Raiding - Archimonde I don't ever want to see you again

Last week of WoD. Which means the last week people can get their moose. Fortunately it's been nerfed heavily so it's a lot easier than it was - we did it last week with a whole bunch of demon hunters and it went ok despite very meh damage output and little ranged.

I have been really pleased looking at the guildies who have turned up to help out other guildies get their mounts. However, it was a little bit trying yesterday because we had 11 carries inexperienced people and we actually wiped on Manny and Archi on our first goes.

Of course, I lay the blame on Ultra's feet. He was excited about getting to tank the last Archimonde and wanted to go on his Demon Hunter. Unfortunately HK tends to forget that Ultra hasn't tanked before so Ultra's taunting was a bit off and Manny moved strangely. We eventually got it down and then off to Archimonde.

Well that didn't go well either. We died the first time and then we were going to do 2 runs with half of the inexperienced in one group and then do it again for the other half. However, Ultra switched to his hunter and Xyn jumped on his tank, I made Erve heal instead of doing rubbish warlock DPS, got Taxar off his mage and onto his paladin, and also got Gorvek on his shaman. The next go went HEAPS better and everyone got their mount. I was happy to see Nath and Jazz join us, as well as Ednatola and Zanthula, Deathblight, Orbit and Dilandach, and they all got their mounts, much to my relief. There were so many healers that I got to do some crappy DPS.

I stared at Archimonde's body for a little while - partly because I looted an Heroic Titanforged trinket, and then managed to roll an even higher item level Heroic Titanforged trinket, and was boggled by that - and thought back over the expansion. The struggles we had as a guild when we first started raiding, where we had too many raiders and people had to sit out and were annoyed at the high numbers of people raiding that they hadn't seen before.  Of the angst we had when we started using EPGP and people were unhappy with donations and how the looting system worked. It wasn't long into the first raid tier before we had issues with those who weren't quite the right fit for the guild moving on, which was really the best thing for them and the best thing for us.

After that we seemed to find our feet again, settling into our identity and getting the group guild feeling back again. We raided along in BRF and then into HFC - I remember the first heroic Assault seemed so hard we were pondering whether we were just doing something wrong or was it overtuned? Turns out we were doing it wrong!

And our first heroic Archimonde kill. I remember the exultation when we got it down - it was a great feeling and a huge sense of achievement. And then the debacle of mythic raiding which caused a lot of dissatisfaction within the guild - those who didn't want to raid with outsiders ended up not raiding, and those that ended up leaving to join the guild that we had been raiding with. I am never going to do cross guild mythic raiding ever again as a joint guild venture.

And then we started getting in some new blood - some really good new blood - and things are starting to look up again. The full raid team for Legion looks a little bit different but there are still 10 that have always been there and it's comforting to see.

That took a long time to write, when in fact it ran through my mind in less than a minute whilst standing there looting my goodies, but I wasn't sad to say good bye to WoD raiding. It had gone on for too long and unlike the end of Siege of Orgrimmar where we were still raiding progressively trying to get our mythic Garrosh kill I felt a little cheated, but I accepted that to preserve our guild culture and identity that chasing mythic and progression is not our goal. Along the way we may have lost some great players because of that mindset, but it really is why our guild longevity is so good and so stable.

Goodbye Hellfire Citadel!