World of Warcraft Raid Leader of a very casual raid team talks and vents about life in World of Warcraft, and maybe a little bit of life outside of WoW.
This week was better then last week. Next week I look forward to progress.
Tuesday night... we gathered, we grabbed friends, and we managed to get 3 out of 4 down again on the first wing of Flex. On this night, I used my hunter Lazyeye. Not much else to report, a couple people came and went, but all in all we had some fun.
Wednesday night, it was 9:30 before we got rolling, what looked like it might be a short night as not a ton of people had signed up, ended up going with 13 people into fight Sha of Pride. Sha.... Went... Down... With the help of a couple friends from Exile and a couple of others that we scrounged up at the last moment.
This makes me happy because the last two weeks, Wednesday night has not happened. We have been 5 people or shorter, and we just have passed rather then pug in 40-50% of the raid. I am working on different things I can do to mitigate this problem, but for now this is a swing in the right direction. (Thank you to Xalen and Takki from Exile BTW, Along with Easybake and EvilAlan whose schedule does not work with our raid time 100% for the time they put in) We ended up cutting the night a few minutes short. But attitudes were positive, and I look forward to moving forward on this next week.
The other note on this week, is that I'm happy (strangely) that Zangarmarsh is not going to be a connected realm anytime soon. We have a medium population, and apparently on the latest batch of connected realms they have had a flurry of issues, such as Characters disappearing, requests for name changes, and customization screens popping up. Apparently, despite how smooth the connections up to this point have been, there are still some bugs to work out of the system..
Short post with it being Halloween, sally forth and beat down the candy monsters....
And no, not that Affleck is the next Batman, I have no issues with this as Nolan is attached to DC's Superman/Batman movie, and he has pleasantly surprised me with his casting so far. But that is a discussion for another time.
Once again, the raid team is in trouble. I keep working on rebuilding, just to see things fall again. With the people that just left, as I mentioned last week, we are now stuck in Flexville, and even then we can't fill our roster in order to run both nights.
Tuesday, with the lack of a couple of people who have walked another direction, we found it tough. We made 3/4 on the first wing of flex. Part of me believes this is a good thing and that eventually it means that we will build a stronger team. It also means that we have lost one of the crutches the team has been leaning on. It is now time to not only groom dps to come into our raid team, but to push them into doing higher numbers then they have needed to do previously. Heals, for now, are covered. Thought with Shaqia not being able to play his next semester of school, Shimmer may be geared for healing. Not because I "need" too, but if we are healing, I would rather not stack healing classes.
Wednesday raiding didn't happen at all. We had two tanks, three heals, and one dps. That's right we are falling short on DPS. I didn't want to pull in 4 out of 5 deeps once again as a pug, so instead we went off and did our own individual things for the night. I ran a few BG's With Gwyndolynn and then logged.
So where do we go from here is the question? I plan on building things back up. At this point my goal is to have a team in place, with a plan for kick off by next expansion. As a matter of face, when the next expansion launches, I want a plan in place for how quickly we plan on being in the new raids and content. I want to be back into the game in a way where I am giving the virtual smack down to bosses. I want a team worthy of those who have stuck with us the whole time.
I am still fighting. I have had some rough times this summer, and I kept things going. The last couple months have shown that things are getting better though, and i'm hoping at the beginning of next year I can go back to working only one job, which means I won't be stretched as thin as I have been between work, and kids.
The call out this week goes to those on the raid team. See if you can find one dps in the guild who is interested in raiding. Invite them on one of our flex raids. Help them see if their gear is gemmed, chanted, and reforged correctly. Help build this team back up. We can do it.
I propose "Fireys" for the next playable race BTW.
And we will lay low the words of those who try and stop us.
We all have suffered through LFR, so this might be familiar.
Right now with LFR being rough in places, you think people would use some common sense and patience. This isn't was happened to me the other day. We had a person in the run whom I will call Johnny DeathKnight, now Johnny from his broken typing may have not understood English very well. Johnny also could have been a fifth grader. Most likely Johnny was a high school drop out who was in his mid twenties now playing in mommies basement, and using the broken understanding of the language he had bothered to pick up. Yes, from the get go I am tearing into Johnny Deathknight.
You see, I zoned in on my priest into the Dark Shaman fight. As you healers may know, this fight sucks to heal with all the movement involved, normally with people running away from you as quickly as their little sprinting characters can move. This means your heals are constantly being broken by line of sight issues, or you having to move or be nuked by the death being dropped at your feet. So, from the get go, I buckled in and got ready for some horribleness.
This is where Johnny comes in. The tanks called the pull and he was immediately floor tanking. He spent the first half of the fight asking for a Brezz, and then swearing at people for not Brezzing him. Now, I'm not sure if you have ever played a class that can Brezz a person in the middle of a fight, but the last person you Brezz is the douche sitting there swearing at you because apparently the fight completely rests on their shoulders. I groaned inwardly at this but healed on while his swearing and berating tirade moved on in raid chat. Of course, as soon as people started dropping and it was apparent we were going to wipe little Johnny DeathKnight started asking which tank was supposed to grab Skull?
At that point Johnny's tirade was against a tank who apparently couldn't hold aggro, because he had been on skull and had aggro immediately. Now, anyone who had been watching life bars during the fight, and at the pull could have told you that Johnny had grabbed the target before the tank had established aggro. As a matter of fact, Johnny had grabbed the add, and gone down before the tanks lifebar had moved period. Meaning of course, Johnny had fallen to that old saying of you break it, you tank it. He had pulled the mob before the tank. I said as much in Raid chat.. and of course Johnny couldn't hear reason. He just tiraded on about how the tank sucked. The tank to his credit dropped, making us have to wait for a new one. I should have followed.
The very moment a new tank dropped, but what should happen? Johnny DeathKnight pulled the boss. Once again, he was mad that he was floor tanking immediately, and when things fell apart withing seconds he started commenting on how people shouldn't worry, we were getting another 5% buff. At this point, several people started explaining to him the meaning of a "douche move." Somehow, Johnny DK still believed he had done nothing wrong. And strangely he was kicked as soon as everyone was rezzed. Even more strange, then next pull the bosses went down without a hitch. Johnny may have been right about that 5% (eye roll).
The truth is that in a game like World of Warcraft, it's easy to shoot your mouth off at a bunch of strangers your never going to see again. I try not to, but I can't say I've never made a snarky comment in a LFR to taunt someone, or to comment on a player's fail. I am not perfect. However, I work hard not to create a situation such as the one I mentioned above. It does no one any good to build frustration into a group. You never know either. I have run LFR's only to realize at the end that there were a few people I recognized from Zangarmarsh in the raid with me. While your reputation in LFR is fleeting, your reputation on your realm can effect yourself or your guild negatively.
This includes actions within game. If you stock a player, even slightly, it can look bad for yourself or the people who play with you. I know I have been approached before by people who had run a random with a guild member, and had a negative experience, and I'm not even the guild leader. I have also had people whom dwell on Zangarmarsh comment when one of our members has harassed them in any way, and I take that harassment seriously.
Long story short, everyone should work to not be a Johhny Deathknight. You can be the best player in Wow, but if your a jerk, your going to have a lot less options if your looking for people to play with.
Lets start with the good. Tuesday we once again downed all 4 bosses in about an hour and a half. Norushan and Sha of Pride took a couple of tries, but we didn't bring in any extra help and we blew through the content pretty quick. We then went to the second section of Flex and made an attempt on the first boss. I think we would have done better on him, but a bit of RNG took out a healer quickly, and after that we fell during the second tower.
Wednesday was a no go, only 7 peeps showed, and down three dps I didn't want to chance 60% of the dps being question marks. Instead we headed in and got some of LFR done for people. Not the choice use of the evening, but it was at least something.
Now, my frustration is directed at raiding again. I have wanted to get us to start on 10 man raiding, and out of flex pretty quickly, but I was told at the beginning of raid that two of our raiders have joined other raid teams, but will be around for Flex. This was a surprise, but one we will deal with. I had mentioned several times since Siege had begun that I planned on moving into ten man as soon as I could get things solidified, and if I wasn't moving quick enough for other folks, that's fine, but it leaves me having to rebuild more to get to that 10 man point.
To address this point, I am going to make a couple of changes in how I handle things.
I am not going to sever ties to other guilds that I know, however I will not longer recommend people in our guild to help them fill in spots when they are missing raiders. Normally when this happens I will hand pick people who are exceptional that they can ask to come in and help with the other guilds raiding. I won't do this anymore. If I am free I will go in and help with the run myself, but it seems the people I suggest for this are the ones that eventually end up leaving us for the raid teams I recommend them for. This may be construed as a dick move on my part, but I am done suggesting people that can help out with a raid or two, only to have them eventually go over and get absorbed into another team.
It's not that it happens often, but it has happened a few times in the last few years, and always to our detriment.
I will try and work up a couple hours a week to do work with developing guildies. I will be doing some runs on a tank or a healer where I bring people in who haven't raided/run dungeons before. I will take time to study and renew my knowledge of other classes and specs again, and I will do my best to ask and find people in the guild who may need help. Maybe even a raiding 101 class once a month might not be a bad idea. But I want to start working on developing people in our guild. I would love to find someone to put over this as it may end up being a bigger project, and creating an officership around it might be something for us to pursue.
I want to make it clear, I am not blaming anyone for leaving the guild, or raiding team or focusing any negativity that way. People outgrow their raid teams, sometimes they want something different. It might be atmosphere, progression speed, or many other factors. We are a laid back family guild. We don't push the content in a hardcore fashion. That doesn't appeal to a lot of people. But to some people it does. We have an open door, if someone wants to leave, they are welcome to, and they are welcome to come back as long as they left on good terms. We have been fortunate that despite this policy we have only had one or two people in years that have had to be kicked from the guild for their behavior.
A little late, but it's time time to discuss Fear Itself's progress in raiding.
Tuesday was a very good day. I ended back up on my pally tank Lag, as Kedec and Creap were unable to make raid Tuesday, and i'm proud to say I did not embarrass myself. As a matter of fact we cleared the first four bosses on LFR on the one night. I plan on moving us into ten man eventually, but I want to almost wait until we have a more stable team. I have too many question marks right now to feel that some of the folks we are bringing into the equation will still be running consistently in a month from now. Hopefully they will be, but I have to see how things work out.
Now, we did get some help to step in on the last boss. We kept getting close to killing the Sha of Pride, but kept dying at below 5%. Which is amazing since we were down to 2 healers at that point because one of our heals had to run when real life hit. Big gratz to Shaqia and Orheim for working that hard though. A couple people joined us at the end of the run, allowing us to get Scorpiack on heals as well, and the boss went down!
Wednesday we decided to go into the second wing of flex. This night was a little more difficult and we did not manage to down the first boss. We did make some progress on him through the night however, and I feel we will have him down as soon as we learn to manage the adds there a bit better. As people in the guild work on getting more gear, and work on upping our dps, heals and tanking skills it will help too. Right now we have people in different states of raid experience, and as soon as some get adjusted in better, we will see a lot more success. I think eventually we will just fly through the flex modes, and that it won't take us long to get to that point.
So, to put it shortly, things are coming together. I think Flex is very good for out guild as it allows us to stretch out and bring a couple folks I might worry about bringing otherwise. Not because they are bad players mind you, because experience wise, or gear wise they just aren't quite as ready for the 10 man SoO yet. It also allows me to bring extra folks when I want to as well. We have normally had between 10 to 15 people in a raid with flex, and it's been nice if someone shows up late to just be able to invite them in, or if someone has to drop, we don't have to stress out over it. I hope Flex continues to be a thing that Blizzard implements as it is a big success, for at least my guild.
Yes, I'm posting this a couple days late, and writing it short, but here it is!!!
Well, there is a simple answer to that question. BLIZZCON 2013 baby!!!! This is my 50th post, which I feel is a milestone, and not much is going on.
This is normal. It seems every time we have had Blizzcon in my memory at least, the news shuts down from Blizzard for about a month before the event. Oh we will get patch notes, updates on the systems etc... but no actual news about what is coming up soon in our World of Warcraft.
I have noticed this expansion that after almost every patch, we have started hearing news about the next patch immediately. Mists dropped, they started talking features for patch 5.1 that were upcoming etc... And because every other patch has been a true content patch it hasn't been as noticeable because we were not discussing the next raid right after a raid patch dropped. However... when you talk about the next feature they are working on, it keeps some excitement in the air about "What is Blizzard up to next?
Now a few folks have commented that they think we may see a Hearthstone release before Blizzcon. I am not sure if I agree with this, as Blizzard is working hard right now getting things ready for the big even, and with it being a month away, that is a real short time for an announcement of a release date. Of course since Hearthstone is going to be free to play, there is nothing stopping them from just saying, "it's ready!" and dropping it on us.
I am hoping we see a few more connected realm before then as well. They have one set hooked up, and I imagine they plan on watching it for a while before connecting others to make sure any bugs are worked out of the system. I imagine once they feel that the live release is working perfectly as intended we will start seeing connected realms pop up left and right. Since this is something that will completely be effecting everyone on those realms they have every right to be careful about the way they implement this. I am looking forward to seeing how it effects us here on Zangarmarsh, if at all.
Yes, it's country, so sue me.
Anyway, slow news week, I'm fairly certain that is how things will be for a bit. So, have fun in game and I will see folks soon.
It was a pretty good week for us. We got to punch some bosses in the face, and we got some loot!
Tuesday night, we got a flex team together and in short order we took down Immersious. We moved on to the Protectors of the vale, and after a few attempts we managed to get them down instead. The team took a bit of time on trash, and finally we got too Norushan, and that is where we ended the night. We managed a pull before we were out of time, and then we called it until Wednesday. That pull we got him down to 30% on, so it was a good pull too!
The next night (Wednesday) we started on the third boss, and after the first pull, we brought in one of our wayward sons (Khallon) and he brought 3 or 4 of his friends from Exile over. It was nice to have them with us. We managed to down Norushan and then the Sha of Pride before 10:30.
We then queued up for the second flex raid section. By the time we downed the trash, we only managed two pulls on the first fight, but on the second pull we got to the point of clearing the second tower. Meaning, we made decent progress for the night, and did well for a fight that we walked into without any other prior information other then what we have seen in Raid Finder for a few of us.
I am enjoying the flex raid system. The downside I am seeing to it is that by the time I get a group together, it can be fifteen minutes plus into raid before we get moving. Wednesday night we only had two pulls into Norushan before 10 before getting people pulled into the raid etc... If we had started right on time, there is a chance, I think, we may have even downed the first fight (Galakras) in the next section of Flex raid.
Good job to the raiders who came this week and lit things up. I know that this is easier then ten man, but right now with part of the raid team in flux this has been perfect for us. I enjoy the fact we can bring more then 10 people. I enjoy the face I can bring people without worrying that it will be a wipefest for the night. I look forward to getting to a point, where we can focus on regular ten man again, and I think Flex will help us build to that point.
I would also like to give a shout out to Kedec who has recently joined the guild, and volunteered to run some raids into ToT so we can focus completely on SoO. This will be a great boon to raiding in this guild, and I hope people give him the support he needs to get things running.
Anyway it was a good week, and I will see you all in game.
