Elitist Jerk?

I am happy to announce that Zero Yard Range has now officially merged with our new guild, Non Combat Pet; Raid Team Dropbears.

NCP is the type of guild I never imagined being in: -

1. A competitive guild (realm first heroic Garrosh for their US raid team; realm first Oceanic kill for Dropbears)
2. A large guild (3 raid teams over different time slots, plus associated family and friends)
3. A progression-focussed guild (up to 4 raid nights a week with flexible finish times to down bosses)
4. A guild with a skill cutoff (DPS too low? Sorry, you might have to sit this one...)

and

   5. A guild with potentially low tolerance for anything other than near-perfection

How the hell did I end up here? A year ago, fairly content with breezing through casual raids whilst doing two or three other things at the same time, I would have scoffed at anyone suggesting I join an "elitist" guild. Too lazy, too time-poor, not enough motivation to raid the hours or make the effort to research and min/max my class. Oh yes, of course - and nowhere near skilled enough.

And yet, here I am. Here I stay may be another story - I *am* more time-poor than ever and I'm not sure if I have enough of the "elitist" mindset it will take to continue raiding with this crew, but with options for Mythic raiding next to zero without this merge, the choice between the extremes of elite NCP raiding or dropping back to casual/PuG raiding is going to be tough either way.

However, I'm happy to at least give it a shot... especially since they're giving me a shot (I apparently passed their skills test for hunters; namely heroic Blackfuse belt duty and decent DPS, although I wasn't perfect). Whether I stay or not might depend on the people as well - nothing worse than spending several hours a week with people you don't like!

Carry Me Away

Well, my freak out about doing heroic Paragons for the first time was completely unnecessary. The merge guild's team were totally in control the whole time and since everybody except me knew what to do, it was easy.

I would have to say my heroic Blackfuse freak out was probably warranted, but I didn't do too badly at all - died on the first go (after someone else on the floor did, so they couldn't rez me), wiped on the second (slow getting up on the pipe and couldn't DPS wave #6 in time) and killed it the third, although I died right at the end when we were DPSing the boss instead of being on the belt (I had no idea what was going on on the floor, since up until this point I'd been pretty much permanently on the belt).

I'm pretty happy overall with my performance - the other hunter died once in the third Blackfuse attempt, so I felt better about falling off the pipe once in that fight. Plus, I managed to scrape top DPS on Thok (I realise that fight is totally built for hunters, but considering their strat involves 1 tank, 2 heal and burst DPS to get Thok down as the third door opens, I feel like I made a significant contribution...).

Unfortunately I didn't get to do Garrosh - they were taking another newbie through and didn't want a second - but at least I had fun raiding with them. Plus, there was the added bonus of having the entire rest of the week off from raiding - so efficient!

Ahhh... Freak Out

Le Freak, c'est Chic!

So it's maintenance night and I'm freaking out. Why? Because tomorrow night I'm going to be representing Zero Yard Range in our potential merge guild's raid and I've just watched the strat videos for heroic Paragons and Garrosh (having not done them before).

Even before watching these, I'd been freaking out because (as a hunter, naturally) I'm going to have to do the belt for heroic Blackfuse and my guild has only had 2 nights of wipes to wave 6 so far, which is only just halfway through. That's not even counting the fact that it's so easy to fall off the pipes!

On the other hand, I'm also freaking out because these fights look absolutely awesome (or at least Paragons does... for some reason the Garrosh fight looks simpler and more straightforward that Paragons apart from a high DPS requirement).

In any case, our potential merge guild usually makes it to Paragons on the first night, so I'll have one less thing to worry about on Sunday if they let me do Garrosh (which they might not; apparently they still wipe fairly regularly on that fight).

Fingers crossed I don't wipe the raid more than once! :P