Imagine a scenario where Method’s main tank Treckie tells the GM Sco that during progression time, he’s gonna just pug on an alt with Paragon (he has mates there).
Imagine Sco’s reaction to that for a moment…
I know The Dambusters are not Method, I know we are an entirely different type of guild but I also know that if we ever have aspirations of being in a higher bracket of end-game play, we should act like the best and give ourselves half a chance of reaching a higher level. There is nothing wrong in setting boundaries which ensure utmost commitment from your raiders in a guild. The Dambusters may have other facets of the game we pursue but our progression raid teams have been held back by a lack of consistent attendance at our raid times.
Some players have well capable alts, look at my alts? I suggest if you have capable alts that are unused then by all means pug runs to keep them current, just don’t go ahead of your own raid team for the multiple reasons I will explain here:-
1) Certain members of the team are only able to (or are only interested to) raid with our team and expect that their shared single-mindedness towards driving our specific guild forward should be the only thing pushing them and their team mates. If half the team have pugged a full clear then the glue that sticks a team together comes undone as people start to resent each other. The puggers resent the team because they feel the team are underachieving and the non-puggers resent the team because they feel the puggers are not as hungry for that progression kill as they could be. Friction like this in the team is evident at times and it can break the team up.
2) Imagine the scenario, it’s getting late and close the the final pull of the night and the team have the current progression boss at a 5% wipe. The raid leader calls last pull and after near perfection an unlucky tank gets hit by a big crit and dies, leaving the team so close yet so far with a 2% wipe! What happens when the raid leader decides that indeed was the last pull of the night since he and one other raider have work in the morning. Understandable, but these guys have stayed late in the past to get the boss down, now both of them have pugged a kill on that particular boss and no longer have any need for gear from the kill. Instead of doing what the other 8 raiders would prefer and try 1 last shot, the raid is called and that brings an end to the week’s raiding. People will feel dejected and dismayed. The 2 guys will be happy because they get the full night’s sleep but they’ve left the rest of the team considering the future.
3) People can draw the conclusion that having killed the boss already, maybe they got the gear upgrade (whoopty-doo) and maybe they feel all confident (whoopty-doo) but is that additional experience on that boss which the team have already pulled to 2% really going to make the difference? Maybe…
Is it going to be worth it when the other 9 members of your team (who you’ve sweated guts and raid bottles with) have their nerd-scream moment and you’re only /golfclapping? Wouldn’t you rather have killed the boss and had that special moment with your team instead of with some silent farmers who boosted you on your alt?
4) If we open the whole thing up to being a free-for-all where anyone in the guild can do whatever they want with regards raiding, our team effort becomes devalued. If 1 player has a solid alt but is asked to play on his main by Spyrot, and nobody has any issue with him pugging a heroic Garrosh kill on his alt, don’t we risk muddying the waters and opening the floodgates allowing anyone else doing that very same thing? Soon we could have a team who can’t be bothered..
“Hey Spyrot, my alt is 570 (because YOU boosted me) and isn’t saved. My ‘mate’ has offered me a spot in his raid team every Tuesday night, I will stay in the guild but will just be online a bit less often as my love for my alt grows and I stop giving a heck about your pissy lil raid team, ok?”
That sounds to me like someone would rather we raided more, or that they fancy stretching themselves elsewhere and leads me to wonder if they may be better off just joining their ‘mate’ and giving their 100% commitment to the other guild. It’s that very 100% commitment The Dambusters expects and if your eyes are off looking elsewhere with envy, you’re posing a problem to our team. These may seem like harsh words and you might feel you can easily vastly improve your Dambuster raiding character so that you don’t stand in the shit on progression boss attempts, while also getting boosted by the other guild then it very well may seem tough on you. But remember who has eyes on the bigger picture in this guild and why he feels the need to spell it out. More time needs to be spend during the week learning your class so you are an asset to the team come raid night.
It’s late in the expansion but I want guts and hunger from our raiders. When you’re not actually raiding with the team, you should be reading that next progression boss fight so you know your job inside out. You need to be studying your class so that you can play it on automatic and pump out your best on every pull. If you are helping the team to wipe, then the team really can’t spare you off raiding with other teams when you should be studying the inner workings of your class and re-affirming the commitment required of an actual heroic raider and not someone who’s only been getting kills because of the other guys in the team.
We may not be Method, we may be doing the content they did 10 months ago, we may be geared to the teeth but remember last tier we didn’t kill a single heroic boss, this tier we have already lost as much as an entire heroic raid team with the skill and gear to boot, yet we are vastly superior in our progress, albeit the time is long.
We have the potential to push on as long as we do stick together. There are going to be plenty of open spots for guys who want to work for it and we WILL be raiding Mythics with the rest of the big boys soon after WoD release. To achieve success, we need to all be singing from the same page and it’s my job to make sure we do that. It’s only a controversial rule because we have an open line of communication and we all care very much about the way we play the game. The current policy of asking our raiders to commit to only our team is a strategy for the long term which is commonplace among the raiding elite. You may feel personally hamstrung by it but you can guarantee that our guild are absolutely reinforced by it’s existence.
People make mistakes, people are not robots and there are plenty of guild leaders who will simply kick people for raiding with other teams while the current team struggles on a particular boss fight due to player mistakes. We won’t kick anyone from the guild for that because your membership of this guild does not depend on your raiding performance. However, your position in the actual team will come under serious scrutiny if we are not killing the bosses and you are off pugging the kill elsewhere.
If you do not plan to raid with the guild’s progression team(s) then by all means do as you like but if you go ahead of the guild’s progression then don’t expect that to count in your favour come the time you want to join the team.
If we reach a point where we don’t need to focus up and work hard at it to kill heroic bosses each week then maybe we can relax this rule, but while most of the team only have one goal in mind which is The Dambusters killing heroic Garrosh, I can’t see why any of our raiders have time to be spending with other characters in progression pugs.
I will see you all in game..
/Salute
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