I’d Rather Be Wowing!

Last Thursday and Sunday, our raid alliance set foot to Ulduar for the first time. We killed Flame of Leviathan after three pulls. It might sound bad for not being able to one-shot him, but it was mostly because we pulled before destroying the towers, sending the wrong characters up to the turret, and things like that. Let’s say, bad research :). I have no doubt that we won’t have any problem the next time we fight him.

But then, everything went downhill. We wiped many times on the Ragers guy on the way to Ignis (which was a bad idea to start with), spent many attempts on Razorscale, and finally moved on to XT-002 (and wiped for 3 times) before we called it.

But it weren’t the wipes that frustrated me the most from this week’s runs, as I  fully understand and accept wipes during progression raid. There were some changes during this week’s raid and I’m not yet certain that as a raid group, we have fully adapted to these changes. We lost the leader of our raid alliance due to real life issues about 2 weeks ago. Our guild’s leader, who is usually 2nd in command, took over. And to accommodate for less than full attendance, we merged with another raid group from our ally’s guild (this guild has 2 raid groups, only one run regularly in the original raid alliance group - but now the other raid group wants more consistent group as their number is also dwindling down).

Yesterday, the raid leader from this group was leading the run as our “usual” leader was not available. And I felt like being in a PuG.  The raid members from our guild have nobody to represent us. Worse, when we tried to chime in the raid chat before pulls or after wipe to address our concerns about the strategies we were using, there did not seem to be any indication that the raid leader was even acknowledging them. We don’t know the raid leader enough, the only person who has interacted with him was our GL, which wasn’t there.  The members from their guild that were in the original raid alliance, do not seem to speak up often. Not in the raid chat or vent, at least.

To make matter worse, people, especially from the “new” raid group - but there were some people in our old raid alliance that were guilty for this as well - came into the raid without being ready with flasks. Do they think we are on farmed fights? Or do they think that we don’t even have the chance that it’s not even worth popping some flasks? The excuses were: “I’m broke”; “I didn’t know that I will be going in today’s run” (but nobody except one was invited at the last minute, and that’s because he was in an instance and we waited for him for more than 5 minutes to find replacement — it’s as easy as porting to an AH to buy some flasks); and the best excuse from them all — “I don’t need a flask, healers are keeping me alive anyway, only when dps were dropping that I died.” And guess who’s that coming from. Suddenly the other excuses make sense, if you have a raid leader who does not even think it is important to make the most preparation, how can you expect the members to do the same?

I mentioned earlier that we did some attempts for Razorscale  before moving to XT-002. The decision seems to be prompted from being tired of wiping. Hence, the question of the post, when to move on to another boss in case of wipes?

I have to say that I’m slightly disappointed that we moved on, though it’s probably a good move in general as XT-002 seems to be more doable than Razorscale (at least in strategy). I understand wipes from not having the right tool in the group — too low of dps, not enough healing, not enough gears — or other circumstances like lag during Heigan’s dance. Basically, we know that because of that lackness, no matter how many times we attempt to do it, it is unlikely to succeed. But because we know it, we can make changes to it.

But yesterday, when we decided to move on, I couldn’t pinpoint what we were missing and I felt without it, I don’t know how we can improve as a group. Is it because our strategy is not working? Then, why don’t we work on gelling the strategy for next week. Do we just not have the right make-up of healers? Are we too low in DPS? Are people not dodging fire fast enough? It is making me worried when venturing here again this coming week, that we will repeat the same mistakes.