Last night I did a raid trial with the team Zeirah is currently trialling with. The evening was for progression on Mythic Hans’gar and Franzok.

I am trialling as an elemental shaman, and boy did I feel out of my depth last night! Not only was I learning a new fight that I’d never seen before, but I was also having to learn the ins and outs of my class (having played restoration for all of Warlords so far.)

The fight itself was interesting. A little more difficult than heroic, but not too much. I think the fight needs good raid leadership, and this team definitely has that. They are very organised which made everything much easier to deal with. I felt so terrible because I wiped the raid at one point as I triggered 3 stompers. But then others did the same so I didn’t feel too bad after that. But overall, their team was quite good! Everyone listened and learned from their mistakes which made the wipes ok. And in the end we got it.

Playing elemental was interesting. I do love playing that spec, but I need some more practice to feel more confident with it. Once I’d gotten in to a groove on the fight I remembered cooldowns like shamanistic rage to help with getting smacked by body slam. I remembered to use ancestral guidance to help with a bit of extra healing (though I need to work on finding better times to use it). And I remembered to drop my healing stream totem, too, to give a little trickle of heals where possible (though I doubt it did much).

The worst part about the fight was that my totem pets wouldn’t work properly! There’s a bug with them that makes them just pace back and forth in front of me without going over to smack the boss. It was a terrible dps loss, and over my dps for the fight was really bad. But the team did emphasise that it was much more important for people to stay alive than to do amazeballs dps, and when we got the kill I was still alive, so that felt great, even if my dps was bollocks.

The people themselves were great. They learned from their mistakes, they came back quickly from wipes AND they’re all nice! I hope it all works out ok and they want to keep us. It was much nicer going in to the trial knowing Z was there. Gave me someone to talk to, which was nice.

Hopefully I will get to run with them again on Wednesday, which means I have some research to do. But I’m looking forward to it. It’s nice to be excited about raiding again. 🙂