Raiding - Bringing in PuGs to mythic, with some reluctance

Two weeks ago when we had some decent goes on Council, I had to ask Exray to heal, because we didn't have anyone else. I normally wouldn't want him to because he is excellent DPS (though with a heavy tendency to tunnel). He didn't want to heal, because he wasn't brilliant at it, and since then he has not turned up to raid. I hadn't thought much of it, but Kyxyn said it was because he didn't want to be asked to heal again.

It made me cross. I ask Crooked to heal all the time, and he doesn't like it, and yet he does it with minimal complaint (maybe one sad face). I have asked Sars to heal as well. Neither Ultra, Exray or Aza turned up to raid last week (and it was implied it was because of the healing incident) and I was rather crestfallen. Three ranged out of the picture! We couldn't raid last week, and so I had to make contingency plans to find fillers for our raids.

This week, Exray didn't logon for fear of being asked to heal, and Aza told that to Kyxyn and he was rather accepting of it, and told me we should just look at him like a mage or a warlock - a DPS only caster. It's no different really to me being a healer only, since my DPS is so woeful. I keep saying I will work on it, but I'm so far very lazy about trying it outside of PvP. So I accepted that, and I won't ask him to heal anymore.

I had gone along to help some people I met from another guild on Barthilas, Nostalgic, who were a nice bunch of people. I miss having other guild leaders to talk to or hang out with. Nostalgic was not up to mythic raiding, but they had excellent raid co-ordination (people actually FOLLOWED instructions) and were doing Mannoroth. Some of their guildies were extremely well geared, and I thought they could be nice people to ask to come along if we needed fillers since they aren't doing mythics yet. However, they were not far from it, so my window of opportunity for that was narrow. Besides, it's nice to be able to go to an organised raid and just PLAY without having to worry about calling out stuff.

Raid was going to be short of people this week - Voe and Dan were both overseas on holidays, and Duck still was busy with Uni. I wasn't sure if Az, Ultra and Exray would come. Yuuda said he might not come. That was a lot of people missing.

But! With lots of begging and pleasing we managed to scrounge together 20 people - Ultra and Az came, and Tacky came as a filler whilst we waited for Crooked, and he got a Hellfire Assault kill. I asked 2 people from Nostalgic - Tauroki and Galindrasta, who were not super geared but they had decent raid awareness. No doubt they would be brilliant at a higher item level. It took them a few goes to get the Kormrok swirly positions but they got it after a few goes. Poor Tauroki is holy offspec but tank main, and healing is not his main forte, and he felt dreadful being outhealed by the tanks. Now he knows how his healers feel, I guess. I reassured him and Gal that even though they weren't stellar on the DPS or heals, without them we couldn't raid, so I was grateful to them.

I would actually like Taxar and Tacky to come to raid, but unfortunately those two have this tendency to die a lot from mechanics! Maybe we can practice Heroic Iron Reaver more so they will get better with positioning and movement. I would much rather bring our own people than outsiders!

Probably the best loot of the night went to Celaena, who managed to pick up mythic warforged socketed Cruel Hope Crushers, that we put to a roll and Peggy won the roll, except I didn't realise that BoEs could not be transferred across servers. So lucky Celaena got to keep them with her rolling second highest. Man, those would be worth 100k + on the AH!

Mythic warforged Gorebound Wristguards dropped on Hellfire Assault and Ang kindly gave them to me, and I felt bad, he should have taken them. It made me look like a loot whore.

This week will be the first week we are going to try 3 raid nights in 2 weeks, to see how we go. It means that we're going to spend a whole night wiping on Council on Monday, pending turnups.

After raid finished, HK, Kyxyn and I had a discussion about who was going to be coming to raid. We needed to find more people to come, because I had so many people who I couldn't count on to be there at raid. I asked Koda if she would like to raid mythic once a week and she said she would, but would just need to learn the fights so that was good. It means though that I would have to spend more effort learning and playing Boomkin so that my utility would be better.

I am reluctant to recruit because come Legion we will be swamped with people for raids again. But I don't mind swelling the socials. Who knows if some of them will become raiders? But man, why am I only finding melee? Where be all the ranged?