One Dead Elf

I've never been as fond of the Kael'thas fight as of his counterpart Vashj. I find the encounter a bit gimmicky (more so than Vashj's core mechanic that is), and I remember everyone always being bored while having to wait for him to go through his whole RP routine on every pull, and for all the advisors to become active.

That said, he was one of Burning Crusade's big bads, and I'll always remember that missing out on my guild's first kill of the encounter back in summer 2008 actually made me cry. It seems so silly now to care that much about a boss kill, but this was at the height of my emotional investment in WoW and it was clearly important to me... or else I wouldn't still remember the whole experience so vividly almost fourteen years later, from having to sub in another shadow priest because of my suboptimally built custom PC shutting down from running too hot, to me curling up on the sofa in tears while also feeling somewhat ashamed of myself. Most of all I remember the friend from the guild who caught on to my distress and found just the right words to comfort me after.

I couldn't help but remember all that when I looked at the sign-up sheet for Monday's raid to Tempest Keep and considered that I was still only supposed to be a back-up. The initial sign-up numbers for the raid looked like I wasn't going to be needed and might therefore miss out on the guild first kill... which made me ponder that while these things don't bother me nearly as much on this re-run of the content, I did care and would at least prefer to be there. As it happened, a few people dropped out and I got to go after all, and I decided to use this opportunity to finally admit to wanting to re-join the raid team properly.

There are still some things that I'm feeling a bit conflicted about, but ultimately I've been showing up loyally for almost two months despite of not being part of the team "officially" and it's been nice. And as I said previously, I'd like to see Hyjal and Black Temple again, and get some shiny loot in the process too.

On our way to Kael I whispered the current hunter class leader (who is different from the hunter class leader I sometimes referred to in my pre-BC Classic posts) and said that I was going to talk to one of the officers after the raid about rejoining the raid team properly. "Or I can just do this!" he replied and immediately set my rank in the guild roster back to raider. I felt slightly embarrassed to be honest because I'd meant not to make a fuss about it, but with everyone quietly prepping for the next trash pull, the promotion popping up in guild chat was very noticeable and elicited some congratulatory comments. So there we have it. For the time being, I'm back in.

Our first attempt on Kael that evening wasn't too bad, even if I was struggling to find my feet a little, not having been there for any of the guild's previous tries. As the evening progressed, I have to admit I wasn't too hopeful that we were going to kill him that night after all, as things still seemed to descend into a bit too much headless chicken mode whenever all the advisors came back to life. A guildie whispered me to say that he was also thinking that things didn't look too good... but then we managed to get the boss down on what would have had to be the last pull of the evening anyway. I will say that it was more exciting than the Vashj kill at least!

In a turn of events that felt very symbolic, I also ended up winning the tier five chest right after my official return to raider, which is my fourth piece of the set, meaning that I could finally shed my Beast Lord gear to slip straight into the full tier five set bonus, which resulted in my huntress undergoing a noticeable visual transformation as well. A couple more weeks of farming SSC and TK, and then soon, Mount Hyjal awaits.