Rebel's Logic Post 4

[Rebelogic]

I haven't done this in a while so I thought it would be a god idea to post and get people up to speed on what the officers are thinking. Bare with me, this will be a long one.

The overall topic of this post will be the concept of stress. We set up processes and rules in the guild to relieve stress on everyone. If things are more cut and dry, there is no wondering and therefore stress is reduced. People ask me a million times where other people are when they are late or don't show for a raid. Now, I usually end up knowing, often ten minutes before the raid begins, why people are missing and end up frantically trying to fill the raid and keep with the plans of the evening. Now this issue is blanketed all over, not just our Group 1 25M run. It occurs in our ten mans, and our group 2 25M also. We will schedule a raid, be it 25M or 10M, and we will have everyone we expected online one week and the next week we will not be able to go or at the least get as far because we are missing people. Now, here is where we insert the classic false reasoning that always follows a statement like that: "No one shows up for progression nights". I have heard that so many times it is unbelievable. Here are some reasons why that statement is false. First of all, people who cannot make a certain raid day vary each time. "Replace the people who don't show up", not easy if it is different people every time. If it was the same people, they would be sat but that isn't the case. Secondly, people have real lives. I will give you yesterday for example, Unholyfaith had gotten into a car accident and had to deal with life/car issues yesterday so he couldn't raid. I can't remember the last time that he has missed a raid. I want someone to tell him to his face that he doesn't show up for progression nights. Ultimately, the problem is not that sometimes people don't show up, the problem is that we rely too much on a select few for raids to get anything done. If we have a list of 27 possible raiders that I would bring to LK and 5 cannot show up for various reasons, we can't do it. Therefore, my simple solution to this entire problem is a concept of putting the guild before individuals. I want to recruit 6-10 more people to the guild of various classes and specs. The recruiting for raid spots should have harsher criticism than in the past. If we get you in and you suck, we are going to tell you and you better fix it or you are gone. Now the purpose of these 6-10 raiders will be for both group 1 and group 2. On Tuesday, we should be able to clear the first 11 bosses in one day and be on LK if we don't do non-farm hardmodes. People who show up all the time won't need that much gear so let's just toss it to recommended new recruits who have proven that they are dedicated. No more rolling on Offspec gear if you know you will never use it; know that you are helping a guildy who can not only put it to good use but will ultimately help you achieve the ultimate goal. That of course being the downing of progression content. If we clear to LK on a Tuesday, and Wednesday rolls around and someone cannot make it, they can be replaced with someone who we have proven works well with our system and now also has the gear to do so. Recruit well, gear the dedicated, and have good replacements for real life issues = simple concept. Now, here comes a problem some might foresee: What happens when more than 25 good riaders show up for a raid? To be honest, I would love for that problem to happen, I yearn for that problem to happen. It beats the shit out of waiting an hour and a half on 2 people to do a LK attempt and being forced to call it. That will be a first come first serve issue basically. Like I have said said before, if you have issues getting to a raid for any reason, you shouldn't be upset if we replace you for the night and keep going. Now, if we suddenly out of the blue have the same consistent raiders who show up all the time everyday, the plan will not only be a success but the consistent people will have a chance to take a break on farm content if they choose too. For example, we have a lot of people who don't need gear off of the first 8 bosses on normal mode. If we have a new guy who is proving himself, I would be glad to sit for him so he can get some gear and I am sure that others would be willing to do that as well. The reason we would do this is because we understand that when we arrive at progression content, we will be able to rely on a new guy who has proven himself to not only skill-wise replace someone who can't be there for some real life issue, but they also have the gear to do so. Ultimately, we are putting the guild over the individual because the faster the guild progresses, each individual raider also progresses in gear as a result. In this way, we are not wasting time waiting on people who "are running late" for some reason, or "had an emergency" or whatever. It is not that you are being replaced forever, you simply could not make it on time so you are not in the raid for that night. This will make people less antsy and prevent me from having to call and whisper a million people to find out if people can make it. So, all in all, it makes the stress level of people who can't make it, the officers, and the consistent raiders, all go down. No matter what we know what we are doing for a particular night and no one has to wait. This will all pay off when we get to progression content.

As far as ten mans are concerned, we have to clean up their rosters. The new recruiting will help this in terms of filling some bodies but we have to be careful to not spread ourselves too thin when it comes to having too many ten mans going. We have an alt ten man which should go on Friday, we have 2 group 2-run ten mans on Tuesday, the Proxy team goes on the weekend, and Team Oh Man runs whenever it can. That is a lot of 10-mans, lol. As far as I am concerned, in Team Oh Man, I am mainly concerned about downing content that can get us our drake. We used to raid Wednesday/Thursday night for an hour after our 25-man to get a head start on our hardmodes because we wanted the gear from there. Sunday was our main day but I want to make it basically our only day. I will schedule the run to concentrate on a specific achievement every week and go only on Sunday to spend all our time on it. I would even save the ID just so we wouldn't have to do the farm bosses and waste time. Once we get our drake, we can always go back and get the few upgrades we need from there. As far as the people who need badges/gear from normal modes in ten man, please inform an officer so we can get you into some runs if others don't need any gear. People who need gear/badges out of ten mans and have proven that they want to be good raiders in either of the two raid groups will get priority in the ten mans over casuals who just show up whenever. Also, aside from groups who have already done it, lets get some more kingslayers out of ten mans. I know a few people, who have been downed a lot of hardmodes with various groups but haven't gotten their kingslayer yet. Now, one would mention that there isn't really all that good loot on LK 10M, why should we forgo hardmode 10M loot for a LK downing. To that I say the key reason is experience. If you have a lot of experience on the LK and have at least downed him in ten man, you will fully understand what is going on in 25M. Also, I am not saying that I am forcing you to down LK every week i ten mans after you have gotten a consisten group in which all members have done it repeatedly. I am simply saying, maybe throw a few new guys and some other people who have been there a while, the achievement. All this is an effort to ease the burden of consistently filling 25-mans with solid players. Solid players are built through experience, gear is peripheral.

In terms of informing us of raid attendance, there are many who are good at it and many who are terrible at it. We have a website, phone, and the ability to be reached in game. If you cannot make a raid, please inform an officer as early as you can in some fashion. It makes us think that you are actually putting an effort. We all have things come up but only rare occurrences should result in you not being able to inform us through any of the aforementioned methods that you cannot come. Don't be afraid that I will yell at you or something. I will probably give my standard answer of "ok, np" and just find a replacement. Where I will be upset is if you don't show for a day and tell no one that you got called into work. Having reliable people to replace people in those situations will relieve that anger, but it is still irritating.

Now that we have gotten that all out of the way, we can talk about some other things. I tried to upload a sample video blog of me to the officer forum to basically test what it would be like if I did a news blog for the guild. The video was done with a now-decently old camera. The audio was fine but the video was a little lower quality than I would have liked. I recently got the new iphone 4 so I am going to test out the video quality on that via sample blog and send it to Unholy so he can see what it would look like on the site. It should be good enough so be prepared to see my ugly face more often on the site. If people send in enough requests, I might even upload some video of Yacoub slaughtering a defenseless animal, or as he likes to call it, "me time".

We had an incident recently with a guy who apped to the guild because he was a friend of a casual player who joined the guild. The casual player is a friend of Geedub and just wanted to hang out, so his friend decided to app as well. When he apped, he linked his armory and had the bare-bones information. After we had several people tell him that he needed to do things like fix his spec and get some t10 as well as ICC 10 experience at least to the first 4 bosses, he flipped out and started calling us "elitist". He yelled at everyone individually who commented on his app because apparently it is too much to ask to enchant your gear correctly and kill 4 bosses in ICC 10M. Running the daily and the weekly will get you to 5K GS pretty quick. Despite all that, if he simply explained the fact that he was a friend of someone and that he just wanted to come in as a casual and jump into a raid whenever, everything would have been fine. So, if you have a friend who wants to app to the guild, please make him include as much information about himself as he can. Most important though, make sure he s capable of taking basic criticism. Elitists, bah! Well, maybe Glitter, he flasks for sitting in Dalaran.

Speaking of apping to the website, Prydain and Mastric are working on revamping the application. We are doing some research on what we really want to know from a player other than the obvious things. Mastric has also implemented a program that will research a players raid history which will give us a better idea about how much experience they really have. Other than that however, we would like to know things like whether they were officers in a guild previously etc. One guy said he had a dog named Spencer that was "mad Chill". Things like that are important damnit!

Well, since my last Rebel's Logic Post, we have gotten a couple more people the RS 10M achievement. I plan to schedule a RS 25M soon, if not this week. It will probably be on the weekend when we are more free to do casual raids. I predict that place will turn into farm content really fast, it is not hard at all. In terms of ICC, a lot more people/alts have gotten to 10M 11/12 in one day which is really good. Now with the 30% buff, we should be seeing a lot more ten man kingslayers going out as well as hardmode 10 mans. In 25M, Group 2 is now 9/12 and will soon be at least 11/12 before long. In group 1, we downed 25M Rotface hardmode last week which is progression. A heroic DFO or Trauma would be really nice. I don't think Festergut will be too hard to manage as well as some other hardmodes but I want to focus on doing progression bosses only when we are fully confident and have the people. Which, if our recruiting goes well shouldn't be too far into the future.

Well, for now if you are running with anyone who you think would be a good addition to our guild, tell them to apply. We need some more good raiders to fill our ranks. Please inform us if you are going to be gone to the best of your ability. If you want to be in a ten man and you are committed, inform an officer. As for me, I gotta create updates more often so I don't have to write so much in each one, lol.

Later for now guys.

[Mastric]

Word Over Load... Processing...

[Jedabob]

TL;DR

J/k good read rebel. some good points too

[Postmodern]

Needs some better spacing there.. maybe like 17 paragraphs instead of 7? Well, I am new, but I definitely agree on trying to recruit some more able bodied people who are willing to show up and put forth the effort, which would save us a lot of downtime that we waste waiting for those 1-4 people that we can't raid without. And being able to sit out some old timers who may be getting sick of farm content so us newbies who are chomping at the bit to come in and get a taste of the raid. I think the only thing that would stop people from doing that would be loss of DKP for not being in the raid (unless there is some kind of DKP waitlist for those who want to be in the raid but are willingly sitting out?)

It is difficult to fill a raid come progression night, and we aren't the only ones who suffer from it, but I think if people really realize that progression for the guild and raid group as whole means better for themselves as well, since there are very many people who play this game solely for themselves (people who show up to farm dkp/loot, then don't show up to put in the four hours of wiping the next day on progression [it's nothing new to this game ]), also means, "hey, we downed LK, if we can do it again and again, that's going to be better for me in the long run!"

Well, as far as 10 mans, I know I was invited to one once, but I'd definitely love to be a part of a regularly running one that goes every week and tries to go for HMs and achievements (and being able to understand the fights more clearly, though I think I've got most of them down), and I'm sure there are tons of people who would love to get in one, an alt run, or whatever.

I am also not opposed to running alt ICC 25s/10s or TOCs to help others out if that may be the case to help gear them out so that it helps us as a guild.

As far as attendance, I haven't been here long enough, but I thought it was just common sense/polite to let people know ahead of time if you wouldn't be in attendance.

At least it seems like you officers have your heads in the right direction!

[Glitterstim]

For the record, I logged on and flasked just to read this.

I demand some stuff, but I can't think of any of them.

Good job , Rebel. When you sit for me in your 10-man, the dps will go up. : D

[Unholy]

Sheesh I miss one, yes count them I know you wont, one 25 man raid in the 11 months13 days we have been a guild and all this.

One side note. Rebel when we meet in person can you slowly unzip your pants and say "Bare with me, this will be a long one."

Please?

[Varibash]

Lol unholy. Oh BTW guys I am really sorry but it looks as though I won't be online for a few weeks. I am doing everything I can right now to fix that but who knows when I will be back.

[Perenelle]

I actually used to love my previous guilds when we had more raiders on than slots. We had a DKP waitlist. I'd park my toon at the instance, get on the waitlist, switch to an alt (there was a mod that let you tell which alt you were on) and do things like farm mats for the guild bank, fish up some food.... whatever. And get partial DKP just for having my toon parked. If someone had to leave early, I'd get a whisper on my alt and switch toons and run in. No summons, no waiting for someone to fly to the instance and all I'd miss were bosses I didn't need any gear from anyways. Sweet.

[Sashalynn]

I actually used to love my previous guilds when we had more raiders on than slots. We had a DKP waitlist. I'd park my toon at the instance, get on the waitlist, switch to an alt (there was a mod that let you tell which alt you were on) and do things like farm mats for the guild bank, fish up some food.... whatever. And get partial DKP just for having my toon parked. If someone had to leave early, I'd get a whisper on my alt and switch toons and run in. No summons, no waiting for someone to fly to the instance and all I'd miss were bosses I didn't need any gear from anyways. Sweet.

Diag did that with epgp and it worked out great. It's very nice for a lot of people that could use a break from raiding due to rl issues or just burned out. While still being available if the raid needs them.

[Rebelogic]

I flasked to read Glitters post.

Thanks for all your input guys. I like the idea of doing standby DKP, I will look into getting it implemented. We will have to put some standards on it and designate specific people to getting it before the raid however. This will prevent people who don't raid from getting any sort of DKP. Since these standbys won't be here for any boss killings, I assume it would be only for hours spent on the wait list.

[Sashalynn]

I flasked to read Glitters post.

Thanks for all your input guys. I like the idea of doing standby DKP, I will look into getting it implemented. We will have to put some standards on it and designate specific people to getting it before the raid however. This will prevent people who don't raid from getting any sort of DKP. Since these standbys won't be here for any boss killings, I assume it would be only for hours spent on the wait list.

There is one way you could go. Before the raid starts choose someone to keep track of those in the que. That person will randomly do an afk check. They ask in guild for those in que to whisper them. This is a good way to keep track of those still in que and those who may have logged off or are not paying attention. It can be a big responsibility but a rewarding one. It also takes one more thing off the officers/raid leaders plate and makes things much smoother all around.

[Perenelle]

You can also invite the consistent raiders who are on-line in time at the start of the raid. If there are more than 25, look at group comp and see if the class you need to sit has any volunteers to be wait listed. We used to have to stay on-line... no wait list then log off. We also had to be in vent and ready as soon as we were needed. No "oh, we only have one boss left in this instance..." or they'd go to the next waitlist person and you lost anything you'd accumulated. Gump did have a mod that took care of which alt you were on (of course, there were those fail radiers who couldn't read the directions you were whispered about how to do it, sigh) and if you logged off.

[Berms]

Pio used to run something during Ulduar like that. (I think it was Pio.)

I remember doing that back in the MC days. To be fair, I gamed the system badly. I wasn't core, but I was always on. I accrued a huge amount of dkp over time. (We got full dkp like those inside.) If they asked if I wanted to come in, I'd either play afk or just tell them someone else could step in.

I never won anything and moved on to be a strict pvper for a while. Just letting you know that's how I cheated it. (I wasn't alone in that scheme either.)

[Biggrigg]

I wasn't stressed before i read that but now i am.

Thanks alot Rebby

[Teeks]

To echo postmodern, I'm usually down for anything I'm not saved to. If you need a dps or heal fill for a toc or whatever, hit me up and if I'm not busy or about to be I'll be along =)