What is Casual Raiding?

It seems like an easily answered question doesn't it? What is Casual Raiding? Hard Core raiding requires a committed team to go to raids four to five days a week.  These teams are usually made up of a large group. A Core Team and a Bench. The bench is where players sometimes go to raids as required until a Core member leaves the guild or retires.  The Core Team usually have a number of characters to switch in and out of roles as the fights require different group make up.  To be a Hard Core Raider requires a really high level of commitment. To even sit on the bench for teams like this requires a high level of commitment as you have to keep your gear and skill level up to the standard of the core team which means a lot of pugging knowing the fights inside and out so that anytime you can step into the core raid team and be as proficient as a Core Raider.

I think most people really know what is expected of a hard core raider however, I think there's a bit of a misconception about what a Casual Raid team is.  I think this comes from the word "Casual" it can be interpreted as I rock up, my raid team takes me.  This can cause and has caused, in our guild, some problems for the core team and our general progression.  A more accurate description of a casual raid team would be Part-time raiders.  That is we go twice a week the core team should come both days and have the required knowledge and item level to attend. Some people might only be able to make it to raids one day a week or two days a week, once a fortnight. That's ok we will accommodate for real life commitments and expect people to put their families, life and work before raiding.  The flex raid allows for this kind of raiding.  There are two ranks of raiders in our guild "core raiders" and "social raiders".  The expectation of the core raiders is that these members are coming two days a week and are expected to give notice if they can't come so that we can fill that spot for the required time.  Most of our core raiders are great at doing this. The social raiders can just rock up and get to raid with us however, we do expect you to have the right item level and have at least watched the videos provided by Alysith or other youtube videos if we are on a progression boss.  It would be a great advantage to us if we knew in advance who is coming to the raids.  You can send in game mail to Holyfyre, Alysith or Krinsta (me).

We have made some steady progress and most of us in life and ingame want to be going forward and not backwards. If we bring people who are under geared the whole team suffers.  We don't mind helping to gear guildies and we will take you to the bosses you are appropriately geared for. We will source you appropriate gear if we can. The whole raiding experience for us is a fun time with friends what I'm asking of you is to be courteous to your guildies by following the above rules.

Here's the latest awesome video.

Our progress so far is here

It's a Jungle Out There

The new patch is here and we've been smashing it up in normal HFC.  Our team is looking really strong right now and hopefully we can keep it that way.  Ephi has returned and quickly got gear on gear and is smashing the dps. Bashy will be returning this week to give him a run for his money. Beartanks and Maddy have found their tanking mojo and are shaping up to be a great tanking duo. Pangit is leveling a monk healer and we will all be helping out with getting him geared in the jungle. Bainmar has be having a lot of fun saving us all from the horde corpse camping us in the Jungle so much so that I was able to fish there with the horde happily avoiding me like the plague after getting a taste of their own medicine earlier.If you want to get into PvP send Bainmar ingame mail or give him a shout out in guild chat you will often find him in teamspeak, don't be afraid to pop in there anytime there's usually a few ppl chatting away.

The big news is that we have a new intro for our videos that is awesome and we have the new video of the Heroic Imp fight up on youtube.  It would be great if you could show your support for Alysith aka Brenton by subscribing and liking his videos and sharing them with all your friends on facebook or facecrack as Bashy calls it.  You can see the awesome creative works of  Aly 1.0 by clicking here.

Some real life guild news Holyfyre came to visit Brissy and stayed with Bainmar and I in Boganvillia. We had a great week even though we had arctic weather here we managed to have a nice week together.  We did some serious cooking and eating and I think we didn't really walk of the poundage off although we did do a few big walks with my hounds.

More great news is that our lovely Mage Seebo has been given a tentative all clear on the cancer he's been fighting and is getting back to his normal self which I'm sure is a huge relief to Jess. These guys recently celebrated their 3rd Anniversary. Congratulations what a great couple you are. I'm sure Zemm/Seebo and Jess wont mind me reminding all you young guys to do your self examinations to avoid getting testicular cancer. Find out more by clicking here.

Welcome to the few new players I managed to recruit our new hunter Crucible and Garaktou. Thanks for joining and we hope to see you on Monday and Wednesday night raids.