Buff Crazy?

[Endevor]

So keep in mind that this was written directly after a blue screen of death, so it may be slightly more hostile that intended.

I am a MT and raid leader for progression content. The GM of my guild though is somewhat of a thorn in my side in raids, and I am trying to figure away to confront the problem. The GM who has a Holy pally toon has a Buff and mana issue, and because some of the older members have been running with him for so long tend to have the same curse.

As my guild is clearing up to Leo the Blind everything is going quicker and much smoother than usual. That is until we drop a bog lord and the usual culprits of "standing in the fire" players do what they do best...stand in a mass of this amazing green go on the ground. Apparently a sudden change of hue did not key them into the fact that they were on the brink of death. So after I take a 10 second breath to clear the snippy comments all of the dead have been rezed and everyone is either topped off or drinking so mana shouldn't be a problem.
When I tell everyone to clear vent so we can continue to pull I am stopped...The excuse is, "SLOW DOWN! We havn't buffed yet." Since this is not the first time I once again I clear any snide comments I may want to say and decide to pull away.

This is a reucurring issue within the raids, and a lot of the time it is the officers that demand buffs. The issue that I am having is we spend an extreme amount of time buffing and not pulling, and last time I checked you generally do not need full raid buffs to clear trash.

Kinda looking for ideas to end the idea that they need everybuff and full mana for a trash pull?

[Andenthal]

and last time I checked you generally do not need full raid buffs to clear trash.

Agree totally.
Keep pushing them. I wait until most of the healers are 75% mana or better, and all tanks applicable to the pull are alive and full HP.

Have everyone drink/eat to full Mana/HP. Typically good idea to have the Blessing of Salvation Pally toss that out pretty regular - atleast on those that put out high threat.

IMO, buffs are there to mix/max your performance. If you are having to mix/max for trash pulls, bosses are going to eat you alive.

Do you call the raid off if you only have 2 Paladins, or even 1? What if you dont have a Druid with Improved MotW? What if only 1 type of Shaman? Likely not - you just keep going, and deal with what you have.

Which is what you should do after a situation you described. Players can buff on the move - the spells are instant cast. I have everyone put up all buffs as I am explaining the fight - regardless of when they were put on. This leads to some buffs falling off 2 pulls before a boss. So what? It's a freaking trash mob, get over it.

[Fayre]

They have to get used to rebuffing faster.

People die, we rez. I have a macro that spams out what people are missing (Fort, Int, etc), and then the MT pulls. Our raiders love to hate the macro, but we don't waste time.

If I have to spam the macro and the same people are missing stuff after the next group of mobs, I poke the sleeping priests/mages/whoever for a response.

You don't NEED full buffs for each pack of mobs. It is useful. To be honest my opinion is that you need to train your raid to be better at rebuffing, not train your officer team out of being concerned whether or not it's done.

[Optimoos]

I recently joined a new guild on my warrior, and moved from a raid where the feelings were similar to what you're currently experiencing, to a raid where if we're not on a boss, there is no stopping for anything, sometimes not even rezzing (run back for 1 person is generally better for the raid than waiting to rez, we warlock summon if we're deep somewhere). The latter strategy led us to a full clear of BT in around 3 hours, while we were chatting with another guild on our server through BT general which did about half what we accomplished in the same time.

This opened my eyes somewhat to how a competent raid can behave with trash pulls - as long as you haven't lost your tanks or a significant portion of your healing core, keep pulling trash and catch up with buffs at the next boss. In TBC, the only buff that is truly important is salv, so your salv pally needs to be on the ball when a death occurs (or be using a mod like pally power). Once wrath comes out, even that won't be an issue. Have buffers prepared for deaths and re-applying buffs as they see fit, but in my experience this is no reason to halt all movement.

As a side note we don't even stop for mana breaks - we liberally use shadow priests, jow, have our druids innervate, and if really necessary, someone will sit and drink between combat breaks, although we are usually out of combat for mere seconds between pulls.

My $0.02

[Endevor]

I like the macro idea Kayella. what is the basis for it if you dont mind me asking.
We dont cancel our raids if we are short on palys. The tank core is very solid and generally dont have a problem with aggro, and even if we do me and the other MT is very quick on intervene or intercept taunt so its generally never an issue.
The main problem is when the officers speak over me in a raid and slow down the whole raid.