The leader guy

Now its time to sing some praises. I'm feeling good about my guild right now. Strange feeling, because I've been a bit jaded about groupings and instance runs and guild leadership in general. My guild leader impressed me tuesday. On a few different fronts, too.

Let's go back to the Blood Furnace run. 3 things actually impressed me here.

Right off the bat, we start with 5 guildies heading into the instance. Cool, I like all-guild events. One member is a rogue. For this run, guild leader == party leader == tank. So he explains the plan, the icons, the general approach to CC. We do the first pull and rogue stuns the skull, tank has a bit of trouble building rage and therefore holding aggro, but we manage. He asks the rogue to pls not stun skull, hits are needed for rage. Next pull, rogue stuns skull. Again, we manage. "come on man, stop stunning skull". Next pull, same deal. We're talking basic listening skills, and a very basic knowledge of your class and how to NOT use certain capabilities when asked to by your teammates.

Leader whispers me to ask if it would be appropriate to remove the guy from the party. I say give him a warning and lets try again. Warning goes out. Next pull, same deal. Party member removed. Some silence followed, which, I learn shortly after, was the rogue arguing with the leader. A minute or two of this, and the guy /gquits.

The leader asks the remaining party members if its ok if he takes a minute to explain to the guild. Cool, that's a good idea. He explains the situation, people on the guild chat seem to agree with his decision. I certainly do agree. He then did a good job of explaining to the guild, and answering the 1 or 2 questions that came up. Good Job there, hopefully will help curtail the drama, which so far it seems that its worked.

Next up, we're back in Blood Furnace. Leader puts up the icons for a pull. Has me trapping the main warlock of a group of mobs. I ask him if i can have the melee guy because the lock probably wont run to my trap, but instead fry me from a distance. Cool, he listens and gives cleaner assignments. Pull goes nicely. Later, we approach a tricky corridor at the top of some steps, with some closely packed groups, plus a rogue and a patrol. He asks the group for input, and takes some of our ideas and makes them work. We did awesome clearing that area. Asking the group for input, and listening to their ideas...good leadership.

And the last one that had me smiling yesterday. During the day, I was thinking that something lacking from the guild was event planning. All of our groupings are ad hoc, and sort of based upon who replies when somebody says "wanna run ramparts?". I came across Group Calendar and was thinking of how much I wished my guild did something like that. To me, it shows two things. Firstly, it shows that the leadership understands that organization is important to smooth functioning and team play. Secondly, it shows that they're knowledgeable enough to use the tools out there to make organization a bit easier. I know that sounds obvious or overly simplistic. But it is...really simple, small steps that make a guild run nicely.

So when I logged in tuesday night, guild leader chimes in, talking about how they're setting up Group Calendar and you should download the addon.

Its like he read my mind. So I installed it and it really looks cool. A few events are set up, you can indicate that you want to attend. Just cool stuff. I'm all riding high on my guild cloud right now. So time to give it a whirl, and see how the rest of the membership responds, and how well we can use the tool to actually pull off some tight team work.