Raiding - Disappointing, but not unexpected

It is the last raid we will do before expansion and I was really keen to try to get Blackhand for some of our guildies. There were a number who hadn't come to Blackhand because it is a tough fight, and though we've done it on normal with them, heroic is a different story.  It looks great when it's perfectly co-ordinated, when groups are moving correctly and dodging the Marks and hiding behind the same piles and moving away from the big red demo - and in second phase when the balcony goes down easily it makes it heaps easier for healers to get everyone topped up before the drop to phase 3.

But with a whole bunch of people who hadn't done it on heroic before, it wasn't going to be pretty. And it wasn't.

Voe had a shocker to start, dying in phase 1 constantly by getting hit by the mark.  He figured it out after about 40 minutes but it was still ugh.  Bombs went off in melee a little bit too often for my liking, and in Phase 2 there were so many people not getting behind the siege that it didn't feel very progressive.  We at least got to phase 3 a few times and though there weren't as many mistakes there as when we first started doing it, the healing for it and survivability was terrible and most people were dead so we lacked the DPS to be able to get it down.

Lily/Shoe died constantly in Phase 1 during the end of the night.  Owl wasn't as experienced as Yuuda as getting to balcony and one time got targetted so he couldn't get up anyway because he had to run behind the siege but ended up getting shot anyway - it is very confusing when that happens, I know I hate it.  I was on balcony duty but I could hardly get up there because I was panic healing all the people who got shot or bombed but at least I took germination so that they were hotted up before they went up, so it didn't feel as necessary to go up as it used to.  Nok had to leave because he had been having a bad week, but with 2 boomkins on the balcony you'd think it would be great.  But there was lots of fire, lots of sieges not going down, Ultra was getting frustrated because he suddenly stopped talking halfway through the raid so people didn't know if they had to switch to the siege or not.

I had a ridiculous stuff up when I was marked and ran towards a pile of bombs instead of the rubble pile and got Kaillynn shot because of my stuff up.  Whoops.

Crooked disconnected and after that we put a vote to the raid to stop or continue and we ended it there.  We actually had 19 people turn up to raid, including Duck, Tacky, Voe and Lilynette (Shoushiro) and Kaillynn on her priest (which she will be using in the next tier anyway).

I didn't end up asking any Athanasy people to come because I was unsure of how this run would go. It wouldn't have been a good run to have them on anyway, there was enough confusion already.

Duck had just finished his exams and wanting to get back into raiding, so it would have been so brilliant to get it down for him as he had been with us almost all of the way through BRF.  But, next tier is here, so it's time to look forward, not backward and think about new raid fights, new mechanics and NEW LOOT!