RL Crit

How much defense does it take to eliminate crits from real life? Anybody?

The last five days have been crazy. Absolutely, completely, insanely crazy.

I haven't been on WoW the past two nights, which is probably a good thing considering I was way off my game while we were raiding over the weekend. Sloppy pulls, forgetting to Vig, etc. Just wasn't really with it.

Still, we downed Kologarn and hit a brick wall with the Iron Council. Still couldn't get Ignis, although we think we know what we were doing wrong so he should drop this week. We one-shot the bosses we had downed the week before, which is a good sign.

Tried out ToC and got nowhere in a hurry. We weren't expecting much out of it, so it wasn't a huge letdown. We just wanted to get in and poke around a bit.

EoE was epic frustration. I'm two kills shy of my CotFW title (Maly and H-AN). I really wanted to knock Maly off that list, but we just couldn't get a decent shot at him. First try, wiped in Phase 1. Second try, wiped in Phase 2. Third try, wiped in Phase 3. Theoretically, one more shot would have probably done the trick, but we just didn't have it in us.

We overgear the heck out of EoE, but most of us hadn't seen it before and there's enough going on that lack of experience with the fight can and will be your downfall. We'll get him sooner or later.

I'm hoping to sneak in a couple of raids this week, but my RL drama is still unfolding, so we'll see how it plays out.

Gonna try to toss up a post here or there, but they'll probably be a bit more sporadic than normal.

Ulduar At Last

I love the smell of progression raiding in the morning.

Yeah, I know most of you have cleared Ulduar and have a weekly naked run through it, but it was EoF's first time there. We had a former guildie walking us through the fights, but it was nearly a complete EoF team.

We went 3/4 in the Siege area. We would have dropped Ignis given a little more time, but we put a time limit on the raid because we knew we were going to lose a few folks.

I'm really impressed with the talent we have in our guild. Everybody learns fast...really fast. Flame and XT were two-shot and Razorscale was one-shot. It's good to be surrounded by players who know how to diagnose a problem with an attempt and fix it the second time around.

We're going to have several teams running this week. We set up early runs to help those who can't make the later raid times (and, as a result, haven't gotten to raid very much at all) get some experience and gear in Naxx and OS, and we've still got Ulduar up as a later run to accommodate those who are geared for it.

As long as people keep signing up and bringing their A-game, we can ride this wave of momentum through Ulduar and beyond. I'm hoping to be blogging about ToC in the near future.

Ulduar or Bust

Tomorrow night we have an Ulduar raid scheduled. This will be our guild's first time in, and the first time for many of us as individuals.

In TBC, we as a guild never made it past the first tier of raiding. I never saw anything outside of Kara, Gruul, and a pull or two into SSC. I'm glad we're in a position to be moving forward progression-wise and taking our raiding to the next level here in WotLK.

Hopefully we can get the sign-ups and manage to make the run happen. Most of us are geared for it (in some cases overgeared for it) thanks to emblem purchases, so, once we get the hang of the fights, we should be in a position to really make some rapid progress.

My goal, lofty as it may be, is to be able to walk into Icecrown-10 very soon after it opens. Even if we're still mopping up the last few bosses of Ulduar and ToC, I'd like to be able to make some progress in the defining raid of WotLK while others are also progressing through it.

From a blogging standpoint, I'd love to be able to help the community. Right now, I'm relying on recommendations from the community when it comes to tanking fights. If I'm involved in progression as it comes, though, I can be one of the bloggers making the recommendations based on my experience tanking the "current" content.

As long as we can get the personnel to come along, I think that we, as a guild, are in a position to make some solid progress over the coming weeks.

It's exciting. I just hope it plays out.