Gear and Planning Frustrations

One of the big advantages of playing a tank class is that you tend to get first pick of gear, often over everyone else. It's a perk I've enjoyed greatly in the prior tiers. Because of that, and along with a dose of good luck the last few tiers, I have tended to be the kind of player who prattles on incessantly and selfishly about missing that one or another upgrade, when all the rest of my gear is already perfect and everyone is still fishing for drops.

However, that streak ended this tier. Boss drops and coin rolls have been abysmal, and I'm floundering in the high 540s, after upgrading all my gear, despite having killed normal mode bosses in SoO 55 fucking times and rolling all my coins every week. The other raid members are well into their mid to high 550s and I'm floundering like some pathetic, beached fish flopping desperate and sucking empty gills for gear.

I know gear will come, and having a second plate tank and a plate DPS also slows the rate of gear acquisition, but right now, it's frustrating when I find myself biting it while tanking wave after wave of Garrosh adds and just not being able to stand up as well as I should. The rest of the raid is geared and I'm not, and in my role, that's limiting the raid group a bit.

Wah. Wah. Wah. I'm done QQing now.

A more serious thing that's frustrating is the raid-composition we're running with. It's a bit hodge-podge, with no less than 4 Paladins, up to 2 Priest, and maybe a Warlock. And then we have 2 rogues, 2 hunters, and a shaman. Can you guess what token hasn't dropped but maybe 3 times all tier long? We also wind up missing a raid-buff frequently, and while normal modes don't really require all buffs at all times, if we're pushing to progress in Heroics, it's something I would consider for comp very closely.

And that's another thing, we often spend so much time actually building comp before every boss rather than raiding, we easily miss out on at least one if not two extra boss kills a night. To be fair, we did have a pretty decent clear on Tuesday with 11 normal mode bosses down in 3 hours,  but that could have been much better. We started about 15 minutes late, ran about 15 minutes late, and also spend another half hour or so in downtime between bosses as the officers hem'd and haw'd about who to bring and who to sit. A roster of 12 or 13 is starting to feel a bit overfull, especially when the roster isn't particularly diverse in terms of token-distribution.

But. I don't really blame the officers here, either. The guild is in a situation where attendance isn't as good, we frequently have DPS missing raid or showing up half-way through, and due to the nature of raiding and loot in the group, there are no possible repercussions that you can dole out. And you really don't want to shrink the roster, and potentially wind up with not enough people to raid (there have been nights with only 10 people online), so what do you do? It's not an easy situation.

When I was running Turtles, one of the ways we were able to really improve attendance was by implementing a Suicide Kings system, where absent members didn't rise through the ranks, people Suicided above them. That was a real motivation to be at raid, if you wanted loot. But I don't know, I'm also feeling like we squander a lot of time, we killed 11 bosses in 3 hours and then took 2 hours to clean up Siegecrafter and Paragons. Part of that was starting a half-hour late.

Maybe it's my age, but if I'm putting out 9 hours out of my really busy week, I really want a well-organized, well-oiled machine in a raid. Very little down-time, a single, organized break half-way though and very quick swaps for comp (ideally, from preplanned and posted rosters).

I just don't know what the problem is. It's a combination of things without an easy solution, and I'm just frustrated. Bah.

The Encounter Journal Has Killed Raiding (Not)

With the Encounter Journal coming out, and every boss ability laid out, bare and squirming, for all the PvE guilds to dissect and build strategies around, the raiding game is done, right? All that's left is execution. Might as well stop raiding now. Right?

Well... 

Problem Solved

As might be clear from my posting habits, out little guild is a friendly, cozy little place. Generally speaking, we're a warm, inviting, and very open group that embraces new members and will quickly assimilate people and their quirks and jokes and such into our own group. In the seven-odd months of our existence, those that don't fit in generally slip away quietly and quickly in the midst of the night and I generally don't go chasing after them.

By now, those who're going to stick around, do so, through thick or thin. We've had members stick with us through the really really difficult time from August till now when putting raids together has been absolutely brutal, when teams fluctuated almost weekly, and progress just about crawled to a stand-still. About a month or so ago, we had a tiny infusion of fresh blood and it really pushed us back into gear and we finally started making some progress, especially as 4.0.1 dropped and excitement crept back in.

However, some of this new blood also brought in its own problems.

This member was really informed, knowledgeable, generous with their information, a good player, filled a class need, but... there was a feeling that this person maybe belonged in another guild somewhere. They were obsessed with their position on Recount, being knowledgeable they had very strong opinions about things, and constantly contradicted their own expectations of raiders with their personal behavior.

My problem with this person generally only extended to their behavior in raids and we spoke to this person a couple of times, but here is where our guild structure causes a bit of an issue. Because we're so friendly and the line between officers and members is so thin, when situations for corrections and discipline come up, authority isn't really established outside of raids. It makes having these discussions more difficult, but I took it up as an officer, and I thought I had made myself clear about my expectation of this person's behavior.

It worked for a couple of weeks, but then, last night, it all came screaming back in high-velocity. So much so, that an argument broke out in GChat at one point, and while I was forcefully retaining my impulsive GKick button the person spared me the guilt and GQuit themselves.

Things immediately restored themselves back to normal. I threw a tiny fit in my head about loosing ANOTHER geared, trained raider but the peace of mind that followed their absence was worth the price. The tragic thing is, I liked this person quite a bit, and had it not been for their behavior and epeening, we could have enjoyed a long and healthy relationship.

Ego can be a big thing in games, and I understand it's a rush to be at the top of the heap and it stings to be at the bottom, but:

1. I don't need you to flash Recount every time you do well
2. I don't need you to make excuses when you aren't
3. I don't need you to blame everyone and everything else but yourself when you die
4. Sometimes, the Healers choose tanks over you and you wind up dying, so deal with it
5. Dying to mechanics you fail to execute does not mean the mechanic is bugged
   
6. You might have been top DPS because you sat on the boss, but the people who actually switched over to the adds saved the fight
7. Please don't correct me, and then when you're proven wrong, feign acute memory loss

If you're in a raid and find that you're suffering from a feeling of being the Outsider, check the above list and if you do any of the things on it, the problem might be you, not the raid.