The Elephant

Or The Post that Hopefully Allows me to Revive From my Two-Month Funk

First, a quote from Wikipedia: "Elephant in the room is an English idiom for an obvious truth that is being ignored or goes unaddressed. The idiomatic expression also applies to an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss.[1]

It is based on the idea that an elephant in a room would be impossible to overlook; thus, people in the room who pretend the elephant is not there have chosen to concern themselves with tangential or small and irrelevant issues rather than deal with the looming big one."

When I last posted, Memento was looking forward to a guild-wide meeting to determine our path for Cataclysm.

My Elephant - the topic I have, thus far, been unable to discuss is the fact that Memento is no more.

There's more to it than that, of course.

We discussed a lot of things during our meeting. Everyone was there, which impressed me. Takk, Mord, Hippy, Ann, Militia, Batra, Sen, and myself. We talked about what we had and what we wanted.

At the time we all wanted the same thing. Sitting on the bleeding edge of a new expansion gave every one the bug for progression raiding. So we compared schedules and made decisions. Wednesday nights and Saturday afternoons were to be for progression raiding. For three weeks, those time slots would be used for running heroics and gearing up. For learning how to work as a team in the big new world that is Cataclysm heroics.

Sen, being a full time engineer, decided to step down from his position as GM. The group chose a replacement... me.

I didn't mind the responsibility. Memento being a small guild, we made a few more changes. We ditched the officers idea and moved forward with our "open-forum" idea. Mord agreed to continue his role as Raid Leader and Militia volunteered to be the Recruitment Guy. I made us a new website and we were all ready to move forward.

Or so I thought.

We floundered through those first three weeks. Most nights we were forced to split up into who was eligible for heroics and who was not. I healed some normal dungeons those week - Disc felt pretty weak at the time.

Then a new, insidious idea began to spread through our happy-meal-sized guild. It would be so much easier to join the progession party if we were not actually a happy-meal-sized guild. But! Instead of recruiting... let's just join a different, bigger guild.

The idea did - and does - cut me like a knife.

But these were my guildies now and I had a responsibility to them. If, in the three week span since our last meeting, they had changed their minds about recruiting for Memento and preferred to raid in a larger, more established environment then that was what we would do.

We had a second guild meeting and decided to look for a new home.

There were some possibilities right off the bat. Militia has always raided on the side with Kaizen and we thought, for awhile, that they might be interested in "absorbing" our little guild.

But... I guess... people weren't willing to wait.

Hippy and Batra, whose attendance was always a little iffy, disappeared entirely.

Militia transferred his characters out of the guild and over to Kaizen without telling anyone.

Mord announced to me - over realID, one day - how totally relieved he was to not be the raid leader anymore. That being free of the responsibility had lifted a huge weight off his shoulders. He, too, had left the guild without telling anyone.

...

Let me go on record for saying it's not okay to leave a guild without notice. You may not want to give them your reason - and most of the time, you don't have to. You do have to say something.

It's not okay to ninja-quit.

It's not okay. It fucking hurts.

...

Time and a shift in priorities has done much to restore my equilibrium on the matter.

Mord went on to join Soulfire Tribe - a guild that successfully runs 25 man raids, 4 nights a week.

Ann joined him soon after - something I expected. As an engaged couple who has been raiding together for awhile, little else would make sense.

Soulfire has extended the invitation to the rest of us still dithering about in Memento. All three of us: Takk, Sen and myself.

I encouraged Takk to take the offer, even as I knew that Sen and I probably wouldn't. Memento has been our home a lot longer than its been a raiding guild, so we're comfortable in the small environment. Even if it's now a home for lost alts - its still ours.

...

I got a new job. The local university lost a visiting professor three weeks into the semester and needed a replacement in a hurry. I met all the necessary requirements. I jumped on it. I now attempt to teach 130 students the ins and outs of Object Oriented Software Development.

Sen and I are attempting to buy a house. I know that no one has ever said that buying a house is an easy thing to accomplish, but they certainly don't tell you that it's rather like playing dodgeball with screwdrivers.

Getting approved for our loan has added a whole new level of stress to our lives. Sen has since turned off his wow account. He has a major engineering exam in April, but he does plan on returning to the game "when things settle down again".

...

I've encouraged Takk to join Soulfire again, since spending time in our dieing guild doesn't get him any closer to his goal of raiding. He's loyal and stubborn and has stuck it out with us thus far. I suspect I will be moving my warlock to Soulfire with Takk soon.

Serious Business

Memento Mori is currently the Land of Eternal Drama and I am not enjoying it. Apart from the general animosity between Mord and Batra, Militia has thrown himself into the ring. I can't imagine why, but I can attempt to explain the sequence of events as I know them.

Last Thursday
We had our first official raid leader test for electing a super official raid leader. :)

I set Sartharion with 3 Drakes as Mord's test. Mord was welcome to choose any strategy, any mix of players, tanks, healers, whatever he wanted. I would have liked to have seen it done the "real" way, in which the drakes get off-tanked and killed one by one.

But Mord opted for the zerg strategy and I did my job and we won. We almost all died, but we won. I was decently happy with the results. I was also (I think) the last person to die before Sarth himself.

Anyway, the council voted and Mord is official now. We didn't include very much pomp and/or circumstance in the promotion. Just a general "huzzah!".

Previously, Batra had told me that Militia expressed an interest in becoming the Death Knight class leader. So I stated talking to Batra about the idea. I have done a minuscule amount of research into DK stats, rotations, gems and enchants. Minuscule. Really.

But I gave the information I gleaned to Batra, because I knew he was regemming some of his gear. Thursday night I noticed he picked up a new meta gem, but it wasn't the one that I'd read was most recommended. So I asked him about it and got "Militia said use this one."

So, while I was in a council-y sort of mood Thursday night, I told Batra that I was slightly concerned about the information he was getting from Militia.

Apparently this is where everything went to hell.

Batra went back to Militia (evidently) about the meta gems, because the next thing I know is that Militia is talking on vent about the merits of Crit metas vs. Agility metas. And at the end of the day... I don't care. Especially since I'd already discussed both gems with Batra and I told him that I would talk to Militia about it if I felt I needed to.

It bothers me that the conversation about DK nonsense and the quality of Militia's information that I was having with Batra did not remain a conversation between me and Batra.

There. That's out there.

Because now that Militia thinks the quality of his information is in doubt, we have been the fortunate recipients of "I know my shit" posts on the forums of our guild website. Awesome.

Tuesday
On Tuesday we pretended that we were a cutting-edge raiding guild and pugged Ruby Sanctum. It was pretty terrible actually. We died on trash a lot. We lost some tanks and some dps and had to re-pug.

We got lucky with our second pug tank. We managed to pull together and find some strategies for the trash groups. We succeeded! For awhile.

We one-shot the first mini-boss or whatever. One our trees pulled him on accident, and we still succeeded. Yay.

Then our tank dropped. Had to go do something with his guild. It was super lame.

But overall, I had a good time. For the time ever - EVER - I was in the new content the night it was released and it was awesome and I felt awesome and even though we got very little accomplished it was an amazing experience.

Then we re-pugged for our ICC10 run. Not as amazing.

I remember we had a hunter. I think the hunter started with us in RS because Militia really wanted him to go away before the ICC run. And he was pretty terribad if I remember correctly.

But. Some cloak dropped in ICC. It had agility on it. The hunter rolled. Batra rolled. Batra rolled higher. I gave it to Batra and here's where thing's get a little sticky.

The cloak (Agility, Expertise, and some other stuff) was not an upgrade for the hunter. At least, that's what I've been told. It was, however, a main-spec roll to which we generally give preference to over off-spec rolls. Batra was in his unholy dps spec which, as I understand it, does not rely on expertise. I believe he has a cloak with Strength and other stuff on it for that spec. So... technically, while Batra wants to switch his main-spec to Dual-wielding Frost, that wasn't the spec he was running in at the time.

Do we really want to get into what should main-spec/off-spec when both specs are dps? Sounds like a mess to me.

And frankly, it never fails to blow my mind that DKs actually want agility on some of their pieces.

Blows my mind.

Anyway. The hunter complained. I told him Batra rolled for it as well and it was clear that he rolled higher. Mord didn't appreciate this either and went on a mini-rant of how DKs do not need agility and agility is clearly a hunter stat and DKs should never roll on agility gear.

Militia seemed to take this particularly personally. Ensue massive debate. Begin large amounts of "The top dps dks of <wherever the f-nonsense> do it this way" and "Well, here's a billion online resources that say they're wrong".

It's rough.

I'm tired of it.

It seems to me that our biggest problem is that both Mord and Militia take these debates and disagreements personally. And once one of them starts to get offended the "I've been doing this a long time. I'm a ba raider and I know what I'm talking about." arrogance shows up out of nowhere. That starts to make everybody mad and everyone sounds like a jerk.

Thursday
A calmer night by far. Some people were missing, so we kept it simple. Weekly, VoA, Mord did Amphitheater with my priest and Takk's rogue. It was good stuff.

Militia says he's been having a hard time dealing with some of the tards we've pugged with recently. I think, in our quest to ignore GS, we've also started to ignore some truly noobish behavior. If we're to enforce our "appropriate gear" guidelines for guildies, it needs to be the same for pugs. If our guild members can't show up in half pvp-gear with bizarre enchants then neither can non-guildies.

I don't think it has to be a matter of "we will only take well-geared players to our raids". But it would be nice to have a "we will only take non-tards to our raids".

In the interest of this initiative, Militia posted a "Red Flags when looking for pugs" where everyone can drop a little bit of their own personal knowledge of what to look for in their own class. I think it's a neat exercise. I stopped to remember some of the really nooby things I did when leveling my warlock. For example, I used Demon Armor constantly. It didn't matter what was going on or what situation I was in. I did not discover the awesomeness of Fel Armor until probably level 78. And now I know from experience that a level 80 warlock who wants to raid wouldn't touch Demon Armor with a 10-foot pole.

It's a nice feeling, being able to share little nuggets of knowledge like that.

---

My Raiders are Five Years Old

This post is very likely to offend some guild members. And I'm not going to apologize for that, because I believe that as a writer and as a Councilor for Memento this post deserves my unvarnished opinions.

Let's start with some good news. Memento has gained a new member! Mord's brother has returned from wow-retirement with a Lazer-Chicken named Hippycrit. Naming decisions aside, Memento is happy to welcome new members.

However, the emphasis is on new member, not necessarily new raider. Our general raid roster is already caster heavy and since we've started doing ICC on a regular basis, Hippy comes to us rather undergeared. This is not problem. As I've said, Noobraid is not about GS. I do wonder, though, if he would have been as quickly accepted if he had joined us through normal recruitment channels.

Also, getting a reputation for nepotism just when we're getting a reputation for being cool, good people would be a terrible blow.

The drama started early last night. Mord is our raid leader the vast majority of the time. He and Militia have the most experience in raid leading and Militia generally isn't interested in doing that at this time. So, Mord was filling up the raid group and we got down to this situation: 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 6 DPS, and 2 empty slots. I asked Takk to switch to his Shaman for heals so we could fit more guildies into the raid because Batra hadn't joined us yet.

Mord did not seem to be a particular fan of this idea. He seemed to want to include a warrior who has been running with us in ICC. This would have been fine if the warrior, or anyone in the raid group could have switched to filling a tank spot. Which, both of our healers could but that would have left us with even more issues.

Guildies come first. We needed to pug a tank for ICC and this was simply not happening. Our illustrious GM suggested a trip to Ulduar instead, being a particularly nice alternative for our new boomkin to get some gear in a location we could actually handle with only 9 people.

It helped that the weekly was Ignis.

We chased Orbit-uary a couple times before giving up and destroying the towers. Ignis was no big deal. We had some fun with the Deconstructor. Mord asked all the dps to pop their cooldowns when the heart first showed up. So we did. And the heart ate it big time. And then we wiped.

Anyway, we took the Deconstructor out the second try. We tackled the Assembly of Iron and won. Hurray, that counts as progression! Kologarn finished out our night's adventure in Ulduar.

All of that is on-screen goodness. I switched to Demonology at Ignis and had a blast the rest of the night. I am a GIANT PURPLE DEMON. What's not to like?

Behind the scenes was a different story. Batra seemed to be having some severe connectivity issues. He disconnected several times between the start of the run and Deconstructor.

Mord reports to Ann and I that, during one of these disconnections, a toon with the name [Mord's real name]sux was online and harassing him. Specifically telling him what a terrible raid leader he is and saying some fairly personal things that I was not privy to. Mord assumes that this is Batra's doing.

Now, there is a history of animosity between Mord and Batra. I don't know where it came from and I don't think there's a way to fix it, patch it up, whatever. So long as it doesn't impede my real life or the guild, I don't have to deal with it. Because of the personal nature of what was said, we have to assume that it was someone in the guild. It's guild business if one member of the guild is harassing another, regardless of whether or not its done on a alt who is not a member of the guild.

I went with the direct approach and asked Batra if he had an alt by the offenders name. He denied it. This is, naturally, the expected response whether he actually does or not. Maybe I thought I could get lucky, I don't know. I went on to ask Mord's roommate if he'd done it, just to cover the possibility of someone else screwing with Mord's head.

Points in Mord's Favor
* Chances are extremely slim that the harasser was not a guildy and Batra was the only member offline during the incident
* Batra has done something similar in the past in regards to Senach

Points in Batra's Favor
* Batra is careful not to deliberately provoke Mord anywhere a guildy can see or hear. I mentioned the history of animosity. In general, Batra goes out of his way to not direct anything he says at Mord.
* We cannot prove or disprove the identity of the harasser.

For the most part, the Council is the ruling body of the guild. The GM steps in only when necessary. We run into an interesting dilemma when it comes to dealing with this issue, though. We have Batra on one side, a Councilor himself, and Mord on the other side, significant other to Ann, who is also a Councilor. So, in my view, two of the three members of the Council who should be dealing with this are too biased to view the issue rationally.

Which leaves... me.

And, despite being the only unbiased Council member, my initial response is something that most people who know me would agree is typical Mara: Deal with it.

I recognize that this is a big deal. I am given to understand the the offender said some things that even I would want to punch him or her for. Unfortunately, this doesn't change the fact that there is nothing I can do about it.

If it was something I had witnessed personally, I think I would have been quick to jump on it. Particularly if it happened in guild or raid, or could be easily traced to a specific guild member. Memento has a set of strict "Don't be a douchebag" rules.

At the risk of sounding like my mom, or anyone's mom really, all I have to say is this: This kind of behavior is juvenile and unnecessary and it will not be tolerated. All involved parties will please act like adults from here on out. And if I find out who did it, expulsion from the guild is imminent.

---

Tempest Keep: Flexibility

I convinced some of the guildies to do some of the level 70 dungeons with Aioka. Takk, Penguin, Sen, and Ann carted my little priesty through The Botanica, The Mechanar, and The Arcatraz. And I think we had a lot of fun doing it.

But then... I especially enjoy it because I can still get gear there that is beneficial for Aioka. Everyone else is there for achievements and because they love me. (I am the lootmaster, after all.)

I'd still like to finish up Steamvault and The Black Morass, but there's plenty of time yet. I'd also like to see Karazhan and the Black Temple, but these are places that even Mara hasn't defeated. Of course, we've only attempted Black Temple and that only with pug groups. I'm sure it would be much easier if we were to do a guild run of them.

The guildies have also been awesome about running the Wrath dungeons with Aioka. It's pretty hilarious to watch Takk roflstomp his way through Utgarde Keep. And it's cool that no ones been a jerk about it yet.

A lot of groups ask: "Are you here on purpose?"

They just have to point to me and everyone understands.

One of these days I will be brave enough to venture into a Wrath dungeon without a guildie. I think.

I switched Aioka's mining profession for jewelcrafting. This was always going to be the plan, but I had originally planned on farming a lot more ore of all kinds. But I got bored and impatient and I didn't want to wait to make the switch anymore. I have been stocking up on ore, bars, and gems for months.

Leveling Aioka's jewelcrafting to Northrend standards took a couple hours and several hundred gold. I think it will be worth it though. If Militia's paladin is going to be missing, that leaves Ann as the only jewelcrafter until Aioka's skill actually becomes useful.

In response to all the confusion with Militia's alts moving around willy-nilly, we've asked everyone in Memento to declare who they want to be their main raiding character and primary role. Apparently there was even some confusion with Aioka. I'm not planning on switching my main. Even though playing a priest is tons of fun, I revel in being an EVIL warlock.

I'm sure Aioka will see some raid action though. And all that's really important is being useful to the guild and making fun and awesome raids happen. Whether I can make that happen by draining the souls of my enemies or by dps'ing health bars in reverse, I'm totally up for it.

---

Farming ICC

This is an interesting position to be in. I don't think I ever thought I would be in a position to farm raid bosses (any of them), let alone those in the most recent raid. But that's essentially what Memento is doing right now. We skip off to ICC every Tuesday night, wipe out the Lower Spire, and then (usually) stop.

This has been good for loot. Not so good for progression.

Last night's ICC run went pretty well, all things considered. Batra opted not to come and Es bowed out early again... because they have real jobs and they... like... get tired and stuff.

But that's ok, because we got to play with a hunter friend that we also pugged last week and a shaman that was looking for a casual raiding guild. I think you can guess what happened. Memento gained a new member! Huzzah!

Red is a healy type Shaman and I would have had concerns about how this would affect our healing team - Time (druid) and Voltz (shaman) - except that Militia/Voltz decided to pull all of his characters out of the guild. Except a deathknight. And this done with no warning or discussion.

Ann and I are a little... perturbed... to say the least.

After a bit more investigation, however, I noticed that... while Militia changed guilds on all of his characters they're now in a guild with... themselves. I imagine guild chat is not particularly interesting. Regardless, the fact that he didn't tell us beforehand or come to raid last night tells that some role and/or leader rearranging may be in order.

There's been some discussion about changing some raid times or adding a raid night and some stuff. Ann is heading that project up at the moment, which is just fine with me.

I have been spending a great deal of free time with my priest. Aioka has moved on to the Wrath dungeons - she has emblems of Triumph! I'm so proud.

I still want to go back and do the level 70 BC dungeons. I've never done them and they look so interesting. I tried to queue for one with Aioka and ended up waiting for a tank for an hour and a half. It was quite ridiculous. I'll try and get the guildies to go.

So far all I have gotten is Utgarde Keep, even though it, Nexus, and Azjol-Nerub are all open to Aioka. This "random" thing really gets me. At least they're not pretending to give me satchels of "helpful" goods anymore.

---

I'll write about it in my blag

Explanation of title.

Guild night last night was interesting. We weren't planning anything major because we knew that a large number of people would be absent. But because Ann and I are farming pieces from Heroic Pit of Saron (different pieces, thank goodness), when Batra suggested we do something we all grouped and queued for H PoS.

What a terrible idea.

Ann got stuck in load-screen land or some such and had to restart her computer before we even got started. Our first healer dropped because he got tired of waiting. He was a dbag anyway.

Really, is it that hard to use a name in a pug group? He could have said "You coming Ann?" instead of "you coming mage?". It even has less letters. I don't get it.

Anyway. The initial trash pulls go without much issue. We pick up an extra group at one point, but the warrior dps held them until Batra came and picked them up.

Somewhere around this point Batra asks us "How's my DPS?".

Apart from the obvious answer - terrible - why do you care when you're tanking? Takk did try to explain later about how DK tanks use direct damage to maintain aggro and stuff. Still, you should be more concerned about TPS, I would think. And even if you do care about DPS, why would you ask about it in a pug group? Recount can put it right there on your own screen and you don't have to ask anyone.

We get to the first boss: Garfrost.

I don't even remember the first wipe, it was such a clusterfuck. I do remember running around trying to avoid the huge boulders. Thanks, DBM, for the helpful hints (MOVE).

And then trying to hide behind them to get rid of permafrost. Does this even work?

But anyway, we die. I think we may have gotten hit with adds. Who knows.

Batra says: "Grr".

We run back in. Rebuff. Etc. We stand there in front of Garfrost for few minutes. Batra wonders if we can kill the large skeletons nearby so that they can't jump on us when we pull Garfrost.

For future reference: No, you can't.

Ann told him she thought they were linked, but he death grips one anyway and appears to be totally unprepared for Garfrost to coming running at him.

We die.

The healer and the warrior dps don't even try to res. They just drop group.

Batra asks us if we want to keep trying. I tell him no. I'm not particularly interested in attempting this again.

So we quit. No big.

Batra then asks us in guild chat how his tanking was. Ann takes the fall for this one. She tells him the truth. It was not fantastic. And those are pretty mild words for what I was thinking at the time.

So he whispers her about what was going wrong. She gives him the laundry list with nice and helpful comments about how he could do better. Example? "You should make sure all the targets are focused on you. DKs have a couple aoe effects that should accomplish this." These are all totally my words because I did not actually see the conversation.

His response?

"Have fun in Naxx next week. Apparently I'm too useless to go."

DRAMA.

I don't understand. He's been a level 80 for like, 5 months now. Maybe more, idk. And while I haven't leveled a tank that high, I've read its not particularly difficult to get to the defense cap. I think Takk managed it in three weeks. To be fair, Takk seems to have more time than the rest of us to play. But Batra's still had MONTHS worth of a head start on us.

I feel bad. I do. Because I know Batra irl. And I know he's been looking forward to tanking for our guild. But it's not free. You have to do your research. You have to know your class, know your fights, know how to get and keep aggro. And you have to get to the def cap, dangit!

---

Excuse me while I drop the f-bomb

Let me start with a warning: This is a post of anger and frustration. There will be curse words and finger pointing and general blame re-allocation. You have been warned.

Guild night starts up pretty normal. Sen, Batra and I are the only ones online at 8. No surprises there. Takk calls me to say he'll be on in 30-45 minutes. No big. I don't particularly care at this point.

I start the evening frustrated at my roommates after spending a large portion of the day fighting with a virus-infected computer. All I'm looking to do is to get online and to start killing stuff in the most efficient manner possible. The quests in Ice Crown are particularly useful for this. Hopping into a vehicle and man-slaughtering hundreds of scourge is a great stress reducer.

When Takk gets online, we queue up for a random heroic. This lands us in Drak'Tharon with Batra tanking and another awesome healer from Nazgrel. Remember the Moral of the Story? Neither did I when we started Drak'Tharon. If you're going to run heroics, make sure your tank is def capped.

Regardless, we survive Drak'Tharon for the most part. There's a wipe on King Dred. How or why, I still don't know. Throughout the instance, Sen and this healer have been chit-chatting and word gets around to the rest of us that he doesn't have the Bronze Drake from Culling of Stratholme.

Shall we do that one next? Great idea. None of us have ever gone through Heroic CoS without getting to the Infinite Corruptor in time.

Observe me while I eat these words.

In general, CoS is no big deal at this point. Even I can find my way most of the time. We're all on vent at this point too, even though my microphone is kinda wonky. Nothing major happens until wave 6. Batra dies.

Whatever. Takk takes most of the aggro, Sen and I burn stuff to the ground. Healer of Awesome resurrects Batra. Wave 7 hits.

On vent I ask Takk to tank wave 7 so that we can keep moving at a good pace. Batra, surprisingly enough, doesn't appreciate this. He's trying to tell us how we have plenty of time and he just needs to regain his health and we'll keep going.

I'm seething. We do not have plenty of time.

It takes two minutes - two fucking minutes - for Batra to finish healing, find wave 7, and for us to kill it. This does not leave us "plenty of time".

This clusterfuck of suck continues until Arthas is ready to go behind the bookshelf. We have 3 minutes to run the gauntlet of angry scourge and take out the dragonkin at the end. This is possible. Sen, Takk, and I only need about 30 seconds with a boss. We can crank out some pretty awesome dps when shit gets serious.

The gauntlet begins. Sen is arcane blasting scourge away. I'm sending Flaag (my fel-guard) after everything in sight. I have no idea what the dks are doing. We get to the first mob with elites in it. There is no sign of death and decay, or any other form of aoe aggro that means I won't get dps'ed in the face if I start fighting.

Long story short: we die again. Sen's frustrated that we weren't able to help our Healer friend get his drake. I'm frustrated that no one listened earlier in the instance when I said we needed to move faster. Takk is probably frustrated, but none of us know for sure because he dropped from vent awhile back. Smart man.

We try to rush back in there, but its a long run and Batra won't speed up and no one is communicating and nothing works well and we die again. And this time its my fault. At least, thats what I heard Batra told Takk. Heresay. That's what the guild needs.

Regardless. We're now out of time. So all that's left to do is to regroup, calm down, and finish the instance at a pace that suits everyone. Instead, Batra switches to guild chat and starts talking about how ignored he feels because no one is saying anything on vent.

I'm the only one on with a microphone. And I'm not yet convinced it works.

We finish CoS. We're stupid enough to queue for another one. A random one. Random my ass. WoW puts us right back in CoS. Fuck my life.

I pick up the crates this time, because I haven't before and I like new stuff. We make it all the way to AFTER the timer starts. And then Batra drops group. The timer is already running! Luckily, Militia is online to make my life better. He steps in to tank for us. Everything runs smoothly.

Militia reminds us that Batra is not def capped. Oh, right. The moral of the story. Damnit.

Ann believes that it time to have a discussion with Batra about upholding the rules we agreed on. The rules that essentially amount to "don't be a douchebag". Sen doesn't think it will do any good. I can easily believe that its a clusterfuck waiting to happen. I guess we will see how it plays out.

Good news:
I'm hit capped. Exactly 17%. Win.

---

Playing Nice

Tuesday night guild night was even more drama filled than Sunday night. Five of our level 80s were present on time. So we signed up for a random heroic. Because that is what we do.

Takk was tanking, Militia was healing, and Sen, Ann, and I were dps'ing. We get Azjol-Nerub. It's not one of my favourites. And we don't get far.

We get down to where the first boss is with his 3 watchers. Takk is pulling the groups one at a time, pretty simple. We're not going for the achievement or anything here. And we die.

We do this several times. And I'm not sure what, exactly, is going wrong. Maybe Sen, Ann, and I just aren't cranking out enough damage. Maybe Militia is not cranking out enough heals. Maybe Takk's just taking too much of a beating. Who knows.

Takk, very discouraged after three or four attempts, suggests we pug someone else and continue. This is not the point of guild night. Guild night for learning to play together and, more specifically, learning to balance each others strengths and weaknesses.

Militia goes to check Takk's gear because he thinks theres a tanking belt that drops in Azjol-Nerub. Instead, he accidentally kicks Takk from the group. Takk logs off and we don't see him for the rest of the night.

So we pug. We finish Azjol-Nerub. Huzzah, huzzah, Emblems of Frost for everyone.

Sen decides he's not interested in doing more dungeons. Batra signs on. We make our way through Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron. Get some phat loot: Prelate's Snowshoes. All in all, a fairly lackluster night.

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Week 2

Second official week of Guild Night and Social Night. Equally uninspiring.

We are having some attendance issues. Truthfully, attendance is not mandatory. But I thought that everyone was on board with creating an actual raid night. Thus far, attendance has been better on Tuesdays so maybe we'll have to return to that being our raid night. I guess this is just one of those things we'll have to tweak and retweak until we arrive at a solution that actually works for everyone.

There's also some drama happening over at Memento. Batra and Senach are really talented at getting on each others nerves. So much so that Batra /ignored Sen during a random heroic last night.

Allow me to tell the whole story. Sen, Ann, Batra, and I randomed our way into Heroic Trial of the Champion. We died a lot. The jousting part I expected to die in. Frankly, I'm terrible at it. But then its time to face Runok Wildmane, Zul'tore, and some other guy.

Lets be perfectly honest here. We're still noobs when it comes to ToC and ICC. Dungeon or Raid, it doesn't matter. But we know a few basics. We know to interrupt the healer. We know to keep the hunter occupied and away from the clothies. We know to stay out of the piles of green crap.

So, to start off I send my felguard after the hunter. I figure, the felguard can keep him occupied until Batra has enough aggro on Runok and whatshisface to spare a second to grab Zul'tore. I'm dps'ing my warlocky heart out on Runok. Several things happen at the same time. My felguard dies. I start to overtake Batra in threat. And an angry hunter starts firing his arrows of doom at me. We die.

At this point, our healer helpfully points out that Batra should be in frost presence. I also point out, as nicely as I can, that he also needs to remember to pick up the hunter. Because having my face peppered with arrows does nothing for our DPS.

Attempt number two goes marginally better. It drags on and on because Runok keeps healing himself. We die.

As we fly back on our spectral gryphons I have a brief discussion with Ann and Sen about interrupting the heals. This is also about the time when I take a few moments to apologize to our healer. I explain that we're all from the same guild and that we're trying to get our tank some experience. Said healer says 'No problem. I'm a GM, I handle this stuff all the time.'

Healer of Awesome, I salute you. This is my shoutout to Otic on Nazgrel. You were amazing. Thank you for your patience with our group.

Otic also points out that Batra is not defense capped. We are aware of this. Painfully and unfortunately aware of this. This time Batra drops the group to the shock and irritation of the rest of us. He cites Sen for always being on his case. I hope this was actually an instance of Sen giving constructive criticism. Sen is the GM, its his job, etc. etc. I don't know.

But, it's a random. We requeue, get another tank, and finish without much trouble. I did get zerged by one of the trash packs that comes with Paletres. That was totally my fault.

So, moral of the story: make sure your tank is defense capped. The random dungeon finder does not care about your stats when it picks a dungeon for you. While we're in the process of recruiting healers and a few more dps we will also be focusing on getting gear for our tanks.

Speaking of gear: I finally got Mark of the War Prisoner! Also picked up the T9 gloves, completing the T94pc bonus I was looking for. Huzzah, huzzah. Finally, picked up a Sword for my main hand. I'm out of greens in my gear, now working on getting rid of blues. A few small upgrades from the heroics. Nothing too exciting.

I can't speak too much about Batra and Takk not being def capped. I'm not hit capped yet. But I'm still working on it. Promise.

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Limping

First week of having "official" guild nights... not so amazing. To be perfectly honest, social night (Tuesdays, 9-12) was sent up for a particular friend that lives out-of-state. She was a no-show Tuesday night, but I found out her computer is dead. She won't be back for 2-4 weeks, le sigh. But one of our Council decided not to show either. And told us Sunday that he didn't know there was a meeting, though it's been posted in the Guild Message for awhile now.

Sunday was pretty gimpy too. 3 people showed up around 8. Others trickled in over the next 2 hours. We ended up running some heroics, in which no gear upgrades dropped. Batra tanked for Ann, Takk, and I through heroic Occulus. We were using the random dungeon finder. Two healers bailed on us right in a row because they kept getting attacked by whelps. I think it was Takk's first lesson in off-tanking.

One of Ann's friends rejoined our server. He may take over the main tank position, which I believe relegates Batra to off-tanking. Takk's good, but he's stated that he's not wholly interested in tanking. In general, I'm cool with Militia. He has actual raid experience, which would be a huge boon for us. But... it shows. And by 'it shows' I mean 'he has a tendency to talk down to us because we have no idea what we're doing'. He probably doesn't even realize he does it. Sometimes (really, just sometimes) it rubs me the wrong way.

Regardless, we're still not anywhere near raiding yet. We have no healers. And, while we could probably pug Naxx (or something on a similar level), the goal is to actually build a group for the long haul.

On the bright side of things:
I did manage to upgrade my wand. I'm also close to buying another T9 piece, if I could only decide which one. I'm debating between eventually getting all of the T9 pieces and getting the T9 4pc bonus with the Hood of Fiery Aftermath. Fel Armor makes it complicated. The 30% to spellpower from spirit makes me want to stack spirit. But in the end, a lot of pieces have more spellpower than the extra I would get from having the piece with spirit on it. And my felguard dieing so often makes me want to stack stamina.

Regardless, I've been picking up some small upgrades from heroics. And stocking up on Emblems of Triumph for the T9 pieces. And hoarding Ebonweave and Spellweave for things to make later.

Still saving for fast flying. Almost to halfway. Farming Violet Hold for The Mark of the War Prisoner. Building my enchanting oh so slowly.

Also, Batra got our vent channel set up. I was without a microphone on Sunday, but it was really neat to hear everyone!

Finally, upgraded my interface. It is much awesome now, although I'm still getting used to it. It's considerably cleaner. The main problem I'm having with it is that, when using the random dungeon finder, I can't tell who is the tank and who is the healer. Not a problem when you're teamed up with a death knight and priest. Big problem when you're teamed up with two paladins.

Social Night tonight will probably be running more heroics.

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