Raiding with CDA

[Indigo]

So as a few of you may know I've been chatting about raiding with a group of players who are inexperienced with raids. Their guild is called Creators of Destiny Awakening. I bumped into them a month or so ago, whilst pugging some Vale Guardians. I was just looking for experience and they advertised a training raid. I hopped on with them on my Tempest and we managed to get to the first split phase and then wipe, to my initial surprise this guild seemed delighted with the progress. So I stuck with them for an hour or so we progressed a little further but we didn't get close to 50%. Despite this I was impressed with how happy and positive the group were, so on the off chance I say to them "Add me to your friends list and I'll join you in future". 

We raid a few more times and the group is making solid progress, they keep wiping but they keep the positive atmosphere. Last week, Aly joined us, I switched from Tempest to Chronotank and we got VG down to 20%, the group are learning a lot but they were at the PANIC stage. Lack of experience meaning people were just not used to the mechanics and pressure of the final few percent.

Tonight comes along, Rugi joins me and Aly and we have a solid core group who are experienced enough to help the less experienced players through. We get VG down to 2% and wipe. The group are a little frustrated but still are so happy. Rugi and myself had noticed the groups food had ran out halfway through the attempt, the chances are we kill with the food equipped.

2 attempts later, the group successfully kills Vale Guardian, a lot of screaming is heard and a fantastic amount of genuine delight is expressed. This is and has been a great experience. And now they want to kill Gorseval, who am I to stop them? Just to note a few of their members have joined Gank as a guest, you may see them join us in future raids.

Sorry for the potato quality team photo.

[Rugiviet]

Lovely bunch of people and I really enjoyed it

[starrifyx]

For those who would love to see part of our VG kill, here it is.

[Indigo]

Glad you have that recorded Aly, you can hear how happy they were at the end. I forgot there was a missed green circle we recovered through, it was a nice kill.

[starrifyx]

I do have more on their squeals at the end, but I decided to leave them out because I didn't have much time to edit it and export then upload, and I thought I could reserve some to be put into the short docu. ^_^

[Sam (CDA Leader)]

This really has been a great "journey" for us. We started to try and get into raiding, but we had *so* much switching and sudden crazed people leave the party telling us we were noobs, clearly not reading our lfg properly. This went on and on and we never had a good team composition to be able to kill him in time. People who joined didn't even join our TS half the time; it was just useless! But we weren't disheartened, we kept trying. Behind this, we were all getting our food and gear as good as we could get it. My character Little Miss Marrs was fully kitted out prior to raiding coming a part of GW2 as were a couple more in our guild, so we felt quite set when trying to lfg, we had googled and You Tubed to find the best comp for the Vale Guard and more often than not we'd lfg for a Herald and we'd get another condi Necro - PEOPLE DON'T READ lol. We probably tried in all about 5 times

Anyway then we met Indi... WAAAAAAAAAAAA he is SO awesome (as are the rest of you), he never lost his patience, or if he did he didn't show it. I was able to switch to an all exo geared Herald if needed and my husband has both offensive and healer Druid so we had scope for switching if necessary. But the rest of our lot who wanted to keep raiding didn't have scope for changing (which is okay), but Gank did!! This *was* a game changer. I think we had about 4 goes trying, and please correct me if I'm wrong, the 5th try we killed him. And it was a solid kill, with only 9 of us in the end since our poor thief died somewhere in the middle.

One of our guildies told me we'd scream (especially me lol) and yep, as you heard, we did. I even had a few tears forming. So, I guess I want to thank Indi, Rugi and Starry, anyone else (sorry my meds cause me to forget things) who joined us wholeheartedly for sticking with us and being happy enough to keep raiding with us and even more 'blessed' to be asked to join them if they're short of any class .

I play DPS Tempest, but I want to get into my Herald and I am also checking out other builds. In the photo Indi posted, I am the first asura at the front row, with glasses the Human next to me is my husband (healer druid). Then next asura is our DD Thief, and at the end with the pink hair is mesmer and I'm not even sure what kind lol.

Finally I think it necessary for me to tell you, which may clarify how happy *I* was to beat the VG is I have cancer (caused by my condition Epidermolysis Bullosa, EB for short) and it can't be fixed this time, so my bucket list through all the wings has begun to shrink! YAYAYAY And I want to kill that VG sucker any time also

*THANK YOU, GANK*

[Rugiviet]

Coming from one leader to another and a cancer patient to another (even though mine was no where near what you are going through), it was the least that we could do to help you. And with you and the rest of CDA being such a lovely group of people to help it came very easy.
Once again Sam, we are all glad that we could help you achieve one of your bucket list items.

P.S. Indi is secretly a cunt when you guys are not around. He beats every asurans, I've seen him do it

[Indigo]

Most of them deserve it.

[Pyriin]

Beware Gorseval. Your next. CDA os comming for you!!!

[Indigo]

Just to add to the OP, CDA are still raiding away and we completed the Escort mission for the first time on Sunday. I'm really enjoying the runs and collaboration we have between our 2 guilds in terms of raiding. I know Moro and Vio from CDA are both regulars in Gank raids and have been great additions to our group. Also I know a fair few different Gankers have joined in on CDA raids and they've always said how much fun they are. I know Gank raids vs CDA raids are 2 very different atmospheres but it's great to see we can work well in both.