Raiding - Do we continue or do we stop?
Mythic numbers continue to bleed, such that our own players are reluctant now to play. The woes of many guilds I'm sure.
Aza has often said he doesn't like playing with unknown people, and after last night, he said he didn't want to raid anymore. We had 5 non guildies in the group (non Onineko and non Frostwolves) and I thought they were all good and we managed to get 3 bosses down, but we also had 2 new guildies promoted to mythic so we have to help gear them up also. He wasn't enjoying it and I don't blame him. I like having our own guild to play with!
Server issues with login difficulties were plaguing us, which often happens after a patch - even a minor launcher patch. Fortunately it was pretty much fixed by the time we got to raid time, but then we had Dan have some strange issues with Telstra where apparently he didn't pay his internet/phone bills and was subsequently forced to play tethered to his phone.
Deidria and Splatz were our new initiates into mythic and they did ok. These were easy bosses though but at least we finished the 3 easy ones. I would really like to get further as it's frustrating to people to try to get places and then not get far at all. Splatz was naughty and did NOT have Exorsus (even though I told him to get it last week) but we marked his spot and he somehow coped.
There were too many healers, much to my chagrin. It meant I had to DPS and my DPS is absolutely
WOEFUL. It was embarrassing to have to DPS in front of PuGs, and ONE OF THE PUGS was a mythic geared boomkin as mainspec... ugh. Absolutely mortifying. I moaned about it and then my guildies teased me about it. I actually enjoy being teased about it, despite my complaining.
I think at this stage I only have 9 guildies I can count on to raid - which would be Kyxyn, Aimei, Bish, myself, Sev, Voe, Koda, Dan, Lushen. Rag and Yuuda are possibles (they almost count as one person because frequently one is missing), and Crooked will come if needed, but I will always try to spare him if possible. Now we have Deidria and Splatz coming that brings us to 12 with Crooked as an emergency.
Peggy, Nez and Angry are the three that so far keep coming to mythic. That makes 15. Nez is away this week so that put us back a bit.
That means we have to consistently find 5 people. Fortunately for me this week Nostalgic wasn't raiding, but I will go help them when we aren't doing mythic. One of the PuGs I got was a warrior from Jubei'thos, and he was actually quite good and a fun guy. He apologised to me many times for stuffing up but I told him I wasn't not worried about that. As long as he had fun. He is keen to come again, which is good.
I also had a DK come as well, whose main was a paladin. Another 10/13M raider, it as nice that he came along.
Then we had Neuro, who was on his boomkin. He was a friend of Cinder (he is her co-host on their podcast Battletagged) and he was of course the best geared person there with damage to boot. There is no way that I wanted to do boomkin whilst he was there!
We kicked the raid off half an hour late, and then Assault went ok. Then we had Iron Reaver and a lot of bombs were going off. Ugh. But people focussed by the end and we were better. Then onto Kormrok.
Now this was interesting. We usually go green pool then orange pool, and have rogues and hunters getting the empoweredruins runes. However we had no rogues and one hunter so that was not a viable option. Kyxyn decided to try something different which was green pool then purple pool, which meant blobs would come.
Voe went on and and on about how easy it was. And I admit now, it was nice because it was something each person could control themselves rather than depend on the rune runners to get. However, Kyxyn didn't like it, and we had issues with tanks dying, so we ended up 5 healing it and on the last attempt we managed to get it. Phew.
After the raid Kyxyn wanted to have a chat. He was a bit demoralised by the attendance and the waiting and the dragging we had to do to get people to come. He was thinking perhaps we should stop doing mythics, and I can see why, but we still have the possibility to go further. People are expressing interest, and I think next week we will have a full group again. I really need to improve my DPS if I want to be useful to the raid, because we have a lot of healers at the moment.
Though it looks like a step backwards, people need to look at what we are getting. It is unreasonable to think that new entrants into the group will be as smooth and slick as those of us who have done it 10 times already. They will need gear and practice with the mechanics. Once they get it, we will advance. Both Deidria and Splatz are fast learners, and just need some tweaking with gear and raid awareness.
And yes having outsiders coming to the raid is also not ideal, but what if they are nice people? Walach was keen to come again, and I told Neuro that he could bring his mage next time, since his boomkin was overgearing what we were doing, and there was some concern with him bringing a lesser geared toon. But can't people see that there is nothing to be gained for him doing these bosses he had done 30+ times already? He knows the mechanics so it should be easy for him, and so he will unlikely die to mechanics but DPS will improve as gear improves. And if he brings a different toon there is a benefit for him - not everyone wants to come and help out of pure goodness and kindness of their heart! Sometimes I wish people would see beyond the numbers and look at the quallity of the raider and them doing mechanics - I saw that with Thor last week. But that's why I am the guild leader I suppose. Someone has to see the diamonds in the rough, and at least I will have the final say in the decision making.
If the group remains consistent, then we will get bosses down. I am not sure if we can do 2 days ever again, but if we do, then we might actually get somewhere. Patience is key. And fortunately for the guild I have that quality in spades.
We kicked the raid off half an hour late, and then Assault went ok. Then we had Iron Reaver and a lot of bombs were going off. Ugh. But people focussed by the end and we were better. Then onto Kormrok.
Now this was interesting. We usually go green pool then orange pool, and have rogues and hunters getting the empowered
Voe went on and and on about how easy it was. And I admit now, it was nice because it was something each person could control themselves rather than depend on the rune runners to get. However, Kyxyn didn't like it, and we had issues with tanks dying, so we ended up 5 healing it and on the last attempt we managed to get it. Phew.
After the raid Kyxyn wanted to have a chat. He was a bit demoralised by the attendance and the waiting and the dragging we had to do to get people to come. He was thinking perhaps we should stop doing mythics, and I can see why, but we still have the possibility to go further. People are expressing interest, and I think next week we will have a full group again. I really need to improve my DPS if I want to be useful to the raid, because we have a lot of healers at the moment.
Though it looks like a step backwards, people need to look at what we are getting. It is unreasonable to think that new entrants into the group will be as smooth and slick as those of us who have done it 10 times already. They will need gear and practice with the mechanics. Once they get it, we will advance. Both Deidria and Splatz are fast learners, and just need some tweaking with gear and raid awareness.
And yes having outsiders coming to the raid is also not ideal, but what if they are nice people? Walach was keen to come again, and I told Neuro that he could bring his mage next time, since his boomkin was overgearing what we were doing, and there was some concern with him bringing a lesser geared toon. But can't people see that there is nothing to be gained for him doing these bosses he had done 30+ times already? He knows the mechanics so it should be easy for him, and so he will unlikely die to mechanics but DPS will improve as gear improves. And if he brings a different toon there is a benefit for him - not everyone wants to come and help out of pure goodness and kindness of their heart! Sometimes I wish people would see beyond the numbers and look at the quallity of the raider and them doing mechanics - I saw that with Thor last week. But that's why I am the guild leader I suppose. Someone has to see the diamonds in the rough, and at least I will have the final say in the decision making.
If the group remains consistent, then we will get bosses down. I am not sure if we can do 2 days ever again, but if we do, then we might actually get somewhere. Patience is key. And fortunately for the guild I have that quality in spades.
One of the main problems I find as raid leader/organiser, is trying not to be unduly influenced by one or two individuals. I've found in the past that most people are just happy coming along, having fun, doing their thing and going with the flow, but you'll have one or two who aren't "go with the flow" people.
ReplyDeleteThey're not looking to cause problems - they're actually trying to help (which is why it is then difficult to sort this type of "help" from the actual helpful help!) - but they'll be the ones who are quick to give up, or say things aren't working, or say there is a problem with the dps (or the healers, or the tanks) which is causing wipes ...
I'm not a very good raid leader - I heal as well so often I'm trying to keep people alive (sometimes this is a good thing, because I can see who keeps TRYING to die!) but it means I often miss how people react to certain mechanics, and I find it difficult to call out stuff that needs to be called out. However - I'm generally positive - if I can see that we're making PROGRESS on a fight, however small, then that is a good sign. I'm happy to take suggestions as long as they have a good reason and are based on what is actually going on, but not keen on the "perhaps we need more healers, because people keep dying" complaints, when quite obviously (to me) people are dying because THEY'RE STANDING IN FIRE!!
Recently we'd been struggling to get numbers for our second raid night. Our main raid night is a Wednesday and, for example last night, we had 15 sign up with a few more in the wings. Admittedly one couldn't get online because of problems with the login servers, but we still started on time with 15 people which, for us, is a good turnout at this point in the expansion (we do heroic/normal).
But Friday, our second night, we tend to struggle to get 10, never mind more, and have to resort to twisting arms, begging and fluttering eyelashes - and even then (or perhaps because!) we sometimes have to cancel. So a few people said that perhaps we were doing it on the wrong night. I didn't believe it was - we'd done a poll a while back and, traditionally, Friday has been our second-best night for raiding. However, in the end I put a poll up on our site, and asked people to vote. Which didn't really help because it was fairly even across the nights I'd be likely to put a raid up for (notwithstanding that a couple who voted didn't even raid!!).
So then I ended up testing the waters by putting up actual raids on different nights - Saturday last week was a complete bust .. only 4 I think it was (including myself) signed up. We have tonight which is looking more promising - but it still doesn't have a full 10 signed up so I may have to twist arms.
Which leads us back to Friday again :p
Sometimes people have the best of intentions but, if you let yourself influenced by them then you can open up a whole new can of worms :p
For example .. those people who are enjoying raiding with you now .. are they happy to stick around without any guild raiding until the next expansion? I know a lot of guilds HAVE stopped raiding now - but I also know that some of them have either shut up shop completely, and everyone has left, or they're losing people slowly as they drift off to find something to do elsewhere.
Having said that .. you don't want to put raids up, and then have to keep cancelling them. That just causes bad morale.
The alternative is to do something else - if you think you're done with Mythics, you could run heroics on alts - and/or try for achievements - or do Mythics on the previous raids with less than 20 (can you do that?)
It's always nice to hear your perspective Sprowt. It makes for good reading :)
ReplyDeleteWe also tried a few different days, but Wednesdays seems to be our best day. It's just the mythic day we struggle with, we have tons of people turn up for the alt Heroic HFC day. We did alt heroic HFC yesterday and we had 22 turn up and it was fun, I don't even think people minded the wipes so much. It would have been nice to do Archi that day though!
Those in the guild now are happy to stick around in the guild without any raiding till the expansion - I tend not to recruit people who are in it just for raiding, mostly seem to pick up socials who are looking for a home they can be part of. And it's cancelling raids which is depressing. You're right, it's bad for morale.
LOL about alts heroics and achieves - we have done that (bar mythic Blackhand which is actually a little bit hard when you're with a bunch of casual players!). We have also finished mythic everything else in WoD! I'm glad we think alike, except I need some other idea to keep things going LOL