I had to fail a trial yesterday. It was NOT fun.
We're not like most raiding guilds. In most raiding guilds, if you fail your trial it's an auto-kick. We, however, are a social guild as well as a raiding guild. All our new apps are studied on armoury to make sure their experience and gear is up to par, then they're interviewed on vent to make sure they'll fit in.
This guy applied as a dps warrior. The last thing we need is more melee, and his experience was meh at best. We wouldn't have taken him on as dps. I whispered him to tell him this and he said that he actually preferred tanking, and that he'd been a tank in WotLK and that he would immediately start getting together a tank set. We scheduled a vent interview for 5 days later and I wished him luck getting his set together.
The day of his vent interview, we looked him up on armoury and were impressed. He'd managed to build up an almost complete tank set in the 5 days I'd given him. My misgivings were quietened. We got him on vent for the interview and... it was a bit weird. We didn't have very many questions to ask him about his gear, and the conversation didn't really get off the ground, which was a bit weird because he'd been quite chatty in whispers to me. We did, however, ascertain that tanking was what he wanted to do rather than dps. People enjoying themselves is a major concern of ours.
Anyway, at the end of the day, we were desparate for a decent tank sub, so we accepted his app and offered him as much help as he needed finishing up his tank set.
The following week, he had his first raid with us. He was only just barely on time, logging precisely one minute before the raid was due to start (Who does that? My first 10-15 raids with a new guild and I'm sitting outside the instance, flasks, food and pots in hand, and bored out of my skull from waiting at the raid entrance 30minutes before the raid start time).
The raid was... a disaster. He failed on Halfus, tanking the adds so far away from the boss he dragged me on my elemental shaman out of interrupt range (Not that I'm great on interrupts to start with anyway! A combination of grid tunnel vision from spending most of my time healing, 400ms average and cast-times on my spells means that putting me on interrupts is potluck at best, wipe city at worst.). Luckily, our other tank is an old hand at tanking, having tanked for most of TBC, and dragged the boss over to him and helped me on interrupts (<3), so we didn't wipe.
Then we got to Valiona and Theralion. And the nightmare begun. Our pro tank went dps (noooooooo) and we had the new guy tank so we could see what he was made of. Turns out he was made of a combination of stupid and suicidal. He had watched a strat. Which had him drag the boss unexpectedly all the way across the room leaving the healers and dps behind going "WTF why is the boss/tank out of range?!?" instead of tanking it on the stairs like we normally did. "What's the big deal? Just move with him." I hear you say. Well, the big deal is that I specifically told him when he joined us that we had kill vids for every boss we'd downed on our forums, as well as strat threads (some of them up to 6 pages long) on our forums, with specific instructions on where to find each. He obviously hadn't looked at either.
We quickly ran over to him and all went well until phase change. *Suddenly* our tank is gone. And panicking. The room suddenly has nothing in it!!! Yes, that's right folks, he stood around in Dazzling Destruction and got phased. We quickly told him how to get out of the room and he ran for the sides, but couldn't find a portal. A wipe recovery later, we're standing in the room, telling him about how he must move from the shiny pink stuff because it's horrible, murdering fire, and prodding him to ask any other questions he might have.
Second time around it looks more promising. He pulls on the stairs so we have room to move away from Dazzling Destruction and everyone's happy. Until phase 2 starts. We had thought that he hadn't moved away from Dazzling Destruction properly because there really wasn't very much room to move where he could still be in range to grab Theralion when he landed. We were justified in our trust of him and the second attempt went flawlessly.
Joking - our happy delusions were mercilessly shattered when the first Dazzling Destruction landed on him and he just stood there. Four of us started yelling at him to move, but it was too late, he was phased again. We had one more try after that, but our happy confidence that we could clear everything (maybe even the end bosses!) on our alts was shattered, especially with this idiot tanking.
We disbanded after a heroic total of one whole boss and went home to lick our wounds. The next day, I gave him a stern crapping out, letting him know we expected him to know our strats, own up to his mistakes, let us know how he intended to not make whatever mistake it was again and also that if he ever showed up to a raid without knowing strats again he'd fail his trial instantly.
The next week rolls around and we're short a person for our main raids. Ok nps, we'll pull in one of our subs. The new tank... not an option. The new healer? We could have our rdruid go moonkin and pull him in. Only problem is... he has a new baby and likely won't be able to make it. This made our new tank the only option. Or calling off the raid. Being the seductress I am, I managed to convince a friend of mine in a 13/13 guild on another realm that what he really wanted out of life was to bring his offrealm alt to our raid instead of going to farm night with his guild (ok I just whispered him to whine and he said he was on rotation that night and bored and he could come if we wanted him) and we were set.
The following week, he showed up late to raid again. So late, in fact, that we'd already pugged a replacement. A bit of raid shuffling and a lot of grief later, we found him a spot and off we went. It went a little better this time, I didn't trust the new guy anymore so I had the pug tank V&T (yes, I actually trusted a pug over our own recruit) as well as the Elementium Monstrosity on Council. Then our co-gl told me I should let him tank adds on Cho'gall, as we needed to see what he was capable of. Needless to say, most of us weren't happy about this, but we let him. He wasn't great, but he wasn't so godawful that we could fail his trial either.
Honestly, when everyone expressed disappointment at his improvement, I should have just failed him on a social level. Yes, failing on a social level is actually enough to fail a trial. In fact, it's pretty much the only thing that will get you kicked from our guild.
Cut forward to week 3. Late again. So late that this time we had a full raid group and were in the instance before he logged. Yay a raid where we're not being gimped by the tank! And just to add insult to injury, we cleared 5/6 in BWD, did Halfus on heroic (zomg heroic tier!!!11!1eleven) and even nearly killed Cho. We resolved to come back later in the week and kill Cho. Luckily for the new tank, the whole raid started late, so he actually got a spot. A few hours later, Cho was dead (hours? /cry) and we moved over to Throne to take down Conclave quickly before the end of the raid night. 3 healing circles dropped in the middle of Anshal's platform later, we gave up and I put up a vote on forums regarding the new guy's tenure in guild.
The vote went to gkicking him as well as failing his trial. I can't stress how unusual this is. In our 3 year existence, only 2 people had ever been kicked out. And one of them only half counted, as his "kick" had been alts he had left behind when he moved off to a new guild and which hadn't been logged in at least 4 months. And it was me who had to do it (dun dun dun).
With a heavy heart, I logged on and demoted his offline toon to one with no access to anything (I'm paranoid ok?) and sat waiting for him to log. When he did, I grabbed him and our co-gl and set to it. I said that I had bad news, that he'd failed his trial on a raid and a social level and that we were unfortunately going to have to ask him to leave the guild. He was very nice about it (this made me feel worse), wished us luck for the future (worse again!), which we returned, and gquit before saying goodbye and leaving party.
Now I feel like a horrible person :( Having to tell someone that they suck at raiding doesn't bother me nearly as much as having to say "Sorry dude, nobody likes you, please leave".
No comments:
Post a Comment