Contentedness in raiding.
Posted 06-10-2009 at 11:04 AM by Klimpen
I'm in a bit of a bind, and I'm not sure how to resolve it. I think setting the scene is important, so I'll do that first.
My guild's quite new. We formed up at the beginning of May and have done ~3weeks of Ulduar making significant progress each week. Most recently, we got Hodir to 50% and I expect that we'll 2-3 shot him this week.
My raiders are solid. We're mostly two groups of RL friends plus some extras to fill the gaps. Everyone gets along pretty well [except that one dude] and the environment is generally pretty positive, pretty laidback and pretty awesome. People're geared in a strange mix of Naxx25/Ulduar10 gear with Naxx10/Heroic gear making up most of the base. Our DPS are all above 3.5k. Our heals are all solid. I'm tanking, which automatically means zero issues which I cant work on myself, though that being said I'm feeling the stagnation myself, with no regular second Tank to be pushing me, the only thing motivating me to get better is to see what silly numbers I can pull on Patchwerk this week.
The problem I'm facing is a difficult one. I've tried going about it as tactfully as possible but people're still offended. Basically, I feel people are starting to get content with their skill level, when they've got more to give. I've challenged one of our DPS, a DK named Rotinaj to improve his DPS or lose his spot. He's now able to poke fun at other DPS 'only doing 3.5k'.
I'd like to foster friendly competition for DPS, since they're grounded enough to know that countering boss ability x is more important than +2DPS, but some members are being surprisingly resistant to the idea.
I've tried talking to everyone in a 'I'm talking to everyone but would you mind doing an hour or two's research and try to figure out how you could /skill more? Thanks<3'. But I've usually got excuses rather than 'Okay, I'll see what I can do'. One of my good irl friends who plays a Disc Priest is honestly feeling pretty bad as most of our actual progress has happened on nights for whatever reason, she hasn't been able to raid [and she's had a fair number of bs reasons]. Which is just her being unfair on herself, she's helped us learn. We've finished the night with the boss nearly dead on the last attempt [ie. IC to P3 to 45%] only to 2 shot it the next night when she couldn't come.
The real reason I'm so concerned, rather than raiders being contended with their skill being zomg!bad, is that I'm very much feeling the pinch of tuning at the moment. Now days we seem to be wiping not because anyone is doing anything inherently wrong, but because we're only putting out 99.5% of what the encounter requires and that last .5% is biting us in the arse if the encounter goes on for too long. I'm trying to get a few percent buffer because I'm quite sure that things are going to get harder as we progress further into Ulduar and onto Hardmodes.
tl;dr: My raiders are getting content. Help me shake up their world and get them zomg!motivated to doing +10% output.
My guild's quite new. We formed up at the beginning of May and have done ~3weeks of Ulduar making significant progress each week. Most recently, we got Hodir to 50% and I expect that we'll 2-3 shot him this week.
My raiders are solid. We're mostly two groups of RL friends plus some extras to fill the gaps. Everyone gets along pretty well [except that one dude] and the environment is generally pretty positive, pretty laidback and pretty awesome. People're geared in a strange mix of Naxx25/Ulduar10 gear with Naxx10/Heroic gear making up most of the base. Our DPS are all above 3.5k. Our heals are all solid. I'm tanking, which automatically means zero issues which I cant work on myself, though that being said I'm feeling the stagnation myself, with no regular second Tank to be pushing me, the only thing motivating me to get better is to see what silly numbers I can pull on Patchwerk this week.
The problem I'm facing is a difficult one. I've tried going about it as tactfully as possible but people're still offended. Basically, I feel people are starting to get content with their skill level, when they've got more to give. I've challenged one of our DPS, a DK named Rotinaj to improve his DPS or lose his spot. He's now able to poke fun at other DPS 'only doing 3.5k'.
I'd like to foster friendly competition for DPS, since they're grounded enough to know that countering boss ability x is more important than +2DPS, but some members are being surprisingly resistant to the idea.
I've tried talking to everyone in a 'I'm talking to everyone but would you mind doing an hour or two's research and try to figure out how you could /skill more? Thanks<3'. But I've usually got excuses rather than 'Okay, I'll see what I can do'. One of my good irl friends who plays a Disc Priest is honestly feeling pretty bad as most of our actual progress has happened on nights for whatever reason, she hasn't been able to raid [and she's had a fair number of bs reasons]. Which is just her being unfair on herself, she's helped us learn. We've finished the night with the boss nearly dead on the last attempt [ie. IC to P3 to 45%] only to 2 shot it the next night when she couldn't come.
The real reason I'm so concerned, rather than raiders being contended with their skill being zomg!bad, is that I'm very much feeling the pinch of tuning at the moment. Now days we seem to be wiping not because anyone is doing anything inherently wrong, but because we're only putting out 99.5% of what the encounter requires and that last .5% is biting us in the arse if the encounter goes on for too long. I'm trying to get a few percent buffer because I'm quite sure that things are going to get harder as we progress further into Ulduar and onto Hardmodes.
tl;dr: My raiders are getting content. Help me shake up their world and get them zomg!motivated to doing +10% output.
Total Comments 5
Comments
-
id remind everyone that your still progressing, and the fact that you still haven't cleared everything means this instance isnt on farm status and you need to keep pushing.
if raiders aren't dedicated enough... keep recruiting and threaten them that their position in the raid isnt given, its earned.
you might also consider pushing for hard mode achievements/loot when your ready for itPosted 06-10-2009 at 12:10 PM by Helmer 
-
Foster competition. Top DPS at the end of the night gets free 'x'... Repairs, flasks, buff food, whatever... There's a reason the carrot and stick seldom fail. That's the nice way to go about it. Or you could be a dick, scream, yell, stomp your feet and threaten... But in BC raiding, when our healers were underperforming, a druid and myself [a shaman] used to spam up chat about who was going to top the healing meters each raid night. Our trash-talking [all contrived] spurred our other healers to be *that* much better because they wanted to rub the both of our noses in the fact that they had us beat. They never did, but our guld had some of the best healers on the server as a result.Posted 06-10-2009 at 04:22 PM by Azadar - Your raiders should be constantly wondering what they can do better, whether regemming and changing a couple of pieces would help, how best to time abilities, or whether spec X would yield an advantage in fight Y. If they don't they're probably bored, or they're not that driven. I'm not sure you can fix this directly.
Posted 06-10-2009 at 09:06 PM by Machus - Remember that the pressure cannot allways be full on. The community I raid with is notoriious for silly buttpulls on trashmob or even a way to preventable wipe or two on the easier stuff, then one shot 2-3 harder bosses in one straight line.
Focus is a weird commodity. Especially as a (sort of impromptu) raidleader I've found it helpful to have regular 5 minute breaks to iron out the little kinks. I've also found that focus and willingness comes back the moment you're working on something that just seems unbeatable at first. (it'll just cause a little pain first).
Friendly competition is good, but in my opinion it should really come naturally.Posted 06-11-2009 at 12:06 AM by Aethelas - I think I may have to disagree a little bit here. I have just the opposite problem in my guild. I am GM, MT and RL for our guild and I find that our DPS rely TOO heavily on that rotten terrible addon Recount. Hitting 7k DPS on an Ulduar boss is not always a good thing if they are not seeing that ice block fall, or keep casting when the flame jets are coming and either die or cause another player to die a short time later. I think far too much emphasis is put on maximum DPS and not enough on awareness. For example I swap to retri on Hodir and let my OT tank him. I normally put out 5k or more DPS but only do about 2800 on Hodir because there is so much happening, to stay alive I have to shake rattle and roll, run, jump, transfer sparkly debuff, dispel frozen people and so on. We have not yet cleared Ulduar 10 but are progressing steadily each week. One thing that I do now is, when we restart after reset, we are starting to do the some of the first mandatory fights in hard mode and skipping the easy optional bosses and drive straight for the progression bosses. This gives us a lot more time to learn the new fights and keeps the level of interest up.
Not sure if I helped, but it is my 2 cents for what ever it was worth!!Posted 06-11-2009 at 02:43 AM by Mehiaku
