Calm Before The Storm

I think a lot of people have been feeling it. There is just not that much stuff left to do in WoW right now. Some achievements you get one shot at such as the Immortal and others are just plain annoying that you don't want to do it. As far as I have gone all I need for the Heroic: Glory of the Raider is Immortal and Gotta Go when the Volcano goes. I am so close to my mount but I know I'm not gonna get it because we never run a consistent 25. We have about 18 core members who always show up and the other 7 or so are either new recruits or people who haven't played in a while. Not a good combo to get Immortal

The guild has recently been trying to get 10 man Sarth 3d. We did it the conventional way of tanking the drakes, dpsing them down in order and we almost had it but it is punishing if anyone messes up. We also tried the dps zerg and we almost had that as well (5%) but there is always one issue or another. I am currently just fed up with it and I don't even know why I continue because there is no loot to go along with the victory minus a mount.

You can feel the people in the guild getting tired of running the same old stuff over and over again and then also trying to get silly achievements that they already have. We need Ulduar. I perosnally need Ulduar. I need a new challenge. I want to learn new strategies and I want to drool over new loot. I have a feeling that we might zoom through Ulduar a bit. From the impression I get from Blizzard they want the encoutners to be challenging but doable. I have no doubt that we'll probably have at least half the instance down before the first reset is done. Looking at the strategies so far it seems there is definatley a lot of coordination that has to happen and a dps race on top of it.

Back before we were head long into raiding I spent hours a day going to sites and analyzing tanking items and trying to figure out which instances I needed to run, how many badges I needed and which bosses had the loot I was going to cross my fingers on. Now that I have best in slot for tanking I have no reason to look at any current gear available in game. I really haven't looked through the Ulduar gear but once the dust settles I am actually looking forward to going back and figuring out which pieces of gear I'm going to go after. Also with Dual specs being available with the patch I am going to be doing the same thing with the Ret gear that drops from there as well

I am a little worried about Ret at the moment. They both buffed and nerfed a lot of the Ret tree. In raids right now with my current gear I feel confident to be able to compete with the best dps in the guild. I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that once the patch comes out. I could also say the same thing about tanking. Right now we rely on our Death knight to be there to be able to complete Sarth 3d. I'm really worried that even if I have best in slot gear for tanking there will be more bosses out there where a paladin tank won't be optimal and the guild will look for alternatives to beating the encounter.

Even though it might be scary what happens I'm really looking forward to it. New encoutners, new loot, new strategies, and a new adventure await me and my guild. I see a lot of nights where I probably won't be getting as much sleep as I should