockiness and arrogance get in the way of being able to field a strong 25-man group, night in and night out. Not that I was deliberately an ass to people, but I didn’t recruit to replace people I’d lost between BC and WotLK and I let some nasty people be overly vocal and that led to more people leaving. People that we just couldn’t replace because we hadn’t progressed enough to get noticed, basically. I’ve felt that my arrogance and overconfidence was the ultimate reason for our downfall. I probably take too much on myself, but it’s how I felt.

We killed Sartharion — +0. (Although we were 5% away from a +1 kill!) We never killed Thaddius, so we never got to look at Sapphiron or Kel’Thuzad. We never got the key to 25-man Eye of Eternity, so we didn’t get to try Malygos.

Wrath of the Lich King was unkind, to understate it, to Apotheosis and I have basically held my breath since restarting this funny old guild of ours. Until Tuesday night.

I overrecruited, determined not to cancel raids, determined to have a solid group of people to be raiders.

We have had 19 25-man raids and have not cancelled a single one. We rescheduled due to the Superbowl, true, but never cancelled. This meant that when one of our warlocks who typically works graveyard ended up oversleeping, we fielded a 24-man raid until he woke up and joined us. We got through it.

We’ve dealt with the loss of two of our four original tanks on the roster, we’ve lost some cherished old-time members and some newer members to that pesky thing called “real life” and honestly, some people just didn’t end up making the cut. Ultimately, we haven’t had the smoothest six resets ever. Our raiding roster has gone from 39 to 27 and back up to 33.

What we have done, however, is improve. Each week, we keep killing things we killed the previous week and it keeps getting cleaner. I’ve started dropping healers on a couple of fights now that I trust people not to stand in the bad and, last Thursday, we shaved a full minute off our fastest Valiona & Theralion kill.

We had a ninja pull on Tuesday on Magmaw (I think it was a hunter who pulled by mistake, but that’s fine) and you know what? We did just fine. Clean kill, one-shot. Not a problem. Granted, not something I desperately want to relive, but it was fine.

This is in contrast to some of our raids back in Burning Crusade. We could go in and clear 5/6 SSC, getting everyone but Vashj down in one raid night, but the next week, we’d spend half the night wiping to Leotheras the Blind or Karathress. Occasionally, Tidewalker or Lurker.

We eventually got better at consistently clearing content, but the progress we’ve made in our six resets is far beyond what we experienced in Burning Crusade’s Apotheosis.

It’s sort of expected and standard and such, at least for me, to always repeat kills with a lot less effort than the original kill. After spending months in ICC working on regular modes, then heroic modes, I’m very used to wiping a lot and then mastering the fight and it’s on farm.

I’ve never really had that in Apotheosis until now.

Also, while not everyone adores each other, we’re not total dicks! There’s none of that idle chatter full of profanity and perjorative slurs that tend to accompany progressed raid guilds. We do swear (I do a lot!), but there’s no talk of “raping” that boss, or how “gay” something is. There is a lot of mocking of me (and Majik!) but the chatter is fun, harmless stuff. It’s not full of barely-concealed self-loathing or veiled (or not-so-veiled!) references to violence against women.

Of course, none of that is permitted as per our guild policies, but it’s really a striking difference to me. Most raid guilds I was in during Wrath had no such policies (Choice of Skywall is the exception — and they’re recruiting holy paladins! Go apply now!) and it was tiring to log on and hear 20-something year olds talk continually about how “gayly” they were just “raped” by someone. :P

The members are quality people. Good players. Some are still struggling a bit and adjusting, but they’re getting there and everyone on the roster is there for a reason.

And what’s amazing is that we really are turning into a team, where it doesn’t matter that people weren’t there two years ago. We only had ten “old-timers” in on our Cho’gall kill. I’m no longer thinking of people as groups of people I know from other guilds or other servers, but really, truly thinking of them as my guildies. There’s a contingent of four people with whom I raided on Bronzebeard and they brought another shadow priest and another DK along. And for a bit, I thought of them as “the Bronzebeard people”. All six of them were there on Tuesday for the kill and not once did I think of them as anything apart from “my guildies”.

So Tuesday night, I could breathe again. The guild that I had painstakingly reassembled had finally really come into itself. We killed our first end boss of the expansion. Together. On 25-man.

The tension and stress mostly melted away as soon as we got the kill. The guild has momentum. Doesn’t mean I can slack off, but it means that the guild has achieved stuff and I am no longer holding the guild together through sheer willpower. ;) It means that people are invested now. We sweated through Twilight Ascendant Council. We worked on Cho’gall. We nearly cried on Atramedes, I swear. We have in-jokes. We have shared experiences that bind us together.

Five years from now, even if I’m not playing anymore, I will always remember that we always wanted to kill Majik with the Atramedes trash. I’ll always remember priests levitating off the elevator… into Nefarian’s lava. I’ll always remember how Shadowcry fell off the edge of Halfus’ platform or how Dayden and Fog got thrown into the same lava when blown back by adds on V&T trash. I’ll always remember how I was laughing so hard, I could hardly breathe, much less heal through trash, while my guildies mocked my fail computer and likened it to an abacus. I’ll remember how one of our shadow priests was mangled by Magmaw, that one time.

I’ll remember the perseverence the guild showed when we had an abysmal time on Council the week before we killed them, on that rescheduled raid night. We came roaring back the next night and went 5/6 in BWD and then killed Halfus for fun.

I’ll remember the strength of character the raiders continually show me when I swap them out and they step out without a complaint.

We sat eight people on the Cho’gall kill. Tia, Raisa, Andy, Hestiah, Onemanshort, Hulrok, Fidjet and Traellus. It wasn’t easy to sit most of them — although in some cases, lack of gear was the determining factor, which made it a little easier. But I won’t forget that not a one of them raged about it. Not a one of them said anything more than “man, wish I were there with you guys!” and even then, just once, if that. They all recognized that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. They congratulated us.

All 33 people who signed up and showed up tonight are team players.

And if it weren’t for that attitude that is apparently shared by us all, we wouldn’t be sitting at 9/12, with Conclave on the schedule for Thursday, ready to pop us up to 10/12.

If it weren’t for people being there for us, willing to push through things, willing to wipe and learn and get better and willing to sit or swap in or whatever the raid needs, we’d still be failing to Valiona & Theralion or Atramedes.

But we aren’t still failing to those fights… because our people are awesome.

I know the ranks really aren’t that accurate, but WoWprogress says that we’re US 979 for Cho’gall 25, which is something like 2000 ranks better than we ever saw in BC. We’re technically realm third in 25s, but one of the 25-man guilds has split into two teams of 10s, so we’re really the #2 25-man guild on the server. Our rank may say 10th, or 3rd, or whatever, depending what you look at, but we’re keeping up. (Hell, GuildOx says we’re #1 in 25-man progress… go figure!) And even if we weren’t, what matters is that we keep pushing. We pushed progression on Tuesday by not resetting Bastion. We’ll push progression on Thursday when we take on Conclave and play with Al’Akir.

We’re pushing, we’re progressing.

We got Cho’gall 25 down on Tuesday night. I know it’s one of three end-bosses in entry-level raid content and that, a year from now, most no one will care.

But I care now. And I’ll care then.

Because this is my guild, made up of people I’ve known for years, raided with during Wrath or gotten to know because of this blog. This is the guild that I have painstakingly assembled, piece by piece, bit by bit, all in the hopes that things wouldn’t backfire hideously on me.

The first test has been passed: Cho’gall 25 down, Bastion of Twilight 25 cleared.

This might actually end up working after all.