Icecrown Citadel, 10-player, 5th May 2010, 2030 ST - With Added Drama™

Logged on to find that one of last week's team had left the guild, and Bradstrut was off with his new Huge Important Raiding Guild. Never mind. We had six on, which is a start. Except one who was doing an ICC25 pug. Five, then. On the plus side, this included our two Amazing healers, and Krisha, a druid. Into Pugging mode. /Trade was busy with ICC10s forming. Most needed tanks (shocked, I was). LFG had a few people in, varying from '5.9kgs, 12/12 ICC25, cower before me' types to the usual 'Friendly happy ppl'. There is an art to getting people in this situation. Equal measures of total honesty and bare-faced lies humour. Eventually, the trusty old "LF1M tank. Ability to tie own shoes not required" elicits a response of "What gear do you consider a minimum?" from a hopeful. "What have you got?" I say. Two minutes later and we have a tank. A little undergeared, but we have Awesome Healers. 30 seconds more and we're full. The DPS trade is a buyer's market.

In we go, and trash gets bashed. People die. Skeletons are overpulled. I forget that you can't taunt them. Whoops. The palatank exhibits astonishing threat generation, but the Awesome Healers keep us all up. A DK pug keeps disconnecting. Never a good sign on trash.

Marrowgar is pulled, and off we go. The pugs display a remarkable lack of ability to stand under the boss, but my tanking is, of course, perfect, the other tank is always in the right place, and what's a few dead hunters between friends? After four(?) bonestorms, down he goes. One Guildie (you can check the armory to find out which one) received "Emblematic". This means this was their first ever boss kill in any instance. Awesome job. Yay, happiness, rezzing, and booting of completely DC'd DK.

On to Lady Deathwhisper. Trash cleared, Pug Warlock is found, joins, summoned and DCs. Booted. Oh dear. Our guildie has finished ICC25! Spiffing! In you come! "Shan't." "Why not?" "Might not get loot." "Oh.". Silence in /Guild. Ominous silence. My DramaSense is tingling. "Please come? We need you?" "No". Petulance. Oh dear. At this point, I am running a mental countdown, and carefully not saying anything. 5...."Your guildies would really appreciate it" says the Team Diplomat ...4....3.....{petulance}....2..1..RAGEQUIT! Deeply impressed with how quickly the Officers moved to boot all his alts. Sapphrina took a minute to explain to everyone what had happened, and why in a calm and sensible manner. I, it pains me to inform you, was giggling like a toddler with a firearm. I love me some drama. Anyway, onwards.

Did I mention the weekly was Darnavan? Well, it was. Poot. Most annnoying for the tanks. At this point we pugged in the awesome Valmoria (we've run with them before). They suggested that they could tank Darnavan. Then someone suggested using Krisha. So, Krisha went Bearmode, and we pulled. First alt out - Darnavan. Krisha taunts, holds and all is looking good. Into add management mode I go. 20 seconds later and Darnavan is down. Whoops. Nobody had told Krisha what the aim was. Oh dear. I blame the Raid leader. Due to some people having trouble with simple instructions, we get adds when the shield goes down. I mean, how many languages do I have to bellow "STOP" in? More than one, apparently. But, hey, even single syllables can be overwhelming for pug DPS. Poor little dears.

The rather spiffing Njorndar Bone Bow drops, and we get two MS rolls, a hunter and a warrior. The warrior wins. I think for a bit, and explain that, even though it's much better for the hunter, I'm giving it to the top roller. And do so. And the warrior cops some grief, and hands it to the hunter, which no-one notices, and gets some more grief.

After a quick break, we get to the gunships. No warrior. DC'd. Oh bugger. Well, it's only the Gunships. I give a piss-poor briefing, and we pull with nine. One of the gunners (in his first instance ever) has no idea where to point it. Gentle (hah!) correction over Vent and in /raid. Boing, I go. Boing back. And again. Ping-pong with people, this fight. The other tank (have I mentioned how well they were doing? I should) did a bang-up job on adds. My role was to keep going Boing until the Horde get bored. Despite 9-manning with four pugs, a lightly geared Adds tank and a first-timer, we fail to screw up, and it's loot time! No hat for the Shaman of course. It'll drop when she brings her Druid.

We give Saurfang a pull. Valmoria does most of the briefing, which is fine with me. I've had a couple of beers, and am not entirely upbeat about our chances on this. We pull, and the fun begins. Until now, I thought there were three ways to screw this fight up. It turns out there are four. Hitting the wrong Blood Beast? Check. Mis-timing a taunt? A check for both tanks. AoE on the Blood Beasts? Oh very check. Moving the boss away from the current off-tank and pointing a cleave at a healer? Brilliant, I say. A true innovation in the field of screwup. Inspirational. And it seemed like such a good way to reposition him, too. No, I'm not saying which of us did it. When it became clear we weren't getting him below 98%, and a mark had fallen, I ordered a retreat to the Skybreaker, which, amazingly, everyone made. After a certain amount of chortling, we gave it another shot, and got him to 61%. One DPS short, we weren't getting him down, but several people got a good look at the fight. I called it at about 2300ST.

Apparently, despite all the drama and incompetence, we hadn't done enough to scare everyone away. Asisia joined the guild, and we're looking forward to tanking together again.

Key Facts

Number of people who earned their first emblem ever: 1
Main tanks fully raid-buffed health, trinkets popped: Eighty Three Thousand
Reason for 83k Health: 15% raid-wide stats buff
Running total of No Warranty RAGEQUITTERS: 1

See you all on Thursday for the next exciting episode!

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