The Times They are a Changing

With the practice (and the ilvl boost) we are finally making progress in heroics. 
A couple more first kills, Orgegorger and Ka'graz (bit of a fluke), and we are now up to 4/10HC.

Ix was away one night and we had an excellent night of wipes on Oregorger (George) with Kissez leading the raid. 
No kill but it was a lot of fun and we came very close on a couple of occasions, with one agonising wipe at 200k HP.  That's Touch of Death territory but alas, we don't have a monk.

We played around with a few different tactics for the rolling phase but found our best to be splitting into two groups, melee and ranged.  Melee would concentrate on the inside while ranged focussed on the outer boxes, following me to keep safe.

Now, I am normally fine with avoiding the giant rolling Goren and it was even my suggestion that people could follow me if they weren't too sure themselves... cue a succession of attempts with me making poor decisions, getting hit, running down blind alleys etc. 
Bloody typical!  I say people can follow me then fall to pieces and get them all killed... repeatedly.

Of course, I was the butt of a few jokes for a while.  Follow Sol... to your death!
It was all good fun though and we all improved to the point that we were seeing the later phases a lot more often.

The kill didn't come that night but we knew it was close.  Next raid night Ix wanted to have another go at Imperator Mar'gok but was convinced to go back into BRF for another go at George.
The decision paid off immediately!  First pull of the night and George was no more.

I expected us to go to Darmac next, we had been making some decent progress on the fight and didn't look too far away from a kill.  Instead, Ix took us to Flamebender Ka'graz...

We had a few looks at the fight, adjusted positioning etc and made small improvements but didn't really look very close to a kill... until, on the final attempt of the night, it just died!
It was quite incredible, none of our other attempts made it past 50% but everything just came together on that one attempt.

So, two new bosses down in one night.  One with the first pull, one with the last.
The team selection decisions are finally paying off in terms of progress, the team always feels capable of killing something even if we don't always manage it.

But, as Artosis would say... At what cost?
Sign-ups have been dropping gradually, those on the periphery of the team knowing they aren't going to be picked are just not bothering to turn up. 

We need to be more inclusive, find a balance between pushing progression and playing as a guild rather than a 10-man team within a guild.  Or so I thought...

In the past week there has been talk of a merger with another guild on Arathor, bringing the two raid rosters together to form one team capable of clearing content and with the numbers to eventually attempt Mythic should we get that far.

A trial raid was arranged, a run through BRF normal, and all available raiders from both sides joined in.

It was a fun night, we killed 8/10 including a kill on Blast Furnace which was progress for both guilds.  We even had a follow-up night, killing Iron Maidens and making excellent progress on Blackhand himself  (11% was our best attempt, closing in on the kill)

Both nights have been very positive and we are planning joint raids for the next two weeks to see how things go.  We seem like a very good match in both skill and attitude so I'm hopeful it will become something more permanent.

I love raiding is a bigger group, the atmosphere is great and the fights just feel more epic.  It really made me realise how much I've missed the 25-man raids of my former horde guild.
To be honest, it just feels like this is the way it was meant to be done.