The Trial Continues...

It just occurred to me... I have no idea how long this trial is supposed to last!

2nd night of the trial and I still feel like everyone knows more than I do... because it's still true :-s 
It might be a progress night for them but they have had a few attempts at these bosses and cleared them on normal... they know what's going on.
I will be doing my headless chicken routine again while everyone else kills the boss.

A couple of drops from the first raid gave me a nice little ilvl boost, and I started upgrading some crafted gear for a bit more, so I was going to be closer in that regard at least.

We were starting on Fel Lord Zakuun...
My original plan of hiding at the back while everyone else dealt with the mechanics came unstuck when nobody was moving to soak the puddles furthest away from the boss. 
Somebody has to do it so I figured it might as well be me and off I went and quickly realised why nobody else wanted to do it... it meant I was out of range of the boss! :-(

It's not about dps, it's about dealing with the mechanics and killing the boss (is what I rehearsed just in case my low dps was mentioned) - I didn't really want to be chasing distant puddles though, I wanted time to watch and learn the fight.

Well... I got the time to learn anyway as we wiped a few times.  There were no major problems, just the usual wipes you expect when learning a fight...
Tanks getting used to the ramp up in damage in P2
Soakers getting used to the movement to avoid the waves of bad stuff (forget dps, that stuff hurts - move!)
Healers getting used to the healing barrier thing

The progress was almost tangible with each wipe until it just came to the point where we needed a clear run without silly mistakes.
This was where my old guild would fall down, those silly mistakes would just keep on coming causing wipe after wipe after wipe.

Here though, it felt different.  It took us 4 more attempts to get that clean run and the kill. 
There was also the feeling that this boss was sorted now.  The feeling that next week might not be a 1-shot but it wouldn't be far off.

On to Socrethar...
Only 2 attempts on this boss but it seems easy enough. 
After the 2nd wipe, they decided to drop half of the raid team and go with 15 people. 

I'm not really sure of the reasoning behind it, something about number of debuffs coming in making it harder with 16+ was mentioned but no idea if it's true (or important). 

Anyway, as a trial, I could see a bench in my future (despite being 3rd on dps) so I volunteered to step out.
It took them 3 more attempts to get the kill which I suppose justifies their decision to go with the smaller team.

Xhul'horac on the final raid night of the week... this boss seems much tougher, a step up to a harder tier of bosses before Archimonde. 

There was much debate about exploding puddles, black holes and interrupting adds all through the night but slowly all those things were sorted out and we closed in for the kill. 
It's a fun fight but it seems quite manic, I was back into headless chicken mode just trying not to blow people up. 

With so many adds around though, Chain Lightning and Earthquake were fantastic, dragging me up to 3rd on the meters for the kill. 

10th boss down in only 10 pulls, incredible!

No great confidence in future kills like on Fel Lord but you never know.  Another week of gear will make those adds go down that little bit faster and the fight that little bit easier.

A few pulls on Tyrant Velhari to round out the week gave us a decent look at the first two phases and I'm confident we can go back to make it 11/13Hc there this week.

I felt so much more comfortable over these two nights than the first and that is almost definitely down to the wipes.

I know I can walk into a raid and avoid the fire so, given a few wipes to see how the fights really shape up, I feel like I can really develop my positioning and movement to make it easier for myself (and to improve my dps)

I'm really enjoying the challenge, trying to compete with the extra gear and experience of the other raiders (and, in particular, the other shaman) and I can feel the gap closing all the time.

I've had no feedback from the officers so I have no idea how they think the trial is going but, even if I don't pass the trial for whatever reason, I will be full of confidence when I apply to another guild.

Happy Raiding!