Progression... and leaving sub-par players behind

[Anaea]

But that's not accurate. The first 25-man fight that genuinely requires coordination from everyone is Gorefiend, followed by Mother. In both cases, most top-tier guilds can wipe and wipe and wipe even on otherwise good nights.

With all due respect, Cider, I think your position hanging out at the actual end of end game might skew your perspective a bit. We're currently working on Vashj. Having just come from 1.5 nights on the Naga woman, I'm not seeing how anyone in this fight gets to slack off - particularly during Phase 2.

(For perspective, like Horacio's guild (hai2u!), we log about 9 hours a week. So we're running in about Tier 4.5 level gear - hooray for badges!)

The nature of the fight is trotting out the old "what do we do about underperformers?!" angst that we went through in the early Kara days. I'm not saying the fight is more difficult than Gorefiend (I wouldn't know) but it sorta sounds here like you're saying the first "hard" TBC fight happens in BT... and I'd venture to guess that the plethora of 5/6 3/4 guilds out there would disagree.

(Heck, when you're running around in Sunwell gear I bet those bad Gorefiend nights will be a thing of the past for you too; maybe then the "first" coordination fight in TBC will be the Eredar twins or something. =P)

I think it's human nature to trivialize the content we've completed - that's how memory works, after all. The time last week when we blew through X with alts and respecs "just for fun" comes to mind much faster than the time two months ago when we wiped all night learning an encounter. Sure Aran seems like a joke now for us, but my friend whose guild just dinged 70 and is working on Kara is absolutely certain that any mistake by anyone in the group will wipe them.

So I'm don't blame you for that. But I would be careful not to trivialize the feelings people have about how difficult these encounters are and how imperative and impossible the decisions around raiding these encounters also feel. No matter how much the troll tempts you.

And @Telani - ad hominems are the refuge of the ignorant and lazy.

[Talani]

And @Telani - ad hominems are the refuge of the ignorant and lazy.

I made a crack about ciderhelm solving crimes and curing cancer...is that what your commenting on? I can see where you think this would be a personal attack and agreed I was being a bit of a jackass in saying it but I assure you it was in no way an attempt to win our disagreement.

In all honesty I still think he is wrong but even more so I don't care if im right. So ill take the fall and say he is right and end it so it doesn't drag on into something it does not need to be. And if anything your guilty of your own crime by suggesting I am "ignorant and lazy"

For the record I do think highly of cider and everyone else who puts out their two cents on these boards and I do take alot away from them. I do however feel people take it to personally when someone disagrees with them though.

also you spelled my name wrong ^^ but I do agree with you about what you posted before the ad homie thing.
T
he guild I am in now is just starting to get towards the end of kara and they have worked every step of the way to do it.. we don't even use vent! I mean to me the point of even raiding isnt reading a guide ..its jumping in there and doing it. We just downed neatherspite for the first time last time..and seeing all the /rw WHOOO!!'s and /dances I mean..it does make you feel awesome to be apart of that and I feel even luckyer that noone in my raid group does it just for the loot but that feeling to. I have the time to devote to a high end BT guild with strict dkp rules and all the shiney new purple candy but ..what fun is it when you only do it to say your the best? or so people can inspect you in ironforge? thats how I feel high end guilds are like. I could be wrong.. but im still pumped about beating that jerk netherspite.

None of that of course has anything to do with why I think 25 men are harder for the average player then 40 man raids where but it was fun typing it.

[Ceravantes]

So ebcause I have progressed farther, faster I must only be doing it so people can admire me in town....what sense does that make, do you think that there is not the same, if not a greater, sense of accomplishment when you break into T6, or when you kill illidan, or when you kill any new boss for that matter.

[Talani]

"thats how I feel high end guilds are like. I could be wrong.."
Again I could be wrong. I run into more assholes with an "look at your gear you must suck" wearing T6 then ones that are willing to help people.

And I never said your one of them. Why not say "Talani I can understand where you would have that veiw but thats not how it is in my guild we do have alot of fun and get that feeling to! I know what your talking about and thats what drives us to be on the cutting edge" I dunno if its true.. I have only done one group with a guild like that and noone was even allowed to talk on vent cept the Raid leader and class officers, I almost got booted out for telling a joke in raid chat. So thats where I came up with the veiw thats why top end guilds might be like that.

For all you know..yours is the only top end guild that isnt like that.

and if the next post I see is "why should people in top end guilds go out of their way to help people" the answer is they don't and that does not make them a bad person or player, but having a snobby tude about it is. For example Once I was in a group for BM with a few members of a certain guild and they happened to do the last 5 portals alot different then I normally do it..I was un clear on it and we wiped. How do you think they handled it? I can assure you I was not with a "what happened do you not understand how we do this? here let me explane again". Actions of guild members reflect on the guild, do you not agree?

[Ciderhelm]

With all due respect, Cider, I think your position hanging out at the actual end of end game might skew your perspective a bit. We're currently working on Vashj. Having just come from 1.5 nights on the Naga woman, I'm not seeing how anyone in this fight gets to slack off - particularly during Phase 2.

(For perspective, like Horacio's guild (hai2u!), we log about 9 hours a week. So we're running in about Tier 4.5 level gear - hooray for badges!)

The nature of the fight is trotting out the old "what do we do about underperformers?!" angst that we went through in the early Kara days. I'm not saying the fight is more difficult than Gorefiend (I wouldn't know) but it sorta sounds here like you're saying the first "hard" TBC fight happens in BT... and I'd venture to guess that the plethora of 5/6 3/4 guilds out there would disagree.

(Heck, when you're running around in Sunwell gear I bet those bad Gorefiend nights will be a thing of the past for you too; maybe then the "first" coordination fight in TBC will be the Eredar twins or something. =P)

I think it's human nature to trivialize the content we've completed - that's how memory works, after all. The time last week when we blew through X with alts and respecs "just for fun" comes to mind much faster than the time two months ago when we wiped all night learning an encounter. Sure Aran seems like a joke now for us, but my friend whose guild just dinged 70 and is working on Kara is absolutely certain that any mistake by anyone in the group will wipe them.

So I'm don't blame you for that. But I would be careful not to trivialize the feelings people have about how difficult these encounters are and how imperative and impossible the decisions around raiding these encounters also feel. No matter how much the troll tempts you.

And @Telani - ad hominems are the refuge of the ignorant and lazy.

To clarify - the charge is not that 40-mans are harder than 25-mans, nor is it that Gorefiend is harder than Vashj. I've said neither. The Gorefiend comment was in regards to whether you can have players in the raid who don't understand the entirety of the encounter they're in; the 40-mans comment was a rebuttal of whether 25-mans are harder by virtue of being 25-mans, not a statement that 40-mans are harder.

On Vashj, you don't wipe if a DPS'er dies, unless they failed to throw their item. You can outgear the lack of DPS.

On Gorefiend, any player controlling a ghost who fails to do their job wipes the raid. On Thaddius, any player who doesn't know how to rotate wipes the raid. On Four Horsemen, any player who doesn't understand their rotation wipes the raid. There's slight flexibility in this -- a single player failure towards the end of the encounter can be recoverable in each case if the raid is well-geared -- but you still can't risk bringing bad players to the encounter.

You've got fights where you can carry people and fights where you can't. Vashj is a fight where you can carry people. So are the vast majority of encounters in the game. The fact is, the fights you can't carry people are more numerous pre-TBC than post.

This isn't a question about whether tanks do more or less in a given raid, or healers. Any encounter which puts enormous responsibility on tanks and healers is a difficult encounter for the tanks and the healers. DPS still aren't pushed anywhere near as hard as they should be, or as they were in Naxx. Raids still carry dead weight, and there's no change in whether they can carry deadweight as a result of 25-mans, which was the argument being made.

Suggesting I'm trivializing content in the past is strange since I'm specifically referencing content from a year and a half ago, no?

what fun is it when you only do it to say your the best? or so people can inspect you in ironforge? thats how I feel high end guilds are like.

I raid for personal accomplishment, guild accomplishment, and knowledge. I then take what I learn and implement it into guides and personal advice. I don't think anyone has accused me, or could possibly accuse me, of having a superiority complex over players with less progression because of my raid status.

This is the core of the issue. Bear in mind that the people who built this forum and website are primarily raiders or people who've put in enormous amounts of research time.

When you don't need to make "principled" (as opposed to experienced) comments about subjects, it's best that you don't. The WoW forum attitude of raiders vs. casuals doesn't belong here, from anyone on any end of the progression spectrum. When you have a point to make, the best tool you have is evidence and supporting arguments.

Personally ...do you still play wow? if so why do you put so much effort into being skilled if you don't need any skill..just alot of free time?

I have a personal desire to be a good player. You don't learn that from raiding. Many of the best tanks in this game aren't hardcore raiders; many aren't raiders at all.


Remember, the debate you're arguing is from a gratuitous and unnecessary comment you made. You can make your original point -- that people need to carry their weight in raids -- without saying a word about 40-man raids.

[Talani]

Remember, the debate you're arguing is from a gratuitous and unnecessary comment you made. You can make your original point -- that people need to carry their weight in raids -- without saying a word about 40-man raids.

Well you know me I do like to open my big mouth but ok here goes.

Would you not agree with me that cutting edge guilds get that way not because of just the time they put in but because they also give 110%? Whatever the modivation may be to do it. You say that you can drag yourself through any boss encounter, this might be true but why suffer wipe after wipe for people who have no drive to be better? Maybe if perhaps it was a more casual thing but even still at one point wouldn't it just get old?
Now say out of 10 people 9 where pulling their weight but 1 person was not. Is it fair that the player slacking off gets loot over someone trying his hardist?

You right I did not need to bring 40 man raids into this but it did however spawn a different discussion about if pre-TBC 40 man raids where more diffacult then TBC 25 man raids, Thats the only reason I kept bringing it up.

We can however forget about it because in my mind thats always going to be a personal thing, and different for everyone. We can all agree that raiding no matter what the number is alot of fun right?

[Ciderhelm]

Would you not agree with me that cutting edge guilds get that way not because of just the time they put in but because they also give 110%? Whatever the modivation may be to do it. You say that you can drag yourself through any boss encounter, this might be true but why suffer wipe after wipe for people who have no drive to be better? Maybe if perhaps it was a more casual thing but even still at one point wouldn't it just get old?

Now say out of 10 people 9 where pulling their weight but 1 person was not. Is it fair that the player slacking off gets loot over someone trying his hardist?

I alluded to this earlier.

Too many classes with too many unique roles is the reason every guild gets stuck with bad players. Unless you're on an enormous server and are bleeding edge (Nihilum, etc), you're always settling with bad players.

If I could, I would never raid with a Warlock again. In three years, I've only met two who were genuinely good players. If I could, I would never raid with a Hunter again. Rogues and Shamans, I've met plenty of good ones, but plenty of bad ones as well.

Right now, we have 9 different groups of players which attract different personalities. Blizzard has said, "you must pick at least one person from each of the 9 different groups, or you can't raid 25-mans." Nevermind that Mages tend to understand their class better than Warlocks understand theirs. Nevermind that Paladin and Druid healers tend to understand their class more than Shaman healers (Alliance side). Without a stable of players from each class, raiding guilds don't succeed.

I don't want to jump too much into the subject of 40-mans again, but the comparison is a bit cleaner here. With a 40-man raid, you had the same situation with 8 classes. But after you picked your obligatory terrible-player, you could stack any other class with good ones, depending on what recruiting was available. You came out to about the same number of bad players, but had a lot more flexibility in good players. A lot of guilds ran with 8 priests, for instance, but we had run with only 4, compensating for it with great Paladins and Druids.


In your 10 person example, here's the counter. When a guild is in Karazhan, how do they keep their guild together? Normally, the decision is made to not have an A team and a B team, where the better players are all in one group every week. This causes drama. In my case, it was a matter of having no one to run with by virtue of how quickly I was level 70, so we took several poor players on our first clear.

There are external factors, almost all of them having to do with guild stability, that cause you to bring underperformers to otherwise rock-solid raids.

[Unsurper]

Lol same song and dance, imo it was worse in pre bc with the 40 mans.....we carried a lot od dead' weight to field all 40 slots, then farming and gearing up replacements for people who needed a break....some stayed, some where a waste of breath, or some geared and left.
My opinion, they either have learned their class by 70 or something is wrong, they either pull their own weight or something is wrong, they either want to be there or they don't, obvious eh?
10 mans there is a small amount of lee way, 5 man heroics no error of margin allowed unless you are all geared to the teeth....the people who where carried in pre bc 40 man half asleep tapping a macro can't get away with it any more......
I don't feel obligated to carry anyone's weight, they want to learn cool, they need gear and show the drive then cool.....they half step then screw them.

[Finelle]

I haven't experienced beyond SSC/TK, or BWL, but how do the fight mechanics of TBC stack up with pre TBC?

[Ciderhelm]

I haven't experienced beyond SSC/TK, or BWL, but how do the fight mechanics of TBC stack up with pre TBC?

By and large, every encounter from TBC has mechanics pulled from places in pre-TBC. Gorefiend (controlling ghosts) is new. Gruul's shatter is new. Aran's flame wreath is new, as are Netherspite's beams. Using inventory items in combat, such as with Vashj or Kael, is new. There are a few more I don't remember off-hand.

The question is primarily usage. For instance, the first boss in Heroic Mechanaar has the same mechanic as Thaddius from Naxxramas, where players get positive and negative charges. Scale makes all the difference here (Thaddius was brutally difficult because of how many people had to rotate correctly).

Missing now are Heigan's dance, Gothikk's kill-respawn balancing act, Four Horsemen's marks. The biggest thing missing is a major LOS-based fight, unless I'm forgetting one -- old world had Firemaw, Chromaggus, Razuvious, Sapphiron.

Enrage timers are much more forgiving in TBC as well. TBC's enrage timers are more Grobbulus than Patchwerk (Grobb was one of the easiest encounters pre-TBC; he followed Patchwerk, one of the hardest).

Mechanics are all pretty similar, which isn't so much of a fault of TBC as a reality that there's only so many unique things that can occur. It's all about how they're combined. Some fights in TBC combine them exceptionally well, just as some fights pre-TBC did.

[Worldie]

Well depends, the enrage timers in SSC/TK aren't exactly forgiving for a unprepared raid, they are there to test the DPS.

Pre tbc you could go for half of the bosses with 4 tanks and 36 healers and kill them anyway, Naxx started to change this with Patchwerk and such. iirc Twin Emp had enrage timer also, can't remember, too much time has passed.

[Ciderhelm]

Pre tbc you could go for half of the bosses with 4 tanks and 36 healers and kill them anyway, Naxx started to change this with Patchwerk and such. iirc Twin Emp had enrage timer also, can't remember, too much time has passed.

Yes, pre-TBC many bosses had no enrage timers. Many that did enrage did so at a set percentage of health instead of on a timer.

Twin Emps had an enrage timer that was well tuned. If you were new to the encounter you needed consumables to beat the timer.

Patchwerk was probably the best tuned that's been in the game, simply because the enrage timer was the encounter as far as DPS was concerned. Thaddius was similarly well tuned.

[Rak]

Gorefiend's ghost mechanic, while clearly very different, feels a bit inspired by Razuvious to me. Mind Controlling the adds to tank the boss was very fun and very scary.

[Worldie]

Heh, i remind that one of our priests was the designed sacrificed victim since was the one to "MC pull" and thus always died at the first shout
(we ran very heavy on priests, 7-8 usually)

[Clifford]

There are external factors, almost all of them having to do with guild stability, that cause you to bring underperformers to otherwise rock-solid raids.

This is very true. What I have made clear to my guild (and is generally accepted) is that I have to take the top players for progression evenings, whilst there is more rotation on farm evenings.

[CyCy]

I don't think it's mean or hateful to leave less dedicated players behind. I hit 70 with my hunter shortly after the arenas started. I am a casual player I admit my gear sucks. I do however enjoy playing instances so have become a well skilled tank and am able to Tank at 58 with 70's in the grp and able to hold aggro.

There truly is 3 versions of WOW running simultaneously together. Raiders, Arenas, and PVE questing four if you count traditional PVP BG's. People must find there nitch and learn to love the game there dedication allows them to enjoy. Whereas my 70 sucks in Kara and arenas it's a great gold farmer and quest helper toon for other guildies who help me level my alts and quest with.

Just keep in mind although someone doesnt have all tier 6 epics or season 4 gear doesnt make them newbs or uneducated about the game. However if they truly want to improve themselves guild mates should be willing to carry the weight til they progress as long as they are making the committment. If they simply want to be tagalongs when it's conveinent for them restrictions are not unreasonable i.e. earn full pvp epics first.

WOW adding lvls to 80 w/ TLK is actually a moot point the desparity in abilities gained by better gear is already seperating 70's like a lvl 50 compared to a lvl 60 in a duel.

Sorry for rambling but don't ever feel bad for leaving someone behind. If you are someone who has been left behind and are reading this you are at least taking the initiative to improve yourself.

[Krashtork]

Drop the scrubs. Blizzard has been absolutely rabid about giving everyone cakewalk methods to get full epics. This game has become EXTREMELY easy when it comes to getting gear. With heroics, badges, pvp, reputation rewards, craftables, and BoE AH epics NO ONE has any excuse to not be fully epicced in a very short period of time. If they can't even manage getting epiced out with Blizzard hurling boat loads of easy epics at them, they simply don't belong in any raiding situation.

[Manginae]

I guess im lucky enough to be in a guild that (as much as i hated it) wouldnt let you raid until you met thier standards
12+ health
490 def rating
12+armour
45% avoidance
And you know i went with some other guilds kara rnus as an OT and i did better, but to be honest the main thing my guild cares about is gear pulling people its not fair to other more experinced raiders to have someone not doin 100% to keep up with the raid. I did heriocs for about two weeks and got sun eater ect. Then i felt confident to do a full run with another guild and we cleared it in 4 hours, they explained some of the pulls. But i am i WoW nub and the only reason i know what im doin is i ask for help and my other guild mates give it to me. I talkked to our warrior class leader and he told me the best ways to keep threat ect. I also had help with getting the correct mods for me. So i would say do a slower run for the less expeirieced players and a faster run for experieced one and make sure they know theyr class cause most people dont when they start out.