Now with 10% fewer hairballs!

So last night was Tuesday. This means patch day, and the kick-off to our raid week.

This patch-day something… odd happened.

There were the normal grumblings about people getting stuck on the downloader, issues and hiccups getting in-game. Though I do have to note that I was patched and up and running in record time thanks to Mr. Tigerfeet downloading the patch for us through a mirror while I was at work (I’m really going to miss stuff like this when he finally finds a job)

But we got in, got everyone together, loaded up into our vehicles, and rolled out for a repeat performance of Heroic: Unbroken.

Simple, yea?

Then we worked our way through the XT trash. This is almost always a messy business, but there wasn’t anything that happened to raise any flags.

Then we started on XT. And we wiped.

Hmmmmmm. I couldn’t see anything (nor could the other officers) that was a glaring problems. It just looked like general sloppy play.

Ok then. Over Vent: “Ok guys, I’ll remind you just to make sure, do this this and this, don’t blow anyone up, don’t be stupid, we’ve got this guy”. Next attempt we killed him, but again, it was pretty messey.

By this point I was noticing something wrong. I DPS on the XT fight, and my numbers were LOW. So too, in fact, were most everyone else’s.

The fact that Beserk wasn’t working properly was our first clue.

It wasn’t until we got past Kologarn, and then banged our heads on Auriaya a few times that it really became apparent that something was very, very wrong. One kind guildie must have noticed something on the forums because he piped up about a talent glitch, people having problems with energy (yep), Runic Power, Rage, etc.

Yeah, yeah, that sounded familiar.

But this was our raid-time dammit, we might be under-performing, but Auriaya ain’t no thing so long as you get the pull right. We’ve got this.

No, NOW we’ve got this

Ho-kay, next time warn us when the Feral Defender drops, this time we’ve got it.

No… now…. NOW!

After multiple wipes caused by a myriad of little tiny things that normally wouldn’t cause us to bat an eye, this little thing flashed along the bottom of our screens…

Server Restart: 15 Minutes

Fifteen minutes? We’d just recovered from our last wipe, I had the cats marked up and we were pretty much ready to pull.

We can do this in 15 minutes!

And you know what?

We DID.

Finally, with the threat of the Server coming crashing down on our ears, we pulled up our britches, straightened our knuckles, put on our girrrrr faces, and showed Auriaya what for.

I swear, even disadvantaged like we were last night, We do our best when under pressure!

Afterwards, instead of attempting to tackle another Ulduar boss, we groupd up in Wintergrasp to run a 25-man VoA. Emalon, and then Archavon down no problem at all. Whatever they did during the re-start fixed our talent and energy issues juuuuuuust fine!

Meanwhile, I think being forced to perform better (or face annihilation) will actually go a good ways towards making us a stronger group. We’re <Unemployed>, and we thrive on adversity!