Do You Need LFR Gear And Other Sundries

Firstly:
I finally joined up with Twitter! You can follow me @RaidAfterDark if you like.

Secondly:
This post from The Reluctant Raider made me sad and a little angry.

When your Raid Leader is asking you to run LFR or loose your spot in the raid team for Dragon Soul, ask yourself the following questions:

• Are you seriously going for and expecting to get Realm First Heroic kills?
• Do you still need to seriously gear up in Hour of Twilight or Firelands?
• Do you find your performance  lags significantly behind the rest of the raid?
• Do you have a lot of trouble killing more than 1 boss in normal Dragon Soul?
• Is your entire spec balanced around your 4-piece tier bonus in 4.3?
• Do you want to run LFR?

If your answer to any one of those questions is "Yes", then you might need some LFR gear. Otherwise, tell your Raid Lead that you are comfortable with your gear level and if he has a problem with your performance, to discuss it specifically with you. Being benched for not running LFR when your performance is equivalent is utterly, completely unfair and unreasonable.

And if you're a raid leader who requires their members to use LFR as an essential gearing element, you need to buckle up, setup a night and get as many core raid members into a 25-man group as you can before queuing.

LFR is not an easy nor a guaranteed method of gearing and a single boss can take an hour. You can't reasonably throw your raid members into that hell rudderless and expect them to come out with gear. If you want them to get that gear, you have to take them in yourself. Own up to your responsibility.

This isn't ICC 25 where Trade PUGs would clear 9/12 for GDKP runs in 2 or 3 hours. This is a million monkeys, gibbering and slamming their heads on their keyboards, hoping to kill bosses.

Lastly:
A Korea guild (I'm sorry, I can't anglicize the Korean characters but I think it translates to Kin Raiding) get World First Kills of both Deathwing modes, on 25-man. The world second kill of Spine was another Korean guild (In Extremis) and they're the only other guild in the world working on Madness right now.

Wow.

That's a sea-change I didn't see coming. And with US guilds having sat up there at 6/8 for ages and ages. Blood Legion and Vodka must be stunned, I know I am. This was the unseen bullet that came out of nowhere, and, yeah, I don't know. I wonder what the race would've been like with Paragon/Ensidia/Method in there, but it is a sting for US Guilds to deal with not claiming world first yet again, even without the EU competition.

Also: they're an Alliance guild. WIN! Glory to the Alliance!

Seeing things like this make me wish I could compete and play the game at a higher level sometimes. I love raiding with my guild, but we're a casual/semi-serious group that raids 6 hours a week and spends maybe 4 of those hours actually killing shit and the rest of it is spent in banter and camaraderie.

That is not a complaint, BTW!  ;-) Just wistful thinking.