I hate drama as much as Gruul

Friday night we were back in Gruul’s Layer, lots of wipes later and still no Gruul kill. Honors was MT for 5 attempts and I was MT for 1 attempt, neither times went well. Frustration is mounting and I feel like venting.

Frustration#1: That big MotherF&#ker wont die!

Frustration #2: During Gruul attempts my RL friend who plays in the guild with me popped off his during the Gruul fight. He started raging on and on about how a paladin can’t be the MT and it can only be done with 2 warriors, I feel he’s wrong on that after comparing all the combat stats a pally tank holds up the same as a warrior with equal gear. Now does that mean I think Honors or I should be MT on Gruul? Honestly no I don’t think we are geared enough for him, we have a better geared tank in the guild who I feel needs be there. The fact that the better geared tank is a warrior is irrelevant; if it was a likewise geared paladin I’d be saying the same thing. Anyways back to my RL friend, he sometimes has a quick temper when he gets really frustrated and unfortunately it was honors who soaked up all the BS he decided to spew out. Now I feel like there is some weird tension there on our 5v5 team and that sucks (Went 4-6 over the weekend as we tried a 3 dps 2 healer approach, apparently 2.5 dps /2.5 healer worked better for us last week). I hate drama, it can lick my sack.

Frustration #3: I think the big reason Dirty was going Apesh*t on Friday was because he has made several attempts over the past few weeks to impart some of the working strategies on the Gruul kills he has done in the past, and from what he has told me he’s been completely shot down. It’s possible the way he tried to present this was “Your setup is stupid let’s try my way” (I doubt that is what was said but for the sake of the argument let’s just say it was), which of course anyone would probably rail against. Therefore I tried to talk to the raid leader and suggest setting up our positioning differently, I also was shot down. I didn’t even get a “Let’s talk about it later”. As a guild we have gotten Gruul down to 4%, so the raid leader sticks to that and won’t change the setup or acknowledge that there is the possibility of a different course of action. True 4% is close, but that’s happened 1 time in 15 tries? We setup as 5 different groups circling Gruul with assigned healers to that group, If you want a heal you have to be in range of your assigned healer. Well you can’t control where shatter sends you, the chances of you landing back by your healer are not very good. So you end up with healers scrambling all around to heal their guys, and it becomes a big mess. Here is the basics of Dirty’s suggestions without going deeply into an explanation. Ranged + assigned ranged healers to the West side of the room, Melee + Melee Healers to the East side of the room. Instead of being assigned a group to heal your healing groups are set up very much the same as when fighting Onyxia. Groups 1,3,5 go left (this consists of ranged and ranged healers), groups 2 & 4 go right (melee and melee healers), healers heal whomever is on your side not just your group. With this setup we have a 50% chance(one side or the other) of a landing in the correct area after a shatter instead of a 20% chance, not to mention its more organized keeping the healers from running all around. There is also more to add on this strategy having to do with ranged collapsing on top of each other to avoid cave ins most of the time and then spreading out for shatter but I’m not typing it all out. Now because of dirty running his mouth I think this will be ignored even more just because it’s his suggestions. What can be said in his defense is that he’s been in a lot of Gruul kills with another guild, and he is an experienced raider. Pre-BC we raided through BWL together and since level 70 he has been up into TK and SSC so he’s been around the block. Not to mention he is one of our best healers, throughout Gruuls he did the 2nd most healing done with I think the lowest over healing. He is a good player, knows what he is doing, and I agree his attitude can suck balls sometimes, but should that keep us from trying something new?

Having said all that I used to be a guild master and I organized and ran raids ALL the time. When you start wiping you instantly get 10 people whispering you with their suggestions and what you are doing wrong, in most cases you just ignore them and stick to your strategy until the guild clicks and you get your boss kill. 15 tries later and we haven’t killed Gruul, I would venture to say maybe we could switch up strategies three or four times and see if we have any better luck. What could it really hurt?