What do we want

So I feel the need to ask the question... what do we want? Have you been keeping up on the performance logs for our 10-man ICC raid? We've been going for a while now and we have some player(s) that do not perform to standards I would consider appropriate for a progression group. Maybe some people's interests have changed and that's not the type of group that they really want to be a part of. Maybe some just want to be part of a good group that may or may not go all the way, and that's what they are hoping we do.

I'll be honest, for our 10-man group I want a progression group full of people that want to be the best at what they do. We may not do it all, but it won't be for lack of effort and trying. Effort includes making sure we maximize our toon to be the best it can be. I also realize I can be a bit over the top with people at times. A little "quick to judge" some might say. But that's because for certain groups and situations I have very little tolerance for those that don't want to exceed. I think that people who know me would agree that I put everything I can into what I do. And I do have the expectation that others will do the same. Years of trying to do it the nice way has shown time and time again that at the end of the day it doesn't work. Even now I sometimes give in to wanting to give people a chance. But it rarely produces the desired result.

I have a different attitude about all of our other raids... because we do them for different reasons.

As always, I'll defer to the group. What do we want?

-Boman

No responses yet so let me be a little more specific. I think overall everyone is doing good but we should all continue to be thinking about how can we do better. Because most if not all of us can be doing better. I've been seeing people talk about doing 10k dmg on festergut. We had Stalar hitting 7k. If we use that as a benchmark it definitely seems like we can improve. In some cases it could be as simple as people need to learn the mechanics of the fight more so they know how to maximize. But this is more of a generalization.

I think the 3 key things the group needs are (and I will single people out here so I apologize if it offends anyone - but my goal is that we continue to improve and if people aren't willing that we know that upfront so that we can make appropriate decisions):

1. Neferio needs to focus more. His numbers are good - falling in line with the note above that most could be doing better but not in the clearly there's a problem category. But the constant requests for portals and such. Basically people should show up focused and ready to go for the entire raid.

2. Ishamaell needs to improve his DPS. Death Knights are currently amazing in the DPS numbers they can put up, and Ishamaell is continually at the bottom of our list. I don't think it's an unrealistic expectation.

3. Shaemen needs to improve his healing. On many fights is numbers are lower than what we'd expect in Naxx. His gear has improved considerably. There was at least 1 fight where he put out good numbers, but many it's clearly underperforming. This has a huge impact.

I would ask that we give people 2 weeks to make improvements on all of the above.

Again just my 2 cents, but I'd rather be identifying things as they come up and giving people a chance to correct it.

-Boman

I'd say that there are no current responses more because noone seems to come here rather than any lack of desire to do better- I only just looked myself right now- I believe personally that for the most part our group is aiming for progression and unfortunately over the christmas season that progression has been delayed by lack of raids allowing for better gear for ish and shaemen specifically- not going to touch nef =P Specifically I looked at ish's gear and he has only recently been able to upgrade certain things and still has 213 boots and a few 226 pieces but as I said that is more because of christmas season's lack of raiding (he was away for a while and the right things don't necessarily drop) I believe that once we are back into a constant raiding schedule he as well as shaemen should not only be getting the gear they need but also the badges to purchase more gear.

I would suggest however for these two- if they have any time at all outside of raiding- to constantly be doing the new daily heroics for badges to purchase better gear- by doing this, each dungeon you do gives at least 5 badges of triumph after the first daily heroic that gives frost (3 from bosses + 2 from it being a daily after the first one)
this should allow both of them to purchase the 232 gear or above from the triumph vendor. Beyond that the most we can hope is that they are able to attend our weekly toc25 to gain better gear as well as togc10.

I believe that it would be a good thing for us to possibly continue a regular toc10 that these two are available for in order for their obtaining gear as well as badges- I will try to speak to both shaemen and ish (since I don't believe either of them look at the website) and see when a good time for them to do a 10man toc would be. It may be that they will need to find these groups on their own.

hmm I wonder if they are both available for a wednesday run- we could do toc10 after whatever weekly it might be hmm perhaps.

I know - most people don't come here. I can't help it though. I like posting even if I am just another tree falling in the forest. I would hope that people who know me know that I try to separate the people from the raid. My comments aren't meant to be a personal affront to anyone. I'm just trying to be up front about what I see as some weaknesses the group currently has. I don't think we were ever misleading to people about what the expectations were coming into the group. Our goal was a progression group that could clear the latest content and do hard modes. We accomplished that in ToGC10. It was rocky at times, but I feel it was successful.

I think a few of our raiders will benefit more from doing some homework than from gear upgrades. I did some research on wow-heroes:

Ishamaell #12 2740gs
Morpheuz #11 2766gs

Guess who does more dps?

Shaemen #23 2600
Kantus #22 2600

Not comparing apples to apples, but same gear score and Shaman's are currently putting out better healing numbers than priests. Guess who does more healing? Maybe he can do better and the issue is we have 2 other crazy epic healers so he tends not to heal as much. Maybe - but we had so many wipes last week I'd expect the healing numbers to be higher since people were dying a lot.

I know Daargo reads the forums... but to compare apples to apples... guess who's shammy is better geared? Guess who's shammy heals more?

We say that we require 2000+ healing for our 25-man raids. For our 10-man progression run you'd think we'd have more stringent requirements.

Don't get me wrong, most of us have some room to improve and should be working on it! But when you're looking at numbers the obvious things seem to pop out first. I like Ish - but his dps is consistently at the bottom and I think he can be doing better. I like Arrdim when I have the global mute on, but again, his numbers absolutely can be much better with the gear he has. I would absolutely hope that they want to do better and just need to be told that they have to. I enjoy our group. I just don't want to get caught back in the endless cycle of not getting somewhere because we don't push the people that need it.

I'm not saying don't give people a chance - but I am saying let's put a timeframe to it because I haven't seen the motivation. And I'm saying that the issue isn't the gear. Gear will always help, but it's not the main problem.

IF we want to be a progression group, people have to want to put in the time to make sure they are doing the best that they can come raid time. If we don't, then we need to be fair to the group and say we're not so that people can decide if it's where they want to be.

-Boman

So I'm hoping by the end of this weekend to have my next post ready. What I'm doing is graphing our individual progress since we started ICC10 - by boss kill. Meaning that the dps/hps statistics I'm taking are only from the attempt where we down the boss. We're going to be making some changes with healing this weekend - we're going to start 2 healing on some if not all fights. Looking at other successful guilds that progress further, they all 2 heal. So our healers need to be able to do this. I've talked about this already with the healers on our team. It's actually exciting and I'm hoping it goes well.

The other thing which the spreadsheet will help show is our dps progression. Comparatively our dps is low - and that surprised me a bit. So we need to focus on getting everyone to improve. That's the other piece to 2 healing, our dps also needs to be fast enough so that it doesn't pose mana issues to our healers. So I'll be talking individually to all our dps'ers over the coming week about what I'm seeing and what type of improvements I think are needed based upon comparisons to their class across other guilds.

This isn't about singling out an individual, it is about the success of the team. So my hope is that everyone is open and willing to improve. I enjoy raiding with everyone we have on the team - but I can't let that hold back the progress of the team either. So think about that and decide if you are willing to commit to whatever it takes. I don't want to lose anyone in the guild to this, so if you think you're going to get upset about it I'd ask that you drop from the team now. I'll try to come up with a more eloquent speech for saturday night so that everyone knows what's up.

It was never a hidden fact that the goal of the team is progression. So if you aren't constantly trying to improve and see what you can do better - the clock is ticking!

-Boman

2 healing muhahaha BRING IT!! we so got this.

how long till we can see the spreadsheet? I really want to see it!

you know I just saw something on wow heroes that I find kinda weird- out of the top 15 geared people in our guild 3 are alts of people in the top 10 (kirau+desi 9+10, Helioz+Morpheuz 2+14, Nez+Serv 4+15) this is weird to me because except for the icc saturday morning that I do with serv and the toc25 that i don't expect to get gear from, he mostly has badge gear- and while jaksaa is currently sitting at 72 in guild he's jumping up by leaps and bounds every time i get a new piece of badge gear (72 not registering the new t9.0 badge chest i just got today). Not sure what im trying to say with this but it seems strange to me.

nez ur trying to say that its easy to get gear people are just not trying i stoped trying to gear my dk just dont have the time but getting it that geared is easy hell my dk only every did toc 10 and 25 1 time.didnt get any thing from 25 but u get it mostly all its gear is bages few raid stuff and 2 bs stuff that are easy to get:)

I promise that the spreadsheet is coming this week!

Helioz make sure you yell as soon as you know how things are going to be for you! I know you will anyway.

Thanks,
Boman