In case you couldn't tell, i'm exceedingly happy about this. Cho'gall has been a cock-block for us for over a month now. So much so that we actually had to take a couple weeks away from plugging at him to clear our collective heads out. For a guild that's not a bunch of hardcore raiders, going in 2 weeks in a row and doing nothing for a day but throw ourselves against a wall of ogre.... it gets tiring. People make sloppy mistakes, they get burned out, they lose focus, they get irritable. It's really a difficult time for me, as a raid leader, to find out how to deal with 10 people who are so sick of the same shit... and really, I can't blame them. I was getting sick of doing the same boss. It's times like this that make me realize I am not the type to be in a real hardcore progression guild. I can only imagine how long the server firsters threw themselves at some bosses just for the sake of being... server first.
I don't have that kind of sanity. I like raiding 6 hours a week and not having to stress about whether i've got the mats for flasks or gold for repairs until tuesday. But all of that aside, we hadn't had a lot of real "failures" as far as our raiding progress goes. We had never spent more than a week or two on a boss once we went at him full tilt, so Cho'gall was especially frustrating to me, as raid leader. Aside from the fact that it is, expectedly, a much more difficult fight than any of the others we'd faced previously... it just felt like we would take 2 steps forward, than 2 steps back. We would make good, REAL progress, and then we'd slink backwards when we didn't kill him that time.
So, we took our 2 weeks away from him. Last week was our first time back, but we were running a bit slow on time, so we only had 30 minutes to chip away at him. Turns out those 30 minutes were just enough, really, for us to get angry at him again. Angry, but purposed. In the 3 or 4 attempts we threw at him last week, we got him to phase two, all but one time... A very good sign. So for THIS week we decided, on the surprisingly good advice of one of the guildies, to dedicate a two-hour block to JUST working on Cho'gall, and come hell or high water, when that 2 hours was up, we'd move on. After 2 hours of REALLY solid work, apparently there is something magical about the raid leader saying "This is our last shot before moving on" because i'll be damned if we didn't execute like a very angry, very FOCUSED, group. I haven't seen us that cohesive in a while. Sure there were miscues, but everything was just on. And we brought the fucker down.
Yeah... I'm proud of my group for that. Not just the other 9 people who finally managed to get us the kill, but everyone else who put in the work on chipping away at him for the last 5 or 6 weeks since we first stepped into his room. Every raider on my roster had a hand in it, whether they were there for the final result or not. So, let me just say thanks to all of you. Well deserved victory.
That was an awesome kill.
ReplyDeleteAs you said, everything seemed to click on that last attempt.
As the one who had the "surprisingly" good idea of dedicating a 2 hour block to Chogall, i find it surprisingly fitting that Chogall decided to drop my T11 shoulder on his first kill and that your dice failed. Imo, i got my reward for the good idea :)