Dawning of Aquarius, and Reality.

I didn't get a chance to raid with the guild this weekend, even though I was briefly in the raid. Too many melee, and all that. I ended up in a whisped conversation with a friend afterward. And one of the topics was on the possibility of this guild ever seeing (or defeating) the Lich King.

This person's feeling was that no way, no where, no how was it going to happen. Sadly, I agree.

In my 10-mans, there are usually only 2 of us putting out "good" DPS numbers. Even with the 25% buff, it's STILL a race to kill Festergut before the enrage. We've failed because a single 4k DPS person died. At this point with gear and buffs, that's a bit disheartening.

Tanking is usually goood enough, and healing can be iffy.

A large portion of this, is that the guild rotates folks in & out of the raids week to week. Partly this is intentional (we are, afterall, mainly a social guild, and we want everyone to participate) and part of it is just some folks can't raid every day/week we are scheduled (I missed 2 weeks, due to camping and visiting family) And overall, this doesn't bug me much.

Until I read about other bloggers making it to Sindy, etc whilest in a PuG.

It's not that others can do well in a PuG that makes my shoulders slump. It's that we can't do well in a complete Guild run that is depressing.

What happens to cause us to fail?

(I should say that we can usually make ot past Fester in 10 man, though not always. I have seen Putricide once)

• We rotate our team, and usually have at least one person that has never seen this content before. And even though we don't swap toons mid-run (unless someone can't make it the second day) it still means our team's composition is ALWAYS changing, and usually has folks that are still fairly new to the fights.


• The fact that most of our players are not at all hardcore, and are not uber-geared has an effect. Pungent Blight is a nasty nasty thing when your tanks have less than 40k health (buffed), and your healers can't each push out 10k heals/second.


• While great gear isn't necessary, it helps overcome less than perfect gear/spec/rotation that most folks have. (I am lumping myself in there)


• To put this in perspective, in the last 10 man I ran (20% buff) I was doing 7,500 DPS. A slightly lower geared Warlock (I'm at 5,600 GS and she's at 5,400 GS) was the only person at that level. Depending on the fight, we would swap #1 in DPS.


• We do have a couple others that can dish out the DPS, but I rarely run with them, so the rest of the DPS starts getting a tad low.


• We have new tanks that take a while to learn the swap, or are a little squishy.


• We have people standing in the bad. (either new, not paying attention/whatever)


• We have folks not using appropriate add-ons.

If you combine all this, even a 30% buff will be tough to progress with.

Earlier, I had thought the weekday group was doing a lot better (they have actually beaten Putricide) but it turns out that isn't the case. The only real advantage they have is that they will often run 3+ days a week.

Part of me would like to take the 10 best players in our guild, and take a few weeks to see how far we can progress. The problem is that would severely hurt the chances for the other team to do much of anything. Not to mention that there's no guarantee that we could get all 10 to show up each and every day for multiple weeks. Again, this is a social guild, and real life takes priority


On a side note, I had an offer (actually, nearly a beg) for me to tank ICC 10 man for Kattastrophe's guild, in an alt run. As much as part of me wanted to go, I had to beg off.

• While I *am* def capped, I am not hit capped, so my threat gen is hampered.


• I have 29,000 health, self buffed, and only 37k fully 10 man buffed.


• My tank GS is about 4,400.


• Doing the pre-Marrowgar trash is a cat-herding fest, which I am NOT good at.


• Everyone was playing alts, which meant that there was nobody uber-geared to help pick up my (or anyone else's) slack.

Based on my own lacking, plus (the assumed) lacking of the rest of the group, I just didn't feel like beating my head against a wall for 2-3 hours. (plus, there are a couple members of that guild that I REALLY do not like, and at least one of them was in the group)

In another day or 2, I will have some better gear (one more piece of primordial saronite, and I will have ICC boots!) I will also have to see if I can get a set of ToC wrists, which aren't TOO expensive (especially with all my frozen orbs)

So, instead of the ICC group, 4 other guildies & I did a fun-run-mount-run. We did Magister's Terrace, The Ravenlord run and Zul'Gurub. None of the mounts dropped, but still fun.

Oh, and on a final note, Kattastrophe got her Cata Beta invite, and has been playing it a fair amount. I may "see if I can get her to play a pally" (eh-hem) and possibly get a feel for the new Pally mechanics. I don't want to know ANYTHING about the new areas, redesigned areas, or any of that, but getting a chance to "see it being played" (wink wink) as a REt-Pal will be worht a quick check-out.

She has been playing a Goblin Rogue (the Worgen have been disabled for some reason) so I have been trying to avoid watching (and listening) to what has been happening on her screen. ONe slight spoiler: Goblins have a TON of vehicle related quests. (ok, a few, which is still a bunch, for WoW)

Laters...