I take it all back.
I was 15 minutes late to tonight's raid. Traffic was a bitch.
I texted updates to two of my guildmates, so they knew I was coming. Unfortunately, they couldn't account for our missing Disc Priest, nor could they find a last minute replacement for the Holy Priest whose game card ran out over the weekend. And when your healing core consists of exactly five healers, two are stranded offline and one is MIA ...
Well, let's just say we canceled yet another night of 25-man raiding due to poor attendance. >.<
Two ToC 10 groups formed, one very obviously the A-Team (and in Trial of the Grand Crusader as I type /sigh), and the other not quite as strong, but certainly capable of clearing the normal modes in an hour or so.
By the time I finally made it online — and by finally, I mean all of a quarter-hour late — Group 1 was halfway through the instance and Group 2 was waiting patiently for a tank to log on.
Since Keaton was also stranded offline (in the most nonsensical staff meeting I've ever heard described in /guild chat — or anywhere else for that matter; trust me on this one), I volunteered. I've tanked several full clears, and only one of them didn't go smoothly.
I don't know what happened. This wasn't a PuG; this was a full guild run, with the same raiders who one-shot Onyxia last night and went on to clear VoA and ToC 25 in a little less than two hours.
And yet ...
And yet, these were just some of the that things we suffered through tonight:
- An undergeared off-tank whose health spiked dangerously low after just one stack of Impale. (To be fair, it was the alt of one of our core raiders — but an alt who had no business tanking T9 content and was quickly replaced.) (Paladin threat was nerfed! I so should not be pulling aggro with auto-attacks! /flail)
- A warlock in full T8.5 and a smattering of ilevel 245 epics do exactly 1,900 DPS on Lord Jaraxxus, and then tell me to "take the negativity elsewhere" when I suggested that if he paid attention, he might do more damage than the tanks.
- A hunter accidentally misdirect to a priest, and then procede to complain about a dearth of heals.
- A hunter run out of everyone's range while a victim of Incinerate Flesh, and then procede to complain about a dearth of heals.
- A hunter healed from 10% to full by the tanking prot paladin, right before he complained about a dearth of heals.
- Exactly zero DPS remember to switch to Jaraxxus's adds.
- Exactly zero ranged DPS remember to shoot down permafrost.
Somewhere in the middle of all that ... I lost it.
I am the second-calmest guild leader I know. (Keaton is the first, if you were wondering.) I never call people out publicly. I (almost) never use naughty words.
But after the third or fourth stupid wipe on the Beasts of Northrend — THE BEASTS OF NORTHREND, PEOPLE! — I was absolutely seething. And after our first disasterous attempt on Lord Jaraxxus, when the raid decimated by two waves of adds that no one even attempted to DPS, I was done. "Some people obviously don't want to be here," I snapped. "And I don't particularly feel like wiping all night for them."
We pulled it together after that. Even the seriously slacking warlock kicked it up a notch and managed to eke out something like 3,400 DPS — coming in a solid last among the DPS classes, but at least above the tanks. That's something.
Go figure: the Twins and Anub'arak were one-shots.
So, yeah. I take back what I said in my last post.
I'm not that guy. Compared to some of my guildmembers' performance tonight, I'm fucking awesome.
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September 23rd, 2009 - 21:29
Sorry to hear tonight didn’t go so well, Sari. Or at least, that it didn’t start off so well.
Still stuck here at Uni myself, bit of a gap before my last class of the day. November-ish – still unsure at this time whether early or late Nov – will be free to assist with at least one more guy showing up. And I shouldn’t even need to take what I realise must be infuriating 15-20m breaks during our raid period either!
September 23rd, 2009 - 21:39
No one begrudges you those! It’s not you’re running out mid-raid to benchpress a Volkswagon like someone I could name. You’re taking care of your kid… so props for that. <3
September 24th, 2009 - 03:20
Yikes. Sounds like a couple of attitude problems there. The correct answer if you’re called out for doing 1.9k DPS is not “take that negativity elsewhere”, it’s “Sorry, I’ll stop wanding and actually do some DPS now”.
Seriously, lazy DPS grind my gears. Lazy, beligerant DPS make me want to burn their characters down.
September 24th, 2009 - 06:16
Seriously.
I don’t know what happened last night. There was no one in the raid that I would hesitate to bring to a 10 or 25 man raid. Most of our stronger raiders were in the other group, but no one is ours was “bad.” Still, something was really off last night; there was no synergy at all — and I don’t mean raid buffs (although those were rather lacking). We were playing like 10 individuals instead of one group, and it was a mess.
September 24th, 2009 - 11:23
I think you hit on a real point here. While the ten of us might like each other and be casual friends, we don’t have the same sort of synergy and familiarity with each other that your regular ten man group has-even when they bring in an extra one or two people to fill a spot.
And please, you’d know you’d love to bring Grazeless to a 25 man raid! After all, my tank dying to one impale makes her a badass, amirite?
(For the record, I knew what you meant by this! xD)
Elam´s last blog ..I have officially gone self hosted!
September 24th, 2009 - 13:35
I didn’t say she died! I said she spiked dangerously low … and she did. Your healers are freaking the hell out, lol.
That said, I think it would be fun to co-tank something like Ulduar 10 sometime. Except now that I know you hate it, I probably won’t ask.
September 24th, 2009 - 15:39
I hate it because of the pressure and because I don’t think I’d be very good at it. It would be fun to do Ulduar…provided you main tank!
Elam´s last blog ..I have officially gone self hosted!
September 25th, 2009 - 12:10
I blame Elam for tossing me lead after inviting me. God knows I don’t have a clue how to raid lead. I just make sure all the raid buffs are there as best as I could and expect people to do their jobs right.
And in my defense, my MD to you probably got stolen by that Glyph of PW:S bug. I can’t imagine myself MDing a healer any other way.
September 25th, 2009 - 12:52
It wasn’t your fault. (Okay, running away from the healers during Jaraxxus was your fault, but it was almost worth it for two reasons: (1) I got to heal while tanking /flex, and (2) Blankor is -so- cute when he’s all growlie!)
I was just venting. I don’t mind wiping when everyone is actually trying, but I think a few people were phoning it in. Long distance. On a prepaid card that is running out any minute now.
But, seriously: you had all the crucial buffs covered until we kicked Elam to Elam and Saffi to Tyk, and lost our replenishment in the process. And ToC hardly requires an active raid leader.
I think the main problem was inattentiveness on a couple of players’ parts (not naming names anymore, ’cause apparently you’re all reading
), and then just poor coordination/communication between the rest of us. I’m sure my Vent issues didn’t help. I don’t know how Heart main-tanked an entire tier without Vent; I couldn’t do it for one night without wanting to scream.
September 24th, 2009 - 14:44
Could be a morale issue as well. I was trying to find the right words for it yesterday in my initial reply, but I suspect it was a double whammy of 1) Not having enough to pull off the 25m raid that people are more inclined to /want/ to do (the ones that showed up, anyway), and then the 2) of being in what they perceive to be the ‘inferior’ of the two groups. Because it is quite obvious.
Don’t get me wrong here, I don’t mean at all to say even for a second that anyone from the ‘A team’ does or says anything to cause this impression, but it’s just there, you know? I actually honestly couldn’t explain how I came to this conclusion, precisely because no-one ever does do anything to explicitly cause it.
But nonetheless, I think between those two hits, it might be difficult to keep your chin up and perform your utmost in such a situation. This is also not to say I excuse the behaviour, someone as geared as the warlock in question pulling 1.9k DPS may as well have bowed out and left an empty spot. It would have been almost as good!
Anyhow, I hope I don’t offend with this. It isn’t by any means the intention, and I wasn’t there to really get a first hand impression of the mood in the raid, so it’s entirely possible I’m completely off base anyway. But if I’m not, it might be an idea to mix the groups up a little when it comes to 10m time. At least for the regular non heroic stuff anyways.
September 24th, 2009 - 15:23
You’re either a very perceptive tree, or someone is feeding you inside information. :p
… or you read the guild forum. I suppose that’s possible, too.
Unfortunately, the 10-mans have been a source of tension for a while. All told, we have about 15 raiders who are both interested in 10-man achievements and willing to commit to the additional raid days necessary to maintain that kind of parallel progression. That’s too many for one group, but not enough for two, so we’re faced with an unpleasant decision: either continue to run the so-called “officer group” (which is often perceived as a clique), or split into two subpar groups and PuG from /guild or even /trade to fill the inevitable holes.
I’ve attempted to compromise by splitting up for normal ToC 10 and scheduling the hardmodes for offnights — but it doesn’t always work, as we saw last week. For the record, had I been on, I would have split the 25-man group into two balanced 10-mans and knocked out regular ToC 10 with both. But by the time I made it home from work, the decision had been made and the damage, unfortunately, done.
September 24th, 2009 - 16:02
Heh, I can say quite honestly that Elam (or any other) has not fed me any information regarding this. And while I did actually peruse the forums before making the plunge to join you guys, I of course didn’t have any access to the inner sanctums there. I’m still trying to figure out how precisely I arrived at the conclusion. If I work that one out, I’ll let you know.
// *deletes second and third paragraphs. Again.*
Grr.
// Don’t you hate it when nothing seems to come out
// right?
Perhaps simply trying to say too much in a single comment is the problem! I think all I really actually have to say, is that at least insofar as my currently rather limited experience, despite having picked up on this without outside whispers, no-one has actually said or done anything /wrong/.
Despite that, I think your intended course of action would have been the better one. I understand that it can be a pain to rotate people through. I’ve been there. Even if the people you’re rotating in are competent raiders, it’s very easy to form a bond with those you go with most regularly, learn how they play and what to expect.
But it’s probably still worth it, even if there is only one or two of the additional five swapped in at a time. If the group can become more dynamic, let people swap in and out for particular achievements as need dictates, it’d be for the best overall. But it isn’t easy, and I’m certainly not one to throw stones on this, as I’ve failed at it myself before!
September 25th, 2009 - 03:48
It’s reassuring to know we’re not the only people having this problem. We’ve been almost in the exact same situation, first with Ulduar and now with ToC10. On our offnights we have had a fairly regular clique for weeks. We have achieved loads together; Rusted Protos, Starcaller, Tribute to Skill etc. The problem comes from the fact to make that work, we’ve had to stick with roughly the same people each week, which breeds resentment from those who don’t get to go. And of course, we have that magic number of “Enough for 1×10 man, not enough for 2×10 man” too, and even if we did get 2×10 mans running, we’d probably run into the “Team Awesome and Team Not-so-awesome” problem anyway.
Shortly we will probably be doing 2×10 mans as official runs as well, which is something I’m not really looking forward to. Even if you try and balance it out fairly, splitting your “best” people evenly, you’re still going to end up with one team that does better than the other, which is going to be a whole new can of worms. But the people have spoken, we’re looking to phase Ulduar out of the raid calendar and we need to fill the gap with something.