It’s great to be back and blogging again, after a few great weeks of pre-xpac playing, raiding and money-hoarding culminated this weekend with a great visit with my folks and older brother, who are all very loving and inspiring to my life.

As we get closer to the coldest months of the year, thoughts move towards hunkering down where it’s warm and focusing on getting a lot done while the weather gets nastier outside.

And of course, some of my goals have to do with World of Warcraft :)

New Guild Working Out Grand

I’m so very happy that I decided to take the time to research out and find myself a homey, small, very progressed guild to join two months before the Xpac release date.

I’m so insanely happy that this guild is already tight-knit, and their raiding team is mature, quiet, and solid.

They’re so solid that I’ve gotten into some Sunwell progression raids, and I can get into the farm status raids (Black Temple, Mount Hyjal and below), but more often than not those progression raids in Sunwell have me on the sidelines in the “overflow” group.

All three raiding nights this week I’ve been on Standby, standing at the Sunwell instance door (sometimes link-dead/disconnected).

What Do I Think Of Being On Standby

Fine by me! I’m insanely happy that these guys are solid enough that they DON’T need to pull me in. I’ve got many things I can do when my main toon is locked where I can quickly hop into the action if they need me.

And of course, the guild has great rules in terms of Overflow and DKP… Overflow counts as a full raid as long as I stay on Vent and keep available on the guild alt chat lines, etc.

But What About Raiding??!!

These days, there are so may PUG raids going on, there’s no worries about getting into raids and continuing to get upgrades to my gear. And since I have no RaidID restrictions beyond Sunwell itself, I just do what comes up that sounds good to me in the time that I have.

Guild Progression To The Last Minute

It is fun to listen to the raids even when I’m not in them… our guild was one of the ones who entered into Sunwell before the 3.0.2 patch which nerfed mob and boss health in all the raid instances and made them easier, but we hadn’t made any boss kills yet.

As soon as we started raiding after 3.0.2 patch, the bosses started to fall at the rate of one or two per raiding week, which consists of 3 raids of 3.5 hours each.

And within these hours, there’s very little fooling around. One progression raid I was a part of last week for Felmyst had us do 16 attempts on him in that time. Enough attempts that we took a break to repair, and then come back for another 7 attempts afterwards.

Comparing that to one of my friends who is Raid Leading SSC and TK progression raids and says his group is only capable of 3-4 attempts in that timeframe because it takes so long for everyone to get re-rezzed and buffed up afterwards, and there are an endless stream of AFKs, I’m damned impressed with this new guild I’m in.

The only boss left right now is the final boss of Sunwell - Kil’jaiden.

But, Do They Like Me?

This, of course, is subjective and difficult for me to really, truly tell.

But I do think they like me, even though I haven’t had a lot of opportunity to demonstrate my raiding ability in a hands-on fashion.

But of course, I’m going to be an initiate until I’m level 80 at the very least, so I guess that means I could be kicked at any time, so I do work to make sure I meet my requirements and strive to improve even when there’s nothing guild-related going on to help me with it.

As of last night, I got past the 66% raid attendance minimum for the last 30 days.

And now that Be Imba! is updating again, I see that my gear has moved up to solidly within Sunwell, whereas it was still rated as Black Temple/Mount Hyjal-worthy when the patch came along and the Armory stopped updating for 3 wks.

I’m well-poised to enter into the expansion with a solid team of well-geared, skilled players! I am quite looking forward to it! :)

How about you? :)

Tags: be imba, eredar twins, felmyst, guild progression, guild raids, kil'jaiden, mu'ru, raiding sunwell, sunwell, xpac preparation