Embarassing Fangirl Moment

Have you watched PST or Weekly Marmot?  I do.  Religiously.  Weekly Marmot is extremely interesting and there's always good, solid advice on PST.  I would say a definite must for any officer.

Yesterday I got an email from Lore - an actual real email despite the fact that he's on holiday! (!!!!!)  It only said one word - "Sure!".  That was his response to me asking his permission to link to Weekly Marmot and PST here (yay!).

You can find his shows on Tankspot (amazing site for raid strats and all sorts of other yummy goodies).  PST is out every Friday morning (Friday evening/Saturday morning for me) and Weekly Marmot on Tuesday morning (Tuesday evening/Wednesday morning for me).

Enough of me plugging my new (only) favourite celebrity:  for your viewing pleasure, the Weekly Marmot!

 

Officer Stuffs: Failing a Trial

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".

Our own personal rockstar

Everyone knows there are times when you have to just sit and wait, be it because your tank is late, your healer has dc'd and can't seem to log back in or someone fell off their chair and they just want to stop their face from bleeding so they can see quick (Ok this hasn't happened to us.  Yet.  But it's a distinct possibility for either myself or our co-gl).  These times are boring.  Luckily, we have a guy in our guild who is actually a remarkably good singer.  Even more luckily, we have a guy in our guild who frapses every word (and then sometimes forgets and deletes them, losing the song dedicated to our gl forever).

Here are all the vids we have so far, soon to be updated with last night's song.

Updated:

Officer Stuffs: The Sub Solution

In my last post, I outlined the issues I've had to deal with regarding our brand-new, shiny Sub position.

1. Rotations are Out Of The Question.  Our raid team is used to having guaranteed raid spots after 3 years and people tend to get set in their ways.
2. Our guild leader point-blank refused to disallow people from pugging raids in case we needed them.
3. Our realm is epically dreadful and at the beginning of Cataclysm, 2/3 of the top guilds migrated offrealm, changing the recruitment pool from "Maybe we'll interest someone reasonably good who wants a lighter raiding schedule" to "Maybe we'll find someone who can log in all by himself on his first try if we're lucky.  Maybe.".

 With the combination of the first two points, there was only one real solution:  Another raid lockout every week to gear subs.  Now, in WotLK this would easily have been solved with one of our standard 25man pugs.  But, alas, with the changes to raiding lockouts in Cata, this was not an option.  Letting the subs pug by themselves was also not really an option - what if their group cleared a boss that we were working on in heroic that we suddenly needed them for?  And asking them to wait until Monday (we raid Wednesday and Sunday) to pug is just cruel - most Monday/Tuesday pugs end in a trash wipe and name-calling before you even see the first boss.  Eventually we decided on a third raid night on Mondays - optional for anyone who has raided on one of the Official days, to which those of us who were locked could bring raid-ready alts and at which socials were welcome.

We started off with a bang, netting 2 zomgawesome new apps and using the third night for progression.  Soon one of our main raiders had to resign from the raid team due to real life problems and we replaced him with a DK we'd been courting for a while (he'd been emergency-subbing for us for around 8 months, maybe 9).  Shortly after, we lost one of our zomgamazing new apps, who realised a 3days a week raid roster and a socially-minded guild was just not for him and went offrealm to a 5day a week progression guild.

We realised that rotations were going to be the only thing that would save us from losing our last, solitary sub and decided to do rotations on a voluntary basis, and night-by-night, rather than week-by-week.  This wound up being a solid solution that everyone was happy except for one or two teensy, tiny little details:  Our sub was a dps, and of the 5 people who volunteered to be rotated, only one was a dps.  The rest were the healers and a tank.  We arranged this such that one of our dps brought a tank alt when the tank was afk and one of our dps had to pick up a heal offspec.  It was a bit messy, but we handled it for a few weeks.  Then one of our raiders had a work-schedule change and could no longer make Wednesdays and took a drop to social and then we had a nice stable 10 again.

We decided to leave it there for a bit, kept the Monday as an option for progression and procrastinated a bit more on the alt runs.  Shortly after, we realised that we did, in fact, need subs, and started actively recruiting for the first time ever.  Shortly before we got in some new recruits, we started up the alt/sub run, albeit sans subs.

This turned out to be a great move for the guild.  We had to pug some people, which has netted us some new out-of-guild friends to replace the old ones who transfered offrealm, and even a promising new holy paladin recruit.  So far the alt/sub run has 5/6 BWD normal, 4/4 BoT normal and 1/5 BoT heroic.

I'm thinking of branching the alt/sub run out into 25s to make more contacts, but I must admit the very idea of pugging even one person on our realm positively terrifies me.  Any raid where we have spots that need to be pugged usually start with an argument about who is going to be the poor sod who has to hit up trade (I swear just by typing /join trade you can feel your IQ drop by 10 points before you even hit enter).

Getting Started

I am a Discipline Priest, an officer and one of 2 girls in a small 10man guild on a crappy EU realm.  I may or may not have anything worthwhile to share, but I get bored easily so I'll be posting stuff semi-regularly.

Me:

My first toon (super-bad warlock "Int is my best stat after armour lol") hit 70 3 weeks before WotLK hit and my guild took me along as a "warm body" to a few Zul'Aman and Karazhan runs and I completely and utterly fell in love with raiding, despite the fact that I had no clue whatsoever what I was doing (strats? there are strats? why didn't anyone tell me there were strats?!?).

A few months into WotLK, around mid-3.1, I started levelling a little priest with a friend of mine who had re-rolled to my realm.  Partly to level with her and partly to help her out when she hit 80.  When we started, the emblem upgrades had yet to be announced and finding groups for the daily heroic and for Naxx were all but impossible, so I started up the little priestling so she would always have a healer on tap and dusted off my level 63 DK planning to level it to 80 so she would always have a tank too!

When I hit 40 after a night without sleep (At this point it had dissolved into a competition to see who would hit 80 first), I dutifully paid up the 1000 gold and specced my offspec to Holy.  As I was sorting myself out to log off, someone whispered me and asked if I wanted to heal Maraudon.  I made excuses about not having slept in over 30 hours and desparately needing sleep and never having healed anything other than myself before, but my heart wasn't in it and, after a little bit of pleading, I set off for Mara with my shiny new Holy spec in hand.

It was a disaster.

Joking - it went great and I loved it.  I loved it so much that I decided on roughly the 5th pack that my priest was no longer an alt, but a re-roll.  Side note:  you still get experience in Spirit of Redemption.  I even dinged in it once or twice.

When I hit around 77, I went and chatted with a guild priest about heal "rotation", what spells I should and shouldn't be using and why I was ooming and he told me that the reason I was ooming was because I was healing like a Disc priest.  So i did the logical thing - I changed my healing style to suit my chosen spec.

Joking - I respecced Disc.  And nearly 2 years down the line I'm still Disc and loving the hell out of it.

My guild:

We are and always have been a 10 man guild, since the days of Karazhan.  In TBC, we ran Kara and ZA and pugged the 25s.  When WotLK came around and there was a 10man option for everything, there was much rejoicing and happiness, but the 25-man pugs continued, netting us realm no 11 in 25 mans for most of WotLK (yes, our realm is so dreadful that a 10man guild could rank 11th in 25s just from pugging 25 normals).

I joined in late Trial of the Crusader, shortly before the release of the long-awaited Icecrown Citadel, as a social member.  At the beginning of ICC, one of our long-time raiders decided to resign from wow and I was pulled in as a semi-pug.  This apparently required some reshuffling of the raid team (thanks guys!) as a disc priest is not an intuitive replacement for a mage.  The shadow/disc priest went shadow/yay I can do whatever I want with my offspec, the resto shaman went resto/enha and the hpala started refusing to use Beacon (don't ask - I don't know either).

A few months later, I was promoted from Social to Raider, which is effectively the officer rank in our guild.  I then poked our co-gl and asked if I was expected to take on any specific officer duties or anything, he said no but I could if I wanted and he'd be grateful for the help.

At the end of WotLK, some people quit on us and I raised the issue of having dedicated subs instead of playing the pug lotto when someone was afk.  The 2 guild leaders put it to vote in the guild and it passed.  Then I was told since it was my idea (It wasn't, I was tricked into putting forward the co-gl's idea), that I would be solely responsible for it.

A whole new set of problems arose with this idea:

1. Rotations are Out Of The Question.  Our raid team is used to having guaranteed raid spots after 3 years and people tend to get set in their ways.
2. Our guild leader point-blank refused to disallow people from pugging raids in case we needed them.
3. As previously mentioned, our realm is epically dreadful and at the beginning of Cataclysm, 2/3 of the top guilds migrated offrealm, changing the recruitment pool from "Maybe we'll interest someone reasonably good who wants a lighter raiding schedule" to "Maybe we'll find someone who can log in all by himself on his first try if we're lucky.  Maybe.".

The plan:

My intentions are to try not to embarass myself while ranting about officer-type stuffs, provide gear lists and healing advice tailored to Discipline in 10mans and share our Top-Secret (not really) heroic strats.  We're currently 3/13 and on a raid break for officer-burnout but we'll be back to our progression on the 13th.  That gives me time to catch up to where we are now regarding strats and maybe post some gear lists and so on as well.