Raiding - Mythic Gorefiend makes me glad I'm the PuG

So now I am doing Gorefiend with Nostalgic. The breaker of guilds. Where one mistake will cause a wipe. And that's if you're doing it properly and know what you're doing. Imagine if you're someone who is not a total pro at mechanics!

So far, Kyxyn, HK/Farashkar, Voe and myself are the regular Frostwolves doing Gorefiend with them. You do need consistency when you're trying to learn a new boss, so it's nice that we've been in every week. I have been just focussing on what I can do better, rather than what everyone else can do better - especially since at the moment, I'm healing, which is my preferred role. I hate DPSing on a progress fight. As I've said previously, it's rather relaxing, from a guild leader's point of view. For Xyn, as our raid leader, he can step back and look at what the problems are looking around the raid, the strats, the people, positioning and whether people are doing what they should.

A few weeks ago, there was more room for Frostwolves to fit in, but they have been recruiting, and so our numbers are being squeezed out. Sound familar? Xyn was initially concerned, but I said that if it was us, we would want our own guildies in for a fight as well - it's our nature, we want to play with our own. Yes, we did set aside slots for reliable non guildies, but Nostalgic is not us, and we can't expect them to be. I'm grateful to be raiding, and with a few of my guildies at least.

I also told him that after a lot of wiping on Gorefiend, people will start trickling out. It's the nature of it. Gorefiend is for the dedicated, and I am not sure that some people who are not true mythic raiders (as a lot of people now are mostly mythic because there is nothing else to do, like me) will enjoy the constant wiping. Tempers get short, and I did notice that last night on Gorefiend. The only thing we improved on was the adds control (as Neuro advised me to just spam regrowth and heal the crap out of them and then drink when I came out) which I did, in tree form. It was actually quite good, and I felt a lot better about my healing inside than I have. Throwing double rejuvs around on a few adds and then genesis helped too (well it helped the healing, not my mana pool) but I felt like I was succeeding. Most of the time I died because I wasn't DPS'd out, or the big add inside killed me. Neither of which were my fault, so I was happy about that.

However last night the first signs of raid stress were beginning to appear. People were snarky, mistakes were pounced upon, and there was lots of swearing and angriness. People felt like we were at impasse, but there was some progress - adds were a lot better, so now people just need to work on NOT dying. There seem to be a lot of deaths from things other than the Touch of Death, which is bad because then bodies start piling up and there are tons of people in the belly....

On a side note, I didn't know that when you were in the belly you were "shrunk". Because it's clearly like the tardis in there because the belly looks so much bigger when you're in it than when you're looking at it from the outside.

Poor Voe had a shocker and accidentally pulled a few times, once was a body pull coz he was laggng and came out of the stomach and was standing too close to the boss and pulled it. Other times he just shot it for I don't know what reason - probaby an accident - and he did feel a little bit sheepish after the raid.

However, Tauroki seemed at his wits end with us not getting anywhere. We have done 80+ pulls and not done much progress, it seems. He was tearing his hair out, trying to make it better.I sent him hugs and reassurances but he just needed us to get SOMEWHERE.

People are still getting broken out too early, and that hurts the dmg on the adds inside. Also the biggest issue I had was with the Shared Fates, where you have to run to the person of there will be an almighty explosion. That wasn't done well and people were stuck whilst others kinda forgot to move (or were REALLY SLOW) for shared fate and there were deaths from that when it exploded. Healing inside has improved - and we did have the other druid sacrificing himself at the beginning to avoid having 2 druids going in at once coz our healing inside would be a bit rubbish, but we abandoned doing that towards the end of the night, as the poor druid had quite a few deaths from dying too early (ie before the boss was pulled) or someone would pull too early (/cough Voe) and people would be stuck without their clothes on (the sacrificing people unequipped their clothes before the pull to lower their health pool because they would die faster).

Tauroki wrote a big post on their guild forums about it, which I read - mostly about too much AoE damage on the clones breaking people out too early meaning that not enough damage being done to the adds inside. Now that I am not DPSing, it's not as big a deal. Hopefully I won't be made to role swap again because I just got my healing figured out!

But he's frustrated and I can see that as the night wears on. It will continue as the weeks of wiping continue. It's interesting because people comment that we're going to kill it tonight, even though I know that there is a lot of work still to be done. Are they trying to keep a positive attitude? Or are they just not really seeing that there is a lot of learning still to be done? Even if we manage to live to the first feast, the damage done to Gorefiend is absolutely WOEFUL, and that needs to be worked on. I am still excited to do it week in and out to improve, but I can see some people are getting tired of it already. How long before this raid starts to dwindle in numbers?

I feel for Tauroki because he has to manage regular signups - because for this fight you really don't want an occasional player to be raiding, you need everyone who has been working on it to be there - and pull your DPS, and healers and tanks into line. It makes me glad that it's not Frostwolves running it, because it would be us having to stress about the right balances and who is not performing well and so on. I better not get used to this "being the PuG" business, because when I get back into it come Legion with our own raids, I may have gotten too used to the easy life and forget what it's like to be a GM!