Random Ramblings
As I’ve written before I now GM a great guild. Our progression is fairly steady in current end game content with 3 teams killing the masses in the 10man and 1 team doing the same in the 25 man. The guild is generally satisfied with this, there are always a few who want to do more and keep pushing, but they know when to stop (or have been talked to about their eagerness). Now this is not a problem of course, we’re happy, we get it done, we meet our goals consistently. But…
I find it very strange how people seem to forget what they need to do when they switch up from a 10man to the 25. Most fight mechanics are the same, the only thing that changes is the number of people participating in most cases. Of course I understand that maybe not everyone has seen a particular fight, knows a particular mechanic or gets easily confused. But…
There are a wealth of resources available to everyone. Within a guild and on the internetz to familiarize yourself with what needs to be done. Even just a raid leaders description before an encounter should be more then enough. He/She has done the work to prepare you, did the research, tried it out and modified it in light of our unique styles of play. But…
The thing I don’t understand is why are there always a few people who think they know better? I can understand an experienced player (key word: experienced) being a step ahead then the rest in some cases, anticipating whats coming, positioning, etc., but not everyone is capable of this and that’s fine. But…
Lots of buts, eh? It goes on. It is an issue that I notice raid after raid and I can’t seem to find the way to bring the subject up to individuals without sounding condescending.
Maybe one day.
Maybe.
April 20, 2010 at 1:39 pm
As I read this while at work, please forgive me for skimming through and not reading all the details.
There’s one comment I’d like to make, and it may not be right in line with what you’re talking about, but I’d like to throw it out there.
When you talk about “why are there always a few people who think they know better” I may have a small amount of insight on that. The first thing to mention is that when my guild raids they first look at the common strats (think Tankspot) and give them a shot. Finding that something doesn’t work with our setup we then change it to whatever “might” work for us until we find the sweet spot where it does work. We then take that and use it as our standard strat. So we raid and learn how to do the fight using our own strat. We’re not going off of words that we read or a video that we watched, we’re going off of experience.
To that point we’re in line with what you’re saying about “experienced” players. But let me reveal a bit more. Our guild adopted “our” strategy for Lady Deathwhisper after seeing it work several times. We had a different group of people in there but thought that our strat would still work, which it didn’t. Rather than trying to adopt a new strat we just kept on going with “ours” and expected to win. I made a suggestion based on something that I had read on a blog and it was ignored. We tried again, and we wiped. We tried again, and decided to ignore our strat and add in what I had read. We took her down with no deaths.
This was my second time in ICC, having no raid experience at all. I’m definitely not the experienced player, but I read something that described an alternative strat in a situation similar to ours. I didn’t have experience, but I did have an idea. After that fight three people got on my back about not following the raid leader, never mind the fact that we won because of my doing so.
The moral of that little story is simply to show another side of the coin. Just because someone doesn’t have experience doesn’t mean that their input isn’t valuable. As a GM/RL it’s your responsibility to use all the tools that are available to you, which includes the ideas of your guild members. Just because something doesn’t line up with what you’ve read or even what you’ve experienced doesn’t mean that it’s wrong.
April 20, 2010 at 2:36 pm
Crazy Cat – that is all
April 20, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Pfft. I knew better than all of ya’ll.
April 20, 2010 at 3:01 pm
I agree fully. We look at tankspot for new fights for certain pointers or a basic idea of what to expect. I was mainly thinking about people who don’t do this at all and just ignore calls, because they know better.
For instance the Festergut encounter on 25man. It’s a DPS and healing intensive fight. Now if I have 2 DPS that is not willing to move close enough to a spore they die, we lose their DPS and the boss likely wipes us. And it’s not because they missed the call, it’s because ‘oh, i know better than the other 24 people that i can stand x yards from everyone else and still get the debuff, oh wait, im dead’.
April 27, 2010 at 11:25 am
Next time tell em if they know better and refuse to follow the RL they can go find a guild where that crap is OK. Remind them that we have people sitting out and we have friends from other guilds eager to come do better DPS than they can.
A little threat never hurt anyone, but then I’m a ruthless kinda person too. I just pretend to be nice =)
April 30, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Kanrad? Ruthless? Does not compute.
And as far as the post goes: I never assume I know better. Someone suggests a strat, I’m willing to try it. Whatever gets the boss dead. If I don’t follow the RL’s instructions, I guarantee you it’s cause I got confused, or too caught up in the moment to hear them. Situational awareness is hard on some fights (I’m thinking of Rotface here) and I just need to train myself to be more aware.