Last night was raid night. Hurrah, back to our ten group.

We were waiting outside shrine for Jolly to log on and Tauti to overcome her pc woes.
Everyone was goofing around, running around the steps on mounts or spam healing everyone in sight. Blunnerz had earlier on in the day said he was going to try Holy for Thok so he was lighting up the floor with his oh so glittery healing aoe.
Looking at it is pretty mesmerising. So shiny. But considering I have a bit of moonwalking going on when I get out side of the shrine I was beginning to wonder if our conversation about the sparkly floor and lagging might come true.

“Blunnerz, how are you doing with Holy? You had much practice?” I asked, eager to see if this new spec seemed promising. The smallest, stroppy voice came back over TS.
“I don’t like it.”
Oh dear.

Conversation soon turned to what boss to start on. We had two options. The faceroll of Malkorok or go straight to Thok. It was an ‘umm-errrr’ moment. Do we continue from the terrible dino or work towards him? More importantly, did people need anything from them if we did go in from part three? I checked the raid journal to see what dropped from them both (after clicking on the game menu and then the shop icon first) I needed a ring from Malkorok so if I needed something chances were that others did too.
“We’re going to Malkorok first!”
With that decision we stood around shrine again.
Flinkan was getting impatient.
“We have to wait for Tauti! Verdie is sorting her pc out” I said. Calm yourself little goat!

However it made sense to go in and clear trash. We sent Jolly and Flinkan in first.

“Did anyone see my amazing flying?” Jolly asked.
“Did you struggle to find the door?” I asked just as I crashed into the wall next to the HUGE archway.
“I struggled to find any open space to fly in. I found walls, trees, rocks…”

At last however we were safely inside and waited for the trash to apear. Tauti was still trying to log on so we worked through the trash so she could just run in.
Just as trash was pulled, I needed to go afk. I positioned myself at the back of the group where I would be safe and nipped away. When I came back I was dead.
“I’m dead”
“Yes as we just explained, we’re bad tanks” Tsff said. The sacrificing had begun.

They actually came back to res me, which says a lot about my loading screen time considering I was a foot from the door. Snuggles cane back out and we pressed on.
We got to Malkorok and got him down on the first try. Huzzah! I was however dead and was waiting to be ressed as I wanted to know if my ring was on him or if I should use my last roll. It wasn’t, I rolled and got my ring! For my solo luck, Blizzard decided to curse the group and give us a cape. Again we disenchanted both items.

We were by the spoils guard when I was positioned in front of Blunnerz and was having to eat cookies to try and stay alive. When I finally snuffed it I aired my complaints on ts.
“Blunnerz! I was stood right in front of you and you let me die!”
“Toatally an… accident” Blunnerz sniggered. “Plus I was looking at my raid groups not who was in front of me! ”
“Is that what you do when you heal?” Jolly asked.
“Yes” came the chorus of replies from those that had a healer.
“Isn’t that a bit… boring?” He questioned, the disbelief that you could go through a raid just looking at a disco floor grid rather than the actual fight.
“Yes it is” Blunnerz replied.
“Do it with a blank screen!” I helpfully added
“Alt-z! Then it won’t be boring!” Tsff chirrped in with.
“That’s awesome!” Jolly suddenly piped up with. The joys of a display free screen now apparent to him.

While we waited for a few to run in, I tried to take a screen shot of the floor to replace the ‘amazing’ technical drawings I’d done for the forum. I panned up slightly and noticed huge panda boxes on the wall above the room.
“It would be awesome if we could open those” I thought aloud. People came over to see what I was looking at.
“Ooh or that horde box” Blunnerz added.

I looked at the floor again and worked through my amazing plan in my head.

I’d put instructions for our side on the forum for everyone to know what to open and when, with the points each colour would grant us when dead. It meant I shouldn’t get the compete brain freeze I usually got when running into the other section and stalled telling Jolly what to open.

On our first attempt we got to the last mob in the second section getting down to 4% before we ran out of time.
Such cries of woe have never been heard before. Stunned that we had got so close we picked ourselves up and went again. And again. And again. One side would have a good run and the other side die and then the next try the good run side would die and then the other would make it. This carried on for about eight wipes and then… Holy shit! We did it! With ages to spare!
Yelling at anybody on my side to ‘PULLTHELEVERPULLTHELEVER!!’ I didn’t even realise we were done in a comfortable amount of time.
“It’s fine! We’ve got 30 seconds!” Blunnerz said as we watched the last two points being slaughtered on the other side.

Nerd screams erupted from my speakers. And this time, it was deafening. We had finally, on our own, defeated a boss that had given us so much trouble. Two weeks ago we never got through to the other side, this time we were through more often than not. And finally we had stuck a crowbar into that box lid and jammed it open!

The loot… After all of that we had to disenchant one of them. Desperately seeing if someone could use the leather agility legs that dropped. Trying to convince Tauti that they would be great for her off spec
“Mines tank…”
“Oh please don’t disenchant it” Tsff whimpered.
“Don’t disenchant that ring!” Nanutza said over ts with a very definite tone.

We didn’t. And she got it.

We were so pleased with ourselves. To some people only killing two bosses might not have been much progress but to us we had just gone to the moon. Ant summed it up quite nicely that were so relaxed and take everything in our stride. We’re not angry when things go wrong, we just keep going until we get it. Our wipe totals are something to laugh about rather than get despondent about (67 on this one in total!)

We raid/wipe hard but we have fun harder!