United by...

Fate?

The joint raiding trial is now over and it has been a huge success.  We've made some nice progress and we've had a lot of fun doing it.

A meeting was held between the chiefs and they have come up with a plan to bring the two guilds together permanently under one banner.

I'll be honest... as well as the raiding had gone, I was expecting the worst from the meeting and it to all end in ruins.  I'm not normally this negative or pessimistic but I have lost a lot of confidence in the current leadership and our absent GM.

My fears were unfounded though and the guilds will officially come together this weekend!  We are having a mini-event to commemorate the union but I'm not sure if I will be able to make it which is a shame.

Dawn of a new era...
We'll be in an excellent position roster-wise with 20+ raiders, setting us up nicely for Mythic should we prove capable.

From what I have seen so far, quite a large number of the raiders will be capable of making the step up while some will still need to make improvements in their play.
It's the usual indicators I'm looking at... dancing the presses on Hans and Franz, negotiating the maze on Oregorger, avoiding the spears on Darmac etc etc.

The basic awareness and movement stuff, not the numbers, are what's important in my opinion.  Once you have that stuff sorted, then it's the numbers :-)
I have been top of the dps charts in most fights lately but it's that part of my game that I'm most pleased with, dealing with the mechanics and avoiding the avoidable.

One worry I do have is about the loot system.  We've always used a DKP system which has it's flaws but works well for us, zero loot drama.
They want to continue with the DKP for most loot but introduce a Loot Council for tier pieces.

I am guessing that the thinking behind this is that they can fill out sets and make the raid as a whole stronger, rather than have the whole raid having parts of the set but no bonus.

It's an admirable aim but I have doubts about their (or anyone's) ability to implement it properly and fairly without causing loot drama.  Loot drama is probably the biggest danger to a successful guild and I don't think it's worth the risk.

I also don't think it's necessary these days.  We have normal mode to blast through a few times and pick up tier pieces, fill out our sets.

It basically comes down to trust though... I trust our DKP system more than I trust any of the officers from either guild to get the Loot Council right.

Raiding this week...
Another excellent week for us with 2 more progress bosses down!

Kromog...
We were making real headway on the fight but it was incredibly difficult, health bars spiking low over and over again putting massive pressure on the healers.

A quick calculation said we could afford an extra healer and still beat the enrage so I hearthed back to my garrison to dust off my healing gear!  It's certainly been a while, and no doubt I made a few mistakes, but it turned out to be a great decision.

The extra healing stabilised us and kept people out of those risk areas, and the extra healing cooldowns certainly helped.

Next attempt he was down!

Personally, I was well out of practice as a healer but I really enjoyed it as a change of pace.  My gear had been gathering dust in the bank for a while and was far from optimised so I ended up using a combination of my dps and healing gear.

My talents were all over the place too so, to be honest, I'm just glad I was able to get the numbers out to hold my own.  Hopefully it bought the other healers some breathing space so they could show off their skills and do all the fancy stuff to get us the kill.

Operator Thogar...
Back to dps for this one as we could immediately tell it was a lot less punishing on the healers.
Despite it being our first time on heroic we were high on confidence after the Kromog kill so hunting another kill right from the start.

I figured that, apart from the trains, meter-whoring would be our biggest problem.  Men-at-Arms and Flamemenders staying alive too long as our dps went full AoE, I tried to stress it before and during the fight that these adds needed to die as fast as possible.

It worked to a certain extent, enough anyway, as we made good progress through the fight up until the second split.
In that split we seemed to suddenly lose traction and a few people would go down.

This happened on 2 or 3 attempts in a row and we knew that the fight was basically ours if we could come through that phase in good shape.
Ix made a great call to use Heroism in that split to help healing and the reduced number of dps burn down the major targets.

It was a masterstroke!  Just what we needed, and we flowed through that phase comfortably and into the final stretch.
It all seemed easy from that point onwards as we strolled to the finish line, barely breaking sweat.

Thogar was down!

Two progress bosses in one night, fantastic!

I couldn't record the kills as I was getting a bit of lag which was a shame but Vorosh managed to capture the Thogar kill.  Whether the embarrassment of being hit by a train will stop him sharing it with the rest of the guild remains to be seen  :-)

I had a fantastic week for loot...
Tier helm from Kromog allowed me to shuffle a few things around and replace both my 670ilvl legs and ring, great result!
Trinket from Darmac and Mythic shield from my follower missions and now I only have tier pieces at 670ilvl!

All that's left to do now is upgrade my tier pieces from normal to heroic (which I'll be trying to do with Seals so others can fill their sets) and a couple of itemisation upgrades (which, again, I'll only take if nobody else needs them).
The trinket from Blackhand would be nice though :-)

Side Projects...
I braved the lfr as tank over the weekend.  I made a couple of mistakes but was generally fine.  I may even do it again this weekend!

Slowly levelling a hunter towards max level.  She's currently at level 50 which is much further than I've ever managed on any other hunter.
The heirlooms make it mindless but messing around with Disengage keeps it fun.

The big test, as always for me, will be when I hit 'old' Nagrand at around level 64.
I always hit a wall there and it's a struggle for me until I reach level 78 and go to Icecrown.
It's very strange I know, and I have no idea why I don't like those levels/zones, but it always follows the same pattern.

If I make it through, I will probably use this char to test the 'no gold' gearing method.

Wish me luck!