The Boss is Back

This week is the last week of Uni and work is slowing down a lot. So I'll be back to a more involved GM role. I want to thank the officers for doing such a great job. In particular I would like to thank Sven although he tells me the guild runs itself I'm sure there was a bit of work to do.

I will be returning to raiding in the new year however,  I will try to get my ilvl up to a more appropriate number i.e not 850 more around 870 to match the rest of the raid team. Thanks for taking me along last raid it was much appreciated.  The item on the agenda is to obtain a shadow priest with the ilvl of around 870, if you have any real life friends or WoW Pals who might like to join us in that role they will get first pick.

I might be a bit tougher this time around. I need to practice a less "Passive Aggressive" approach. What is Passive Aggression anyway, it has become a bit of buzz phrase recently like Psychopath and Narcissism. Unfortunately, like most of these buzz words they are often misinterpreted and everyone gets diagnosed with these conditions. Unless you've done 12 years of University try to refrain from diagnosing people with any kind of disorders or labeling behaviors that you aren't qualified to use.

Everyone decided they didn't want to progress rather just hang out, so if we are just hanging out then shut the fuck up if people aren't doing the appropriate dps, healing or whatever for their gear level. It is not appropriate behavior to subtly force people out of the raid by not being pleasant to them. This is a form of bullying and dare I say it a shining example of Passive Aggression. We advertise ourselves as a "casual" raiding guild with a "family" feel. Since when do you force people out of your family for not meeting a dumb made up requirement, especially when we have raiders who are doing exceptionally well in dps who can cover the loss. If people are nervous and are having difficulty I can assure you that picking on them is only going to make them more nervous. Calling it "helping" by the way is shit. If you want to help, tolerate their lower dps until they get the hang of it. If you want you can direct them to a good website, addons etc that is all. Do not week after week hound someone until they leave the raid team. That is just bullshit and you know it.

Seeing as we are "Casual and just hanging out" also opens the door to gearing up your alts again. If you are sick of your toon and want to try another class go ahead that's fine. Make sure they have an acceptable item level before coming though or ask Sven. He might give you an idea of what is lacking in the current raid team and direct you to a class that might be interesting for you.

Cliques are my pet hate as you know because of the excluding nature of them. If you find yourself in a clique I am requesting that you remove yourself from it by including some people who aren't in the clique thus, making our guild more inclusive rather than exclusive. Make some new friends guys. Now if you think I'm creating a drama about this clique thing here is a link to why cliques are bad and should be avoided. So get out of your comfort zone and get to building a community. The core clique members know who they are so please do stuff to alter this negative behavior. I know who you are too and so does everyone else in the guild. It's been our biggest problem in the guild. I can write a list of non -clique Rifties if you like next time.

Raiding off to a Great Start

Raiding got off to a great start with everyone being the required item level minimum and above. I missed most of it. I was there for the ever popular pep talk given by Sven. It just makes us all want to do our best. It was great for me to log on and see my wonderful Rifties smashing through the bosses and getting along so well.

We hit a bit of a wall with enormous vagina boss. That's very normal for this stage of raiding. Talk to the officers to get some tips and advise. Read all that you can on your class so as not to overwhelm Bashybashy who is the stats man. He will be happy to direct you to where you can read up on your class and the best stats, the math behind the numbers. It's up to everyone to do their part in understanding the game.

I am finding it a bit difficult to stay awake for the whole raid and reaching the appropriate item level. Even doing the bare minimum of meeting the requirements for raiding is a bit tough for me. Balancing my shift work job, study and student placement is probably enough stuff to be doing. I got pretty grumpy during the raid and made some ridiculous suggestions.  I apologize for my behavior.

The raiding component of the guild is Sven's job. I agreed to take a step back from this which is very difficult. Me being a naturally competitive person isn't' the best influence on the raid team. I've decided to retire from the raid team. However, I'll still be around to chat to when I get some spare time. If you have concerns about the guild you can text me on messenger or call me on my phone Sven has my number he will give you this number without questions if you need to have a chat also Bashybashy has the number too.You can also email me on sandra.jean.bevan9@gmail.com. I will be more able to participate in the guild after things calm down a bit with work and study. I'll be doing mythic dungeons and pugging things up when I get to the correct item level (if ever that happens).

Here is a guide for the fight we are working on by Line of Sight Gaming. From what I understand 840 is the actual minimum for average players for this raid however, Sven is happy to take people 830 and above. The lower item level will mean that raiders will have to be all over the mechanics in these fights. A great way to learn is by doing the fights at a bit of a lower item level and not cheesing the fights by out gearing the content.

Good Luck Rifties. I'll be seeing you more after I graduate in December if nothing more goes wrong to prevent my graduation. I hope you all respect my decision and don't pester me to come back to raiding any time soon and let me enjoy my retirement.

RIFTWARRIORS CASUAL RAIDING GUILD CANCER TO THE HORDE

Riftwarriors are back on track and going strong. I can't wait to get into the new raids. Hopefully we won't be stuck in one for years and years. Naturally my uni class is on a Wednesday so I'll be late. This is the first of our regular blogs starting as the raid begins. If you have any stories or important updates you want to share send it to me in the mail ingame or contact me via Facecrack or Facebook.

There have been some changes. Old guildies are on new toons so expect a period of adjustment. Just ask Sven who died to fall damage on his DH. That's short for Demon Hunter not Dick Head. I said to Bain what does DH mean? Surely they don't mean Dick Head. You can only imagine his response. I think we all know Sven is my favourite DH no matter what it stands for. Keep Sven updated as to your raiding availability and Item level.  If you want to raid let him know all these details before raid night. Please make him proud on our first raid night.

We've got some new guildies which is great to see. Everyone seems to be fitting in really well and are as proud to call themselves Rifties as the old timers. None so proud as Zlad aka Nate, a real life friend of the long time guildy Mother Fucker aka Callum the Extremely good looking guildy that can get away with anything. Good recruiting btw Callum.

Nate was questing out in Shal'Aran with his map open and noticed an Alliance DK. He thought this guy's crazy hanging around here. What a joke. The guy said "Zlad, your Guild is Cancer". Nate's heart swelled with pride. The guy continued "Awol what a fucking pest". Nate thought "I don't know who that guy Awol is, the dude is fucking amazing. I have no words to express how happy I was that day."  It was 2:30 am and nobody was online to hear the tale so I thought with Zlad's permission I would tell it here for all Rifties to feel the pride or a shadow of the pride that Zlad felt that early morning.

I was laughing so much when Nate told me this story. I was impressed that the pvp boys had such an impact particularly Awol. I know there's a lot of world pvp going on. I'm proud we've become Cancer to the Horde of Jubie'thos and Gun'darak. I changed the guild blurb to this:

Riftwarriors Casual Raiding Guild Cancer to the Horde.....

Welcome new guildies, welcome back returning guildies and a Big thank you to the core team for being so supportive in getting everyone settled back in.

See you all Wednesday night.

Love as Always 

Krinsta aka Sandy 

Your GM

Raid Plan and Progression

This is what our raid teams are going to be doing just so that you know what is happening from week to week. People ask all the time and sometimes the plan does change if we have a reduced team or people are running late. It is a bit dependant on these things however this is basically how it goes:

The raid week starts on Wednesday. So this is the schedule:

• Wednesday Night - Upper Iskar- Manno
• Monday Night - Archie - Lower six on heroic or Normal Achievements

• Saturday - Heroic Lower Six
• Sunday - Upper Six (as far as possible on Normal or Heroic) dependant on who turns up

The Question of Progression into Mythic.

The general consensus in that we don't have the skill or the gear to progress into Mythic at this stage. However, on Thursday nights I will be attempting to get into PuGs so I can at least learn the fights a bit because, let's face it I'm the most retarded player the guild has got. I'm going on the idea that practice makes perfect. I'll be starting to look for a group to join at about 7.30 -8.30. If anyone wants to join me we can look as a group.

When both the groups have got a shit ton of gear we will go into Mythic as a merged group. The idea is to outgear the bosses so much that we can ignore the mechanics that we fail so hard at. I personally think we've got a bit better at the mechanics but the officers and some of the more experienced raiders tell me we suck balls at mechanics big time. I'd so love to prove them wrong, we all know what happens when I try that, they get proved right more..lol

PvP = Fun Times with Guildies

The PvP boys might like to start some rbgs at some stage. First of all though, it might be a good idea to do a few bgs with them to learn all about how to win if you are interested in going along with them. I'm sure the guys would like a nice big well geared team to start rated battlegrounds with.

The guys are great to hang about with and the laughs are real. The trolling of each other and the opposition is hysterical. If you've never tried PvP give it a go with guildies because it really is a fun way to spend a few hours.

Plans and Speculations

We've got a plan. Let us do the plan and win the fights. The other thing to think about is that the expansion might come out sooner rather than later. There's speculation that there will be no Beta testing and that the expansion will drop soon after the movie is released which will make the expansion drop some time in July. How wonderful it will be out of our Garrisons and back into the world of warcraft leveling and planning for the new raid content.

I know you are possibly sick of hearing me say this, I'm saying it anyway, I'm so proud of you and we are doing great for a casual raiding guild. You guys are like my warcraft family and it's always nice to log on and hear about your day irl. Good Job team.

End of Expansion Blues

I've been running around the magic fountain in my garrison talking on TS, stopping to check my emails, write essays and do some facebooking. This can only mean one thing the end of expansion blues has begun. Our raid team have achieved what many think is our limit that is we killed heroic Archie a couple of times and most of us have got the Moose Mount....ah the moose mount with it's shining blue antalas flying through the air with no wings....how does it do that anyway, I wish real life were more like WoW where things like physics didn't matter. Apparently, I've managed to piss a heap of people off with my natural ability to piss people off talent. I only know this through whispers in the dark, hints and innuendo coming indirectly to me. Apparently, I'm so unapproachable it's necessary for people to send the message through others. These are the messages.

People are unhappy about Kylz taking over the weekend group and recruiting for it.  As a show of dissatisfaction a few raiders have decided to withdraw from all raiding, this is unfortunate. Kylz is doing a good job so I have no intention of demoting her to make other people happy. This brings me to the main raid, apparently people are pissed off with me for inviting people who aren't part of the main raid team. This is a problem I agree. So not turning up yourself is really not the ideal solution. The reason I've been inviting people who are not part of the main raid team is because people in the main raid team aren't turning up. It's a catch 22 situation. People don't want to invite PuGs and in fact many have said they will just leave the raid completely if I invite PuGs who have the appropriate item level  and required Dps. This may come as a surprise to the main raid team, most of the guildies don't actually have 728-731 item level gear because, a lot of them haven't been in the main raid team. They've been doing LFR and Mythic Dungeons and the weekend raid to get gear.

It really is annoying when we have a solid team and then team members start dropping off or moving on to other guilds or other games. I understand the frustration of having a full team of people with ALL the appropriate gear to progress into Mythic HFC and then having to gear up four or five other guildies, this puts us back to heroic again. I was looking at our team on WoW Progress the other day and my heart just sank when I saw how geared our main team is, and then realised that most of them aren't coming to raids anymore. I realise that as the Guild Leader the buck stops with me and that I have to work harder to keep people in the guild and in the raid team. What I would ask of the team is that you communicate your dissatisfaction with at least one or two solutions to the problems in mind. I would also ask that you be reasonable in your requests, For example allowing me to invite PuGs so we can progress if you aren't happy with the lower item leveled guildies coming to the main team raids. Being a bit flexible in terms of item level or helping the lower level guildies get gear by taking them with you to PuGs.

I did enjoy my break from Guild Leading it was very nice to have a holiday for a few weeks and I may have another holiday in the future. I've been the GM of this guild for four or so years and it's been a real learning experience. I will be more open to suggestions and listen to you more. However, I'm not the kind of person who is a hard line leader, I'm not going to be kicking people from the guild or the team unless there are good reasons to do that. I'm going to give people a chance to improve if they have the right item level. We all had to learn once.  One of the things I have been passionate about is for Riftwarriors to be a place to give new players and new raiders a chance to do proper raiding with a team of more experienced raiders. Some of our best raiders only had the experience of LFR before joining us and look how far they have come. Some of the more experienced raiders have come from top raiding guilds and I appreciate their patience and input into the training of the less experienced players.  I agree that Heroic Raids aren't the place for learning that's why we have Group 3 or the Weekend team. Please read about or watch the fights before you go into them. There are plenty of guides around. You can even watch the Riftwarrior Recordings if you like. These can be found on WoW Progress too.

What Makes a Good Officer

This week I'm going to be discussing what makes a good officer. An officer is a person who supports and advises the leader of the guild and assists new members to fit into the guild, supports the raid team and behaves in an exemplary manner. A potential officer might stand out above other guildies in their actions and behaviours. A member might be consistently putting their hand up to do jobs to benefit the guild. They might quietly be helping others to get the most out of their experience in the guild. I might notice someone who has great leadership abilities who acts for the team not for themselves.  I might receive some really great suggestions from a person on a regular basis that end up enhancing the guild overall. I might notice people who are recruiting for specific roles within the guild. What I really value is maturity, strength, motivation and the ability to rise above the rabble and stay calm publicly. Privately or with me then it's just fine to lose your cool and freak out a bit. I want officers to present a united front to the guild population. That is not arguing in front of the guildies or undermining the other officers or myself. That's not a very good leadership team. If you have a problem with my leadership you can talk to me about it alone, not in front of the whole guild or raid team.

We have a lot of members who are really looking out for the whole team and at one point everyone seemed worthy of an officer role. However, I can't make you all officers. In the next few days I will making changes to the officer role and starting again with the promotions. We've had the same people in officer roles for a number of years, now and I'd like to give some other people a turn at the job. I will be keeping Kylz, Brenton and John(Bashy/shorty). I will keep Bainmar on in his position really nobody else wants to do the PvP thing more than him. The rest will be getting promoted to Legacy Members. This is a rank for people who have been with the guild through thick and thin, highs and lows. The people who have stuck by the guild when the going has been really tough. This rank is also for people who were founding members who don't play anymore but with any luck might come back. You guys will have a lot of perks and rewards and as you know I appreciate you all so much.

What do I expect of the guildies. I expect you to be nice to each other and respect each other. I expect you to be yourselves and relax. To feel at home in the guild. If you want to invite your friends go ahead and do that the more friends the better really. Like all big groups of people I expect there to be a few personality clashes. What I would ask is to try to accept people no matter what they are doing maybe they just aren't your cup of tea that person may have great value to the guild as a whole. Sometimes people take a little while to grow on you and everyone tends to have a good side, you just have to be open to seeing it.

We are all really lucky to have such a strong guild. We are like a family in many ways and I really think it's great that the support we share online often extends to offline activities as well. We can keep in contact via the Riftwarrior Facebook Group and I encourage all the new members to join this group. When you recruit people it's fine to direct them there and also to the  WoW Progress Website where people now have access to the recordings of our fights. James and Brenton do such a good job of putting those together it's a great way to advertise the guild.

Riftwarriors 13/13 Heroic HFC

I'm back as the Guild Leader again. I've had a nice break thanks to Jasmine who is taking a break herself now. Under Jasmine's leadership we were able to get the last two bosses of HFC down, Archie and Tyrant. You can access all the Youtube recordings of our fight by visiting WoW Progress. Thanks Brenton for attaching those to that page. This will help with recruiting. I'm not sure what people will think of the Sven montage, everyone in the guild loves it.

As for recruiting we need healers and dps for all the raid teams. The teams are Group 1 who are the original main raid group. Group 2, that's the PvPers who raid in the arena  and battlegrounds, against the truly tough bosses, where strategies such as the tortoise dick defense can be seen here and here. Group 3, which is Kylz weekend raid team who are progressing nicely through normal and into heroic. Kylz has been diligently recruiting for her team and organising the raid times around her shifts at work. I have made her an officer. You will find her raids in the calendar so, please check regularly there for the times.  Alts are welcome to join this team while they are forming and to help push the progression so more people can get the moose mount. I think we can come up with some creative names for our raid teams. If you can come up with any good ones please post them below in the facebook comment section.

You may or may not have noticed that I write a blog on stuff that I learn at University and on topics related to psychology which I research at the University online library, I just love that place. This week I wrote about gaming and the psychological benefits of playing a game such as WoW.  You can read that here. I gave you guys a good wrap because you are awesome.

Where to from here, we've completed Heroic HFC and now we can start to dabble into Mythic. A few of us have had a go in PuG raids so we won't be going in completely blind. I believe we can do the first two bosses easily with our dps at the moment. We are over geared for these two fights. If everyone works together and is fully engaged as we were with the Tyrant fight that looks fucking amazing guys if you've seen that recording. We were moving as one. That fight is suppose to be the hardest fight in that raid and we completely one shot it. We had all our best dps and heals on at the time so I know that we can do it again.  We do need to recruit dps and heals, so keep looking around for new recruits. I would prefer it if people didn't swap to roles that aren't what they like to play. It's better if everyone plays a toon that they love to play. We might well end up with a team of hunters because everyone's main seems to be a hunter :).

In preparation for taking on these Mythic bosses please watch these guides. Remember that we out gear these particular bosses so there's no reason to think we can't do them.

Fat Boss Guide

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTqO9jpGPfc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl-WlFkw3LI

Method Guide

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3s1xtY0_V0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOduM_TGp2U

Early Retirement

It's been a long hard week. It's with great difficulty yet much relief that I have decided to give up the position of Guild Mistress or Manager of Riftwarriors. I've been doing the job for a pretty long time now and have decided that I'm going to scale things back in my real life and focus on the pursuits I previously had before playing Warcraft. I'm still going to be a guild member just no longer in the leadership role. I will be Pugging it up in the raids when I am having a break from cleaning my house and working out in my little home Gym.

The last few months have been pretty horrible for me and I've realised that WoW has just become one of the more horrible activities in my day. I never thought I would get to a stage where I dread playing World of Warcraft yet, this is where I am at. I really feel that you guys are my extended family in many ways. A few recent events have given me an opportunity to pause and reflect upon what I really want for myself. After the death of my dog, the upheaval of the guild, the backward steps in recent raids, the fractious nature of the guild generally at the moment which included Pangit leaving with his GF. The constant dissatisfaction in the guild over trivial things that really shouldn't matter. My inability to Manager all of the above have lead me to want to pass on the leadership of the guild.

I will be present at an officers meeting to be held some time this weekend to hand over the Guild Leadership. If you are interested in giving the GM job a shot make yourself known to the guild, officers and me. There's a few people that come to mind as good leaders for example Vonds, Kylz, John(Bashy), Gnomer(Mark), Seebo (Zem) and Wogan could all do a good job of Managing the guild. I will open it up to my Real Id friends so that I have a wide range of options to choose from. I'd really like the guild to go to someone who knows me well and will treat the guild with the respect it deserves. Whoever takes the guild over it will be your guild and the guild will become your project. As it has been for me. The guild can be anything that you want it to be. It could become a PvP guild or a Hardcore Raiding guild the options are really endless. The atmosphere of the guild is very dependant on the leader. The responsibility is awesome and a great learning experience.

I've made a lot of mistakes and I want to thank the people who had the courage to express these concerns regarding my leadership of the guild to my face. It's never nice to hear negative news about yourself. However, it's really imperative to hear this stuff to improve. It is infinitely better to hear this news to my face rather than to find out that it is being said behind my back and it always makes it way to face in the end, usually leaving a path of destruction on its journey there. Often the criticisms helped me to make big decisions in fact it has really helped me learn something about myself and my failings as a human being in general. Conversely I also received plenty of glowing reports as well which have been wonderful to hear. I certainly have tried my best and I have seen the guild reach some great goals. One of my main goals was to provide an inclusive family environment in which people could raid casually, do some PvP together  and to socialise together, basically have fun playing the game I have loved playing for nearly 11 years. In those 11 years I've had about 2 weeks of not being an officer or a GM so I'm really looking forward to fading into the shadows and just enjoying things like questing, leveling alts, seeing how far I can get in PuG raids without the responsibility of running a guild.

I will be a little bit sad about handing the guild over. I think I will mainly feel relief. I should have really given the leadership up about 6 months ago. I didn't achieve all that I set out to achieve. I achieved things that I didn't expect to achieve and I've learned some good and bad lessons about myself. I've gained a lot of experience in the management of people which I'm sure are transferable skills. This will be my last Riftwarriors Blog however, I'll still be writing the other Blogs for those who are interested in psychology and counselling. I might write a general gaming blog sometime in the future.

Thanks Rifties Good Luck.

Respect and Raiding

The last few weeks we've been raiding things have been rough. Tempers have been frayed, there's been snapping and failure upon failure.  Last night's alt raid was evidence of that. Several of the more experienced raiders left the raid when a novice accidently pulled a trash mob. There was speculation that it was James who pulled the mob as a joke. He did do that a couple of weeks ago. Then there was speculation that it may have been Mrs Pangit and upon watching the video provided by the innocent James it could have been Pangit himself or a priest. It doesn't really matter who pulled the mob, it is a minor infraction it takes a few minutes to kill the trash mob it's laziness that makes us skip this mob. What was really disappointing was that several of the more experienced core raiders left the raid for a variety of reasons. As a result Pangit and Mrs Pangit have left the guild. I'm considering demoting the people who left the raid because it's not respectful to leave your guildies in the lurch like that much less officers in the guild and senior raiders as well. The mob pulling was not done on purpose on this occasion it was an accident done by a new raider most likely. Unless you've never made mistake you have no business having a reaction like that.

Luckily we were able to get up to Gorefiend anyway without the more experienced raiders on their alts. It was a great job guys and thank you to all the people who stepped up to the challenge of getting those bosses down with low numbers and an undergeared healer (me).  We had a great night after those other players left and it proved to me that we don't need the core raiders in that particular raid group. The alt raids are going to be run by Steve and Steve's mates from now on. I will try to gear my healer up so that I can be a bit more helpful to you. I will be trying to recruit for the alt raid which is really raid group 2 now.  Jas did return to the raid and for this reason she won't be demoted. The only officers who actually behaved like officers were Bashybashy and Bainmar not really a surprise to me as I know that these guys are always consummate professionals and don't take themselves too seriously. We do expect a little bit more of a serious tone on progression bosses however, it is a game guys and it would be great if we could relax a bit and have at least some fun in a respectful way.

In the main progression group people need to respect Jas more and shutup so that we can hear her explanations and stop talking over the raid leading she is attempting to do. Bashy(John) has set up ts so that the tanks can talk together without the rest of the raid hearing the calls for taunts and whatever else tanks need to discuss. It's very important that everyone show the respect that I know you feel toward Jasmine. You all know she is the best person for this job. You can show this respect by allowing her to set up groups to explain the fights to everyone to call the appropriate instructions as they occur. Officers can talk to her about what she would like assistance with instead of guessing what she might want you to do. Ask before the raid or just prior to the fights in whisper.

In other great news, I'm going back to University where I belong. Fortunately or Unfortunately depending on who you are I won't be able to attend the guild raids until after May. As you know I'm on the slow track to achieving my doctorate in psychology and I must prioritise this life goal over my aspirations in Warcraft.  This is your time to shine guys. I know that you will be fine and I'm really hopeful that you will do well. It's going to be great to see you achieve your potential without an old lady hunter holding you back. You should be sailing up the progression charts. I will still be able to attend the alt raids and weekend raids depending on the study and work commitments that I have.

It's been a great thing for me to be leading the guild and meeting all you beautiful people as Potter calls you. I've learned a lot about myself and my capabilities as well as my inabilities as a leader. I'll be on the lookout for a new GM for Riftwarriors over the next few months and if nobody emerges through the talented people in our guild I'll keep leading until I find the right person. As you all know I really love playing WoW, it's one of my favourite things to do. Before WoW my hobbies were cleaning my house and going to the gym. Gaming certainly opened up a new world to me and I've had so many good times, met so many great peeps. I've got 11 years of fun online memories to recall. The last few have been made really special by the members of Riftwarriors.

I'll still be around and I will be available to talk over whatever needs to be discussed. I wish you all the best of luck in the upcoming raids and hope that we can get over the funk we seem to have found ourselves in. Hopefully if you all Listen Up to Jasmine you'll be kicking some serious raiding arse.

Good Luck Rifities. It has been wonderful raiding with you and being your Guild Mistress.

Alt Raids Progressing Nicely

The alt raids are going well. This is a great opportunity for new raiders and old raiders to get together and gear up as well as have some fun.  There is a minimum item level requirement to enter into the normal raids which is 690 and this is pretty achievable by doing LFR's and mythic dungeons so grab your wives and friends and other family members to do these things together.  Pangit has been very good with explaining the fights in great detail however, it is also helpful to watch the fights most of them can be found here.  If you hop on vent you don't have to talk you can just listen so please do hop on teamspeak the details are in the guild information tab.

If we ask in guild chat for your item level you can find this by opening up the character window  and clicking on the arrow at the bottom right corner in the top section you will see under the "General" tab a list of things one of those will say "Item Level" it will have some numbers there to the right this is your item level it will look something like this 690/692. If you mouse over the numbers you will see equipped that's the number we are looking for it's usually the number on the left.

People are starting to get enough gear to come to heroics and this week we will see Trissa on her priest Jandessa starting in heroics.  I'd like to see you all moving toward the main team however, if you don't feel confident enough it is fine to stay in the alt runs until you feel ready to join. We do require you to be on ts for the heroic raids. You will be promoted to social raider this will give you access to guild repairs and a few other things however, the potions and flasks are used for the raids not for dungeons or questing. The item level requirement is 705 for heroic.  If you have that send me a whisper and we will try to get you a regular spot.

Thank you to all the guildies for the massive amounts of herbs you've been sending me.  This has really taken the pressure off me trying to single handedly supply the bank with potions and flasks. Thanks for the help.

I would like to start to provide food for guildies too so if we can get some kind of fun activity together which will make fishing less boring that would be great...is that even possible.

Frustration before Achievement

This week we had a bit of "frustration" in  Heroic HFC. We are still a good team and we can certainly kill those last two bosses.  Our road block isn't skill, dps, healing or tanking. It's not our teamwork or movement that is holding us back.  The thing that is holding us back is our heads. It's tempting to go back to easier content that we can complete without too much trouble. These bosses don't present too much of a challenge and we would certainly benefit from getting more guildies geared with these first bosses. In the next few weeks we can do that. I know it feels like I'm pushing you hard into areas that you feel we aren't ready to attempt.  It is good for our morale to be downing bosses and getting gears on the easier content. Hopefully we can get something from doing these things.  However, I'm asking you to collect your thoughts, rally yourselves, grit your teeth and brace yourselves for success. I know we can kill Heroic Manno, we've done that boss before. I know that we can do Heroic Archie (mythic) and Xhul'horac. We just have to push past this feeling of frustration to get to that feeling of achievement.

In my longish life I have experienced these feelings of frustration and wanted to go back to do things that were easier for me.  I've experienced the sensation that everything is just too much to deal with and felt like throwing in the towel. The reason I haven't is because I know that just when I think there is no reason to continue, no hope left, that I have given it all and I have nothing left to give, I know that if I dig deep and push myself hard that I can bloody well do it.  I can succeed, I can get there. It seems that last little bit of fuel in my emotional tank is the stuff that pushes me over the line. I know that it is the same for everyone. I'm asking you guys to not give up on ourselves, don't give up on me as your leader and push through the frustration and get us those last two bosses.  I know we can do it.

I am going to give you a break and we are going to go ahead with the plan to go through the whole content of the raid from beginning to end. We can go backwards for a while because we need to do that before we can go forward again next week this is the plan. The following week if we haven't already reached and killed Archie we are going to go straight to Manno and Archie until we kill Archie. You've got to do this guys because really deep down you know that you can.

Right, I love you all...Trust me we are capable of this task, straighten up your tiara's and tutu's, tuck your tissues in the top draw, put away your wah, wah faces, tighten up your hob nailed boots and get this shit down my princesses :)

Random Acts of Kindness and Team Work

One of the things I love about our guild are the random acts of kindness I see everyone doing for each other most of the time with our team goal of doing well in the raids. I'll often hear the stories of how crafted gear or items pop up in people's mailboxes or how an afternoon is spent running someone's alt through mythic dungeons to get gear. These things are what makes our team so great and one of the big reason I'm so proud to be your Guild Leader.  I have been the recipient of these random acts of kindness and I'm always so touched by the efforts people have gone to.  I got the crafted weapon arrive in the mail some time ago. This week I got game time given to me by two guildies. I want to send out a BIG thank you to not just the people who have helped me but to all of you for helping each other in game and in real life with things such as helping guildies move house, helping people with homework assignments and generally just being there for each other.

The alt raids have been going really well. New raiders are learning the mechanics and how to raid.  It's lovely to see Mrs Pangit and Trissa attending these raids it would be great to see more family and friends coming along to these Saturday raids.  If you guys are interested in seeing some of the mechanics this is a good place to start. These videos take only two minutes to watch.  Don't worry if you can't do these things exactly like the videos.  Our guildies will explain what our plan is before the fight. If you want to see how it looks when normal people do these fights you can see our raid team here.  As you can hear people do make mistakes and we still manage to complete the fights.  We still appreciate everyone trying as hard as they can to work together.

We've been seeing some really great video's recently with Brenton and James working together to make them look as good as they do.  I'm sure Brenton would love some melee prospective as well so if you have the ability to record fights and are fine with sharing your view of the fight have a chat to Brenton aka Alysith about sending recordings to him.  It's really great seeing these videos it is a reminder of how the team work so well together and treat each other with respect. Some of the videos do show the lighter side of raiding as well.  These are usually posted on the facebook page.  Don't forget about teamspeak you can always log on to that and just listen if you don't feel confident talking yet you can reply in text in guild chat.  It can be very nerve racking talking in teamspeak.  Recently we had our unofficial guildy Swift  with Sarior play a great practical joke on us in this regard. We all thought Swift was a 16 year old girl for about 4 weeks and then he spoke in teamspeak with a deep 16 year old boy voice saying "Surprise" Very funny guys.

We just have two heroic bosses to get down until we move onto Mythic.  Some of the raiders might not move onto Mythic HFC with us so we are recruiting again to fill any potential gaps. Here are the first couple of Mythic fights.

Bainmar, Leeroy and I have had the pleasure of having some WoW pal visitors over the last few weeks.  It's been really lovely catching up with you in person guys.  We look forward to seeing you again soon. Leeroy is always up for a group hug, some "accidentally" spilled coffee which has been "accidently" knocked over by his tail and a nice long walk.  Bring your comfy shoes :)

2016 Here We Come :)

Rifties have been having lots of fun over the holidays and some of us just couldn't stop raiding every now and then.  Our first official night back saw us steaming right ahead into 38th position on the server. We have just three bosses to go and then it's onto Mythic if everyone feels confident to move ahead with gear and skills.  I'll be posting the guides here and on the Facebook Groups Page.  Try to get a few goes in PuGs if you can even if they are failures it will give you an idea of what to expect and you might pick up a few tips. Practice makes perfect.  Of course for some of us Mythic HFC is old news and have completed most of the bosses already in their main raid teams or with friends.

I'm continuing with the recruiting and hopefully I will stumble across a few good players or at least some more potential raiders. We are just four players short of being able to have 20 guildies attending the raids regularly.

Recently we have had the pleasure of Hannah's hunter, Ely on the raid team while her regular team are on a break this has been terrific. We also picked up Kyle aka Banglord, with a name like that he's fitting in very well with the guys and has felt the agony and thrills of an all night arena spam with Bainmar already. Everyone has been very welcoming. I'm very please that Ely has decided to come out of the shadows and chat with everyone and be active in the guild after being a Rifty for a few years now. We will be seeing more of "No" with his deep and sexy American Voice. Well recruited Pangit.

We still have our alt runs going ahead on Saturdays and Sunday nights if you want to get a bit of raiding experience while we are not on progression bosses come and join us. For the more experienced raiders this is an opportunity to pass along your raiding knowledge in a way which promotes attendance to raids.  We are extremely fortunate to have players in the guild who have been raiding since Vanilla WoW through to current content. We have people who have been in guilds that sat in the number one position on their servers for years and some raiders who are currently raiding in top raiding guilds and who have alts in our guild. I'm really grateful for their input and staying in the guild to help us out. Apparently we are quite lovable and our raids are really fun. I won't name names because they want to be anonymous and are humble, a common trait in top raiders, I've noticed. You never know who you are raiding next to guys so be respectful.

We all had to start somewhere so cast your minds back to when you first raided.  Fortunately for me I was picked up by a guild of Gay Guys who wanted a mum type person in their raid team.  They patiently showed me the ropes, I then went on to join one of the top raiding guilds where I actually raided with Awolleader although the raid teams were much bigger then he slipped under my radar. I know can you imagine Awoll going under any radar. That was Lux Et Umbra. Yes I was in a guild with a latin name which means "Light and Shadow".  I'm still friends with many of the raid team who have gone on to much bigger and better things. I'm very grateful to the people who gave me a chance and I would hope that all of the guildies in Riftwarriors will be keen to give other players a chance particularly beginner raiders. After all if we train these people up they will be great raiders. Much better than PuGs. Treat new raiders with kindness so that they come back and stay.

Happy New Year Rifties.  Lets hope we can crack the top five on Jubei'thos.  And keep the momentum going through to the next expansion.