The Raiding Scene

There’s been a lot going on in recent times with The Dambusters’ raiding and although mostly it gets pretty much kept within the team because there are guild members who are totally uninterested in raiding, there are also those who would benefit from a bit more information about what’s been going on.  I enjoy my raiding and I spend a lot of time trying to help our various officers manage the raiding in the guild with my main focus being to ensure long-term stability of the team and relaying my advice to the guys who do the actual team leadership on given raid days.

Primarily, I feel that this is the right time to relay my own thoughts since we have had a recent breakthrough which gives me more confidence that things are on the way up.  The start of Warlords of Draenor was poor for us all, I only had 1 week before I headed for a 6-week vacation so that first week was crucial and it screwed up.  I did make it to max level fairly quickly however and I did manage to gear up plenty on time for our raiding to begin.  I managed to buy a new PC at home in Scotland so I was able to set up and raid as normal but I also changed class for this expansion to a class which witnessed it’s own changes and of course I was far from familiar with raiding on the resto druid when we first started in Highmaul.

After all that, I performed poorly in the first week and didn’t get invited to the next week’s raiding which was a body blow to me and a few others who didn’t make the cut.  At this stage, I felt I was beginning to get things done on the druid and working up some muscle memory while I still had much to learn (and still do ofc) but I felt my exclusion from the team was unfair especially given that my replacement resto druid was no better and only showed up for that week before disappearing, and eventually /gquitting without a word to anyone.  I felt my commitment was a better option and that I was too quickly binned by the raid leader. That pushed me to forget raiding and just enjoy my holiday so that’s what I did, along with plenty of fishing, first aid and other stuff I had to catch up with on the druid.

Enough about me, when I returned from vacation, I was then able to spend time thinking about what had been going on. Stonewrought raid team had faltered to a modest 3/7 heroic boss kills which the raid team leadership appeared (and still do) proud of at the time.  I had hoped for another step forward in pressing a more determined, dedicated and organised team mentality for the start of this expansion and when it didn’t materialise, people became frustrated and lashed out then left the guild. Former Raid Leader Spyrot quit his post and Holidai took the hot seat but that change wasn’t enough on it’s own to stop the rot.

When I returned, I was absolutely unimpressed and we held a meeting in which I clarified my displeasure at the way the team had been managed. The Raid Leading team vociferously disagreed with my sentiments but from the outside looking in as the guild leader, results were poor and people weren’t showing up for raid nights, people were quitting the guild and the team spirit was poor.  I know because I have eyes in every corner of the guild and I can feel even the slightest changes around the guild. I had to enforce a change and diplomacy was not my priority.

Stonewrought had developed a mentality that it should be the elite team and seemed to be taking 10 raiders only, leaving other raiders on the outside looking in.  If the team had actually been a hardcore team gunning 4+ nights per week and rocking progression then I would at that stage have simply wished them well and pushed to make a new raid team that myself and others could get involved with. Instead I decided to enforce a change of process in which the raid leader would start looking at others within the guild and include them, otherwise Stonewrought team and the guild would further disconnect and there would be no point in the team remaining in the guild. I requested that new Raid Leader Holidai bring some more guys in and thankfully on the first evening of raiding, we managed to kill 5 bosses and then spent a lot of time on Ko’ragh and later Imperator Mar’gok in the following weeks.

The shape of the team has changed a lot week to week and that is primarily due to people being unable to attend. We started progressing normal Blackrock Foundry with the hope that with our morale high from killing heroic Imperator, we should find practicing the mechanics in normal mode to be acceptable while the power of heroic mode was reduced. We started fairly well but as we progressed on normal, we had issues with raiders failing to attend while the team had no replacements readied. Holidai has had his hands tied behind his back when important raiders have been unable to raid and me shouting at him to do more DO MORE! to prepare for these eventualities.  Let me make it clear, I am fully aware of how difficult a position being the raid leader is, especially in this guild. You have the casual nature of the overall guild with a relaxed approach to calendar sign-ups and you have a guild leader who’s a very average raider (while committed) but demands the team is polished and prepared meticulously for every raid night.

When I see the team is not 100% prepared then I get frustrated. I have held heated discussions and outright arguments in our officer chat group about my displeasure at the way things have been going.  We have discussed raiders, the difficulty mode and the reasons behind going heroic or normal.  We have seen Spyrot letting rip at me because he feels I am too involved in pushing my opinions onto the raid leader and getting /gkicked after a long-running feud where he is of the belief that the guild leader should have little place discussing raid team affairs.  Happily Spyrot has returned and now appears to be enjoying just playing his own game for now.

Last week, a culmination of events led to me personally /ragequitting before normal Flamebender.  I had made the point that I felt more should have been done to ensure Stonewrought was prepared to start heroic mode encounters (after weeks of normals) but I had been counter-argued with to the point of exhaustion.  Some important raiders failed to attend and Holidai felt he had no choice but to go normals again.  This frustrated me more and later on I asked Bonesi about his user interface, got bitched at and told to drop it by the raid leader and the overall calamity of the night got the better of me and I /ragequit for the first time ever I recall doing so in a Dambusters raid.  I was subsequently dropped from the team by Holidai, which I pretty much told him to do and I felt relieved to be out at that moment.

The next evening was Friday Fun Night with Heroic Highmaul on the menu and numerous Dambusters members got a chance to sample raiding with us.  We killed Heroic Kargath and wiped a few times on Heroic Butcher due to people needing a bit of time to get to grips with the stacking debuff mechanic, then we killed it. We then went to Twin Orgron and after a 10% wipe, Spyrot and I made silly errors and caused another wipe so it was decided that the team would drop to normals. I was incensed! I immediately left…

I do not understand why people are so afraid to wipe and let people learn. I understand that people are wary of hurting team morale if a whole night is spent wiping, that would tell me the team is incapable but after 2-3 wipes, changing the difficulty from heroic to normal will make little difference if the problem is mechanics, not gear. I also get it that it’s supposed to be Friday Fun Night, but some people actually enjoy wiping a couple of times and learning, the end result being better gear from the kill. I see no reason to take the wind from a team’s sails if nobody is terribly upset about a couple of wipes. Let them man up and learn, they aren’t babies 🙂

This stagnation of Stonewrought has led me to look for fundamental change and I decided initially to resurrect Ironwall raid team with Idioms leading.  The plan was to try to contain Stonewrought’s current team and create the new team from fringe raiders within the guild and by recruiting enough to get started, and work from there.  Monday night, Stonewrought managed to kill 3 Heroic Blackrock Foundry bosses with Holidai having had a hard day, Idioms took control of the speaking part of leading the team. There was an immediate injection of fresh approach, organisation, constant communication and authority. Idioms and Holidai both feel they work well together and after Monday night’s display I started to consider whether going ahead with Ironwall’s resurrection was the right decision.

I think there is a possibility that my previous announcement about Ironwall may have made a difference in certain people’s minds but importantly for me, I witnessed a reaction. Most of my work in this guild involves my provoking reactions. I always push people to make a positive reaction and although reactions are not always positive, I usually get reactions and can at least learn about people. We seen a reaction from that raid team when tasked with stepping up to the higher difficulty, even tho it’s where we should be, it was still a commendable reaction and one which forced me into an embarrassing u-turn.

I have absolutely no problem in making changes for the benefit of the guild even if it makes me look bad personally. I spoke with Jolts, Idioms and Holidai yesterday and after explaining my options for taking the guild’s raiding scene forward with Holidai, we made the decision to push Idioms up beside Holidai as Raid Leading partner, halted the assembly of Ironwall and agreed to look for a 3rd raid night for Stonewrought.  I felt that the u-turn was necessary since both guys work well together which was proven on Monday night, and that by separating the guys, Ironwall would take time to assemble and stabilise while Stonewrought would also feel maybe too strongly the loss of Idioms.  I also believe that Stonewrought have been crying our for a 3rd raid night and the Raid Leaders will now have a decision to make to determine which night Blackrock Foundry will be filled with another Dambusters battalion.

Clearly this post has been a long time coming and I feel that only now, with a truly positive outlook, is it the correct time to inform the guild about what has been going on and put people in the picture as to how much work the guys have been doing to affect positive change regards raiding.

The recent RBG love-affair will be saved for another blog 🙂

/Salute

Bigticket