Empyrean has had a huge explosion in guild membership over the past few weeks, a trend that will most likely continue as we progress through content. While it's certainly a good thing to have a large pool of players to pull from for raids not everyone is ready for 25 man content and it's our job as a guild to get them ready and to help each other meet both guild and personal goals.
The most immediate change is happening this weekend (Nov. 16th - 17th). After speaking with the guild leadership we have decided to convert the Mags runs into Void reaver runs until VR is downed. Around 35 people in the guild now know the pulls to VR and it would be a loss of time to start tackling new content until we have him under our belts and the Progression point on WoWJutsu. After VR goes down for the first time we will put him on a back burner and focus new content goals on Mags Lair. It will take a couple of weeks more than likely to get him down for the first time but with everyone studying the fight and us working together we can do it.
Long term changes
Karazhan and Gearing - There are many people still wanting to run Kara as well as people who need it for gear. The guild leadership is working on getting together 3 Kara groups, Each group will consist of 6 people in need of gearing and 4 vets who will walk those 6 through strats and handle the distribution of EP as well as master looting the drops. With so many new people in the guild this will be a slow process getting the right mix together but in the end it will allow 18 new comers to get the chance at drops as well as badges of justices without putting them into the situation of being in a 25 man and being the weak link.
Guild Ranks - I'm altering the meaning and subtext behind the member and raider ranks in order to properly classify players based on gear level and play skill. Members will still be able to raid 25 mans on a invite only basis but will not be included in new content runs or 25 mans we do not have on farm until they have reached the rank of raider. For most people this will not be an issue because they understand they do not have the gear yet for SSC / TK.
If you happen to be one of the few that don't understand that you will need to raid Kara and heroics for your remaining gear in order to attain raider status you should go ahead and leave the guild now cause I can tell you I'm personally not making any exceptions. It is outright unfair to expect 24 other people to make up for low dps, poor healing, etc. We will all be happy to work with you to help you achieve your personal goals within Empyrean and the class leads will be ready with advice whenever you need it.
It is in my own and the guilds personal interests to see you well geared, happy and moving up within the guild. Please also understand that being a member VS a raider isn't based on friendship, donations or kissing ass. To be blunt I recently dropped my oldest friend on undermine to the status of member because until he starts tanking Karazhan on his own and has finished preparing for 25 mans he will be a liability on any new content runs. Regardless of how much I would like to see him succeed it's once again not fair to the other 24 people in the raid.
Addons, Ventrillo and Raid sign ups - This will probably be the most contentious portion of the guild changes and the one I will get the most feedback about. The reality however is that in a guild this size I cannot manage raids, the guild and issues that come about unless everyone is doing his/her part which included having the correct, updated and installed addons and vent working.
- Ventrilo - Everyone without exceptions must have a vent client installed and working. You do not have to have a working Mic, you are not required to talk on vent but EVERYONE must be able to listen on vent. If something nasty happened to your speakers or sound card I'm very sorry but you simply won't be able to raid until it's fixed. The Key to successfully raiding is communication and we can't take a time out during a boss fight to type a need / request for someone because they aren't on vent.
Everyone can get our full package of official addons at http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/10047/ . Every addon in the package is required in order to raid and there will be no exceptions. More so than vent this will I'm sure be the subject that sparks the most issues but the explanations below should counter any arguments that come up. This is a make or break list. I'm tired of finding out 5 people don't have DBM, or I have to manually sign up 5 people per week for raids. I'm aware that some people are concerned about Virii and trojans and that's why I've released my own package with our official addons. These copies are 100% virus free and safe to use. I have a decade of server security, programming and server side scripting experience under my belt. In my opinion poor password habits are the culprit in these character hacking situations not addons but for the sake of argument I've spent my time examining the code of every addon in our package to make sure you can all feel safe. For the few that simply don't know how to install addons there is a guide to installing them on the Curse site and if your still at a loss I can help you over vent install and configure your addons.
Below is a list of the addons we use and why.
- Omen - Omen is the replacement for KLH Threat Meter. Aside from the obvious use of not passing the tanks threat Having a list showing everyones current place on a mobs threat list helps the tanks, Healers and raid as a whole in almost every fight we deal with. I'm using a friend as an example of the typical "I don't need Omen" attitude, Sorry Ovan your just the best example for everyone. Ovan Says "I don't need threat meter cause your a good tank and I can vanish / feint as needed". Well besides trying to smooth me over with the tank comment Ovan is correct to a degree about his ability to drop aggro or slightly reduce it at a moments notice. However What if he misses it and gets one shotted accidentally? What if he pulls aggro and moves a boss with a nasty cleave towards all the other melee and killing them? Threat isn't a constant, a tanks TPS changes on different fights and in different situations and some bosses have threat reduction debuffs that make it even harder to accurately measure threat without the use of a tool like Omen. There is also the issue of a persons placement in the mob/boss threat list. Some fight take 3, 4 or even 5 tanks. If in our example Ovan passes tank number 4 on threat he endangers not only dieing early in a fight but wiping the whole raid. That risk isn't fair to the other 24 people and that's why everyone that wants to raid will need to have Omen installed and working. (Note: It is also in everyones interest to run Omen from a DPS point of view. Knowing how much the spread is between you and the tank can let you MAX out your DPS without pulling aggro. This is a major help on those bosses with enrage timers.)
- Deadly boss Mods - I feel like I shouldn't even have to explain this one. It warns you when bad things are gonna happen :) Everyone needs it and we chose DBM over bigwigs just because that's what we did. So that's that.
- Group Calendar - This is how we schedule raids and how you sign up. If your GC isn't working correctly try resetting it by typing /calendar reset
- EPGP - This is how you view your current EP and GP as well as your PR score. Simply type J to launch it.
- oRA2 - This is a very lightweight Raid assist back end based on CT_raidassist. It does not include raid windows so you can use any raid window addon you would like or simply the default ones. If you are already running CT_raidassist you can disable this addon. This is to provide a gap between those running CTRA and those who aren't. With oRA2 the raid leaders can see things like broken gear on a player, take votes and check players for quest items or reagents at the beginning of a raid to make sure everyone has enough. Everyone can also see the MT's and OT's targets if enabled.
Raid Preparedness - This is a major issue and one that's getting special attention. If you signed up for a raid you should have all reagents, pots, buff food, supplies and be repaired and ready for summons 15 minutes before the scheduled raid start. I have a notebook next to my keyboard now that i'm taking notes in regarding who's not prepared or showing up late for raids. Those people will face the risk of losing future raid slots or even be banned from guild raids for a period set by the leadership.
PVP specs - No one is to show up for raids specced for PVP/Arena. If you show up for a raid and aren't specced for PVE you'll simply be replaced with someone from the standby list. I'm not holding up 24 people because you forgot to respec.
MIA / Tardiness - If you can't be on time for a raid (15 minutes early) or may not make it please don't bother signing up. We are keeping track and people who are tardy or missing on a reg. basis will lose the privilege of raiding. At the moment I'm thinking of having a 3 strikes rule. If your late or missing 3 times you get banned from raids for 1 week. Nothing is set yet but something will be done.
Please leave Comments with your opinions and thoughts!! I do suspect most people will have a positive attitude about the changes and realize we are trying to maintain order and progress while serving the needs of the guild and it's members. In the end though there will of course be detractors and we want your opinions as well.
9 comments:
Looks good. I like to overall changes. For the most part on fights like VR we need sustainable DPS and if we can't kill him in 10 minutes regardless of deaths and orbs, then we can't kill him. My ideal situation is to sign up for a raid that starts at 8, and be inside killing trash at 8:05. Everyone should have pots, buff foods and a flask to maximize dps/healing/tanking. Once we get on pace with killing bosses in a 25 man environment, then other bosses will drop once a week. The one thing I can not stress enough is that this is not kara. Everyone needs to read and watch boss battles before entering. It is hard to tell someone what to do on VR because it is unlike any other boss battle.
Well, i want to raid new content, but i know im not geared for it. Ive only ever missed one raid i signed up for. I dont bitch about gear, and i dont bitch about runs i get to go on. I completely agree that we need to be on time, there has been weeks that we dont get started on kara an hour or so after it was scheduled. This in turn leaves us without being able to get to the right points we need to be at. Acon is right, I refuse to bitch that i dont get to go to mags or VW, i know im not geared for it, and i wouldnt dare try to take a spot for someone who not only deserves it but is also better suited. If your like me, and want to get epix and to get progression youll put forth the effort and not be pissed because your sitting out. DO something about it, get on on time for the raids, and respect the EPGP system.
Absolutely everything there makes perfect sense. =) Only question I have: About the raider/member thing... are you going through and demoting people that are already raiders if you feel their gear is not up to par? Or is that something that is going to define future promotions to the raider position. I must also agree with the post from "Ray" (IDK who that is) If I sign up for a raid that starts at 8, it would be lovely to be in there killing trash at 8:05! =D (Optimistic or actually obtainable, we will find out!)
please post you toons name when posting, very few of us are one first name basis.
igog
also a stronger post concerning afk during raids, especially when a bossfight is about to happen and instructions are being given.
This is Thios by the way.
I agree with Igog that afkers in raids is harmful in the long run. I would propose that we have a 5 min "break" every hour or so. That way anyone who wants to have a smoke, take a bio, grab a drink, etc knows when they can instead of one or two people going every other pull.
I have 2 things to say about this and before I get into them, I would like to leave a disclaimer.
Yes, I am new to this guild however I am not new to the raiding environment. That being said, these were the 2 biggest things I noticed, please note that I do not think you are in the wrong acon or anyone else in guild, this is just one windfury bots opinions.
1. DBM v Bigwigs- I have used both of these mods for some time now. Bigwigs has the added benefit of being a mainly Ace2 mod, so on raid days, you can be lazy with WoW Ace Updater (WAU) to get the latest update without having to surf the web. More, I find Bigwigs personally to be more accurate in its time-tables. I use both, because I like the whisper aspect that DBM has and I like its addon for battlegrounds anyway so I have both on at a given time.
2. PvP Specs v PvE Specs in a raid-Unless you are a main tank or really one of two to three main healers, you do not NEED to be a straight pve spec. There might always be some abilities that might help, but if a given person knows what they are doing they can live without them. The first month and a half I raided Kara on my shaman I was a pvp spec and managed to do just fine. The only reason I respecced was because I had stopped PvPing on my toon. Yes this is a PvE server however PvP is still very much apart of this game. Whats more, it is the people who don't play straight cookie cutter builds to start out with and find useful tricks that might that own person's non cookie cutter build the cookie cutter build of the future.
One of my best friends before he quit the game back in April, main tanked all of karahzan with a 41 arms spec. I suppose what I am trying to say is that even though someone is a pvp spec, if they know how to play their class, they should still be able to get a given job done.
As far as offspecs I've personally raided with myself, I raid Retribution on a Paladin and Enhancement on a Shaman. Retribution especially is considered nothing more than a pvp build, or was pre the last patch.
/comment before I start repeating myself.
I am Ventus btw, sorry still getting used to the name change. Kasey btw is Alkaseltzer, she forgot to leave her name too
Sylerfan
Hey, sorry it's taken so long to respond here. When I haven't been playing WoW lately I have been very busy with crap in my personal life.
I have to agree with everything posted here. I can't really comment much on the PVP vs PVE aspect since I am 99% of the time specced PVE Prot.
People need to be online and ready to go at the time of the raid they sign up for. Having run a guild and run raids I know how frustrating it can be when people don't show up on time, or show up and realize that they need to have something from their bank. Please try to be ready on time and remember that when you're not you are holding up 24 other people who are ready to go. Flip side however is that occasionally shit happens and we all need to understand that. I believe most everyone will understand if it happens occasionally, but if someone is constantly late or not ready for a raid, then there is a problem.
Addons.. Get them. plain and simple. You need to have these. Sure it's possible to raid without them, but it's a hell of a lot easier to do your job with them and it makes the raid leader and assist's jobs easier if you have them. Group Cal. is an excellent addon for scheduling and signing up for raids. EPGP seems to be a great system for looting. DBM is great, like another poster I use both bigwigs and DBM since there are things I like about both and I am an addon whore.
Like the post and other replies.. if you're not ready to run 25 man raids, then step aside, work on getting your gear in heroics and Kara, then let the people who have been farming the 25 mans help you get through them. You will pay far less repair bills because by the time you get in you will have many people with experience learning the fights telling you what needs to be done.
I agree with other posters about going AFK, as a raid leader myself it's a pain in the ass when you are going over strats only to find out 3 people weren't there.. wait until a break is available then go and get back fast.
One thing I would like to add.. Shut up on vent.. I may seem like an ass for the way I said it, but I don't care. you're distracting people from the task at hand which is downing the boss. If you are talking you are not listening and you WILL miss something important.
That's all folks. See you in game.
Sy
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