Weekend Adventures
The idea of a WoW blog originally sprang from me spamming my personal blog every Monday with tales of my weekends in WoW. As a German player on American servers that’s when I have it going on, with instances, etc. Everyone who comes here should get used to me rambling on Mondays. 
This last Saturday, I led another Gruul and Magtheridon raid, with girls from my guild, plus friends from our guild alliance. I wasn’t anywhere as nervous as I was the first time round, but I can safely say I prefer the ease of 10-man raids. For 25-man raids, there are obstacles to smooth experiences. People not showing up. People spamming you with whispers for invites. Assigning everyone into the groups they want to be in for best buffage. I made the mistake of inviting early and then someone I had counted on and who needed Mags for the Champion title suddenly not filling in, and the person I had squeezed in refusing to leave, because of wanting a specific piece of loot. My blood pressure is rising just reading it again, aargh. So, hats off to those of you who regularly lead 25-man raids, you are stronger people than me.
We had 16 people from my guild, 9 from the guild alliance, and we started about 15 minutes after official raid start time, which I guess is alright for big raid leader noob that I am. It helped that everyone was reaaaally on time and well prepared.
As for the raid, it went smooth, baby, smooth. I don’t know, I was a bit alarmed, because I had heard that our allied guild had tried Magtheridon twice recently and always had to call it because people just weren’t focused enough. In we went to HKM, where we promptly wiped, because Krosh ran over to where I wanted to pick up Maulgar, and I promptly died after a blast wave and two hits by Maulgar himself. We wiped it, went in again, I nudged hunters to put Misdirect on during the countdown, not afterwards (duh!) and we killed Maulgar and his chumps. Now let me introduce you to someone special in my life: Skirting. She’s that handsome druid over there, and she’s played by my partner. See the sparkly shoulders she’s sporting? /facepalm
It had been my goal to get the T4 shoulders. I won them last time fair and square but gave the token to my crappily-geared off-tank. This time Skirting was the off-tank, only one Defender token dropped, and I lost the roll. There’s nothing more bitter than losing the roll on something you covet so much to a person you love, heh! She hearthed to Shattrath, grabbed new shoulders, enchant and gems, and then we went in and one-shot Gruul. It was a really flawless kill, we only had one death in the raid, and that was at about 5% on him. I think druids do have an easier time as off-tank on Gruul. She took all Hurtful Strikes but two, for considerably less damage than our warrior tank last time. Of course we also killed him faster, in 11 growths. No ground-breaking record, but not bad at all.
We moved on to Magtheridon, swapping two hunters for a rogue and a moonkin, and went on to one-shot him as well. I have no idea what was different from our allied guild’s raids, but the channelers went down nice and easy, the infernals were mostly under control, and despite later seeing that I took some heavy hits (worst for 10k), my health never seemed to be down much. I had the help of an experienced guy from the other guild to call out cube clicking, because while tanking Mags I have this tunnel view of him and my action bar. I ended up rage-starved quite a lot which was annoying, but other than that, Magtheridon is as tank and spank as it gets, to the point of boring.
Two hour raid, two 25-man raid bosses down, and feeling like an accomplished raid leader, that was my weekend. Now I am trying to figure out if it’s worth running Gruul one more time, for the blasted shoulders, or to pray for the shoulders from the first chest in Zul’Aman. We’ll see if I can lay my greedy hands on them this coming ZA.
September 29th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
The trick to leading 25 Mans, is to delegate. One person for healers, one for physical dps, one for ranged, and one for tanks (which could be yourself). Have them get in touch with their base, and you manage them.
However, it sounds like you did a great Job solo-ing both raids =D
Yakra´s last blog post..Illidan Kill Two, and Return to SSC
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September 29th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
@Yakra: Nah, I didn’t solo it, I don’t think anyone could. I picked someone for healing assignments, I assigned hunter MDs to tanks, and had a melee DPSer run the cube clicking show on Magtheridon. I am not that uber. I am very much enamored by our healers, we have fantastic ones. All but two of the healers were from my guild.
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September 29th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
The past couple times that we went in to Mags with mostly us and not as many of you ladies, we had a lot of people doing newer roles - some new healers, some new tanks, and some dps that hadn’t raided much yet. So it just stacked against us. I’m glad my being on cold meds this Saturday didn’t hurt my healing too much.
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admin Reply:
September 29th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
You did great on healing, Dusk. I hope you will tell your guys for me that you rocked. We really couldn’t do stuff like this without you great people from SHP. Much <3
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September 29th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Great to hear your stories; I look forward to monday’s news. Yeah I have tremendous admiration for our raid leaders; I think it just takes a ton of skill and practice over a long time. I’m sure they get all that stuff happening you mention; but as a mere raider who shows up, I hear none of it. Things go quiet, we all take an afk, they sort it out and back we go. I’m sure its very hard work.
Bloody t4 shoulders - yeah I still use mine all the time. I hope you get yours soon.
Well, we killed a new boss in BT this w/e - teron gorefiend, which was very satisfying. First new boss for a while. Looks likes people’s enthusiasm is up again to keep progressing right up till wrath, which is fantastic. We may see illidan yet.
Personally, I’m looking forward to aoe tanking, and the removal of crushing blows more than anything. Teron crushed me (druid) twice in a row last week for 9k each. I died right after. Needless to say, our warrior doesnt get crushed nearly as often. I think the core of our guild is looking forward to the days when any tank will do for any fight… what a relief.
Lol, tried to get a ZA run going too, and once again spent ~1hour looking for prot pally with 9 people waiting, checking gear, having the pally show up. then finding out that he’s already saved, the damn noob
I dont really do ZA anymore because of prot pallies (the lack thereof).
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admin Reply:
September 29th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Haha, my co-worker told me of the horrors of Teron Gorefiend today, as he got the debuff to fight the constructs seven times in a row and always failed.
And I am looking forward to post-patch ZA, to rock the Eagle gauntlet and the dragonhawks. I am all for making the tank classes all equally strong!
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September 30th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Was a good read and will bookmark for further tails (thanks to tankspot for the link). I enjoyed it reminded me of when I was starting out in Gruuls, and Mags.
As #1 pointed out delegation is the key to sanity in a 25 man raid instance. I cut my raid leading teeth in SSC/TK, and I tried to control everything. After awhile there is just to much to micro-manage and you have to assign people to help out.
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admin Reply:
September 30th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Thanks for the nice words. It sometimes feels so silly to blog about old content, but I am hoping to be part of the 10-man progression curve in WotLK and not lag behind so much.
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September 30th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Hello there popped over from tankspot
Nice blog gona look around
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