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.
Tuesday we went into Blackrock to kick some things around. Once again due to situations I was tanking on Lag. We managed to pull a person from the raid finder and downed Gruul. Then we went and got destroyed by Hans and Franz. Partially because of the Noobish tank.
Wednesday didn't happen. We were two folks short including a healer and I didn't have the heart to pull people in again. So after a bit of just chatting and not finding anyone in our known associates we called it.
I don't know what I really want to say here this week. I'm feeling discouraged, but working on getting the guild built back to a point where we aren't short people for raiding. When we started raiding this expansion we had about fifteen people. Now we are lucky to field ten. Frustrating but what do you do.
Well, partially you recruit. I've been workng recruiting for Fear Itself on Zangarmarsh to help build ourselves up. Did I mention Fear Itself on Zangarmarsh Alliance side is recruiting? The Raid leader is kind of a jerk, but otherwise I think you should all give that a chance.
The simple truth is, we have been through this before and will go through it again. Every time I question myself and whether I want to rebuild, or if it's time to let go. I don't think it's time to let go yet. Not this time. I'm going to keep working to make this work.
On the bright side we are starting to get a lot of information on Patch 6.2 which is now on Test Realms. I haven't looked through it extensively but so far what little I've seen looks good. Can you say shipyard for your Garrison? I honestly hope this isn't the patch that brings the expansion to a close. If it is then this whole thing might have flown by way too fast. At the same time, what would you expect to see?
I'm keeping it short and sweet this week. Next week I'm give some opinions on 6.2 and what stuff looks good. What doesn't.
Tuesday we didn't raid. Simply just didn't happen. Only five
folks showed up including me and we opted to just chat in vent and do our own
thing. I was not happy.
Wednesday we went into Blackrock Foundry. We were still short
three folks, and two of them we found from friends on another realm. One
we used the raid finder tool to fill. With the changes etc... and a new tank
we didn't even down Gruul. Raid was called short because one of the
people had to log. Once again, frustrating.
When we started this expansion, we had about fifteen folks raiding with
us. Over the last three months that number has dwindled. Now I'm
looking at a drought for the first time since the beginning of Siege and I'm
finding it maddening. We are back to the people getting frustrated
because we aren't progressing quickly, so they jump instead of working on
getting one team to great. Some of them leaving without even saying a
word which is double maddening. I can take it if someone wants to leave.
If they don't even have the courtesy to say goodbye? It makes me a
little mad.
So, I have started working on recruiting
again. I have found myself despite me
hate of the spamming add ons, using one since cross realm zones has pretty much
defeated my normal method of flying through the world and messaging chat. Hopefully I can bring in some new blood, and
get some more bodies into the guild to liven things up a bit more. I'll be honest though, we may be struggling
for a while. I know personally I am.
This raid tier has put a big focus on
personal responsibility. That means one
person standing in the fire can doom us all now. This means the dynamic I have fought of half
the raid doing their homework, and the other half just showing up and hoping
the explanations are enough may not cut it anymore. Folks may actually have to put some effort
into preparation.
But this is all stuff I've said and that
we've been through before. As painful as
it is if I continue to raid lead it's stuff we will go through again in the
future. Life and the grass is greener
complex will always take folks from us, and we just need to learn to
adapt. The downside
I was prepared to just keep working
Blackrock at this point. Now we may have
to go back and do some Highmaul to gear folks as we bring new raiders in and up
to speed. So, we may be taking a step
backwards in progression.
So, If you are on Zangarmarsh or
Hellscream and want a new home to try out, let Fear Itself Alliance side
know. Come in and be part of rebuilding
a raid team. If you do so, please be
committed to being in raid weekly, ready to go.
If you can't make raid on a
weekly basis, don't plan on healing or tanking.
DPS spots I can fill. The more
critical spots I need to have folks there, because every time a tank doesn't
show it effects everyone a lot more critically.
Tuesday was a little
rough. One of our regular tanks couldn't make it so Lag, myself ended up
hanging up his two handed axe for the good old sword and board. Of course
I was a little rusty and it took us all night to kill Gruul, but kill him we
did. And much happiness followed.
Wednesday we ended up
being a little short and I ended up hitting the raid finder feature to get our
last person. We managed to snag a hunter and hopped in starting about
half an hour late. We went to work on Hanz and Franz and got them down
after a couple of attempts. (Partially because I wasn't tanking. If
I was it might have taken a bit longer...) We then went on to Oregorger
and promptly got destroyed a bit. By the end of the night we were making
progress, but he has a bit of work to go yet.
Now, Blizzards April
fools jokes actually got me a little this year. In particular the
T.I.N.D.R. add. I had forgotten what day it was, and after adding the selfie to
the game, I didn't find this to be much of a stretch as an area for Blizzard to
Foray into. The thought of playing a love match game with your followers
seemed like what one might have for a legitimate idea to get one more attached
to those characters.
But it got me to
thinking about their past April fools jokes. My favorite to this day was
the addition of the Bard class. They had taken some screenshots and
married them with the interface from guitar hero to make it look like an
interactive music type of class. It was well done and since bard was a
fun class to play elsewhere, as well as a common fantasy archetype. It was obviously fake but a fun idea. Since then I will not lie, I've kind of
wanted to see a bard class in Wow.
However, I don't believe it will ever happen.
Traditionally bards
are support classes. This means that
they enhance the abilities of those around them, rather than dealing damage or
healing themselves. That isn't to say
they can't fight, or couldn't heal if Blizzard had the notion but their
strength is in helping the group over themselves.
This does appeal to
me. I see a class that has three sets of
spells to move to through the fight. One
set that makes the group deal more damage during light healing phases, one set
to enhance healing when needed, and one to diminish the damage coming in from
the enemies. It could be fun to figure
out when the best time to balance during a fight when the bard should focus on
which of these three areas to focus. Think
of it this way, you're the bard and the tank pulls. For the first few moments of the fight you enhance
the damage going out. Then, the boss
does an ability that puts out a lot of damage so you swap to damage reduction
rotation. Then after the boss deals that
damage you swap again to help the healers top of the life bars and then back
and forth as needed during the encounter.
Alas, this will never
happen because of one thing. The trinity
of Tank, Heals, and DPS is completely ingrained in the player base.
If a Bard where part
of a group where he increased the damage going out by 100k overall, there would
still be someone who called him out for not topping DPS in his personal
numbers. Same with heals. People would not understand that this
character could help everyone else at the expense of personal statistics. To many people would turn into rage machines
that would ruin the experience for all.
Even if this was a minority of people it would poison the pool of those
who wanted to play such a class. Let's
be honest too, as Monks have shown us, being introduced this late in the game
doesn't bode well for player numbers.
Because while Monks are versatile and fun to play, they still are one of
the lowest played classes in the game, if not the lowest.
But how do you feel?
Would you play a Bard? Or a similar class?
Is this a complete pipe dream or do you think Blizzard would consider
something like this? Or do the classes buff
and support each other enough to make this a moot point? If they were to do this what class would you
like to play?
