Just a rant

   I admit it, I have been kind of stuck on what I would like to write about regarding guilds.  After several days of reflection, it occurs to me that I have some pretty concrete views (some may say odd) on guild leadership and group dynamics.  I have always felt that guild leadership carries obligations and responsibilities just as real world leadership does.  Just as real world leadership often seems to fail, so too does guild leadership. 

   Let’s start with a post from my own guild.  The names have been changed to protect the innocent, so from here on out I will call my guild ‘The Evolution’, this was actually the name of an old guild my wife spent time in.  Likewise when I refer to specific players I will be using aliases.  So, I am trolling my realm’s forums and stumble across a recruitment post for The Evolution.  The post is written by the guild leader and one quote in particular strikes me right away.  He writes, “You should expect a chance to raid. Either in one of the normal groups (Though Group 1 is filled, to my knowledge), doing LFRs with others, or the upcoming Flex Raiding that we plan to hit as soon as we can”.  Two things strike me right away here.

    First is the whole to my knowledge thing.  I mean this guy is the freaking guild leader, you would think he might have a handle on whether a particular raid group is filled.  If it isn’t filled you would expect him to have exact and specific knowledge on what was needed, such as “we have a high need for healers of any type, a medium need for ranged DPS, particularly an affliction lock…..”  What I read from the recruitment post is the guild leader doesn’t have a terribly firm grip on what roles are needed or the current compositions of the raid groups.  This can only lead to bad things, like recruiting a potential raider, only to give them a bench spot, an ultimately resulting in them leaving.  Bad for the player who wasted his time, bad for the guild that is squandering a potential resource.

   Second is the whole expectations thing.  He launches off with a fairly strong promise, “You should expect a chance to raid.”  So far, so good.  Then he goes on to say that this so-called chance to raid might mean, “doing LFRs with others.”  Not to be a dick, but do I really need to be guilded to run LFR? No.  My whole point in joining a guild is to raid, real raiding.  I can remain solo and run LFRs just fine.  Guilds can and should have expectations of their members.  Likewise members can and should have expectations from their guild.  The whole thing is a two-way street, or should be.

  This comes into the responsibility and obligation part.  Just as guilds and their leaders have expectations of their members, members also have expectations from the guild.  I don’t think too many people commit themselves to a guild for the mere sake of committing themselves to a guild.  When I approached The Evolution I was pretty clear about my expectations, I wanted to raid.  I was given a trial run and told I had a spot in raid groups two at the conclusion of the run, so I know I made my expectations clear.  Things is group two is down to, like four members, so needless to say we don’t currently raid.  All of the guild leadership is in group one, which raids current content three nights a week.  The whole thing I take away from this current state of affairs is that the guild leadership is doing well and having fun and that is all that matters, those outside of group one can fend for themselves.  Well, friends and neighbors, if I wanted to fend for myself, I would not have taken the time to join a guild.  I paid money to server transfer to be in ‘The Evolution’.  I come to raids prepared with flasks and food, I read strats and watch videos for the content we are doing.  I play to the best of my ability.  I contribute feasts to the guild bank.  When the guild wanted guild credit for killing the celestials and needed bodies, I came and helped in two kills, despite the fact I had already done my celestial kill for the week.  Nobody had to tell, ask, beg or order me to do any of these things, I regarded them as my duty and obligation as a good guild member.

    I hardly think I am being unreasonable when I expect that guild leadership will have the same sense of obligation to its rank and file and do right by them.  How can they fix raid group two?  There may be no easy answer, but it would be nice to see they were at least trying.  They could for example try to cross-level folks from the first raid group into our suffering group.  They certainly had no problems grabbing the top DPS out of our group to augment themselves.  God forbid they could even recruit.  At the very least they could be honest and issue a proclamation that might read, “we the leadership are doing well and raiding three nights a week, we don’t really feel like devoting any time and energy to group two, if you have any expectations to the contrary, you may as well go looking for a new home, because you won’t be doing regular raids here”.

    I also looked through some of the recruitment posts from other guilds, to get a sense of what guilds seem to be asking for versus what they feel they are obligated to provide to their rank and file.  One thing that struck me, was some guilds were very one-sided in the loyalty department.  I am speaking of guilds boasting that their raid spots are ‘competitive’.  There is certainly a baseline of skill, gear and performance that a guild should expect from an individual, but once that is met, that individual should be treated as a valued team member.  Competitive raid spots mean that as soon as something better comes along, that player loses their spot.  Guilds certainly don’t want to gear up individuals only to have them move on down the line to bigger and better things, so why would an individual want to work through content only to be bumped off the team when a better player comes along?

   This post has become something of a rant, on top of being delayed far longer than I would have liked.  Time to bring this to some kind of conclusion.  If anyone is actually reading this, I would love to hear your opinions on how long I should ride out things in my current guild (a week? a month?? Head for the hills now???).  Long term commitment and stability are big things to me.  I have been in guild leadership positions before and HATE it when people use the guild to grab gear and experience and then pack up.  No guild wants to gear people to leave.  By the same token, I see little point in remaining in a guild where my desires are going unmet.  If I wasn’t clear earlier, my desires are pretty reasonable.  I want to raid regularly, two or three nights a week.  I want to raid current and relevant content, it doesn’t have to be heroic.  I want to see progression, steady progress is all I want, I am not looking for server firsts.  Pretty middle of the line reasonable expectations.

    Yeah, this is coming to a close, I promise.  Just a little update first.  Last night’s guild flex raid did not take place.  Unless something develops tonight or tomorrow, this means an entire week of NO raiding outside LFR.  Good times, good times.

   Okay, for real, rant button to off.  Next post, no promises, whatever I feel like writing about.  I’ll try to avoid another rant. 

   Peace.   

Pets: A Brief Update

 So this post I promised I would talk about battle pets.  I should start by saying that collecting extras and selling them has gotten me a nice chunk of gold.  I routinely farm both Kharazhan and Tempest Keep, caging and selling any extra pets I pick up there.  I have also been farming on the Timeless Isle, and have managed to get two extra azure crane chicks and an extra ominous flame.  All have sold, and most I only had to list once.

  

    I have also been busy collecting and leveling, with an eye on the Celestial Tournament.  I came into 5.4 woefully unprepared in the pet department.  I think on release day, I might have had 26 max level pets, most of which were pretty lackluster.

    In the last few days I managed to level ten pets, including the Lesser Voidcaller, Ghostly Skull, Zandalari Kneebiter, and Sunreaver Microsentry.  I spent an hour prowling around Mt. Hyjal before finally finding a rare Nordrasil Wisp.  After acquiring a flawless flying stone, I logged onto a worgen alt and bought a Gilnean Raven, which I immediately upgraded.  At this pace, I am really hoping to be tournament ready by next week, but we shall see.

   The thing is, the tournament, along with Little Tommy Newcomer, need thought out teams that have synergy.  I knew Little Tommy’s pet was Lil’ Oondasta, a beast, so I figured since mechanicals are strong all I would need for the win was a team of three mechanicals.  Things are not that simple.  Due to RNG I was able to win maybe one in four fights with him.  I then checked the forums and found out, yes, I was doing it wrong.  I read some guides, did some thinking, and now generally win every battle vs. Little Tommy on the first go.  Even some of the older pet battle masters are like this.  The other night I was fighting the Pandaren Water Spirit’s team.  I opened with a highland turkey, which is not the pet to open with in this battle.  The turkey has a CC, but no avoidance mechanic, and was destroyed on the third round by the detonation of both the geyser and whirlpool cast by the fish that the spirit opens the battle with.  After losing, I healed and tried again, this time opening with a moth and using cocoon strike to avoid the dangerous geyser/whirlpool combo.  So, even this guy requires a team that has some thought put into it.  I have seen many forum posts where people complain that fights are too hard, or that everything is dependent on RNG.  I disagree with these posts.  My opinion is the great majority of pet battles can be easily won by using very specific teams and using pet abilities in a specific order and way.

   I did try the tournament just to see how it ran and how far I was able to get, fully expecting not to win.  My expectations were met.  I was pitted against Wrathion, Chem Stormstout and Taran Zhu.  I was able to down the first two in battles that were fairly close and got torn apart by Taran Zhu.  I am confident that with the right pets and more forethought before entering again, that the tournament won’t be as hard to win as people are making it out to be.

    The right pet thing can be difficult.  It is a bit of a grind to level pets, especially if you try to level a whole bunch of them in one go.  I tend to focus on one or two or day, on days I have to work my day job, and go into all-out grinding on the days I have all to myself. 

    The whole pet thing renewed my interest in the Brawler’s Guild, since reaching rank 4 allows you to purchase Clock’em, a mechanical pet who could be the Clockwork Gnome’s twin brother.  I stopped doing the brawler’s thing month ago after reaching rank 3.  In two nights, without spending much time, I was able to get through all the third tier bosses and reach rank 4.  Icy Veins has an awesome guide to everything that has to do with the Brawler’s Guild, it is the only source I use.  There is a part of me that wants to call things good now that I have the pet, but the elitist, completionist part of me will probably win out, and see me back brawling in an effort to reach rank 9.

   Perhaps my next post will return to a subject involving guilds, then again perhaps not.  I haven’t exactly made my mind up.  Until then.

   Peace.

Raiding Semantics

  So far my raiding experiences in the new patch have consisted solely of doing flex raids with varying sized guild groups.  My first impression is that the flex level raids are between easy and moderate in terms of difficulty.  My guild was able to clear the four bosses in the first wing the week it opened, a pace that is reminiscent of Naxx.  Of course this is only the first wing, and next week will bring the second wing with four new bosses, so it’s a bit early to give a final opinion on how difficult flex raiding is.  I have to say that so far it is a very nice break from the wipefest that ToT was, my raid group spent somewhere in the neighborhood of three weeks and fifty attempts downing Horridon.

   For those of you who don’t know, boss drop loot in flex raids is personal loot, so there are no worries about rolling against other raid members.  There are trash drops as well, and these drops are not personal loot.  For once fortune has smiled on me, and from our first week of raiding I walked away with a new tanking mace (it’s even itemized correctly) and a tier chest (I chose the tanking version).  On top of this I grabbed a 535 tanking helm from my adventures on the timeless isle and bought some DPS pants with valor points.  I can assure you that I almost never get gear at this rate, so this is a pleasant change from the endless failbags and gold from a whole patch’s worth of LFR.

    It is now time to turn to the main theme of this post, the semantics of raiding.  Many of you have probably been in guilds that field two (or more) raid teams.  My current guild has two raid teams as have several of my previous guilds.  Some guilds name their teams, most simply refer to them as ‘Raid Group One’ and ‘Raid Group Two’.  My guild used to follow the later convention, and for the curious, I am in group two.  As of late, there is a new regime in town in my guild, no longer are we groups one and two, we are now ‘Team Jade’ and ‘Team Red’.  This change is not some random whim on the part of the guild’s leadership.  It is a refined exercise in semantics.  This change in naming was discussed in chat and the explicit reason given for the change was the group one+group two thing carried the implication that one group was better, superior, more important than the other.  The thing is, that this is the case, group one (excuse me, Team Jade) is superior to gro… err excuse me Team Red.

   Group one is the better group; they are more progressed, have the better players, and they are the more desirable of the two groups to be in. I know, this is a bold assertion, but it’s a true one.  The most obvious indicator of this is the progress of the two groups.  The end of patch 5.3 saw Team Jade frantically making attempts on Lei Shen, the final boss in ToT.  At the same point in time, Team Red was still working on Tortos, the fourth boss in ToT.  This disparity is huge.  Playing word games will not change what is.

   I also discovered the other week that my raid group has not a single guild officer.  That’s raid, the raid leader and her assistant have absolutely no officer powers whatsoever.  I figured this out because the guild bank was locked down with no explanation given (I would imagine someone abused their privileges).  The raid leader had to ask an officer to withdraw food and flasks for the raid.  This is just bad business.  A raid leader should have at least some officer powers, considering they are fulfilling a leadership role.

   It gets even better.  With the advent of the new patch, one of our better raiders was transferred to group one, pardon me, Team Jade.  We already have enough problems filling our roster, so this did not help us in the least.  I cannot help wonder, if raid group two had all the guild leadership in it, would this have happened.  My guess is no.

    I could go on, but you might get the idea that I dislike my guild, and nothing could be farther from the truth.  Despite all the issues I just went on about, I very much enjoy my guild.   I think the issue of disparity between raid groups is common to most guilds that have more than one.  After all, guilds generally don’t spring into existence with a full roster of multiple raid groups.  Guilds start with a handful of people, that coalesce into a raid group.  As time goes on, the guild adds more people, eventually there are too many people for one raid group to accommodate everyone who wishes to raid.  A second group forms, but of course they are a bit behind the power curve.  As time goes on, the inequality increases.  After all, if you were the founding member of a guild that started raiding MSV, and went on to HoF, how excited would you be to suddenly find yourself placed into the newly formed group two to wipe repeatedly on the Stone Guardians?

    The easiest answer to these woes is cross-pollinating the raid groups.  Some of the studs in the 1^st group, can occasionally help out folks in the lagging group, while some of the underdogs in G2 can come along with the strong group.  Sadly this rarely happens.  The problem may be too, that there simply are not enough committed raiders to run two separate groups, which means time to start recruiting.

    Enough rambling for now.  Next post I want to talk about pets some more, as I have spent a lot of my last week collecting and leveling new pets, with an eye on the Celestial Tournament.

   Peace.   

Timelost

       I think one of the things I promised in my last post was an update on how well (or not well) my experimenting with pet sales in the AH was going.  I had also remarked that one of the new pets in the game, the Azure Crane Chick, seems to drop from looting crane nests on the isle about one in twenty times.  As data starts to come in, Wowhead (http://www.wowhead.com) now has posted some drop rates, and right now they are saying a 2% drop rate for the crane chick.  So far I have not managed to acquire another one.  I did the Karahzan thing on one of my rogue alt and managed to grab both a Lil’ Bad Wolf and a Fiendish Imp, both of which I promptly listed for a buyout price of 899 gold.  I also discovered I had an extra Pandaren Air Spirit, which I also put up for sale.  The following day the imp and the spirit had both sold.   A quick run of tempest keep had a Lesser Voidcaller drop for me.

      

     Staying on the subject of pets, I have decided to make it a priority to level as many pets as I can to 25, and perhaps next week, I will give the Celestial Tournament a try.  I was able to level a Darkmoon Zeppelin to 25 the other night, and I hoping by next reset that I will have around 40 max level pets.  It is not terribly difficult to level a pet all the way up in a single day, it takes about an hour, and I use the following guide:  http://fecklessleader.blogspot.com/p/pet-leveling-guide.html .  I found this site through a link in the warcraft forums, and after a week of using the advice there, I can say that this is a guide that works.

     

      I think a good main theme for this post should be time, considering I along with everyone else am probably spending a lot of it at a certain isle that lacks it.

     

      One of the first things I have noticed is that a lot of the elites are not so elite, at least not to an iLevel518 arms warrior.  Most of the generic elites are fairly easy to kill one on one at this level, a good thing since the daily quest requires killing twenty of them.  The rare or named elites are a different story; you will most likely want a group for most of these if not all of these.  I have also gotten some time in on my rogue alt who is around iLevel 498, and things are a little tougher for her but still quite doable.  The nice thing about the daily is it gives 50 valor points, meaning just from doing that single daily, I can knock out 350 valor points in a week.  On top of that there is a weekly quest on the isle, a kill and collect type quest, which can be ground out in about an hour or two.  The weekly gives 200 Valor points, so just from questing on the isle you can grab more than half of your weekly valor cap.

     

       Here is a brief rundown of the various elite mobs I have fought.  Again this is based on my experiences as an iLevel 518 arms warrior:

·         Brilliant Windfeather:  An obnoxiously pink flamingo, err crane.  Extremely easy fight, his one main attack is ‘Gust of Wind’, which will sting if you are in front of him, and do nothing if you are not. This ability has a two second cast and is quite easy to avoid.  At most he gets a single cast off in my typical fights.

·         Gulp Frog:  Another easy kill, its main ability is ‘Toxic Skin’, which applies a stacking poison debuff that applies nature damage every time you hit him.  One on one they are an easy kill, just make sure to let the debuff drop off before going off to fight another one.

·         Great Turtle:  He has two abilities of note, ‘Shell Spin’ and ‘Great Bite’.  When he retreats into is shell move away to avoid being hit by the spin, which hurts.  Although a wowhead comment recommends avoiding the bite, I don’t find this ability to be problematic at all and I simply eat it.

·         Ironfur Great Bull:  Very easy, he periodically casts ‘Ox Charge” which requires you to move out of a very visible ground effect before the cast completes (it looks like a shaman’s earthquake spell).  It’s more annoying than painful if you get hit by it, as it applies a knockdown.

·         Death Adder:  An intermediate mob, his sole ability is ‘Huge Fang’ which he spams and which hurts.  I use cooldowns for this guy.

·         Foreboding Flame:  Another intermediate level mob, he has two abilities of concern, ‘Spiritfire Bolt’ and ‘Spiritflame Strike’.  The bolt hurts and should be interrupted or reflected, and the strike creates a large ground effect (a ring of blue flame), which will hurt quite a great deal if you are in it when the cast completes.

·         Jademist Dancer:  This guy is somewhere between easy and intermediate.  His sole ability is ‘steam blast’ which can and should be interrupted or reflected, as it hurts.  These mobs are closely packed and pat about erratically and rapidly, which is where the difficulty factor comes in, you do not want to fight multiple dancers.

   The above list is nowhere near exhaustive, but just a run-down of the easier elites on the isle.

    Let’s not forget collecting timeless coins.  Even though the first week is not done, I am up to 21K coins, so I am guessing in another two weeks or so I will have enough to pay the requisite 50K coins for a piece of iLevel 535 gear.  A guild run allowed me to the loot the chest for the freebie burden of eternity, which I used to make a tanking helm to replace my raid finder helm.  Just from the three easy dailies (the pet battle with Tommy Newcomer, the kill quest and the trivia quest) you make 1600 coins a day, and this is less than an hour’s worth of work.  The above mentioned mobs drop around 20-30 coins on the average, so you should be getting 2K coins a day for very little work.

  

       Perhaps I will talk about raiding (so far limited to the flex difficulty) in my next post.

     

       Peace.