I scared myself for a second this morning. I was thinking over the events of last nights raid, and how much of a pain it was, and how I hadn’t enjoyed it. And for a moment I thought I had lost my enjoyment of raiding. Suffice to say, I stopped to think what precisely it was about last night that I did not like:
1) That pull in front of Naj’entus. Every time I come up to it now, I have no clue whether we’re going to one shot it or wipe on it for an hour. I know we joke about it being a ‘hard boss’, but the general consensus is that outside of bosses, that is the hardest pull in the instance. Added to that, the fact that it’s right at the beginning of the raid, meaning a wipe on it effects the raid mentality for the rest of the night.
2) Supremus. I hate that boss with a burning passion. Partially because it’s seen as so easy a boss that people view it somewhat as a joke, when they really shouldn’t. Also because he picks you off slowly, so that you end up wasting a *huge* amount of time on any attempt that becomes a wipe, because it’s usually not clear until almost the end of his ridiculously long enrage timer that you won’t be able to down him that attempt.
3) Teron Gorefiend. Understanding the basics of my personality in that I really do want to try my best both to be helpful to those around me, and also to avoid ridicule, this boss was a major nightmare for me. Mainly that whether the raid lives or dies is set entirely upon my shoulders, in a way that it is clear that I messed up and how badly, with no way to practice. (The simulator is only but so good, and yes, I beat that many times.) The fact that I could feign death out of it doesn’t really help things, as I pretty much spend then entirety of the fight having to watch his cast bar to feign death. Last night was my first time doing it, though I didn’t pop my rattlegores until after the boss was dead. Which meant the raid had absolutely nothing better to do than watch me, with full knowledge that if I failed, they would be picked off by mobs they could not dps. Happily enough, it was easier than I could have imagined. I hope that this positive experience will make future attempts on this boss less stressful, but who knows, because it’s still better for me to fd out of a cast so I can continue dpsing.
And really, those are the worst things in the instance. Of course they are also the first things in the instance, which is why last night was just bad in general. RoS is not all that bad as long as we don’t have to teach new people important roles (ie holding fixates and kicking). Bloodboil, though stressful on healers isn’t really that bad for me. Shahraz is still a joke that just requires some situational awareness. And even Council seems like it won’t be that bad of a learn. I’m fairly certain we’ll have them down this weekend.
