Raiding - Our turn to smash Blackhand

I hate to say it, but they love to hear it. The warlocks may have saved the day.

It's Wednesday.  Every Wednesday I'm usually in a great mood at work because I know I'm going home and going to raid. However, it's Blackhand Wednesday and I hoped to get some progress on Blackhand today, so I was excited about that, but yet not excited about people getting frustrated or continuing to make mistakes. Koda said we were going to kill it today and I laughed because... well, I didn't want to get my hopes up.

We are always light on ranged and Aza said that he would come to raid on Wednesday, as I think he's slowly coming off his break from WoW.  Sev happened to logon before raid time and Aimei said to him "Are you going to raid Sev?  Aza is coming and we're doing Blackhand."

Sev is still on his break from WoW and so I have been telling him not to come back early because it will just reset his cycle of WoW apathy and so I was surprised when he said he would come.  TWO extra ranged!  TWO warlocks!

Two warlocks who haven't seen much of the fight and don't use DBM.  Two warlocks who pick up the fight relatively quickly. But it's two ranged.  YAY!

Raid started and everyone was agog.  "WARLOCKS! Not one, but TWO!" Everyone was pleased to see them, I think. Hopefully that would inspire them to come back to raiding.  It's always nice to be wanted.

So we had a good Wednesday turnout. Our roster was:
Tanks: Aimei, Kyjenn
Heals: Navi, Koda, Bish, Rag
DPS: Madcow, Arelion, Hwired, Crusnik, Luxy, Crooked, Ultra, Kel, Aza, Sevrus, Lushen, Punchynok, Yuuda

We had some good attempts and then some bad.  I took Heart of the Wild because I was solo tranqing the demolition phase. First phase was going well and DPS was good - we measure it as good when Kyjenn doesn't get punted by Blackhand before the transition (so the tanks only get smashed once each).  And we were making that.

Phase 2 is always where the struggle is.  Rag was being sent into the up group, and he didn't think that was ideal (and I didn't either because tanks REALLY take a hit during that phase).  However, everyone knows how crap I am at getting up onto the balcony - I'd be lucky to make it up half the time and then nobody would get heals.  Which meant I had to chase the bloody tanks around and hope Bish and Koda had everyone else covered.

We had lots of mistakes as usual, the usual things we struggle with.
- both warlocks had their share of being shot by the Mark
- Ultra was kiting the tank around and positioned himself a little bit funny so he ended up getting shot because he was in front of the siege engine when marks came out.
- bombs in melee being triggered
- siege engines not being killed fast enough and fire going out
- healing just before the transition

I had some spectacular mistakes.  One time I was concentrating on healing the tank and then I got the mark so I turned and bolted to the siege and set off a bomb on EVERYONE around Blackhand, right before transition.  Well that was dumb.  I also got shot a couple of times and I had a bad habit of swearing into vent.  Crooked made a subtle comment that vent should be less cluttered and I have to control myself with talking into vent - I'm not even sure why I say "Oh shit....!" when I misclick a heal or get some bad debuff to myself.

It was good to see that Phase 3 was getting better - BOMBS LEFT MARKS RIGHT was eventually sinking in.  Madcow stood there with the bomb one attempt not realising he had it but overall people were good with the bombs, but the marks were still a bit iffy.  Healing for phase 3 feels like a massive poo-fight, and so we had Bish standing out of the smash constantly so that the tanks get healed, and obviously anyone who had the bomb wouldn't get in the smash.

On the 11th attempt for the night we had a really great attempt.  We got to phase 3 and people were doing OK, and then the tanks died when the boss was at about 10% and we managed to squeeze a little bit more out and wiped at 4%.  EVERYONE was stoked for that attempt and on our 12th attempt everyone was excited and feeling positive and we managed to kill Blackhand, though a lot of us were dead towards the end.

BIG CHEERS WENT OUT! Everyone was excited, happy, elated - it had taken us 156 attempts to get it (which according to Ask Mr Robot, at our ilevel it should be 85 attempts) but who cares, we had done it!

Well wouldn't you know, 3 vanquisher tokens dropped.  Crusnik was a happy DK.

Aza walked off with Blackhand Doomstaff, and both Iron Soldier's Sabres were taken for transmog. Shattering Smash leggings were sharded.  No trinkets were rolled and none dropped so that was disappointing!  But who cares, we killed it!

So what to do for the rest of the week?  The officers had a pow wow and we decided that we would welcome alts into the heroic raid depending on DPS and heals, and the casual raiders on Sunday could come as well.  However, some limits were set - if they died to mechanics within one minute of the fight for 2 boss fights then they would be asked to sit out.  I think that's fair.  And it will give others the opportunity for a break now that Blackhand is dead if they don't want to raid but secretly I'm wishing that we would do some of the meta achievements.  Maybe I can hijack Sunday to do that since we're alt raiding during the week.

Are we doing Mythic?  Some people asked that, but we noticed that patch 6.2 is on the downloader so that means patch will drop in the next couple of weeks.  I think our time would be better served doing Blackhand and then relaxing for the rest of the time doing alt runs or achievements so we still keep our fun yet have our toes in the raiding scene still.  Ah, the life of a casual raiding guild :P

WELL DONE FROSTWOLVES!!!