I Cheesed the Raid Finder

But not in the way that has gotten some people banned. I didn't get double rolls on loot, but I did slip in there wearing sporting my shoulders off Chimaeron, my gloves off Maloriak, two pieces of ZA/ZG gear, a Brewfest trinket, and a 359 in my other trinket slot. I had only one piece of T12 and my average ilvl for my raid healing set was definitely not 372.

But I got in to the raid finder last week and completed the four fights that were available. I actually went last Thursday because I wanted get a preview of the Dragon Soul raid (my group raids Saturday and Mondays so we haven't gone yet) and because I didn't want to do the same raid twice on my druid, I took my holy paladin instead.

As to how I got in... it's was perfectly legal by Blizzard's standards. I happen to have a full set of Ruthless Gladiator PvP gear from all the arena I do, which pushed my average ilvl for all gear to a handy 382 and well above requirement for Looking For Raid.

Looking For Raid was not the nightmare I thought it might be after hearing all the complaints on the PTR. I think it may be because the only people who were eligible to go into LFR that first week were all raiders or their raiding alts.

No one called me out on my crap gear, but with all the transmogging going on maybe they just thought I had awful fashion sense (I've only changed my paladin's shield and head so far, because the level 60 PvP gear I was going to wear is sadly unavailable to me).

The first two bosses were one shots, even with a tank that admitted he had no idea what he was doing and hadn't looked into the fights at all. Yor'sahj, the faceless boss who summons slimes, was actually the sticking point as a pug.

The other bosses it's very clear what to do. Shoot the boss, don't stand in bad, group up with everyone else when you see people clumping. There were a couple people who already knew the fight and made callouts in chat when needed, and the fights weren't complicated enough to require more than a little nudging for everyone to get the message.

But Yor'sahj featured the ever popular problem of people dps-ing the boss instead of the slime adds. We wiped three times and each time loss some people. Fortunately the raid finder found replacements quickly.

I think the 25-man formula was a good choice, as there was none of the waiting I'd normally associate with a 5-man. Though we lost a tank, a new one appeared immediately.

And by the fourth attempt people finally got it into their heads to kill the adds and we one-shotted the fourth boss with only two deaths due to ice wall failure.

I'm not sure what it is about the Hagara fight, since it didn't particularly strike me as very paladin friendly with all the running in circles chaining lightning or avoiding moving ice walls, but I had my best healing performance in that fight versus the other healers.

No healing assignments were given, so it was really a free-for-all, which makes me wonder what it's going to be like healing Ultraxion this week since the second wing is opening up.