Frostwolves are back in the saddle again!

Wednesday was here.  Was it safe to say that half of the heroic Frostwolves raiders were on the edges of their seats in excitement?  For me, I spent a lot of the afternoon thinking about that evening.  Tonight we were going to raid as a GUILD, and do heroic Dragon Soul together for the first time in more than 2 months.

It wasn't looking good at first.  After going to those PuG Dragon Souls, Gutsy and I realised that people do want to do Dragon Soul, there are PuGs out there.  We also knew that a few of our heroic raiders were not exactly THRILLED about raiding though they do enjoy current content.  Falln, Voe, Shab, Hwired and Sev are all fantastic players but I can understand they get tired of doing the same thing OVER and OVER.

So, we looked at who wanted to raid.  Az, Roshii, Souglyy, Lushnek, Gutsy and myself were the ones who were dying to raid, were missing raiding.  Sev was happy to come.  Moopie wouldn't mind but he couldn't get on till late.  So, Gutsy started spamming trade chanel.

We got a response from a warrior who was willing to give it a go.  We said that you didn't have to join the guild, all you had to do was join us on Wednesday and Thursday.  We couldn't go back to our heavy raiding schedule, nobody wanted to do that anymore.  2 days seemed like a good compromise as one day was too short.

Shab said to me that he would join us and I was happy because that made another good heroic raider AND I could get buffs and food and a bloodlust.  Now I didn't have to go ring Voe and ask him to come back (not that he was returning my calls anyway - he was probably playing some other game).  Falln definitely was... reluctant.  I knew he probably would be and it was best not to burn him out.  Everyone asked me to talk to Hwired but I didn't want him to get fed up and it was best if he had a break anyway.  But I knew who I COULD talk to.  Someone who was always happy to help but people were often afraid to ask.  I don't know why people were afraid to ask him, maybe it's just because he's in that big position of responsibility and has the final say.  I asked Fueghan our guild leader, who was our tank with the dicky wrist.  And you know what?  He said YES!!!  You see, you never know till you ask.

Boy were we set!  We had 10 people this was great!  I told everyone and Souglyy was so happy to be raiding again, you could hear it in her voice as we talked about it on the phone.  Roshii seemed a bit pessimistic, anxious that it wasn't going to happen.  But I was stoked.

But, on Monday evening I got a tell from the PuG tank telling us he was going to stop playing WoW and spend more time with the family, sorry for letting us down.  I said to him no problem, thanks so much for offering to help and good luck... and then I was back to being anxious again.  Shit, no tank!!!  I looked at my gear.  I COULD tank in a pinch.  I don't really WANT to, but maybe if we can't find a tank, perhaps we can find a healer to make up our group.  I told Gutsy.  He and I both agreed we would start spamming trade again.

I told Roshii.  He was all whiney again.  "Now what's going to happen?  What do we do?  I want to raid!" he said.  I felt like smacking his perky leather clad ass.  "You're an officer!" I said.  "You need to go looking for people to fill our raid as well."

"What about the other officers?  Why don't they help?" asked Roshii.

I counted to 5 for patience.  The other 2 officers, Lush and Sev, were not DYING to raid as much as I was.  Or as much as Souglyy, Aza, Roshii and Gutsy were.  They were happy to come but they could live without raiding.  How do you get someone who doesn't want something as badly as you do to do your job for you?  No, I'm not going to leave it to them, force my wishes on them.  I want to raid, I will do something about it.  And Roshii should be the same, if he wants it as bad as I do, he should go get it.  So I told him to spam trade channel for someone, because... well because it's not the responsibilty of the officers to do things for everyone, if you want something you have to be willing to do the work to get it done.  He said he would.  But I grinned inside, knowing Roshii would rather have it all done for him :P

Gutsy showed me his macro and I said it was good.  He had Tuesday off, so he would spend the afternoon spamming trade.  Around lunchtime I got a text message from him saying he found a 397 geared DK who can DPS/tank and played as a shaman healer in the guild We Raid Backwards, a good guild on our server.  Sounded good, because then he would know the fights.  I was really really looking forward to the evening.  We were raiding!  Doing heroics!  We could do the fights OUR way, not someone else's way (and though we were happy to do it someone else's way when it's their PuG without making a fuss, boy are we happy to do it our own way which works well for us!).

So I logged in just before 8pm to hear Aza and Moopie talking about the new DK tank that appeared in the guild.  Looks like he got invited to the guild, by Roshii.  I looked at his name... I KNOW that guy!  Seven (with funny accents on his name)! And of course Moo and Aza did too because they raided with him in Cymre's guild Mischiefus before.  I asked them if he was good and they said yes.  Well, the evening was looking more and more promising!

Everyone was online at the right time.  We got the raid together and we started heading down.  I got there, and I couldn't remember which direction the raid instance was.  Lushnek laughed because everyone could see my dot on the map and said I was going the OPPOSITE direction of the instance.  I felt a bit stupid - DUH Navi, just follow the other dots!!!  Hey, it's been a while since we raided, OK?

Gutsy whispered me "We'll probably have a few wipes because we're all a bit rusty, so we shouldn't get our hopes up too high."  Souglyy on the other hand, said "I am so excited!   With the 30% nerf, I'm sure we'll get Boat down with NO hassles! Nav, it's SO GOOD to be raiding again!"

Gutsy brought food and flasks.  He told us off for not being prepared to raid but it had been 2 months since we raided so all our guild raid supplies had gone down or were sold on the AH.  I said "Hey, you're the one who's been still raiding all this time, of course you're going to be more prepared than the rest of us!"  I had spell power food for myself and enough for the other casters.

So, Morchok, 2 healing.  Gutsy said it would be easy now, so I said OK, but since he was the one who was still in the swing of healing, he could do Morchok side, I'll do Porkchop.  And it went ok.  The only person who died... was Gutsy.  Well, so much for being rusty... since HE was the one with the most raiding experience lately.  Heh.

On to Zon'ozz.  LOL our rustiness showed there.  Fue tanked the boss really close to where we were standing and the ball was sent off towards the blue.. and we were all standing at the purple.  Az ran his ass off to bounce it back and we tried to recover but I was busy laughing at our "Whoops I've forgotten how to do this" moment that we ended up bouncing it between ourselves accidentally and it hit the wall and we wiped.  But it wasn't too bad a moment really, so we decided to keep trying it that way.  Gutsy laughed, saying it was like a half our way and half  The Empire's way (The Empire is the guild who Gutsy PuG raids with).  So we modified this positioning and got Lushnek healing and we got it down easily enough.  Seven got the achievement for Heroic Zon'ozz and then on to Yor'sahj, my favourite fight.  That went down pretty easily too.  In fact it went down so fast, we really could see the nerf in action.  Roshii was really good, stepping up his officer role.  He called out stuff and didn't once get angry at anyone and was pretty cool.  We were proud of our new officer.

Off to Hagara, and silly us forgot to explain to Seven the new things about the fight, and so he didn't run to get dispelled in ice phase.  Once we told him what to do we had another wipe because people died and then we got it down, but hell the kill was damn messy.   We laughed - it was messy yes, but we're rusty!!!

Ultraxion was next, and we were a bit short on people to take the twilights, so the third one was Shab and Gutsy with guardian spirit.  Hopefully we would kill Ultraxion before we get to the 6th one, and yes we did.  Gutsy that twit took my red crystal!  He laughed at me and said I was too slow, but I told him that green and blue were useless for a druid, so he can heal it by himself next time LOL.  But it was so easy to heal (I took green for the sake of taking something) that we teased Gutsy that he was healing it solo next time.

Then on to boat.  The raid breaker.  I admit I was nervous, would it break us again?  Souglyy whispered me "We can do this Nav!  I bet we'll get it easy!"  Gotta love her, she's always so optimistic, she makes me feel better when I'm in self doubt!

Suddenly, while we were eating our food, Roshii was dead.  What the... "Crap I hit autorun button!"  We all laughed.  Rusty indeed!

So we started, quickly gave Seven the low down on the fight... which was... "The difference between this and normal is that there is FIRE EVERYWHERE!"

The Empire's strat was to kill the drakes and ignore swirlies.  And wow did those drakes go down fast.  We wiped once or twice, but we got it!  RAID BREAKER DEFEATED!!!!

I was ecstatic. We were RAIDING.  We were KILLING STUFF.  And we still had the mojo, the skills.  I missed it.  I was so proud of us, we were heroic raiders again.  I looked at the clock.  It was only 9:30pm!  One and half hours and 6 heroic bosses down?  Not bad for a bunch of rusty old snow dogs eh?

We spent the rest of the night on Spine.  When we started Gutsy said "I see a problem.."  I looked around... What problem?

"There's a chicken on his back."

Ohhhhh.  That problem.  Forgot to tell Lushnek he was healing for spine and dispelling.  Oh well, that's OK, we gave it a go and Gutsy went to the wrong tendril to stand and got thrown off with the roll.  Sev said cheekily "Gutsy, Frostwolves stand at the back left tendril not the front left one :P" because obviously that's what his other guild have been doing.  I think Gutsy should cut back his drinking before raiding because he was playing really oddly last night.  Probably everyone would be saying how is that different from normal, but he obviously plays well with The Empire because he just about outgears me now on that scrub alt.

Well, we had a few bashes, got the plate off but we needed a lot of ironing out.  Timing for the adds.  Timing for the grip.  Timing our own healer cooldowns.  We had to fiddle with Lushnek's healbot so he could see what to dispel and then he wasn't sure what he was supposed to be healing afterwards, but I didn't know an intelligent way of saying "Everything!" because damn, mana is an issue and healing is an issue with all those horrible debuffs we have to heal off.  I really miss having a shaman right about now for mana.  Fue couldn't see what was going on and so Roshii was in charge of calling out when to start and stop DPS for the amalgamation. 

So, a great night!  Fantastic fun!  It was so good to be together again, and even better, we got a keen new recruit too.  Seven seemed happy because he got 5 new heroic kills on his DK, and I hope he will stay - because we now have a full Frostwolves heroic raiding team again.

Comments

  1. I can hear the joy in your voice. Despite excuses of rust, it's clear you've got a team working together. That is a worthy reward despite wipes. It sounds like you did better than you expected with the nerfs helping, right?

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    1. We did, Kallixta! It was so much better than I expected. Those nerfs did help a lot - having the nerfs covered up our rustiness. Now that we're warmed up, a whole night of spine sounds like fun hahahaha.

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  2. Woo-hoo! I'm glad to hear that the Frostwolves are getting their raiding groove back!

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    1. Yay! Me too! We haven't got much time to raid really with Prepatch hitting soon :)

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. Didn't mean to delete that. I said:
      Congrats on the raiding, guildies!

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  4. I am so happy for you guys!!!! Screw the Wankerhorn :)

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    1. Wooo! Ty Dragonray :D It was good to kick that raidbreaker in the BALLS.

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  5. Was good fun, I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed raiding, even if my brain was only half working last night.

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    1. I think your brain was working perfectly. You still had your normal left-right dyslexia.

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  6. Was good fun.. Time to kill spine :) -Rosh

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  7. Congrats :)

    We're fighting with an open tenth spot right now... I think we have it filled now but it's been rough.

    Heroic ship is a royal pain - we're working on that right now :/ The fire is sooo buggy.

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    1. That boat killed our will to raid. Even though we had defeated it, it still seemed so random! Good luck in there Askevar :D

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  8. Good luck on Spine and hopefully Madness!

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  9. I can never figure out why I find reading raid posts where you are talking in Hungarian to me so interesting. Even though I haven't a clue what the porkchops and swirlies and reds and greens are it must be your excitement to be raiding again I feel. Grats! I'm happy you're happy!

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    1. You are always my biggest supporter my friend :)

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  10. Grats Navi!

    I have to admit I am jealous....SR burned out on raiding early in DS....my raiding bug is killing me lol.

    But grats again! Good to see you all kicked the raidbuster's arse.

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