Forged Alliance

First off, I apologize for being curt and disrespectful during the initial trash pulls. I apologize to Chris for calling him out on judging the mob during the LoS pull -- I was in the wrong mindset at the start of the raid and he happened to be the first unfortunate victim.

I also apologize to our DPS for the AoE callout during the trash. Again, I was in the wrong mindset and I should have chosen my words differently since the extra adds were not an expected part of the pull.

That being said, please don't focus on running up the meters. Some of the trash blows up (like you saw) and it is much more important to focus fire the greater raid threats. Our tanks can survive a lot of small adds beating up on them and sometimes it makes more sense to sacrifice maximum AoE DPS -- remember that a mob at 1 hit point does just as much damage as a mob at full health.

Lastly, as some people who have not raided with me have just recently observed, my raid leadership style is very passive. I don't like to call people out because it really doesn't help anyone and there are a lot of times where I'm mistaken (like for the vile gas AKA barf debuff -- in the documentation I've read and videos I've watched, I don't remember them saying it targeted more than one person). We really are learning each wipe -- please don't think we're just wasting our time bashing our heads into a brick wall. Even though I'm not calling people out, I do ask that people pay attention and try to help me and others figure out what is going wrong.

I'm very content with incremental progress. I like to focus and solve 1 issue at a time so that we aren't juggling too many adjustments between pulls. I know that it may bother some people that they are flasking for wipe attempts, but I do think it is important because we need to know how we're doing on DPS relative to the enrage timers. I do know that if we get a 5% attempt and wipe, there will be a lot of regret for not using that flask.

I'm pretty sure that there are PUGs out there that can do this. I personally haven't been in one, but I wouldn't doubt it if someone said it is true. Please remember that this is not a hardcore progression raiding guild. If it bothers you that myself or the other raid leaders aren't pushing extremely hard, please talk to us after the raid. If this style of raiding makes the game unpleasant for you, our guild 25s may not be a good fit for you -- perhaps stick an alt or two in the guild for 10s and randoms and put a main in a cutting edge progression guild. You would not be the first to do so and those who did move a main to another guild did not burn any bridges with us, but please don't 'suffer' in the 25s if it really is bothering you.

On the flip side, if you think that myself or the other raid leaders are pushing you too hard, please be considerate of the other 24 people in the raid. ICC25 is too hard at this point in time to be a loot pinata and it really does take the serious effort of all 25 raid members to do these challenging encounters. We can help you do better DPS, better healing, or whatnot if you need it. We can also help you if you have chronic raid problems like standing in fire -- it may be a user interface problem or we can share our own pointers for how we avoid pitfalls.

I do think that a lot of people see how much time is spent recapping fight mechanics. Please try to read up a little on the encounters and/or watch a video before the raid night. You don't need to memorize everything -- the important thing is for you to be able to say 'a hah, I remember reading that', when something goes wrong in a fight. I'm pretty sure it bugs 23 other people in the raid when I have to do a full recap before a fight instead of just tweaking the 'generally known' strategy.

Good work in ICC25 so far. Remember that we got Saurfang on the 2nd attempt on our 2nd week of raiding, so don't give up on us. As we get people more gear and eventually get the zone wide buff, these things will go smoother.

-HP

Inori should never have to apologize. He says sorry when other people mess up.

(like for the vile gas AKA barf debuff -- in the documentation I've read and videos I've watched, I don't remember them saying it targeted more than one person).

My DBM says in the chat window:
Vile Gas
Vile Gas
Vile Gas

When it says the following then someone has messed up:
Vile Gas Rathrbdrinkn Theanchor
Vile Gas
Vile Gas

If it said the above then Rathr and Anchor were too close.

That makes more sense. Was wondering why it said it three times.

Dang, what did I miss last night!
;o)

Inori, I think you did a good job last night no need to apologize.

I do think that raid members should not be yelled at for talking in vent during the raid, if what they're saying is helping during the fight... Inori cannot see everything that is going on. So if someone calls out "Hey you with the spore get over here." or "2 melee have the spore so-and-so run out". I don't think that person should be yelled at by officers to keep vent clear.

I wouldn't mind have 3-4 voices in vent...
1. Tanks, to call out taunts and CDs
2. Inori
3. A dps (who can call out spores or whatnot, Inori is busying healing, Thandrenn is busy tanking...let some dpser who doesnt have to concentrate as much call it out)

This will help out on Rotface, having a separate person calling out who needs to run out incase they are not paying attention.

2nd I dont mind if people want to call me out for something stupid I did, if done politely ppl shouldn't get offended by being called out. Some people dont know they did something wrong unless they're called out. Ie. Dakkath running away from everyone when he had the spore in 10man. He was called out and now he'll never make that mistake again.

just my 2cents

Damn you Rav, of course you had to use me as an example! lol jerk.

I don't think you have any reason to be sorry either Inori. People really need to listen to the raid leader and at that moment there were several people who weren't listening. We may be more of casual raiding guild, but we still would like to progress and to do that we should really listen and follow our leaders. And I don't mind if other people talk in vent either, but I DO NOT think they should be cutting off the raid leaders or talking over them. Our raid leaders put in a lot of time, and are the leaders for a reason and I think we should have to respect that. When you get a raid with too many people trying to lead, things just get too messy.

We are casual, that does not mean we have to be bad. Or rather, being casual is not an excuse for being bad. Fights don't get much simpler then this. This is a gear check which by definition reduces the amount of, or difficulty of, the mechanics involved. You DPS, you run in, you run out, you DPS some more. That's it. If there is anything that would get us in this fight it would be tanking cooldowns or healing load.

Talking in vent is not a bad thing, but talking over people that need to be heard is. For that reason it makes sense to have as little chatter in vent as possible. Keep your statements short and to the point, and ask questions in /raid chat.

Although, I wasn't there last night. My opinion from the replies and getting more information is,

If people keep making the same mistakes over and over causing people to spend enormous amounts of coin on repairs and other mats then exempt that person from the next raid until they get their shit together.

As much as this guild is a "casual" guild, nobody enjoys raiding, dying repetitively, and not progressing to get gear for people. I mean, if we aren't getting better doing the 25-mans because people keep fucking up, whats the point?

The problem with that Dakkath is that we are usually RIGHT at 25 people, we don't have any bench players to pull from. We are making progress, its just slow going. I know downing Deathbringer Saurfang on Tuesday night surprised some of us, including me. But that just shows how much we're capable of when things go right. I'm very proud of our progress, and our raid DPS is much higher then I thought it would be. I think we will down Festergut next week.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention in the original post. I am sort of only leading the ICC25 raids by default. With Jeff (Akuma) and Mark not active, I sort of took on the task of leading the raid so that Dustin would only have to handle the DKP and loot (which I think is the shorter end of the stick, lol).

If someone else is interested in leading the raid, let the officers know. I'm not particularly fascinated by hearing my own voice on vent, so I'd have no problem being the grunt healer I was back in Molten Core. The same goes for setting up healing assignments and strategies in the /fahealer channel -- as many know, I have a very cursory knowledge of how other healing classes work and I do healing strategies (or lack of healing strategy, FFA healing FTW) based on a lot of preconceptions.

-HP

I r teh feeling da buht hert frum Eich Pee

naa ur doin alright every1 likes the angry inori

Your doing a great job! I think were making great progress , 2 weeks and we get Saurfang!

You called me out? Meh, sometimes I phase out. So I didn't hear it.

first, i don't think inori needs to apologize for anything, you're doing an excellent job and are too nice as it is :p

second, my 2¢ for what it's worth:
we're not here to hold people's hands on a stroll through icc. everyone should have a good idea of their role in and the mechanics of every encounter that we are working on. everyone should have a raid mod that alerts them when they need to do something or move somewhere. everyone should pay attention to what going on around them, if not what is going on in the raid as a whole. in short, everyone is responsible for themselves. i don't particularly care about someone standing in the wrong place at the wrong time on occassion, everyone makes mistakes. however, those that consistently do so and / or are a detriment to the raid will be noticed, and will find themselves on standby when we have more than 25 people available.

finally, the reason i tell people to stfu on vent and raid chat in 25s is because there is generally already too much going on, and with the exception of those that have important information to convey, chances are you are just going to add to the confusion. we haven't really gotten to an encounter that requires much in the way of communication from more than a couple people, so please save your comments or questions for between pulls, or post them here on the forums.