Back to the salt mines

Ok, starting off the new year took a bit longer than I had planned on here. I normally write these over my lunch breaks at work and I haven’t had a lot of time lately, coupled with the fact that I had nearly 2 weeks off for the holidays and last week was a short week.

But in that time I’ve had a chance to do some comtemplatin. I’ve mentioned a few times I started raiding on 2 toons. What I haven’t said is that’s the pressure is on to move at least one of my toons to a raid guild.

My hunter’s raid has been really cool with this and has never even so much as asked me to move. I think they’d be cool if I did but they know who I am and while they are really good and are among the server’s oldest raid groups, they aren’t pushy either.

My druid, on the other hand, gets a request a week – sometimes more often. Usually I re-describe my goals, offer to step aside if that is a requirement and will even help them find someone who is willing to move. But I’m not willing. Don’t get me wrong, I like these folks. A couple of them need a whack upside the head once in a while but nothing too serious and there’s nobody among them I wouldn’t pug for. But the requests are getting a little old and they are stepping up a little too. Last time someone said they really wanted “everyone in Kara 1 in the guild” to make it easier to contact everyone. They have a web page, and a list – how much easier would it be to contact people?

Meh… like I said, the pressure is increasing. I may have to have a chat with someone – or they may ask me to go. Or maybe I should just join them. My own guild is cool, but they aren't into raiding. I think i fI explained it they'd encourage me to put a toon there, so long as I don't abandon my own roots entirely.

Kara on Friday – What … a … mess

Apparently not everyone was ready for the run last Friday night. (our first offical post-holiday run) There was a lot of chatter on vent, making it hard to hear anything I needed to know. The RL looted himself a cape that I think at least someone might have rolled on (we run open rolls on non-tier 4) and we wiped more than usual … okay ... we wiped a whole lot, especially on the bosses leading to Curator, which no raid group our level should be doing at our stage of progression. All this happened the week after they cleared Kara and 1-shotted every boss, in a single night. (yeah they ran while everyone was on vaca – pug’s from TK I think).

After we got the giant mechanical wonder, “The Gallery is for museum guests only…” we called it. My bear’s raid has a lot of experienced raiders in it, most of them know each other. They all said – thanks for coming – we need to have a little chat and we’ll talk to you all next week.

Apparently the raid officers had a very long chat – some 2 hours or so. The upshot was that our RL got his head handed to him for not controlling the raid, the loot thing etc. Now, I’m not one who likes to see someone lose a pound of flesh, but I came ready, spent the dough to be prepared and was on time. So yeah, it was annoying. The whole danged night was a shambles and I went to bed mad. So I’m glad they worked it out.

I ran into the raid leader on Sunday and pugged his Kara 2 group with my hunter – since that one hadn’t been saved yet this week. It went okay – though I must say I think it can still go better.

I like the way my hunter’s raid works. The RL is nice, not afraid to lay the smack down if called for, but not a jerk either. He also calls out a lot of little perks, like reminding ppl to use trinkets, or when to use a certain spell in a certain fight, etc. I think one could learn from the other.