... or, Adjorning as Defined in this post I made in April.
Yes, my 'Tard Ten' as I affectionately called it, will no longer have Hine to blame for it's failures.
Unfortunately, the ICC10 I attempted to shepherd on Sat/Sun never really made it past the 'forming' stage, even after months of blood, sweat and tears.
Trying to put together a third primarily guild ICC10 in a 25-man guild is often an excercise in masochism, I've found. New guildies often got absorbed into the more established runs as people left those groups, and the third group only had 4-5 players consistently attending. I never had the same group two nights in a row, and typically pugged 4-5 players. This meant no heroic modes, no additional Lich King kills, no achievements to speak of (and certainly no fancy mount) and lots and lots and lots of wearing my voice out on vent explaining fights to pugees.
I'll be honest, it was almost a relief when a survey of my summer schedule put the inevitable in the demise of the Tard Ten. I'm out of town at least one of the two nights for the next month, and start teaching classes for the university in the next city up the freeway in the fall - of the Fri/Sat/Sun seminar variety. So, if my poor fellow Tards choose to continue the good fight, I won't be there for much of it.
In any case, a few semi-fond recollections in retrospect that some of you may be all-too-familiar with:
-raids that started at best 45 minutes after posted start time due to need to pug players every night.
-5700+ gear score dps that couldn't beat out our tanks for overall damage or top 5000 dps on boss fights(how do they DO that?)
-Plate dps in spell power gear (and not just pallies)
-warlocks that stack hit to 600+ and can't seem to hit their cookie or summoning portal buttons
-lots and lots of players that don't know fights but seem incapable of listening in vent
-healing, tanking, dpsing. Then, healing, er, tanking, no, dpsing, as the raid needed role switches. Several long-suffering guildies never knew that they'd be doing each time they logged in, and logged more time on an alt in an alt spec than playing on their mains.
-gearing up total strangers every week, since most guildies didn't need any gear from ICC10.
-the satisfaction, at times, of seeing a group that's never run together pull off one-shots of semi-difficult fights like putricide, blood queen, and sindragosa.
-the occasional levity of 'night off' raiders whose inebriation or lack of focus was still somehow more amusing than annoying.
-and, of course, the hilarity that was AVR (RIP) in a 'fun run' raid.
So long and thanks for all the fish, guys.
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A couple of other updates with apologies for lack of screenshots.
My hunter Hinemanu is still gradually leveling on weekends and has crossed the level 60 mark and is happily flying around Hellfire Peninsula. That outlands gear isn't too cartoonish! Oh, wait, it is. :) I'm still enjoying the 'the class I Swore Never to Play.' :P
I hit the 20 shards mark on Shadowfrost shards, so another ~4 weeks and some goodness will hopefully be in my hot little hands (barring an inability to to raid from the hotel room on the road on an upcoming trip. but even so, it won't be too long!). I did manage a few decent parses this past week despite all the top spots being taken by legendary axe wielders. I look forward to re-entering the lists once I have the proper jousting weapon again.
Tiny gold-related comment: is it just me, or has the AH become a rather dry wasteland? I'm feeling lucky these days to make 15g profit on cut gems, and if I list more than 5-6 a day, the listing is inevitably wasted. There's still gold to be made out there, it's just not that much. I suspect that unless you're very determined and very well-organized, the best gold-making strategies the gurus post won't do much for us until Cataclysm drops. That's ok I guess. There's really nothing to spend it on, anyway.
Until next time, have fun out there!
-Hine
