TWIW - Week One

This week in WoW...

So... Wednesday's raid.
RL turned up 1 minute before raid start (and it was another 15mins before he was on mumble) so we were, of course, late getting started.
We could get away with this kind of thing a lot more on 10man but it's intrinsically more difficult to organise the 25man anyway so we have to be much sharper right from the start. 
Add in the horrendous impression it gives to new recruits and it's just unacceptable.

Anyway, back to the raid...
By the time we got started, we only needed to pug one extra player and were lucky enough to bring in Noxxus (friend of the guild and heroic-geared, super-rogue!).
Immerseus was one-shot and went down at around 9.45pm :-s
Then RL left to sort out some stuff at home.

At this point I was wondering if the night would just peter out into nothing until...

In came super-rogue's friend super-shammy!  :-)
Took a while to get him in, on mumble etc but then things picked up nicely.  Both of the super-pugs slaughtered us on the meters and definitely made a big difference as we killed the next few without any major problems. 
6 bosses down with only a wipe on Fallen Protectors where we missed interrupts on Gloom.  Gloom takes much longer to go down in 25man so we just set up a chain of interrupts for the next attempt and had no problems.

The new guys performed fairly well although they did die quite often.  I need to check the logs to see what was actually killing people as I wasn't paying that much attention at the time. 

Raid Tactics 
I think we need to change approach slightly with the new people...
Instead of giving them a full run-down of the tactics, just point out the major things that can kill them (or wipe the raid) and the main priority of the fight.

For example...Norushen
Stack on the colour.
When big beam of death comes, move to the colour we call out.
Kill adds before boss.

30 seconds max to do that.  I know it's one of the more straight-forward bosses but still, it can be done that easily for most of them.  The key is to be prepared, think about how you will explain the boss in advance, think about which information is actually important.
Take out all of the fluff and it allows new raiders to focus on only a couple of things, they will learn the fight so much quicker.

Loot
Still an absolute pain in the arse.  It takes too long and it's too easy to make a mistake.  With each slew of new people I get a fresh bombardment of questions for every piece of loot.

I need to get Xloot working but don't feel like I have time in the raid to mess around with it.

Thursday Night...

I couldn't stand another night of apathy and frustration so have finally decided to just take control.  Speaking with our RL earlier in the day, I decided to take over all raid-prep activities including picking the team and making sure they were all raid-ready.

After getting 6 down on Wednesday, I was actually quite hopeful that we could push on from there and get a few more down. 

Unfortunately, of the 20 that had signed up only 16 were online for raid start. 

I put this down almost entirely to the ridiculously poor example we have set for our raiders over the past few weeks.  I'm not even sure if we can, in good faith, penalise those that didn't turn up without coming across as hypocritical.

Anyway, in this new era of action rather than dithering, I picked a team for 10man to kill a few bosses and hopefully get some new guys some loot.  We even started on time...almost.

Tried to get as many of the new guys (who had decent gear) in as possible.

It was a nice mix of people to be honest.  Some had done the bosses before but still needed gear, some had never done the bosses on normal. 

I tried to follow my own advice of keeping the tactics brief and pertinent (which I am failing miserably at in this post) to save time and allow people to have a look at the fights.  It seemed to work really well.  We had a sighter at each boss then killed it and moved on, finally succumbing to Thok after a devastatingly close 4m HP wipe.

Stand out performer of the night had to be Gonado (new Holy Paladin) who, after only a couple of raids with us, is giving Khal a run for his money on most fights.

Comedy moment of the night unfortunately came from me joining the wrong side on Spoils.  It was only when Khal said "Are we missing someone over here?" that I realised and jumped, shame-faced, back across to the correct side.  Any potential for claiming it was deliberate to boost dps on that side was ruined when I exclaimed "Oh shit, it's me!"

Monday

Bank holiday so no surprise that sign ups are low, hopefully enough will turn up for a 10man capable of killing Garrosh.  I would go as far as to say that the guild really needs the boost of grabbing the kill for some new guys.  It would raise morale and show all our new recruits that we are competent in some areas at least, as well as giving them something to aim for (getting in the Monday 10man) if we continue to struggle with numbers.

Elsewhere in WoW...

Had no time for the rogue but the bags are much appreciated.  He's up to 48 now and in Searing Gorge.  I usually find 48 to around 64 goes very quickly before I really slow down until around 78.  I'm really interested to see how my XP potions affect the levelling.  Going to pop one once I start questing in Borean Tundra, then pop the next once I get to Sholazar Basin (which I would skip if it wasn't for the potion).

Bags...

Pushing Chunlao (Priest tailor) through August Celestials dailies for the Royal Satchel pattern.  Also doing Tillers dailies to get a full farm going so I can plant Songbell for extra Motes of Harmony.  

Once those are completed I can start producing the bags.

Windwool cloth is so common that I'm not even counting that in the process.

1 bag takes 12 Imperial Silk.

Daily cd produces 1 silk.

3 Spirits of Harmony produce 1 silk.

1.6 Harmonies per day from the farm = 0.53 silk per day

1.53 silk per day means 1 bag every 8 days.

I'm fairly confident that Spirits of Harmony will be at least BoA when the pre-patch comes along which should boost production and allow me to kit out a few more of my chars then.  I might hold a few bags back though to sell in the new expac. 

The real question is... can I be bothered to do these dailies yet again?

Once I have the pattern it would only leave the planting/farming to do, and I would need to log that char for the daily cd anyway.  That it's only short-term is what's keeping me going at the moment.

New Feature (as opposed to the long-standing blog features) coming soon...

Spotlight on...

This feature will be me picking on one of our raid members for the week, analyse the logs, look at their playstyle, and tear them to shreds... or something like that.  First up will be a noob horde shammy... when he pulls his finger out and actually gets me some logs.