Tier 14 Retrospective

Tier 14 has been a weird tier for us. It's been the most exciting and the most frustrating tier of my WoW career.

Old Faces in New Places

This was the tier where we got the band back together. Most of my guild mates followed me to SWTOR about midway through the Firelands patch. One by one, we quit SWTOR and came back to WoW. One of our guys had actually stayed in WoW and found a guild on Nesingwary. As we came back, we all just joined up with him. As the tier wore on, it became increasing clear that we needed to be back on our own and recently we've made that a reality.

The core of our team formed during Karazhan, and we really peaked in Ulduar. It has been great to have familiar voices in vent and be raiding with this team again.

Frustrations


Throughout this entire tier, our team has been frustrated by attendance issues. We had to cancel way too many raid nights simply because we couldn't field a team. I know, absolutely know, that we could have gotten farther than 6/6 1/6 with a sub 10% wipe on Blade Lord if we just would have had a consistent team. I know the easy answer is just recruiting. Believe me, we tried. Most everyone in our raid tried. Most people don't want to go backwards in progression. Honestly, I can't blame them, I wouldn't want to either. I'm hopeful that we can get this settled in Tier 15 and really knock it out.

We are pretty set on tanks. We could use some ranged DPS, especially one with a healing offspec, but most nights we just need another person. Our schedule is a bit in flux as we are trying to find the best nights for everyone. We only raid two nights a week or about two to two and a half hours at a time, usually 9:30pm EST to 11:30pm EST with the rare night that we go to midnight. All of us are adults with jobs, kids, families, etc. It's not uncommon for someone to need an extended AFK to take care of a crying baby.

We are a really laid back group. No one gets yelled at for poor performance and most of us are own worst critics. There is some friendly rivalry for the top of the DPS chart when it’s not dominated by our Brewmaster.

Least Favorite Fight


I think it says a lot about this tier that I have a really hard time coming up with a least favorite fight. If I were to include my jaunts into LFR I'd have to say Garalon. There isn't much for the tank to do on that fight, and it was fairly difficult early on. Lei Shi gets an honorable mention only for never once giving me shoulders in 11 kills, at least half of those with bonus rolls used. Sha of Fear is included as well for never giving me a Sha touched weapon in 11 kills, again with bonus rolls. I have to cut Sha a little slack since I went about four of those times as Retribution and did get the Sha Touch two hander plus two head tokens.

Favorite Fight


This was just such an awesome tier and I really did enjoy every fight on Normal. I absolutely loved the new talents and how I was able to use all of my class abilities to help the raid. The only place I feel deficient right now is AoE tanking. Yes, I know, how ironic is THAT! Don't tell my raid leader (our BrewMaster) but I semi-afk on most AoE trash pulls.

I have to give an honorable mention for favorite fight to Feng. I was given the Shroud of Reversal role and that was a ton of fun. I loved being able to take one of the bosses abilities and turn it right back around on him.

But my favorite fight this tier has to be Will of the Emporer. I hated the dance at first, but there is such a feeling of satisfaction when you do it right and the game rewards you with that extra action button. I have yet to beat our BrewMaster in Opportunitistic Strikes landed, but our last kill was very close 14 to 15. The only one I messed up was when I got two close to the wall and my camera zoomed in and I couldn't see where it was going.


Comments

Lakini said…
Too bad your raid times are in the middle of the afternoon (well, maybe the end) here in California. I'll be in retirement until I move to the central time zone or you guys decide you like raiding from say 11:30pm to 2:00am eastern. Good luck with the search old friend.
Tonkadonk said…
Your situation was mentioned a few times while we were trying to decide where to find more raiders. You should just move to Texas, but be sure to leave any democrate/liberal voting ways behind.
Lakini said…
I have lived in Texas and have no liberal voting ways to leave behind. However I don't see moving back anytime soon, despite the improved time zone.

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