Amava's guild has a bunch of people who have indicated interested in completing the Champion of the Naaru quest line.
Its been a month and a half since the first wave of titles came with our first Magtheridon kill. Facing the expansion and the obsoleteness of the current raid dungeons, we've pretty much removed Gruul and Maggy off the schedule.
So, in an effort to help people who want the title, I put a 2-hour Gruul / Magtheridon killing spree on the calendar, two weeks in advance. In addition to this, I set the guild message of the day to include some indication of the "last chance at title, check calendar" concept for the whole two weeks. And on top of that, I put a thread in the guild forum asking for people desiring the title to post where they are in the quest chain so we can try to help folks out.
So along comes sunday. About 40 minutes before the raid, I ask out on gchat "who is up to the Gruul/Maggy steps of the title quest line?" since I'm trying to form up the raid and as such, want to give preference to members who will get the title.
Nothing.
Ok, wait 10 minutes. Ask again.
Nathan.
Ok, wait 10 more minutes. Ask again.
Nada.
Oh well. I suppose they want the title, but not quite bad enough? Or maybe want it but not have time to complete the heroics?
Talk it over with the officers and come up with a real "LAST CHANCE, THIS TIME WE MEAN IT" gruul/maggy run for next sunday.
And head up for another visit to Al'ar.
It must be truely awe inspiring for a raid to hear their Raid Leader and Hunter Extraordinaire announce the misdirection assignments, and only seconds later, when he was supposed to misdirect skull onto main tank for first pull, messes up and misdirects onto his pet, who gets one-shot, and a brief period of chaos as the main tank skillfully regains control of the fight.
Oopsie.
Condoleezza still isn't talking to me.
Get to Al'ar.
Wipe twice, pretty much due to about 2k DPS too little.
We really didn't have a chance, even if people survived the firey effects in Phase 2 (which they didn't). Just too little damage output.
And analysis of the WWS chart afterwards shows, on our best attempt, 5 DPS'ers close to eachother at the top. And then a massive gap followed by a grouping of 8 people who could possibly be mistaken for tanks if this report were the only thing you observed.
/doh
Not gonna happen.
Rage Winterchill tonight. Should be fun to see, even if an exercise in futility, given numbers like that.
Showing posts with label Gruul's Lair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gruul's Lair. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Unstable Flasks
Why do they make it such a pain in the tucckus to buy Unstable Flasks?
Doing my mana cells daily quest, I stumbled upon a Bash'ir Crystalforge in Blades Edge Mountain. It gave me a cog icon as I approached it, so I right clicked it. It let me buy some Unstable Flask of the Sorcerer in exchange for Apexis Shards.
I thought that Unstable Flasks were only available after doing some overly complex NPC escort/assault that only triggers every two hours, and aparently requires a sizeable number of people to complete.
Thinking I had randomly found the vendor after somebody else completed the assault, I gobbled up a few stacks of the Sorcerer flasks for my teammates. But I'm still in search of Bandit flasks for myself.
Research shows that Sorcerer is always available from the Crystalforge. No special world event required.
Anybody out there know how to get the Bandit flasks?
I'm thinking I'll try sitting in on the bi-hourly event solo just to see what its all about, with a thousand Apexis Shards in my bag in case I actually find the NPC.
Doing my mana cells daily quest, I stumbled upon a Bash'ir Crystalforge in Blades Edge Mountain. It gave me a cog icon as I approached it, so I right clicked it. It let me buy some Unstable Flask of the Sorcerer in exchange for Apexis Shards.
I thought that Unstable Flasks were only available after doing some overly complex NPC escort/assault that only triggers every two hours, and aparently requires a sizeable number of people to complete.
Thinking I had randomly found the vendor after somebody else completed the assault, I gobbled up a few stacks of the Sorcerer flasks for my teammates. But I'm still in search of Bandit flasks for myself.
Research shows that Sorcerer is always available from the Crystalforge. No special world event required.
Anybody out there know how to get the Bandit flasks?
I'm thinking I'll try sitting in on the bi-hourly event solo just to see what its all about, with a thousand Apexis Shards in my bag in case I actually find the NPC.
What part of STFU do you not understand?
'Twas the night of a million whispers.
'Twas the night of eight pugged raid members.
'Twas the night Amava looked with nostalgia at the good ole days in Teldrassil, without any professions, with a Bear named Teddy, who was a good boy if not optimally min/max'ed for performance, with no guild and not a care in the world.
'Twas the fourth night of the Guild running Gruul's Lair, and my fourth stab at being a 25-person Raid Leader.
The Facts:
1) 15 people from the guild signed up. Summer-itis struck and many regular members sent their regrets. 17 guildies ended up entering the raid.
2) Located 6 players from friends lists and 2 from blind whispers.
3) Wiped 6 times on High King Maulgar, never making it past a third mob in the kill order.
The Good:
1) The most important thing for me out of the night is that the whole team maintained a pretty positive attitude. A small amount of grumbling over the wipes, which was pretty natural after the third or fourth, but no finger pointing or other destructive behavior.
2) Our first real struggle as a 25-person unit. We haven't really had to struggle on any of our first three nights with Gruul, so this was new for us. We kept tweaking our approach, improving slightly with each try, and generally, the atmosphere was positive. This gives me hope for future content where we really will have to wipe again and again to master the fights.
3) For the first few tries, we had a different Mage Tank than normal try out the job of handling Krosh. She did well, and I would have kept her on the job, but as part of the post-wipe analysis we determined that Krosh was running rampant. Hard to tell if it was the Mage or the Healer assigned to the Mage causing the issue. I'm always happy to see raid members try new and unusual jobs, and I'll be happy to assign her the same job next week.
4) After calling the raid, there was what I'll be so bold as to call an "outpouring" of support for what we went through and me in the job of RL. I was getting ready to hit the bottle to settle my nerves, when the raid chat, guild chat, voice chat and some whispers came alive with supportive messages, from guildies and visitors alike, of how I kept us together and stayed positive and maintained some order through the total chaos that is pugging and wiping. That gave a nice ending to one of the more stressful events I've been through lately, and reminds me of what a decent group of people we actually do have on the team.
The Bad:
1) The whispering. The endless whispering. The constant incoming stream of whispers. I asked numerous times for the whole raid to cease and desist with the whispering. Whispering as we tried to find more PuG players. Whispering as I set up groups. Whispering as we buffed. Whispering as we laid out the initial strategy. Whispering as we wiped each time.
Nobody was whispering anything bad or angry or such. But just too much communication.
Some of it from the PuG members, who do not work with us regularly, some of it from the guildies. Too much.
Which part of STFU do you not understand? :-)
2) We had to fill in 8 players from outside the guild. I blame summer attendance and slow recruiting. If we are going to continue the momentum we had coming into this fourth raid night, we must fix that.
3) First pull was 30 minutes after scheduled start time. Normally this is my chief issue, but this week the PuG nature of the raid eclipses start time. However, the two are intimately related, and I remain hopeful that if we get more guildies participating, then start time will return to the happy 15 minutes we hit last week.
4) Lair Brutes. If you stand too far away, they ignore aggro and charge you, generally one-shotting you, and they scramble the mob's threat table, causing chaos afterwards. PLEASE LISTEN TO ME WHEN I SAY "THEY'RE LIKE ATTUMEN. STAND CLOSE OR DIE". If we had DKP, I would reward zero DKP for the night to any player who dies due to a charge. It is totally avoidable, and slows down the entire raid as we rez and rebuff you.
The Ugly:
1) The shivering fit my body went into after logging out. Maybe that was from the air conditioner cranked too hard, or the Labrador Retriever / Border Collie mix laying next to me breathing firey puppy nose breath directly into my arm pit, but never the less, 1.5 hours of staring at the cieling pleading for sleep to come. Ugly.
The Future:
1) Amava will not begin looking for substitute players unless 20 members from the guild are present at 15 minutes prior to scheduled start time. Each specialty must be well represented in-guild as well (at least 3 of 4 tanks must be from in-guild, at least 5 of 7 healers must be guildies, etc).The guild is welcome to continue on if we don't meet those criteria, with no hard feelings, but I will not be participating that night.
2) As such, recruiting efforts must be increased. We've had a rough time recruiting lately, so we will need to find more avenues through which to find new players.
3) I look forward to returning to Gruul's Lair and kicking @ss next week. Hopefully we can restore confidence and gain some momentum so I can seriously consider adding Magtheridon to the schedule.
'Twas the night of eight pugged raid members.
'Twas the night Amava looked with nostalgia at the good ole days in Teldrassil, without any professions, with a Bear named Teddy, who was a good boy if not optimally min/max'ed for performance, with no guild and not a care in the world.
'Twas the fourth night of the Guild running Gruul's Lair, and my fourth stab at being a 25-person Raid Leader.
The Facts:
1) 15 people from the guild signed up. Summer-itis struck and many regular members sent their regrets. 17 guildies ended up entering the raid.
2) Located 6 players from friends lists and 2 from blind whispers.
3) Wiped 6 times on High King Maulgar, never making it past a third mob in the kill order.
The Good:
1) The most important thing for me out of the night is that the whole team maintained a pretty positive attitude. A small amount of grumbling over the wipes, which was pretty natural after the third or fourth, but no finger pointing or other destructive behavior.
2) Our first real struggle as a 25-person unit. We haven't really had to struggle on any of our first three nights with Gruul, so this was new for us. We kept tweaking our approach, improving slightly with each try, and generally, the atmosphere was positive. This gives me hope for future content where we really will have to wipe again and again to master the fights.
3) For the first few tries, we had a different Mage Tank than normal try out the job of handling Krosh. She did well, and I would have kept her on the job, but as part of the post-wipe analysis we determined that Krosh was running rampant. Hard to tell if it was the Mage or the Healer assigned to the Mage causing the issue. I'm always happy to see raid members try new and unusual jobs, and I'll be happy to assign her the same job next week.
4) After calling the raid, there was what I'll be so bold as to call an "outpouring" of support for what we went through and me in the job of RL. I was getting ready to hit the bottle to settle my nerves, when the raid chat, guild chat, voice chat and some whispers came alive with supportive messages, from guildies and visitors alike, of how I kept us together and stayed positive and maintained some order through the total chaos that is pugging and wiping. That gave a nice ending to one of the more stressful events I've been through lately, and reminds me of what a decent group of people we actually do have on the team.
The Bad:
1) The whispering. The endless whispering. The constant incoming stream of whispers. I asked numerous times for the whole raid to cease and desist with the whispering. Whispering as we tried to find more PuG players. Whispering as I set up groups. Whispering as we buffed. Whispering as we laid out the initial strategy. Whispering as we wiped each time.
Nobody was whispering anything bad or angry or such. But just too much communication.
Some of it from the PuG members, who do not work with us regularly, some of it from the guildies. Too much.
Which part of STFU do you not understand? :-)
2) We had to fill in 8 players from outside the guild. I blame summer attendance and slow recruiting. If we are going to continue the momentum we had coming into this fourth raid night, we must fix that.
3) First pull was 30 minutes after scheduled start time. Normally this is my chief issue, but this week the PuG nature of the raid eclipses start time. However, the two are intimately related, and I remain hopeful that if we get more guildies participating, then start time will return to the happy 15 minutes we hit last week.
4) Lair Brutes. If you stand too far away, they ignore aggro and charge you, generally one-shotting you, and they scramble the mob's threat table, causing chaos afterwards. PLEASE LISTEN TO ME WHEN I SAY "THEY'RE LIKE ATTUMEN. STAND CLOSE OR DIE". If we had DKP, I would reward zero DKP for the night to any player who dies due to a charge. It is totally avoidable, and slows down the entire raid as we rez and rebuff you.
The Ugly:
1) The shivering fit my body went into after logging out. Maybe that was from the air conditioner cranked too hard, or the Labrador Retriever / Border Collie mix laying next to me breathing firey puppy nose breath directly into my arm pit, but never the less, 1.5 hours of staring at the cieling pleading for sleep to come. Ugly.
The Future:
1) Amava will not begin looking for substitute players unless 20 members from the guild are present at 15 minutes prior to scheduled start time. Each specialty must be well represented in-guild as well (at least 3 of 4 tanks must be from in-guild, at least 5 of 7 healers must be guildies, etc).The guild is welcome to continue on if we don't meet those criteria, with no hard feelings, but I will not be participating that night.
2) As such, recruiting efforts must be increased. We've had a rough time recruiting lately, so we will need to find more avenues through which to find new players.
3) I look forward to returning to Gruul's Lair and kicking @ss next week. Hopefully we can restore confidence and gain some momentum so I can seriously consider adding Magtheridon to the schedule.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
A Third Night in Gruul's Lair
Welcome to Part Three of my ongoing series of becoming a brandy new Raid Leader in Gruul's Lair.
On the surface, there's not a whole lot to talk about. We came, we saw, we kicked his ass.
But I'm never one to leave a short story sitting there all alone, so allow me to elaborate.
On a separate note, please, continue to give me feedback on this ongoing series. I got a few comments and emails about the previous one, which I really appreciate and will try to incorporate.
Pre-Work
To start with, I personally did more prework for this one than I did for the previous 2 raids.
The first thing I did was to write a few paragraphs on our guild website, summarizing what went well and what things we are trying to improve.
Next up, I changed the Guild Message of the Day, asking people to signup in advance via Group Calendar and also to go check out the website and read over the article.
During the week, I also randomly spit out messages in Guild chat, asking people to signup if they are interested in coming.
Finally, early on Sunday morning, about 12 hours before the raid, I made a spreadsheet to let me plan out the raid. It basically lets me enter each name who's signed up and their class and role. There's a nice summary of roles and classes up at the top. I also added in a field where I can then indicate if the person is actually invited or not. This allows me to have one summary early on before the raid where I can map out who is planning on attending, and another section that I use during actual invites to map out who is actually online and ready.
So, sunday morning, I recorded all the signups in the sheet. This gave me a nice view of what classes and roles we were light or heavy on.
Starting Up
60 minutes before the raid, I got my own personal consumables and stuff ready and flew on up to Blade's Edge. It was extra complicated because I was bringing a raw jewel to be cut and mats for Exceptional Stats on my new Merciless Chest. But I got my personal sht squared away and then flew on over.
45 minutes before the raid, I went over my spreadsheet again, whispering a few people who were logged in, but hadn't signed up. Those few had indeed signed up via Group Calendar, but it was showing them as "pending", and I could not see their requests.
As it would turn out, we had 22 people sign up. 5 tanks (which is 1 too many for our 4 tank strategy), 6 healers (which is 1 too few for our 7 healer strategy) and 11 DPS (with no single class either over nor under represented).
30 minutes before the raid, I started invites. Of the 22 signups, 19 were online and ready.
20 minutes before the raid, I began seeking out substitute players. We were missing 6 players, with 3 signup/no-shows who we were hoping would show up.
At the scheduled start time, we were at 23 players, missing only 2 DPS. Along the way, we had a Protection Paladin respec to Holy, which as a RL, I hugely appreciate his flexibility and willingness to fill a different role to meet the team's needs. This is in part due to the flexibility of his class, but more importantly, his spirit as a team player. If you're reading this, thank you, its that kind of attitude that makes the team a success.
It took another 12 minutes to locate the last players and fill out the roster.
Pep Talk
As has become standard, I left the dungeon on Heroic mode during all the forming stages.
Once the roster was full, I gave a pep talk. I covered damage meters (we dont use them so dont post them or ask to have them posted. wws is available after the run), loot policy, and our goal.
The goal was to kill HKM and Gruul in an hour and a half. We would be focusing more on speed than in previous weeks.
I also thanked the team for signing up and showing up on time, this is by far the most efficient startup we've had.
It is amusing to imagine what the raiders think of my little 2 minute speech. Part of me thinks they roll their eyes "ugh, amava's at it again", and part of me thinks they're like "whatever". And the part of me that likes the frosted side of the Mini Wheats thinks that they're paying attention, and keeping the little tidbits in the back of their mind during the raid.
At 15 minutes past start time, I changed from Heroic to Normal. First pull went off at 20 minutes past.
Execution
Trash. Nobody seems to listen to my message "group up close to Lair Brutes, if you're too far away, they charge like Attumen", so we consistently lost 2 players minimum on each trash pull that included Lair Brutes. Wasted time that I'd like to eliminate in future attempts.
Along the way, we did accidentally pull some patrols, and the team reacted perfectly, with tanks picking up targets, me throwing icons to help sort out the chaos, and everybody generally staying calm and doing their job.
HKM. Our first one-shot of Maulgar ever. Pretty quick planning session. I did have to review the whole fight because there were 4 people who never saw the encounter before, including one of the tanks.
Gruul. 3 shots and dead. First attempt was shaky, but important learning for the new folks. Second attempt was pretty good, but unlucky positioning after some of the tosses left us with way too much shatter damage.
Third try. Put raid icons on healers. When tossed in the air, healers would only look at spacing themselves against other healers. DPS players were then to find a safe spot and not kill the healers. Worked like a charm.
As usual, I guided the team through a wipe analysis each time we died. There remained a positive atmosphere, and some people gave good input as to what went wrong and creatively coming up with ideas. As RL, I had to intervene after a certain amount of discussion and lay out which of the ideas we'd be implementing.
Looting
Before the run, I reviewed the looting policy.
When we looted HKM, I think people did an outstanding job of maintaining radio silence (and text silence) other than what was required for the loot distribution process. Things went very smoothly and efficiently, with little confusion. This was good.
When we looted Gruul, there was much more peanut gallery conversation. Voice remained clear, which was a positive thing. Text chat was full of some semi-constructive stuff like "oh that's good for ret pally" and also some needless contributions like "doh" after rolling a low number.
The text clutter really made things confusing. When we have 7 people rolling for an item, if nobody adds any extra lines of text, I can just fit all 7 rolls into a single text chat window. This makes things easy. With 8 other lines of text mixed in there, its really tough.
Believe it or not, there's pressure on your Loot Masters and Officers during looting. They want to get it right, and never deny somebody their fair chance at gear. Please respect it with silence. Everybody knows you want to say gratz to people, everybody knows you are unhappy you rolled a 7.
Future Planning
The portals to Shatt City were opened at 10:37, which was 1 hour and 17 minutes after our first pull. I'm thrilled with that. A combination of getting started nearly on time, and maintaining a resonable pace paid off. If we eliminate the 2 wipes on Gruul, this is easily completed in under an hour, which is my goal for next week.
The Officers shared with the team some ideas we have for changing up the raid list, hoping to open up 2 nights for 25-person content.
Generally, people are excited, with a few left concerned at what seems to be less opportunity in Kara for those who still want some gear out of there.
We've got some ideas, but that'll wait for another post.
Conclusion
Two main things made the night a success:
1) Signups and most people being reliably online on time.
2) Increasing familiarity with the dungeon.
We started earlier, and spent only minimal time explaining the fights.
As usual, the whole Officer corps did an excellent job working together and ensuring the raid was well cared for. The raiders did a great job being on time, and then performing their jobs in the raid. Everybody kept a positive attitude, and reacted well to learning from wipes.
Looking forward, I still see startup time as needing improvement, even if only 5 minutes. Additionally, we had to fill a few slots from outside the guild. We are recruiting to try to bring players in to fill those positions.
On the surface, there's not a whole lot to talk about. We came, we saw, we kicked his ass.
But I'm never one to leave a short story sitting there all alone, so allow me to elaborate.
On a separate note, please, continue to give me feedback on this ongoing series. I got a few comments and emails about the previous one, which I really appreciate and will try to incorporate.
Pre-Work
To start with, I personally did more prework for this one than I did for the previous 2 raids.
The first thing I did was to write a few paragraphs on our guild website, summarizing what went well and what things we are trying to improve.
Next up, I changed the Guild Message of the Day, asking people to signup in advance via Group Calendar and also to go check out the website and read over the article.
During the week, I also randomly spit out messages in Guild chat, asking people to signup if they are interested in coming.
Finally, early on Sunday morning, about 12 hours before the raid, I made a spreadsheet to let me plan out the raid. It basically lets me enter each name who's signed up and their class and role. There's a nice summary of roles and classes up at the top. I also added in a field where I can then indicate if the person is actually invited or not. This allows me to have one summary early on before the raid where I can map out who is planning on attending, and another section that I use during actual invites to map out who is actually online and ready.
So, sunday morning, I recorded all the signups in the sheet. This gave me a nice view of what classes and roles we were light or heavy on.
Starting Up
60 minutes before the raid, I got my own personal consumables and stuff ready and flew on up to Blade's Edge. It was extra complicated because I was bringing a raw jewel to be cut and mats for Exceptional Stats on my new Merciless Chest. But I got my personal sht squared away and then flew on over.
45 minutes before the raid, I went over my spreadsheet again, whispering a few people who were logged in, but hadn't signed up. Those few had indeed signed up via Group Calendar, but it was showing them as "pending", and I could not see their requests.
As it would turn out, we had 22 people sign up. 5 tanks (which is 1 too many for our 4 tank strategy), 6 healers (which is 1 too few for our 7 healer strategy) and 11 DPS (with no single class either over nor under represented).
30 minutes before the raid, I started invites. Of the 22 signups, 19 were online and ready.
20 minutes before the raid, I began seeking out substitute players. We were missing 6 players, with 3 signup/no-shows who we were hoping would show up.
At the scheduled start time, we were at 23 players, missing only 2 DPS. Along the way, we had a Protection Paladin respec to Holy, which as a RL, I hugely appreciate his flexibility and willingness to fill a different role to meet the team's needs. This is in part due to the flexibility of his class, but more importantly, his spirit as a team player. If you're reading this, thank you, its that kind of attitude that makes the team a success.
It took another 12 minutes to locate the last players and fill out the roster.
Pep Talk
As has become standard, I left the dungeon on Heroic mode during all the forming stages.
Once the roster was full, I gave a pep talk. I covered damage meters (we dont use them so dont post them or ask to have them posted. wws is available after the run), loot policy, and our goal.
The goal was to kill HKM and Gruul in an hour and a half. We would be focusing more on speed than in previous weeks.
I also thanked the team for signing up and showing up on time, this is by far the most efficient startup we've had.
It is amusing to imagine what the raiders think of my little 2 minute speech. Part of me thinks they roll their eyes "ugh, amava's at it again", and part of me thinks they're like "whatever". And the part of me that likes the frosted side of the Mini Wheats thinks that they're paying attention, and keeping the little tidbits in the back of their mind during the raid.
At 15 minutes past start time, I changed from Heroic to Normal. First pull went off at 20 minutes past.
Execution
Trash. Nobody seems to listen to my message "group up close to Lair Brutes, if you're too far away, they charge like Attumen", so we consistently lost 2 players minimum on each trash pull that included Lair Brutes. Wasted time that I'd like to eliminate in future attempts.
Along the way, we did accidentally pull some patrols, and the team reacted perfectly, with tanks picking up targets, me throwing icons to help sort out the chaos, and everybody generally staying calm and doing their job.
HKM. Our first one-shot of Maulgar ever. Pretty quick planning session. I did have to review the whole fight because there were 4 people who never saw the encounter before, including one of the tanks.
Gruul. 3 shots and dead. First attempt was shaky, but important learning for the new folks. Second attempt was pretty good, but unlucky positioning after some of the tosses left us with way too much shatter damage.
Third try. Put raid icons on healers. When tossed in the air, healers would only look at spacing themselves against other healers. DPS players were then to find a safe spot and not kill the healers. Worked like a charm.
As usual, I guided the team through a wipe analysis each time we died. There remained a positive atmosphere, and some people gave good input as to what went wrong and creatively coming up with ideas. As RL, I had to intervene after a certain amount of discussion and lay out which of the ideas we'd be implementing.
Looting
Before the run, I reviewed the looting policy.
When we looted HKM, I think people did an outstanding job of maintaining radio silence (and text silence) other than what was required for the loot distribution process. Things went very smoothly and efficiently, with little confusion. This was good.
When we looted Gruul, there was much more peanut gallery conversation. Voice remained clear, which was a positive thing. Text chat was full of some semi-constructive stuff like "oh that's good for ret pally" and also some needless contributions like "doh" after rolling a low number.
The text clutter really made things confusing. When we have 7 people rolling for an item, if nobody adds any extra lines of text, I can just fit all 7 rolls into a single text chat window. This makes things easy. With 8 other lines of text mixed in there, its really tough.
Believe it or not, there's pressure on your Loot Masters and Officers during looting. They want to get it right, and never deny somebody their fair chance at gear. Please respect it with silence. Everybody knows you want to say gratz to people, everybody knows you are unhappy you rolled a 7.
Future Planning
The portals to Shatt City were opened at 10:37, which was 1 hour and 17 minutes after our first pull. I'm thrilled with that. A combination of getting started nearly on time, and maintaining a resonable pace paid off. If we eliminate the 2 wipes on Gruul, this is easily completed in under an hour, which is my goal for next week.
The Officers shared with the team some ideas we have for changing up the raid list, hoping to open up 2 nights for 25-person content.
Generally, people are excited, with a few left concerned at what seems to be less opportunity in Kara for those who still want some gear out of there.
We've got some ideas, but that'll wait for another post.
Conclusion
Two main things made the night a success:
1) Signups and most people being reliably online on time.
2) Increasing familiarity with the dungeon.
We started earlier, and spent only minimal time explaining the fights.
As usual, the whole Officer corps did an excellent job working together and ensuring the raid was well cared for. The raiders did a great job being on time, and then performing their jobs in the raid. Everybody kept a positive attitude, and reacted well to learning from wipes.
Looking forward, I still see startup time as needing improvement, even if only 5 minutes. Additionally, we had to fill a few slots from outside the guild. We are recruiting to try to bring players in to fill those positions.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
The Proper Way to Welcome New Guildies
Celebrating the 4th of July weekend properly, I was outdoors and with family the whole time, and as such, away from WoW for 3 days.
Ok, so we weren't outdoors the whole time, and we did get some family time on the Wii, including me blasting away most of my sister's high scores in the Wii Fit balance games. I think its because I mostly stand up when I play WoW, but I digress. Oh, and while I'm digressing, they need to rename the movie to "White Men Can't Dance", which some recent video footage of Dance Dance Revolution will readily confirm.
So sunday night, I drive 400 miles home, and log in for Gruul's.
Looking through the Guild, I see a Paladin that I worked with back in my 30's in a leveling guild, and he's now been invited. We whispered a little of the good old days, then it was down to business getting the raid set up.
My chief concern of the evening was how to properly welcome him to the Guild. You can't treat these things lightly.
While getting set up, we also had a Resto Shaman who was a friend of a few players join our guild.
Now a true celebration is in order.
I got to thinking, how about a raid to celebrate? Sure, lets do it.
Form up the team, zone on into the instance, and raise some h3ll.
Took a few tries, but HKM goes down.
Both new invitees do awesome. Our Mage Tank, in her shiny new stamina set, did awesome. Overall, the entire team did a fantastic job. We handled three wipes with dignity and remained focused on learning from our defeats, and making small incremental changes each time. I'm fully confident that next week, this fight will be much less chaos and that much closer to farming.
On to Gruul. Last week, our first visit to his Lair, we got him down to 24% in our best attempt.
This week? Best attempt, 0%.
Yep, we've got a shiny new screenshot of 25 combatants standing before a face-down Gruul.
The fight was interesting. Survivability was king. Stay away from other folks so you don't Shatter. I spent most of the fight shimmying from side to side, trying to find a safe little nook between adjacent players. Although I'm happy with my DPS output, all the jockeying for position did hurt my numbers, so I'm looking at this as the biggest area for my own personal improvement.
The raid generally did a nice job moving around and adjusting to the chaos. Some nice usage of bandages also helped reduce the healing burden, although it did slow the DPS down and cause the fight to go longer than I'd like. I think we had him at growth 13 or 14, but I'm not 100% sure, the end of the fight was a blur.
Judgment of Wisdom was absolutely wonderful for mana regen.
Aldori Legendary Defender dropped and the Main Tank won the roll. Good stuff, from what I hear, its a pretty nifty shield. A couple Hunters/Mages/Warlocks got T4 love. w00t.
So I exclaimed "Welcome to the Guild, [Pally] and [Shammy]. This is how we do things around here!"
I have a tendancy to get a little passionate about things, and the excitement must have come across in my voice, because someone texted out "I bet Amava's jumping up and down right now" as I was in mid-leap.
Ok, so we weren't outdoors the whole time, and we did get some family time on the Wii, including me blasting away most of my sister's high scores in the Wii Fit balance games. I think its because I mostly stand up when I play WoW, but I digress. Oh, and while I'm digressing, they need to rename the movie to "White Men Can't Dance", which some recent video footage of Dance Dance Revolution will readily confirm.
So sunday night, I drive 400 miles home, and log in for Gruul's.
Looking through the Guild, I see a Paladin that I worked with back in my 30's in a leveling guild, and he's now been invited. We whispered a little of the good old days, then it was down to business getting the raid set up.
My chief concern of the evening was how to properly welcome him to the Guild. You can't treat these things lightly.
While getting set up, we also had a Resto Shaman who was a friend of a few players join our guild.
Now a true celebration is in order.
I got to thinking, how about a raid to celebrate? Sure, lets do it.
Form up the team, zone on into the instance, and raise some h3ll.
Took a few tries, but HKM goes down.
Both new invitees do awesome. Our Mage Tank, in her shiny new stamina set, did awesome. Overall, the entire team did a fantastic job. We handled three wipes with dignity and remained focused on learning from our defeats, and making small incremental changes each time. I'm fully confident that next week, this fight will be much less chaos and that much closer to farming.
On to Gruul. Last week, our first visit to his Lair, we got him down to 24% in our best attempt.
This week? Best attempt, 0%.
Yep, we've got a shiny new screenshot of 25 combatants standing before a face-down Gruul.
The fight was interesting. Survivability was king. Stay away from other folks so you don't Shatter. I spent most of the fight shimmying from side to side, trying to find a safe little nook between adjacent players. Although I'm happy with my DPS output, all the jockeying for position did hurt my numbers, so I'm looking at this as the biggest area for my own personal improvement.
The raid generally did a nice job moving around and adjusting to the chaos. Some nice usage of bandages also helped reduce the healing burden, although it did slow the DPS down and cause the fight to go longer than I'd like. I think we had him at growth 13 or 14, but I'm not 100% sure, the end of the fight was a blur.
Judgment of Wisdom was absolutely wonderful for mana regen.
Aldori Legendary Defender dropped and the Main Tank won the roll. Good stuff, from what I hear, its a pretty nifty shield. A couple Hunters/Mages/Warlocks got T4 love. w00t.
So I exclaimed "Welcome to the Guild, [Pally] and [Shammy]. This is how we do things around here!"
I have a tendancy to get a little passionate about things, and the excitement must have come across in my voice, because someone texted out "I bet Amava's jumping up and down right now" as I was in mid-leap.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
The Guild Visits Gruul's Lair
Lol, I said "the next post is a doozy". Not this one, the next one, so go get another cup of coffee.
So, Sunday night. Our normal night for Team 1 to go to Zul'Aman and Team 2 to continue progressing through Karazhan.
Not this week. The time was right for the guild to move into 25-person raiding.
Gruul's Lair was on the calendar.
19 people signed up. There was much buzz and excitement in the days leading up.
I log in about an hour before the event. Immediately get an invite from the Guild Manager / Raid Leader. I see the other officers in the group already. To delegate some of the duties and spread out the responsibility of leading the group, they want me to be Raid Leader.
I was blown away. A mix of feeling happy from the respect my friends have for my performance leading a group, and a huge overwhelming feeling of the weight of just how challenging it will be. More on that later, as the experience leaves me with lots of thoughts. This post is about the raid.
All those who signed up were logged in and ready to rock on time. We ended up with 21 from the guild. Partnering with another guild at our stage of progression, we picked up 3 more players, although filling in the extra slots took us a long time. We started the night with only 24 players because time was ticking and we were anxious.
5 tanks (2 Warriors, 2 Paladins, 1 Druid)
7 healers (4 Priests, 2 Druids, 1 Paladin)
12 DPS (6 Hunters, 3 Rogues, 1 Mage, 1 Warlock, 1 Priest)
Generally a good blend of classes, with the only real issue of 6 Hunters, which is too many, and zero Shamans, which is too few.
We started the run 49 minutes later than our scheduled start time, which is my only complaint for the evening. I'm ok with it for our first night, but this is the chief area that I want the team to improve.
Waltz through the three trashies.
Spend some time figuring out strategy for High King Maulgar. The only people who did the fight before had done it in raids where the Raid Leader pretty much knew the fight and just told people where to go, so they didn't really know how to explain the fight.
First shot. Complete and total chaos.
Second shot. Lets put those 6 Hunters to work. I gave out clear Misdirection assignments for each tank. Much more control over the fight.
Third shot. The only missing piece that was really causing chaos during the Second Shot was the Mage Boss. We got that under control in the third fight.
And we kicked his @ss.
First night, three shots, High King Maulgar down.
For the first time in Guild History, Amava decides to roll for T4 loot. And with 9 people rolling, drops a 98 and wins the shoulders. I actually felt bad and wish I hadn't rolled, I'd much rather see the gear go to a Guildie, but I suppose I won't complain, I like the look better than my Beastmaw Pauldrons.
We pushed on to Gruul.
The group agreed to extend our raid by 30 minutes to allow for some Gruul experimentation.
2 shots, both wipes. 24% at 9 growths.
And there you have it. Our first foray into 25-person content, a smashing success. Positive attitudes abound. Good progression for the guild. Lots of good things on the list, and only a start time issue on the bad side.
So, Sunday night. Our normal night for Team 1 to go to Zul'Aman and Team 2 to continue progressing through Karazhan.
Not this week. The time was right for the guild to move into 25-person raiding.
Gruul's Lair was on the calendar.
19 people signed up. There was much buzz and excitement in the days leading up.
I log in about an hour before the event. Immediately get an invite from the Guild Manager / Raid Leader. I see the other officers in the group already. To delegate some of the duties and spread out the responsibility of leading the group, they want me to be Raid Leader.
I was blown away. A mix of feeling happy from the respect my friends have for my performance leading a group, and a huge overwhelming feeling of the weight of just how challenging it will be. More on that later, as the experience leaves me with lots of thoughts. This post is about the raid.
All those who signed up were logged in and ready to rock on time. We ended up with 21 from the guild. Partnering with another guild at our stage of progression, we picked up 3 more players, although filling in the extra slots took us a long time. We started the night with only 24 players because time was ticking and we were anxious.
5 tanks (2 Warriors, 2 Paladins, 1 Druid)
7 healers (4 Priests, 2 Druids, 1 Paladin)
12 DPS (6 Hunters, 3 Rogues, 1 Mage, 1 Warlock, 1 Priest)
Generally a good blend of classes, with the only real issue of 6 Hunters, which is too many, and zero Shamans, which is too few.
We started the run 49 minutes later than our scheduled start time, which is my only complaint for the evening. I'm ok with it for our first night, but this is the chief area that I want the team to improve.
Waltz through the three trashies.
Spend some time figuring out strategy for High King Maulgar. The only people who did the fight before had done it in raids where the Raid Leader pretty much knew the fight and just told people where to go, so they didn't really know how to explain the fight.
First shot. Complete and total chaos.
Second shot. Lets put those 6 Hunters to work. I gave out clear Misdirection assignments for each tank. Much more control over the fight.
Third shot. The only missing piece that was really causing chaos during the Second Shot was the Mage Boss. We got that under control in the third fight.
And we kicked his @ss.
First night, three shots, High King Maulgar down.
For the first time in Guild History, Amava decides to roll for T4 loot. And with 9 people rolling, drops a 98 and wins the shoulders. I actually felt bad and wish I hadn't rolled, I'd much rather see the gear go to a Guildie, but I suppose I won't complain, I like the look better than my Beastmaw Pauldrons.
We pushed on to Gruul.
The group agreed to extend our raid by 30 minutes to allow for some Gruul experimentation.
2 shots, both wipes. 24% at 9 growths.
And there you have it. Our first foray into 25-person content, a smashing success. Positive attitudes abound. Good progression for the guild. Lots of good things on the list, and only a start time issue on the bad side.
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