When the guild doesn’t fit

I’ve learnt a big lesson in the last five weeks about what’s it’s like if you’re just in a guild that doesn’t suit. In the past month I’ve gone from a mental space where I loved healing and logging on to heal with my guildies to hating my my druid, hating myself and hating my healing  in a really short space of time.  And the most ridiculous part is that I pretty much did all that to myself without much outside input.

I really wasn’t enjoying my time healing in the new guild. A week into my trial the healing lead had a quick whispered conversation that he felt my numbers were a bit low and that they’d be watching them when  we moved off farm and into progression again. Instead of taking a deep breath and remembering that they were an established team on farm and the fights were still prog for me, I started hyper focusing on numbers and self-doubt and wow did I get miserable fast.

Once we started heroic not much really got better, our split runs had me healing with 5-6 healers for around 27 people. Which was just pure overhealing hell and I would be staring at full health bars wondering where the hell to put my hots because it was just just pure overheal. There were some really strange decisions made too, like on the last heroic kill of K’J we were happily 5 healing with no issues when all of a sudden the main spec feral druid went resto, and we 6 healed the boss for 25 people. I still don’t know what prompted that decision but we went from slightly overhealing to full overhealling. I was just really glad my healng still stayed  above the other druid’s even with so many of us.

Nothing was said to me outside of that one conversation, but I constantly felt like I wasn’t good enough. The guild itself didn’t feel that friendly either but let’s be honest here for a second, I don’t think I helped the situation, the second I felt like I wasn’t good enough I shut down and didn’t want to approach anyone in the guild because in mind they were just thinking of me as that weaker healer. No one else really made any effort to get to know me or say hi or anything so I felt completely out of my depth.

We started mythics and nothing was said about their intentions with me, though I figured it wouldn’t be great. Apparently the officers had already mentioned to Dec and Fitme (also from misanth) that they would pass their trial but they weren’t sure about me. This probably should have been a conversation they had directly with me, but wasn’t. So I sat the first 3 bosses on the first 2 nights and then as they started on Sisters, I got an invite as they were going to 5 heal it.  I really wasn’t prepared for the fight, I hadn’t looked at it as I figured I wasn’t being brought in with this guild, so I was going in blind, which was pretty dumb of me but it was what it was. And that night was the last straw for me.  All the healers were in one party so we could talk in party chat which was fantastic but the copuple of times I asked questions in party chat or put in my thoughts on the talents the healing lead wanted met to take… completely ignored.

As luck would have it, Cinder’s guild had just lost their resto druid right about when I started opening up to Cinder and letting her know just how much I was hating the way I was playing so she suggested I think about coming to them (eek another server transfer)and taking their druid’s spot. I really wavered for a bit because the main reason I came to Frostmourne was to go to a bigger realm where there were lots of guilds and Saurfang is a much smaller realm. But they needed a resto, I already knew friends there and I couldn’t really see a guild on Frostmourne that had desperate need of a Resto and Cinder did. I spoke to Dec and he amazingly said he’d be coming with me if I went; he really patiently listened to me go back and forth about the good points and bad and just kept saying to do whatever I wanted. So, we went and joined Cinder and Neuro in their guild on Saurfang.

The guild seems quite nice and I like the people so far though the raid leading is quite a bit different to what I’m used to. There’s a lot more talking rather than just going and pulling on the bosses. Last night I think we had almost as long discussing pulls than we actually had doing pulls but the first night we cleared heroic and the first 2 mythic bosses and then last night we cleared the 3rd and started work on the 4th so it’s not a super slow pace which is awesome.

The healing team is actually really lovely and really chatty and Cinder keeps saying the healing lead is just awesome and patient and willing to go through logs with her whenever needed and from what I’ve seen so far he really is great. They added me instantly to all the healing channels on discord and in-game chat and there was heaps of communication there.

The really good bit is that Cinder have them trained to take Screenshots of their kills, so yay I have a kill photo for Demonic Inquisition.

My healing figures are pretty much exactly the same as they were in the previous guild but this time I’m not lower than everyone else, all of us healers in this guild are fairly close in figures which is a much nicer feeling.

I even had time in raid last night to get around to taking some nice screenshots, when I’m not running through the place in a ball of misery, I can actually appreciate my surroundings!

Just before the room with Sisters in it, there’s a place on the stairway where you can step sideways and fall through the floor. You fall for a really long way before you finally die. It’s really gorgeous looking around at all the stars and you pass a couple of the spacehips on the way. Dec and I managed to get Cinder to stand in just the right spot and she got to go on a trip! I jumped in after her so she wasn’t space travelling alone and took some photos on the way. 

I’m incredibly lucky I have a friend like Cinder who knows what’s it like to manage to spiral yourself into a black well of self-doubt and Dec who listened and told me to go do whatever I needed and he’d tag along. Thanks guys.

Heroic Kil’Jaeden down

Goes without saying that this is a bit of a spoiler post if you look at the photos,but since the patch has been out for a week it’s probably unlikely you’ve missed seeing spoilers, but beware about reading on  if you are trying to miss them until you’ve killed him 🙂

We finished the regular week’s amount of raiding at 8/9H on our mains, achieved through 2 split runs. We had all come back together on mains on Monday night to work on Kil’jaeden but we just didn’t get him down, so a decision was made to come back on Tuesday when hopefully everyone was a bit fresher. Monday was a huge night of raiding, we spent a good bit of time on Fallen Avatar on the first split run and then when he was down, worked from the 3rd boss back up through to the 8th, raid was longer by an hour and half for the 2nd night in a row to make sure it was all done. I don’t know about anyone else but I was really mentally tired from being in there on 2 different healers for a bit, so I was more than happy to come back the next day.

Walking back in on Tuesday was much better, but it still took a bit of time to get all the mechanics under control, there’s a lot of stacking and spreading and running to specific spots.. sounds like a normal boss fight really 🙂 You fight him on his spaceship and I was a bit worried about falling off into space but the platform was actually quite big, phew.

The fight actually wasn’t as difficult as I thought he would be, for a long while the first 1 or 2 on Mythic have generally been harder than the last on heroic but it didn’t feel like that this time. Maybe because everyone was pretty geared from NH and Mythic plus runs. We ended up having to take an hours break with the brief shutdown for restart but we got him down not long after it came up.

This is the first time I’ve collected the Ahead of the Curve achievement in the same week a raid has gone live. It’s pretty good getting it so early as that means mythic can be started on that bit earlier. Time to start watching a lot more videos on changes.

Once KJ dies, you get to watch the cutscene that’s been floating around for the last week or so, then you get teleported down to Azsuna. It’s still part of the instance so you can’t leave and you can catch up with Illidan and Khadgar for some congratulations and from then on Argus is floating above Azeroth.

 

The image of Aegwynn is there in Azsuna and you can talk to her to be sent back to the ship where you fight KJ and you can get some really good close up views of Argus.

It looks phenomenal and scary, I cannot wait to go there.

As to how I’m going in my new guild/raid team, I really don’t think that well. They are really good raiders, and I’ve done a couple of mythic plus with a few people but it’s not a super friendly guild. Well I don’t think so and I’ve been in there a month. And my healing is horrid, I’m not coming near the other healers in healing numbers. It doesn’t help that we are 5 and 6 healing heroic/normal for only 26 people but the other main healers seem to push out phenomenal numbers even with that amount of overhealing and I just don’t. I do have some good numbers; I have really low damage taken, and really low deaths and higher dps on bosses.. but none of that is raw healing numbers and I feel inadequate.  I really don’t think I’ll end up raiding mythic with this guild, with 4 other really fantastic healers I can’t see there being too much room with an extra.

But for now I’m still raiding and that’s pretty cool, we’ll just have to see what mythic brings.

Mythic Botanist down!

I’ve been with the new guild for a couple of days now and so far they seem quite nice. Pretty noisy on discord which is fine and usually has me laughing a lot behind the scenes.  Outside of raid I haven’t really done much with them apart from running the timewalking dgns with one of druids from the raid team (there are 7 of us! 2 guardians, 2 resto, 2 balance and a feral!) which was a good introduction so at least at our first raid night I already knew one of the guildies a bit.

The first raid night on Wed we started mythics straight away and I was in for the kills on Skorpy and Chron (yay new ach) and then I sat for Trill as we were dropping a healer for Botanist progression (we had been 5 healing Chron) so they had me sit out so the healer that was sitting had a chance to raid for a bit as they wouldn’t be coming back in for the rest of the night.

They had Chron on farm for quite a few weeks now so I felt like it was pretty much a carry though my tranqs were needed during power overwhelming.  They have the raid set up so if you’re moved into group 5, you’re sitting for that fight. I might need to make vuhdo hide group 5 because it changes the size and direction of my panels once there’s more than 4 groups and it’s distracting having it show a group that isn’t actually in the raid.

We spent the rest of Wed night on Mythic Bot. Botanist was interesting, it’s a freaking chaotic fight at the best of times and mythic version just gets worse. You start with all 3 bosses up and when one dies, the other 2 reset to full health and the abilities that boss had is combined into the other 2 bosses abilities.

The team pretty much had P1 and P2 under control so for them the real progression was on P3 but for me, P2 onwards was completely different (P1 is the same as P3 on Heroic, just hits harder). I picked up the changes for P2 pretty quickly though a few times I touched a spore and got the debuff and got called out for it. You can bet that not touching spores became a huge priority! (as the night went on I realised I wasn’t the only one that was getting called out for it but I didn’t want to hear my name on vent for that reason again). P3 scared the hell out of me because if you get the call of night debuff you have to go kill yourself on the spores in a specific spot and I was so nervous about being in the right spot at the right time.

I felt like the biggest idiot when on one of our best attempts I dispelled the wrong tank and we wiped. I immediately apologised and the healing lead said it was fine, they had all had a lot of wipes/practice compared to that being my first night. After that a specific healer was assigned to dispel as they knew the voices. I had discord sitting open on my other monitor so when ppl spoke I could match voices to names but not everyone has the same discord name as their toon so it’s going to be a guessing game for a bit.

We didn’t end up getting him Wed night so on Thursday after clearing through a few heroic bosses we went back to Botanist progression. We were consistently getting through to P3 which was great and then we had an attempt where everything went really smoothly.

There’s so much to look out for; make sure you’re standing at the right marker with a person if you have call, avoid all the crap on the floor, stand next to spores but don’t touch them and I think for most of the attempts I was holding my breath. I ended up getting the first set of call of night debuff on the  kill attempt which meant I had to go kill myself in a patch of spores to avoid triggering a mechanic and to clear spores so it was great in a way that meant I could watch the fight but crap because being dead for so long I look terrible on the healer meters (I’m so competitive /sigh) but it was sooo exciting seeing his health just steadily dropping and then the ach come up.

I ended up bonus rolling mythic titanforged boots which were a massive 20ilvl upgrade! It’s exciting to have my first piece of mythic loot.

I asked if the guild takes screenshots after kills which they do, but rather than the line up I’m used to they tend to pop toys for the photos.

I love all the green bears! The two tanks are Guardian and both use the artifact skin that turns them bright colours. One is neon purple and the other is neon green so it’s very easy to pick them out in the middle of a fight.

Next boss up in the progression chain is Krosus and I’m fairly sure we’re only going to be 3 healing so a good chance I’ll be sitting, but I still better have my head around that fight by Sunday and then after that it will Spellblade. Most of the guilds on our realm that are 4/10M have killed Krosus as their 4th. Hopefully by killing Botanist which is harder,  it means Krosus should die quicker which would be a big boost to the guild.

All I hope now is that I actually make it through my trial and keep being a mythic raider because it’s an awesome feeling and I’ve really missed it.

Trying something new

This raiding thing has really been taking up a lot of my attention, I haven’t really even felt like blogging that much because pretty much all my time has been spent in a mental tug of war over what to do; stay with friends or go looking for the raiding I want.  But I made the decision that since I’m obviously not that happy in my current raiding situation, I could either sit there and be unhappy (even surrounded by guildies I liked) or I could go try something new. So I did.

I had whispered a few guilds over the last few days that had interesting looking ads, but while the people I was talking to were friendly, their existing team set up didn’t really grab me as being a good fit.  I had noted on my profile on wowprogress that I was looking for a new raiding guild and the next day I got a whisper from a guild looking for a healer. I jumped onto discord to have a talk with them and it went pretty well. The team sounds like what I’m looking for, I’d make the 4th dedicated healer (and they’re fine I don’t do raid level dps on my OS). They lost a healer a few weeks ago to real life stuff and have been having one of their dps fill in as heals which is handy as it means they already have a decent swing healer in place.

The GM is also the healing lead and is another Rdruid so he and I spent a while on discord talking druid chatter which was nice. I said I’d missed healing with another druid and he said the same. Apparently, the rest of the healing team is girls so I’m a little excited about getting to be in a guild with more girls again. For ages it’s just been me in Deadline. I just hope with the difference in our ilvl I’m not going to look really horrible against them. The guild is 3/10M currently so I did point out that I’m a bit lower ilvl/progession and offered to link logs for him  but he said he’d looked at my logs and was fine with them. I was surprised he’d already checked up but he said he wouldn’t have whispered me if he wasn’t happy with what he saw.

Last night was my last raid in Deadline and I was hoping we’d finish off Elis/Gul’dan and move onto Chron for mythic prog. But we ended up with a team of 13 in the raid group… People just do not turn up to progression on Sundays which was frustrating as it meant no working on mythic and it made killing Gul’dan, even on heroic, difficult as with such a tiny team there is just no room for error. It was horrible to tell the team, that’s already having roster problems, I was going but the frustration over the last raid made me sure that I’m making the right decision looking for something closer to what my expectations should be. Even if the new guild doesn’t turn out to be what I’m looking for, it’s a step in the right direction. My alts are staying in Deadline so I’ll still see my friends a lot as I’ve got a lot of levelling of alts to do still.

I ended up swapping guilds after the raid. I was actually doing a mythic + with Deadline guildies after the raid and made the swap part way through. It was really weird to have a different guild name after so long in Deadline.  I didn’t go alone though. Neuro came with me and is going to trial as well. Hopefully we both go well in our trials and find what we’re looking for. Guess only time will tell.

 

 

Random Tuesday Mutterings

Random Tuesday Mutterings is the perfect place to put the random assortment of what-nots I’ve got up to in Azeroth each week.

It feels like it’s been  a relatively quiet week in WoW. I don’t think I’ve got up to much out of the ordinary. Z’s sitting at trait 53 so there was quite a few mythic pluses done over the week to gather up more artifact power. She only has 2 mil to go and then I can stop the serious grind for a bit and just gather AP as it comes my way. I only did a 15 this week, I didn’t really feel like pushing higher keys and a 15 does give good loot. Maybe next week I’ll try for a higher key.

I ran some old raids and picked up a few achs. AQ 40 gave me the last bit of rep for Brood of Nozdormu, so now only 9 reps to go! I also got a new transmog out of there and only have Tier 2 to go and my order hall racks will be full.

I also ran through some old WoD raids with Twice and Kublas and picked up two new titles and a few extra achs.

I’ve been working on my Demon Hunter’s campaign and I  was super excited to see a Vikings reference in the quests for it. Lucky I’m only doing it now because a few months ago I had no idea of the series and I wouldn’t have got the references at all. Funny enough I was actually watching one of the new episodes while doing the quest!

A couple of weeks ago I want into SOO with Kublas  and he tamed Thok, so over the weekend we went back so I could also grab him for my own. He’s so adorable as a mini dino. I want to find a blue flashy transmog to match him. 

On one of my pugs into Heroic EN this week (I really do like that raid), the hidden appearance for bear dropped! Now I have all the hidden skins for the 4 Druid specs so I’m pretty lucky.  I really like the hidden appearance for bear, in its little cage of bones.

The hatching of the Hippogrpyhs was on so I popped down with Toco as we were both on druids and had the easy port into Feralas! I got my hippogryph baby and picked up the item that made it last the extra days. It was really awesome having it travel around with me and so  super cute how it sat on my back in cat form.

And ever since I’ve started paying attention to the Star Augur scenery I’m still seriously blown away by how gorgeous it is.

This week I’ll have to try to get some better screenshots and ones of the void infested planet as well.

And that was my week in WoW. Let’s see what next week brings.

How was your week in WoW?

We’re recruiting for Mythics

Sunday was raid night and true to form, 16 people turned up for what should have been a night of finishing the clear of Elisande and Gul’dan and then onto mythic progression. So the mythic bit obviously didn’t happen.  I’m so glad we at least did Mythic Skorpyron on Wednesday.

Needless to say I was rather disappointed in the turnout.We obviously have a relatively strong core of raiders but we really need to bump the roster up. I’ve been talking to a few guilds on my server the last day or so and most of them are having similar issues of a roster too large to merge with another guild but small enough that covering people being away is not easy.

So, if you’re interested in raiding 2 nights a week on Barthilas (horde side obviously), let me know. We’re recruiting! We’re looking mostly for reliable, mythic minded ranged dps who will turn up 2 nights a week. Social members are welcome to join the guild too.

 

 

Nighthold, visiting Guldan

Warning: Some of the photos are spoilers, especially the Gul’dan ones so be aware if you keep reading 🙂

It’s been a while since I’ve raided 3 nights in a row but it was really awesome there were enough people in the guild that were interested to keep coming back until we cleared Nighthold and could see the full raid.

We went back in the night after the official guild raid and got the 7 of the bosses cleared through on normal. We flew through the first 3 as we had already done them on heroic and we knew the fights and the damage/mechanics were a lot easier on this difficulty. Spellblade Auriel went down really easily compared to her heroic counterpart who had caused us trouble, but we used a different positioning for her fire adds which should help in heroic. We placed them in a semi circle around her, rather than off the side, so melee dps didn’t have to take time out to run to them.. which would have been awesomely easy compared to where we had been stacking them in heroic except we found in normal the adds don’t stay in the one place but instead run around once they spawn. Oh well, at least the pools they spawned from were placed nicely.

I loved the Krosus fight, but didn’t take any photos, no idea what I was distracted by. But you’re on a bridge that he slowly demolishes side by side, so it’s a lot of ducking back and forth across it and avoiding a laser beam he shoots out. He kindly telegraphs which side he’s going to shoot it out by raising his arm so you have lots of time to move. He’d be no good in poker with such obvious tells I think.

Tichondrius was quite fun too, we all stayed stacked up on once side until carrion plague went out and then the plagued people ran away to the other side and stayed there so they didn’t infect us and then we ducked behind pillars he spawned at times. Apparently the pillars are more fragile in heroic so you have to be aware of how many people are stacking behind each one but in normal there wasn’t restrictions so we all just clumped together. Tich also has a healer only debuff in phase 3 which summons an add when dispelled. I didn’t end up getting it once so it seems it wasn’t healer wide.

My absolute favourite fight was the Star Augur. His room was really beautiful to begin with before the fight and then during the fight the walls drop away and we’re up among the stars. It’s so gorgeous and the fight mechanically wise was probably one of my favourites as well.

We came back the third night and started at Botanist. Turnout was a bit lower and we had a raid of 10 at the start. I forgot how much I love smaller raid sizes (I used to only raid with 10 way back before flexible raids were a thing) and it was just 2 tanks, 2 heals and the 6 dps. There was a lot of movement in this fight and we had all melee with us, I think it would be a lot easier with some ranged to help run over and soak the spores that spawned. But we got it down even with this set up. The garden the Botanist fight is set in was another beautiful room. I seriously can’t get over how gorgeous this raid is. It’s definitely first place on my list for beautiful raids now.

Then it was onto the final two bosses. I was so excited going through the portal to see Elisande. She really plays with time in this fight summoning adds that drop bubbles that can slow down time which were handy for the rings of orbs that spawn, more orbs to find gaps for..

And then Guldan. I was so excited when we were finally standing in front of this boss. He took us a few goes to get the mechanics right. During the fight he does a knock back to a few people and tethers them to the ground and to break the tethers you need people in there with you to absorb the damage when the bonds break. We found pretty quickly that you can really easily be knocked off the edge if you’ve not got your back to the centre and you get targeted. He was probably the most damaging fight, which is what I’d expect from the end boss, so I think on heroic we might be on him for a bit.

The cutscence once he died was absolutely amazing. Toco had told me on Wednesday that I was going to love the Guldan cutscene and he was absolutely 100% correct. Omg I am so excited for the rest of the expansion to unroll.

Another really cool benefit of killing Guldan was I could go talk to Occuluth in Shal’aran and get a quest for my Arcanists Manasaber as part of finishing the Insurrection quest line. This is the same model that my Druid turns into in travel form when masked in Suramar city but with one huge difference… it can fly!

I really loved seeing all of this raid, the fights were really interesting, and really varied which is great given how many bosses are in there and visually it is a stunning raid. By far one of the most beautiful raids I’ve seen. Given we’ll be in here for quite a few months to come, I’m really glad of the gorgeous scenery we’ll be surrounded by.

 

 

Random Tuesday Mutterings

Random Tuesday Mutterings is the perfect place to put the random assortment of what-nots I’ve got up to in Azeroth each week.

Another week in wow passed by way too quickly,  I always feel I haven’t got up to that much. I didn’t play over the weekend as Klor was in Melbourne so I spent lots of time catching up with him and not much playing so it was a chunk of 3 days out of the week, so this time I’m justified in saying I didn’t get up to much wow playing.

The most exciting thing this week though was I got to be a guest on Behind the Avatar. I’ve been chattering to Leeta on a Twitter a bit and she really nicely asked me to come and chat on her podcast. It was very fun to do and it was all about me, so lots of Z talking nonsense. Leeta was really lovely and I’m super excited to be meeting her in real life next week; I’m going up to the Gold Coast to see Klor next weekend and Leeta just happens to be coming down there so we’re meeting for lunch, along with Natanie, Moo and hopefully Spankyhunter.

So in wow.. what did I do?

I opened up my mages order hall but she hasn’t gone off to get her weapon yet. I’m not sure what spec I’ll chose for her. I’m hoping Frost is still viable for levelling because I love having a water elemental trailing around after her, though the arcane artifact is by far the prettiest of the three.

I can’t wait to see the order hall change as I go through the campaign. At the moment, it’s an utter wreck so it’ll be great to see it get repaired. Mages get the best looking trinkets and what nots on their shelves.

Z unlocked her Boomy hidden artifact appearance. So now I have the Feral and Boomkin but the other two just haven’t shown up. THe guardian one comes from killing Ursoc and the Resto one is from planting seeds in your order hall that *might* spawn into the rare acorn that unlocks the appearance.

 

There’s a pool in your garrison that shows  me the unlocked appearances I have. I love visiting it when I’m in feral spec because it has little cats sitting on the stumps.

Z finally got all her normal traits for her Resto artifact, now I just to get the paragon unlocked. But I doubt the hunt for artifact power will ever end as I have 3 other weapons to drop AP into as a druid.

I’ve been forgetting to go and run Withered training regularly but I popped down there before reset tonight and luckily I did because I managed to get a toy I didn’t have out of the reward at the end.

Add in there a couple of raids (OH OH OH, we had 5 new people join our guild all in one go last night, their guild was having similar issues and folded, which is sad for them but good for our guild I hope). First impressions, they seem quite nice so hopefully that holds true and they fit our guild and vice versa. And a few mythic plus dgns and a lot of pet battle world quests and that was my week in wow.

How was yours?

Emerald Nightmare – First Night

I have been so excited all week that raids were starting back again this week and last night we finally got to go in and have a look at the Emerald Nightmare for the first time.  The raid itself is perfect for a druid. It’s all druid themed, even if it is corrupted druids, and a really pretty raid. It’s all purples and reds and pinks, a far cry from the fel colours of HFC.

It was great seeing the main core back together (minus a few really missed faces who have either moved to different realms/factions or stopped playing altogether) and there were tons of new (to me, a lot are friends of other raiders who have come and joined us) faces. Raids are always awesome with so many people in the one place. I’ve always said I’m lucky with my guild, everyone is pretty awesome and we mix well, which given the range of personalities that come with such a large group, is a feat in itself.

The healer line up is fairly different from Warlords but luckily for me, Drew who used to heal with me on his priest is still there but  now raiding on his druid! Which is awesome as I have someone to chat Resto Druid secret stuff with.

It’s been ages since I’ve healed with another Resto druid and we look like we’re in a good place healing wise this expac 🙂

We decided to start on Heroic Nythendra to see how the fights would go. It was awesome fighting a dragon again. I really like raids with dragons, and dragons in general, so it’s soo good to have them back as raid bosses.

We originally tried keeping groups together but it turned out relatively messy. As soon as a person got Rot on them, everyone in 8 yards would also take a tick as well, no matter how fast they ran it away,  and the dot stacks on people really quickly started adding up. We spread everyone out around the room and the fight got a lot tidier with less extra dot damage to heal through on people and it meant there was more room to see the exploding bugs that came out during Heart of the Swarm phase.

I really liked this fight and the mechanics were pretty cool  but true to form, the game decided to give me a heroic ring (yay) with perfect stats for a Feral kitty (not so yay). I’m really sensing a theme here, for quite a while my feral spec was higher ilvl than resto with amazing upgrades on agility trinkets and feral relics.

 

Klor took a lot of the photos of our kill shots( thank you!) as I’m still having trouble getting Z’s camera to zoom out far enough. No idea what’s going on there but I’ll have to look into this. Big thanks to my patient guild that lined up after each boss for screenshots. The trials for raiders in a guild with a blogger is real!

After killing her on heroic, we flicked it back to normal to clear through it and see the fights and 850 loot is still an upgrade for pretty much everyone in there.

Once you kill Nythendra you run up a pathway to a section with 4 portals and can choose the order of the next few bosses. We decided to go:

Ursoc

Dragons of the Nightmare

Il’gynoth

Elerethe Renferal

Being first raid night, we were expecting a ton of disconnects and we were right. I was really lucky I was really stable the first boss but it went downhill from there.. By the end of the night I was getting super sick of dcin’g mid-fight and then having to reload as soon as I got in as Vuh-do vanishes on a dc and I need to reload UI to get it back. The dc’s meant there was a lot of non-healing time for me /sigh. Let’s hope Sunday is a smoother night.

Being 1/7H and 5/7N on the first night of raiding even with the constant dc’s is pretty awesome, hopefully we keep going well throughout the rest of this raid tier:)

Seriously, how pretty is the scenery, even trash fights are gorgeous! 

I’m pretty sure Klor was having daydreams of getting to tame another Dinosaur when we came across this little cutie.

All up, it was a great night and I can’t wait until Sunday to go back and clear normal and start on heroic’s. Fingers crossed we’ll end up raiding mythically this expac as well. I’ve already decided I’m not going to pull Z out of Deadline to go chase mythic like I did in the lull last expac, but it would be nice to challenge ourselves and work on the higher level.

 

 

 

 

 

A few more bosses and a guild meet up

Raiding with the new guild is going quite well. We got hans/franz down the other week; that is a truly terrible fight. It took me way too long to be able to learn the heroic stamper dance; the dance I should have actually learnt in heroic /blush, however learn it I did and those evil twins died and very nicely gave me a mace which will be an upgrade if I manage to get my hands on an off hand anytime soon. I’m contemplating pugging into some heroic runs to try to roll an offhand just to use the shiny mace.

Tonight was the 2nd raid night of the week and we killed both Flamebender and Gruul tonight. Flamebender was a pain with all the weapons all over the place, they really limit movement after a while.

Gruul is basically exactly the same just a lot more damage. I think he went down on the 4th or 5th pull, which makes me wonder why he wasn’t higher up the priority of bosses to try. But after the many pulls on hans/frans an easier mythic boss was welcome.

 

I’ve been keeping an eye on the other two druids I’m healing with and I noticed that both use their aoe heal, wild growth, a lot more than me. I tried keeping up with their wild growth usage the other night and was so mana hungry all the time so I took a peak at them on the armory and realised that both had significantly more spirit than me, almost double in one case. So I went and retweaked some of my gear, the garrison mission must have known my plans because it very nicely handed over a spirit trinket this week, a trinket I actually scoffed at before I realised just how little spirit I had so I really gladly put it on and managed to match spirit levels. Now to train myself to be a little less conservative with my aoe healing and see how it goes.

My very long awaited guild meet up happened this weekend. It was absolutely fanastic. There were 13 of us, with  some coming from Qld and NSW as well as the majority of us who live here in Melbourne. We met up in a great burger bar for tea, then made our way to a retro gaming club afterwards. It was so exciting putting faces to voices, we even had our two tanks from when I first joined, Exo and Zugs come along even though neither have played in a while. Zugs even got tempted back to the game and logged in today, yay! The night flew by, even though we were there from 5pm to 12am it was really comfortable and so much talking was done. Lots of wow chatter as expected. A couple of members couldn’t make it due to work and our disc priest who lives in America so he certainly couldn’t come but apart from missing them it was pretty much the entire old raid team in one place. It was really good to see everyone even though lots of us have put our mains into progression guilds, Deadline still feels like home. Hopefully we can make this into an annual event.