Those who know me better can verify that I get excited pretty quickly on some idea. And my interest in that idea may dwindle as quickly as it is incited.
Yesterday I tweeted that I might take up on - or in fact propose - leading a guild raid in some earlier instances. I had a plan and I had the interest and I was very much pepped up with the whole thing. Until I checked our guild's current raid schedule. The ICC runs are already in a state in which the only one running is 25 man, three times a week. No tens in some time now and the odd raids -scheduled- are old world reputation and achievement runs. To which there are not many joining, but then again, in 80's gear they are all soloable.
So I got dishearted and decided to stick to the Loremaster stuff instead. If nothing changes, that will be my main interest for the time being.
This lead me to think about the raid leading and beginning it. It would be pretty hard for me to think about starting a PUG, barely knowing the encounters as a raider, let alone take on the leading. Sure, I have read the strategies and know the basics of the encounters, but knowing how different the actual encounters are from the videos or strategies to execute, I doubt severely that I could do it. Successfully.
The current state of the game is such that the LFD 5mans do not teach you anything about grouping, group or class dynamics or goup roles. Levelling content 5mans are - especially the LFD PUGs - just facerolled and most of the time the healer is actually more bound of DPS than healing: the self healing capabilities (and mitigation) of the tanking classes are showing already at low levels, rendering the healing to a couple of HoT's at best. DPS can go rampant and tank lose the aggro and still there is only a little risk of anything going wrong. Only a really messy add pull causes a wipe in there. I've healed a RFK with my lv32 Druid in which I did more dps as healer than an enhancement shaman. And we did the instance without a problem.
Anyhow, the Three rode again yesterday.
First of all, we tried a new composition by having my baby DK first as dps for Headless Horseman and a random heroic. I was a bit amazed that this poor little DK in his green, blue and lv200 purple gear could deliver more dps than Förgelös, who is in way higher gear alltogether. On Headless the difference was significant, but in Gundrak it was even bigger.
In Gundrak my main dps run was against the tanking DK in all purples. Granted, he was tanking and more active due to that, but still I managed to out dps him on each and every boss fight, and in the last boss quite nicely. We passed Eck, as usual, but as the rest of the group left, we decided to go and see if we could do it by ourselves.
I had a tanking spec done - blood one, naturally - but my gear is almost all dps. Just a slight improvement by two or three pieces, but nothing crucial. Dodge at 10%, Parry at 12% and no real understanding on tanking as a DK. My buttons were a mess and I really hadn't even considered what the skills really do.
Add to this, Bishopgeorge's connection had an uncanny trait to disconnect at the most inappropriate moments.
We wiped twice, first due to the fact that I just didn't have the whole grasp of my skills. Second because our healer all of a sudden disconnected. And third wipe came from these combined.
Fourth one. I used every skill to see how and what it helped. In went Army of the Dead, Dancing Rune Weapon, Icebound Fortitude (aye, keep it up all the time) and so on.
And down went Eck.
I realized it only later that we had downed him on HEROIC.
From there I switched to my prot warrior and off we went to Pit of Saron. Now this instance, with which we struggled for so long, seems like a walk in the park. Garfrost is a big lump of meat, Ick/Krick almost annoying fight and Scourgelord Tyrannus is just a blabbermouth. For some reason we always seem to be able to pull the mid-climb mobs on as and wipe: that's just sheer negligence and should be done with. The sad part of this run was that as we ran it for Förgelös so he could get new daggers, no such drops were seen. We had one irritated rogue among us for the rest of the evening.
And off the Halls of Reflection we went.
To be honest, Falric/Marwyn would have been a nice, concise and pushoverish fight, had our healer stayed online through it all. He disconnected around the last wave before Marwyn and we just couldn't push him over the edge. Our first try and he got away with 1/6 of his health.
Second try on Marwyn was pure joy: down he went and without a problem. Too bad the shield didn't drop, it would have made my evening. It's the only improvement I can get from 5 mans anymore, so it would be nice to see drop.
But we have a new brickwall in our way. The last part, the evasion from the Lich King with Jaina. We just do not have enough firepower as it currently is to down the mobs fast enough. Sure, we can do it up to the last wall, but then the lack comes apparent and Lich King collects more souls for Frostmourne.
Next week it will be more Pit of Saron and Halls of Reflection. Hopefully with better luck with gear upgrades, as that is all it seems to be about.
C out
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