The purpose of this post is not to shift the focus of our raids from, “WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”, to “SRS BZNS.” I have been in uber serious raiding guilds, I was in this guild when it was an uber serious raiding guild...it was not fun and the last thing I want is to compromise our fun. The bottom line is that we want the same thing, to have fun and kill bosses. In my opinion having fun is more important, but I feel that there are a few tweaks that we can make to our raids that will facilitate both happening at the same time.
Expectations that go along with signing up for a raid:
When you sign up for a raid there are some things that I think you should attend to before you click the accept button, or at the least make sure you have covered before you show up at raid time.
Be on time, prepared to raid: Average boss attempts last 3-5 minutes, when we have to wait 15 min for someone we are sacrificing time working on bosses. It is as simple as that. Raid starts at 10 means be ready for invites at 10 does not mean go buy your flasks/pots/food/gems/chants at 10, it means do it at 9:30 or in the 5 days a week that we do not raid.
Be aware of and obtain the best gear for your spec(s): Do a little research; I will be posting an extensive link section where people can go learn about what they can do to make themselves mo bettah at what they do in the raid. With many classes (especially DPS) knowing your spell/ability priority is much more important than getting that 1 extra piece of gear. Phizz pulled 17k on his rogue last night, his rogue has some nice pieces but is still rockin some blues and non-heroic gear and still managed to smoke 3 out of 5 dps in almost full epics on a stand and burn, this is because he knows his toon and how to get the most out of it.
Watch Boss videos and or read strategies: This ties back into the time issue, if the RL has to spend 30 min explaining a fight, that is time we are not spending tailoring our strategy to suit our raid’s strengths. Of course, there is going to be some role assigning involved, but if we, as raiders, can do anything to lessen that time, it translates into more time killing bosses.
Critera for Raid invitation priority
We have been kicking around the idea of forming a core group for Firelands. After some consideration I have decided to oppose this particular strategy; mostly because of the informal environment that we all enjoy so much while in raid. I don’t want people to feel excluded unjustly, or that there is some kind of conspiracy to give raid slot priority based on friendship. That shit is dangerous and I know for a fact that the officers don’t do it. So, I am posting a list of what we typically consider when deciding who to give raid slots to, in no particular order.
Attitude: The cornerstone of Synergy’s raid philosophy is that Fun>Progression. It doesn’t matter to us if you pull 40kdps single target, if you are making the raid not fun for other people then you aren’t worth it. Behavior that leads to making you an enemy of fun includes but is not limited to,
Being overly obsessed with loot,
Throwing a fit because you didn’t get a piece of loot,
Needing to afk every other boss pull because you need food/drink/bong hits/ masturbation etc etc,
Feeling the need to share everything that crosses your mind while we are trying to work out boss strats in vent
Not following directions because you think you know better than the RL (We don’t have much problem with this but I think it’s worth mentioning.)
Gear/Preformance: These two are less linked than you may think. It is only when one has a firm understanding of your class/spec that one can make the most out of their gear. There are certain classes for whom gear is more vital than others. A poorly geared warrior being played by the best player in the world, will still typically do less dps than a mage in great gear who has no clue what they are doing. What matters at the end of the raid is where we were short when the boss didn’t die, if everyone is pulling 25k dps and the tank stands in shit….it doesn’t matter we are gonna wipe anyways. The same is true for DPS, if the healers are all blowing all their CDs and the tanks are well geared and not standing in shit, but the dps is not pulling their weight, they will eventually go oom and we will wipe at less than 20% ( like we do often do) The guilds who are clearing Firelands right now are able to do so because most of them are wearing heroic raid gear. We are not, this means that we need to take advantage of the new JP/valor gear and troll dungeons to try to come to a similar level before we can expect to make much progress in there. There are many moving parts to a successful raid, the make or break is determined by how much responsibility each person takes for their own moving part.
Attendance: Attendance is a major factor, if you consistently show for raids that means you will consistently get better gear and experience on bosses. As a result your performance, and by proxy, the raid’s performance will continue to increase, ideally to a point where we can kill our current progression boss. This doesn’t mean that we expect everyone to show for every raid, but it certainly works in you favor.
Ventrillo Etiquette
I love our vent most of the time. It is full of banter and chatter and good (not always clean) fun. When we are working on trash or bosses that we have on farm (killed once does not mean farm) we should goofball it up in my opinion. The issue comes when our raid leader cannot assign roles or explain strats because we are listening to people talk about whatever happens to stumble into their head. Truth be told, while the RL is explaining their strategy no one should have anything to say because they should be LISTENING. This is not to say that we don’t want input. Mindless automatons cannot adjust to the dynamic boss environments of this raid tier. I propose that if you have an insight or suggestion about a fight we are having a hard time with you type it out, if the raid leader wants to hear you in vent let them invite you to talk, this come full circle to less time wasted repeating and more time on bosses.
Please don’t think that I want us to lose any of the fun that we have while raiding, much of what I have spelled out here is from my years of raiding experience both as a raid leader and rank and file raider. If we adhere to some standards, it won’t be long till we have every boss on farm and can goof off to no end with no need for lengthy theory craft or GAME FACE TIME.
Please respond to this post letting me know that you have read and understand it. If you disagree with any point in the post I would love to hear about it, on this forum in the form of a public reply. Open discussion is how we will find our happy medium.
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