Casual Raid Leader

Ok… look.  I’m forced to admit every year that I’m getting older and older.  No… I’m not some old fogey talking about the good old days and pulling out my cane to bang on the ground…. shake it at you young wiper snappers and mourn the changes.  Its funny, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve found that my memory gets less reliable. 

Its not that I can’t remember stuff, but as you get older your brain gets filled up with lots of other concerns… what are the kids doing? Do we have practiced today or tomorrow?  What was dinner tonight? What adjustments do I need to make to my 401k?  Ok when did I need to submit that form so I can get some vacation time off?  Wait… oh god they got me another project at work…. sigh… that will be another 50 hour work week….

We kind of keep filling up the spare spaces to the point that its harder and harder to keep things in memory long enough to cement them.  So as a busy father of three, I have resorted to…… Read the rest of this entry »

In every expansion you watch the same thing.  Blizzard starts the content one way… they add an extensively long grind.  As the expansion closes down… they ease the grind and at the very last moment…. they make it a non issue. 

What bothers me most is the nay sayers… Look.. I’m a casual player.  This expansion is for me.  Yes… I play a lot, but I’m an altohlic with focus issues.  It doesn’t dumb down what I did or eliminate your effort… so quit your bitching…  The damned patch isn’t even out yet. Read the rest of this entry »

Its an interesting effect when you watch raiders hit walls.  Some of them really start digging in.  Others throw up their hands and begin to fade away.  I had a sneaking suspicion it was coming.  If you look over the common threads, you see a lot of the “hard core” raiding guilds are pushing the limits and are pretty much done with Ulduar.  They are looking at the hard modes and desperately trying to get to Alagon.  For the more casual guilds they seem to be hovering anywhere from 6-7 in Ulduar.  The walls there are very real,  but what’s the effect that causes this? Read the rest of this entry »

Negative feedback is hard to give. But it’s even harder to receive.

http://www.worldofmatticus.com/2009/06/11/so-you-think-you-can-raid/#ixzz0I9N1a6kb&D

As you can see, Matticus was discussing on Friday how badly it sucks to have to give bad news.  Its interesting how age kind of redefines how you view and approach things.  Some people can be blunt and they have no problems giving bad news out to people.  Other people just hem an haw and have a nightmare of a time telling people anything that might be negative.

As much as I’d like to say I’m a nice worldly person…  as much as I’d like to say I’ve mastered the fine art of conversation and I can handle anything the world throws at me, I can’t.  I’m just a guy… in my early thirties who’s going to share a little bit of insight. Read the rest of this entry »

I can assure you… Kologarn does wear pants… he does wear shoes as well. I’ve decided my lot in life is to provide lots of entertainment to my raiders. They are great people. I love raiding with them and it is such a good feeling that I can provide hours of entertainment for them.

Last night was our first night this week of fun times in Ulduar. This is our first week of multiple days in Ulduar. We’re reaching that stage where we just aren’t getting anything out of Naxx. We’ll do our best to speed run it from here on out, but Naxx is probably going to be relegated to the status of something we just kind of duck into for Abyss crystals or to catch up some people on gear. Its one of those sad times, but from another perspective the new challenges that await us in Ulduar are a good reminder that we have lots of work to do. Read the rest of this entry »

I admit it. I’ve felt a bit down on druids lately. Its not that I don’t want to play my druid. Far from it, but its a bit disheartening to look at your class and see that what you’ve built up as an expectation for how it should play… how it should work and how it should function is not in Blizzard’s vision.

I started thinking more on the subject and honestly… if I want to survive the new world order of Druids I think I need to readjust my take on them. I’m too old school… time to teach this dog some new tricks. 

Warning:  I am not a hard core theory crafter.  Don’t expect to see complex calculations… I fully expect the math geeks in you out there will start posting and correcting my “fuzzy math”.  I did this as more of general exercise. Read the rest of this entry »

Vision… it sounds like a simple word.  Sure.. I could easily quip off how I can see just fine.. what are you getting at?  But vision to me has a lot different meaning.  Vision isn’t about sight.  Vision is very much about finding a path you can walk and believe in.

Last fall I wrote about how you could use mission, vision and values to really transform you guild, but for now I want to kind of hone in on vision.  In our lifetime we’ve seen quite a few people who have been described as visionary.  Though he died before my time, he makes a great example.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was considered by many to be one of the most visionary people of his time.  He may go down as one of the most visionary people of the 20th century.  What made him visionary is his ability to see what the world could be.  Beyond that, he was willing pursue his dream.  He was willing to communicate his vision to the world and risk it all to go beyond.

It transcends just politics and the real world though.  Vision is about sharing your ideals… building your program in a way that supports what you want.  We have visionaries in all parts of life.  There are visionary painters.  There are visionary musicians who helped forge new types of music or dance.  We have visionary writers, artists, game designers, computer experts, automobile designers…you name the profession and there’s probably some visionary in that field who is out there right now.. transforming the way we do things. Read the rest of this entry »

Raiding is an interesting experience.  Ok that’s probably a bit of an understatement, but overall its an evolving process where you learn, grow, meet challenges, retool and move on.  Its organic in nature.  And no I don’t mean Freya.  What I mean is that as a raid leader, you have the ability to transform your raiding experience into something thats very open and engaging for your raiders.  Its not just about soliciting ideas, but allowing the depth of knowledge of your raiders to augment and speed the learning process.

Teacher…. teach thyself… and share

Like the Internet, I’ve found my sources of information have had to evolve over time.  In the old days of Burning Crusade, I really only relied on two sources to develop 90% of my kill strategies.  I could very reliably go out to www.wowwiki.com for the core abilities and some of the basic strategies.  I could very easily also head out to www.bosskillers.com to obtain some alternate or more “professional” strategies.  Of course today what I’ve found is that its just not enough anymore. 

As a raid leader, I’ve found that in this expansion the knowledge has been spread all over the place.  We have movies like we did before, but Blizzard has made the fights evolve over time so that the initial videos released aren’t always the best way to kill a boss over time.  I love going to TankSpot to read up on strategies and watch the videos.  Some of them are super easy to do, but other times I find that we have to be willing to look at alternate strategies. 

I find myself spending more time reading blogs, reading the comments on kill strategies, or going out to totally new sites (to me) like StratFu.  The knowledge required to kill these bosses or at least educate yourself is spread in a much broader spectrum than it was before.  Hell I’m constantly looking for new sites, new ideas and new sources of information.  I’m not looking for the “do this and you win” button.  I’m looking for smarter ways for us to do the instance.  If I can shave 1 minute off a fight or 30 minutes off trash, I’ve helped the raid be more efficient or better in some way.

Knowledge in Depth

Your team is there to help you.  If you’re a tank, you’re probably going to spend 90% of your time staring at your own butt,  (Sorry bear tank here… its all I see…) or some guy/girl/thing’s ankles.  Typically you’ve got a limited field of vision.  If you’re fortunate enough to be a ranged DPS you’re probably a bit more situationally aware of whats going on.  If you’re a healer, you’re going to be busy healing at some point.  So odds are good you’ll be busy at times and not fully aware of your surroundings.

Regardless of what role you play, you’re probably not being paid to sit there over some ranged DPS’s shoulder and just direct everyone.  You’re there in the thick of it.. and guess what.. you won’t see everything.  So your team has to be there with their eyes and ears to tell you what just happened when things just went horribly wrong…

I’m a very big proponent of keeping my team with an open dialogue.  For one thing, they read different stuff than I do.  They also see different things.  Last night we took a couple of swipes at Ignis at the end of the night.  On the first attempt I was the OT in charge of keeping the adds controlled.  So I was busy doing that when I heard the words… “Oh shit… he just blew up the raid” come across on vent.  Instantly I looked up and notice… yep.. then entire raid was pretty much dead.  I knew right away what happened, but the communication that the raid provided me told me I hadn’t explained something very well and guess what… I missed a minor detail.

Killing stuff is more than just explaining it and going.  People need time to understand what you’ve said and then absorb it.  With that constant flow of information you can tweak and refine your strategies much faster.  Plus in our case, we have players who also attended 25 man Ulduar with another group on our server.  They bring a LOT of information back with them.  I’m not upset that they’re running it with other people.  I’m happy they are bringing back other ideas and thoughts that I can use.

Encourage Discourse

The most important thing I can stress is keeping an open dialogue.  yes… I know.. I said it like just last paragraph, but for me, I find that when you have a pretty smart group of players, you need to understand what their challenges are and what they need to keep things progressing.  If you assign someone to a task, you need to understand what if anything went wrong.  Also you need to find out what went right.

Frequently we forget to find out what went well too.  Talking it over with your team, you can find out little tricks and tips that people used to accomplish certain tasks.  By getting your raiders to share those tips and tricks, you’re helping to better their team.  If you have two Boomkin and one is doing 3500 DPS and the second one is doing 2500 DPS, its time to encourage your raiders to talk and share ideas openly.  Some general guidelines that I find help out.

1.  If you think someone is doing something wrong, try to phrase your statement as a suggestion not in the form of, “YOU MUST DO THIS”.
2.  A great way to share information is, “I find its easiest for me to control the adds when I do ______.”  When you phrase it this way you are sharing information that you have without telling people that they must do it your way.
3.  Try asking the other people what they think before you offer your opinion.  So if someone is having trouble healing the tank, instead of saying.. “You’re not doing your job!!!”, try “I noticed the tank isn’t staying up.. what’s going on?  IS there some damage we’re not seeing?”  You might be surprised when the healer tells you that the tank keeps turning their back to the mob and getting mauled… hmmm healers fault?  Nope.

Organic and all Natural

The point that I’ve been dancing around so much till the point is that overall if you want your raid team to be smarter, faster and work harder than the other guys that you’re competing with, you have to encourage open dialogue and sharing of ideas.  You’re healer shouldn’t be affraid to ask if you’ve remembered to throw your tanking gear on or if you’re spec’d right tonight.  Yes… I did that.. I tanked Ignis with a kitty spec and tank gear and he bent me over and spanked me like a very naughty little kid.

The teams learn what their strengths and weaknesses are and are more willing to help each other out if you foster that idea of sharing what they’ve learned and growing with it.

What about you guys?  Where do you get your information?  HOw do you share it amongst the team?  Where do keep your experts?

Last night folks… was our first visit to Ulduar.  Yes… I know…. some of you are bored.  Some of you are done with Ulduar.  Well some of us rebuilt a new guild and got a little delayed ok??  But hey… what can I say?

For a glimpse of what my day was like.  I spent most of the morning getting my mundane chores done at work.  My breaks were dedicated to searching out strategies, making sure I read the details on the fights, and watching videos.  As a raid leader I need to come across as at least somewhat credible right?  So its a lot of time taking notes, going through things in my head and just basically figuring stuff out.

I prepped myself for pretty much what you expect to see any time you step foot into an instance the first time.  I was all set with my repair money.  I was all set with my flasks… I was all set to walk into Ulduar and get the living tar kicked out of me.  What I wasn’t expecting to find was the ROCK Factor. Read the rest of this entry »

Well… I have to give credit where credit is due.  We had a lot of people who stuck with us last night.  We went a full 30 minutes over our anticipated end time, but at the end of the day… We got it again.  Naxx is down again.  This time under a new guild tag.  I won’t go so far as to say its permanently on farm, but for certain… we’ve seen it.. we’ve done it.