A reminder of why I still raid

Posting this very late as I've had a fairly hectic work schedule (long story but essentially I had to find a new role within the company I work for). In addition to this I no longer have access to any Blogger or Wordpress sites from work, so please if you find me commenting less on your own blogs please understand that I still check my favourites even if I don't always have the time to post.

Monday the 6th of April I had a reminder of why I still raid.

We had 23people 10mins after raid start and in /o we were having premonitions this raid being like our last 2 raids on thursday and sunday which were cancelled due to lack of people that could do the Hardmodes. One of our pally healers logs on, and the last of the bulgarians logs on. We has raid.

Immediately start on Saurfang HM. We've been just about managing to hang in there sub 30% when the Marks really start hurting but we've been losing people at 5% and wiping (one memorable wipe last week my beast died and I distracting shotted the boss). People are staying positive and assigning marks and then 4th time we managed the kill. Very impressive stuff from our healing squad.

Then onto Rotface HM where we oneshotted and then Festergut HM where after a small wipe due to DPS dying (I swear I was in range of the goddamn spore!) and other DPS being stupid with Malleable Goo we took him next try with a pally bubbling on enrage and the dots taking him down for our second new HM kill of the night.

From there we moved to the Princes HM which I swear is a test of "can you stay awake while shooting balls" and BQL HM where we managed another enrage pally bubble kill second try after our bite order severely messed up.

So then we cleared up putricide on normal and headed back into the frostwing lair where after a minor altercation with one of our healers and the subsequent ragequit on the pull (who does that?, I mean really) we adjusted the raid and bounced back to take down Valithria on HM second try. It was getting very late by this point and by the time we'd killed sindragosa on normal we had 1minute to raid time. So we said to the raid:
"Look we realise it's raid time. Stay with us and we'll have one shot on the Lich King then we'll call time"

We zone in on the spire and hurriedly assign tanks and dispellers. We've got a couple of us who haven't downed him on 25man and in my case I've never seen the penultimate phase. Halfway through P1 we realise we haven't assigned Valkyr dps
"Fuck, just go fucking nuts on them"
we haven't assigned TotTs or MDs for raging spirits
"Glue them to the fucking tanks"
Healers are running low so our boomkin is calling the innervates for the lowest. We're on the valkyrs now and people are playing out of their skins to get the CC in. I'm kill shotting Valkyrs right at the edge. Slightly badly placed Defile caused by me, but we're all out of it in seconds.
We hit the second remorseless winter in fine form and then P4 and vile spirits are dying quickly and the tanks are kiting.
All of a sudden its over and everyone is joking about kicking one of our rogues so he doesn't get the kill.

Lich King one shotted. Hello Kingslayer Echo. Hello the reason why I raid. It's not so much the stuff we accomplished last night although thats always gravy. It's more that this is a group of people who for the last year I've spent upwards of 16hours a week with in 25mans and countless hours here and there in alts runs, 10mans and nostalgia runs. I've actually really missed them since I had to stop raiding so much midweek. I know most of them pretty well and this last push from them after the loleaster holidays trouble of the past few days has been epic. A lot of people have been musing that we don't kill LK enough since we downed him. This may be true but focusing on hardmodes is an obvious choice we've had to make as an officer team. The fact that nobody was screaming at anyone when things didn't go perfectly or already working out who to blame for the wipe while everybody was alive was really refreshing. This showed when we bounced back from everything the big bad of the expansion threw at us and downing the bastard to top off an already awesome raid night.

/echo out

PS: Its nothing to do with the 10% buff fuck you :D

Since this happened we've also taken down all other hardmodes we were working on and are now 10/12. Putricide HM went tonight and we're working on Sindragosa HM. The night described above is what I see as the turning point.