ICC Time Woes

So the Crimson Halls have been open for a little over a week now. And the Frostwing Halls is set to open on Tuesday. That'll be the full deal. All of ICC.

So where do I stand in completion? Deathbringer Saurfang.

I've seen the inside of the Plagueworks once, and Rotface stomped us all night long. We had one reasonably good attempt (~30%), one fair attempt (~50%), and mostly miserable attempts the rest of the time. It was to the point where I didn't even know where to begin suggesting improvements because it felt like nothing was going right for us (which, as a raid leader, is the most frustrating thing in the world). Plus I was the Rotface tank, which means my job consisted of "stand there and tank." So I didn't even feel there was anything specific I could to do help out in my role.

So what's the primary reason for this? Time, really. Right now our guild has 4 scheduled raid nights. Tuesday and Sunday are the weekly raid for however many people we get signed up and want to go. More often than not we end up running a 25 and a 10 there. Friday and Saturday are our scheduled guild 25-man runs. That leaves 3 (4, tops, if you count Tue and Sun as half-nights) nights where we can make attempts at ICC. Most Mondays are out for me because I play hockey that night. Every other Tuesday is out because those are guys'-night-outs.

Because of the geographic spread of our core raiding members (Nova Scotia to Cali) and their own personal obligations, an average raid night for us lasts from 8-11 server time, if we get grouped and started right away. We often lose anywhere from 30-60 minutes in that area.

We've still cleared the Lower Spire almost every week. We've got that down to about a 90-minute run. Hell, we can even do it on alts, as we found out. But then because of schedules or raid member availability, we haven't even been able to get a second night in after that since the first week of the Plagueworks. Not even attempts.

I don't mind being in a spot where I have to continually work to down a specific boss. I don't expect to get every boss I try down in the first night. But I do mind that I'm not even getting the chance to try.

Could we extend the raid ID? Sure. But we're still not sharding things from the Lower Spire. Plus that's a guaranteed 8 Emblems of Frost that I hate to pass up. So it seems inappropriate to just save our progress past that content. But at the same time, it's starting to look like the only way we're going to continue to get real chances.

Oh, the trials of a casual raiding guild...