A Tale of Two Teams

Last night, the Gold Team once again ventured back into Gruul the Dragonkiller's lair and quickly disposed of him. We wiped once on Gruul due to a horrible shatter but quickly took him down the second time through.

For the second time in two weeks, he once again dropped two pairs of Leggings of the Fallen Hero. Again, this time I did not roll for them as we are now using a DKP system called EP/GP. It rewards both effort points (showing up on time, etc.) and gear points (gear that drops). And even though I'd like to have the pants to complete a Tier 4 set, I am not going to roll on them since I would not use them (Spellstrike is significantly better).

But last night, once again, the difference between the two teams I have run 25-man content with was plainly clear. The Gold Team had clear leadership, we had all the classes in their respective channels, and everything seemed to go smoothly. We had a couple new people so the initial Maulgar pull took a couple of chances but we quickly took him out.

This image (Gruul: Week 1) compares two teams on Gruul. The blue on the left is the Ungawa group I previously ran with. The brown on the left is the Gold Team I currently run with. When you look at total DPS, it's clear why Gruul will not die for my old team - DPS. Plain and simple. If we can average 8,104 DPS over a 25 man raid and they get to 6,500 or so, that is a provlem. Another thing you notice is 16 people survived all 100% of the fight and 7 of the remaining 9 lasted 90% of the fight. On the other side, you've got people dorpping off at 50 and 75%. Sure, we had an early death, but we pushed through and destroyed the Gronn. You also see at the top of our list, 2 mages, and 2 hunters. In the Ungawa group, there's 2 hunters at the top and the mages come in at #7 (lasted whole fight) and #10, 11 & 13 (died early - only one was going 600+ DPS).

In this second week's numbers, you can see that our DPS actually increased from 8,100 DPS to over 9,200! Comador completely destroyed Gruul with over 1,000 sustained DPS and I lost a bit of DPS due to more movement (I was only able to DPS 91% of the time compared to 97% the week before). We had 13 people doing over 500 DPS, and 5 people doing 700+ DPS. Ungawa has 9 people doing 500+ DPS (2 died really early) and just 2 people doing 700+ DPS (none doing over 800+).

Now, the point of the post isn't to point out one team being better than the other, but rather to show what dedicated players can accomplish. All too often with the Ungawa raids, I saw people show up without consumables. Not have enchants on their main set of gear. Having green gems in gear instead of blue gems. And just a laissez faire attitude towards raiding. On our side, we are all committed. We are all working to progress both individually and as a group. I really do hope the Ungawa team can continue to make gains, but I was just discouraged with the attitude of the group and they were attempting SSC without being able to down Gruul. We are able to one-shot Gruul on a consistent basis and we're planning on goin to Magtheridon soon. We have yet to step inside SSC. There's a reason you used to have to down Gruul and Magtheridon before going to SSC. There's a purpose behind the madness of Blizzard. Hopefully Ungawa will progress and figure out that attempting SSC without being able to down Gruul or Mag is a fruitless endeavor.

Here is a locally hosted version of the WowWebStats from last night: here. Here it is on the WWS server: here.

Gold Team 25 Man One Shots Gruul

Another fun and interesting night. Rather than our usual Karazhan Tuesdays, we have rearranged our schedules and had a split Zul'Aman / Gruul night. The Gold Team quickly ventured into Zul'Aman, one shot Akil'zon, Nalorakk, and Halazzi earning two timed chests and then we got in a couple attempts on Jan'Alai before we headed over to Gruul's Lair.

We picked up the rest of the Gold 25 Man Team and we had a brief meeting as this was the first official Gold Team venture into Gruul's - a quasi-Gold Team went in last night and one shot Maulgar and took Gruul down to 5% the first try and down the second try.

After our quick team meeting, we rushed Maulgar, took him down despite a quick death of one of my healers as I was mage tanking - Lexten quickly shifted over and kept me up with Dylana quite ably. After Maulgar, we headed to Gruul and without a hitch one shot him. Much to my surprise, two Leggings of the Fallen Hero dropped. I didn't roll since they wouldn't be an upgrade for me. But hopefully we'll continue to see them and I'll get them on a need roll and work towards completing my Tier 4 set.

Congrats again to the amazing Gold Team! We will quickly conquer whatever lies in front of us!

((Locally hosted WowWebStats can be found here for Zul'Aman and here for Gruul's Lair. The WowWebStats site is down, but I am just itching to see what my DPS was for Gruul himself...))