Fuck Turtles

My poor little guild has been through the wringer for our roster and general attendance.

After struggling to get through Council for a few weeks (after the Horridon struggle – speaking of which, why are they STILL nerfing that fight – and even the occasional wipefest on Jin’rokh for no good reason) we have been struggling to field 10 raiders to face down Tortos.

(Flex raid with 8, pretty please?)

And we’ve been poking at Tortos with a long stick for what feels like ages.

For a while now, I’ve been on kicking duty.

And while every wipe certainly hasn’t been due to kicking-related issues, a considerable amount more than I’m comfortable with were.

If I wanted to be aiming something, I would play an FPS.

What the hell is going on around here?

Seriously?

Guild goes on raiding hiatus.

Weird “this is all your fault” drama with a potential to raid with my old guild.

I filled in here and there, but the start time of 4:30 local just is too tight when I’m in meetings that run until 4:30 on those days. No hard feelings, I think they found another mage anyway. I did get Tortus and Megaera down (still no Council for me).

Now, my GM has stepped down and left his GF in charge because he doesn’t know where he’s living from day to day. (Somehow, his being homeless increases the likelihood of his children having a roof over their heads. I can’t even pretend to understand the intricacies of this guy’s life.)

We’re set to raid again this week, new raid days of Wednesday and Thusday.

But we had a brief interlude where a miracle almost happened.

How does this even happen?

Remember the other day when I said that my guild was on hiatus?

No, that didn’t change.

But the week before I *gasp* offered to gear my priest up since replacing DPS would theoretically be easier than replacing a healer (and with the exception of Tir, we’ve had pretty crappy luck with recruiting healers in the first place).

I was told, no, I should stay on the mage because my damage would be difficult to replace.

Awwww, how sweet.

Didn’t see that coming

As I posted earlier, I was looking forward to trying the QUEST (which apparently involves a draenei porn star).

Log on Thursday evening bearing bad news – Tir’s semester is winding to a close and he’s slammed with homework/studying.

The GM/raid leader was less than enthused, but understood that school is at least slightly more important than wiping all night.

I was on about 30 minutes prior to raid.

There were 4 of us logged and ready to go.

I ran out to the island and popped into the inn. I had my flasks, my feasts, my pots.

Might as well

Tuesday’s raid sort of ran out of steam… and by steam I mean people. So I might as well post.

Tir’s been having a rough week so missed raid as he was passed out before the raid even started, meaning we were out our strongest healer.

Our normal (new) hunter was MIA for something in RL.

We did have a new warlock to replace the last two we burned through in rapid succession. We need a warlock vending machine. Hell, I would be happy with a Healthstone vending machine.

The warrior was busy, but his girlfriend was playing his character. (Much better than she normally does but she was even more talkative than normal. I don’t think she took a breath the whole night.)

We were short our normal heal and DPS spots on top of the absences.

Almost an hour after raid started we had a temporary hunter, a resto druid, and an ele shaman.

Off to Throne of Thunder!

Redemption

A quick follow up to yesterday’s post about failing miserably in ToT and not even being able to clear Jin’rok.

We zoned in on Tuesday night with a new hunter to replace the one we lost.

(If you follow me on Twitter, you might remember me talking about calling a raid early when one of our raiders reported he was puking blood but wanted to wait until the raid was over before going to the ER. Turns out he has a stomach ulcer. He was hoping to continue raiding but hasn’t logged since.)

We had a full complement of healers.

We had a PUG warlock to replace our warlock that suddenly went MIA the other week.

(He logs on via remote chat but won’t talk to anyone. Even if he was hacked or sold his account you would think he would log in to vent to give us a heads up on current events…)

So we entered ToT with a full raid, nearly all guilded.

Embarrassment

Things were going so well.

In a new guild.

Making progress with a nearly full roster.

Then the healers that were supposed to join disappeared.

And so did the next pair.

And the next.

So we slogged through a few weeks of Horridon with various PUG healers; all having their own strats, their own opinions, and apparently all having the worst internet connections in the world (judging by the number of “disconnects” we endured).

The funniest thing about all the PUGS we went through, was that the guild was actually functioning appropriately – we were in the right spots and the right time attacking the right targets, it was the PUGs that were all over the board in skill.

And then it happened.

Tir made a tough decision, but one which I am very proud of him for: there are more important things in life than progression raiding.

He told his 25-man guild that he didn’t have the time available to devote to raiding 4+ nights a week and he left.

There should be an account achievement for an absurd amount of faction transfers. That’s right, he came back home to the Horde. (I don’t care that he started as Alliance, he belongs over here under the red and black.)

Not only did he come back to the Horde, but he moved over to Area 52 and brought all his characters into the guild – including his paladin healer, which we desperately need.

So we had an established roster of 9 and a filler healer lined up. We went in to Jin’rok and were already chatting about our Horridon strat now that we had some competent (and consistent) heals.

Except we didn’t get there.

Making Progress!

Alright, it’s been another week-plus since I had time to write, but there’s been valor to cap and bosses to kill.

Not to loot, just to kill. Because I just get gold.

Anyway…

I am now officially 16/16 in T14 content and ready to step up in to T15 Throne of Thunder.

So I had a bright idea.

I should use the +300 food for the new content, really squeak out that extra bit of DPS.

Hmmm…. I’ve got a DK that’s got cooking up pretty close. I bet I could level his cooking really quick and make my little fish stews to get points!

Moving in to the Barn

I think I need a “not dead yet” tag for posts.

There are three reasons I don’t post:

1. Nothing is happening and/or nothing new is happening and I can only rehash the same rants so many times.
2. There’s lots of new stuff happening but it’s not appropriate to print at all or the timing isn’t quite right.
3. And sometimes there’s just so much happening I don’t have time to post.

Thankfully, my latest week-long hiatus was for the reason behind door number 3.

Last week I posted about moving to greener pastures so it’s only fair I give an update on how that transition is going.

Greener Pastures

Hopefully.

The grass is always greener on the other side, but in my case I think the grass was greener EVERYWHERE.

The Sahara has greener grass. Mars has greener grass.

Raiding on Saturday was terrible.

I use the word “terrible” loosely.

Abysmal. Horrendous. Catastrophic. You get the idea.

It was decided to let the druid healer (punk kid) bring in his hunter and let a new (to the raid but longtime standing guild member and nice guy) take his place as healer.