King's Here

Sure, Pallys provide kings, but Varian provides Kings!

Last night, in my first raid with The Ebon School, I had a ton of fun! The atmosphere was relaxed, we burned through 6 ICC bosses (ending with Fester and Rot), and I got phat lewtz!

I spent 100 dkp on two different items - both off Lady Deathwhisper - a pair of shoulders and a pair of bracers. Yep, blew my whole dkp for the night by the second boss.

Let me tell you, I really like this dkp thing. I get to determine what I want, save up for it, and eventually buy it. I get more control over obtaining my loot with minimal RNG and loot council interference. If I've got the dkp, then I have a shot at buying the item.

Also, I really like the system that is in place: silent bidding (one bid per person), so items don't get bid up sky high. Also, the winner of the item, pays the amount of the second highest bid, so if for some reason, you value the item much more than others, you won't be penalized for bidding your whole dkp stack. Of course, the opposite is true and if it is a highly valued item, you may well be spending nearly your whole stack if you win the bid by 1 dkp.

You are allowed to actually go negative if nobody wants the item and it's your main spec; there are minimum bids of 100 for armor and 150 for weapons.

Another thing I like about the loot administration is that different officers are assigned as auctioneers for items. So for my loot, I just had to whisper my bid to the appropriate officer, who kept track of the bids, announced when the bids would be closed, and determined who won the item. Loot distribution went much faster as we didn't have a bottleneck in one person handling all the loot.

As far as the raid itself went, everything went pretty smooth. I placed at 14th on the damage meter for the night; with gear score taken into consideration, I did pretty good for what I had compared to better geared people. I was about middle of the pack as far as healing/damage taken, so I need to get better at moving out of the fire.

I also had to learn some fights being in a different position. Festergut was one of them as in Hubris, I was in the ranged group and had to stay away from people with the exception of collapsing on the spore point. Last night, I was in the melee group and had to run out anywhere except toward people if I happened to get a spore on me.

On Marrowgar, I was used to standing pretty much anywhere close to the boss except in the cleave area; in last night's raid, the RL wanted everyone to group up right next to the boss's backside. I got called out for that one. Whoops.

So, I did ok, but I definitely have some work to do, which means....A LIST!

1. I need to read up on the fights. I always understand something better if I see it, then I read about it. Of course, if I read about it, see it, and then read about it again, I do quantum leaps better. Now that I have a good feel for all of last night's fights, Blood Council, and Dreamwalker, I need to read some information on specifics on each of the encounters. Blood Council and Dreamwalker are up for Sunday.

2. Need more situational awareness. I'm pretty good about staying out of DnD, sticky slime pools, and rocket targeted areas. I can keep away from Blood beasts, little slimes, and Donovan. Where I really need to pay more attention is Rotface and his slime spray. The Rotface fight in general is taxing as far as paying attention - know where the spray is going, where the slime is flowing, where to run to when you get a little slime, when the big slime is going to explode, and where the big slime is. And dps the boss while keeping tabs on all that.

3. Maximize my rotation. I was able to equip the bracers, shoulders, and a staff on the spot, which gave me more spell power and haste, but took away my T9 bonus of a longer duration of Vampiric touch. What that meant was that I had to cast Vampiric Touch more often and threw my entire rotation off for the rest of the evening. I need to get a feel for the new rotation and when things come off cooldown/duration. PSP is going to become a much valued addon once more.

Maybe it's the fresh start with a new guild and maybe it's not, but I am excited and motivated to be raiding with The Ebon School. I'm excited because from the very start, I felt like a valued part of the team. I'm motivated because I know the loot system will be applied fairly across the board, the team is very capable, and I had a lot of fun.