Hmm...

Ok, so I jumped into a 25 man VOA last night, knowing that it's been revamped and while I have read the Emalon fight, I don't know it. I was ok with my gear, especially with there being 3 tanks for some reason. But I was concerned when I noticed it was a hard core raider group.

Nothing against hard core raiders, but I'm not. Nor will I be unless I get laid off with a lot of savings. I have too much going on to commit to constant and regular 5-8 hour blocks of raiding time. I'm not the most amazing tank out there, but I do the best I can and try to learn what I can. That being said, this particular raid was not the best experience, and I've been trying to piece together why I had such an awful time in less than 5 minutes of actual time in raid.

First, I was tired, not even sure I wanted to go on the raid, and worried I wouldn't do well. Not a good combo. It was pretty clear most of these folks raided together all the time, so that didn't help. RL specifically said no vent, so there goes a great form of communication. But since I was one of two OTs, I knew my job was adds for the most part. Not sure why we needed 2 OTs, I could have just DPS'd, or I was more than happy being told "we have tanks". I hear it all the time lately.

Trash pulls went fine, we obviously had good DPS numbers. But Emalon didn't go well on the first attempt, and 1/3 of the raid wiped on the first chain lightening. Yay for spreading out, eh? I was in the wrong place, and I knew it, but I wasn't sure where to be. The other OT had the adds, the MT had the boss, I was waiting for an add to peel off? I dunno. All the strategies I know of use 2 tanks. I'm not going to taunt off the OT as long as he has it and is fine on health. Problem is that about the time the DPs get wiped by chain lightening, the RL starts yelling. And Yelling. I mean, just stupid yelling. Mostly at me. Sigh....

Frankly, at that point, I don't give a shit. Clearly the raid has the stats to do this, there's just some slacking all around, including me. It happens on raids when folks aren't focused. And they sooo weren't if I judged the text chat right. Likely it took a wipe to wake everyone up and stop facerolling. But I'm not fond of yelling, don't think it's necessary, and really am not interested in interacting with people who punctuate yelling with swear words. So I bailed. After calling him a dumbass. That part felt good, even though I'm sure it's a drop in the bucket for him.

I dunno, they finished and a guildie got some loot off of it, which is great. But at the end of the day, I was glad I jumped. I learned from it. My only concern was really perception for my guild for jumping out of a raid. New guild, new perception to build. I do want to raid, I work at getting better, I'm upgrading gear. But it's not my living breathing goal in life. Hopefully they get that.