Do you ever find yourself second-guessing your second guess?
We knew it would happen.
Summer crit our raids. Between the usual attrition to Real Life™, pre-patch ennui and widespread disinterest in the watered-down endgame, attendance tanked. Suddenly, instead of attempting the hardmodes and the meta-achievement we desperately wanted to complete before the release of the new tier, we found ourselves 22-manning Ulduar, PuGing from our Friends & Family ranks and flooding the market with BoE epics and abyss crystals.
In a last ditch effort to save the guild from stagnantion, I threw recruitment wide open. I was determined not only to replace those fairweather raiders I just couldn't count on, but also to seed a small bench to cover the inevitable weekly absences that are all part and parcel of running a Mostly Casual® guild.
Over the course of the last month, I've recruited two warlocks, three mages, a rogue, a Death Knight, a fury warrior, an arms warrior and an enhancement shaman. It sounds like a lot, but — summer attendance being what it is — it still wasn't enough to reliably fill raids. And even when we could assemble 25 raiders in one place at one time, we didn't have the cumulative DPS to tackle hard-modes because we were forced to invite undergeared players as an alternative to running two or three or ten raiders short.
... then 3.2 hit, and our long-MIA members came crawling out of the woodwork.
Last month, we had to PuG DPS — DPS! — from /trade to fill an Ulduar-25 raid.
Last night, we had 36 would-be raiders scattered throughout the Tournament grounds — including some players we hadn't seen consistently (or at all!) for weeks.
Literally overnight, raid slotting became a nightmare.
Do I invite the rogue who raided throughout The Burning Crusade and still tops the damage meters, in spite of being a full tier behind in gear ... but who disappears for months at a time with no warning at all?
Or do I invite the rogue who joined us halfway through Ulduar and suffered through the very worst of the summer slump with 100% attendance ... but who can barely eke out more DPS than our feral druid (when he's tanking)?
(For the record, I invited the consistent but subpar rogue to last night's raid — our first real foray into T9 — but will make a point of talking to him about his performance before the weekend. If he can't put out respectable numbers for his gear, then he'll need to step aside in favor of someone who can. I also had a brief chat with the flakey rogue to get a handle on his intentions. He says he wants to raid again, so I'll try to start slotting him in where I can and assess his commitment from there.)
I've been very open with my members about where we are as a guild, what my goals are for the new tier, and how I intend to prioritize raid spots (i.e., to those players who have been filling them — provided that they are also competent). Nonetheless, there was a bit of drama last night when I wait-listed one of the mages I recruited to fill summer raids in favor of a new and much better-geared recruit. In between add-on induced disconnects, I attempted to explain to the mage that his DPS was too low for Ulduar, let alone for a new tier of content. We were committed to helping him gear up in Uld so he could contribute to progression raids in the future ... but until then, he would have to sit out.
... Of course, now that I've actually done the Beasts of Northrend, I realize it's an easier and much more forgiving encounter than many of the fights in Ulduar. In hindsight, I'm sure we could have overcome the mage's subpar DPS. But I had no way of knowing that going into the Colesium for the first time, and felt it was unfair to ask the rest of the raid to carry deadweight when there were better options.
I attempted to explain all of this — but the mage essentially accused us of using him, and then casting him aside in favor of "returning friends." He /gquit before I even finished slotting the raid. (Ironically, one disconnect and a thoroughly hopeless Death Knight later, he could have subbed back in if he'd just stuck around.)
To be fair, we did "use" him: he was a warm body to fill our raids. But he was also someone we genuinely liked and were committed to helping succeed. He came to every Ulduar raid he signed up for and walked away with several pieces of T8.5. We invested in him, and had every intention of continuing to do so — just not in progression content.
And I absolutely did not cast him aside in favor of "returning friends." In fact, I wait-listed all of our "returning friends" in order to trial new Initiates. It seemed like the right thing to do, since I recruited the Initiates to raid (not to ride the bench!) and the "returning friends" were the ones who made it necessary for me to open recruitment in the first place.
The idea was to invite the better-geared Initiates, and sub them out over the course of the raid for raiders on standby (such as the mage) if it turned out that their DPS wasn't commensurate with their gear ... but, obviously, that didn't work out.
I'm sure that things will sort themselves out in the next few weeks, as we are better able to assess our new Initiates' skill and determine who to invite to the guild as a raider and who to let go. The novelty of patch 3.2 will wear off, as will the newness of the Coliseum (which I can already see myself coming to loathe — given that one thoroughly uninviting and lackluster room tied to completely nonsensical lore is the setting for no less than six new instances).
I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't have benched the mage. Maybe his loyalty throughout the summer slump should have been rewarded with an invitation to our first run at the Trial of the Crusader. But I feel we made the best choices we could in the limited amount of time we had to make them in, especially considering all of the variables we had to take into account (raid composition, prior attendance, order of sign-ups, rank, gear, skill... etc.).
I've tried very hard to create a supportive guild environment, with clear and transparent rules regarding raid invites and loot distribution. For the most part, I think I've done a good job, but situations like this lead me to start second-guessing myself.
And then I start second-guessing my second guess, and it's all downhill from there.
What does 3.2 mean for us? A guild leader's perspective.
Of all the roles I fulfill in the World of Warcraft — shaman, healer, raider, recruiter, even blogger — the one I consider most important is guild leader. I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility to those who wear my tag ... not to mention the adorable, purple and blue themed Angry Totem Tabard© that recently replaced our traditional Maple Leaf.
(Contrary to popular belief, we are not changing our name to <Surreality, eh?>. But we may take Canada Day off, since most of our American raiders are heading out of town for the weekend anyway...)
... Where was I going with this?
Oh, right. Because I am, first and foremost, a guild leader, it should come as no real surprise that I view all of the upcoming game changes with one question in mind:
What does this mean for my guild?
Optional extension on raid lockouts
I'm not sure how to feel about this one. As frustrating as it is to come within a few measly percent of defeating a new boss on the last attempt of the lockout, I like the sense of urgency that accompanies a looming reset. Surreality downed Kael'thas and Mimiron on offnights, after the weeks' raids were officially over. If we'd had the option to extend the lockout, I'm sure we'd have taken it — but the same energy and determination that brought the guild together at the eleventh hour also contributed, massively, to our success.
I'm going to miss that.
I'm also not looking forward to the decision itself. Do we extend the lockout for a week so we can progress through new hard-modes, even if it means losing a shot at loot from a boss we've already downed? Flame Leviathan drops the best-in-slot DPS caster neck and boots, and I know there will some very disappointed mages, warlocks and shadow priests in my raid if we opt to extend. And yet ... if we're going to make significant progress on other hard-modes or eventually unlock Algalon while raiding only 10 hours a week, we're either going to have to pick and choose (doing some hard modes each week and forgoing others) or take advantage of the new option to extend.
My guildmembers are all adults, and very reasonable people. No one is going to /gquit in a fit of pique or throw a temper tantrum if we end up skipping — or extending — a particular raid boss or hard-mode. But, as a leader, I will struggle to reach an acceptable compromise and inevitably feel that I've let someone down.
Universal tier tokens
There will be no slot-specific tier tokens in the next raid instance, and all but the highest ilevel of T9 gear will be purchasable with Emblems of Triumph.
This is an interesting change, and one that I'm actually looking forward to since it will reduce the amount of loot that goes to off-specs or shards. I imagine it will also minimize the impact of the RNG, marry the guild's ilevel to its actual progression, and make farming the first few bosses of the instance feel like less of a chore, because the loot they drop will still be useful. (I'm assuming there's some sort of linear progression to the Crusader's Coliseum, but for all I know it will follows VoA's "boss buffet" model. There's a spoiler-rich post on WoW.com that might shed some light on the subject, but — alas! — I can't access it from work.)
I'm not sure yet how universal tier tokens will interact with my guild's loot system. We use EPGP, a ratio-based model of loot distribution that assigns a priority ranking ("PR") to each raider that is equal to the amount of time they've put in (Effort Points, or "EP") divided by the level and quality of the gear they've taken out (Gear Points, or "GP").
It usually works out so that our more consistent raiders have a higher priority on new drops, simply by virtue their superior EP — but the fact that each token currently has limited usefulness means that our casual raiders are able to pick them up relatively quickly, in spite of a lower average PR.
The change from slot-specific to universal tier tokens may prevent some our more casual raiders from obtaining tier gear, or — coupled with the Emblem of Conquest change — it may have the opposite effect, as our core raiders farm the heroic dailies for Emblems of Triumph to purchase their tier tokens, maintaining PR for off-set drops like weapons, jewelery and trinkets.
BoP items tradeable for a small window of time (to others who were elligible to receive them)
I'm sure this will lead to item-selling in PuG raids. A few of my guildmembers — brave souls who PuG'd into another guild's Uld25 last night on alts — saw an early preview of this when a shaman in the hosting guild rolled on a ring with spellpower and spirit (!) and then nobly passed "to any guilded priest."
We /scoffed at the move in guild chat. What's next? my boyfriend speculated. Priests rolling on tanking shields and then passing to "any guilded paladin"?
It won't be allowed in my guild. All loot decisions will follow EPGP, and anyone caught selling or trading items will be /gremoved. (Not that I expect this to happen, of course. The closest thing we've had to loot drama since our crazy tankadin de-guilded — mid-SSC! — has been me complaining about losing Vulmir, the Northern Tempest three weeks in a row. Granted, it's off-spec for me ... but I lost to another resto shaman, an ultra-casual enhancement shaman and a combat rogue who, together, raid less as melee than I do. >.<
Of course, karma smiled on me the very next week when the Golden Saronite Dragon dropped from our first hardmode Flame Leviathan kill ... and lo!, not an enhancement shaman or mace-rogue in sight! Suffice it to say, I won't be crying about Vulmir anymore.)
Paid faction changes
...
WTB Holy Paladin, PST!
No, really. Our sole Healadin is in five-piece T8.5 and substantially all of our spellpower plate is going to a Death Knight's holy set. (Surely, Tirion will redeem him someday. /cough)
Surely, I can lure just one of you humans or dwarves or spacegoats to the Dark Side!
The problem with Ulduar is Naxxramas.
I love Ulduar.
I love the scenery. I love the lore — what I understand of it, anyway (I've never paid too much attention to that aspect of the game, which is ironic for someone who considers herself a compulsive role-player). I love the boss fights with their fun, occasionally gimmicky mechanics; the trash pulls that require creativity and thought; the unexpected humor (XT-002's voice, AoE mobs named Trash and V0-L7R-0N spring readily to mind); and especially the newness of it all.
I love that healing is hard again; that I have to utilize my rotations rather than simply spam Chain Heal on the melee.
What I don't love — and what actually caused me to end last night's raid in tears (something I don't dare confess to the guild-at-large) — was the Naxx-inspired cockiness that we took into Ulduar with us the first time we zoned in, and the inevitable crash that followed it.
I don't think Ulduar is "too hard." On the contrary, compared to SSC and TK — The Burning Crusade's sophomore tier — Ulduar's easy modes are... well, easy. Laugh if you like, but we didn't down Void Reaver the first time we attempted him. It took two days for us to master that particular fight, and we raced the enrage timer every week for a month before we could consider the "Loot Reaver" on farm.
I stopped counting after the first few dozen deaths (and I was playing a warlock at the time, so they were plentiful!), but I rather suspect that A'lar's trash wiped us more times than Razorscale, Deconstructor and Ignis combined.
So, no, the problem isn't Ulduar itself.
The problem is that Naxxramas was so easy by comparison to the raids that preceded it that we actually forgot what it was like to progress through new content. Once upon a tier, we congratulated ourselves when it "only" took a week or two of raiding to defeat a new boss. Now, we feel like we've failed if it takes more than two or three attempts, let alone nights.
Tensions are running high in my 25-man raid. We're making decent progress — nine bosses fell (or were redeemed) in our second full week of raiding — but we're certainly not one- or two- shotting encounters like we were in Naxxramas when it was new.
To be fair, most of us don't want to. We complained bitterly that Naxx was "too easy"; by the time Ulduar was released, we were desperate for a challenge. (Granted, Sartharion 3D was a challenge — but it was also a hard-mode, so we tended to view it as an encore performance rather than a legitimate step in our progression.)
Still, there's a difference between wanting to wipe in Ulduar and actually wiping in Ulduar. In the heat of the moment, it's easy to forget that this is exactly what we've been crying for, and start to lose our patience and eventually our tempers. This happened repeatedly in Saturday's 25-man raid, as the same officers and veterans I count on to help me lead when Keaton isn't around (and he wasn't this weekend) tore into each other for perceived slights, mistakes, lapses in judgment and even disagreements over strategy. As hard as I tried to run interference — reining in tempers, soothing ruffled feathers, mediating the inevitable disputes privately while remaining outwardly positive — I failed utterly to control the raid and ended the night thoroughly exhausted, demoralized and in tears.
Even Sunday's Ulduar 10 was rough. We cleared everything before General Vezax in just five hours, with a dozen wipes along the way — most of them on Mimiron. Given that this was only our second week of raiding, I think this is outstanding; GuildOx agrees, and ranks us as #1 Horde-side and #6 on the server (which is pretty awesome, if you ask me). Nonetheless, the bickering that was so prevalent in Saturday's Ulduar 25 raid polluted our usually relaxed Ulduar 10, and far from enjoying the new content that I claim to love, I find myself dreading it.
Don't get me wrong: I really enjoy the people I play with. I've said over and over again that they absolutely make the game for me, and it's true. It's the short-temperedness and the peevishness among my core raid — two very recent developments — that are slowly spoiling the endgame for me. It may be a bit of a cop-out to name Naxxramas as the culprit, rather than the players themselves (or the guild leader who is accustomed to leading by example, and floundering now that she needs to take a more hands-on approach...), but I sincerely believe that the precedent that it set six months ago is hurting us now.
* * *
As I was writing this (in between SQL queries at work >.>), Matticus posted a theory about Ulduar frustrations that has since been picked up by WoW Insider:
Many guilds have forgotten what it's like to hit a progression wall. Raiders who felt good about themselves and their abilities started having doubts about themselves.
This is what we're experiencing. Exactly.
For us, the problem lies in the fact that these doubts have manifested as fits of temper — and, in some cases, depression — that are quickly snowballing through the raid. I'm going to have to give some serious thought to combating them, because I refuse to let Naxxramas of all things break my guild six months after we trounced it.
"Casual" is not a four-letter word
Blogger's Note: I intended for this to be a relatively short post, inspired by the fact that one of my guild's Casual Raiders recently asked me to change the name of her rank since the word "casual" has negative connotations in the WoW community. It ended up being a lot longer than I anticipated, so I'm going to break it into parts. I realize the theme has been done to death, but it's become an issue again in my guild (there was a /gquit last night, and I'm expecting at least one more to come), so it's very much on my mind.
* * *
My guild has two raiding ranks: Core Raider and — until recently — Casual Raider.
Core does not refer to "hardcore"; no one I play with is serious enough about raiding to want or deserve that particular distinction! Even the members of the (thankfully defunct) Cool Kid's Club are pretty casual in terms of actual playtime. The ret paladin has season tickets and would rather miss a raid than a game. The mage-turned-resto-druid-turned-mage-again is two hours ahead of the server and has a firm bedtime. Even our single-highest attendance raider, who likes to boast that he's the most "hardcore" among us, took three months off in the middle of our T5/T6 progression to concentrate on school.
Yes. Hardcore. Likes a Maltipoo on a fox hunt.
No, in this context, "core" means exactly that: the dozen or so raiders who form the core of my raiding team. These are the players I know I can count on to attend more raids than they miss and always keep me in the loop when their plans and priorities change. Most of them have my cell phone number; the few who don't live in other countries*, but can still reach me via MSN or G-mail.
I use a two-tiered rank system to differentiate these Core Raiders from our much larger pool of Casual Raiders: players who can't commit to a set raid schedule — often because of school, work or family commitments — but are welcome and encouraged to sign up for those raids they can attend. I can't promise them spots in every raid, because I won't displace a Core Raider for a Casual Raider, but our roster is such that I need at least some of my Casual Raiders to show up for each raid in order to get it off the ground.
As a whole, I depend on my Casual Raiders every bit as much as I depend on my Core Raiders. I just can't depend on them individually, but such is the nature of their membership in the guild. They may or may not be available on any given raid night, and I may or may not have spots for them when they are.
Flexibility for flexibility.
It's a fair arrangement, but it comes with its share of frustrations — for both sides, but especially for me: the one person in the guild charged with the task of reconciling everyone's individual needs with the raid's overarching one.
The Casual Perspective
If I can only raid one day a week, then I want to raid - not ride the bench. It isn't my fault that I can't raid as often as everyone else; I shouldn't be penalized for having a life. After all, I work just as hard on my gear as everyone else ... sometimes even harder, because I can't count on farming Naxx for all of my upgrades. I've been a member of the guild forever, contribute to the community in immeasurable ways and am always, always willing to help other guildmembers outside of raids, even when it cuts into my limited playtime.
I understand this; believe me, I do! If I had only a few hours a week to raid, then I imagine I would want to spend them raiding too, and could easily become resentful of those who are able to do more in-game simply by virtue of the fact that they have a seemingly unlimited amount of time in which to do it.
I also think there's some merit to the thought that casual raiders (by my guild's definition) have to put some extra effort into keeping their gear up-to-date. For those of us who attend every raid, gearing up becomes a group effort; the guild even provides gems and enchanting materials for most main-spec upgrades. In contrast, those who are only able to step in for a few bosses each week are often handicapped by our EPGP system (which rewards time as well as effort) and at the mercy of the RNG. There is an abundance of gear available outside of 25-man raids — crafted epics, BoE's, badge and reputation rewards and even Heroic and 10-man drops — but very little of it comes easily, or cheaply, to someone with a limited amount of time to invest in farming.
Because my guild is first and foremost a community, I value the contributions that my casual players make even, and especially, outside of raids. Guild chat is seldom quiet, and is often LOL-funny ... not the kind of "lol" you type at the end of a snarky sentence to take the sting out of it, but the kind that makes the dog bark because you find yourself suddenly choking on your Mountain Dew.
The point that I'm trying to make (in my typical, long-winded, replete-with-irreverent-parenthetical-asides fashion) is that our casuals may not come to every progression raid, but they are as much a presence in the guild as our core raiders are. Far from finding them a burden, I want to accommodate them as much as possible — in part I feel obligated to live up to my end of the bargain, but also because I genuinely enjoy raiding with them. As I've said many times before, the people make the game for me.
Perfect example: We have an ultra-casual rogue who works on an oil rig and can be out of commission for days and even weeks at a time. He logs on from a laptop to keep in touch, but doesn't have a stable enough connection to raid; I think he's come to three or four runs since Wrath was released. But on those rare occasions he is able to join us for a few bosses in Heroic Naxx, he comes armed with enough Comfortable Insoles for the entire raid. Why? Because they're comfortable, of course! (At one point, he had half of us convinced that they actually decreased durability damage. Quite a few people dove off the cliffs in Mount Hyjal just to test it out. Tyrande was furious.)
I can't imagine a guild without Testybones or his Comfortable Insoles. I'm sure they exist, and do quite well ... but I wouldn't want to be a part of one.
Next: The Core Perspective
Reflections of a Twilight Vanquisher
If you read Matticus through a feedreader, like I do, then you're probably familiar with the quote in his security footer:
You miss 100% of the shots you never take. — Wayne Gretzky
I like the quote, and I agree with it ... but more in passing than upon reflection, if that makes any sense? Until this weekend, I never gave it much more than a moment's thought. Now, though — now, it rings so poignantly true that it almost brought me to tears this morning, when I opened my beloved Google® Reader to learn more than I ever needed to know about Lifebloom and five (more) reasons that the PTR sucks.
Yes, I'm a girl. I still cry every time Bambi's mother dies, and whenever Sarah McLachlan asks for money for the SPCA.
... But why would a hockey quote, of all things, make my nose start to sting and my eyes just a little moist?
Because this weekend's Sartharion 3D kill, a first for my guild, came perilously close to not happening — not because we couldn't master the fight, but because we almost didn't try.
* * *
Scott Andrews of Wow Insider printed a letter in his column this morning that could have come from any one of my officers:
After clearing all available 25-man content and having it on farm for over a month, a line seems to have been drawn in the proverbial sand. Half of our raiders consider multiple drake Obsidian Sanctum the next step in guild progression. However, the other half seem to be content farming content that it "easy" for us and are happy not logging on when we schedule attempts.
Furthermore, when we do get enough people for a "progression" raid, we run into the same problem. After a few attempts, we inevitably get one or two raiders planting the seed of doubt ...
Don't despair, anonymous WI reader! You aren't alone.
This has been our experience exactly.
I'm sure I've written about this before: on the evening of our first scheduled Naxx-25, we had over 40 guildmembers online, leveled to 80 and ready to raid — including players I hadn't seen in months and long-since demoted to "Friends & Family." (As an ostensibly casual guild leader, I've come to accept that members will come and go. We have ridiculously low attrition, insofar that raiders very seldom leave us for other guilds, but we do tend to lose casuals to real life fairly often.)
The initial burst of energy and enthusiasm carried us through all of the content currently available. Within three weeks, we had cleared not only Naxxramas, but Obsidian Sanctum and Eye of Eternity as well.
Then ... we stalled.
You've heard all of the reasons and excuses before — certainly from the blogosphere, and perhaps within your own guild as well. The absence of Heroic attunements and abundance of BoE epics make the gearing up process trivial. Two versions of each raid instance lead players to burn out on them twice as quickly.
The content itself is "too easy," and there isn't nearly enough of it: Malygos and Sartharion can be farmed in about 30 minutes each; Naxxramas takes longer, but lacks the replayability of Karazhan. (Remember how utterly random the Prince Malchezaar fight was? Even a T6-geared raid could catch an unlucky series of infernals and wipe!)
Taken together, these things conspired against us: by the time we returned to the Obsidian Sanctum on Saturday, it had been three weeks since we had cleared Naxxramas with more than 20 people in our raid. Even more disheartening was the fact that we had been forced to either cancel or downgrade all but two of our previous Sartharion 3D attempts for lack of interest.
Right up until invite time, Saturday's raid looked to be more of the same.
Our single-highest DPS — a Death Knight — signed up as "not attending." So did our holy priest and both of our part-time resto druids. One of our rogues was called into work at the last minute, and a mage claimed the same (but was probably just boycotting the raid, since he isn't interested in any boss that doesn't drop The Turning Tide).
Several of our casuals had recently leveled to 80, so we were able to fill the most glaring holes in our raid. For the first time in almost a month, we had 25 people ready and even eager to go! ... The problem was, they weren't the right people.
We had five tanks (one more than we needed), six healers (one less than we wanted) and two brand-new DPS who had PuG'd OS a few times but never before attended drake attempts with the guild.
And, because we opened the night with Malygos-25 and PuG'd liberally from /guild chat to do it, we ended up inviting everyone who was capable of clicking "accept" — from the newly 80 holy paladin who had all of his gear enchanted with stamina patches to the beastmaster hunter who can raid once in a rare Saturday (and only then if we're desparate, since his transatlantic connection makes it almost impossible for him to dodge void zones and lava waves).
Looking over the roster at the start of the Obsidian Sanctum portion of our raid, Sartharion 3D looked impossible. Feeling more than a little trepidatious, Keaton started counting the number of "save-the-bear" cooldowns we had available to us. There were all of two: his, and a single Pain Suppression.
Was it even worth attempting Sarth 3D with this group? we asked ourselves on our private u2u channel. Or should we take the quick kill and break into 10-man groups to gear our newer members and work on our Glory of the Raider achievements?
We discussed our options briefly on open Vent, acknowledging that we didn't have the "ideal group composition" for progression, but expressing our willingness to continue if the rest of the raid was. Worst case scenario, I mused (while Keaton scurried off to Moonglade to respec bear), we could work on our positioning, practice the movement of the fight and perfect the healing and tanking assignments for next time.
We put it to a /readycheck vote: 22 for; 3 against.
Cleary, I raid with optimists.
* * *
On our very first attempt, we killed Tenebron before losing too many healers to uncontrolled adds and calling the wipe. By our third or fourth attempt — and to everyone's shock — we were starting to see actual progress, and what had started as a resigned, "might as well get a couple of learning wipes in" attitude became to transform into real excitement and real determination.
We started to take things seriously. Our fifth tank respecced DPS. Our undergeared paladin subbed out for a warlock (which elicited more than one raised eyebrow, because it took the total number of healers in the raid down to five). And one of our two ret paladins switched over to his Death Knight, who he retired a few weeks ago but still sufficiently outgears his current main.
Things went wrong; we fixed them — talking through our strategies on Vent, experimenting with new roles, adjusting the timing of our Bloodlusts and how we dealt with portal phases.
DPS seemed a little low; we told our high-DPS rogue not to bother with anesthetic wound poison, and put our lowest-DPSing hunter on tranquilizing shot.
Twilight Whelps were chewing up our healers; we switched tanking assignments and had our protadin handle the drakes, while our warrior took over adds. He was paired with a second prot paladin, and together they had both the snap aggro (thunderclap) and the AoE threat generation (consecrate) to keep the whelps and fire elementals under control.
A handful of players struggled with void zones; we had an elemental shaman with high-situational awareness call them out on Vent.
And so on.
One obstacle at a time, we inched closer and closer to victory. The one thing we couldn't overcome were the breaths; with all three drakes up and only two cooldowns to rely on, Sartharion could easily one-shot our main tank.
Our prot-turned-fury warrior had dinner plans, and reluctantly stepped out. We brought a holy paladin in to replace him, which brought our total number of healers up to six, but didn't help our cooldown count since he wasn't specced for Divine Guardian. "Should I respec?" he asked as he zoned in.
"No, just run with it," I /whispered in response. "We're doing really well and don't want to break our momentum. Respec after this wipe to minimize downtime."
... except, we didn't wipe. And we didn't need a single cooldown, because our DPS burst Tenebron down before Shadron even landed.
It was one of those magical, once-in-a-raiding-tier nights when everything just clicked for us, and the fight flowed together.
Tenebron fell.
Shadron fell.
Vesperon fell.
And suddenly there was just Sartharion to deal with, and our epic battle became one we've done a dozen times before. Still, I don't think I was the only one holding my breath with Sartharion finally bit the dust.
And to think ... it almost didn't happen. Because we almost didn't try.
A Tale of Two Hunters
Larísa and Gevlon are dancing again — or, rather Larísa is dancing and Gevlon is standing in the corner, looking morose, misanthropic and slighty green (although that is certainly a nice suit he's wearing; I'm sure it was appropriately expensive).
I've been following the debate, of course; I even drafted a couple of comments that I fussed over for far too long and eventually abandoned. Others — including Larísa and Leah (a frequent commenter on both blogs; I'm not sure if she has a blog herself, but if she does I'd love to read it!) —have made all of the same points I would, and far more persuasively.
I'm not going to bother paraphrasing their arguments here, but I do want to respond, in a roundabout manner, to a comment Gevlon made on Larísa's blog:
You can make friends with skilled people, but you cannot make skills out of friendly people.
I disagree.
Absolutely, 100% disagree.
Exhibit 1: Hunter A
When we first started out into the world (of Warcraft), it was as a social guild with no raiding pretensions whatsoever. We invited our friends, and our friends invited their friends, and within a few weeks we had a small but lively community of players at various levels of skill, gear and experience. Hunter A joined us at about this time, invited solely by virtue of his friendship with one of our officers.
Hunter A wasn't just "bad"; he was an unmitigated disaster. He couldn't trap; couldn't kite; couldn't shoot his way out of a Netherweave bag. He frequently ran out of ammunition, seldom out DPS'd the tank, thought every item he could equip was made especially for him and had to be reminded at least ten times at the start of every run to put his pet on passive and turn Growl off.
But you know what? It didn't matter, because we weren't interested in raiding and he was a genuinely nice guy: a little immature at 14, and a good deal younger than the rest of our players (even then, most of us were in our 20's), but sweet and sincere and always the first to volunteer if someone needed help with a quest or a low-level alt run.
Gevlon would dismiss him contemptuously as one of those dime-a-dozen "friendly helpful ppl" — but there's a lot to be said for being friendly and helpful, and Hunter A was both.
When we were finally bit by the raiding bug and looking to start Karazhan, Hunter A wanted desperately to come too, and somehow managed to muddle his way through the key quests. But Kara was actually hard then, and we couldn't afford to take someone we all knew would be a hindrance rather than a help. He was left out of both of our raiding teams, and while he was clearly disappointed, he didn't sulk (like I would expect of someone his age), complain, cause drama or threaten to /gquit.
Instead, and unbeknownst to me, Hunter A turned to one of our tanks (a warrior who had played every class to level cap) for help ... and slowly but surely started to work on improving his gear and learning — and then mastering — the basics.
By the time we had two groups farming Karazhan, we started to talk about bringing Hunter A to raids as a fill-in ... if only because we were confident we could 9-man it, so his sub-tank DPS wouldn't hold us back. As long as he could manage to stand still in the flame wreath, we figured, there wasn't much he could do to wipe us.
Because Hunter A was universally well-liked (he had actually become something of a guild pet at that point; everyone loved him, but no one quite trusted him off-leash), our members didn't mind "boosting" him through Karazhan. Many of them were actually looking forward to it, and there were cheers on Vent and in /guild chat the first time he zoned in.
He surprised the hell out of us. Under the warrior's mentorship, he had literally learned2play. He wasn't topping the charts by any stretch of the imagination — that came later, with weeks and months of practice — but he was competent.
By the time we started SSC, Hunter A was a full-fledged member of our raiding team. I will never forget the first time he "won Recount": it was on Lurker trash, and I was so proud of him that I broke my own rule about linking meters and complimented him in /raid chat on his "nice damage." (I know, I know ... trash meters don't matter! Still, it included Hydross and I was thrilled with his progress.)
Fourteen months later, Hunter A is still a member of my guild. He started high school this year, and doesn't have as much time to play, so he's fallen a bit behind the gear curve, but is nonetheless a capable, competent member of my raiding team. Not since Karazhan have I hesitated to invite him to a progression raid.
Exhibit 2: Hunter B
We picked up Hunter B while we were still working our way through T5. My boyfriend is a firm believer in recruiting-by-PuGing (I am, too; I just don't have the patience for it that Keaton does), and Hunter B was one of his more promising acquisitions — on paper.
Hunter B played his class masterfully: he had excellent crowd control, amazing damage (I believe the technical term is MQoSRDPS?), and a obvious command of all the tools in his arsenal ... with the possible exception of feign death, since I do remember him stealing aggro a time or two on Void Reaver. /cough
Still, he was a very good hunter.
As well as a complete jerk — something you would never have known from grouping with him casually, since he didn't like to type and often came across in-game as quiet. On Vent, however, Hunter B became an entirely different animal: arrogant, obnoxious, occasionally even cruel.
To be fair, he wasn't bad in the beginning. He was often brash, and could be abrasive, but his sharp sense of humor and caustic wit enlivened our raids. For a while, we truly enjoyed playing with him.
But as he become increasingly comfortable with the guild, and more firmly entrenched in his role, he became bolder ... and meaner. He raged at the rogue who won the roll for a DPS trinket he wanted, insulting the rogue's DPS, his playstyle, his education and (of course) his mother. He made my Mom cry in a just-for-fun Gruul's Lair that we hosted for our non-raiding friends and family, when she accidentally auto-ran into High King Maulgar and wiped the raid. He shrieked like a banshee anytime anyone (inadvertantly or otherwise) pulled a boss to him after he feigned death to escape a wipe. And once he found out that it bothered me to hear the word "rape" used metaphorically, he made a point of spamming it at every opportunity — including in public chat channels, like General and Trade. >.<
I tried several times to explain to him that good DPS didn't excuse bad behavior, and that — as a guild — we expected our members to treat each other with respect and act honorably when out and about in the world. He didn't just disagree with our rules; he flaunted them at every opportunity, and I eventually removed him ... to the relief of everyone in the raid, and no small amount of /cheering.
The Verdict
Given the choice between Hunter A and Hunter B — a friendly, unskilled player vs. an unfriendly, skilled one — Hunter A wins every. single. time.
After all, you can grind gear, train skills, perfect your rotation and (simply put) l2play. Every single one of us is proof positive of that, as none of us started the game for the first time with the knowledge we have now. Personality, on the other hand, is inherent: you can't make an unpleasant person pleasant, nor can you teach them social skills if they have none.
Perhaps a more hardcore guild would be willing to take Hunter B, use him for his DPS, throw some epics his way and /ignore him the moment the raid ended.
Perhaps Gevlon's ill-fated PuG would be eager to do the same.
But for a guild that values its reputation on the server and considers its community at least as important as its raid progression, Hunter A is the type of player you invest in, and Hunter B is the type you avoid like the Undead plague.
My Mental Inventory
Ambrosyne of i like bubbles I Like Bubbles i like bubbles— ...
Oh. My. Earthmother.
If you want to make an OCD, perfectionist blogger cry, write a thought-provoking article that almost demands a trackback — and then don't capitalize the name of your blog. Amber, if I didn't find your always humorous, occasionally indignant and endlessly varied style so entertaining ... I would seriously hate you right now.
Like, GNOMEMAGE! KILLIT!KILLIT!KILLIT! hate you.
/sigh
Let's try this again, shall we?
Ambrosyne, who likes bubbles (see what I did there?), used the phrase “mental inventory” today to make a point about why raid sign-ups can be so much more difficult to manage than the average raider — or even officer, in the case of her boyfriend and raid leader — might think.
He doesn’t keep the mental inventory of people that I do — he’s not thinking of X the new recruit, Y who’ll PuG ANYTHING he’s not sure we’re doing as a guild, and Z who needs to arrange things with his wife.
The phrase mental inventory struck me as astoundingly appropriate, and something any raid organizer worth her Deeprock Salt maintains simply as a matter of course.
Good leaders aren't goblins. Our players are people to us: not character sheets, not multi-colored bars on a DPS meter and certainly not the sum of their stats — but people, with identities outside of the game, real lives to plan around and a whole host of idiosyncrasies and personal preferences to take into account.
Mental inventory. Exactly.
From memory, here's an excerpt from mine:
- Feral Druid (MT #1): Prefers to tank. Will DPS if he feels he has to (but mope about it for the duration of the raid). Can't make Thursdays or Fridays.
- Prot Warrior (MT #2): Won't miss a raid. Ever. Somewhat jealous of his MT role and will feel slighted on tanking assignments if we try to rotate them around. (Rotate them around anyway, but be gentle about it.)
- Prot Paladin (MT #3): Can only raid twice a week, and needs some advance notice to plan things with his wife. Always prioritizes progression raids above farm content.
- Prot Paladin (understudy): Wants to feel useful even more than he wants to tank. Don't hesitate to ask him to respec to DPS or heal (but help him out with respec costs; he does it a lot.) Works weekends and can't make the Saturday raid.
- Prot Warrior (understudy): Great guy to pal around with, but totally unreliable. Forgets to sign up for raids half the time, and occasionally no-shows when he does. Encourage him to level his warlock since flakey DPS is less morale-crushing than a flakey tank.
- Death Knight (understudy): Has no concept whatsoever of tanking etiquette. (Even I know it's bad form to taunt off of another tank. >.>) Works graveyards and can only make weekend raids. Hates respeccing to DPS, but is open to healing on his priest if he isn't needed to tank. Will PuG anything that isn't scheduled on Group Calendar.
- Discipline Priest: Has been with us since day one. Lives three hours ahead of server time and struggles to make weeknight raids, but will drive himself to exhaustion trying if he feels the guild is counting on him. Don't let anyone pressure him into staying online until 6 AM on a work night!
- Resto Shaman: Knows his stuff, but has the attention span of a goldfish. Keep him busy (involve him in healing assignments, engage him in conversation during trash pulls, etc.) or he will start running off at the mouth and aggro half the raid. Has the single-highest attendance in the guild, but is starting to burn out on healing. Let him raid on a DPS alt once and a while if group composition can accomodate it.
... and so on.
As the person who maintains this inventory for my guild, I'm also the one who posts and organizes raids 99% of the time. Even if another officer is slotted to raid lead, I will hold onto my little gold crown and micro-manage invites until the 25th player zones into the instance. Then, and only then, will I pass lead and settle quietly into the background to focus on healing.
Still, it doesn't stop there. On the contrary, my mental inventory guides virtually every decision I make.
I suspect that my boyfriend and raid leader (who sounds a lot like Amber's Josh, come to think of it) would be shocked to listen in on the stream-of-consciousness that even a simple question like
From [Keaton]: What do you think? Military or Plague Quarter next?
can inspire.
We-ell. Since you asked ...
We have two priests in the raid at the moment, one holy and one shadow. That means that Instructor Razuvious is definitely doable. But our holy priest absolutely hates to Mind Control the understudies. If we ask him to do it, he will, and he won't complain about it or cause drama because that's the kind of guy he is — but he will stress out about it for the rest of the Quarter, and won't be playing his best because of it. Also, our disc priest would really like a chance at a trinket that Gothik drops. He can't make tonight's raid because of the time zone difference, but he will be here on Saturday. We'll also have an extra tank then, which will make Gothik's adds and the Four Horsemen easier to control.
Meanwhile, our resident Aussie isn't here with her through-the-roof latency, so I think we'd stand a real shot at the Safety Dance achievement. It's also getting kind of late, and our fury warrior has an early morning final and I'm pretty sure our resto druid is already tiptoeing around trying not to wake up his parents. Plague Quarter is always faster for us than Military, so — yes — let's do that.
To [Keaton]: Plague, I think.
From [Keaton]: Sounds good; that works with our comp because ...
Keaton could probably write the complementary blogpost on raid composition and synergies; I'm sure he has a similar stream-of-conciousness for that. I'm not trying to discount its importance. I just don't know how to paraphrase it, because it's not how I think. Since I lack his expertise with classes other than my own, my primary concern is for the people who play these classes rather than the classes themselves.
Needless to say, I'm loving Blizzard's new "take the player, not the class" philosophy. It makes my job a little easier — not a lot easier (the analogy is "herding cats" for a reason!), but I'll take what I can get. 
The best application I ever denied …
I received a very nice application from a Willing-to-Be-Holy Paladin at a time that we desperately needed another healer. He had obviously put some time and thought into his answers, and injected them with a fair dose of humor as well.
There were two I especially liked:
Why do you want to join?
I have looked fairly deeply into the guilds on this server, and I've come to the conclusion that this one would be the best fit for me based on your ability to have a casual attitude towards raiding, while still progressing well. In the past I've played the game much more seriously than I should have, and I think that takes away from the fun of the game. Which is, the overall reason we all play.
I'll admit, the last sentence (technically, fragment) makes me /twitch. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's comma abuse! (TJ: 1, BRK: 0 ... if you're keeping score.)
Other than that, this is a solid answer. The Paladin doesn't just tell me he's done his homework; he shows me, by paraphrasing my guild's vision statement in his response. His description of the guild is pretty much spot-on: we market ourselves as a casual guild and have a relaxed attitude towards raiding, but still manage to remain fairly competitive when it comes to progression. Clearly, the Paladin has either has talked to someone who knows us, or visited both our website (which describes our philosophies) and the realm forum (where our progression is posted). Either way, I appreciate the fact that he's taken the time to research the guild before applying to it.
What is your favorite boss fight? Why?
Tanking Hydross the Unstable. I thought the idea of making a whole set of gear for one fight was very cool for some reason. =D The fight isn't even all that technical, but for me it was very fun.
He mentions a specific boss fight and one of its mechanics, which tells me that he either has raid experience or is able to use WoWWiki or Bosskillers to fake his way through it. (I'm such a cynic.) He also claims to have enjoyed creating a resistance set. If this is true, he's (1) insane, and (2) the kind of player who is willing to invest some serious time and/or gold in his gear ... both big pluses in my book!
The rest of his application is equally well-written, and by the time I alt-tab back into the game, I'm looking forward to talking to him. I open my Social window with the intention of adding him to my friends list, in part to see if he's online and send him a /tell, and in part simply to stalk him ... as I do all applicants to my guild ... >.>
Hey, there's a method to my madness!
If you're in Storm Peaks, then you're probably doing Sons of Hodirs dailies, which is good.
If you're in Hillsbrad, then you might be ganking lowbies, which is pathetic and lame. (Bad Hordeling, no cookie.)
Wait. Where was I?
Oh, right. Adding the Paladin to my friends list.
... except he's already there. That's odd. Where could I possibly know him from?
I'm chewing on my lower lip, trying to remember (and panicking a little, because I have a reputation for a this totally OP memory to protect), when my Shaman officer whispers me. Out of the blue. And in blue, as is the nature of Shamans.
[Shaman]: Hey, did you see that new app? From the pally?
[Me]: Yep. I'm about to send him a tell him now.
[Shaman]: Don't bother. It's Sal. I've been keeping tabs on him for a while.
[Me]: ... By "a while," do you mean "since he /gquit in a fit of pique after losing the roll on our first Hammer of Judgement to a boomkin; took ALL of the enchanting mats, epic gems and Hearts of Darkness from the guild bank; spelled FUCK U with vendor trash in the Officers' tab; and then posted screen shots of his handiwork on the realm forum?"
[Shaman]: Yes, exactly.
[Shaman]: He also called your boyfriend fat and mocked you and your sex life in trade chat.
[Me]: Ah, good to know. That explains why he's on my friend's list; I must not have noticed the name change.
Application denied.
Cliques Happen
It's an inevitable fact of guild life — and, indeed, life in general. We gravitate towards those people with whom we feel the most comfortable, often because we share common interests or experiences.
An inherently social game, WoW actually encourages the formation of cliques by rewarding us for forming 5-player teams from level 12 on. As content becomes more challenging, we are increasingly motivated to group with people we know and trust; after all, Razorfen Kraul was relatively painless to PuG. Heroic Old Kingdom ... not so much.
My guild's first negative experience with cliques occurred in our early Karazhan days, when we were attempting to organize our diverse roster into two 10-man groups — a significant challenge in and of itself, given that we had members in all four hemispheres! It wasn't an issue when we were a mere leveling guild; in fact, it worked to our advantage, since there was almost always someone online to talk to or ask for help with that group quest you could almost but not quite solo. However, when we finally entered the endgame, we had to make some serious compromises to accommodate timezones that ranged from five hours behind Server Time to 13 hours ahead.
I posted a poll on the guild forum to collect information about our members' availability, input it into an Excel spreadsheet, and spent a thoroughly exhausting four hours in a Vent meeting with my co-guild leaders: planning the future of the guild, drafting loot rules and building two raid rosters that were as balanced as they could be while still taking everyone's schedules and personal preferences into account.
In spite of these efforts, a perception soon emerged within the guild that there was an "A-Team" and a "B-Team." In hindsight, this was most likely because all three of the guild's leaders were on the so-called A-Team. This was 100% the result of our individual school and work schedules, which favored weekend raids — but no matter how many times we explained this, it was still seen as symptomatic of an "officer's clique."
Meanwhile, at the core of the B-Team was a group of friends who had played together in the past under different tags and built relationships that transcended WoW. Most had exchanged phone numbers, and a few knew each other in real life. They were already perceived as a social clique by many; once they were formally organized into a Karazhan team — one they perceived as being the lesser of the two — their loyalty to each other increased in inverse proportion to their resentment for guild's officers. As a result, the B-Team became increasingly standoffish and often shunned guildmembers they considered "outsiders."
Things came to a head the week Zul'Aman was patched into the game, when my (former) co-lead attempted to organize a single ZA group consisting of the strongest members of both Karazhan teams. He felt (rightly, in my opinion) that neither team alone would make significant headway into the new instance. It wasn't so much matter of skill or gear at that point as it was of class composition: in those days, at our level of progression, Zul'Aman required two MT-quality tanks and three healers, with a mage or druid for crowd control. Each of the two Kara groups were running with one tank, one off-tank, two healers and a shadow priest as primary CC.
In order to stand a chance at clearing ZA, it was clear to my co-lead that we would need to mix things up — and given that the A-Team/B-Team mentality was causing hard feelings all around, I personally felt that combining the teams to some extent would be good for guild morale.
The clique wouldn't hear of it. Its members wanted to progress from Karazhan to ZA as a team, and some went so far as to refuse to join another group for any reason. After a long and emotionally fraught Vent meeting, the B-Team ended up leaving to create their own guild. (To their credit, they cleared Zul'Aman before we did — but not before making significant changes to their roster to accommodate the unique demands pre-nerf ZA placed on an entry-level raid.)
As for the rest of us? Burnt out on Zul'Aman before we even set foot (or hoof or paw, as they case may be...) in the instance, we turned our attention to Gruul's Lair instead. With a major source of tension removed from the guild, we were able to recruit quickly — something we had been hard-pressed to do before the split, with the A-Team/B-Team dichotomy fostering negativity and resentment among our members.
What had once seemed like a guild-breaking schism turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as we were able to reinvent ourselves, recommit to each other, and ultimately rebuild: stronger than we had been before, with a renewed sense of purpose and common vision. Shortly thereafter, we made the jump from a 10- to 25-man raiding guild ... and enjoyed a small modicum of success in the process.
And as difficult as it was at the time, I learned a great deal about guild leading from this early experience.
First, I learned that cliques happen. Social cliques, heroic groups and even 10-man teams will form in a guild that is focused on 25-man raid content. Unless these cliques threaten the unity of the guild, they can be tolerated and in some cases even welcomed, because they can and do bring individual guild members closer together.
Second, I learned that there comes a point for some cliques when they cease to be benevolent and become poisonous instead. When a clique develops its own identity, separate from that of the guild, and the clique's members identify with the clique first and the guild second, and place unreasonable demands upon the guild — even holding it hostage by refusing to participate in guild events unless the wishes of the clique are accommodated — then it needs to be confronted, perhaps even excised.
Finally, I learned that in extreme cases such as this, it can be necessary to sacrifice the guild's short-term goals for its long term health. Parting ways with the so-called B-team may have set us back a few weeks in terms of raid progression, but it also allowed us to move forward with a stronger core than we had had before. We rebuilt the guild from a position of unity and confidence, and were the all the better for it. It took months for me to recover, personally, from what I felt was a failure on my part to keep the guild intact. But eventually, I came to realize that the guild split was the best thing that could have happened to us at the time. At the risk of sounding hopelessly melodramatic, it was a liberating epiphany.
EPGP, dual specs and loot distribution
Dual specs are coming!
Maybe. Someday. Eventually.
There's no target date yet — at least, not that I'm aware of — and Blizzard seems to be subtly setting us up for disappointment. ("Maybe for Uldaur. But maybe not. It's complicated. ... But how about those dance studios?")
Still, if your guild is anything like mine, the promise of dual specs at some point in the near or not-so-near future is a frequent topic of conversation in /g.
I'm certainly looking forward to it, even more so now that I'm a part-time resto shaman than when I was a full time afflock. If you think doing Sons of Hodir dailies are rough, try doing them twice! First as a character who can't kill anything, and then again as one who can't tag anything—
I swear, as soon as 3.0.8 is out, I am going to create a party with four other warlocks and camp that damned cave for HOURS. We will DoT everything. We will Fear everything. And at the end of the day we will polish Hodir's helm with the tears of everyone who ever tagged a mob after we DoTed it.
So take that, you stupid Boomkin with your stupid insta-DoT, insta-tag Moonfire!
... ranting again ...
*ahem* Even though there's no real ETA, half of my guild members already know what their dual-spec will be. Holy for raids/Shadow for dailies. Elemental for PvP/Enhancement for PvE. Kitty for trash/Bear for bosses. And so on.
And while I'm daydreaming as much as the next person (Do I want to zap things with lightning bolts, or simply whack!them!dead! with massive fist weapons? /ponder), I'm also thinking ahead:
How will dual specs affect loot distribution? Should I ask everyone to declare a secondary spec? If so, should I prioritize loot to secondary specs over off-specs? And should secondary specs receive a discount under our loot system, as off-specs currently do?
I understand that the purpose of dual specs is to give players options. I'm certainly not aiming to take that away! If you're tagged with me and would like your secondary spec to be for PvP or some other, non-raid related purpose ... that's fine. Really.
But what about those players who want both of their specs to be raid-viable? Such as those tanks I was talking about earlier, who aspire to MT raid content but usually end up healing or DPSing? Or that jack-of-all-trades druid, who will cheerfully shed his feathers for fur or leaves and relishes any opportunity to put his hybrid nature to good use?
Oh, wait. He went Death Knight for the expansion. 
Still, the point remains. For those few flexible players I've come to rely on — the prot paladin who also heals; the holy priest who also DPSes — it makes to sense gear a secondary spec, if not equally, then certainly ahead of someone else's moth-eaten off-spec.
My boyfriend and I have talked about ways to accommodate this idea into our loot system, but we're not quite there yet. In the meantime, we take occasional advantage of a small disclaimer written into our rules — one that allows him, as Raid Leader, to override the official loot list for the benefit of raid progression — to ensure that that multi-spec paladin keeps a decent holy set and the priest has some hit gear.
With dual specs on the horizon, it seems like a perfect time to formally revisit the idea of secondary specs.
Currently, my guild uses EPGP to manage loot. If you aren't familiar with it, EPGP is a ratio-based system in which players earn Effort Points (EP) for participating in raids, and are assigned Gear Points (GP) equal to the value (a function of ilevel*slot value*rarity) of the loot they receive. Their priority (PR) on new drops is calculated from ratio of EP to GP; in other words, PR = EP/GP.
EPGP can be complicated to explain, but it's very simple in practice.
In determining who receives a particular piece of loot, we look at two things: 1) who, among those interested, has the highest PR; and 2) whether the item is intended for main-spec or off-spec use. With very few exceptions, the player with the highest PR who intends the item for main-spec use will receive it — along with the corresponding GP, which will decrease his PR for future drops.
If no one needs the item for main-spec use, it can be looted for off-spec use at 10% of its GP value. This means that the spellpower ring that cost a mage 70 GP last week could very well go to an enhancement shaman for 7 GP this week.
At first glance, this may seem like a flaw of the system; it's certainly caused a few raised eyebrows among those new to the guild! But it's actually how EPGP is supposed to work. Increasing the mage's GP by 70 caused his PR to decrease, so the priest, warlock and elemental shaman who were beneath him on the loot list before he received the ring are now above him, and will have the option of winning a comprable item before he earns his next drop.
Another thing that's occasionally pointed to as a "flaw" is that some classes have no true off-spec, and therefore never have the opportunity to win loot at 10% cost. However, as our priest officer pointed out last night, hybrids incur the 10% cost on off-spec items in addition to the 100% cost they pay for on-spec ones. Compared to a mage, who pays 100% GP for his gear, a priest collecting two sets of gear for two different specs pays 110% GP for both!
Tangential aside (because I couldn't find anything useful from other guilds when I Googled for inspiration months ago): GP values are calculated by the EPGP mod, but EP is left to the guild's discretion. In active zones — including progression zones, as well as zones that aren't quite new but aren't quite on farm status, either — we award 5 EP every 15 minutes for the duration of the raid, 38 EP for every guild first kill, and 25 EP for each kill thereafter. In farm zones, we award 25 EP per boss but skip the time-based award.
The idea here is to reward ourselves for the time we spend learning new encounters (hence the incremental award in fresh content), while at the same time incenting us to clear older zones quickly and without the kinds of silly mistakes that lead to three wipes on pre-Patchwerk slime.
Overall, I'm happy with our current system, but would like to make some changes to accommodate secondary specs when the time comes. It might be as simple as offering secondary spec items at half cost or 25% cost, with priority going to main specs over secondary specs, and secondary specs over off-specs. Giving players the ability to "bid what the item is worth" could also be an option, but I like the simplicity of fixed GP and don't want to turn loot distribution into some kind of auction. (I realize it works for some guilds, but I don't think it would be particularly efficient in mine.)
Fortunately (or unfortunately, from my poor shaman's perspective), we have some time to think about it before making any decisions.
... In between daydreams of zap!-zap!-zapping! things to death, of course ...
Alts! I haz them.
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