5.4 has been out for 2 weeks now. I’m still enjoying it a lot. The Timeless Isle is a lot of fun – it’s like a giant Easter Egg hunt! And of course there’s the new raid zone, Siege of Orgrimmar, which hasn’t been out long enough for me to hate yet. 🙂

What I’m not enjoying, though, is recruiting. As I’ve written about before, there were a few dramas in my previous guild, and a change of Guild Master meant that I felt I couldn’t be in the guild or their raid team any more. So I moved, and quite a few people left too. We’ve now formed our own guild, Flames of the Phoenix. We had five people come over with us – half a raid team. We just needed to find some tanks, at least 1 or 2 healers and some dps to fill in the blanks. I stalked the forums, spammed trade chat – everything. By the time our first raid time rolled around we had (well, we thought) all roles except a dps filled. Unfortunately, the second tank we had recruited didn’t show up. He had paid for a transfer, so I’m honestly surprised at this. From what I see he hasn’t logged in to WoW since 5.4 dropped.

That first week, one of our healer trials was unable to make it to the second raid, so we had to pug a healer and hit the jackpot with a really great resto druid. In the end we had to reject the other healer and brought her in instead. So that was some good fortune.
But this whole time we’ve been pugging tanks, and it’s beyond frustrating. Tanks are a hard role to fill – there are never enough of them, and to be quite honest, a lot of them can be jerks. (I think it’s because you need to have a thick skin to be a tank… so it tends to bring about some quite large egos). So we’ve had a different tank each week. Thankfully we had the same tank 2 nights in a row this week, however he did cause us to have to sit around waiting for 20 minutes which none of us appreciated.

I just want a solid, consistent team. And every time I feel like we’re getting close to having that, something happens – someone leaves or can only come a few days – and we’re back to having to find members again. It’s exhausting. It also hinders our progression. At the moment we’re only 6/14 and not nearly as far along as I would like us to be.

I’m also struggling to raid lead a constantly changing group. It’s hard to get used to people’s personalities and group dynamics when it changes each week. Those of us who have been in from the start have formed a good relationship, I think. But other newer people are still getting there.

I know things will work out eventually… I just wanted to be a bit more competitive than what we are now. Mostly, I didn’t want to be so far behind my previous guild. hehe

One of the biggest changes this tier has been raid leading as my pally. Previously I was playing my mage, but I am a healer a heart, and because I had left the other raid team I had my pally freed up I jumped at the chance to play her. It’s a bit tough watching healer frames and mechanics AND telling other people what to do. I’m not doing it nearly as well as I should, but hopefully not too badly.

On the plus side, I have managed to get some great loots already, so have a new outfit! It’s a mix-and-match of current and previous tier (and one pre-previous tier weapon) that seems to work alright. I’ll be happy to have the full set later, though.

Not the greatest shot of her… I’m at work so I can’t log in to the game hehe.

Anyway, that’s what’s going on at the moment. I’ll just keep wishing for a stable team.