Friday/Weekend (1 Nov) - A Struggling Guild

Friday/Weekend (1 Nov) - A Struggling Guild

The Alt-10 took a disturbing step back on Friday night. Earlier in the week there were complaints from two guildies that they were not getting invites to the raid, even though they had expressed interest. Both are healers. So they were added to the raid calender and invited to the Friday raid. Neither guildie acknowledged their raid invites by either accepting or declining. One guildie never showed and the other came in game long after the raid had started. I suppose they could say they didn't know they had been added to the invite list, but I would think they'd check it after being told they'd be added. To make things even more frustrating, four other healers accepted invites to the raid, but only two showed up, and the missing healers did not let anyone know that they would not make the raid.

To give credit to the raid leaders, we were still able to fill the raid, but we had just the two healers, Wild and Mxpally. Wild was already in Storm Peaks outside Ulduar for the invites, but initially the raid leaders wanted to try ToC, so Wild made the short flight to the Argent tournament grounds. When we started having the invite problems, though, we decided that our best bet was to give Onyxia a try.

We had our two regular tanks, as well as two death knights who were also capable of tanking. The pally tank (and one of the raid leaders) volunteered to be the third healer and have one of the dks be the second tank. He was not speced or geared to heal, but we thought a little additional healing would help out.

We made three attempts on Onyxia, and then the raid leader abandoned the idea of trying to be a healer, admitting that he was really not adding anything. It was a nice offer, but Wild had to agree that the pallie's healing numbers were so low we could much better use him as a tank and let the dk go back to DPS. For the rest of the evening we had just the two healers.

The raid made a total of six attempts on Onyxia. We didn't do badly, but we just couldn't bring her down.

We changed direction again and went back to Ulduar, which was our original plan to begin with. We started well, killing Razorscale (an optional boss we had bypassed on Wednesday) on our first try.

We then worked our way through the trash mobs to Hodir, who we had killed last week. To be honest I lost count of how many attempts we made on Hodir. At least seven, probably more. Mxpally main healed the tank and did a great job, as well as doing his best to help raid heal. Pallies don't have much in the way of AoE or instant heals, though, so Wild was really on his own healing the rest of the raid. Wild pushed close to 2800 hps over the course of the Hodir fights, but the incoming raid damage was too high and too constant. Every raider had to keep moving to avoid being frozen, so raiders trying to help themselves had trouble even using bandages since they could not stay in one place long enough to apply them. Wild plastered the raid with instant heals every second of every fight, also staying on the run to avoid getting frozen, and tossed the AoE heal Wild growth every instant it was available (every six seconds), but it wasn't enough. We even went over our stop time a bit to get one more attempt in - we were that determined. But in the end we couldn't kill him.

Sunday - "What happened to our guild?" This is the title of a new post on the guild website from one of our raiding guildies. It is a little accusatory, but it raises the issue and opens the debate. At least I hope so, and assuming that anyone reads it or responds, which would say a lot in and of itself.

I have my own perspective, which I'll share with the guild, and we'll see where this goes. In all the years I've been part of the guild, and all the ups and down, I never felt like the guild was ever close to actually failing. This time I'm not so sure. This time I'm really worried.

Wild's Post:
"I must admit I've been wondering the same thing the past few weeks, and I'd like to share my perspective on the current raiding situation.

On our usual Wednesday 25 man raid night, a month ago, our Guild Leader and two raid leaders announced that the guild was going to stop doing 25 man raids. Not enough people were signing up or showing up, and more often than not we couldn't field a raid. In place of the 25 man raid the guild wanted to start a new ten man raid. There is another post on the new raid if you want the specifics, but the intent was to use the new ten man raid to help build back up to a 25 man raid capability.

Something happened to that strategy along the way. This new strategy was never communicated to the rest of the guild, with the exception of those who happened to be in the aborted raid on that night. The guild website was silent. The Wed/Fri replacement 10 man did not get on the raid calendar for some two weeks, so, with no announcement to rest of the guild, and no raid sign up for the new 10 man, few were even aware of it or what it was for. Once the raid was posted on the raid calendar, only those who had come to earlier raids were on the invite list, so anyone else who might be interested still had no way of knowing about it or asking about it. Eventually there were some complaints about the raid, and some effort to expand the invite list and bring in more interested folks, but still no explanation of what the guild was trying to do. And so, it was probably inevitable that guildies didn't take the raid that seriously, and were not that good about checking the calendar or showing up.

I admit I was a bit frustrated as well, and that led to my own posting about the new raid on 24 Oct. Guess what? No one responded. Which in hindsight could have been predicted. By now few cared, and were filling those days doing something else.

So we are a fragmented guild. We have two ten man groups, that from what I can see are still active with a full complement of mains. A month ago there were two other guild ten mans, both of which are no longer active. The guild's wed/fri 10 man raid is still in play, but what happens to it and where the guild goes with it is an open question.

I personally don't think that fault lies with those leading our raids. Leading a raid is a hard, thankless job, and regardless of whether you like the style or not, both of our raid leaders do their homework and put everything they have into making the raid a success. I'd bet both would be happy if other guildies would volunteer to lead raids and give them a break to just play instead of worrying about filling the raid, and getting the right mix of classes, explaining over and over every detail of an encounter, listening to the complaints, etc etc etc.

I don't know if there are 25 guildies left who want to do 25 mans. I think that is the first thing we need to find out. If there is enough interest, then that is the group that needs to work through what our issues are and what it will take to get it going again. We may still need to do ten mans for awhile to get to the point where we can be successful, I don't know.

But I do know that we have to communicate with each other a whole lot better than we have been. That is the job of guild leadership at the top. We need to hear from the Guild Leader.

Monday Morning - We did hear from the Guild Leader, as well as a couple of other guildies. I think the conversation has been a good one so far, so I'm encouraged. Will keep ya'll informed as we work through this.