Raiding Theory - Page 9

Arantes · 03/31/09, 12:53 AM

Originally Posted by Sharajat

I don't know. Certainly as the debuff continues stacking, the adds get nastier and nastier. Maybe the OT judged that he was too undergeared to take an add until KT was nearing dead and the debuff was building up on OT 1, because otherwise the debuff would stack too high on him.

I was not there, I can't judge the situation at all. All I know is that if the Raid leader is scared to compliment people, that's bad. If the raid leader doesn't compliment me, well, I evaluate my performance after each boss. I know how it was. If I did good, I did good. I usually have aspects I can improve, I track it and try to improve.

Or maybe the OT was attacked by aliens from the planet Stbonr. If you want to add facts to an anecdote you can create your own - there's a big difference between trying to understand every side of what happened and making unwarranted assumptions.

As you said you were not there, I tried to clarify the situation simply to make a point clearer. There are some things I agree with you on and others I do not. For one, the point stands - if you compliment x or y for doing a good job, make sure you don't sound like a fool who completely misread the situation.

Your approach of not caring whether x or y did better than is fine but does not reflect the reality of most groups of raiders, particularly competitive ones. You seem to be taking some of my comments, which were meant as just an addition to a long thread of bullet points raids need to consider, rather personally almost.

Also - more in line with adding to this thread but still as a response to your post - being an officer does not require ranking players in your guild. You can, for example, set a standard and simply make sure everyone meets that standard, there's no need to compare one player to another if everyone performs there roles and has the right attitude.

This goes back to my example - and in the end maybe you're simply confused cause you've never seen this, but quite simply someone got rewarded for NOT doing their job properly while the person who consistently goes above and beyond was passed over for that same reward. Sure, here the reward is small - simply a compliment - but this could be analogized to loot councils rewarding the wrong people or assigning roles to people less capable of performing them.

Perhaps this is not relevant to the highest level, or perhaps I chose a poor situation to clearly illustrate a larger point, at any rate, I fail to see how it can be a bad idea to make an effort to make sure that rewards, whether as small as a compliment or as great as a legendary, be assigned to those who earn it or at least do what is expected of them, as opposed to those who perform poorly.

Qaenyin · 03/31/09, 7:42 AM

Originally Posted by supplicium

Oh hmm I like that system a lot. Too many guilds (mine included, not that I'm an officer) run like the elite raider rank style and than other raiders. With the system you outlined Your lootcouncil dkp system sounds very nice, I'll have to propose it in our loot system overhaul. Do you find most people get around the same bid with a blind system, or are the bids all over the map? Thats what always bugged me about blind bids especially on minor upgrades. Do you have a min price for all items or is it what ever is fair?

Another thing that in my opinion needs to be viewed as important is things like primary vs offspecs.

Had this issue on one raid(only came up once, though, so didn't bug me much). Fire Scorched Greathelm dropped. I was our guild's third tank for 25 mans(meaning I only tanked mobs on 3 drake sarth and 4h, and was backup on KT in case our offtank got MC'd). I rolled, but since I'm considered a tank, since I do tank every raid(even if it's only for one fight), I had to call offspec. Our prot warrior main tank also called offspec. We rolled, I lost. I've had mixed feelings on that particular ruling, mainly because I was dpsing(and had to respec for dps) at least once a run, whereas the warrior was 24/7 prot, and our maintank(and therefore never raided as anything except prot. I don't think he even pvped or did anything as non-prot). To my knowledge he never did use that helm, whereas I was packing only a Chitin Shell Greathelm at the time(a couple weeks later I ended up just getting a Spiked Titansteel Helm made since that helm never did drop again and I really needed the hit rating).

I always felt that I should have gotten priority on that helm, but I never did get a clear answer from the guild leader on whether I should be rolling dps mainspec and tank offspec or dps offspec tank mainspec(for the first couple raids I actually ended up rolling everything offspec because I didn't want to cross some line or another that I wasn't aware of). Maybe that's just me having loot envy though, since the warrior already had full best in slot tanking gear including last laugh, whereas both my tank and dps set had a few blue pieces sitting around.

Quick edit, since I don't think it was made totally clear:Point of my post is, what do you guys think rulings should be on offspecs used frequently in the raid vs offspecs that are not used in raids, should they all be considered offspecs or should the ones used in raids have priority(for example your protadin main tank getting to roll on healing gear against your ret paladin who actually ends up respeccing holy for some fights or something along those lines).

Calgar · 03/31/09, 9:06 AM

That's a tough spot, we have our feral druid in a similar situation. He obviously gets main spec bid on "tanking leather" but we make him off-spec bid on dps leather. He's brought it up that it isn't really fair to him, and i agree. It's even worse for plate tanks because you have rets, DKs, and dps warriors on the dps side, and prot pallys, warriors and dks on the tanking side and the gear is very distinct for dps/tank roles.

Sadly, in terms of over all guild progression you are better off passing everything to everyone else (that has equal or better attendance of course, no point in giving gear to a 20% attendance pally when you will be using it more then he will) as they will get more use out of any individual piece then you will.

Tel · 03/31/09, 9:16 AM

With regards the issues you guys are having around offspec, something we found to work for us was to apply a nominal gold fee for offspec items (currently it's 150g an item). Now this may not seem much, but what it does is stop people just rolling 'because they can', and make them think 'am i going to get 150g worth of use out of this item'.

The gold obviously goes into Guild Bank, and is used for guild repairs / flasks etc so everyone benefits - some get cheap (compared to AH) offspec gear, and the rest get free repairs.

Since going down this route, we've found that the people bidding are now those serious about raiding/pvping/doing heroics as their offspec, meaning the gear isn't wasted, and people aren't picking it up to store in their bank because its 'free'.

Edit: Regarding Offspecs used in raids vs Offspecs not used in raids - If you're in a raiding guild, then i think it should go without saying that the Offspec that gets used in raids takes priority. At least thats how my guilds members work it (we have no rule in place to enforce this, but 99.9% of the time people will pass for the person who gets most use our of an item).

MatsT · 03/31/09, 10:14 AM

Originally Posted by Qaenyin

Quick edit, since I don't think it was made totally clear:Point of my post is, what do you guys think rulings should be on offspecs used frequently in the raid vs offspecs that are not used in raids, should they all be considered offspecs or should the ones used in raids have priority(for example your protadin main tank getting to roll on healing gear against your ret paladin who actually ends up respeccing holy for some fights or something along those lines).

You also have to consider the fact that if the 3rd and 2nd tank gets priority on dps items over the 1st tank, it will become virtually impossible for him to ever get any pvp/dps gear. As a former 1st tank, I can say it's very frustrating to always have to pass on items because "Well he dpses sometimes..." even when I am twice as active as them.

What it comes down to in the end is whether or not he gets priority on tank items over you since he's the 1st tank. If he does, then you should probably have priority on dps loot over him. If not, it wouldn't really be fair to him. If you are really only tanking on one fight per raid, a good solution might be to have your main specc be dps but give you priority over other dps/healers on tanking items that are more than minor upgrades.

In general these kind of questions are really hard for outsiders to answer for you. Since every guild has different goals you have to figure out your own set of guidelines. If your goal is to be the world's best raiding guild, you should distribute each item only to maximize the raid's efficiency, even if this means giving the 1st tank 14 tanking items before the 2nd tank gets his first. If you just have 1 progression raid per week and care more about fairness and people being happy, that solution would obviously not be very good.

thalys · 03/31/09, 10:55 AM

Originally Posted by Sharajat

I don't know. Certainly as the debuff continues stacking, the adds get nastier and nastier. Maybe the OT judged that he was too undergeared to take an add until KT was nearing dead and the debuff was building up on OT 1, because otherwise the debuff would stack too high on him.

The beauty of this response is that it perfectly illustrates the problem with not criticizing mistakes, and praising where it isn't warranted by performance above the norm.

Blood tap is a self-cast buff, not a targeted debuff. The OT would be *wrong* to think that way.

I don't think you proved what you meant to prove here.

Jezele · 03/31/09, 11:32 AM

Originally Posted by Soulplague

I was wondering if there's a "standard" way of reducing DKP in this situation? The people who have suggested the balancing are those at the top, so they are in favour of being brought down somewhat. It wouldn't be fair to completely wipe all DKP however.

Towards the end of BC, we were having huge inflation issues due to stagnation in our progression (no new loot from bosses we were having trouble with and sharding a majority of items from bosses we had on farm). At one point, our highest DKP totals were well over 1,000 DKP, which is pretty daunting for any new recruits coming into the guild. We used an escalating system to help curb inflation (e.g. Kara loot cost 10 DKP, SSC/TK loot cost 20 DKP, etc.), but the lack of items to bid on became a serious problem.

We contemplated using a periodic tax system (something like 10% of DKP at the end of every month), but that was hugely unpopular - folks are attached to their DKP totals and a tax feels like they're somehow getting punished, even though that's hardly the point of the tax.

The solution we came up with for WoTLK (as we wanted to continue using DKP) was to move to a percentage-based system for determining the price of items. Currently, tier items cost 50% of your DKP total, whereas other epics cost 40%. We also employ a need/greed system, with all need bids having priority over greed, but if there are no need bids, the highest greed DKP wins for 1/2 the cost (25% and 20% of current total). The advantage of this system is that it inherently controls inflation and also discourages point hoarding (you save up 200 DKP to ensure you're going to win that one item, it'll cost you 80 DKP, whereas someone who bids often may pick up five or six upgrades for the same cost). This system has worked well for us so far as it gives a priority to our most frequent raiders (we don't have an attendance requirement), but still allows new folks to be competitive.

One change we're making for 3.1 is to move to three tiers: need for main spec, need for off spec, and then greed. That allows players to get a little bit of priority for major upgrades to their off spec, but ensures that it's not at the expense of a main.

Crytz · 03/31/09, 12:39 PM

Originally Posted by MatsT

You also have to consider the fact that if the 3rd and 2nd tank gets priority on dps items over the 1st tank, it will become virtually impossible for him to ever get any pvp/dps gear.

In the current raiding environment, I don't think this is much of an issue at all. Even if a prot warrior MT never gets a single piece of dps gear off a boss in 25-man raids, he still has chances every week for 10-man gear, badges for badge gear and tier tokens, and daily resets on heroic gear. I know I stopped regularly raiding 25-man content on my resto druid in the end of January, and I have decent, full sets for both offspecs with only having gotten a few pieces (idols - woot!) from 25-man raids.

Sharajat · 03/31/09, 2:49 PM

Originally Posted by thalys

The beauty of this response is that it perfectly illustrates the problem with not criticizing mistakes, and praising where it isn't warranted by performance above the norm.

Blood tap is a self-cast buff, not a targeted debuff. The OT would be *wrong* to think that way.

I don't think you proved what you meant to prove here.

Wow, you picked on one part of a long post in which I already explained I don't know certain mechanics, and jumped on me for it. You know, this is exactly what peeves me about the blizzard forums, people will take one line out of context and jump all over it. Well, you found one line, now have a cookie.

My points were, quite simple

*Compliments are the most intangible thing you can imagine. Don't assume your raid leader is stupid because YOU would have complimented a different person, or criticized someone for something that isn't their fault. There was blame to be assigned when the MT died, but the OFF TANKS are definitely one of the few parties that can't possibly be blamed. Therefore, trust your raid leader in simple situations. If everytime a raid leader compliments someone, you look for who might have done better, then you are the problem element. In the above example, OT 2 did nothing blameworthy, and overall did an acceptable job. As I said before (and no one has disagreed with) if you're going to play the blame game, start elsewhere when an MT is eating concrete.
*FFS stop worrying about who is doing what, and start trying to do your job better.
*If you are wondering why a raid leader did something TALK TO YOUR RAID LEADER! Preferably at some random point where you're both prospecting gems in IF or something instead of 4 seconds after KT dies.
*Seriously, anyone who prefers to tear others down rather than improve themselves is a waste of a guild spot. Period, the end.

Boytaur · 03/31/09, 3:22 PM

Originally Posted by Sharajat

*FFS stop worrying about who is doing what, and start trying to do your job better.
*Seriously, anyone who prefers to tear others down rather than improve themselves is a waste of a guild spot. Period, the end.

I have to say I disagree with you here. Let me give a concrete example:

A month or so ago we were working on 3 drake and a raid member was AOEing the fire adds while Tenebron was down, even before the whelps spawned. Maybe he didn't understand the encounter or was trying to pad the dps meter, who knows. Our raid leader is also the drake tank; he has enough to deal with and didn't notice this. Now, should I "stop worrying about what he is doing, and start trying to do my job better" ? I guess I could worry about the tiny dps I could have lost by not optimally refreshing/clipping my dots while moving to avoid lava waves, but compared to losing 3K DPS from a member not attacking the right thing, it is not even worth thinking about.

You may prefer to concentrate on your individual performance and that's fine, but others like to see the big picture.

supplicium · 03/31/09, 3:29 PM

Boytaur While I agree with what you are saying, I think what Sharajat is getting at is this.

Assume people are doing their job correctly. If they are doing something wrong by all means speak up, but if you are just unsure of what they are doing, assume they know and it's on the level.

Arantes · 03/31/09, 3:37 PM

Originally Posted by supplicium

Boytaur While I agree with what you are saying, I think what Sharajat is getting at is this.

Assume people are doing their job correctly. If they are doing something wrong by all means speak up, but if you are just unsure of what they are doing, assume they know and it's on the level.

This I agree with and again I apologize for making an unclear and incomplete analogy in my first post. But Sharajat assumes too much if he assumes healing was not dealt with separately and so on; the whole point was that an officer (not the raid leader as Sharajat seems to have misread) made a conscious decision to offer a reward, sure it was a small reward, just boosting someone's ego, but he chose poorly - officers have a responsibility to understand the big picture (perhaps not the biggest picture, but whatever they are in charge of) and to get it right and when you so clearly get it wrong you introduce a negative element into how people relate to each other.

Sharajat · 03/31/09, 6:14 PM

Originally Posted by Arantes

This I agree with and again I apologize for making an unclear and incomplete analogy in my first post. But Sharajat assumes too much if he assumes healing was not dealt with separately and so on; the whole point was that an officer (not the raid leader as Sharajat seems to have misread) made a conscious decision to offer a reward, sure it was a small reward, just boosting someone's ego, but he chose poorly - officers have a responsibility to understand the big picture (perhaps not the biggest picture, but whatever they are in charge of) and to get it right and when you so clearly get it wrong you introduce a negative element into how people relate to each other.

I did indeed misread, I thought it was the raid leader, not an officer. It still doesn't change my general point - under no circumstances can you accuse OT 2 of having done something like 'not attack Tenebron.'

To offer another 3D analogy, lets say that one of your mages suddenly starts AOEing fire adds while Vesperon is down even though only 3 are up. After a while he stops and goes back to DPSing Vesperon. What was he doing? Well, chances are he wasn't padding the meters, chances are he was intelligently reacting to Twilight Torment, and changing to a non-triggering action. Now maybe he chose the wrong time to do this. And maybe he AOEd for too long. And maybe he was in no risk and just prolonged Twilight Torment for no real reason.

Apply this to KT. OT 2 did not miss picking up his adds (an actual failure). He did not lose aggro on one of his adds (a pathetic failure). He did not stand in a void zone (an abject failure). He did not allow a mob that he was not supposed to tank to run around the raid ganking healers (a tanking failure). He noted the situation - OT 1 was tanking KT and 2 adds. The damage was not unhealable (reasonably obviously, OT 1 survived). Now maybe he had various reasons for not getting in range to taunt. You don't really know what they are. At a certain point (perhaps when he judged that OT 1 was getting into gib range of damage) he taunted to relieve the pressure.

Now maybe you would have taunted earlier. Maybe you would have grabbed KT instead of OT 1.

That's great, but OT 2 did not commit any failures during that run. He did not allow another off tank to tank an unhealable amount of adds, he did not allow adds to run about the raid (perhaps except for a few deaths after the MT death on KT, which seems virtually inevitable, all things considered). The worst he can really have been said to have done is act differently than you. I think supplicium grasped the essence of what I'm saying - leave these issues up to the officers/raid leader and the tanks involved.

Also, my final point - it's a compliment. If someone really thinks a compliment introduces negative social interaction (or god forbid, you're actually RIGHT and it DOES) then you have a TOTALLY DIFFERENT issue in your guild. It's not like someone said "Oh my god, that was great tanking OT 2, have a Betrayer of Humanity!"

I think I've said all I need to on this, so this is my last post on that subject, but I am literally shocked and disturbed that people consider a compliment a game-breaking acknowledgment. Everyone is blowing this a lot out of proportion here. This is how useless drama starts, and it's childish and unnecessary.

Arantes · 03/31/09, 8:27 PM

Originally Posted by Sharajat

Apply this to KT. OT 2 did not miss picking up his adds (an actual failure). He did not lose aggro on one of his adds (a pathetic failure). He did not stand in a void zone (an abject failure). He did not allow a mob that he was not supposed to tank to run around the raid ganking healers (a tanking failure). He noted the situation - OT 1 was tanking KT and 2 adds. The damage was not unhealable (reasonably obviously, OT 1 survived). Now maybe he had various reasons for not getting in range to taunt. You don't really know what they are. At a certain point (perhaps when he judged that OT 1 was getting into gib range of damage) he taunted to relieve the pressure.

Well I had to go back to my original post to double check this. The whole point was that OT2 did not do his job. Apparently you think OT2 picked up 2 adds. He did not, as I clearly stated he picked up 1 - you either assume he picked up 2 having distanced yourself from the post, or you skimmed over and missed that fact in the first place. OT2 was told to pick up 2 adds, picked up only one and made no effort to pick up his second add until KT was at 3%. Please do not assume additional facts here. It simply is what it is, OT2 did not do the job assigned to him despite being capable of doing so.

Also, my final point - it's a compliment. If someone really thinks a compliment introduces negative social interaction (or god forbid, you're actually RIGHT and it DOES) then you have a TOTALLY DIFFERENT issue in your guild. It's not like someone said "Oh my god, that was great tanking OT 2, have a Betrayer of Humanity!"

I think I've said all I need to on this, so this is my last post on that subject, but I am literally shocked and disturbed that people consider a compliment a game-breaking acknowledgment. Everyone is blowing this a lot out of proportion here. This is how useless drama starts, and it's childish and unnecessary.

I think you're blowing this out of proportion (partly because of misreading it). The point wasn't that a compliment is game-breaking but that rewards given for poor performance do more than just reward the person who played poorly. It's a responsibility that officers have to be aware of as leaders. I'll agree however that we've really gotten nowhere from my example and that's probably my fault more than anyone's perhaps for choosing something that I agree is ultimately not a big deal (a compliment). Rewarding people for poor performance is however how drama starts and both sides have a responsibility here - anyone who is upset has a responsibility to bring it up (which I did not address in this thread) and officers have a responsibility to be able to evaluate situations properly. Once that is done two good outcomes are likely - fixing the situation or leaving if you do not agree with the way it is handled. I suppose that's where this should have lead. Your ability to not read the post and assume facts not in evidence is a good example of what not to do and of how you can alienate yourself from people who otherwise agree with you by making unwarranted assumptions in defense of a situation you mis-characterize.

At any rate to the other readers here I apologize for being one of those posters who tend to fall into a trap of not expressing himself as he meant to at first and then feels forced to get it right with each reply.

Douglas · 04/01/09, 9:43 AM

Originally Posted by Arantes

...rewards given for poor performance do more than just reward the person who played poorly.

Boy howdy, you ain't just whistlin' dixie. The biggest example of that I know is when folks go out of their way to help someone who shows up in greens and poorly-chosen quest rewards, with no enchants and with empty gem sockets, to gear up. Sure, that person is ready to raid faster, but that can be extremely demotivating to the people who worked to gear up, and it can teach that person that what they were doing was okay.

solbergb · 04/01/09, 2:33 PM

Originally Posted by Eetabeetay

Our Raider rank is for people who make decent attendance, but aren't really consistent at putting out the dps or healing numbers they should be or they tend to die to things like void zones.

You do realize that by depriving the second rank raiders of loot will make even worse the lack of fight capability they get by simply not attending as often? It's a recursive cycle that will ensure they fall further and further behind....less performance earns them less gear, and less practice = more void zone type deaths.

There seems to be a real tendency to divide raid groups into "first team" and "second team", where the "first team" gets all the glasschewing, all the best drops and the second team only gets invited to fill in or for the "Easy stuff".

You get a very quick and major gap in capability (assuming the bulk of raiding both "teams" are doing is within the raid group/guild and nowhere else). The first team learns the fights better, because they were around when the raid was wiping on those fights and got dozens of tries each week for practice. So they don't die to stupid stuff and have the fights internalized well enough to focus on finetuning their role. They also rapidly get a significant gear advantage.

Of the two things, the gear is easiest to fix...do some farm runs and encourage your first team not to roll on anything that is only a marginal upgrade. But nothing helps the experience gap and it leads to a permanent perception of anyone who wasn't picked for the "first team" as inferior. Unlike in real sports, the only practice you get raiding is the raid itself, and if the "second team" is only doing the stuff on farm or doing substitution work to make scheduling happen, they're pretty much doing everything "cold", taking weeks to get the same institutional knowledge you get in an hour of wipes during the glasschewing phase.

I know that a lot of raid guilds function just fine with this kind of division, but it just seems destructive to me.

Nal · 04/01/09, 4:23 PM

Originally Posted by Calgar

Sadly, in terms of over all guild progression you are better off passing everything to everyone else (that has equal or better attendance of course, no point in giving gear to a 20% attendance pally when you will be using it more then he will) as they will get more use out of any individual piece then you will.

It needn't be all or nothing. You could give the person who makes most use of it priority some of the time. It needn't be a 100-0 split. And frankly, what has happened in the past isn't always a great indicator of what is likely to occur in the future. The guy you're heaping epics on via priority could quit/transfer tomorrow.

You're far better off spreading loot and performance opportunities around in the long run. You should never put your guild in a position such that losing 1-2 'key' players is an actual setback in terms of what you're able to down.

thalys · 04/01/09, 4:56 PM

Originally Posted by solbergb

You do realize that by depriving the second rank raiders of loot will make even worse the lack of fight capability they get by simply not attending as often? It's a recursive cycle that will ensure they fall further and further behind....less performance earns them less gear, and less practice = more void zone type deaths.

There seems to be a real tendency to divide raid groups into "first team" and "second team", where the "first team" gets all the glasschewing, all the best drops and the second team only gets invited to fill in or for the "Easy stuff".

This really isn't accurate, in terms of the results. There just isn't that big a gear gap, with most of Naxx, especially Naxx-10, being ridiculously simple for guilds who are at the level to exclude void zone magnets from their progression raids. Sure, if someone's doing 10% less DPS than the best geared DPS in the guild, they shouldn't be held back for failure to perform--but I think you're being obtuse if you read that into what was said. If someone's doing 30% less DPS, that's not a gear problem. Further, there are plenty of outdoor trash mobs that you can mess around with to practice getting out of the fire without wasting your fellow raiders' time and money. Content that is currently challenging your raid is not for practicing basic skills like avoiding the bad places to stand. There's lots of ways for someone to get themselves onto the "first team" even if they're behind on gear, if the guild is serious about bringing the best people.

Nor is it a recursive cycle, because they'll be at most one tier behind.

Some guilds exclude people for bad reasons, to be sure--but being excluded for failure to perform, in a guild where performance is explicitly deemed important to the guild's stated purpose, is not a bad reason. Nor is it a death sentence. The people for whom it is a death sentence were in the wrong guild anyway. The people who take it as a wakeup call, and either solve their own problems or get help solving them, are the ones you want to keep. On the other hand, if it's a casual guild that takes a few random shots at Sarth+2 once in a while, and the GL boots someone for allegedly dying in fire so he can give his 1500 DPS green machine mage girlfriend the raid slot, that would be an issue too.

solbergb · 04/01/09, 8:50 PM

So the basic problem is that the harder content has no equivalent you can "practice" on your own.

Where exactly will you learn how to deal with all the crap in Sarth3d except by doing the encounter enough times to "get it". It's not like there is an "Aces High" daily or Tears practice zone as there are in some of the other technical fights.

If it's on farm...you'll likely never "get it".

Our group cleared all the content from zero to Sarth3d in about 6 weeks. That's not the kind of group that gets server firsts but they're hardly incompetent.

The learning curve at least in our group for ranged dps seemed to be between 40-80 attempts before people reliably avoided waves, void zones, didn't clump for 11k+ damage meteors, didn't kill themselves in twilight torment, didn't stand somewhere that they'd encounter the wrong end of a drake, didn't lose pets and didn't pull aggro in the aoe phases and did high dps rotations until the third dragon dropped in spite of distractions. There was a direct correlation between the number of wipes people had participated in previously and how well they performed on any given day until they "got it" and they started both staying alive and doing something approaching "normal" performance for healers and dps. The personal "get it" number varied, although people with more raid experience sometimes had it "click" faster. Not always though.

It's easy to get that many attempts when the raid as a whole is taking 2-3 hours to get a kill, or is wiping 3 hours and then dropping back to 2 drakes to get a kill. Assuming you're rostered on the nights that's going on.

It's impossible to get that may attempts if it's on farm, where you see it exactly one time each week. It's hard if you aren't being rostered until the raid is getting it killed in 4-5 attempts, but might happen if you are rostered every week.

Most stuff wasn't that hard. Something like Heigan people "get" in 4-10 attempts, which you can actually learn on farm. Thaddeus is the same if raid dps is high, takes a few more attempts if most of the raid is in heroic blues and it's also a dps race. Malygos took a few more attempts. I think our group spent one night wiping on it, and then after that could reliably kill in 1-3 attempts. Most of the issue was critical mass of people in ph3 who could operate the damn drakes. Once we had enough, they could carry the people who hadn't seen the fight enough to keep stacks up or avoid dying. Also the strat changed to better accomodate those who only had aces-high as a reference.

Uldar though is going to have fights that are hard enough that raiders need to see the thing enough times to "get it" and that isn't going to happen if they're only rostered for it on farm, 2-3 times a month.

My opinion is that if somebody isn't good enough to glasschew, he probably isn't good enough to be in a progression guild at whatever level they're trying to progress. Having a first team and a second team just means the second team is going to permanently suck on the really hard encounters.

It doesn't matter much what the magic number is. A better guild would take less attempts to "get" the same fight, but a better guild would have less tolerance of people who take 2x as many attempts. Pretty much...if your second tier can't learn the content in the same number of attempts as the first tier, why are they even allowed in the group at all? They certainly aren't going to ever catch up if they're getting half (or 1/10th) the attempts of the glasschewers.

If anything it's the better raiders who should be benched while the slower members in the group learn the fight. Have a day while the second string wipes 60 times, then have the first tier guys use the raid lockout to kill it the second night. Eventually the skill levels will even out, and if you're doing some kind of attendence-based loot system that'll be more equitable too. Also you're in a stronger position to boot the people who will never learn, even given the same opportunity to see the fight as the usual "glasschewers". How can you know that they're bad unless you give them the same chances?

So. Either boot them entirely or give them a fair chance. If somebody is doing 30% less dps on a fight, or dies reliably, find out how many times he's been rostered for the fight compared to the raiders that have whatever performance baseline you consider is acceptable. If it turns out he's seen it like 3 times, and the rest have seen it 30-40 times (with 6 kills perhaps) then it's fight knowledge that is holding him back. Roster him more. If he's had plenty of chances, ask him why he sucks on that fight. He'll probably be able to tell you. Maybe there's something that can be done in terms of target selection, respeccing, getting an add-on, or an analagous situation that he CAN practice on his own that he doesn't know about.

If he's doing 30% less than what's acceptable for the raid on everything, then he probably should not be in the dps role at all in that group. That's an entirely different thing. Either you can't get anyone else (in which case your standards are lower and perhaps it really is acceptable) or you're keeping somebody who should be let go.

Njald · 04/02/09, 9:34 AM

Originally Posted by supplicium

Boytaur While I agree with what you are saying, I think what Sharajat is getting at is this.

Assume people are doing their job correctly. If they are doing something wrong by all means speak up, but if you are just unsure of what they are doing, assume they know and it's on the level.

Or, you could ask him/her to explain to you what his reasoning is. If he has none, it might just be that whatever odd behaviour you see from him actually is a bad idea and suboptimal way of playing his class.

Asking in a humble tone goes a long way. You might learn something about his class and his preferences that can assist you in further raids. (especially if you are an officer, where learning your team members preferences makes role asiging so much easier)

I've been a few raiding guilds that all of them have been hovering around server third in terms of progression from vanilla to LK. There have never been enough hardcore in any of the guilds for casual tagalongs not to get spots occasionally. And talking in a friendly tone have in almost all cases resulted in the person coming back at a later point with thoughts/discusission about what I asked about.

One example springs to mind where I was officer for caster dps but having to spec restoration for chainheal spam in Sunwell. We had a restoration druid with limited knowlegde of english, a keen eagerness to participate in raids and being a good friend of healing officer. His performance was a rollercoaster thing. I figured out that it for most part was due to him not actually understanding the english that was spoken or written in guides or during raids. Every now and then I asked him about his spell choices or positioning and forced him into trying to understand my english as well as expressing his own ideas about the raids.
I do not know how he percieved my efforts but he communicated with me to the best of his knowlegde and always seemed to appreciate the communication since so many others given up on his english. (it was at the level of someone who know no english and sits down to play and figure out what spells and words mean by casting them...)
And as we progressed he actually showed he was an able performer and stopped dying to random aoe, felmyst breath etc. But he needed a lot of points, help and support to be able to perform.

Another example was asking a warrior back in vanilla moltencore why on earth he had a pair of lvl 37 mail gloves with skill rating on him (egdemaster handguards I think they were called). He explained the glancing blows mechanic to me and its importance for melee dps in raids. (remember, back then very few people were hardcore theorycrafters). The knowlegde of how that worked and it's importance helped me help other meleers right up until the point where they removed the skill rating function for the glancing blow reduction in TBC.

So, don't asume everyone plays perfect every time. But don't asume they are doing something _wrong_. They might just not have found the _best_ way to play in a given situation.

Montegomery · 04/02/09, 11:04 AM

Originally Posted by solbergb

So the basic problem is that the harder content has no equivalent you can "practice" on your own.

Where exactly will you learn how to deal with all the crap in Sarth3d except by doing the encounter enough times to "get it". It's not like there is an "Aces High" daily or Tears practice zone as there are in some of the other technical fights.

I don't think the comparison to the Aces High daily is entirely apt. Phase 3 Malygos takes a player's experience with their class and spec out of the equation entirely. It's effectively the same as suddenly playing a completely different class two thirds of the way through the fight.

Sarth 3D does not have an analogous hurdle. It's certainly difficult, but that's purely a function of the fight mechanics. At no point do you suddenly need to learn a completely different style of dps/healing.

Calgar · 04/02/09, 12:09 PM

Originally Posted by Nal

It needn't be all or nothing. You could give the person who makes most use of it priority some of the time. It needn't be a 100-0 split. And frankly, what has happened in the past isn't always a great indicator of what is likely to occur in the future. The guy you're heaping epics on via priority could quit/transfer tomorrow.

You're far better off spreading loot and performance opportunities around in the long run. You should never put your guild in a position such that losing 1-2 'key' players is an actual setback in terms of what you're able to down.

I agree 100%. If everyone were to stay in the guild though, the player in the OT/DPS roll would probably be best to take the large upgrades for him and pass the smaller ones if someone else that's dedicated to either roll needed them. The problem with gearing 2 specs in a "gear cycle" is that it obviously takes twice as much loot, and if you get average drops and whatnot, you are basically going to be sub-par at both jobs for a while. It's the price you pay for being able to do both.

As for the stacking loot on 1-2 people, that's like playing Russian roulette. If you know the person will be 100% consistent then it's a boons to raid progression. If they take off to a "better" guild after they take all the tanking loot for a month, well, then you are screwed. We have had that happen a couple of times and have since given up on priority to any person ever. It's just better to spread the loot around (to an extent, main spec first obviously), maybe not in the short term, but definitely in the long run.

The recent posts have really hit home for me as well. We still have the "second string" players dying in void zones/lava waves etc. even months upon months after putting the boss on farm. Why? Because they weren't there with the "first string" for the 60+ wipes it took to learn 3 drakes and so forth. Even 4 months of doing it successfully is less experience then 3 solid nights of failing on it.

If anything it's the better raiders who should be benched while the slower members in the group learn the fight. Have a day while the second string wipes 60 times, then have the first tier guys use the raid lockout to kill it the second night. Eventually the skill levels will even out,

I...cannot disagree more. Not to sound insulting, but this could be the worst idea I've ever heard from a raid leading perspective. Your reasoning is fine, and it sounds fine on paper, but you don't raid to train people, you raid to get stuff killed and move on. You will get stuff down faster and more reliably and learn the fights faster with the full "First string", period. No one wants to be benched for a progression fight so "Mr.3000-less-DPS-then-me" can learn how to play better, and the people that are actually in the raid will not tolerate additional wipes due to clearly inferior players. It's much better for overall guild mental health to learn the fight fast and get it done, then afterwards, drag the "Second stringers" through it a few at a time where 1-2 people learning the fight will have less impact on overall raid efficiency.

And no, skill will NOT eventually even out. Some people just do not get it, and never ever will. They can be trained to jump through the hoops and get stuff done, but that is it. There is a clear distinction between a great and an average player. Great players can foresee any possible problem they might have and take steps to mitigate the risks, whereas average players can only deal with things as they happen.

solbergb · 04/02/09, 1:43 PM

Well yeah, it is a matter of goals.

I guess the difference for me is that if somebody can't learn, he just should not be invited, ever, unless your goal is to have 20 "real raiders" who carry the other 5 on every single raid.

If somebody CAN learn, he needs to be given a fair chance TO learn.

My point is you will never transition any "average" raiders to "great" raiders if the "average" raiders never see anything that isnt' on farm and never gain the experience the 20 "great" raiders got by being rostered during all the wipes in the early days. What makes the "great" raiders that good is that they know their class AND how it fits into the fights. Lots of people know the class but not the fights. You'll never know whether that's the case if you don't give them the chance.

Imagine a basketball team where the starting 5 got to practice all week and the bench got only 1 day of practice. What are the odds the bench will ever replace a starter barring injury or a trade? Not bloody likely.

If you want 30 great raiders on your team (to allow for rotation/real life 25 great raiders in every single raid) and can't simply recruit them, then yeah, maybe giving up one day of progression to let the bottom 25 of the group actually learn the fight would lead to faster progression long term than ending up with 20 "great" raiders who see all the content and do all the heavy lifting and 10 "average" raiders in the guild who are carried by the other 20 forever.

Is sacrificing one day of progression such a big deal compared to a permanent improvment in the performance of the bottom half of your guild on the hardest fights? I find it baffling that you think a "wipe day" is a bad idea. To me you either live with the fact that a third of your raid is going to stand in fire due to lack of experience with fight, or you will take the time to give them the experience. You can't have it both ways.

My expectation when joining a raid guild is a fair shot at all the content if I make the cut. If I'm not producing after having the same opportunities as those that are producing, I expect to be cut from the entire team. Not just kept on a string to "fill in" or for "the easy stuff", tying down my lockouts and spare time for the rare chance to be invited and then underperform by being rusty or doing fights "cold".

JALbert · 04/02/09, 2:00 PM

Originally Posted by Calgar

I...cannot disagree more. Not to sound insulting, but this could be the worst idea I've ever heard from a raid leading perspective. Your reasoning is fine, and it sounds fine on paper, but you don't raid to train people, you raid to get stuff killed and move on. You will get stuff down faster and more reliably and learn the fights faster with the full "First string", period. No one wants to be benched for a progression fight so "Mr.3000-less-DPS-then-me" can learn how to play better, and the people that are actually in the raid will not tolerate additional wipes due to clearly inferior players. It's much better for overall guild mental health to learn the fight fast and get it done, then afterwards, drag the "Second stringers" through it a few at a time where 1-2 people learning the fight will have less impact on overall raid efficiency.

And no, skill will NOT eventually even out. Some people just do not get it, and never ever will. They can be trained to jump through the hoops and get stuff done, but that is it. There is a clear distinction between a great and an average player. Great players can foresee any possible problem they might have and take steps to mitigate the risks, whereas average players can only deal with things as they happen.

Not everyone has perfect information, however. I was a second stringer for a while due to being a latecomer to WotLK, and doing 10 3d Sarth for a few hours till we got it down made me a better player than all the prior time I had running with guildies on farm content. I don't think the poster you're quoting was advocating sending the second string into Ulduar progression first, but if you're farming 3d at the moment, people who are going to be the backups or fill out the last couple raidslots may not be learning and becoming better raiders if the rest of the raid has it on farm status. Taking players 20-40 and putting them in a progression situation for a day is going to benefit your raid far more than pulling 5 of them a week through will with a team that considers it farm content. You'll quickly find out who your best backups are, who can cut it on the main team. Not all of them will improve drastically, but some definitely will.

Attrition happens in guilds. Having good backups, and making sure the backups are also getting better is still important.

solbergb · 04/02/09, 2:05 PM

Originally Posted by Calgar

It's much better for overall guild mental health to learn the fight fast and get it done, then afterwards, drag the "Second stringers" through it a few at a time where 1-2 people learning the fight will have less impact on overall raid efficiency.

So the following is good for mental health of the raid?

1. people on the bench who feel that they can't risk taking chances (like spec or rotation improvements that are unfamiliar) because if they perform badly they'll get even less playtime.

2. People in the "first team" who have contempt for the second team idiots who constantly stand in fire

3. People on the "first team" who feel they don't deserve it for any reason. (in my case, because an accident of rostering got me on every attempt, and the benched people had one day of glasschewing to my 5 days. Those benched people consistenly outperform me for in fights they had glasschewed before I started raiding in WOLK, while I had only seen them on farm a few times. The cause-effect was pretty damn clear from my perspective)

4. People on the "bench" who feel they deserve to be rostered for any reason (perceived favoritism of raid leaders, unfair chance to learn content, class prejudice, they stole the girlfriend of the guy setting up the roster, blah blah)

I don't know about you, but "winning" isn't enough to paper all that over for a lot of people. If you ask why people raid, yes, downing bosses is part of it, but so is the feeling of being on a strong team, of working together to do something hard. The satisfaction can really be poisoned if what you're thinking about when downing the big boss is stupid guild drama.

My Sarth3d kills were not much fun. I was going through this kind of thing with my group. My wife had a similar thing in the closing days of BC, where the final Sunwell boss her guild killed wasn't any fun at all, because she was furious about...rostering decisions...plus some guild drama about where to do the last week of raiding before the group called it quits for BC. Killing the boss was something she did on autopilot while being upset about the other stuff. I'll point out that both of us were in the "first team". I can only imagine how much worse it was to see it from the bench. "Yay (sarcastically) we won. Well not we. We doesn't include me unless everyone else has killed it a dozen times."

Seems to me that delaying the kill a little to make it an effort where everybody feels they contributed to the result (yes, including those guys who happened to be rostered out on day of the first kill..they know that next week they'll get a kill too because the ony reason they were benched was it was their turn in the rotation) is better for the health of the raid than training up some fraction of the raid and having them "carry" the "weak" members in future weeks.

Now having said all that, I've got a bias from my personal experiences. There is a danger of burnout too if you go too far the other way. My wife's guild in BC wiped for 18 solid days of glasschewing on Archemonde before they just ejected the people who could not avoid cratering. But that's a totally different thing. They wiped for so long, you really could tell who was incapable of learning the fight. There's a line somewhere....and I'm cool with it being a shorter line for elite groups than for more casual raiders. Maybe there isn't any fight a really good raider won't learn after 2-3 tries. At the level I play though, really learning any technical fight to the level you never die stupidly and can concentrate entirely on finetuning my DPS is usually about 10 tries, with harder ones requiring dozens or even scores of attempts.

But there is nobody who will learn a fight that he only sees on farm as well as somebody who did it when the fight was actually difficult for the group. I just think about how the 5 man dungeons were to tank when I first started WOLK and now that my tank has geared up a bit and my dps/healers are much stronger. I can sleepwalk through most of the fights, where early on I had to use every ounce of skill to set up the pull, use crowd control, LOS, carefully time tank cooldowns etc. I don't need to "learn" these fights anymore...unless I level up an alt and play him through the dungeon again without 'ringers".