Small Victories

There are times when it’s a drag doing some of the not-so-fun stuff of trying to run a guild.  I can’t really say “run”, because the officers do a HUGE amount of the heavy lifting and the members are all in all very good people and helpful in their own regard.  For the most part officers all have their things they do, either assigned stuff or just helpful stuff, and I know I couldn’t do all of those things myself.

Still though there are those times when “it’s a dirty job but someone has to do it” and often times those are the things I have to do.  Perhaps I have to turn someone down for something, or yell at (politely chat with *cough*) someone who isn’t following the rules, or deal with mundane tasks that end up in my lap.  These things can kind of wear on you, even in the best of circumstances.  I also freely admit I’m often times not the most pleasant person to deal with, and I can absolutely slack on stuff which in the end makes even more work for myself.  I think it’s also safe to say sometimes I need to deal with someone who in that moment isn’t at their best either.  In those cases I have to at least *try* to deal with the situation in a reasonable manner without completely flipping out.  Sometimes I do ok, sometimes I don’t.  Often those are my roughest moments.

Then there are times like last night…but first a little back-story.

We raid 25s only two nights a week, 3-4 hours a stretch, so we try and get a lot done in a short amount of time.  Our first raid night of this past week we ran through Vault, the new weekly raid quest, and finally started Icecrown Citadel.  We got through Lord Marrowgar in two tries, and then cleared the trash to Lady Deathwhisper.  We got (I think) 4 total tries on her before we had to call it a night.  The first 3 were sort of tune-ups trying to learn her abilities, but also to try and figure out who needed to be placed where.  The last try of the first night we did a bit better, but still only phase 1 of the fight and still not a chance of beating her enrage timer.  At the end of the night we were tired, and we didn’t even get her into her second phase.  We weren’t dejected, but I think we all were hoping for more.

Last night (our second raid night) we went at her again.  I’m not sure how may attempts we put in on her, but enough to the point that we had trash re-spawn and had to clear it yet again (but we saw our first epic drop off of trash from them, so yay!).  We worked to fine tune our strategy, and kept plugging away at it.

FINALLY, after working on her for literally hours, we had a really great attempt.  Everyone playing as best as they were capable of playing, everyone doing their best to do what they were supposed to do, everyone coordinating their efforts.  Healers were hitting their assignments and also covering for each other.  DPS were on the ball killing adds and responsive to be on the correct targets.  Tanks were picking stuff up quickly and holding onto their multiple targets.  Everyone was using their long cooldowns and battle-rezes at good times to try and maximize the attempt.  Everyone was trying to minimize their damage taken.  Everyone working in concert like a well oiled machine.

We got her to go into phase two.  All of us were calling out things to watch for in vent, making sure the entire raid knew exactly where things were that we needed to move away from.  Everyone was focused, burning the boss because we knew we were running out of time before the enrage.

I could tell it was going to be close, and as we got her under 10% health I think we were all sure she was going to enrage before we would be able to kill her.  Multiple people started yelling “DON’T STOP” and “GIVE HER EVERYTHING YOU HAVE!”  No one was giving up, no quitters here.  I’m not sure exactly how close it got (I think she enraged at 4%?) because I was concentrating on my own damage and trying my best to get a good long rotation on her so if I died I’d have multiple DoTs ticking.

A moment later we FINALLY killed her, and there was an eruption of cheers on vent like I haven’t heard in a long time.  Everyone was yelling and screaming and we all lined up to take a picture together.

Those are the moments for me that make any of the other not-so-fun stuff worthwhile.

We are straight up BETTER raiders as a group then we were at the start of this expansion.  People in the guild that started off not knowing anything about their class have done research and learned about what they need to be doing for us to succeed.  People that didn’t know much or anything about raiding have learned how to react fast and use their abilities to best help the group achieve a common goal.  Do we all have room to improve?  Absolutely, but we’re BETTER then we were.

I saw all of that come to fruition last night.  There isn’t a doubt in my mind our guild has progressed together, and that feels awesome.  Are we shooting for server first or world first kills?  No.  Are we the top progression guild on the server?  Not even close.  But that’s not the point, nor is it what we strive to be.  Are we a better team now then ever before?  Yes.  And that is what makes guild leaders happy.