So right now we've only got 5 "reliable" (read: there everynight, on time, ready to rock, with stable connections) healers in Hamfist.  That's right, only five.

Garreth
Vulk
Katibug
Closer
Caliroll

In many circumstances and on a number of boss fights, we need no fewer than eight (8) to make it a smooth kill.  Of our "less reliable" healers, we have:

Alydis
Clos
Cisper (only recently due to university)

So basically, if the stars align and we butcher a holy goat we can expect to have a smooth raid.  Otherwise, we will be dragging our feet and praying to whatever gods might be listening that we can actually kill something on a given night.

Off-spec, limited-attendance, and alt healer options are also limited:

Luchs (T4 geared w/ some experience)
Turth (T4+ geared w/ some good experience)
Irnub (T4 geared w/ little healing experience)
Antiquite ON CORETWO or CISPER
Magieck
Warion (when LF1M isn't raiding)
Captnopants (when LF1M isn't raiding)

Basically, what I'm posting this for is this:

I'm begging that any guildie that is a qualified healer, that has run with us in the past, consider the option of helping out as often as they can.  We want to kill Illidan.  At our current pace and rate, we won't.  It's that simple.  At our current pace we cannot kill him.  We're losing so many healers and bleeding so much loot because of it, that it's going to become a festering boil of raid non-progression that will be hard to shed, without a little help from our guildies.

This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, Garreth -

I don't think adding more days to the raiding calendar is going to help, not in the way one might think anyway.  Instead of adding more days, we need to begin asking for more from our raiders.

Hear me out.

We have it set up so that under ideal circumstances, everyone is in raid and at BT at 7pm *sharp* for first pulls.  Invites start going out at 6:30.  However, many nights invites aren't out until 6:40 and people start getting la-dee-da on us, asking us to wait for them to finish dailies, they need something crafted, etc etc.  While this is all well and good, it delays the start of the raid even further than normal.  Eventually enough people trickle in to raid at 7:30 for us to actually START raid - now a half our late.

Once we do start raiding, people aren't paying attention during trash or on "easy" boss fights (Supremus, for example) and so they die in silly ways that end up costing us MORE time.  Then a number of people have to go afk because of god-knows-what (for the record, going afk to vomit or what not is totally fine).  THEN someone d/c's and we have to wait for them (even if just for trash).

In short, we've gotten really relaxed.  Which is fine, from the standpoint that a lot of us just got off work and would rather be chill and groovy than uptight.  However, from the standpoint of wanting to kill bosses and *progress*, this isn't working.

What I propose is this:

1)  When we say invites go out at 6:30, they go out at 6:30.  Finish your dailies before raid starts, or after raid is done.  Get your pots/stuff made before raid starts, or after it is done.  Don't ask the raid to wait for your health pots.

2)  When we say pulls start at 7:00, they start at 7:00.  We won't wait for you.  If you missed your summon, too bad - get here faster.