Transitioning to Summer Intensity!

Summer is here! It's time for that annual transition to summer intensity - every year, during summer, there is a decline in the number of hours that people are online and we see fewer people available to raid consistently week after week. We love summer and all the wonderful things that come with it so we adjust the raiding intensity accordingly - after all, we are a weekend raiding guild and there are summer parties and things to attend to!

After thorough discussion and planning, and after looking at the attendance logs, we have decided to suspend Blue (Tigers) and Purple (Dragons) raid groups for the summer. Green (Bears) raiding group will continue to raid every week on its normal schedule.

Why did we do this? What does this mean to you?

Why did we do this? Bluntly, it is merely announcing what has already happened and that we are not attempting to reverse it during the summer - the raiders have already effected this to each group.

Overall throughout all of wow and on every server, the summer brings about a lower attendance and availability and it is the time when there are the fewest 'guild recruits' available to bring in to fill empty raid seats. Recruiting is not going to be more successful during the summer quieter period than during the rest of the year - not that we will not continue recruiting, however we have to face facts from the past seven years. Green group actively maintains a reserve list of non-guildies ready to raid with us should we lose a member and be unable to recruit from within the guild. However, Blue and Purple group have been below full roster fielded for a 10-man raid for weeks now and they do not have a reserve list of non-guildies from which to draw upon to fill the empty raid seats.

Green group has a roster that pretty much shows up week after week after week for months and months and months (years, really) - it has a roster of people (12) that is sized to ensure that it never is forced to take a week off because of one or two outages. This gives it the consistency and resilience to absorb someone not being available one week and still roll out the raid. Also, within the roster, there are multiple people who have the tanking spec and gear, the healing spec and gear, the dps spec and gear such that it can shift people around to best suit the encounter and address an outage (e.g. a tank is away for 2 weeks on vacation with family) -- it doesn't do so by bringing in an alt that has not been geared and receiving the drops every week, but rather it does so by changing the specs of the toons already in the raid group. In effect, it has forward momentum and the critical mass to successfully raid every week unless it chooses to take a week off.

Blue and Purple groups on the other hand have several committed raiders each, however not twelve. In fact, not even eight each. Within the committed (they show up reliably every week) raiders within each of Blue and Purple, they lack tank and healer resilience should there be an outage - they can pull someone's alt or swap specs however the gear and skill level is a sizable step down from the 'norm'.

However, combined, Blue and Purple *do* have a 'roster' of enough committed people that the raid group could effectively raid every week unless it chooses to take a week off. That same combined roster has tank and healer resilience.

So rather than attempt to force a square peg into a round hole, we are not going to approach the shortage of committed raiders in Blue and Purple by recruiting for each of their groups now during the summer months when it is hardest to recruit raiders. Instead, we are suspending both raid groups and will re-visit how many raid groups we need in the guild in the Fall.

What does this mean to you? If you are in Green group, it means there is highly likely a guild replacement should you want to take a week off, communicate in advance accordingly as usual. On the other hand, if you are in Blue or Purple group, it means you are now highly likely going to be able to raid every single week - together. And you should expect to see some of the Green group raiding with you form time to time also.

Keep in mind that a 'raid group' by our definition is a highly managed entity. There are set rosters, firm attendance reliability expectations, performance expectations, and everyone is expected to have the highest levels of communication with the raid lead and group as to outages or changes. There are raid logs to be snapped, posted, and reviewed (by everyone in the group). There is a 'set in stone' mentality about our raid groups and a very, very high level of commitment that is expected.

Side bar: there is a difference between 'need', 'want', and 'like'. People need to drink water. People want to appear clean when they go to work. People would like to be a movie star. As a result, they always drink water, they do take showers, but they don't actually do anything that in any way is conducive to them actually becoming a movie star. Separate individuals from groups and look only at the actual evidence of the groups as whole entities: Green group has demonstrated that it wants to raid. Blue and Purple groups have demonstrated that both would like to raid - each has individuals that want to raid.

tl;dr: For the summer, Green group will be the only official rostered guild raid group however everyone will be able to raid in guild groups.

How will this work in practical terms? For Green group, no change - carry on. For Blue and Purple group, you will no longer see raid invitations on the calendar (that's alright, half of you were not responding anyways!). The guild raids on Fridays and Saturdays, 8:30PM server. If you want to raid, be online early enough to get a raid seat when raid groups start forming up.

i.e. Green group will assemble up as usual. Everyone not in Green group, will do what we have always done in wow for the past 7 years when in a raiding guild but not in the 'official' raid group: raid with guildies!

Obviously, we can expect that the raiders that want to raid every week will likely coalesce into an informal roster. (Please note that no one will be managing this roster!) It is a logical conclusion that we would not disband such a tight-knit group in the Fall but would simply re-brand it to be the new Blue. If an informal roster does not coalesce, we will re-visit raid rosters in the Fall anyways.

Why aren't you suspending Green group also? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Hey! Are you saying we are broken in Blue and Purple?! Not as individuals, no. You are fabulous as individuals. As groups - hells yes! Let's call a spade a spade here folks: a raid group that cannot reliably form a raid every week and zone into an instance or that cannot do more than get the first boss down after months and months is not a 'healthy and good working' raid group. Let's call it what it is and heal what ails it.

Sounds elitist. Personally, I plan on raiding with 'the summer group' A LOT this summer. Frankly, I don't care as much about which raid group I raid with as much as I do care about us sticking to our guild principles of respect and fun -- and there is nothing fun nor respectful in asking Gray or Doom to put thankless hours into organizing and managing and caring for and stressing over a group only to have people log on and not have the basic courtesy of clicking a button on the calendar invitation to let them know whether that raider will or will not be available that week. It is not respectful nor fun when a large group of people all agree to show up every week as a group and then more than half fail to do so leaving every one of the other people who did show up hanging and the raid lead feeling stressed because it was their job to form a raid that night because people planned their weekly lives and set that time aside as the precious time in the week when they could enjoy the leisure activity of playing the game and specifically, raiding. Green group 'got it' and made it work. Blue and Purple groups did not get it, but individuals in both groups totally 'get it' and it's time to make sure they get the benefits rather than just having another week where they don't get to raid because not enough people showed up.

Have a nice day and enjoy the summer!  = )

Megaera Down!

Immediately after Meg was beat, you could hear two things in Mumble: elation and relief! We had not been working on Meg for very long, however you could sense that everyone felt 'it should be down by now' and so 'the sooner the better'. It is a fight that, at first blush, seems quite simple on the surface; however, under the covers, it is a bit more demanding than you'd think both on the healers and on the dps.

As a tank, it is business as usual: establish and hold aggro, immediately face [your part of] the boss away from the raid, rotate CDs accordingly, move when and as needed.

As a dps, there is a tremendous amount of reactionary movement that is punishing to the healers if you linger more than a split second on your reaction times. In the final stages of the fight where the boss is hitting harder and more frequently, cast-time casters have a hard time getting a cast in before they have to move, again.

As a healer, the performance of the raid and it's ability to react to the situations that develop are what drives how difficult this fight is for you. The first half of the fight is deceiving in that the boss is hitting slower and not as hard, however the second half of the fight accelerates the rate and increases the damage done by the boss requiring the healers to increase the rate at which they heal and the oomph with which they are healing - right about the time when their mana pools are bone dry.

After Meg was down, I asked if there was anything we did on that attempt that was different (so that we could do it on every attempt, obv), however the general consensus was that no, nothing was done diffferent than our usual strat - just that we needed to polish the execution until we got it all working together.

Frankly, I think that is the essence of raiding - being willing to show up and try things until you find what is likely to work for you, polish it until it works, and have fun together doing it. Granted, there is a balance between pure fun and pure progression - progression being fun "in a way" but largely being stressful while you are doing it! There is a reason why you hear elation and relief when a progression boss goes down.

Striking that balance between 'we want to have fun' and 'we want to progress and see the content' is dodgy, at best. People have to be pushed when they are least wanting to be pushed which is when they are already sensitive to being behind where they should be (which is why they need to be pushed if they want to stay in that fight at that time). Pushing progression too quickly is a 'fun suck' and it raises a bar of performance that might be too high for your group -- just because "everyone else is 11/12" does not mean your group should be, too. Then again, if people are not being mindful of paying attention to detail and performing good raidcraft, then yes, they need to be pushed.

But back to last night: progression, and fun!

About the only complaint that I had (other than the bludgeoning headache I had) was that the run back to Meg after wiping feels inordinately long compared to the other run backs -- yes, I know, there were longer run backs back 'in the day'; however, we've been nicely spoiled this xpac with zoning in almost where you wiped and I like it!