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 1st
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.
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