Last night saw us do a few preliminary goes at hodir hard mode to figure out what kind of group HoS should be looking at taking in for the Real Deal.  The RLs learned a lot and this will be put to good use this week when we smash Hodirs face in really fast.

Since for some inexplicable reason half our core raiders decided to be capped this month (GG GUYS!) we went in with a whole bunch of people new to the latter end of Ulduar.  About 1/3 of the raid were either in a spec they had not been in before or simply had not done the fight to completion before.  So of course, we oneshot vezax with 4 clouds.  A super well done to those who walked into that fight with little to no experience and did your jobs brilliantly!

So, with that bucking us up, we went to try yogg with what was really not a good balance for a Yogg team (which is not on farm for us yet so we need to consider our groups still).  Again about 1/3 of the raid were new to the fight.  And strike me dead with a lightning bolt if we didnt get him to less than 10% (he SHOULD have died, but for a communications fuck up ONE UP sounds a lot NONE UP - oopsies) several times.  However, now a bunch of new people have learned the fight, so next time we should be good to kill him.

Heroic Raiders - the kill plan for next week is up, Rath and I are pretty happy with it.  If you think Wed is busy, consider this; We did MORE than that last Thursday, so I think we will have it in the bag.  It is a new month, so please go sign up so as to not give me any more grey hairs from stress about fielding a team.  Good Work last night guys, there was much learning to be had from the guild and that is worth its weight in wipes later on.

This week was a but fail on the signups.  No real reason to worry, but a conjunction of RL things stealing away a few core raiders all at the same time.  Wednesday was SOO, so we lost a raid night, which, for a 3 day a week guild, is a Big Deal.  So last night, we continued with the fail signup thing and had me running as ret (and I didn't COMPLETELY disgrace myself, just mostly did.  Guys, when I ask for tips on how not to die on mimiron I'd really appreciate knowing useful things, like, in phase 2 stand at the back of his hit box not just "oh its fine just run to the back all the time" *sigh* and inphase 1, listening for the call of Melee out that I heard every time when healing suddenly everyone is pro enough to NOT need it?  No, I really am NOT pro enough and need those calls!! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!  However, I did own in arena for Fworim!)

*cough cough*

Yes well.  holy retnubs aside, we did a decent clear out of Ulduar last night.  With new guys trialling and alt specs (thanks to everyone running in an alt spec or respeccing for the night) running we didnt have the DPS we needed to really give any hard modes a go (oh well) so we saved hodir till monday - surprisngly we were not too far behind on XT given we had 7 healers!  So game faces people, we need hodir hard mode down so we can start getting that on farm.  That said, I think we taught 4 new people a bunch of fights they had not done before, so that was a win as far as I was concerned.  Sometimes, you need to do that as an investment in the future of your raid team.  One step back for 3 forward.

So, Monday - Hodir hardmode, Vezax and Yogg.  Now, I am not sure we will have time to get all this done (as I suspect we will be teaching new people yogg which will slow us up on that fight). So we will probably have to chose between Hodir hardmode and a yogg kill.  Have a think about that and chat to Rath and the other officers over the weekend about it - personally, I think I want hodir hardmode.