Tuesday, March 18, 2008

5 Weeks, a Weekend and Raiding Inconsistency

Haven't written much in last few days, just been busy with work and when I wasn't was stuck in Kara raids. With not much time to channel my thoughts In that time. Didn't feel like writing much here to say the least today. But Its maintenance day and my day off from work thankfully so I guess some time to write something of whatever comes to mind. Yet I really don't feel that motivated to write today either.

So lets see, last week was a real dump for 5 man Heroics picked up around 15 Badges for the week which wasn't that thrilling but its more badges all the same. On Friday/Saturday/Sunday after a full day of working as soon as I got home and logged on I was in a Kara raid until I logged off a few hours later and went to bed. Rinse and repeat all weekend. For that I picked up 9 Badges. That basically left me a bit tired and sleepy all weekend. Monday night or last night the guild did not have a scheduled raid so after logging on for a few minutes I just logged off and called it and early nap. So that's been the last several days. So its good to just have a day off to rest a bit.

Karazhan Progress
Well on Friday the guild put together a raid team for Kara. This is about our guilds 5th week in Kara so far and overall things are not consistent. Unlike our first 2 weeks in Karazhan we had a very good team of Tanks/DPS/Healers who were consistently the same on every run for that 2 weeks shooting all the bosses. 3-5 Weeks later the only thing consistent about the raid team makeup is both Tanks (Warrior MT, Galo OT) and 1 or 2 dps one being the guilds GM the Warlock which is also the guild highest dpser. Pretty much every raid that roster changes to just whoever is logged on at raid time or after. The regular group members we had before are nowhere to be seen or log on for raids inconsistently. Yet those members are our best players and best geared currently also. Being a small guild has it challenges with enough people logged, logged on working on gear on or elsewhere playing their alts. We also lost one of our guilds highest dpser and raid member a Hunter that was a really good player who quit. He was also my Heroics sidekick also.

So Friday we started the raid 1.5 hours late due to some newer guild members needing to complete their Kara key quest in BM, so the entire raid was on hold. We eventualy started and shot the first 4 Bosses no problem. We had no CC on Moroes, as we had none of our usual Priests or none of our 2 usual Hunters. Though we had one hunter in raid for some reason he did not trap. So I basically Exorcism one the Warriors adds, drop Judgement the other and OT Moroes while the group eventually dps them when the other 2 adds were down. I Healed on Maiden as usually pretty easy. Opera was R&J we did that no problem. Next up was Curator and at about that point right there progress ended for the night. We wipped on Curator over and over due to DPS not being able to manage and get the flares down in time as well as positioning. So we called it a night.

On Saturday we had a different DPS/Healer raid makeup and also had to reclear all the trash back to Curator. We wipe 1 or 2 more times I can remember. Next attempt we got him down which took 8mins and 45sec with the DPS/Healers spread out in a half circle behind the tanks. We also had the DPS warrior in the group on the flares also with the range dps since they had so much trouble on the flares. We got him down. We moved on to clear trash to the Shade of Aran from that point as well having to clear for new members doing their Kara quests. On way clearing trash some members had constant high latency issues as well as disconnect issues. Both these are very common on almost every raid which is a time soak. In the end we never got to Aran due 2 members being disconnected. I had to eventually go as it was late having to ready for my next day early rise for work.

Sunday the guild was back to Kara with a different DPS/Healer mix or 2-3 people and had to reclear trash to get to Aran. We also had a new guild priest as a healer in the raid who joined that day the guild. We had some the same problems with people having latency issues and disconnect issues. To be honest I really find this annoying and a big issue during every raid. We got to Aran and had to explain the fight to many who have never seen it before. I was changing gear for the fight when it started and I was still changing gear to spell dmg gear. In the first 10 sec of the fight Aran did Flame Wrath. Well I didn't notice it since I was fixing my gear, I took 2 steps from the door to Arans room I got caught in Flame Wrath we wipe. Yeah my fault I admit to it. 2nd attempt we started about a min into fight Aran did Flame Wrath and someone else moved, we wiped. As soon as the raid wiped the Priest who joined the guild that day gquit just like that with no word. So now we were out a healer and none the other various guild healers were on. We could not get a replacement. So we 9 man to the chest event and completed the chest event.

Though we downed a few bosses, some people got a few upgrades. Ask me how was the weekend raiding, it wasn't fun in my own opinion. I would rather say It Sucked!

3 comments:

Nibuca said...

Ouch!

We've never quite run into that problem.. but we have run into weeks where we have too many undergeared alts and we aren't able to make it past Maiden.

It's hard to get a consistent group. The only way we've been able to do it is to declare certain raid nights. One of the runs of the regular group starts at 8:30 on Wednesday. That way everyone who wants to go knows to be on then if they want an invite. Invites go out at 8:15-sigh and if we don't have enough people we call it. We haven't had to call it in a bunch of weeks.

Keep your chin up.

Nibuca
http://chicanery.fibergeek.com/

Ardent Defender said...

All our Raid times are posted every week. Most days enough time in advance usually. Today it wasn't but usually it is.

grumpus said...

Do you guys do sign ups on a website with something like phpRaider? The guild I am in does invites 30 minutes before raid time and replacements from people in the signup queue 15 minutes before. I think it helps! Get an eyeball for who wants to go and also let them see there are plenty of others clamoring for their spot. Mind you this might be harder with a smaller guild. :s

Either way that really does suck. Good luck! some weeks are just misery. :/