LF Ranged DPS, Have Tanks and Healers

Tuesdays night’s raid was canceled. We have had trouble filling a full raid of 25 Tuesday thru Thursday. Even though people say they would be available they are not signing up. Making it hard for the raid leaders to plan since those were the nights everyone said they would be able to attend. From other blogs and talking with other guilds it looks like this is prevalent in all raiding guilds. I think it is just a summer, WotLK, and Alt thing.

Our only raiding prot pally says in guild. [G][Pally]: Kara badge run!”

Then one of our priest said they would go… and a warrior.

Well that sounded promising. I announced my interest too. Seems with 22 people on we could make a quick Kara group to farm the place for badges. I might even get my hat!

I waited a few minutes. No one was doing invites. No one was taking initiative. *sigh* I have a feeling it is not going to happen if I don’t organize this.

So I start inviting.

A hunter would like to take their dps warrior. Another hunter would like to take their rogue. And second hunter had a friend that could heal. A healer who wanted to take their hunter.

I sent invites. I got whispers “I am not taking this toon.”

I need to know where we stand with bodies. What classes we need to fill. I have NEVER paid attention. I just sign up for these things. I don’t lead these things. Here I was with four people whispering me. Trying to ask questions myself on how many tanks and healers we need. How geared each new-to-me character was. I even looked up our guest in armory! I needed to know if I needed a third healer or not.

I didn’t sign up for this position. But I was looking at a raid of eight. With me as lead.

By this time my rogue was going to be home in 20 minutes. So I would make him the ninth. I have some pull there. *grin* But with two rogues and a dps warrior we were a little thin on ranged and casters. So that is what I had to fill.

It took me 20 plus minutes to fill that tenth raid spot. Friends talked to people and other people. I whispered to guildies. Finally when my rogue logged on I received a whisper from one of the other guild locks. YES! Off we went.

The healer friend was the only one who had never been all the way through Kara. He had coaching. Form his friend, the other healer, and the healer on her hunter. So I didn’t worry. Lots of loot was picked up for healer friend, alts, and fun to play around with. So we actually didn’t shard as much as I thought.

We had a hitch with Moroes. Mostly because I never pay attention to who gets killed first, shacked, trapped, and tanked. My solution?

[RL] [Me]: You all mark the one you CC.

They did, everyone agreed and we cleared up the kill order for everyone and proceeded. We did end up killing the shacked mob before Moroes because it got dotted. No, it wasn’t me. *shrug* Moroes still died.

I made fun of prot pally for going off and giving the healers heart attacks by almost dieing. To the point I put a raid icon on his head so we could keep track of him. From then on the icon kept changing. And they reduced their healing so he didn’t get mana back so fast so they could get theirs.

We took a peek at Nightbane. I finally got my urn. Our hunter switched out to her healer. But we still didn’t get him down. I know we could. I wanted to finish up the quest to get it out of my log. But this was a farming run and it was decided to move on quickly. We wanted Prince since he had the most loot on him for the raid. I restrained myself from being disappointed. I was really hopping to get that done.

We got Big Bad Wolf for the Opera event. No hat for me. But my rogue picked up the Big Bad Wolf's Paw to play with.

We breezed through the fights. I only brought up reminders kill sparks first, wait on mana before next pull, and don’t move on flame wreath. We did wipe. Had a bad pull on the way to Maiden.

It took three tries on Prince. On the run back I reminded them to repair at the vendor standing before chess.

I had whispers about this being the latest they could stay. Sleepy raiders get sloppy.

[RL][Me]: No more dieing allowed.

We changed around tanks and healing. Down he went.

I know I had it easy. They knew the fights. I still had to establish loot rules, deal with the whispers, the organizing, final decisions and every random thing that came up. I have always had high respect for my raid leaders. I know it is not an easy job. You are in charge of the fun and personalities of the raid. I was responsible for nine others.

I didn’t realize I was doing it. While we were raiding, after each kill, I congratulated the raid. Told people thanks for remembering things and focusing.

In the end I was excited at how much loot was distributed. Gearing alts and getting items for offspec that had no DKP cost from a normal raid. I told the raid it was fun. And they concurred.

It wasn’t horrible. We cleared everything but the two dragons. Giving us 18 badges. I have some interest to go back and clear the dragons for quests from others in the guild. So a full clear might happen. Now we will have to see if I ever do a run like this ever again.