World of Warcraft encore

[Yagathai]

Proceed!

[Stego]

Neither do i.

[Yagathai]

Good lord. Really? You quit?

[RaceBannon42]

Even when people are gone they still give me headaches.

[Greywolf2375]

After raid last night about 15 of us decided to go harass the Alliance. Apparently last night was an off night for them - we pretty much steam rolled through all the leaders - maybe had a total of 10 deaths, and those were mostly from lag and people AFKing on the tram. IF was the hardest and even for that we only had two people taking on the Alli's while the rest of us were on Magni. Now I just need to figure out how to get 20 more mounts to hit 100.

[Kalbear]

Got Yogg0 to 7% or so before the hordes of immortal dorks kicked our ass. Sigh.

I really hated the fight at first, but now that I'm seeing that a lot of the RNG isn't RNG, it's stupid people - it's a lot more fun. People are getting better at their jobs, they're telling me how to do mine better, and everyone's working hard on it. It's one of the most complex fights I've been involved in; I think the only one that comes close is Vashj in terms of moving parts, and even that's not really close.

[Poobah]

Getting pissed off with my guild's leadership atm.

They seem determined to ignore the harsh realities and stick their heads in the sand of political correctness. They either need to officially say that the guild is casual (atm we are supposed to be a serious raiding guild) or un-twist their fucking panties and get the balls to use terms like "A-Team" because wiping a shit load of times because "it's unfair and elitist to exclude people" on encounters that we can and have done with members of what I'd consider our unofficial A-Team, because we're carrying 5-6 out of 10 people who only show up for 1-2 raids a week and obviously haven't found out what they should be doing ahead of time is not making me happy.

Half the problem is that they look on the roster and see like 30 people with the 'raider' rank which means that they should be attending 4-5 raid nights each week, which is utter bullshit 'cause that hasn't been cleaned out in forever. And this leads them to believe that the guild is capable of raiding endgame 25 man content, and not really take the 10 mans seriously, or rather get in a hissy about the horrifying idea of putting the 10 best (but we mustn't use the word best because we might upset some people) people in one raid and actually clearing TotGC 10 one night. As long as we're still wiping on Anub 10H, or rather with some of the groups we've been running the past weeks not even getting to him, then someone needs to man up and do something drastic to get us moving in a progressionly direction because how's this for an idea? They're afraid to exclude other members of the guild and create some sort of a-team/b-team divide or whatever, well right now I'm on the brink of excluding myself because I'm seriously tired of putting up with dragging the casuals in the guild through content they don't deserve to be in.

Oh noes I'm using casual in a negative way, I must be an elitist! The. Horror. If everyone we brought to these raids was putting in the effort then I wouldn't be complaining, but I know no other word for people who only show up to some raids occasionally and when they do show up haven't bothered to learn their role ahead of time. I just don't think these people deserve to be holding back those in the guild who are actually putting the time and work in.

This really isn't being helped by people in the upper echelons knowing one-another IRL and some of them / their teenage spawn being the slackers.

Methinks if something doesn't change soon I'll be looking for a new guild, which is sad because we have all the elements in this one to do it right. Probably going to mean a server change because this server is so tiny :S

[BlueRose]

My guild is kinda messed up too. We dont officially have an A and B team either, but the B raiders know who they are (I'm one of them). Now the main raid managed to get up to Twins in ToGC 25 about 3 weeks ago and they were getting there without much trouble. Then the holiday season hit and they lost people for exams/work/whatever else and they dont have 25 A raiders anymore. SO us B's get to go. Except: they refuse to explain strategy, and then get really mad when we dont follow their way of doing it. And, we wiped on champs 3 times and they called the raid, with over an hour of raid time left. We were not running out of attempts at all, the leadership just got all pissy and yelled and then called it.

I guess my post is the exact opposite of Poobah's. But us 'B' raiders know the fights, we dont stand in the fire, we just have lower DPS due to crap gear and or not being able to make the raid time regularly. I understand that they want to take the 25 best people they can. But it seems dumb to not even try and fill in the new people on their specific strats.

[Kalbear]

I've been in both situations (the A and B teams) and I can tell you that it doesn't matter how good the B players are - if you wipe on content you had down just from adding new people, it's really frustrating. And it's easy to blame the new people.

But at the same time, it's expected, especailly on the harder content. Even adding superstars is going to cause disruption, especially when those people are in key parts of the fight. It's very rare that you can add someone who will simply rock it right out of the gate. Mostly because they might know the fight, have ton of practice and great gear - but they've not played your way, and they've not played with you.

And that's a disruption.

The B thing also sucks. I really, really hate the 10-man stuff for that, though I don't hate the 10-man; I hate the essential requirement that if you want to be as good as you can be on 25s you MUST do 10s. That pressure is what causes this issue more often than not, and it's a huge source of drama and pain. But what it means is that (often) you'll have two groups doing the easy 10-man early on and clearing it mostly easily. Then one group will stop doing it as the novelty goes away, while the other works on hard modes. As they get better at hard modes, those second-groupers start wanting in on it. Except...then you've either got to do two groups that can do hard modes (which is nontrivial) or one with subs, and usually no one wants to wipe teaching people stuff you've already done. So it's a lose-lose for everyone. And the 'good' players don't want to carry the bads either after a point, especially after they've gotten all the achieves/mounts/gear they want from the thing.

It's just a big headache. Especially with toc, since you can run it 4 times weekly.

Either make it so that the gear you get from 10s is strictly worse than the 25s, or put a shared lockout on both.

[RaceBannon42]

I think ICC will be even worse on this. With extremely limited attempts, raids worried about progression are not going to want to bring anyone but the best group they can for that fight.

I dont have anything against 10 mans but I can only deal with so much raiding. 4 nights, 4 hours a night is 16 hours a week. Which is probably 4 more hours than I want to commit, but well, I feel a responsibility to be there. Add to that an hour pre-raid every raid thats 20 hours. Add to that maybe another hour or so a week for post raid BS to deal with thats 21-22 hours just for 25 mans. I just can't add another 4-6 hours a week doing 10 mans as well. I may play that much, but dinking around farming or alting is differnt. I can get up and walk away for 20 mintues to do something else. With a raid you have 24 other peoples time to consider, so you cant just afk.

[Kalbear]

At least with ICC you can't do both normal and heroic, but yeah - the limited attempts (especially on normal mode!) are going to cause even more drama. When you can't actually do anything at all...people are going to get really frustrated.

Or maybe, just maybe, people will be able to recognize that they need a good comp and their best players and can't just faceroll it, and that might reduce the drama. If people understand why they can't just take random mouthbreathers with drug and alcohol problems, it might help them understand what's going on. It's not always the case; people resent that they suck. But it might make it easier.

[RaceBannon42]

Its not even that people are mouthbreathers. Some people just aren't as good as others. Maybe they stress out and underperform, maybe they just have crappy reflexs. Sure there are a lot of people thay have no clue, but there are those who try and just aren't that good. I guess maybe they shouldn't be doing progression raiding then, but still, it really bothers me having to sit people on hard fights everytime. I like some of these people, and telling them no you cant come or you cant tank because you suck at it really sucks ass.

[BlueRose]

Or maybe, just maybe, people will be able to recognize that they need a good comp and their best players and can't just faceroll it, and that might reduce the drama. If people understand why they can't just take random mouthbreathers with drug and alcohol problems,

I resent that Kal. So because I can't do 6 or 7 k DPS, I'm a mouth breather with drug and alcohol problems?

I realize that I'm not going to ever be a super star raider, and that's okay with me. I'm behind in gear, I missed 4 months of raiding. I do my daily H every day, pug Ony and Vault 10 and 25, but I'm still behind.

And I'm not complaining at all about being on the waitlist or in the B raid. Not at all, I understand that. It's when the A raid only has 23 people and they bring us, then freak out because raid DPs is a little lower or we dont follow their exact strat with no explanation on it beforehand. And it's not like they've been clearing this forever, they got 1 boss farther than we did, for 2 weeks.

[Mack Kilimaro]

I really don't get how the 25 man guilds can go so crazy on the 10s either. I don't think that I could do it if I was in one. I just don't have the interest to be doubling up on raiding that much. I like that the 10 man option is there for guilds like mine that just don't want to deal with getting together a 25 man raid. You can be friends, or at least friendly with, everyone you're raiding with and I think that makes it more fun for everybody.

We've now done Beasts on Grand Crusader and that's it. I'm not sure how we are going to try to juggle the raid schedule once ICC comes out, since we still kind of want to clear out Ulduar (Firefighter, Smell of Saronite, Yogg+1 and Algalon to do for drakes), Grand Crusader feels like something we should do because it's the challenge, and we'll want to see the new place. I'm really not sure. I don't even have to worry about it for the first week since I can't raid next week. Just my luck!

It's been fun lately, though, and hopefully the new heroics and all the new ICC stuff will breathe some more life back into the game.

[Relic]

I like some of these people, and telling them no you cant come or you cant tank because you suck at it really sucks ass.

At least you feel bad about it. WoW raiding turns a lot of people into dicks, or allows their inner dick to come out.

I resent that Kal. So because I can't do 6 or 7 k DPS, I'm a mouth breather with drug and alcohol problems?

No, it means you're a girl...

::hides

[Kalbear]

I resent that Kal. So because I can't do 6 or 7 k DPS, I'm a mouth breather with drug and alcohol problems?

I realize that I'm not going to ever be a super star raider, and that's okay with me. I'm behind in gear, I missed 4 months of raiding. I do my daily H every day, pug Ony and Vault 10 and 25, but I'm still behind.

And I'm not complaining at all about being on the waitlist or in the B raid. Not at all, I understand that. It's when the A raid only has 23 people and they bring us, then freak out because raid DPs is a little lower or we dont follow their exact strat with no explanation on it beforehand. And it's not like they've been clearing this forever, they got 1 boss farther than we did, for 2 weeks.

Sorry, Blue. No offense was meant to you. I've personally ran into tons of people that were like that who figured that just because really good players could do it for a few weeks that their sorry ass could be dragged along, and it sucked. There's going to be a spectrum there, but the important thing to note is to not get too butthurt when people have a choice to make between downing the content reasonably quickly and not downing the content at all because of who they brought who doesn't measure up. If you can understand that - if you're cool with sitting because your gear or your play level isn't where it needs to be to measure up, good.

In our guild we have three ranks of players. We have raiders, wannabe raiders (who are trial apps) and socials. Socials quite often come on raids, but they're not held to the same level as others. The flip side is that they don't have preferred slots and only come when we're missing people. But we don't expect them to be the best in the universe, and if they do come most everyone views it as a favor to us for filling in when we needed it. And yeah, we explain everything to them as best we can, and if they do get it wrong so it goes. This is what happened to us when we lost like 5 raiders in a week; we had socials galore and still couldn't fill a full raid, and ended up wiping a lot on old content.

I don't think a single person thought about blaming anyone who came. It's pretty stupid if they do.

[Inigima]

And I'm not complaining at all about being on the waitlist or in the B raid. Not at all, I understand that. It's when the A raid only has 23 people and they bring us, then freak out because raid DPs is a little lower or we dont follow their exact strat with no explanation on it beforehand. And it's not like they've been clearing this forever, they got 1 boss farther than we did, for 2 weeks.

Did you ask?

[BlueRose]

Did you ask?

Of course I asked, several people, several times. No one told me the key thing for one fight, which the RL announced in vent in a snarky manner on our 4th attempt. The strat for champs is apparently 'kill things'.

[Inigima]

Wow, that sucks. I'm not a hardcore raider, but I'd think you'd take a second to explain to your new guys.

I read up on fights before I do them too, but I like a good quick explanation the first time as well.

[Poobah]

Regardless of gear there are some people who for whatever reason don't understand concepts such as "don't stand in the fire" or "switch targets to the nether portal as soon as it appears" or even "don't run spikes through the fucking raid".

It doesn't matter if you're doing 10K dps, if you're running spikes through the raid and dying because you stood in the fire then bitched about not getting heals then you shouldn't be getting an invite. On the flipside, if you can switch targets as soon as the priority target spawns, get out of the fire before you get two stacks of the DoT, avoid the big green clouds and all the rest of that situational awareness stuff, then even if you're only pulling 3K DPS the only thing you're lacking to be a good solid raider is gear (or a good rotation/skill priority list).

-Poobs