Last night was madness… but in a mostly good way. Firstly it started on a bizarre note because I had not been reading the raid slack during the evening, and had not quite grasped that it was up to me to pull things together. I was busying myself with trying to get shit ready for the raid, and was fishing up some mackerel to make the high end versatility food. During this time folks kept asking me if I was running the show that night, and each time I answered “Sure if Ky doesn’t show up”, never fully grasping that in fact that was what was happening. I remembered Ky saying something about not being there, but for whatever reason I had that linked in my head with the “people attending blizzcon” list, so that when he said he was not in fact at BlizzCon I just sorta deleted that tidbit of information from my brain. As a result what ended up happening was me realizing five minutes before the start time of the raid that I probably should have sent out invites fifteen minutes before hand. There was a last minute flurry of activity, getting people invited and summoned and this also caused me to feel like I really needed to pull faster than normal. Apologies to the healer team for putting up with my shit.
In truth a huge thank you to the entire raid for dealing with my shit. It has been years since I have attempted to lead anything larger than a five player group. Even then I am not entirely certain I am completely qualified to be responsible for the lives of others. The truth is I was a little concerned that we were down both Zea and Kylana who traditionally are locked in an eternal struggle for first and second place on the dps meters. However in the past week it seems like that quite literally everyone has improved their gear a bit, and the result felt like we possibly cleared trash faster than we have ever done. Similarly a lot of the boss fights felt really solid, namely Il’gynoth that felt like our smoothest kill yet with no last minute panic or the feeling of it being an extended wipe race to the finish line. The only negative of the night was that we struggled a bit on Spiderbirb, but I think most of that was simply bad luck. It was about then that our flasks were wearing off so we took a break and came back refocused, and wrecked it on the next pull.
The real highlight of the night however is that we finally downed Xavius. Honestly the timing of this could not have been more perfect, because after we had made a few attempts and were regrouping we saw that Zea popped into game. So we ninja invited him… and he opted to bring a friend of his along as well. Then when we went out to summon that friend… Kylana popped online, who we also ninja invited. So when we managed to get the kill we had our entire raid team, which makes it feel all the more awesome as a result. Sure I realize this is “only normal” but screw it I am happy as hell and I will fite you if you poop on this moment! The fight felt like madness from a tanking perspective, but it is amazing how much confidence comes from having downed and encounter the first time. I know without doubt that we will come back next week and wreck him all the harder. At some point I am certain we will start dipping our toes into some of the heroic versions of these fights as well. We essentially have one more Cenarius kill from being able to skip directly to Xavius, so at a minimum we can start working on heroic while still clearing the final boss. It was a good night.
