Grand Black War Mammoth Sighting

With the arrival of Toravon the Ice Watcher yesterday, I finally found myself with a reason to return to the Vault of Archavon. After joining a successful group for the 25 man version, I decided to form my own group to tackle Toravon in 10 man mode.

Mechanically speaking, Toravon is a relatively straight forward encounter. Tanks need to swap to shed a stacking DoT and ranged dps need to quickly burn the Frozen Orbs which spawn to avoid the raid taking too much AoE damage. That is pretty much it. He is, however, a bit of a gear check as he has a dps demanding soft enrage (an AoE delivered stacking debuff which increases frost damage taken) and dishes out a hearty amount of raid damage.

After a two wipes and a handful of personnel changes, my 10 man proved to be a success and Toravon was tasting the Vault floor. Unfortunately, the loot was a bit of a bummer as only a PvP caster cloak was of any meaningful use to anyone. Oh well, at least we got some experience to carry into next week.

After Toravon's loot was disposed of, we lost a healer and a dps, but I decided to make a run at Koralon anyway. I find the encounter enjoyable and it seemed as though there might be upgrades available for a raid member or two. Our eight man proved rather easy and Koralon was down for the count. As with Toravon, Koralon's loot was as useless as can be, with only one notable exception. Much to my amazement, there between three pieces of Elemental Shaman gear were the Reins of the Grand Black War Mammoth!

I just sat and stared for a second. Thoughts of excitement, logistics, and potential drama all floated through my head. I announced the find to the raid resulting in a flood of all caps exclamations. "It goes to the raid leader, right?" I joked, giving rise to a chorus of "haha" and "NO."

I must admit, I briefly thought of taking it for myself. There would be outrage, sure, but I would only be offending seven people in a server of thousands. Assuming a handful of them could be bought off or talked down, my little stint as a ninja would likely only cost me the temporary ire of less than a single instance group's worth of raiders. My reputation on the server was sterling, so I was confident that even if a storm resulted, I could weather it and it would be brief.

In the end, however, I thought about how I expected to be treated as a raider and new I had to do the right thing. I typed out a very specific call for open rolls and the winning roll turned out to be the first one out of the gate: a perfect 100 within a second of my call. I waited for the other rolls to assure there wasn't a tie, passed the winner his loot, and offered my congratulations.

Sure, I would have loved to claim this rare prize for myself, but the excitement of just seeing it drop and knowing it was handled respectfully provides its own kind of joy. The only way to counteract all the stories of PuG ninjas is to create positive PuG experiences whenever you have the opportunity. Also, who knows, maybe the WoW karma gods will finally see fit to give me those Reins of the Raven Lord I have been farming...