Raid restructuring
After getting through our first two weeks of raiding in Firelands, I've got a few thoughts on how we should proceed. I'll be revising the raiding plan put forth in this thread based on what we discuss here. There's a few issues that we definitely need to address.
1. We have a SEVERE lack of healers right now. With Tal, Ogg, Samm, Malky, Dok, and soon Moo gone, we've taken a big hit to our healing corps. Bottom line - we need more healers. Most nights we have enough to run 2 10mans...if we only had enough healers to do so. If you are willing to switch from a dps to a healer, or if you are currently playing a healer and are willing to come raid, PLEASE let me or another Commissar know ASAP. If you're scared of raiding - don't be. Everyone has to start someplace, and I promise we can help you be a better raider.
2. Raid performance. This is always hard, because I don't want to come across like I am saying that people suck at what they do. However Firelands requires a minimum level of performance for a raid to be successful. In the previous tier, we had some minimum requirements, and I think I need to set some minimum requirements for Firelands also. I am asking that raiders meet the following criteria in order to participate in Firelands raids:
- MINIMUM item level of around 355. This means you're in a mixture of epic gear from the troll instances, crafted epics, Justice/Valor epics. Most of your gear should be at least item level 353 or higher.
- Gear gemmed, enchanted and reforged (if necessary). There's absolutely no excuse not to have your gear in top condition, regardless of its item level. If you aren't sure what types of gems or enchants you should be using, ask a Commissar, or someone else you think is knowledgable in your class. Do class research. Get the Reforgenator addon and use it every time you acquire new gear.
- DPS performance needs to be at or above 10k. I know that seems like a big number but the average DPS I see in our raids right now is at least 11k. If you aren't regularly doing 10k dps on average, then you may need to do some adjusting. Many of the boss fights in Firelands have some kind of soft enrage attached to them - this means it comes down to killing the boss before he either enrages or before encounter mechanics kill you. It's essential that DPS be able to pull out at least 10k dps in cases like this when we need to burn a boss down.
- Healers - it's hard to measure healing performance, since HPS is going to vary widely depending on the class you play. However if you can't comfortably heal a troll instance without too much difficulty, then you may need to adjust things or gear up a bit before heading to Firelands. Also, be able to manage your mana. If you're still drinking after every other pull in a heroic, then mana management on fights that can last 6-10 minutes is going to be an issue.
- Raid awareness - if you find yourself regularly having trouble moving even when Deadly Boss Mobs is yelling at you to do so, then that's something that needs to be worked on before you head into Firelands. Every time a raid member gets caught taking damage that they didn't need to take, that's healing that has to be switched to them and taken off the tank. Any time a raider gets caught in a crystal trap on Shannox for example, that's DPS that has to be wasted on breaking a trap instead of being on the boss where it needs to be. I'm not asking people to be Ensidia or Paragon quality - I'm just asking for people to show some basic raid awareness.
3. What to raid, and when? Right now, we're raiding Firelands on both Tuesday and Thursday nights, and planning on heading into BoT/BWD on Fridays. Given how sporadic our raid attendance is throughout the week, it may be time to revisit our raid schedule. I created a poll on what nights people would prefer to raid here. You can only select one poll option, so I tried to give as many options as I could, Please take time to vote and if possible, post any clarfication or thoughts. I'm going to let the poll run for about a week and then make a decision with the other Commisars on what direction to take with our raid scheduling from there.
4. When to suggest things to the raid leader...and when not to. /momvoiceon
I'm just going to be blunt here. Although I like to think of myself as a pretty open person, willing to listen to any suggestion or opinion, while I am trying to catherd for raid is not the time to be making suggestions to me. I've got enough on my mind at that point as it is. Additionally, a few times I've people do what I consider to be "strong-arming" me into making certain decisions about raid composition. Stop it. It seriously makes me want to rage when I am trying to catherd and I get tells from people complaining about how that person went last week and they can only raid tonight, or they will only go if so-an-so can go too, or they think it's unfair that this person already got loot from a boss and they haven't yet.
Stop it.
Trying to put together a progression raid (and yes, Firelands is considered progression) under an inclusive raiding policy is hard enough as it is without everyone and their brother trying to tell me how I should handle the job of raid leader/cat herder. I understand that you all want to go. I understand that you all want loot. I understand that it might seem unfair that certain people go every week, and others have to be sat. It's a problem that requires multiple solutions, which I've outlinedabove. We need more healers, and we need people to step up their game if they're going to run progression. More healers means more dps getting to raid which means more people getting geared, which means more people (hopefully) improving their raid performance.
It may be that most of our raiders still need some gearing and practice in the previous tier before heading into Firelands and if that's the case, then that's what we'll do. Give me your feedback on that here in this thread. And if you don't give feedback in this thread, then please don't come and complain to us ingame when we implement a raid schedule that you don't like. You have multiple opportunities for feedback - use them. Just for the love of all things holy, not when I am catherding. Please.
Thanks.
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I am willing to try healing
I have a priest (Alright) (Holy, previously Discipline) and a shaman (Hoodoo) (Restoration) that I've been healing heroic dungeons with. I seem to be doing a lot better healing as a shaman than as a priest, but most of my priest healing was before lots of people had stuff from the Zuls, so maybe it was a gear thing.
Either or
Either is fine. We currently have ZERO Holy Priests raiding, and right now Groz is the only Resto Shaman that's been healing in raids.
...and Stuff
I had a really long post explaining background of this request, but I'm afraid it might come off as strong-arming or drama-llama or whatever. Instead, let me ask a question and dive in to my explanatin only if necessary
Would it be possible to factor in things like how many times someone gets to come in preferred role as well as whether or not they were previously sat?
P.S. - Do our leaders have any tool in place to share sits/non-sits/role swaps/etc? If not, someone in guild might be able/willing to put together a shared excel sheet or something to help manage this :-)
Hmm
Right now, what I try to do is follow the rule that we set down in our Cata Raiding Plan - basically if someone sits one night, then they aren't sat the next night. Where I am experiencing difficulty here is that following this kind of inclusive raiding plan when putting progression raids ends up hurting raid progress more than helping it.
I keep a log of everyone I sit and which day. It's supposed to get logged here in the forums, but to be honest, I've never logged it here. I suppose that's something we can make a bigger effort to start doing.
As for roles, our rule of thumb with that has been that you declare a raiding main, and that your main has a main spec and an offspec. Your main spec is your MAIN spec, regardless of the role you are currently raiding in. Your offspec is your OFFSPEC. This usually only affects people that are often asked to switch between their preferred spec and their offspec on a regular basis. For example Groz is a Resto main, so he rolls Need on resto gear and gets charged full GP for it, even if he was raiding as a dps on a particular encounter. Overall, we try to have people raid as their main spec, but there are times we ask people to switch - most often when it comes to people with both tank and dps specs. Sometimes we have more tanks than we can use, so someone who mains a tank might need to raid as dps. I try to rotate tanks as I can.
I do try to take into consideration the role a person will be filling when I assign them to raid or not, but more often than not, I'm faced with choosing between melee dps and ranged dps, and most of the people I am choosing between only fill a dps role.
What I thought of...
((This is all theoretical, but I'm a nerd, this is the kind of problem I enjoy))
Have a list of the active raiders that it was easy to add remove people from, and it listed player, main role, off-role. Next to each player, there would be 4 columns for 'checking' : 'Signed Up', 'Showed Up' 'Role-Swap' 'Sat'. At the very end there would be a column with 'Priority', and a button to reset.
Each raid, the raid leader would hit this reset button, which would migrate all the current data in to a historical table which would then be used to formulate priority with something like the following :
Then you'd end up with a list of prioritized players between -1 and 4; if you know you need a Ranged DPS slot and you have to choose between 2 people and one is a 2 and the other is a 4, you know you're making the most 'Fair' choices. If it was something everyone could see but only officers could edit it would probably improve overall perception of fair play and it might also encourage people to be 'good citizens' and volunteer proactively to role swap/sit to build up their PR for their most preferred raiding night. It's possible we could bake in some functionality to let players volunteer through the tool rather than sending tells or spamming raid, so at a glance 15 minutes before raid the raid leader could build his team based on all the relevant information.
...I should build this...
I am intrigued by this. If
I am intrigued by this. If you build it I am certainly willing to see it.
!
Im actually thinking I'm going to give it a go. I keep looking for a personal project that will hold my interest, and this will give me an excuse to look at the WoW API, because it would be sweet to be able to query the event and grab the sign-ups directly from WoW.
Hm
I don't see how using PR rating as the benchmark for sitting/taking players would be the most fair system. All a high PR means is that you haven't had a loot drop in a while. On the one hand it sounds like an interesting idea, but not sure how PR as the sorting value would work best.
!
Heh, no sorry, namespace overlap. The PR (or priority) described above is seperate from the value of EP/GP.
If I write this app I'll call it something else... like raidiness
I swear
I promise to trya nd come back to heal regularly. I feel bad that so many of our standard healers aren't around, and I do want to play. I just need to mark out one night a week to do it regardless.
The forest is looking thin!
Ikuri said she needed healers, so Firk is coming off the bench. However, if you show up I'll have someone to swap innervates with. No pressure boss, really *gauntlet stare*.
They nerfed the innervate
They nerfed the innervate swap.. you'll actually gain less mana now doing it. :-(
Oh that's just lovely
how kind of them. Because innverate was so OP before? *snorts derisively*
seriously...
I'm running out of places to squat. B/c you know.... bears crap in the woods.... >.>
not if they live at the zoo
not if they live at the zoo
I wish they'd just give every
I wish they'd just give every class duality mechanics. I don't want to spend the time/effort it takes to prepare an alt, especially if it forces me to play the character I don't want more than the one I do.
I applaud any of you willing to play a healer but I hope you do it because it's what you want, not for pressure of raiding. We'll reach a point where we can field more than one raid, and we'll recruit others. Just ticks me off sometimes how limited the scopes of our class flexibility are.
(No subject)
!
Damn, just beat me to it :-D
Well my thoughts were more
Well my thoughts were more along the lines of hunters rogues mages and warlocks lol
Tis just a flesh wound
Tis just a flesh wound
No worries Cacc
Firk has been my main in the past, and I've been staying out of raids because my dps as ret is fail. I might actually be useful this way, who knows?
Cat herding
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk7yqlTMvp8
http://www.snooth.com/wine/herding-cats-merlot-pinotage/
lol
That video never ceases to make me giggle because it is SO TRUE.
Healer
I Am working on Druid only lvl 20, but never tryed Healing spec Since ever really, but i,ll get it a try >< Thinking starting shammy but IDK busy with sargo/ Sarfang and Ultharr i can change one Ultharr spec holy/ret needed. i know ppl mite wanna join guild or just help in raid if need for healers. Plan B see anyone i know farstrider on allince side mite change horde, but see what their plans are. Let you know if see them on i,ll ask them.
I guess I could gear up my
I guess I could gear up my shamman. DPS'ing on heroics with her now, dunno if I can handle healing yet. I actually like healing. I've never been on a raid. Was never serious enough to bother. I'm hella burned out but I think I'd like to do some raiding at least once. I kind of regret never having done so. I give no fucks about gear, so if something drops and someone else wants it its theirs, I don't care if its for an off-spec. I'd rather play the game than argue over something silly and it seriously doesn't matter to me. I'm easy and just happy to be here. Akuna-matata and stuff.
But I can only go Sun and Mon.
Hey all - sounds like Iky needs a summons
/summons Iky
Well!
I've got Caerulius as main specced Holy, and have been beating my head against the wall of priest healing (Disc, cause who needs lightwells? Seriously, not gonna trust dps to heal themselves), and have started gearing Te'Walla, my shaman, for raids now. You guys know how much I swap out characters, I really don' mind bringing an alt to raid night if we need a raid healer and Caer just won't cut it. With this in mind I will try to show up on Tuesdays, but that the only night I can be there, I get home about 9:30pm server other nights. Well, week nights that is.
Hello! I've been interested
Hello! I've been interested in healing with my Pally, Kainyn, since TBC. The 'ole longear is at 82.5 at the moment...and I'd be happy to take on a Holy spec if someone could point me to a brain to pick, or a "holy for dummies" kind of site to read.
This should help
http://elitistjerks.com/f76/t110847-holy_cataclysm_holy_compendium_4_0_6_a/
Some things might have changed given its 4.2 now, so I would read the comments and see if any adjustments have been made. It's a good start though.
Bump
Bumping this as well to see about getting a few more thoughts before we restructure things.
wrstpallyevr is at your
wrstpallyevr is at your service for healing.........kinda
lol
tank healing (ie. tanking as a healer?) :P
Righteous Tank Healing!
Holy Shockadin ftw :D
I am now back from my lovely
I am now back from my lovely vacation and can heal on Storm, will just need to run the crap outta some heroics to get some decent healy gear and some patient people to help me some.
What type of healer are you looking for raid or tank? This way I can research it some.
Raid healers are in more
Raid healers are in more demand at the moment.
I just joined recently, and
I just joined recently, and even though I put my hunter as my main, I have my Resto druid that I am more than happy to bring. All my toons are pretty evenly geared, so Alestris should be good on helping out in the healing department if needed.
I have a feeling one of
I have a feeling one of Ikuri's comments is at least partially directed at me, namely "they think it's unfair that this person already got loot from a boss and they haven't yet or they think it's unfair that this person already got loot from a boss and they haven't yet".
I don't normally care about what loot drops from what boss, but there is one case that is more important than others...melee dps weapons (and hunter ranged weapons). These particular items are more important in that they are huge upgrades for the relevant classes, worth 4 or 5 other items. My comment to Ikuri was about the dagger that Shannox drops. Pollygix had already got it, so I asked that another rogue be subbed in (not necessarily me, Craxx was in the raid too). I think this is a reasonable request for this special case. As far as other pieces of gear go, I don't really care. Just my two cents.
Well
I was trying to avoid naming names, etc. but since you brought it up, yes that was what I was referencing. It is a valid point, however you waited to bring it up to me after I had already assigned groups and instructed people to head inside the instance, and frankly, that frustrated me. So yeah, valid point, but not the appropriate time to bring it up, and that was the point of my comment.
My apologies. I
My apologies. I actually didn't even know that Poly had the dagger until during the raid set-up. But that is a poor excuse on my part, since you have so many damn things to deal with at the start of a raid. In retrospect I should have said nothing and mentioned it after the raid or something. Sorry Ikky.
This would have been best
This would have been best said in a tell to Ikuri or another officer mog.
I disagree Zee. I wasn't
I disagree Zee. I wasn't griping; just stating my point. Ikky rightfully countered that while my point was valid, my timing sucked. So it should be a lesson to all. The raid leader has a ton of stuff to do for raid prep, so really nobody should send them tells unless they are critical to the organization of the current raid.
And thanks Ikky, for all the effort, we all appreciate it and rarely thank you.
Ok, so
Based on the responses to my poll, conversations in-world, and on the forums, I talked it over with Zee and Moo and made some decisions about how we're going to progress for the time being. This will likely change depending on how we are progressing through current and previous tier content, but we'll approach the need for any changes as we go along.
NEW RAID SCHEDULE
Most people said they wanted to raid on Tues/Wed/Thurs (or Tues/Thurs). So starting next week, our official raiding schedule will be Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday with invites going out at 8:05pm server time. The plan is that Tuesday raids will be spent in BWD/BoT/Tot4W where we can run it as regular or on heroic. This will depend on two things - raid composition, and someone in raid having the ability to trigger the heroic version. With the down-scaling of those instances, it's possible to do a full clear of at least one of them in one night.
Wednesday nights will be either Firelands or previous tier. This will depend on the raid composition. If the raid leader for that night is capable of putting together a group for Firelands, then they'll push for that. If not, then it will be previous content. It may also be that we don't get enough signups for a Werdnesday night raid. That's fine too. But we're going to put it on the calendar and plan for it.
Thursdays will be Firelands, and that means that for now, Thursdays are progression nights. This means that we'll be more selective about putting together our raid composition. There will be minimum standards of performance (outlined below) that we'll enforce and people not meeting those standards will not be selected for Firelands progression raids until they demonstrate otherwise. People that are meeting those standards will be rotated in as possible, taking into consideration raid composition.
As we gear and improve at our Firelands raid progression, I expect that Wednesdays will become solely a Firelands raid night, with Thirsdau remaining a progression night, and Tuesday remaining a heroic BoT/BWD/Tot4W night. Eventually I can see us raiding Firelands all three nights.
WEEKENDS
There was also a considerable amount of interest in the poll of a weekend raid schedule (Fri/Sat/Sun). What we decided is that since Moo's availability will be better suited for weekends once he moves to Russia, he will explore putting together a weekend raid that may run at an earlier time during the day. So if weekend raiding is something that interests you, talk to Moo and plan to sign up once he starts putting those together.
MINIMUM PERFORMANCE STANDARDS
After spending some time going over World of Log reports and assessing our own performance, I'm revising the standards I'm setting for Firelands progression.
ADDITIONS
One of my biggest frustrations lately has to do with how slow our raids are to get started off. I'm open to adjusting our raid schedule if need be, but truthfully I think our times work out alright for most people. Still, it seems to take forever to get a raid actually off the ground and going. So from this point on, raid invites will start at 8:05pm server time. By 8:15pm server time, I expect invites to be over (exceptions made if you contact us ahead of time and let us know you'll be late.) By 8:20pm I want everyone who is going on the raid to be heading to the entrance. By 8:30pm I want us inside and readying our first pull. We're not going to dither around trying to figure out raid composition any more. We're going to put the raid together, announce who - if anyone - is sitting, assign on-time EP, and then get the ball rolling. If we don't have the numbers or composition to send in a raid group, then by 8:30pm server time at the latest, we're calling for a cancellation.
RECRUITMENT
It's no secret that our raiding numbers have suffered a loss lately, particularly where healers are concerned. We desperately need healers. I've given some people in guild the opportunity to step up with their healers and start raiding. Some have expressed an interest, but I don't feel there's enough of a solid commitment from anyone to where we're out of the woods where the lack of healers is concerned. So I'm pushing recruitment on the official WoW forums and in a few other places. If you want to help out keep our threads on the official forums bumped, you can find them here and here.
One question
My tank spec is obviously up to par but my DPS spec is a bit behind the requirements above. I want to make my dps spec better, but my play time right now is pretty limited and I try to cash it out to let me raid. I want to raid but I also want to be fair. I obviously prefer a spec that is a little overbooked right now, so I can't play in that spec all the time, but I'd prefer not to sit as often as I might need to not-tank.
What is the guild 'best practices' here?
Main spec.
If you haven't been playing your main spec in raid for a while bring it up with the Raid Leader prior to invites. Even they are human and sometimes forget things. I'm more than happy to scratch at boss' asses. Especially once precious is mine! Oh, the precious! It calls to Sme... Uh, but yeah, just mention it to the raid leader or an officer prior to raid.
Well...
I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this. My main spec is good to go. My off-spec is a little weak and I don't have a lot of time right now to get it up to snuff. If I'm going to be off-spec, it might make sense to sit me in favor of a heavier hitter for now until I can get my off-spec updated. On the other hand, I don't want to get sat more than other folks because my main spec is overloaded... does this make sense?
I guess it's the three way struggle between wanting to raid, wanting to make sure we have the strongest team possible and needing to manage my WoW time right now. On the other hand, given the new plan it seems like the only time I'd need to be sat as a DPS might be thursdays, so if I was being sat a little more for Progression type stuff due to role overloading that might be okay too :-D
No worries
I was pretty happy with your tanking job on Shannox, and both Kibs and Holy are ok with switching roles as need be (plus Holy is working on a healing set), so with the three of you being the only tanks that seem to sign up on a regular basis, I don't think you'll need to worry about being able to run as a tank. Just make sure you are brushed up on boss strategies and that your tank set is all good to go. Definitely keep working on your DPS set when you can, since there will be times you might need to DPS. But don't worry too much about never getting to tank and having to sit in favor of a stronger dps.
8/30
Was there a log taken for the 8/30 raids on Shannox and Beth'tilac?
here
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-0vtsm7bzuwkq1c8u/