Ulduar!

My guild made it's second venture into Ulduar this weekend.

Boy, that instance KICKS. ASS.

This weekend was much better than last weekend. Last weekend we had to PuG three people. Yes, three people we had not run with before. That SUCKED. But this last weekend, we actually had three extra.

Our raid leader had to make the difficult decision as to who would sit, and who would run. It was sad; a few people who don't routinely show up were asked to sit out, after doing lots of research... but we needed the best geared, most teamwork oriented people in our group to go. I was especially sad that my PocketPriestess didn't get to go, but she was the last geared of the three asked to sit.

Our UberMage was asked to sit, because while he is geared, he hasn't had the same experience as the rest of us, due to his sporadic raid attendance. This can't be helped; RL comes first, and we are not a hardcore raiding guild, but he does his research... I was sad that we didn't have the raidslot for him. And our awesome DK tank- Wendy (who also Tanks The World)- was also unable to go, due to gear constraints and schedule constraints that keep her from being able to go with us to Naxx routinely, thereby getting gear and raid experience.

Anyhow, we had two feral druids- Zenkitteh and Shinkitteh- our enhance shammy of doom who I fight over the kitties with, our pew pew spriest, and our ele shammy of fantastic (I LOVE WRATH OF AIR TOTEM RAWR). For tanks, we had Leodude, pally crazytank who was my favorite tank to run with forever, and Thanebane, our raid leader. For group healers, we had myself (yes, the holy paladin..) and Feyfey, our resto druid, then Wys the discpriest on MT.

We took down Flame Lev after the people who were new to this week learned the fight. It took a few wipes, sadly enough; we had some difficulties in launching the kitty druids ONTO Flame Lev without letting them go splat. You know, I hate to admit I was wrong, but I was wrong- that fight is a lot of fun. I take back all the nasty fearful things I said about hating vehicles. It was a blast!

Instead of Razorscale, we moved ahead to XT Deconstructor. He has a shield that I want, anyway, and I really hoped we'd get him down.

We wiped about 7 times before calling it, but on one try, we got him down to 7% before hitting the enrage timer! We worked on our strategy, and I think healing went pretty well- I swapped out a few crit pieces for haste pieces, so as to be a more effective group healer, since the disc priest really isn't too good at group healing and I'm used to it anyway. I'm a little disheartened, because once my PocketPriestess gets geared, it just doesn't make sense to bring both me and the disc priest; it would be easier on the group to have two group healers, instead of me, and the disc priest doesn't spec holy.

Still, I am very proud of myself; I kept my assigned targets up. But the problem was that those who got hit with the Light Bomb occasionally did NOT get the heals they needed; I would kill to be a resto druid right now!

Light bomb + Tantrum = Dead target. That sucked; we NEED our ele shammy to not be shammysmear on the ground!

But this fight was HELLA fun, and I'm very pleased with the performance of the entire healing team. We really got this down. My faith in the disc priest has grown immensely. I do admit, I occasionally chucked a heal at the tank; I can't help it, it's in my nature! But she did a great job at keeping her targets up, and I can't complain in the slightest.

The tree druid and I need to work a bit more, but I think we were really getting it down, so woot!

Really, what needs to happen this fight is that the DPS needs to step it up yet another notch, or maybe healers need to DPS during the heart phase; I helped DPS the heart (popped wings and everything) on the attempt we got him down to 7%... so I'm going to encourage my healers to do what they can. Disc priest DPS = yummy anyway.

I can't wait to go back next weekend!

In others news, I was promoted to an officer this weekend, as was the lovely miss Wendy (Mandatory plug here.)

We have lots of ideas, including starting a second raid, and integrating raid stuff into RP stuff. Our guild is primarily an RP guild; it is only our members' interest in raiding which makes us so successful as a raiding team. It has been a concern that raiding interferes with RP, but if we work integrate more RP into the raid, and into our raiding experience itself, this may help to combine the two things we seem to be doing.