Concentrations what you need..when you wanna be a Raid Maker

Been a while again huh? So, what’s been occurin’? Time off for family stuff last week which was a lot of fun. My baby daughter went to nursery for the first time and was absolutely golden on Friday, but apparently this morning was a different matter and we had lots of tears. Heartbreaking to leave them like that, but I guess it’s for the best. She needs to learn how to share!

Aside from that we had some raiding last week of course. Rohan Theer, went down very easily indeed. What an easy fight. Well, when you are doing it one ‘one rune’ mode. What I mean by that is there are four runes in total that you can kill throughout the fight. You can kill the named by just killing one rune. The more runes you kill the harder the result of killing that rune gets and you still have to kill the mob. On Thursday we tried again in a fresh palace instance and the results were, well different.

We started with the Three Sages which is where we left off the previous Monday. We got them down but only after we switched our Monk tank who was fighting Medorius (I think that’s his name) for a Bruiser alt, after our Monk couldn’t hold aggro. It’s a shame and no one can understand why, he is the most well kitted of all the brawlers classes in our raid force. I wasn’t asked to do it because I was required on Adurj as we were short of Dirges that night. But we swapped out a caster for a Bruiser alt and lo and behold, no issues at all, just a plain slog of a fight.

After that we moved up to Mr Theer with expectations that it would be as easy as last time. It wasn’t. I have a few ideas why but it’s not my job to call out where I see mistakes and give my opinion on that. I mean come on, this is me. I am sure some of those mistakes were caused by yours truly. Ok, mebbe not but it could have been me given the chance. Part of the reason it was tougher is that we opted for the two rune strategy. The second rune when you kill it spawns a huge amount of adds, that never seem to stop coming. We couldn’t do it on that mode, so eventually opted out for the one rune kill. Even that was painful and we only won because of a well placed ‘Verdict’ cast at the end of the fight.

OK, so I said I was not going to give my opinion. But it’s my blog, so I’m gonna. There were simply not enough raid members listening and doing as they were told. It’s an easy fight when all follow instructions. But sooooo many times I saw members behind the mob. Behind it. If you go behind the mob you may as well be signing your own special Norrathian funeral. This was repeated many times to the raid force. I know through habit of fighting nearly every mob out there, some classes will automatically gravitate to the rear of the mob. But in this fight the instructions were specific. Stand well in front of the mob. Our tank was giving good instruction about when he was going to move and a few times when aggro popped around and the mob started to turn, I moved. He’s a big dude and not difficult to spot when moving. I just stayed on our tanks boot tips. When doing this stuff, 100% concentration is required. Most of the raid were ok, but some, well they just weren’t paying attention. Everyone is allowed to make mistakes, but when they happen over and over, there is a problem.

As an example, I died. I didn’t realise if you pop your graphics a bit higher you can see when a tile is about to drop you in to the abyss of sure death. So I went off to the res tile as a deady, waiting to be ressed. When I was up I ran off back to the fight. At this stage our other Dirge told me I needed to stay there to help ressing. An excellent point indeed. Did I make that mistake again, with both the tiles and the ressing? No. I improved my graphics and never dropped with a falling tile again, then next time I died I stayed on the res tile for a long time making sure all were up. I was told, and I did. Yup at the start I made the mistake. But it didn’t happen twice. At this level of raiding, we cannot afford to have a few who do not do as they are told. It wipes the raid. Simple as that. Just like we cannot afford to have members who are fully geared in T1 SF raid gear, and not be able to do exactly what it says on the tin. I know it’s cruel, and enough chance should be given to improve. But after many many raids with no improvement, then I’m sorry but that is a liability to the rest of the raid. When does politeness become burdensome and some harder hitting words of instruction are required? Well, in my opinion when things start to happen like they did the other night during the raid.

In some other news, Jahf and I were hanging out last night and we did an Erudin Research Halls instance. It was an ok run and we finished without too much pain. Although it did improve noticeably when Jahf brought his dirge. After we chatted for an hour or so, and as these things sometimes do, it all degraded in to some duelling. Now, I’m not sure how this happened, but I won. I am absolutely aghast at this. I have never been very good at PvP or duelling. In fact I would say the opposite. The first time I headed to Battlegrounds, I was mushed, repeatedly. I am a considered thoughtful player when raiding or instancing, but when I PvP, all my brains dribble out my ears and I become a button masher. It’s a weird thing. In ‘action’ in real life, when the chips are down I don’t have the same problem. I remain calm and in control. But when PvPing, I’m a loon. On top of that it isn’t just my goofyness. Jahf is an extremely accomplished player. If it were left to skill alone and nothing else, he would have won hands down.

The only things I can attribute the wins to are my raid gear and the huge amount of survivability stuff a Bruiser has, on top of which there are a huge amount of stuns in your skill set. I am starting to see why Bruisers are hailed as pretty Godlike in PvP. I say this because I have no doubt that Jahf is a better player than me. Oh, did I point out that the toons he chose to duel me with were not raid kitted at all? Oh, yeah, that could have had something to do with it also. But, all that being said it was nice to finally win a duel even if I was OP’d for my opponent. I think I may have to visit BGs again, just to refresh my perspective and make me humble again.

Be well.