She's gone from suck to blow!

Okay so I had a very long post written out, but I just went in and deleted it... Why? I wasn't saying anything. Or rather, I was droning on about a lot of garbage that everyone knows. Operation Gnomeregan/Zalazane's Fall is live.. Patch 4.01 is on the PTR. Blah blah blah, Cataclysm's coming.. We know that. On to other things kay?

Yesterday an interesting thing happened in my guild. I was officially promoted to an officer, and given the "official" title of Raid Leader as well. Now, like i've said before, i've kinda taken up that mantle over the last few weeks, but having it made official, announced to the entire guild is still kind of nice to have that recognition. Enough patting myself on the back though. I do that enough on this blog and i'm sure you don't give a shit, so who am I to pander to myself? Oh wait... this is my blog... Well whatever, moving on.

The last couple of weeks in SiB raiding have been a bit harsh. 2 weeks ago we went into the raid with the goal of putting in a few attempts on heroic Saurfang, but something happened.. I'm not sure what it was, but hardmodes we'd beaten relatively easily before... we were just unable to bring down. Marrowgar and Deathwhisper stymied us. So needless to say, we didn't attempt to H-Saurfang. We started picking ourselves up, and went through the plague wing relatively easily, killing Putricide just before the raid-end time. The next night... brought an entirely different group of raiders. I don't know what happened, but we went in and *destroyed* the Blood wing, Frostwing Halls and even went on to one-shot Arthas... Something my guild has yet to do up to that point.

Now then. With downing 4 bosses in an hour's time span, we still had 2 full hours of raid time available to us... "Ruby Sanctum?" someone piped up in raid chat... A quick ready-check vote, and off we were heading, to Wyrmrest Temple, to try our hand at a different sort of actual progression. A couple name hops and one personal replacement later (our GM wanted to go do something IRL... silly), we gave everybody a 15 minute break to watch the Tankspot strategy video for RS 10... Then, off we went.. Ruby Sanctum went something like this. Things in quotation marks are my comments. Italics are comments by others. James was the main tank, and Solt was the offtank... I was huntering it up for RS this week.

Pulled our first pack of trash and wiped...
"Wait, what happened? Oh.. You mean those guys shockwave... Well that would explain why all the melee went down at once.. Right.. hafta remember that." Clear trash, clear trash clear trash..
Miniboss! "Anyone know what she does? (Saviana Ragefire, for the record)... No? Well hell.. we'll wing it." *fight fight*
"Oshit, enrage, Tranq sho----.. Right we have 3 hunters." *fight fight fight*
"Sweet! She's down!" More trash more trash more trash more trash.
"Oh shit.. we have to seperate that pack of trash.. Right.. Run back and rebuff everyone." Trash trash trash.
Miniboss! Baltharius the Warborn. "Anybody know what he does?"
Uhm, I think he splits in half at some point, and the two need to be tanked away from each other...
"/shrug. Sounds good to me, let's do it." *fight fight fight fight*
"Oop, there's the split mentioned.. Solt, pull him away.... good deal." *fight fight fight fight*
"OH SHIT JAMES IS DOWN AUGH... Oh.. boss is dead.... the hell?"
*last packs of trash*
Miniboss! General Zarithrian. "What's this guy do?"
*crickets chirping*
"Right.. Thought so.. Oh well, winging it seems to work for us so far" *fight fight fight*
"Adds incoming, one on each side, Solt pick them up if you don't mind"
(random raid member) Don't we need to tank swap at some point?
(James) Oh fuck! I've got a debuff up to 5 stacks taking 20% of my armor off each stack.. OH GOD SOLT TAUNT HIM OFF ME! *taunt swap*
"More adds guys.. James, can you pick them up maybe?"
(Solt)Uhm, he needs to taunt the boss off me, cause i'm at 3 stacks
"Right.. Range, burn the adds down then"
(several people at once) Fuck Intimidating Roar
*fight fight fight* Boss down! Oh look.. Barney is in the middle... Man, he's got a cool voice actor. Okay well... Everyone's watched the video? Yeah.. These people stay outside in p2. Uhmm... P3... A and B go back out, C, D, and E, stay in
*readycheck*
*Fight fight....* (warrior DPS) Fuck... I'm DC'ed..
"It's fine, just log back in as soon as you can"
*he logs back in to find that he's outside the ring of fire*
"Well.... fuck..."
*wipe*
"Hrmmm.. I wonder how close we can get to Barney without facepulling him." *Someone goes in and promptly facepulls him, getting eaten alive for my trouble* "Right.... that was too close. Looks like you can get just inside the ring though. Can someone Rez me before Barney respawns?"
*Pally starts rezzing, Barney respawns*
".......fuckit I'll run back"

Now.. i'm gonna put a break in here to explain that the warrior dps who DCed on our first engagement of Halion... he'd been having some sort of addon conflict. Anytime an encounter shows up that pulls up seperate boss frames (Blood Princes, Gunship, and apparently Halion), it causes his comp to lag so hard that he gets booted right our... once he comes back in he's fine though. This caused a lot of trouble with us before because he was our main tank when I first started raiding with SiB. Anyway.. Back to the battle.

*take 2...3 if you count my facepull*
(warrior with DC problems) I'm gonna buff up, sit just inside the ring, and log until after the pull
"Works for me" *raid proceeds to buff, and he logs.. MT pulls* "Right.. Go ahead and log back in now."
*fight fight fight* (warrior again) FUCK. I DCed again
"/sigh" *raid wipes due to completely unrelated circumstances.... Barney respawns... Warrior logs back in, damn near on top of Barney"
Damnit.....
*After he despawns, I rush in on my hyperspeed boots, hit the warrior with my gnomish army knife, and zoom back out... Warrior takes the rez, and makes it JUST out of the ring in time for Halion to respawn again.... Raid promptly dies laughing at what just happened*

Long story short (too late), we didn't down Halion, but we had a LOT of fun with those attempts. I daresay the most fun the raid as a whole has had in a couple weeks given everything that's happened. I'll put another post up early next week to explain what happened with THIS week's raid lockout, and more fun from the Ruby Sanctum...