Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Healers, Healers Everywhere, but not a Drop to Drink

Team 2 is ready to roll. We've put together a roster and posted it to the guild website. All of the Team 2 members are pretty new, but have seen the inside at least once. Only real question that remains is who will play the role of Raid Leader. The players that show the most leadership qualities are officers who are all part of Team 1. For now, we've chosen to not split up Team 1 at all. There are one or two people on Team 2 who might just be leaders in disguise, ready to do a good job if given the opportunity, so its time to give them that opportunity.

And then comes the predicament.

Since life can never be simple, Team 1 now finds itself in a bind. When we started, we had 2 Holy Priests who were generally available for all 3 raid nights, and a Holy Paladin who was generally available for 2 of the 3 nights.

One Holy Priest had a work shift change so he is unavailable during evenings now. Other Holy Priest just began a three month vacation through Asia. He might have availablity for joining an occasional raid, but definitely nothing solid. And the Holy Paladin is on a 2 week vacation as well.

So right at the moment that we are saying the Team 2 healers are now going to run with a real Team 2, is the exact moment that Team 1 is short on some healing.

Funny, eh?

But the officers feel pretty strongly that we need to encourage Team 2 to run and form a team identity and get into a grove of raiding and enjoy some progress. At this point, we're determined to not pirate any of the Team 2 healers, and will make the sacrifice of not raiding unless we can find some alternate healers.
Which then brings me to my own personal dilemma.

I recently was able to get my Resto Druid friend to join the guild. The benefit he brings is two-fold. On the surface, a Tree of Life brings tremendous raid benefit. Innervate, Combat Rez, Mark of the Wild, Tree of Life healing buff for tanks. Below the surface, I know that the person behind the toon has the right drive and attitude to fit in with the team.

But there was this unfortunate incident with Zul'Aman and some cloth healing gear and some subsequent drama. The whole thing is sad really. Two people who both have demonstrated over time that the are really fun and reasonable folks, and loot sort of brought out the worst, causing others to take sides and just make a small mess of the situation.

Fast forward a few days.

After basically coming to grips with the fact that the drama is a bit too intense for him to return to our guild right now, he was nearly immediately recruited by the 2nd most progressed guild on our server. I'd like to see an unguilded Hunter get blindly recruited like that, lol. He ran with them for 'bout a week, and is thinking that they are a bit too hardcore, with pretty strict rules about many different fascets of the game.

Long story short, he's really interested in a second shot with our guild.

So what to do?

We're in need of a healer, or faced with stopping raiding. We have a capable healer available. One who is a reasonable person, but has a semi-tainted reputation over this whole event.

Two of the officers want to invite him back, one does not want him back but at the same time, will be absent for three months. The final officer and GM is on the fence, trying to be diplomatic and keep drama at a minimum while keeping the guild emotionally stable.

As far as the drama goes, its really not been too "dramatic". The people involved have all maintained a relatively mature attitude, and the drama has really just surrounded the bottom line of "is he in or is he out." No hissy fits or hair pulling or name calling.

So how do I help everybody see a middle ground that allows us to continue progress and un-ruffle all the feathers?

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