Our alliance makes our first attempt at Ulduar 25 tonight. I have only made a smattering of attempts at even Ulduar 10, and one ridiculous and ill-fated Ulduar 25 pug. Needless to say, I’m quite pumped. Coupled with that is the fact that for the first time in weeks, we had several healers sign up – to the point that I don’t think we will be facing any extreme problems in handling the healing situation.

About three weeks ago, when we began seriously discussing starting Ulduar, I ran across this post on wow.com. I took that advice very much to heart, and after starting a discussion on the item in our forums, and listening to what others in our Alliance had to say about it, the officers decided that the best way to handle Valan’yr was to let the entire Alliance decide. We chose to hold a vote.

This is how it will work. One healer will be designated as primary recipient of Valan’yr shards. A secondary healer will be designated as recipient for whenever the primary healer is unavailable. If neither of those healers are in the raid when a fragment drops, it goes to open roll for all healers. There will be no tier reductions for someone who receives a fragment (our loot system is a modified tier system).

After taking nominations via the Alliance forum, a poll thread was started with the nominees allowing everyone to vote. The healer who receives the most votes is designated as Primary recipient, and the one with the second largest number of votes is secondary recipient.

In most guilds, the officers will simply select the healer who “deserves” the fragments, and thus, eventually, the mace. I cannot express how happy and proud I am that we did not choose this approach. Perhaps it is because I am both a healer and an officer, but I did not want anyone to think I had an agenda of securing a legendary item solely for myself. It just breeds bad blood and resentment amongst our healers.

I didn’t actually expect to win the vote.

This isn’t some misplaced modesty. I didn’t vote for myself. As an officer, I was able to see who voted for whom, and over the past couple of days, as the vote has been progressing, I can’t even express the warmth I felt for my Alliance members. I mentioned earlier today that I am the kind of person that needs positive feedback. For weeks now I’ve felt I wasn’t doing a very good job – I’ve been absent due to real life circumstances. And to see so many of my fellow raiders show their support for me in spite of all that has really touched me.

I’m feelin’ the Valan’yr love. Some legendary items proc all kinds of warm gooey feelings.

As a side note, I respecced from holy/shadow to holy/disc, so that I can fulfill whatever role is needed most on our raids.