Leadership, role play, and raiding

This week has seen some interesting changes. It's my first week of officership, and so far, I am finding myself really enthused and energized about the whole process- although I feel marginally intimidated by the project that I have set myself to, which is setting up a role play apprenticeship system so that we can have more character interaction, and perhaps bring an element of warfare to the guild RP.

Our guild has changed since I first joined. Originally, there was no raid team, only a few max levels who joined something called the Small Guild Kara Alliance. I was in a different guild at the time, a guild that had a raid team, but that was also small and role play oriented. We brought in some of our friends from my current guild, and it was good.

Then that guild fell apart, and with it, the raid team. I joined our ally guild, which is my current guild, and three of us paladins planned. We were going to have a raiding team, dang it! After all, we had enough people who make max level- it was going to be awesome.

So we brought raiding into the guild, and ever since, it has stuck.

However, this has left a bit of a rift between raiding and role play, as the raiding was never really mixed with the role play aspects. Back in my original guild, we would actively role play during the raid; but in Naxx, and now in Ulduar, we don't really do that. The feel of the RP is different in this guild than it was in my last one. That isn't to say bad, mind- but this isn't my last guild, and I'm happy with that.

Still, it has been noted that we really are still primarily an RP guild, and it could be fun to incorporate our weekly ventures into Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum, and Ulduar into our guild role play, since so many of us have become so entrenched in raiding.

We also seem to be developing more and more max level characters, ones who haven't necessarily raided before.

So, to work on the PVE skillsets of those characters, my thought is that we can create an role play system where characters of similar class and mindset can provide instruction to their 'apprentices'; this would include in character discussion of ability rotations, gearing, and actual raid strategy. For characters who are not max level, this would still allow role play interaction, as a character could take on a lower level apprentice, and slowly guide them through the process of leveling up and learning their class, from an IC perspective.

This in character learning could also apply to dual specs, and to professions, for those who aren't as interested in the raiding aspect.

My hope is that this would draw together these two very important, very wonderful aspects of my incredible guild- mesh the PvE progression with the role play that our guild is founded on and continues to be focused on.

However, this project is slightly intimidating to me. Generally, our guild is very relaxed, and easy going. People are willing to take advice and criticism. But I'm not sure how to set this up.

(If anyone has any suggestions on that, I'd love to hear them!)

As for the rest of my WoW experience, aside from the new tasks of officership, I've also been RPing. (Who is surprised? Oh, that's right, no one.) I've managed to bring Kestrell into role play more, which pleases me, and I brought Odynae, my main, back from her jaunt in Ice Crown. She is no longer with Leonu, and has turned into a bitter, hardened warrior- which I believe will leave her in a good position to organize the apprentice/training endeavor. Before, she was rather wiffly and ineffective. I think she'll make a better leader this way.

In addition, I have utterly failed at doing my dailies, or leveling my death knight. I have, however, been working on Rhainn (said DK)'s herbalism and alchemy. She's at 250, and 259, respectively. I'm proud of this. Soon, soon, I shall have flasks and mana potions for my main! Muahahaa!

I'm also trying to get together the materials to make two of our new eighties, both ret paladins (one of whom is off-speccing holy!) their titansteel destroyers. But oh god I hate farming Titanium nodes on my stupid slow flying mount.

Which leads me back to the fact that I NEED TO DO MY DAMN DAILIES. Arrrghhhh.

Ever since I hit Revered with Hodir, I've felt absolutely no motivation. Not even being poor, poor, poor has caused me to stir my lazy butt.

Ah well.

This weekend, we will be taking on Malygos once again, and downing OS. Sunday we will be running Naxx, but I doubt I'll get to go; two of our healers just returned from long absences, and I don't really need much out of there, other than Maexxna's cursed shield. I've pretty much accepted that it will ONLY drop if I am not there. Or it will drop the day after I get the shield off of XT in Ulduar. Argh.

However, despite probably not going to Naxx, I will be attending one of (sort of) ally guilds' Ulduar run, since my guild is not doing Ulduar this weekend due to our fresh eighties and our desire to include them! So, YAY Ulduar with SSB! I'm excited, folks!

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.