I'm going to say something that's going to be unpopular.

If LFR is going to be the fall-back plan then we need to know that up front. Like, Tuesday style up front. A lot of the responsible raiders make a point to run it before our normal raid time for the express purpose of having their upgrades in time for Man Hug.

I don't mind going back to LFR to help others, but if this is going to be our regular fallback plan we need to make this known so people like myself can hold off until later in the week and run it after Man Hug decides what it's doing. This grey area we're in now of not knowing makes me feel like I'm making a mistake no matter what I choose to do. All I'm asking for is more transparency than we have now.

I understand that we don't WANT to run LFR as the ideal. I propose a different solution in the event that we can't fill Man Hug on a given night. I'll preface this with a couple of bullet points.

• Gearing our raid via LFR does not require the gathering of an entire Downfall raid. It can be done on the time of the individual raider (i.e. not sanctioned DF raid time)
• The gear awarded in LFR is mediocre for the raid tier.
• Downfall has no public showing whatsoever. Rise of the Darkside kills world bosses on a weekly basis and provides a service to the Gorgonnash community in doing so. It additionally makes them very visible and (I'm willing to guess) acts as a recruiting engine. We only raid in instances and, in doing so, only have our Trade chat messages as a community interaction.

I propose that we seriously considering using the 25 Man (only on nights that we can't fill) as an engine to murder World Bosses. Nalak and Oondasta both.

I address the above listed problems with more bullet points:

• World Bosses drop 522 gear and tier armor (see also, set bonuses). By sheer volume of Downfall participation; people would get upgrades. A not-quite-full Man Hug is a strong, sizeable backbone for a world boss kill. And it sure as hell has stronger leadership and communication than a pure pug.
• This gives us a way to actually do some good on Gorgonnash and get ourselves into the public eye. No amount of spamming Trade chat is going to appeal to people more than dead bosses that they can get involved with, meet us, and see what we do.
• This is an activity that requires a raid group. LFR does not. I again insist that it's a questionable use of our time together as a raid.
• Seriously, we need more players and we all know that. This can help with that. That's huge potential.

I'd like serious discussion on this matter and people's opinions. I don't mean just the officers and such either. I mean everyone. I mean not to step on the toes of this raid's leadership and be like "Do what I say!" -- I'm not in charge here and I don't pretend to be. But I think that we need to start looking outside the box (i.e. instances) on how to move forward both as a raid and as a guild.

May the 25 man raid happen tonight. Kadoosh!