For the Love of the Light!

I had my chance to face palm against Sindragosa 25 last night.
Not only was I wholly unprepared to be invited at short notice, but I was also extremely unprepared.  I think this point is so important, I had to make it twice.

So, I crammed as much wowhead/tankspot as I could in the 10mins I had to play with before getting summoned into the instance.


WHOA THERE NER! Didn't you say that your guild had stopped 25s?
Well, yes we have.

I had to make a tough call last week.  I had to decide what I wanted to do more - run a guild or run 25man content.  And this is what I wrote on my guild site about it (with a few edits for it to make sense here):

This is not easy for me to say. 
I am going to be moving Brangwen to another guild to continue raiding 25s. 

All I have ever really wanted to do is raid.  When I couldn't find a guild to do that in originally the way I wanted it done, I made my own place with the support of a group of people to run a guild with.

When those people left, I found another group of people to run a guild with to continue raiding.  And now, after 2.5 years, that group of people has finally dwindled down to 2.

There are many reasons why I decided to call a halt to 25s.  I was also very aware that it was probably the end of us as we knew it irrevocably.  And yes, it broke my heart.  And yes, I feel like I am deserting those who chose to stay.  And yes, I have been uncommunicative about this decision, because I have been struggling with even admitting it to myself.  But, I find that I want more than this guild can provide.

I want to kill the Lich King on 25 mode, and I want to do 25man hardmodes.  I am also no longer in a position to be able to do this as a guild leader.  I am burned out, for reasons outside WoW as well as inside WoW.

I will stay on as GL for the moment - but mostly as a figure head.  I am going to talk to people who are most keen to get us going as a serious 10man guild.  You know who you are, and I will try to support you in your ambition to make this happen.  So, there will be a period of transition and negotiation coming up.

I will also be leaving my alts here for as long as is feasible.

But the long and short of it is that I need to step down, but I want to raid, this necessarily leads me to other pastures.
 
Thank you for all your support and time over the years.  It really has been one of the most rewarding things I have ever done with my time.  We have achieved a lot, and I am sure we will again - but differently.

 
I and my wow buddy decided last week that we really did want to run 25s and we wanted to see the content and defeat it.  He had some solid contacts in another guild and we both applied privately and talked to the guild leaders before we made a move, before we said anything to our guild.

Yes, it felt a bit like deception.  But I wanted to be sure that I was actually going before I said anything to anyone. And these guys do things very differently!  It will be interesting to make comparisons about the way we used to do things to the way they actually do them now.

TANGENT NER? What about Sindragosa?
As a holy pally, sindragosa is really a terrible fight.  The damage output is minimal, and evenly distributed if everyone does their job in Phases 1 and 2.  But you know what REALLY makes you look bad first night in? 3% of the total healing.  Yeah, that looks bad.  But if you break it down, it really isnt as bad as all that.

Comparing myself to the other holy pally in the raid, over 40% of his healing came from Judgement of light.  There really is nothing I can do to compete with that!  Why waste a GCD when he is maintaining the judgement?  Sure, it makes the new girl look BAD but any healer worth their salt will see the break downs and realise what was happening.

The other mechanic that made my wow buddy gag when I pointed out to him how poorly it looked like I was performing, was the actual fight itself.  There are 3 mechanics that forcibly stop you from casting as a holy pally.  One is a debuff that stacks when you cast/melee hit the boss with it on.  So, you stop casting.  Awesome!  The second is running around like an idiot.  Because pallies are so GOOD at moving and casting at the same time.  This fight has a lot of movement in it.  The third is being turned into an iceblock and being stunned.

Guess which paladin was well and truly loved by Sindragosa last night?  Yeah, this one.  On the upside I got very good at positioning my iceblock exactly so!

When we get Phase 3 more under control, I think holy pallies will be looking a bit better on the meters, but it is still a really mobile fight... we may not catch the chain hax and HoTy goodness of the other classes in time.