I love being co-raid-leader with Reversion of our raid. I think the job is too big for one person to manage, honestly. I handle logistics and back end stuff; he gives fight strategies and leads Vent. Behind the scenes we spend a lot of time discussing the raid, our raiders, goals and priorities.
This weekend we extended our BOT lockout to work on Cho’Gall. Until he’s down, he is our progression boss. Friday night we brought in a brand new to the guild tank, a healer we haven’t run with in ages, and after two hours we had back to back attempts where we got below 25% and into phase two. After that we went and killed Magmaw/Omnom/Maloriak, to get a head start on Saturday.
Saturday we headed back with my preferred healing team (me, Kerick the paladin, Jhudora the shaman) and tried Cho’gall again. We’re getting really good at getting to phase 2. It’s going to take time to get through that and down Cho’Gall but I know we can do it. After we put in about 9 wipes on him we did our Four Winds kill – I still enjoy that place even now that we have it completely on farm – and then to BWD to finish off there.
We one shot Atramedes. I believe that’s our third kill of him as a raid but it really feels like we’ve got that one on farm. We can handle a little sloppiness, we aren’t having issues with sound, people know what to do.
Then we went to my archnemesis Chimaeron. We discussed cooldown use and healing assignments and started. First attempt I did terribly. I managed to forget what group I was healing and I’d stacked the cooldowns wrong too. We died at the third Feud. We came back, I fixed my attitude and readjusted what cooldowns we use, and we killed that – creature.
I was actually surprised but this is the first time we’ve had my favorite heals team in there in a long time. Add in the new shaman cooldown, plus we had a paladin tank so we had a cooldown there too, and the fight just wasn’t bad. For the record, first Feud we used my Tranquility. Second Feud we used the Spirit Link totem. Third Feud we used Rev’s Tranq, my tree, and the pally cooldown.
So we’re making good progress but we have a lot of work to do to stay progression minded. For the next…. well, more than likely it’ll end up being all summer, we have people out. I’m working on that. The guild just invited a very cheerful new tank who I’m hoping to lock down as an alt for us since we can offer him a guaranteed slot for basically the next two months.
4.2 is on the horizon somewhere and Rev and I are talking about our goals. Our raid is not a heroic mode raid. We’d like to go back and do some heroics once we down end bosses but that’s just not quite where we are right now, or we’d be more than 9/12 regular right now. So when Firelands comes out we’re going to concentrate on getting new content down. We will finish all of the 4.0 bosses though.
See, as a raid I want us to put together the caster staff. I’ve talked to a few raid members who’ve agreed that Falahla, our Arcane mage, is the choice for that staff. It represents to me a great goal for us as a raid. We have to clear the 4.0 content. Then we have to get 4.2 bosses on farm to get the shards. And at some point we will have to kill Ragnaros. I have no idea yet what sort of timeline we can expect to try to live up to but if we do it before the NEXT content patch I’ll be happy.
I know a lot of raids are hurting right now. The summer slump hits us all hard. But with both short and long term goals in mind, it motivates me to get the work down to keep our raid running. We have 6-8 people who will attend unless they are physically unable to. That means even if we have to pug a blind walrus and a melee hunter, we will run our raids every week. It’s a very reassuring thing to know, as a raid leader, that unless you get really really unlucky you won’t have to replace more than two people any given night.
I must admit, I am very proud of our raid, that we have only missed one night in all this time … and that was when you two were out of town, we’d downed all our farm content on Friday, and our fillin healer didn’t show up Saturday … so we decided pugging someone for mostly-cleared content and no guaranteed kills was pushing our luck.
Yeah, I am thrilled at that record too! You guys are such a great team to raid with.
Grats guys 🙂
Grats, mate. I like to hear about hard work paying off.
I also agree with what you said about co-leading. I and my buddy led raids for a long time in more than one guild, and it worked really well. He was far better with noticing small details, checking in recount, etc, and I was much better with the personnel management, talking to people on vent, organizing beforehand, and so forth. It worked perfectly.
It’s also nice (non-raid leaders read no further) because you have someone to complain privately to about raider X who stinks for Y reason and you know it won’t get back to that person. Just having a safe “venting” partner is nice.
Once you get the Nef/Cho’gall fight mechanics down, you will breeze through them over and over. Al’Akir.. /sigh… I hate that fight.
Just an FYI.. rumor has it mid-to-end June is when 4.2 is supposed to drop. (supposedly)
Sounds about right. I certainly would not expect it to be sooner than that.
Glad to hear that about the chogal mechanics. I have already noticed it being less random than some other progression has been. In some ways it is more forgiving. Not that you don’t wipe when you screw up but that screwups often have a delayed action before they wipe you.
For our guild it’s Cho’gall and Al’Akir that are mostly 1-shots, while we still wipe several times on Nef.
For getting through Cho’gall p2, I think positioning is very important. We usually pull him on the throne, which makes all his adds spawn on the throne as well, where they can be AoE’d and cleaved. In a corner works too, but it spreads the adds around a little more. The only thing you have to watch out for with the throne tactic is that you don’t pull him there while he’s spawning blazes, or your entire throne will be covered in fire.
Does he only spawn those at the start of that phase? I tried watching the timing last night (with the other guild raid) between the blazes and the eyes but I was not able to get a fewl sense of the timing.
fewl? Autocorrect ftw! xD
I am sure those letters snuck in after I hit ‘post’ fewl
According to our tank, he starts spawning blazes a few seconds into Flame Orders (which only happens in p1), 1 per swing and around 5 total. The eye stalks are spawned at the start of p2 and periodically after that. You have to be careful not to move him near or on the throne when he is in Flame Orders. It’s not a big problem if the first wave of eye stalks spawns outside the throne, but after that it really helps to keep them confined to melee.
I pulled him into the nearest corner last night and there was no fire. I am assuming he was in Shadow’s Orders but can’t say with 100% certainty on that. We wiped at 3% …..
The DPS was a little low (not counting Zug, he’s like 2 dpsers in one) so we 2 healed it. Between Avenger’s Shield, Arcane Torrent, and Warstomp, the Horde raid has sooo many more options for interrupts that we just don’t have. Our raid has to be even more on top of Conversion to execute the fight properly.
We’ve pugged a blind walrus? I’m sorry I missed that night! ^_^ Our raid is awesome! Besides making steady progress, its a really fun group. I mean six months ago, I wasn’t raiding at all and now I look forward to raid nights!
Just think – in six months you’re going to be walking around with an orange staff.
I have more fun with our raid than I thought would be possible. The work to get things set up is a lot but it’s totally worth it!
I’m also excited about the staff! Though, everytime I’m in a capital city after we get it, I might be inclined to periodically shout “Look what my guild did!” Hee hee!
Totally awesome 🙂
I am proud of all the raids on their progress it’s very awesome to see this happening in Crits as we have never been “current” with our raiding. Well sorta, but not until late LK.
It makes me happy to see raids that keep on keeping on. Once my RL slows down, I’m getting back in the saddle and looking for a raid team with a can-do progression-focused attitude like yours.
🙂
Cho’gall takes some time to learn but eventually folks get into the flow and you’ll have him.