WoW Stuff - Pandarian raiding and my level of frustration
It’s rare that I am inspired to blog these days and I wish I had a better or more interesting topic on my mind. It seems that inevitably I end up getting frustrated or flustered with my WoW raid team and instead of blowing up at them I end up here, ranting to myself and those who read.
I should preface any complaints I have with the fact that we are currently an extremely successful raid team. Since the drop of the Pandarian xpac we have consistently been the highest ranked progression raid team on our server for the Horde. (While we still retain the overall top Horde spot for Ravencrest, Doesn’t Afraid has passed us by one kill - Garalon in HoF). Our team is comprised of the following: Warrior tank, monk off tank/dps, rogue, warlock, shaman, hunter, priest, DK, and two paladin healers (one of which is mine). Yes, two paladin healers. I’ve been greatly amused at the talk around our server and at least one other server saying “Two paladins can’t heal that fight” and yet we do it each and every week.
Currently we have Mogu’Shan Vaults (normal - 10) on farm and our progression is focused on Heart of Fear. So far we’ve made it through the first two bosses there and are currently struggling to deal with the mechanics of Garalon. Consistently getting past the Blade Lord is still proving to be difficult. The Phase 2 mechanic with the tornadoes is very unforgiving and extremely stressful on everyone, especially the healers. We’re doing good to survive ourselves, sometimes I think the group takes our healing for granted and that it’s a joke when we say “You’ve got to heal yourself by any means possible” during that phase.
Garalon’s sheer size, central crush mechanic, frontal cone attack and pheromone debuff are a real challenge to deal with. In 10 man mode you invariably end up with people spread out quite a bit and the fight requires almost near constant movement. The pheromone debuff also requires constant movement and close coordination so it can be passed from one person to the next at the correct number of stacks. The debuff does raidwide damage increasing with number of stacks so there is a critical point beyond which you just can’t heal it. Couple all of that with a short enrage timer and you have a very unforgiving fight. We really need to be two healing it and as of yet can’t make that strat work. Three heals is much easier but our one good attempt left us 35mil hp short of the kill (Garalon down to 15% health or so). The struggle with two healing is range and being able to have the hps to cover the damage going out.
One source of my frustration is us trying to decide what strat works best for us. This is just the normal frustration of any progression team, you beat your head on a boss over and over until you find what works for you. I found out last night that we may be trying to insert more healers into the pheromone kiting rotation and that bothers me. While I get that it frees the dps to go full bore on Garalon it greatly reduces the amount of healing going out. No matter what anyone says, healing and moving are not easy by any means. Personally I believe the kiting and debuff stack management are what is killing us, our kiters are doing a poor job of changing at the proper number of stacks, not regaining the debuff and staying out of the frontal cone attack. It’s far from easy so I cut them a huge amount of slack.
The biggest source of my frustration is what is currently going on with our raid team and it’s makeup. In Cata I was extremely upset at the number of alts and toon switching that went on during raid and I brought this up as something we need to fix going forward. I thought everything was going along as planned until about two months into Pandaria our GM and raid lead decided to drop his druid and pick up a DK. His change was in part because he was enjoying playing a DK and he felt it would help our team. His druid served as a potential off heal and could also throw out some beneficial spells that the DK just can’t. Essentially the DK is just another plate melee dps which we didn’t have to have. Personally I’ve yet to see a positive impact. I’ve accepted the change though I still disagree with it and in the back of my mind it still eats at me a little. (Frustration 1)
We recently found out that our shaman (dps/off healer) will be undergoing a work schedule change and as such won’t be able to raid one of the two nights a week that we run (Tues/Sun 6:30-10PM). Totally understandable, life happens and people have to miss. I had to miss some during Firelands (more on this later when it got thrown in my face) so I am at least somewhat understanding. Last Sunday the raid team took a vote to determine if we wanted our shaman to be able to attend once a week or replace him entirely. I like consistency in a team and while I understand and sympathize with his situation, I voted to replace him. Apparently only 2 of us felt that way.
I found out last night that it went from a “Yes” or “No” vote to a “Well I don’t care what we do as long as we don’t have to pug his spot.” Apparently most of our team felt the need to give a lengthy response to our GM instead of a yes/no. I guess I sorta look like a dick now with my “Replace him” response. Short, to the point and that was that. I guess I was the only one that short and only one of two who said replace. Fine. Majority rules and I have to accept that and move on. (Frustration 2)
Also last night I get informed of his replacement, potential replacement I should say and this would only be for one of our two raid nights. Oddly enough this guy had posted on the WoW forums and as weird luck would have it can be available on the night our shaman cannot. Perfect. What are the odds? Oh, he’s a DK. Didn’t our GM change to a DK to benefit our team? Now we have two. Is he going to switch back to his druid? If he is then he hasn’t mentioned it. So now we have two DKs and no druid. I don’t agree with this team composition but so far I’ve held my comments in check. (Frustration 3)
This guy may be a great addition but the decision to give him a shot was made solely by the GM and his girlfriend apparently. To my knowledge, none of the other three guild officers (total of 5 of us) were in on the decision. It may be the right choice to make at this time but I feel slighted and left out. As a team we decided on how to replace our shaman, more than two of us should have been involved in who we bring in as a test. I believe the whole team will decide on whether or not to keep him but I don’t like how this has been handled initially. Personally I would have like to have seen a shaman, mage or druid brought in to further round out our composition. (Frustration 4)
I’m not sure why I was the only one in Officer Chat questioning how all of this had come about. Granted it was not a terrible decision but I’ve yet to comprehend why no one else spoke up and questioned the process of identifying and inviting a person to do a test run with us. After a lot of my questions and then me falling silent with just the occasional “Okay” response the chat moved to a personal discussion between me and the GM. I voiced my concerns over how the vote had shifted, how a replacement was identified and the lack of communication on the subject. Our GM was understanding and nice about the whole thing so I cannot really fault him for that.
What finally rubbed me raw with him for the night was when I questioned the addition of a DK and the loss of our off heals. The response I got was along the lines of “Well most all of the fights require only two healers and besides, we made accommodations for you in Firelands when you had to be out on certain days.” Fuck! Way to slap me in the face and shut me up. >.< I really hope he did not mean for it to come across that way but that is exactly how I took it. I didn’t speak to him the rest of the night other than to revert to my “Okay” responses to a few things he said. (Frustration 5)
Due to the upcoming holidays and erratic schedules that people are likely to have we are changing up our raid rotation this week. Normally on Tuesday we clear Mogu’shan Vaults then get as far as we can in HoF before calling it a night. Then on Sunday we will pick up where we left off in HoF. Tonight we will be starting on HoF. This means no somewhat relaxing night. It means a night of tough fights on bosses we just beat our heads on two nights ago. I have no issue with this change, it just means I have to focus and be on my game where as some Tuesdays I can more or less coast through parts of raid night.
Last night, on a whim I hit Officer Chat one last time (after my talk with the GM ended on a sour note) to see if there was a plan to modify the strat for Garalon. It turns out that one of the other officers has been studying an alternate strat which involves some (or perhaps all) of the healers to take a turn at kiting the boss and stacking the pheromone debuff. I had been dreading this. This is going to put even more stress and pressure on our healers to perform. My guildmates idea of it allowing the kiting healer to regen mana and only heal himself sounds good in theory but the reality of it may be something else. We’ll have to see. I have a real sense of dread over this. I know how hard it is to heal and move, now I have to heal, move and worry about stacks of a debuff and where I am in the rotation. This in of itself is not a frustration with my guild, it’s just on me to perform. The frustration over this is would I have been told of the potential upcoming change if I had not asked? Would I have been told right before we pull the boss? I don’t like last minute changes, especially when it involves me and a mechanic I’ve not had to deal with yet. (Frustration 6)
While I don’t fancy myself as a hard-core raider, semi hard-core maybe, I do like just a bit of seriousness and focus to our raid nights. Recently it seems that one or more of our team is playing distracted and/or not taking things seriously. Several times on wipes I saw the “Oh. Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention” or I could tell from performance that they were not totally focused on what they were doing. It’s a pet peeve of mine to screw around during a boss fight. If you are not focused on your job or your screwing around and it causes us to wipe unnecessarily then yes, it is going to piss me off….especially when I am doing my best to keep your ass alive, along with everyone else. I doubt I could ever bring this up to our team considering who it is and how they have been reacting to my least little comment of criticism of our overall performance.
There. Three pages of me venting. Do I feel better? Eh, maybe a little. The irritations are still there but talking about it does help. I don’t expect any of you to really respond as such, this was more for me to just spew forth my thoughts and get them off my chest.
In closing, this is what it all comes down to…..
Communication, communication, communication and involvement…..it’s important to me!
Stormy
aka Elanarian - Holy Paladin - Horde - Ravencrest
I should preface any complaints I have with the fact that we are currently an extremely successful raid team. Since the drop of the Pandarian xpac we have consistently been the highest ranked progression raid team on our server for the Horde. (While we still retain the overall top Horde spot for Ravencrest, Doesn’t Afraid has passed us by one kill - Garalon in HoF). Our team is comprised of the following: Warrior tank, monk off tank/dps, rogue, warlock, shaman, hunter, priest, DK, and two paladin healers (one of which is mine). Yes, two paladin healers. I’ve been greatly amused at the talk around our server and at least one other server saying “Two paladins can’t heal that fight” and yet we do it each and every week.
Currently we have Mogu’Shan Vaults (normal - 10) on farm and our progression is focused on Heart of Fear. So far we’ve made it through the first two bosses there and are currently struggling to deal with the mechanics of Garalon. Consistently getting past the Blade Lord is still proving to be difficult. The Phase 2 mechanic with the tornadoes is very unforgiving and extremely stressful on everyone, especially the healers. We’re doing good to survive ourselves, sometimes I think the group takes our healing for granted and that it’s a joke when we say “You’ve got to heal yourself by any means possible” during that phase.
Garalon’s sheer size, central crush mechanic, frontal cone attack and pheromone debuff are a real challenge to deal with. In 10 man mode you invariably end up with people spread out quite a bit and the fight requires almost near constant movement. The pheromone debuff also requires constant movement and close coordination so it can be passed from one person to the next at the correct number of stacks. The debuff does raidwide damage increasing with number of stacks so there is a critical point beyond which you just can’t heal it. Couple all of that with a short enrage timer and you have a very unforgiving fight. We really need to be two healing it and as of yet can’t make that strat work. Three heals is much easier but our one good attempt left us 35mil hp short of the kill (Garalon down to 15% health or so). The struggle with two healing is range and being able to have the hps to cover the damage going out.
One source of my frustration is us trying to decide what strat works best for us. This is just the normal frustration of any progression team, you beat your head on a boss over and over until you find what works for you. I found out last night that we may be trying to insert more healers into the pheromone kiting rotation and that bothers me. While I get that it frees the dps to go full bore on Garalon it greatly reduces the amount of healing going out. No matter what anyone says, healing and moving are not easy by any means. Personally I believe the kiting and debuff stack management are what is killing us, our kiters are doing a poor job of changing at the proper number of stacks, not regaining the debuff and staying out of the frontal cone attack. It’s far from easy so I cut them a huge amount of slack.
The biggest source of my frustration is what is currently going on with our raid team and it’s makeup. In Cata I was extremely upset at the number of alts and toon switching that went on during raid and I brought this up as something we need to fix going forward. I thought everything was going along as planned until about two months into Pandaria our GM and raid lead decided to drop his druid and pick up a DK. His change was in part because he was enjoying playing a DK and he felt it would help our team. His druid served as a potential off heal and could also throw out some beneficial spells that the DK just can’t. Essentially the DK is just another plate melee dps which we didn’t have to have. Personally I’ve yet to see a positive impact. I’ve accepted the change though I still disagree with it and in the back of my mind it still eats at me a little. (Frustration 1)
We recently found out that our shaman (dps/off healer) will be undergoing a work schedule change and as such won’t be able to raid one of the two nights a week that we run (Tues/Sun 6:30-10PM). Totally understandable, life happens and people have to miss. I had to miss some during Firelands (more on this later when it got thrown in my face) so I am at least somewhat understanding. Last Sunday the raid team took a vote to determine if we wanted our shaman to be able to attend once a week or replace him entirely. I like consistency in a team and while I understand and sympathize with his situation, I voted to replace him. Apparently only 2 of us felt that way.
I found out last night that it went from a “Yes” or “No” vote to a “Well I don’t care what we do as long as we don’t have to pug his spot.” Apparently most of our team felt the need to give a lengthy response to our GM instead of a yes/no. I guess I sorta look like a dick now with my “Replace him” response. Short, to the point and that was that. I guess I was the only one that short and only one of two who said replace. Fine. Majority rules and I have to accept that and move on. (Frustration 2)
Also last night I get informed of his replacement, potential replacement I should say and this would only be for one of our two raid nights. Oddly enough this guy had posted on the WoW forums and as weird luck would have it can be available on the night our shaman cannot. Perfect. What are the odds? Oh, he’s a DK. Didn’t our GM change to a DK to benefit our team? Now we have two. Is he going to switch back to his druid? If he is then he hasn’t mentioned it. So now we have two DKs and no druid. I don’t agree with this team composition but so far I’ve held my comments in check. (Frustration 3)
This guy may be a great addition but the decision to give him a shot was made solely by the GM and his girlfriend apparently. To my knowledge, none of the other three guild officers (total of 5 of us) were in on the decision. It may be the right choice to make at this time but I feel slighted and left out. As a team we decided on how to replace our shaman, more than two of us should have been involved in who we bring in as a test. I believe the whole team will decide on whether or not to keep him but I don’t like how this has been handled initially. Personally I would have like to have seen a shaman, mage or druid brought in to further round out our composition. (Frustration 4)
I’m not sure why I was the only one in Officer Chat questioning how all of this had come about. Granted it was not a terrible decision but I’ve yet to comprehend why no one else spoke up and questioned the process of identifying and inviting a person to do a test run with us. After a lot of my questions and then me falling silent with just the occasional “Okay” response the chat moved to a personal discussion between me and the GM. I voiced my concerns over how the vote had shifted, how a replacement was identified and the lack of communication on the subject. Our GM was understanding and nice about the whole thing so I cannot really fault him for that.
What finally rubbed me raw with him for the night was when I questioned the addition of a DK and the loss of our off heals. The response I got was along the lines of “Well most all of the fights require only two healers and besides, we made accommodations for you in Firelands when you had to be out on certain days.” Fuck! Way to slap me in the face and shut me up. >.< I really hope he did not mean for it to come across that way but that is exactly how I took it. I didn’t speak to him the rest of the night other than to revert to my “Okay” responses to a few things he said. (Frustration 5)
Due to the upcoming holidays and erratic schedules that people are likely to have we are changing up our raid rotation this week. Normally on Tuesday we clear Mogu’shan Vaults then get as far as we can in HoF before calling it a night. Then on Sunday we will pick up where we left off in HoF. Tonight we will be starting on HoF. This means no somewhat relaxing night. It means a night of tough fights on bosses we just beat our heads on two nights ago. I have no issue with this change, it just means I have to focus and be on my game where as some Tuesdays I can more or less coast through parts of raid night.
Last night, on a whim I hit Officer Chat one last time (after my talk with the GM ended on a sour note) to see if there was a plan to modify the strat for Garalon. It turns out that one of the other officers has been studying an alternate strat which involves some (or perhaps all) of the healers to take a turn at kiting the boss and stacking the pheromone debuff. I had been dreading this. This is going to put even more stress and pressure on our healers to perform. My guildmates idea of it allowing the kiting healer to regen mana and only heal himself sounds good in theory but the reality of it may be something else. We’ll have to see. I have a real sense of dread over this. I know how hard it is to heal and move, now I have to heal, move and worry about stacks of a debuff and where I am in the rotation. This in of itself is not a frustration with my guild, it’s just on me to perform. The frustration over this is would I have been told of the potential upcoming change if I had not asked? Would I have been told right before we pull the boss? I don’t like last minute changes, especially when it involves me and a mechanic I’ve not had to deal with yet. (Frustration 6)
While I don’t fancy myself as a hard-core raider, semi hard-core maybe, I do like just a bit of seriousness and focus to our raid nights. Recently it seems that one or more of our team is playing distracted and/or not taking things seriously. Several times on wipes I saw the “Oh. Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention” or I could tell from performance that they were not totally focused on what they were doing. It’s a pet peeve of mine to screw around during a boss fight. If you are not focused on your job or your screwing around and it causes us to wipe unnecessarily then yes, it is going to piss me off….especially when I am doing my best to keep your ass alive, along with everyone else. I doubt I could ever bring this up to our team considering who it is and how they have been reacting to my least little comment of criticism of our overall performance.
There. Three pages of me venting. Do I feel better? Eh, maybe a little. The irritations are still there but talking about it does help. I don’t expect any of you to really respond as such, this was more for me to just spew forth my thoughts and get them off my chest.
In closing, this is what it all comes down to…..
Communication, communication, communication and involvement…..it’s important to me!
Stormy
aka Elanarian - Holy Paladin - Horde - Ravencrest