I don't fare well in new places either, my first go healing in TotC freaked me out, I had just tried grid for the first time and was not keen. Call me a masochist but I always try add ons whilst being thrown in a the deep end to see how I fare with it. If I don't get something first time round I am not interested and grid was not doing it for me. I was also not keen on spamming of mass dispel, whilst two man healing, and having to keep away from violent PvP fetishists moving towards me with no hope of survival other than: rubbish holy bubble power word shield and fear which always seems to be bloody immune. Since that horrific time, I have healed lower spire four times, and countless pugs with healbot and was feeling more confident when my boyfriend pestered me to pug a 25 man. Reconfiguring healbot so I could dispel with a right click away we rounded up a bunch of people from /trade, the new LFG channel for SWC apparently. Now, don't get me wrong, I would take my SWC comrades over a spakkarian ninja but on a Saturday night, the only people coming are going to be unguilded, or people part of the huge raiding guilds who are either too shit or never invited to go with their guild, or for some reason not saved and are super elitist. Raffles have a laid back approach to the raiding, and would rather discuss how Dolphins are not in fact fish, but insects or how someone’s eye got COT OOT. This combined with people from the most prestigious raiding guilds and impatient people often causes a conflict. It was a constant battle for Malkier to lead the raid as so many egos are fighting for the position, or their guild have done it 25 man superduperhardmode blinded and gagged with a pencil sellotaped to their nose guessing what spells are bound to what hotkeys whilst maintaining 11k dps/5k hps 17million times. Due to the snowtwunts gripping peoples faces, everyone needs assist in order to raid warning, but this then leaves open for people other than main assit and raid leader to start ready checks etc. Leading a pug, 25 man, is stressful, you don't really have any support or back up to people pissing you off, because they are not in your guild so no punishment will work, and kicking them just means you have to search for another one, and there are 24 of them. Raffles have a no lol policy, but obviously cannot practice this in a pug. The raid went well, I was second on healing and was coached by a lovely person in the pug named Wraven and Jeb's disc priest, who managed to get in 160 dispels during faction champs, to my 60. Loot also is a MAJOR issue in raid pugs. Raffles operate a loot rule where roll 1 is MS, roll 2 is MS but won something already/ OS and roll 3 is kind of all of the above. It is very casual, and generally if someone is more deserving or a on a progression toon whoever won the role with hand it over no quibbles. I don't think Raffles have ever had a loot fight before, so this week two arguments broke out with officers over pug loot. Icewalker Treads dropped and the hunter and the druid rolled. The hunter got the higher roll. My main is a hunter and this was a huge upgrade for him, but obviously the druid got upset. I said highest roll wins, which perhaps was unfair, but with my biased hunter eyes on I would have been pissed if i had lost out to the druid. Malkier called it and passed to the druid. I was furious with Malkier, the druid was rude and spammed readychecks and moaned that loot rolling was taking more time than actually killing the bosses. Which to be fair it was, however distributing this loot was proving to be hard work! The raid was actually successful, with a couple of wipes on faction champs and Anub. 25 man raid healing in my most hated raid was fine. More than fine actually, I really enjoyed it, except for what I perhaps experienced more in the VoA that I did, there don't appear to be any assigned healing arrangements in these pugs. Mark the tanks and off you go sort it amongst yourselves. Being a holy priest my AoE heals are pretty awesome, but I find that I am having to bounce these off the tank, and overhealing him is fine. When I get just heal raid, I feel a bit put out really, I don't know how to take it, I need a plan and a focus and so far have (rightly or wrongly as no one has died yet) ignored this and stuck to my plan of AoE heals off tank and flash heal raid members when needed.
Our second venture was 25 man VoA. SWC Horde side only ever win WG on a Wednesday. Without fail I come home from work on a Wednesday have some dinner, relying on the fact my SWC horde friends have beat the shit of the alliance as they do every Wednesday, go VoA, weekly raid then ICC. When we had won Monday everyone scrambled to get a group together. In the spirit of 25 man raid week, Raffles got one together and I tried out my new UI, and watched Malkier contend with people asking for recount spams before we had even started, moans about the ratio of pallys to other classes. Again I was not given a specific healing assignment, I stuck to my trusty PoM and CoH tank with flash heals and renews and shields being popped on to random damage takers. Downed first time, with relative ease.
Last night we were invited to an ICC 25 man, with the ratio of Raffles to other guilds about 5:1 I felt more comfortable. The raid leader set out the loot rules straight away, and despite the healers do want you want policy there was very minimal annoyance. We wiped on Marrowgar but this didn't seem to discourage anyone, no one finger pointed, no one moaned, none of the usual pug traits. I called it a night at Gunship battle and took away with me this week that I really enjoyed 25 mans, they seem a lot more epic, and enjoyable, and a lot more of a challenge for me, in old repeated content. If you can get past the issues I have pointed out I would highly recommend pugging 25 mans on SWC.
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