Guild Drama..
Hey Guys! Hope all are well and getting excited about Ulduar coming soon.
So I guess by the title of the post you’ve guessed what I’m going to be writing about tonight.
I’m sure we’ve all been through Guild Drama at one time or another during the course of playing WoW and tonight was the first time I’ve had to deal with it for a long time.
The guild has been having a few issues lately getting enough people to form 25-man raids. People seem to be burning out a little on the current content being to easy or something.
We’ve had a few core veterans leave due to real life issues as well and that hasn’t helped either.
So tonight’s raid formed up and we were 5 men down for Naxx. So we pulled together what we had and said we’d do the Achievement for doing Naxx with less than 21. All was going fine, we cleared the Spider wing with no problems one shotting all 3 bosses and then we moved to Patchwerk. Now the last few weeks we’ve had issues with the melee group getting Hateful Strikes and nearly always this would lead to a wipe. It was so bad one time I resigned myself to ret-healing – standing at the back and helping spam Flash of Light one of the tanks.
The biggest problem we seem to have is Chain Heal from our Resto Shamans. This and the extra things resto Shamans have that cause instant crit heals on raid members in range.
As a melee dps its really frustrating. No-one like wiping – especially if we cant even get him down in under 3 minutes for the achievement.
So tonight this was the straw that broke the horses back for me and after the 4th wipe on patchwerk I left the raid and logged off.
I gave myself sometime to cool off and popped over to my hordie and had a chat with Tim over at Suicidal Zebra. Some minutes later I logged back onto my banker toon and whispered one of my guildies who was leading the raid tonight. He had told our resto shaman and the rest of the melee to cool off or he’d kick people from the guild and then disbanded the raid.
I logged onto Firelight, said that I wont be threatened into shutting up when I knew what was wrong and what had to be done to stop the melee from being killed and /gquit.
I then had the majority of guild members whispering and our GM and I had a long chat on ventrillo. A few minutes later I was back in the guild, but he said something interesting;
“Its no one persons fault that all of this is happening, its Blizzards fault for causing people to get burnt out so quickly”
This made sense to me – I mean why would someone leave the guild (our main raid leader) stating that due to our lack of ability to gather 25 people together and not being able to kill Sartharion with 3 Drakes up.
After all of this I’ve decided to take a raiding break with my Paladin till 3.1 is out. I’m going to log on and play still, but I’m going to level up some alts and try some other things – probably end up doing some 10-mans with my Boomkin.
As I said before we’ve all been affected one way or another by guild drama, all we can do is try to pull ourselves through it, learn from it, and move on.
12 Responses so far
Peregrine
April 2nd, 2009
12:00 am
People call Thaddius the raid-bane because of that jump that one person never makes, they blame Sarth3D for being quite hard with lots of flying spells and adds, but the true raid-killer is drama. Sorry to hear this happened man, but I agree with your GM and yourself. Blizzard made the raids easy, this is true, to prove that anybody could raid, but they made em TOO easy. People have all the gear they want, or its boring, and yeah, they get burnt out. Hopefully Ulduar will change that… looking forward to more posts on raids when 3.1 gets here!
Ithilien
April 2nd, 2009
8:00 am
As a GM I can only disagree with your intended course of action.
We’ve been seeing the same kind of burn out and wowquits, and have been struggling to get full 25 man raids even when we still have Sarth+3 left to kill.
And to an extent I can understand people – having to go though Naxx week after week with no real challenge is dull, boring and uninspiring. Seeing every Sartharion raid dumbed down to +2 drakes because we can’t make the healer/dps/tank requirements is no fun.
Thing is, the more people actually start thinking like this and say “f* it I’m gonna cool off until Ulduar”, the harder it gets for the other 20ish people who still want to raid. They see their chances of getting a proper 3 drakes raid being shot, get disillusioned and I have to work all my mojo to stop them from quitting wow, quitting the guild (even though they know most guilds are going through this), starting to ask about rerolls, … or by the time Ulduar finally does hit and all the “slackers” (for lack of a better word) return, there’s not much of a guild left.
I’m in the same boat – I dread going to Naxx every week again; there’s nothing in it for me anymore, I’ve grown so tired of the place on my druid after 4-5 months and I’m itching to get my pally to 80 to start alt raids on her, but still I keep going because it’s what the guild needs (that + it’d be a horrible signal for the GM to stop raiding
). And meanwhile keep praying for a lucky evening where we do get a full raid and we can actually go and get a violet proto drake.
HolyWarrior
April 2nd, 2009
11:50 am
Hmmm, seems April 1st was day for guild drama
Barrista
April 2nd, 2009
12:57 pm
Ithilien:
I don’t think those of us who want to take a break are slackers. Some of us have been to EVERY raid from the beginning. Then, we are pulled in when things aren’t going right because we have the dps and know the fight. We have all this weight put on our shoulders by our guild-mates and they wonder why we sometimes don’t want to log in? We aren’t always the slackers. The slackers are the people who want to be carried through the content by people like us.
So, my situation for example is that I would like to get my 77 mage to 80, but if I get on her, I’m going to get bugged by my guildies to help them in naxx. At what point am I allowed to enjoy the game I’m paying for in my own way without being called a “slacker”???
I don’t think the content being too easy is the issue. I don’t think it’s too hard either. I think the issue is the Ulduar release (and I think that is what your GM was saying?). Those of us that have cleared the content and want to try more challenging content (achievements/EOE/OS3D) are constantly asked to come back to Naxx so others can be geared for 3.1 content as well.
Ithilien
April 2nd, 2009
2:27 pm
I knew I should’ve used a different word instead of slacker
I merely meant that the people who do get disillusioned, stop raiding and cool off for a while more often than not actually help (unintentionally of course) the decline of their guild as it means even less people raid and raids start to fail/get cancelled/… and everyone else gets disillusioned over that. You would be surprised (or perhaps not) at the amount of applications I’ve seen on various guild forums where people state their main reason of leaving their current guild – even though they’ve been a member for years – is that “the guild has lost its drive” or “people don’t care anymore”. After they quit (or get booted out), even more people start to worry/wonder and you wind up in a vicious circle.
Anyway I didn’t mean to offend anyone – my apologies if I did.
You are right on the Ulduar release. Naxx is no longer a challenge, and 3 months after it became “farm content” we still haven’t got a new challenge.
Tay
April 3rd, 2009
7:46 am
Wow… this is almost exactly what happened to me the other day man. I feel for ya. We were short 5 for a sarth/maly night, and we’ve been trying to get a proper raid group for 3D but people aren’t showing up. We did Sarth1D, which was a joke and then wiped on Malygos to the enrage timer 4 or 5 times. I left the raid… told the GM I was mad that people are slacking and don’t care, and then logged.
I might do the same as you and just take a couple weeks off from raiding until 3.1 is out. I just hope my guild shapes up when it does come out or I’ll be leaving it for a guild that actually comes prepared in the first place.
Good luck, hope it works out.
~Tay
Darrtanus
April 3rd, 2009
2:49 pm
Nothing like this has happend to me or the guild I am in, but I do see it happening to friends/allies in other guilds. WotLK is WAY to easy. Look how fast everyone blew through the instances and now the raids.
I know for my guild, heroics in BC were a whole lot tougher to do. Heroic Shattered Halls kept us occupied for a long time, then of course there was Heroic Magister’s Terrace. I know some raiding guilds probably disagree, but thats the way it was for us. Now the only heroic my guild dislikes to step into is Heroic Occulus.
Peregrine
April 6th, 2009
1:30 pm
Heh don’t worry Dartt… Naxx, Sarth, Arch, and Maly were the bones they threw to people who consistently insisted that everyone with half an hour a week free should be able to raid. Come 3.1, we do this shit for real
Anonymous
April 7th, 2009
11:04 pm
If your melee is slime dipping, your guild likely doesn’t understand that Patchwerk fight mechanics. Slime dipping is unneccesary, and as you discovered, not all that helpful. Nobody who is not #2 or #3 on aggro in melee rage will ever take a hateful strike. Ever. Regardless of their health. And of those two people the one with the highest health takes the swat. So you either need 3 tanks or some VERY gratuitous spam overhealing on your #2 OT.
Elleiras
April 9th, 2009
10:36 pm
With all due respect, I don’t think you understood what was wrong or what had to be done at all. If your raid is wiping to Patchwerk because Chain Heal is bouncing to the melee … that’s a tanking issue, not a healing one. Your OT’s aren’t generating enough threat, and your melee DPS isn’t watching Omen to know when to let loose and win to hold back.
Anyone who tried to blame the healers for this kind of wipe in my guild would be laughed right out of it.
Alex - aka Firelight
April 14th, 2009
1:29 pm
@ elleiras – Its not a threat issue at all. Its a healing the melee issue. Look at every guide on the internet – they say: “Dont heal the melee dps”
Our problem is we are quite heavy on melee dps most raids.
I dont care so much any more as I dont take my paladin in Naxx any more unless I really have to.
Elleiras
April 15th, 2009
12:12 am
If you read it on the Internet, it must be true. ^.^
The “don’t heal the melee” strategy is the idiot-proof way to do (read: cheese!) this fight.
As Anonymous stated, Patchwerk Hateful Strikes whoever has more health between the second and third players on his aggro table –provided that that player is also in melee range. This is why most 25-man raids bring two off-tanks, and have their worst-geared tank MT.
If your melee DPS is dying to Hateful strikes, it’s either because (1) you only have one off-tank OR (2) your off-tanks (a) aren’t #2 and #3 on threat AND (b) have less health than melee DPS is who is somehow surprassing them.
That’s why I say it’s most likely a threat issue, or (in the case of tanks lacking health) a gear issue.
The only way it’s is a healing issue is if your healers aren’t keeping the off-tanks topped off.
We take three resto shamans to Naxxramas. Each of us earth shields a tank and spams Chain Heal on our assigned tank. CH bounces to the other tanks and to the melee (including the SoBing ret pallies, who I tend to keep HoTs on throughout the fight). It’s never been a problem for us. But then again, we also have a RL who understands the fight mechanics.
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