Scattershot thoughts
Roster drama
We have a pretty solid twenty-five man group right now, well geared and focused. That is a welcome change from patch raid cycles where we’ve dealt with having to bring in floaters on our big nights, or deal with folks getting the gear they want and then disappearing until the next raid was released.
Now we’re victims of our own success. We have a bunch of folks who can do the content but aren’t top flight like our core raiders and so raid invites are few and far between for them. They’re obviously aggrieved, but what can I say? How can we bench folks that put the effort into learning their class and gearing/speccing properly?
Demo sent out in-game letters to some folks (especially to a few that have been bitching in /g that they aren’t getting invite, a huge party foul) telling them the raid roster is generally closed so they can’t expect invites. Harsh, but the truth does sting, does it not?
We had one kiddie rage quit, but that was no big loss.
Overall, if people would just work on improving themselves rather than sitting around and playing the victim card, they’d be a lot more successful at getting into the raids. Just recently we had a healer decide to disappear, probably until Icecrown–ok, I lied, one instance of a disappearing act–and a new priest recruit has been stepping in to take her place. Last night he did a great job, and basically won himself a guaranteed raid invite. He did it the right way, he didn’t bitch in /g he was being benched, he went out and geared via heroics and waited for his time to shine, and now he’s got it.
But on a positive note
Our raid core is damn good. Everyone there is committed to their success and the success of our guild. I think part of that is our players tend to trend a bit older (like older than college students) so we have generally a pretty mature raid. Loot drama is nonexistent (unless they’re hiding it pretty well) and everyone is performing at or beyond the level they should be. We’re not at the point where we can down ToGC25 Beasts, but we can one shot all of ToC25 in 45 minutes, so that’s a good bellwether.
Part of that may be the ease of this raid cycle’s content, but I think a bigger part of it is many of us (myself included) have improved as players since the guild started raiding late last year.
Goooooals
Kyrilean has a thought-provoking post on his blog about goals and how when you have none you tend to burn out from the game. It made me ponder for a while what my own goals are, short/long/whatever term. I would probably say my goals are:
Short term
- Get exalted with Netherwing
- Kill at least Beasts in ToGC25
- Kill Yogg
- Complete Glory of the Ulduar Raider
- Red proto drake
Long term
- Get my druid to 80 before Cataclysm
- Get full t10 and all the necessary accoutrements so I can finally get a FigurePrint of Rhidach
- Loot last Binding and build Thunderfury
Not many goals, but enough to drive me, and enough to keep me busy.
Icecrown can’t come soon enough though. Even with somewhat challenging weekly clears of ToGC10, I am incredibly bored of the Coliseum. I never thought I’d see the day I say this, but…
I miss trash.
•Get full t10 and all the necessary accoutrements so I can finally get a FigurePrint of Rhidach
Why do you make it so easy? Must I say it?
NERD!!!!!!!!!!!!
@Rhidach
Oh BS like you don’t have a shelf of about five different figures prints of your rogue in different tier sets? WE ALL KNOW THE TRUTH.
My only comment is: how can they prove themselves as being raid worthy if they can’t get get a spot in raid?
It is simultaneously a great place to be (a solid core of skilled raiders) and a crap place (possibly losing guild members because they feel that they could be a valued part of the team…but can’t get into the raid to prove it).
@Rhidach
That is the difficult part that needs to be balanced by the raid leadership: how to reward those that put the hard work in to learning and executing encounters, while simultaneously bringing fresh blood into the raid group. I’m not sure how to do it. We’ve been working on a better standby system to promote people sticking around after invites go out so we have a pool to draw on if someone drops out, but that’s not even a band-aid.
If folks drop, or disappear – can you really count on them as being core raiders?
Yet another reason I’m glad we’re now a 10 man guild.
Core raiders still have jobs, children, spouses…etc..You have to count on the fact that people will be missing some days. I think ES is doing a good job of pulling in alternate raiders for TOC normal, even TOC heroic 10 now. Testing them out and gauging what they need to be ready for progression. Some people are fine with it, others complain. I have a feeling that the people who are fine with it will soon be core raiders themselves, and the people who complain will soon be gone. The more we have a particular instance on farm, the more we use it as a farm team. I think the system works, and for your own sense of sanity you will have to just ignore the QQ’ers.
That being said, we really need to get everyone to show up for 25 Grand….
Our raid roster is basically closed, we aren’t inviting new people. The people we aren’t getting invites are mostly people who have had a chance in the raids but are consistently not performing to the benchmarks the others who are getting invites do… I am not sure that we have any people left who haven’t been given a chance.
The problem is those people who have proven they aren’t nearly as good as others complain they aren’t getting the invites they want… If we want to build a strong group we can’t cripple the raid with crummy players because its fair when that would hamper our ability to clear the content.
I would rather have 30-35 incredibly well geared players than 45 with marginally decent gear because we switched the groups up so much that the gear got spread so thin.
Basically recruitment is closed at the moment and the raid pool of about 32 people is locked. Now people who aren’t very good and those that disappeared for 3 and a half months are coming back expecting a raid spot that we just don’t have.
Also we have only had a core raider drop and be replaced by someone once (Tuesday) in the last 3 or more months… It just hasn’t happened in a long time.
@anafielle
Couldn’t help but leave a message. You might miss trash, but take it from someone who had to MT a trash-filled instance for the first time this week- It’s not fun when it’s your first time. I just put up a totally stressed out post on my own blog (tankadinerrant.wordpress.com) and couldn’t help but think of the “I miss trash” comment in this recent post of yours…. :)
Sure, Coliseum gets boring after a while… and then when you find yourself in the hot seat in Ulduar, it suddenly becomes a much scarier place!