Killing Time
Another lengthy post and not enough no pretty pictures. TLDR: /whine, as a raid group we need to clean up our act, /whine. But scroll through and check out the links.
That’s what raiding has more or less come to mean for me. And I don’t mean killing in the sense of filling time before something important, but, rather, making it deadified and useless. Last night was our Kara run, started 45 minutes late (as usual) and ran an hour late (as usual). Perhaps I’m just crazy, but we have start times and end times for a reason: so that people know how to fit the raid into their schedule. For some people that really matters, and I’m one of them!
We also started the raid invites and had four tanks and no healers. Kara needs two tanks. We had four. I have to admit curiosity on how we ended up with four. the KaraT2 MT was on, as expected, the KaraT2 OT (supposedly me) on, the prot paladin who OTs when she shows up was on, and an arena-spec DPS warrior had respecced prot and was on. WTF?! We have so many tanks already, why would you give up a pretty guaranteed DPS spot (as one of two dps warriors) to join the tank corps which, at a quick count, is over 10 people!
I switched to my resto shaman and healed through Maiden, then swapped to my shadow priest to DPS/shackle the skeletons before Opera, then stayed in because the Resto Shaman that we picked up was freakin’ awesome and was solo healing just fine. Got Big Bad Wolf, I died immediately (hint: pulling while someone is still buffing and they get turned into Red Riding Hood = splatted spriest), then a mage died pretty quickly, too. The six people still not disconnected and alive finished it out and we disenchanted two epics, yay!
At a quick personal rundown, the only character I have any real interest in endgame got 0/16000 Violet Eye rep needed for exalted, 0/10 badges for the Waistguard of the Great Beast (I think that’s right), Edgewalker Longboots didn’t drop anyway. My shaman, resto for the moment, got the Bracers of the White Stag (a solid upgrade for her healing set) and 7 badges that will be unused, and my Shadow Priest got two badges that will be unused. This is worth my time, right?
To make this something other than just whining, I have to categorize problems and offer constructive suggestions for improving, yeah? Okay:
- Raid time: starting nearly an hour late is wasteful of everyone’s time. If the time or the night doesn’t work, which is consistently the case, we need to change that. If the run needs to be nine to midnight, change it so I’m not jumping in front of Karazhan no one is standing around while they could be doing something useful.
- Raid leadership: the team needs a Raid Leader, recently it has shuffled around a bit. A position of responsibility and little reward, I admit, but someone needs to be in charge, needs to be getting the right group composition, one person doing invites, etc. My personal experience finds the MT to be good for that role, as they are generally the person most responsible for the pulling and pacing, anyway, though it need not be. Our MT doesn’t seem to want the job and doesn’t talk
on vent, so I don’t think he would be best. But someone, and someone knowledgeable about Karazhan needs to do it. I would, but I’m an asshole and no one would like it. - Raid composition: Four tanks does not work. Four physical tanks is used for a couple of fights in 25 man content, right? Not Karazhan. Zero healers is a bad, bad thing. On balance, we need to recruit healers and some of our tanks need to be told “no.” Most of them have other level 70 alts and could do the run on another class. If we feel it necessary to have this many tanks and have them all active as raiders, we need to rotate through them (OT-MT-dps/alt-dps/alt) so that
no one tank is always relegated to an alt or a role they are not interested in. This is where the raid and guild leadership needs to think about priorities. If we have teams that are mean to be working
as teams, the rosters need to be consistent. Consistent groups mean better groups. Playing tank roulette is not going to further progression. - Gear: We don’t have any gear requirements at all. This has meantsome people who are very undergeared have been coming to Kara, and, ok,this isn’t always a big deal, but some of these people don’t seem to bedoing much to improve their gear level but in Karazhan. This is disrespectful. Most of the guild has spent their time in level 70instances and battlegrounds and heroics to get the gear they need to be competitive in their role. For people to be joining the raid and not be doing that… disrespectful. Slower runs, more durability loss,more wipes. The guild hasn’t been big on organizing gearing runs, but the LFG tool is in WoW for a reason-use it. Gear issues lead us to:
- Loot: Basically we do a loot council kind of system. Whoever gets the best upgrade out of an item gets it as, in theory, this buffs the raid the most. There are some issues with this. The people who
spend a ton of time working on their own to get solid gear are going to have better gear than those who don’t, and therefore got smaller upgrades from drops, if they even get upgrades and often then do not get the drops they are looking for. I don’t inherently favor DKP (I really like suicide kings), but the system we have does not work and penalizes the better geared player. Loot council could work if there really was a “team” of ten people who were all progressing though
this content at the same level and it was theorycrafted out, but “Well, it’s more of an upgrade for” without serious looking at specs and gear sets and gearing the core of the raid fails. To quote a quote (via the Pugnacious Priest: “and to quote someone else’s blog ( no idea whose, sorry) If the item was that much of an upgrade for them that it took priority over everyone else, then they didn’t belong there”
Back to the personal level, I’m at the point where I don’t think it’s worth it. For a whole bunch of reasons, I’m not having a good time in these raids. Except when I’m tanking. I’d really like to be main tanking, but it seems my tanking skills are unregarded by my guild mates and I end up DPSing while crittable tanks
(a pairing that should not exist in raid content) are on the mobs. SuraBear wrote a good piece about this, though it sounds like his guild wants him to tank (/target SuraBear /bow) but I think he really summarizes the issue for feral tanks well: “Now, don’t misread this. I can do DPS. I can do pretty good DPS, as a matter of fact. I just dont particularly WANT to.”
So, I’m not sure if I even plan on logging on for night two. I have to take Lushere on the off chance the T4 gloves drop and on the off chance that I get them. And on the off chance that the few other things I want might drop. Hanging out on Ralendra and leveling and begging to join the Sidhe Devils sounds like a whole lot more fun, though. i r conflicted.
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Wow, ten tanks? I’m pretty jealous, actually. But you do seem to be having the problem many groups have: not enough healers.
Something I’ve wondered: Do you have forum sign ups? Our guild makes sign ups, with a requirement for an MT, and OT, three healers and five dps. We also split Kara into two nights. The first night is where we want the undergeared people to come; those bosses are easier and supported by the main people they can do really well and get some upgrades. The second night is where we want the geared people to come and maybe one or two undergeared people who have proven they can overcome it, because we need them to get those bosses down. This has an advantage of giving newer people access to Kara gear, while at the same time reserving the end half of the instance (with the arguably better loot) for people who have been raiding a while and improving their gear.
Bellwether’s last blog post..Anzu and Utilizing the Spirits; a Healing Guide
Having counted, ten was a little low. We have about 14, though only 6 or so are “active.” We don’t have forum sign-ups. I wish we did, but the theory is that we have a team of ten people that’s supposed to be running the instance, with a few alternates in case someone can’t make it. Since, this doesn’t happen, and we have a hard time even getting ten people on at the raid time, it gets thrown together with whoever is available and this usually doesn’t work out too well. Much of it, yes, is healer shortage (we have maybe 6, of which 1 is active on their healer, and another 2 or 3 with well-geared healer alts).
We also do kara on two nights. I don’t mind lesser geared people filling in the first night, but by the time we’re hitting try 6 on Curator, I have to wonder why they’re in night 2 of the raid. This is our Team2 (team1 has decided to focus on ZA) so it’s not expected we clear Kara. We can, I know we can, but we’d have to organize much better and tell some people “no” for night 2. I don’t think the guild leadership is interested in doing that.