Pull, Wipe... Rinse & Repeat
It has taken a few weeks however we have finally found a progression point: Sindragosa! Down to 12% on best attempt. It’s a beautiful thing! And painful. It’s frustrating as all hell to go in and spend a night wiping and not get a First Down! Then again, they don’t call it a ‘Walk in the Park’ for a reason. The great thing about our guild is that it is less about ‘what’ we clear and more about ‘how’ we clear it. This in no way suggests that we won’t clear content; rather, it means we do not do it at the price of compromising respect, common sense or performance. No raiders are sacrificed in the process of getting a First Down!
Some of us have downed Sindy on other toons or on other servers and we know that this is a fight that demands a lot of performance from raiders and that all have fabulous internet connections and uptime the entire fight. I think this is one of the reasons I like this fight! It’s not easy. It’s fun. Of course, if you over-gear it already, then it’s cake as long as everyone knows what they are doing; however I am talking about people that sometimes are seeing it for the first time and may even have never experienced some of the formative fights that this Sindragosa fight includes the mechanics of (they may have come along after Naxx and H PoS were still hard). That just makes it even more nifty.
Nonetheless, wiping all night with no prize at the end still is frustrating and wears down morale and enthusiasm.
It is important for all officers and raiders to keep foremost that they need to put in their best performances on each pull and to have fun every time. Thankfully, we keep it respectful even when the temperatures go up and folks flare – our culture helps put out the fires before they get too hot. That being said, people need to take heed of comments and look deep to see if there is validity to what sparked a comment. A good example of that was that in the recent night of attempts, there was thoughts thoughted aloud that perhaps my paladin should be doing things differently than what I was doing. I took the point. I researched the heck out of it. I read all the trusted sources. I read all the holy pally blogs. I read all the results Google gave me to searches like “Paladin Healing Sindragosa”. Turns out, I am doing exactly what I need to be doing. But the point is that I might not have been and it behooved me to go do my homework to *confirm* my choices for that fight. It does not hurt to go look. Sometimes, they might not have been correct in asserting that you were not doing something correct – maybe you were doing it right – but by going and looking, you find something new you did not know. In my case, I saw a tip on one blog in the comments to a post that suggested both tanks be Sacred Shielded (one by another pally – either themselves if they are a pally or by a ret pally etc) so that my FoL can kick off the HoT.
So you see, it wasn’t that my progression pains showed me that I was doing something wrong, it was that it showed me something I could do even more – a slight addition, but an addition nonetheless. It made me a better healer go forward. And I had a great time that night despite a lot of wiping. And I got to play with people I really enjoy spending time with.
Progression fights are not supposed to be easy. They are not supposed to be downed in just a visit or two. But they serve wonders to improve your raiding sharpness and they are a great test of the true mettle of a guild’s raiding culture.
