As you know, we extended our Heart of Fear raid lockout on Monday to work on Amber Shaper Un'sok. That went very well. Though he didn't die, we got most of the kinks worked out and we're in good shape to get him down next time. 7%! This does bring up a good question: What is our raid schedule going to be like? How often are we going to extend? Here's my take on that.
I generally prefer to avoid extending lockouts. I like to clear the bosses so we can upgrade our gear and get some easy valor. It's also fun and relaxing. All progression bosses all the time can be taxing. It's good to be able to improve our ability to take down the bosses we've beaten already. Progression is very important too. It starts to get dull when you clear the same bosses every week with very little time on a new one. It's exciting to get that new boss down and fun to overcome the challenge. Sometimes it's necessary to extend a lockout to get time on a tough new boss.
The trick is to balance that. We run two nights a week, which gives us an obvious split. One night should be farm style and the other should be about progression. My plan is to continue to have farm nights on Thursday and progression nights on Monday. Of course, if we clear the farm stuff fast enough, that gives us progression time on Thursday too. This past week, we cleared Mogu'shan Vaults on Thursday. The main reason for that was due to lacking attendance caused by RL issues. (That's fine! Unfortunate, but fine.) Monday I thought it best to extend HoF so we had significant time to work on Un'sok. He's a rough boss, particularly because each raider needs to know how to drive the Construct. I'm pleased at how well that turned out!
In the future, I plan to clear Heart of Fear from the beginning on Thursday and work on new bosses in there on Monday. With Terrace added in there soon too! I prefer NOT to extend on a Thursday because that cuts out a lot of farm possibility. I want to maintain the balance. I think Monday is enough time for progression, while Thursday is good for building up our gear and improving our clear speed. We will have to reclear at some point and I don't want to have to relearn bosses! We likely will not spend much time in Mogu'shan Vaults. Though there are still a few upgrades in there, most of the gear in Heart of Fear is better and our limited time is better spent there. There is an option of clearing MV on a Thursday and extend HoF on a Monday if we have a desire to kill bosses in the Vaults. Otherwise, feel free to PuG it.
As always, I welcome your thoughts and opinions! Each of you is a valued member of this raid group and I want everyone to feel comfortable voicing your opinion.
As for tomorrow, I'll be late. Between 9:00-9:30, depending on when my meeting ends. I leave it up to all of you to decide what you want to do.
Clear HoF from the start?
Extend and start at the Amber Shaper?
Play in MV for a while?
Your choice and I'll go along with it. :) Admittedly, getting Amber Shaper down today and working on Empress on Monday is tempting. XD
For Science!
Hey all, I"m going to suspend my raiding until I can figure out this 6 FPS BS. WOW is not fun at 6 FPS. I will keep you posted when I get this fixed.
Yick, that sucks Rada! We all hope you can figure it out soon. :( Hey, anyone that can help with that?
Partly due to Rada's computer problems, we're shifting plans. Despite all that fancy text, we're likely to extend again tonight. I do think some farm nights are good, but with Rada, Swipe and possibly Ardwen out on Monday, having a progression capable group is looking iffy. We'd know for sure if everyone was signed up, but we don't.
SO! Tonight we should take the group we have, which is a good one, and go back to Un'sok. Extend the lockout and kill that sucker! We're pretty close so it might not even take long and we can get some good time on the Empress tonight!
We CAN still have a good group Monday too. Auto will need to tank with Kul. Serelyn will need to heal with Aanvil and Muta. Plus we'll need 5 other DPS, of course. All of that is fine if everyone can make it! If so we can kill Empress this week too and clear the Heart of Fear! Then we'd have to start over. ;)
For Science!
I have no problem tanking and will have my gear sitting on me and ready for that occasion. I have to admit I have been slack this X-pac so far in caring the extra gear around like I used to in Cata but will get back into the swing of things! Looks good to me on Extending and killing and moving on. I wouldn't mind being in Terrace sooner then later because if I am not mistaken that is where EVERYONE has an upgrade in terms of Sha Touched weapons or if not all the majority which is BiS at least for now until 5.2 comes around (But I think they are still BiS then to because of the gem...and upgrading the weapon next patch!).
Darkguns - Level 90 DK
Autogun - Retired Lock
Wilygun - Druid Extraordinaire
Shamgun - Shaman fun!
Looked over WowProgress a bit tonight and noticed that quite a few guilds have started on heroic MV before finishing HoF. I'm not sure that's what I want to do, but I'm going to try and do some digging to see how hard heroic stone guard is.
Stone Guard is supposedly fairly easy, but that may depend on the explosions. Those are quite annoying to control. :/
Feng looks very simple. Mechanics of Elegon are pretty easy too, but the numbers there may be rough. Gara'jal is mostly just a bigger DPS check. Spirit Kings is the hardest one in there. Will looks quite a bit different with Gas active all the time and exploding Rages.
Could be fun to give it a shot if we think it's worth it right now. I'd start with Feng, then Dogs, Gara'jal or Elegon.
For Science!
Would be fun to try some of those HM fights. I bet with our increase in DPS, Gara'jal wouldn't be a problem at all. Mostly want to try him so I can steal his shield from Aanvil. If he hasn't needed a shield yet, he wont need one for awhile!