Team RubiPam Report:
Last Thursday, Team RubiPam on its last night with Rubidium as our regular field general, went into Garrosh for the umpteenth time, this time armed with gear improvements and new upgrades made possible with the latest patch. We knew this would be probably our last shot with Rubidium before his step-down from so much raiding this expac, due to real life activities and pressures. We also knew Corwynn would be gone for the next two weeks, sent overseas AGAIN by an inconsiderate employer who clearly has no understanding of the needs of a raid team. These two factors together, plus the fact that we are all so sick of this fight (we can all recite the RP between Garrosh and Thrall by heart by now, and can do the pre-Garrosh trash pretty much blind folded), meant that this night was do or…well, not die, but possibly give up. I asked before the raid, “How is this night different from all other nights?” and the resounding answer was, “Tonight we kill him!” And we did.
It was glorious. Our first pull was very, very good, but Voban died during one of the intermissions to the server lag boss, and we wiped at 2.8%, by far our best first pull. We went at it again, got him down to a nice 32% or so going into the second intermission, and kept pounding away at him so that we did not get overwhelmed with empowered adds. We got him to the magic 10% in short order, he healed up to 25% and it was off to the races – and BOOM goes the dynamite, he was DAID! Well, in custody, technically, but dead to us, baby!
This has been a sometimes agonizing, frequently difficult and depressing 4 months or so on this fight (with several breaks throughout for absences of various folks, so our actual efforts might have been more like 3 months. But who’s counting.) At times it seemed we must be working on some new raid achievement for most wipes on a final boss, titled "I Say We Take Off and Nuke'm From Orbit: [it's the only way to be sure]" We probably should have done more weeks of farming than we did – possibly we thought we were closer than we really were.
But we stuck together through all of it to get it done. It is a tribute to the values of this guild (we are friends who raid, not raiders who might be friends) and the bonds forged between members of this casual raid team – Rubidium, Thanael, Xoff, Bemused, Mageartin, Lynera, Corwynn, Joravic, Voban and Pamena – that we did not dissolve at any point into an orgy of bitterness, finger pointing and recriminations over our difficulties getting this fight done. We helped each other along the way – I’ll never forget Rubi playing his frost mage and his shadow priest for one 10 day period to see if he could come up with helpful suggestions for Mageartin and Pamena, which he certainly did. And we benefited a lot from the advice and subbing in of Team Kaels members – Kaels, Taymage, Carune, Snuffy and Zarjah aka Chanta, thanks so much. A special shoutout is owed to Xoff, who tanks for us and heals/dps's for Team Kaels on his druid - I do not know how he kept his sanity doing this fight so much with BOTH teams, but somehow he did, and we couldn't have done it without him, for sure.
We plan to continue as a team now, but at a more relaxed and fun pace – we need to find a permanent replacement for Rubidium (and he ALWAYS has a spot with us any time he feels like running something), but we won’t worry about that too much until Corwynn returns in a few weeks. We may be doing alt runs, pickup runs, runs thru Firelands, and eventually I hope, try some heroics. But whatever happens, we did this – we ARE Liberators of Orgrimmar! I love you guys.
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