Wishing you all a safe and happy holiday season! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to All!
During this period of family time, please play hard with family - there will be work hard with the raid group following for the remainder of the year!
There have been some inquiries into how 2015 will shake out in a raid performance vs. raid fun balance. Humor me and bear me out.
On raiding performance expectations:
Common sense hopefully will always prevail in every matter and context of our raiding; whether that be in loot distribution, raid preparedness, or making choices to further the raiding progression.
The basics are the foundation, of course.
And yet, this merits reminder. In the last raid last week, on the progression boss, only seven (7) out of sixteen (16) raiders used pots on the first solid attempt and fewer still on subsequent attempts. I'm sure we all expect each other to contribute FULLY to each effort to advance our progression and no one has any intentions of wasting anyone else's time by delivering less than their best in every attempt.
Therefore, obviously, and I am positive everyone would agree, if Hero is popped on an attempt and a pot is not used by a player in that same attempt, that player should expect to be replaced. Obviously.
Similarly, proper use of CDs, not standing in the bad, etc, etc, etc.
These matters are all the more important when the boss is not on farm however even so when on farm as this permits a more expedient arrival at the progression boss for more time spent on it than wasted on slower clearing of the farm bosses.
Which segues into Raid Preparedness:
Courtesy is always the first step of preparedness. Arrive ready to raid. On time. Or communicate otherwise in advance. You would not join a pug group and expect someone else to hand you flasks nor enchant your gear, therefore don't hold up our group by being unprepared. It is especially an injury to spend hours pre-raid on alts only to be late on your main. Again, obvious.
Don't rely on everyone else or someone else to bring all the feasts or buff food -- either find a way to collaborate and contribute or bring your own.
Next, let's tackle knowledge preparedness: Everyone should have had by now a chance to carefully study the encounters in Highmaul; if not, use the remaining days of 2014 wisely and as you feel best prepare you for the road ahead in 2015. As always, I recommend FatBossTV on youtube and icy-veins.com videos for visual information. Wowhead.com has great in-depth descriptions for the boss abilities and recommendations for the different raid roles. Last but not least, do not overlook the power of the new Group Finder in enabling you to join Custom Groups that are working on bosses or clearing through - granted, you may not obtain loot if you have already downed the boss that week, however you will have a chance to practice better performance on the boss. The other direct benefit, of course, is that you can do bosses you have not yet done in our group.
LFR is not only useless to teach you the encounters, it ingrains bad muscle-memory habits and reactions - or lack of reactions. Unless you are just there to see the scenery, LFR is utterly useless as a mechanism to prepare you for Normal and Heroic mode.
We will be leveraging the Custom Group capability in the Group Finder in order to fill empty spots on raid nights and or to fill specifics we do not presently have (for e.g. a hunter in the group). Finding replacements using this tool cannot replace the camaraderie and "friendships" of course, however it can quickly provide us with replacements to offset absenteeism or underperformance.
Which segues into the whole performance vs. fun balance question:
It is quite simple: either you are directly contributing to success that specific night, or you are holding the raid group back that night. If this were a viking oar ship of viking friends, either you are rowing with us, helping us get to the destination, cheering and singing with us; or you are very wet, swimming in the dark stormy seas.
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