Hello there! Today is a Wednesday, also known as Mancy's Ensidia day! This week's entry will be mostly centered, other than the raid review, around Kungen quitting and the impact I believe it will have on our future raiding, as well as PTR preparations.
Let's start with our raids: the main raid was scheduled to take place on Wednesday, and so it did. We were ready to pull the trash in Bastion of Twilight at 18:30 and we had plenty of new people in the raid, including a mage! I was pretty happy to see a new mage, as I always find it entertaining to play with new people of my class (maybe they prove to be better than Hearnt so I'll have some competition). Halfus, Theralion, Ascendant Council and Cho'Gall all died in record time, I don't think we wiped at all. I was pretty satisfied by my DPS results as Arcane, I'm starting to love this spec again!
Then it was time for Blackwing Descent. Sadly, Ekyu wanted to test the new mage on every encounter and it was Hearnt's turn to play, so I sat out for both Blackwing Descent and Throne of the Four Winds. That made me a very sad panda so I just played HoN all night instead.
As a general comment, what's up with trials ninja quitting during the night ? It's pretty annoying. Take for example the new mage, he left on Thursday without saying anything... And a couple more trials just suddenly disappeared as well, that kind of behaviour truly sucks in my eyes.
Anyway, moving forward to Monday, time for the alt raid. Sarcasm aside, I found that raid very entertaining since we did plenty of hardmodes and it was a fun atmosphere. We one-shot Halfus in heroic mode then did everything else on Normal. We should be killing Theralion on heroic soon, however!
After clearing Bastion of Twilight, we moved to Blackwing Descent. That's where it gets good! We one-shot Omnotron in Heroic mode as well as Magmaw! Then we proceeded to kill Maloriak Heroic as well. This fight was another example of how good Stancy is. Not only did Stancy manage to survive, but she also beat Ekyu on Damage Meter. Stancy is a true hero.
Following Maloriak's demise was Chimaeron, who we also killed in Heroic mode. That one was kinda tricky, since we had Caleb as a tank and Daniie, but we managed to get him after a few wipes regardless. Up next was Atramedes, he died as well after an astonishing performance of Team Priest.
At this point, right before Nefarian, I found it a great idea to troll Ekyu. It's kinda funny since he can't tell when I'm trolling him and when I'm just arguing with him.
Anyway, Nefarian went down fast and so did Conclave and Al'akir, all in normal mode. I really don't know what the hell is up with Al'akir, every week I see a new item. This week we got some Intellect/Mastery/Hit cloak... first time in my life I see an int cloak dropping from him. Are they adding new items every day or what? Well, one thing is for certain: the caster DPS weapon will never drop for us (I am forced to mention that I am missing a gem in my very recently added new socket on my belt (the leatherworking crafted one. Ekyu forced me to say that)).
And that concludes the raiding section. However, this week's article's main focus is the recent roster changes and the impact I believe they will have on our raiding. Namely:
Kungen quit raiding. Why ? Well, there are plenty of reasons, but the main is demotivation. After playing WoW competitively for such a long time, it makes perfect sense to lose motivation. And when you lose motivation, you lose all interest to play the game as well. What will he do next? Well, I don't know that, maybe he wants to talk about it himself some day. What I do know is what he WON'T do next and that is a HoN career, he's just too bad at that game.
Varokk (cloze) quit raiding. His lack of time and motivation has been apparent for a long time now, and it was only a matter of time in my eyes until he made the decission to (perhaps temporarily) quit.
Ekyu, Mage class leader of Ensidia rerolled and is now playing his warrior, fulfilling the Main Tank role that Kungen left open (hence why he was playing his mage in the alt raid).
What to make of this? Well, some people might think that losing one of our leaders, as well as some other awesome players, will significantly cripple the guild. What will actually happen is unknown to everyone, but from my perspective we will come back stronger than ever. Why? Because of motivation. No matter how good a player is, if he lacks motivation he will not perform to the maximum. I definitely believe that Kungen was an important asset for the guild, as well as the other guys that quit like Bastrel, Kazuko and a few others, but I think Ekyu will be able to cover the main tank role just fine as he is a really skilled player. The addition of even more recruits, driven by motivation and the desire to get world firsts makes me really optimistic about the future. Players come and go. So, we have some important, core players gone but we have a lot of new blood around that is proving to be capable of taking the pressure and fulfilling the requirements to be a part of a top raiding team. Besides, the leadership gap will be covered by Mek, who returned to hardcore raiding and leading the guild in the middle of Cataclysm progress and is ready to take us back to the #1 rank.
Over with that as well. As some of you might be aware, 4.2 PTR hit the test realms today and Firelands, the new raid instance, is included in the patch, so we can expect some PTR Raiding really soon. What that means is that it's preparation time!
- Buy a lot of consumables.
- Copy character to test realms.
- Download the PTR client.
- Install the PTR.
- Update the PTR.
- Log in, get invited to Guild.
- Move all addons.
- Check which addons work.
- Check which addons need to get replaced/removed.
- Spec.
- Spec second spec.
- Make sure there is nothing missing, like enchants or items etc.
- Make sure you have a flexible schedule in the near future in case of unannounced raid testing (or like, "We are enabling X boss in 5 minutes")
- and some more stuff that I'm forgetting.
I'm really hyped for this PTR, I hope Firelands is going to be an amazing instance and I truly can't wait for Ragnaros Heroic Mode. The upcoming articles will feature some PTR boss details, but I won't give too much info as there should hopefully be a boss guide feature in the future! Also, stay tuned for next week's Mancy's Ensidia, it will feature a very interesting twist. I don't wanna spoil anything, but trust me, it will be interesting!
