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Thespeus
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Hey guys,

I'm opening up this discussion to how we can make this team really rock. Everyone here wants progression and has made it a priority, from what I can see. I love everyone's dedication to the team, and it's time to step it up. A couple things we need to work on:

-Time spent raiding: I'm not implying adding a night or anything like that, but we do need to make sure that the 3 hours we set aside to raid are actually spend raiding, not putting out invites, etc. This means invites should start going out before raid start. We should start pulling at our start time. If this means we bump our start time by 30 minutes, then we also bump our end time by 30 minutes.

-Run back: After a wipe, make your best effort to get back and rebuffed ASAP. I will do my best to provide ample breaktime for food/bio/drink, etc. If it's not one of those times, we should be hauling ass to get back in there.

-Analysis: There are logs posted after every raid to our World of Logs account (link is at the top of every page). Everyone should be making efforts to look at logs to see what they need to adjust. How did you die that one time? Are you keeping your debuffs on the boss enough? How's your DPS versus everyone else? This needs to be a team effort to get better.

-Gear: I don't expect everyone to spend thousands of gold to get BiS gear, but I do expect people to make sure they're getting the best bang for their buck. Whatever that means for you, make sure your gear is as good as it can be. We have the mats to get you better enchants, we have crafters to get you better gear, use them. Get your valor points as often as you can for the new gear. Get justice points to replace those blues you've had for so long. What we lack in time, we must make up for in gear.

This is a starting point. Please discuss how else you feel we can improve on the time that we have. It's time to step up our game, cause we're falling behind again.
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Since I've always prided myself on being the best DPS DK I can be, I'll be helping out with our raid progression by spraying some of my pride all over the other DPS players.

As of right now, the only thing that I can think of will be regular inspections. The points that Dave made above about gear are pretty clear. If there's JP items or ZA/ZG items that are clear upgrades for you and no effort is shown to replace said items, that's simply unacceptable.

My inspections will probably be done over the armory. I know it doesn't update regularly but its as close as I can get to looking at your actual character sheet.

I'll be researching any classes I don't already know so as to make suggestions for upgrades and proper gemming / enchanting.

Letting gear hold us back is a poor excuse.


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Thespeus
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Hamweaver wrote:
If there's JP items or ZA/ZG items that are clear upgrades for you and no effort is shown to replace said items, that's simply unacceptable.


I think the point here is the "holy trinity" of Tanking/DPSing/Healing really rings true. Each one depends on the other. No one class or role is at fault here, but everyone needs to make sure they're at the top of their game.

This is what progression raiding is. Little deficiencies in gear show a lot bigger in current progression. If you need help getting something, ask. That's what this team is for.


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Hamweaver
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DREAM Paragon (Only guild with H Ragnaros down currently) recently posted their impressions on 10 v 25 raiding.

What they said in the following segment has implications for our team.

Quote:
This leads us to the fact that the gap between an optimal setup and the wrong setup seems to be quite a bit larger in 10-man than in 25s. If the encounters are really hard, you'll need a proper setup. Guilds shooting for a world first should always be expected to come up with one, but those below, the ones without alt raids, will be left hanging. If the encounters are tuned for the 'average' setup, guilds who can afford the optimal one will steamroll through them.


Since we don't usually run with "optimal" setups, that puts extra weight on the shoulders of our raid team. Running with people we enjoy rather than "X of each class" we can't let small things, like easily upgradable gear, hold us back.


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Agreed here guys. As limited as my game time has been this summer due to my travel schedule, I feel like I have done a lot of what is necessary to keep myself geared to where I can be at the top of my DPS when I am there. Also, staying up on your knowledge of the fights past Shannox and Beth is going to be key. There ARE going to be nights when we do progress and are going to need to be at the top of our games to keep progressing faster and faster. A realistic goal for us should be hardmodes in 3-5 weeks, honestly.
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Reumant wrote:
Agreed here guys. As limited as my game time has been this summer due to my travel schedule, I feel like I have done a lot of what is necessary to keep myself geared to where I can be at the top of my DPS when I am there. Also, staying up on your knowledge of the fights past Shannox and Beth is going to be key. There ARE going to be nights when we do progress and are going to need to be at the top of our games to keep progressing faster and faster. A realistic goal for us should be hardmodes in 3-5 weeks, honestly.


Don't want anyone to feel they're "not a part of the team" just so long as communication is open and effort is being made when you are on. Jeff, you've been doing both, I know everyone appreciates it. We look forward to having you back soon.

As for knowledge, I think that goes without saying. I'd like to have Rag down ASAP, but that has to have the dedication of everyone involved. Hardmodes would be nice, yes, but let's have our sights set on downing the normal modes, first. Good points, though.


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i don't see 3-5 weeks happening for hard modes. you have to be here for that to happen and ppl still aren't. Great read about the gear and everything but our biggest problem is still getting ppl to show up and show up on time. You can look at my two pieces of 346 gear and say whatever you want about it but I still come to pwn and I think sometimes that should be overlooked and/or isn't as big a deal. Personally, to get me raiding better, no gear would help...a new computer would though. And THAT is something I have been saving up for and will be getting soon.
Staying with how we can improve though,,,,
I think the biggest thing is and always has been personal accountability. If you really wanna do this guys, do it. don't half ass it. Get on when you signed up and said you would be on. Have shit ready to go (food is about all you need to bring). We all put this time aside. Don't get on right at raid time (or 5 minutes after) and see that nobody is on and decide you are going to log off. I have done it a couple times but there are a few that do that habitually. YOU want to raid? YOU help us put in the time. period.
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I think the biggest thing is and always has been personal accountability.


Scotty, I'm not saying that having a piece of 346 gear is causing us to wipe, but if it's easily replaceable, then there's no reason it should still be on someone's character, unless it's a trinket that might be considered BiS. If everyone upped their gear in these little ways, that's cumulatively a big boost to the team.

Yes, personal accountability is key. I think on Tuesday we're going to try to see what little point system we can implement for unexcused latecomers. We may have invites at 5pm server time, and first pull at 5:15pm, ending at 8:15pm. If you're late for invites, you get docked a slot on the SK list perhaps.

However, the biggest issues are going to be really pushing during raid nights. Working to up your efficiency (DPS, HPS, Health/Mitigation). We all know our classes, but I'm hoping that people are looking at some outside sources for their class/role. These are invaluable in thinking outside the box. AskMrRobot is an awesome resource for gear optimization that I know a few people have gotten hooked on.

But you bring up a good point, Scotty. Either you want to do this, or you don't. I won't fault anyone for not wanting to do it, but that simply means this style of raiding might not be for you.


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We can talk about personal accountability until we're blue in the face, but there are things we can't change and how others behave is one of them (although I really like the idea of tweeking the loot system to penalize the late folks!!). Even pep talks only work for so long. Raid comp is also something we have very little control over.

Lets focus on the things we can change.

Aligning our goals - This is what I find most important here. We need to figure out what our goal as a team will be. Do we want to "focus on progression", do we want "something in the middle where we try to kill bosses but keep the stress level minimum", or do we want to "hang out with good people and if something dies, its a bonus"? Think about what you want out of your raiding and what kind of raid environment is ideal for you. We'll all compare notes at the guild meeting on Tuesday.

Pulling pace and running back after wipes - This, IMO, is our biggest weakness. First of all, we loose a lot of attempts because we stand around too much. Second of all, whenever we slow down our pace, we loose our focus. Whenever we loose our focus, we screw up. So by being slow, we're both loosing attempts and making more mistakes. The idea I've had is this: I get a stopwatch from Walmart. I'll time our trash clearing and the period between a wipe being called and the next pull (unless there's a long strat readjustment discussion). I'll post the times after every raid so we can compete against our old times and watch our time-efficiency improve from raid to raid.

Communication within roles- We need better ways to communicate. Us healers need a healing channel. Badly. Like omg how have we gone so long without one! I'll implement that for Tuesday's raid. DPS might benefit from a channel too. As for tanks, its up to you guys.

Communication between everyone - We should be debriefing after EVERY raid. That means not only going over the logs, but sharing what we discover from them. Or point out elements from our strategy that could be changed. I know that it's hard to get activity going on the forums, so an alternative could be an email list. Everyone on the team is on the list and between raids we toss around emails with ideas, discussion points and/or silly stuff for morale. Email has the added bonuses that it's workplace compatible and you can pick and choose who you send what to (for example, if healers want to talk, an email can be sent out only to healers).

The Gearing Issue - First of all, we need to get out of the mindset of "we're progressing slowly because our gear is bad". It's true, our gear is slowing us down. However, there are other factors involved that we need to address in addition to gear. Now that's out of the way, lets talk about gear. Most of us are pretty busy irl so running 7 trollheroics every week is obviously a lot to ask. So lets find a way where we can fit collecting Valor Points into our busy schedules AND find a way to make VP grinding less tedious. My idea is to instill an extra, optional, night that we can sign up for and where we run 5-mans (or t11 raids) with guildies. Even if 2-3 people sign up at first, it's still 2-3 people who are guaranteed a few less painful trollheroics. (I can do Sundays)

We all have to remember that progression raiding isn't ONLY about killing bosses and looking sexy in our gear. It's about a team (in our case, 10 people) working together as one. It's about wanting to play the game and wringing the most out of it.

I think that raiding more efficiently by communicating better and staying more focused during raids will actually make our team stronger and our environment more pleasant. We'll have this "raid thingy" that we share, that we work on together and that we're proud of.
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Personally I am going to agree with scotty here. Accountability is getting out of control. I cant tell you how many times at 4:50 me and scotty are the only ones on, then at 4:57 boom everyone logs on. Then they claim to not be ready, seriously log on at least 15 mins before a raid. Then you get a massive amount of people late, taking their time. There needs to be a punishment set up for loot AND raid slots. After 5 we pug even if they log on, just don't invite. Unless they warn us "hey i am going to be late". Hell even if there is only 2 people on, screw it pug 8 people. The point needs to be established that the world doesn't wait for them, so making 9 other people wait for you won't fly. We run a shorter raid then most as it is, so it hurts when you take 30 mins out of the 3 hours we have.

Also the comp issue has to be addressed. This isn't t11, you can't just throw shit at a wall and see what sticks. Firelands is much tougher then that, it requires legit raid comps. So having 2 resto druids means we will wipe, having 6 melee means we wipe. I know comps are the hardest thing to fix because you can't force people into certain specs and we dont have the people to be choicey. The sad reality is there can't be progression unless its fixed tho.

This afking when ever you please thing isn't helping anything as well. There are breaks unless is an emergency, wait till the break! Its a 3 hour raid with multiple breaks, we aren't in preschool anymore, hold it. This goes with running back from a wipe as well. If a wipe is called release immediately and run back. There are many times where i have ran back and sit there for 5 mins waiting. Now I have a hard time with my loading screens taking a very long time to finish, so I shouldn't be the 3rd one there.

You can fine tone and min-max the raid time and gear as much as you want but these 3 are what's holding us back. Honestly in the raid I am not going to be sitting there saying "shucks if only I had 200 more mana we would have killed him". What I will be saying is "Wow if we weren't a hour late starting we would have killed him".
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On the late start times, Thes and I have talked about it, but it wasn't posted here. The reason no one logs on time is that there's no real set time to raid right now. It's just "after 5 server". I actually started logging on late on purpose because I was getting so furious waiting around in Stormwind.

We're busy people here, so we need a set time for invites and a set finish time. If invites are a 5 server, then the pull should be at 5:10 server and not a second later. Anyone who's not online for invites should, as Joseph said, have their raid spot compromised.

Finish time shouldn't be up for debate either. The raid is scheduled until 8 server. Unless an emergency comes up, anyone who has to leave before 8 should notify the raid leader before the beginning of the raid.

If pointing fingers and naming names is what it takes, then fine, I'll keep track of who shows up late and who leaves early for raids.

I also think that if a raid is cancelled, we should still do something useful as a guild. I seriously doubt that ANY of you are VP capped by Thursday. We can get our VP together by pugging t11, doing ZA bear runs or working on the 5 man drake. Raid times are our scheduled team times, I don't want to see people refusing to help guildies and going to do arena and stuff.

As for raid comp, I think anyone who complains about it should get on to recruiting. I'll help out anywhere but recruiting is the one thing I don't touch.
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Raid Times:

-Invites will go out sharp at 5pm server time. Some people physically can't sign on until before 5pm, so I don't want to make invites any earlier. If you're unannounced late, though, your spot is up for grabs. If consistently late, we'll have to revisit our raid times. There are nights that I work until 4pm server, and I'm home at 4:45pm. I throw something in the microwave, kiss the girlfriend, and eat/breathe while we do trash. Yes, I've been late a couple times, but I've made adjustments so that will be an extreme rarity.

-First pull at 5:10pm. Until we hit guild level 21 (Mass Summon perk), you must find your own way there. Don't expect a summon. Be repaired and have your IRL drink/snack ready and have an empty bladder. If you're not ready by first pull, we'll implement whatever "loot punishment" we end up figuring out.

-Jenn is right, 8:10pm is end time (3 hours of actual raiding). Not 7pm, and not 7:30pm. We all have real life issues, significant others, and jobs. There are nights that I'll raid til 10pm (my time) and have to be awake for work at 3am. If I can do it, so can you. I'm sympathetic to real life and being tired, but this is our time.

Remember, we're meeting Tuesday to hammer out details.


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Rykga wrote:
I also think that if a raid is cancelled, we should still do something useful as a guild. I seriously doubt that ANY of you are VP capped by Thursday. We can get our VP together by pugging t11, doing ZA bear runs or working on the 5 man drake. Raid times are our scheduled team times, I don't want to see people refusing to help guildies and going to do arena and stuff.

As for raid comp, I think anyone who complains about it should get on to recruiting. I'll help out anywhere but recruiting is the one thing I don't touch.



Here is the thing I think you guys do not understand, you can't force people to do things. As jenn pointed here if a raid is canceled, people are free to do what they want. I know personally I will not do ZA/ZG, I don't like them and i disagree with blizzs choice to make raid gear require heroics. That is my choice, if anyone were to "force" me, I would laugh in their face. So if you say "This raid is canceled" do not expect people to sit around for something else. If they want to spend all night in arenas that is there choice. Unless you pay their 15 a month, you cant force people to do things.

The intentions are good in a lot of what your saying. You have to decide though, are trying to be a heavy hard core guild because we are so far off track of that. Or are we trying to be a casual progressed guild, we are getting there with that. If its casual progressed then, you can not do things like inspections saying "run this now for this". You can how ever look some one up and say "hey there is an upgrade here, did you want help farming it?". Things like pre raid meetings, its good in theory but realistically people wont show. You really have to look at the direction in which you are presenting how you want your goal achieved. You can do things like raid spots locked at 5, choose to be there or not. You can't say you are required to show up at 5. Hell thats more likely to make them log off at 5. What I am saying is stop trying to make people do things. If they don't want to do it work around them, everyone is replaceable. If they don't wanna show up for raids replace their raid spots. They don't wanna do ZA / ZG, find some one that does. This isn't the military you can't just yell jump and expect people to do it.

As far as the raid comps go I understand you can not just go poof people. So recruiting is going to be tough it even may take a long time. The reality is though if you don't fix it you can run a raid till your blue in the face and not go anywhere with a bad comp. I can't stress this enough its not t11, this is totally different type of content. It does require certain types of classes in 10. You can pout in a corner rejecting reality but it sure as hell wont change it. No one is saying its an easy quick thing to fix. Its going to take a while and a lot of work but has to be done. In the mean time I doubt anyone of us is going to stop raiding until there is a better comp. So there really is no sense in getting snippy about it. As a guild we should all be working together to recruit. Every time you run something with a pug its telling people what our guild is like. So if your a douche to some one on our server. That makes everyone look bad not just you. I am not saying everyone should be in trade actively recruiting but if you see a good player guildless, why not trying to fix that? Or my favorite if some one is saying they hate their guild, tell them how awesome we are. Just simple things like that make a big difference its not rocket science.

This above doesn't really have to do with the rest of the conversation. I just feel maybe we should stop trying to take shots at people for not seeing eye to eye and stay focused on the goal we are working toward.

I do agree with the fact that the raid time flexibility needs stop. If we start at 5, invites go out at 4:45, and pulls start 5:10 (those times can change just an example). Also if you hit accept on the invite you are saying yes I am here and ready to raid 3 full hours. If the communicate that they can't stay before the raid, then we have options in the mean time.
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well i really have one thing to really add to this conversation is that as a guild we need to get our prioritys strate on the direction of the guild and the raid team. we cant just want to be a hardcore raid team and talk about being hardcore. we need to set a tone on the direction of the raid team, if one doesnt like it then you can be replaced. it may sound harsh but this is how core teams work. all in all the raid leaders and officers need to figure out the direction they want to go and then inforce that direction.

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Hamweaver
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Let me preface this post by saying that I want to raid and get content down in a reasonable amount of time. I don't expect server firsts, nor do I want them.

That being said, I feel like I need to address some things I've read here.

These are not personal attacks nor am I picking on anyone individually.

Quote:
This isn't t11, you can't just throw shit at a wall and see what sticks. Firelands is much tougher then that, it requires legit raid comps.


I think most people here understand that comps are important and can make or break some attempts, however all we can do is work with what we have. If we had people sitting on the bench waiting to fill a spot because "2 frost DK's won't cut it" then the situation would be different. That just isn't the case.

Quote:
The intentions are good in a lot of what your saying. You have to decide though, are trying to be a heavy hard core guild because we are so far off track of that. Or are we trying to be a casual progressed guild, we are getting there with that. If its casual progressed then, you can not do things like inspections saying "run this now for this".


At no point has anyone said anything from inspections will be required. What I've seen from most of the posts is mostly against the notion that gear improvements will translate into progression. When I inspect someone, it will in fact be to provide suggestions, not deadlines and penalties. The suggestions however, should at least be taken into consideration. If upgrading a piece of gear will increase DPS (note: I'm only going to be doing DPS inspections. That's all they taught me in the inner city) then there is no reason people shouldn't make an effort to get it. Ranting and raving over personal responsibility during the raid has no merit if people won't carry that responsibility outside the raid as well.

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If they want to spend all night in arenas that is there choice. Unless you pay their 15 a month, you cant force people to do things.


No one can be forced to do anything over the internet, let alone in a video game. What can be expected though is that if people are willing to sign up for 3 hours to make progress, then when the Firelands raid does not happen, progress can be made in other fields. Progress isn't all loot distribution and pictures for the website.

Quote:
well i really have one thing to really add to this conversation is that as a guild we need to get our prioritys strate on the direction of the guild and the raid team. we cant just want to be a hardcore raid team and talk about being hardcore. we need to set a tone on the direction of the raid team, if one doesnt like it then you can be replaced.


This is probably the most troubling thing I read. If this raid team does in fact decide to be defined as "hardcore" I will be the first to step out. I have done hardcore progression raiding before and I have no intention to return to that arena. While I do agree that progress should come first, I refuse to raid without a connection to my team.

Team Sport will always come before raiding to me, even if it means I never see Rag or Deathwing downed. I may be alone on how I feel on this subject, but I do not believe that we have to become "hardcore" to be hardcore.


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