For once in the last two weeks, we had enough healers right at the start, but many of our ranged dps were absent. Faced with the choices available to us (Nefarian, Al'Akir, or BoT), we chose to head to BoT with the 22 raiders we had, hoping more people would show up by the time we got through the trash.
We certainly gave them enough opportunity.
Out of the four mages on our roster, none showed up, which meant that our crowd control had to be a little creative. (At least we had extra healers during those pulls, so more people lived, even if it took a while.) It took an abominably long time to get through the trash on the way to Halfus.
We did not find ourselves with a full raid until we were ready to face Council. And then someone left. /sigh . . . There was much discussion on the wisdom of spending an hour wiping on Council for lack of dps, but recognizing that we could 24-man it if everyone was paying attention, we went ahead and pulled. Not everyone was paying attention. We wiped it after a couple of people died. The second try produced the same result.
Our very patient guild leader had a few choice words for the raid at that point in time. He emphasized that we will be recruiting more people, because apparently the number we have on the roster is insufficient to fill the raids. He also reminded people that only they can improve their own personal performance. I'm not relaying his message in its entirety, but it apparently had some positive effect.
After all the frustration and teeth-grinding, the next attempt went almost perfectly. Nobody stood in the aoe. Everyone remembered to get the wind/grounding debuffs. Nobody failed on the lightning. And the boss went down.
With an hour left in our regularly-scheduled raid, and recognizing that Cho'gall could prove to be a problem with our composition, we decided to do something different. We told the raiders they could leave if they wanted, but if they so chose, they could help us get some guild raiding achievements in Burning Crusade content. We needed 20 guildies, and they were welcome to bring alts.
The mood was lifted and brightened. There was a scurrying to log on alts and get them invited to the raid. In the end, we had 23 raiders who chose to come, using the raid summon function to get us from one point to another quickly. After about 15 minutes, we had finished both Magtheridon and Gruul, and we were on our way to the Black Temple--the last Burning Crusade guild raid achievement left.
We raced down the halls through which we had struggled in the past--scenes of fond memories and remembered pain. Somewhere in the merry confusion and the laughter, Tempest reached level 24. We cheered without missing a beat and finally filed onto the platform where Illidan waited, brooding.
It was a good night, after all.
I'll be back next week promise!
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