Misadventures In Raiding: We Got This

Yesterday while doing our standard valor cap thing, now that it is worth doing again, myself and the two people I was spamming heroic scenarios with to cap our characters got an invite from a friend of one of us to join in on an SoO pug.

Normally we would not do something like that, it is valor cap time but figured what the heck.  We all jumped on alts, me a druid tank, one of the others a druid tank and the third a damage dealer on a hunter and we joined the group.

It was a pure pug, all people from different guilds except for us three of course.  I am sure a few of them knew each other because that is how pugs usually go.  A friend invites a friend invites a friend.

It was a slow moving run because after the first boss someone dropped and we ended up waiting near 30 minutes to get going again.  We had a few more delays along the way, but otherwise everything was running smooth.  Bosses were falling over despite the raid leader using strategies that at least the three of us had never used, but he is the raid leader so we followed his lead and did as he said.

Like I said, with the exception of a lot of wasted time, which no one complained about, things were going nicely.  It seemed as if the group worked well together.  At least until Galakras.  It was where we hit our first bump in the road.

Side note:  To anyone that is not a raider, please be advised, this is not the right way to do things.  This is a misadventure and pure luck.

Towers went fine but when the protodrake landed all hell broke lose and the entire raid died near instantly.  Don't ask me how because I have no clue but you do not need death note to tell you it probably had something to do with standing in the fire.  Okay, bad joke.

It was just me, my co tank and one damage dealer still up.  The raid leader said it was a wipe to which I responded the way any person that has tanked a lot would admit they have responded at least a hundred times by saying, don't worry, we got this.

I was not trying to over rule the raid leader, it was not my raid.  It was his decision, but I figured it would not hurt to try and go for it.  At that point it was, in my mind at least, we are either going to manage to pull this off, or we are going to finish it off and die quickly, so lets have a little fun and I must admit, there is nothing more fun than saying "I got this" and somehow managing to get it.  This seemed like one of those times it could be pulled off.  Even if those chances were really slim.

Galakras was around 78% with the raid went poof up in flames.  Did I really believe we had this?  Yeah, I guess so, I did believe it was possible.  While me and my co tank were on alts we were on very well geared alts.  For normals anyway.  So it came down to, do we think we can heal ourselves enough to survive because his breath was going to start getting really brutal really fast with only the three of us alive and us using all our rage for healing instead of damage.

I said to the other tank, who do you think I should bring up.  He said our other guild mate.  So I battle revived our guild mate and we kept at it.  How he, on a hunter, survived so long without any heals is was amazing and the other damage dealer, the one person beside the tanks that managed to not go up in smoke instantly was a priest, managed to at least keep themselves alive.

At around 50% the shaman healer, who apparently did not want to waste their pop decided, what the hell and popped up.

We said, don't worry about us, keep you guys up, and myself and the other tank kept pounding away, rotating cooldowns, and keeping ourselves alive and low and behold, we got it.  You could hear the excitement on vent and the see the dead people typing in raid things like "I can't believe what I am seeing", "how is that even possible", and the funniest line you ever hear in a pug "this is the best group ever, I love you guys".

It wasn't the greatest thing to ever happen in a raid but it sure was fun to have something like that happen.  It was not pressing content, it was not something that was out of the realm of possibility, but it was definitely one of those raid stories you will go on to tell for a long time.

I often complain about pugs but sometimes fun things like this can only happen in a pug.  It was a good group and really you could tell that from the get go when no one complained at all about the long wait between the first and second boss.  I guess their patience was rewarded with a story they can tell their friends.

Side note: Both myself and my friend were on druid tanks.  If you do not play a druid I'll just explain how we did it nice and easy.  Druids rocks.  It reminded me of our first kill of Al'Akir at the beginning of cataclysm.  Somehow the entire raid got blown away at the beginning of phase three except me tanking on my druid, a feral druid DPS, and a restoration druid.  So the three druids did the third phase all alone for out first kill.

We got this.  Yes, we did.  Sometimes misadventures are the best adventures to have.  Misadventures indeed.