FU$*@NG A, Good Gruul’s Layer!

Last night was an excellent night for me. I logged on and chilled in Shatt until the Gruul’s layer run started forming. About 25 minutes later everyone is gathered up at the entrance and buffs begin. The few pulls before High King Mulgar go down with no problems, I love that there is hardly any trash in Gruul’s. I don’t know how many people used to raid Molten Core back in the day, but tons of trash with a quick respawn timer sucked. I think we wiped on HKM twice before we downed him, but both times it was just goofy mistakes so we reset him and continued on until he was dead. He dropped Pauldrons of the Fallen Defender x 2 and Maulgar's Warhelm( View his loot). I was pumped to see the pauldrons of defender fall again, I have been wanting these ever sense I passed the first time. I love the dodge rating these bring to the table even though they offer less stamina. I’m going to throw out a quick explanation on the way Mal Katai does loot. It is very different than what I was used to in my previous big raiding guild (I’m referring to my raiding guild pre-BC which we did MC, BWl, AQ40). My previous guild was pretty hard core and we had a DKP system. If we didn’t do a run which counted for DKP then it went straight to rolls. That’s the way it was done, period. For those of you not familiar with how a DKP system works here is an explanation. Mal Katai does it differently in that the guild master asks everyone to send her a whisper if we want the item that dropped and what item we are currently using. The GM will look over who wants the item and say who she thinks should get the drop based on what equipment they are currently using, but everyone who wants it is still allowed to roll. What usually happens is that whomever wins will normally pass their roll to the person the GM said should get it, either because they are happy to give it to this person or because they felt pressure into doing it. This is what I did the first time I “won” my tier 4 shoulders with a roll of 95, but I passed for a druid who still had green shoulders. I know that there are Pro’s and Con’s to both methods, for instance what’s good about the way Mal Katai does it is that she is helping direct the flow of loot to help better up the “guild” as a whole and will help our progression. What’s bad is that the individual who wants an upgrade and wins the roll feels guilty about it if his gear is better than someone else who needs the item, at least I did last night.
As you might have surmised I won one of the roll for the shoulder piece and took the item even though I had the epic shoulder piece from Kara where as some of the others had blues and even greens. At the moment I’m battling with my old mind set of “It was an upgrade for me, gives me a set bonus, makes me a better tank, and I won the roll” verse “ TankB could really use these because they are a huge improvement and it will help our healers out more”. I think I would be more comfortable with the “Pass to the lowest geared guy” idea if I hadn’t been burnt by this before. I spent several months in a guild as the highest geared DPS(a different character, different server) passing on almost everything so other guys could get caught up, and shortly after that the guild fell apart, and I wasted several months. I can say that was a different group of people and I don’t see Mal Katai going that route, so I should probably get with the program and start thinking less of my loot and more for the guild. I got a few tells last night about my roll/loot so I know I stepped on a few toes and feel guilty about it, but then again should I? I put forth work to improve my gear just as much if not more than many others. I will say though that my luck with drops on average seems to be much higher than a lot of other guys so I know that’s probably frustrating to other tanks seeing me gear up so quickly when they cant get thier loot to drop. *yes i have crappy gems in the shoulders right now, but im broke!*
ANYWAYS onto some fun stuff, after we killed High King Mulgar we went and took some attempts at Gruul. Our mage Faceeraser was playing “Eye of the Tiger” in vent, it was a new boss fight, and the boss graphic rocks. I must say this was the most fun that I have had on wow in quite a while. My job was strictly DPS which as an arms/prot hybrid at the moment I wasn’t topping the charts or anything but I think I did my fair share, at least while i was alive. We didn’t kill him and after 3 wipes(I think 3 wipes) it was late so the raid was called. I think we may be going back in tonight to give it another shot, im looking forward to it! I have included a few pictures of him for anyone who hasn’t yet seen him. He reminds me a lot of that monster in star wars that Luke fought in Jabba’s place.
Repair Bill: 22g