The main reason I moved to Moon Guard was to join up with an actually active guild on an active server. To this end, Azeroth Inc. has been a very good call. The lowest number of online people I've ever seen has been around 12 with population ranging from 30-50 in the evenings. Guild chat is lively, interesting, and in the game. I hate having to log into Discord because that's the only place conversation is happening.
Now that I've been flying for a while and I'm done with the current story campaign, I've been spending my time split between Acannasta and Strev. Strev is always in the 'go find gear' mode, which wound up with me doing a LOT of pvp this past week for a massive weapon upgrade. Canna I'm just trying to level up-- I hit that post Vanilla slog and ran into a wall. With DPS queue times for level 60+ in the 20-30 minute range, it was going to be a questing in zones I hated or had done to death. Familiarity breeds contempt, and all that.
The guild's first raid of 8.2 was on Friday. I didn't bother with signing up. I've been lazy-- haven't watched the boss fights, was missing enchantments, no flasks… definitely not bringing my "A" game and if I'm going to debut, I want to not be a joke. As a bonus, the last time I seriously raided was… omg. Cataclysm. They announced that the raid was being streamed for anyone who wanted to watch. Ok! Let's pull up a chair.
Here's what I learned: this group had never raided together before, but were skilled enough dancers. Most were lower geared than Strev. The guild master is also Arcane.
So…How'd they do? Over the course of a couple of hours, they cleared 4/8 bosses, with 2 on the first attempt. Wow.
By Sunday evening Canna hit Draenor and I flipped back over to Strev to check on a couple of things before logging. Seconds after logging in, the GM whispers me: "ilvl?" "416" "Wanna come raid?" I told him straight up that I didn't have my shit together or know the fights. "It's fine. We'll teach you." Holy crap. Well, ok-- you know what you're getting.
Apparently things have changed a bit since "the day" and raid sizes are flexible you aren't locked into 10/25. I make me way to the raid entrance while the GM scrambles to assemble the rest of the team. In the end, we didn't raid. Our guild's "normal tanks" were on vacation and as a group we decided we'd rather gear up alternate tanks than waste time and resources with under-geared ones.
In the end, I was left with a chunk of self-imposed homework: learn the fights for Friday, get flasks, optimize gear and review raiding simulations. I sim a little under 30k dps (about 1k higher than the GM), but I feel like I should be hitting higher.
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