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[clockworkjames]

There is no easy way to leave a guild without at least *some* hard feelings in my experience, especially if like in your case you feel like you are carrying them and they are keepingyou back because they all feel they need you.

Just get it over with, explain your feelings and move on, take experiences from it and keep good friends if at all possible, then start thinking about how you are going to apply/sell yourself to a new guild.

Hell, get some friends to look over your app before you submit it for some constructive criticism.

In other news, TotGC25 Twins is HARD and you will wipe the first time you try it.

[Beren]

HTwins sucks. We just managed it on sunday finally.

My guild has devolved into being disgustingly draconian. You now can't even change your guild note if you're not an officer, let alone the million other things you can't do (use the guild bank with the DE materials from raids, have any say in where we raid or what we do, etc, etc.). I think I've almost reached the breaking point. Our GL is one of those guys psychotically obsessed with the military and I've finally come to realize that's pretty much how he wants to run the guild.

[pilsner]

It was shocking to me at first how many soon-to-be-military and ex-military types play WoW obsessively.  After a little bit of time in a progression guild it made perfect sense though.

[clockworkjames]

It was shocking to me at first how many soon-to-be-military and ex-military types play WoW obsessively.  After a little bit of time in a progression guild it made perfect sense though.

This.

[jmrz]

Okay, so I need to rant about this somewhere that ISN'T to one of my super lovely guild members who bring this up.

Basically, I got handed a guild and the previous guild leader stepped down and her and her boyfriend are now my 2IC's. Now, she is a lovely girl, but extremely impulsive. She also sets up the raid calendar every week, which as of next week, I am going to tell her, I'm doing - because it's ridiculous.

This week on the raid calendar, we have one night for Uld10 (which we haven't got on full clear by any means), one night for ToC10, one night for naxx25, one night for EoE10, one night for Ony10 and one for OS.

Now, I understand why we are doing the old raids - we are a newish guild and would like to have all these raids ticked off on our progression or whatever, but seriously?! An entire fucking night for OS and Ony10?! SERIOUSLY?! We never full clear naxx25 in one night either, and people get pissed off that we don't finish it. Personally, we would be doing a lot better if we had two nights for Uld10, one for ToC (which we did apparently clear in one night last week), one night for OS, Ony10, EoE and one night where we can just run naxx for extra badges or something. We would be far better off if we spent more time in Uld10 and Uld25 than stuffing around with boring shit people only do for badges.

On top of that, last week, I could only attend one night of uld10 (which was set for thurs/fri) and I was raid leading one group. I told one of my tanks that he could raid lead for Friday and that was good with him. I log in Saturday to find out that my 2IC had decided to ditch the two 10man teams, and do Uld25 with about 10puggers. They downed FL and XT and there was heaps of mucking around and silliness and basically, set a bad image for our guild. I was pissed off.

Monday night we had Ony25 on the raid cal. We had one pugger (a friend of a guildie) in the raid, the rest were guild members. It took a good 45 minutes to get everyone there and organised then we wiped twice and I gave up, cracked the shits, told them I had things to do for tomorrow and logged off for the night. After I left, one of the tanks (the one I had put in charge of last week's uld group) got a few members together for an ony10. The 2IC also got a few members for the ony10. She then cracked the shits and was all "didn't know you were a raid leader blah blah" to the tank, so him and the OT joined her group. Instead of her then filling the group with guild members who were in the tank's original group, she pugged the rest. People bitched about it in gchat, the tank called her out on it, she cracked it and logged off and hasn't been logged in since. The guild members then continued to have a whinge about it.

Basically, I'm pissed off - the 2IC is about 19 I think? So she's a year younger than me, but she is incredibly impulsive and I am kind of glad she passed the guild leadership to me. I really think that this guild (we've got about 70 level 80's) would do really really well if the raid calendar was actually set up for raids people needed and want to finish and there wasn't so much damn drama with this girl. Argh.

[pilsner]

Getting handed a guild is a little like getting handed a job as a kindergarten teacher except no pay, more crying, and infinitely less socially acceptable.  If someone really hates you they will try to give you two guilds.

[Aurjay]

It was shocking to me at first how many soon-to-be-military and ex-military types play WoW obsessively.  After a little bit of time in a progression guild it made perfect sense though.

I'm in the army and agree with you to an extent. I play wow to avoid everything military. I live in the barracks and have to be a soldier damn near 24 hrs a day, so a little escapism is nice. Also I'm stationed in the middle of the desert next to Mexico so the only other activities are going out and getting drunk and/or fighting. Now the agreeing part is that i've played with military before and they do seem to be overly organized and controlling. I think this has a little to do with our lives being pretty much the same way.

[Alex C]

I'm rocking two 258 daggers now.



Oh, god, I play this game way too much, when will it end?


[EDIT]

I somehow missed jmrz post.

The raid calendar.

I'm glad you see the problem with it and I strongly encourage you not to back down on changing it, particularly if she's just expecting people to show up every week and work from there. That setup your old guild leader was doing will never work for a guild that's even remotely casual or ever wants to come up with a consistent raiding roster. There's just too many good reasons not to do it that way. If you run 5 or 6 times a week, that's 5 or 6 times a week you'll need to get the raid setup. Even if by some miracle it only takes you 5 minutes to get set up per run that's a half hour per week you're blowing on preliminary organization alone. And that's assuming the attendance will actually manage to remain high enough to support such a schedule, something I don't see happening that many days a week. Just imagine the fallout that'd happen if someone shows up all 6 nights and ends up having to sit out 3 or 4 of the raids because the attendance just doesn't support it; I guarantee you someone would get pissed off, and justifiably so.

Plus, burnout can become an issue, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. My guild has only 3 official raid nights in which we do 25 man progression content. Everything else is done "unofficially," but since many of us are hopeless wow addicts, that still comes out 3 quarters of the progression group raiding in some fashion 5-6 times a week. That's actually pretty sustainable since we don't really do 25mans other than the Coliseum anymore, but as it turns out, just barely. We temporarily added Monday to our raid schedule to try and down TOTGC 25 Anub and the wheels really came flying off on Tuesday. We wiped a few times to Jaraxxus last night due to silly mistakes, and he's a guy we one shot the first time we encountered him in TotGC.


Man, I ran at the mouth there and probably didn't say anything you didn't already know. Still, I thought it'd help to let you know that at least one person out there definitely doesn't think you're crazy for wanting to change this.

[Beren]

It was shocking to me at first how many soon-to-be-military and ex-military types play WoW obsessively.  After a little bit of time in a progression guild it made perfect sense though.

I'm in the army and agree with you to an extent. I play wow to avoid everything military. I live in the barracks and have to be a soldier damn near 24 hrs a day, so a little escapism is nice. Also I'm stationed in the middle of the desert next to Mexico so the only other activities are going out and getting drunk and/or fighting. Now the agreeing part is that i've played with military before and they do seem to be overly organized and controlling. I think this has a little to do with our lives being pretty much the same way.

The guys actually in the military don't tend to be that bad. It's the guys who are obsessed with the military without actually having joined that are the crazies. The ones who work in an office as a programmer 13-hours a day with navy seal posters in their cubicle. This is my GL/RL.

[clockworkjames]

25 man anub hardmode without unhittable or block value gear is hard. I am working on it though...

First week in the guild and I tank 4/5 TotGC25 bosses.

Lol new pants too, I went from 25 man to 25 man HC leggings, now I have BiS legs woo. Still just a trialist though >.>

Also a nice new survival shield from Hodir 10 man hardmode (fucking finally).

And your guild drama, make a dragon night smooshing sarth,maly,ony into one night, and VoA if you have controll of WG. 4 raids you can do in under 1 hour before you move on to ToC which takes about 35-40 mins if you take your time and don't wipe.

2 nights of naxx sure, but not really advisable before you hit a brick wall in ulduar (then it becomes progression).

Oh, bottom line is - If you don't like how a guild is going and you cannot change it, find a guild that better suits you. Fuck feeling guilty for ditching people holding you back, is why I stayed in my old guild for so long then I went from strength to strength, landing in a progress guild with a bunch of RL mates.

[Lines]

Only 40g away from epic flight form... Which I should definitely get from what I just dropped into the AH. And then in the middle of the month my subscription expires and then I'm moving on. I haven't been playing much, I don't really do anything except quest and farm (which isn't that much fun), and my friends have all quit, so I think I'll be taking a break until Cataclysm.

But I got my Ony 5th anniversary pet today in the mail and it is cuuuute. So is the little penguin from switching to battle.net. D'aww.

[Alex C]

TotGC 25 Anub'arak is a douche bag.

[Aurjay]

Only 40g away from epic flight form... Which I should definitely get from what I just dropped into the AH. And then in the middle of the month my subscription expires and then I'm moving on. I haven't been playing much, I don't really do anything except quest and farm (which isn't that much fun), and my friends have all quit, so I think I'll be taking a break until Cataclysm.

But I got my Ony 5th anniversary pet today in the mail and it is cuuuute. So is the little penguin from switching to battle.net. D'aww.

I seriously hold a grudge against all druids that just get to buy their flight form. I had to spend the 5g and also do the boring ass 18 part quest. Granted i get a chance at the raptor mount but still annoys me they made it trainable.

[BeoPuppy]

... when I was your age we had to WORK for our flight forms, missy!

[Lines]

I wouldn't have minded the quest chain, but seriously, it has taken me this long to make 5000g. Think about it.

[clockworkjames]

TotGC 25 Anub'arak is a douche bag.

^^^^^^^^^^

I need to farm ulduar and naxx 25 for my unhittable set, how shit is that?

[Dragonslayer's Brace] or [Waistguard of the Tutor] [Inexorable Sabatons] [Wyrmguard Legplates] [Unbreakable Chestguard] [Handguards of the Enclave] [Bindings of the Hapless Prey]

[jmrz]

The raid calendar.

I'm glad you see the problem with it and I strongly encourage you not to back down on changing it, particularly if she's just expecting people to show up every week and work from there. That setup your old guild leader was doing will never work for a guild that's even remotely casual or ever wants to come up with a consistent raiding roster. There's just too many good reasons not to do it that way. If you run 5 or 6 times a week, that's 5 or 6 times a week you'll need to get the raid setup. Even if by some miracle it only takes you 5 minutes to get set up per run that's a half hour per week you're blowing on preliminary organization alone. And that's assuming the attendance will actually manage to remain high enough to support such a schedule, something I don't see happening that many days a week. Just imagine the fallout that'd happen if someone shows up all 6 nights and ends up having to sit out 3 or 4 of the raids because the attendance just doesn't support it; I guarantee you someone would get pissed off, and justifiably so.

Man, I ran at the mouth there and probably didn't say anything you didn't already know. Still, I thought it'd help to let you know that at least one person out there definitely doesn't think you're crazy for wanting to change this.

It seriously helps knowing I'm not batshit insane for wanting to change it.

Burn out isn't necessarily an issue, I mean, we have one group which is basically a guy and his real life friends and whichever other guildies he picks doing "progression"  (i.e. TOC10) and our Ulduar night is our only other serious night. It's ridiculous. We spend ours just fucking about doing piss easy raids "because naxx25 ranks high in guild progression" and to be honest, I don't give a flying fuck about the progression charts. Sure, maybe if we were up there with the best guilds on the server, but we aren't and I don't think we will be. We are a bunch of people who play the game FOR FUN. We aren't hardcore raiders and never will be. I want my members in Ulduar two nights a week and having a dragon night seems like a good idea. Everything else can jump in the lake and they can pug it. It's seriously driving me up the wall. So much so that last night naxx25 was on the calendar and instead of staying home and logging on to raid lead like I was supposed to, I just went shopping for Christmas presents and plain didn't show up.

My officer, who fully agrees with me, has been playing the game since the vanilla WoW beta came out six years ago and is basically a crazy WoW kid - told everyone last night that I didn't want to run naxx25 anymore and that he wasn't ever going to tank it again because it's just ridiculous to even be there right now. Some people agreed with him (from what I heard) and then the ex-gleader logged on and had a whinge about the fact that no one had got the raid together and no one organised anything. I mean, really. It's naxx25, I could do it in my sleep and so could most of my members. If they want badges they'd be far more productive in endless heroics.

But yes, when it rolls around to Sunday and it comes time to post the raid cal for the week, I'm doing it. I will just do it before the ex-guild leader gets a chance to. And I will set it up so we have two nights for ulduar10, one night for toc10, one night for OS, EoE, Ony and then people can do whatever they hell they like on the other nights. I may even just throw in a oldschool raid night just for fun. When I logged in last night a group of them had decided to do Kara and ZA just for fun, so I jumped in with them, got a heap of gold, saw some old raids I'd never seen before and we had a blast.

I want it to be fun, I don't want people to be bored running raids that aren't helping them and I want them to be ready in at least some way so we can see some of this new content. Otherwise, they can go get stuffed, I'll dump guildleader back onto the ex-gleader and I'll find somewhere else (which is not the ideal plan, because I really like the guild as a whole and I like the people in it, but seriously, I'm gleader now, I should be making the decisions).

Speaking of making decisions as guild leader - one of my other officers was all "You should ask the members WHAT THEY WANT, because I know you are overgeared for naxx, but they may still want to do it and you have to do what is best for the guild members, not what you think is best". Oh really?! Ask the guild members?! Seriously?! I think as guild leader I would have a fair judgement on what people should be raiding, and it ain't naxx.

ARGH.

(sorry this is probably way longer than it needs to be and I've just kept blabbing, but ARGH).

[Beren]

Speaking of making decisions as guild leader - one of my other officers was all "You should ask the members WHAT THEY WANT, because I know you are overgeared for naxx, but they may still want to do it and you have to do what is best for the guild members, not what you think is best". Oh really?! Ask the guild members?! Seriously?! I think as guild leader I would have a fair judgement on what people should be raiding, and it ain't naxx.

No, not really. But I have a feeling the majority of the guild members would agree with you. But it's not your decision without input from the other 24 people doing it.

[jmrz]

To be honest, I asked. I asked guild chat what they thought. I got one response "I'm only there because I haven't done KT". The response from my officer was "I agree with you, I'm never tanking naxx again, get us into ulduar more".

No one else said anything. Which means they were all afk, didn't care or just plain didn't have an opinion.

[clockworkjames]

Grand crusader 10 man anub down with 39 tries left. 1 wipe on FC, 10 on Anub.

/wrists

No wipes were directly my fault as boss tank, and the add tank (my pally mate who solo'd Wyrn) was a beast as always. Sucks.

So now I am up to speed with the guild, grand crusader 10 5/5 and 25 4/5.

FUCKING BLOCK SET (I got bracers tonite in a naxx 25 pug though, and the leggings from badges so it is slowly coming together...)

Oh and 25 man normal shield dropped which was sweet, and my legs are now BiS.

[Lines]

Epic flight formmmm. Zoom!

Also, they give you the option of completing the quest, even at 80.

[Aurjay]

Epic flight formmmm. Zoom!

Also, they give you the option of completing the quest, even at 80.

I'd still do the quest line then cuz its gives you a moonstone that you can use in Seth Halls to summon the Raven Lord beat him enough times and his mount might drop.

[Lines]

I dunno if I'll be able to before my subscription runs out, as I am rep grinding with the Oracles and farming, but I might when I come back. I took it and am keeping it in my quest log, just in case.

[Tyler]

Poor Jens.

[Lines]

At least they didn't leave you naked with nothing on an island in the middle of nowhere in addition to all of that.

[Ăśde]

Reading this thread makes me glad I don't play WoW.

[Aurjay]

So I finally switched guilds and as expected my previous guild wasnt too happy. I got a /w from the leader upset cuz i am the best geared healer and now they are kinda screwed. Felt bad so I offered to help them out on some 10man stuff cuz all I really want from this new guild was a chance to run 25man raids.

[beat mouse]

I am about 6 months clean now, and I feel great. I played from beta and earlier this year I was hacked by a rival guild due to ulduar progression kerfuffles, leading in my assisted quitting. A lot of good times, a lot of bad times, but more than anything it was most of my time. I applaud goes out to those who can keep it at a distance, getting to a near professional level of WoW is something I don't wish on anyone's soul

[pilsner]

True that.  The more seriously you take it, the more of a time sink it becomes and the less fun you actually have during raiding.  Four hours of wiping on the same boss the week it came out is not so much fun.  How did you get hacked by a rival guild though?  Like did they just run a dictionary attack on your password?

[beat mouse]

I'm not entirely sure who or how, but I played L4D and COD4 with the same guild and they mentioned it was a /trade topic of conversation that I specifically was out of the equation. The rumor mill had circulated that it wasn't a chinabot that had done it, and I was a little notorious for being a facetious mage as it was.

[jmrz]

Patch dropped this morning. Downloaded it, installed it and now... it takes forever to log in, sends me to the realm suggestion screen, I can get to my realm, the box comes up "Connected" and then "You have been disconnected from the server". Well screw you too.

Looks like I'm getting a mini Corehound pet! Apparently those people who use an authenticator (either the mobile or actual device version) get one.

[StreetSpirit]

I had similar problems when 3.3 went live today. A tiny corehound may make me a bit less sour about the whole affair, haha.

Kronnen (80 feral druid)/Naushika (80 shadow/holy priest) - Anetheron

[jmrz]

Now it wont even get past the log in screen. I have such a love/hate relationship with Patch Week.

Tiny corehound looks rockin'.

http://www.wow.com/2009/12/08/corehound-pups-in-the-mail-with-patch-3-3/

[StreetSpirit]

Same here, I am actually in the midst of re-installing the whole game to see if that yields any results O.o

That corehound DOES look awesome! It'll definitely help quell and negative emotions towards blizzard, haha.

[jmrz]

I doubt reinstalling will help, it was an issue on the Blizzard side of things with battle.net authentication I think.

I got in not long ago and oh wow the new LFG and LFR system is rockin'.

MINI COREHOUND FUCK YEAH.

[Alex C]

I just wish you could run with specific people if you really wanted to. It'd be fun to run with a few of you guys sometime.


[EDIT]

Also my guild is alternately amused/horrified that Blizzard saw fit to buff my mutilate spec. It's pretty nice so far. I bet the devs feel slightly ashamed every time they look at the Murder talent now. 4% increased damage for 2 talent points. That's just an open admission that they just don't know what else to tinker with anymore.


[EDIT AGAIN]

I like how it's hit the point where the Subtlety tree is so pathetic for PvE that the modern raider should now have 0-2 points put into the tree, max.

[Alex C]

After the mutilate buffs, I do 10k deeps on a straight tank and spank. It's pretty sexy.


[EDIT]
Oh, and we downed everything in the Lower Spire but Saurfang already, and we didn't even try him because we only raid for 2 hours a night. WTB: Challenge.

[Aurjay]

Patch so far has been a fail for me. No corehound to make me happy either. Main problem i have right now is not getting my Emblems of Frost after completing the Daily Random Heroic. Also the LFG thing is buggy as hell. Took me 3x's of locking up to finally get in a group and then once inside party chat went down so all we had left was /s. I know these things will be worked out in the next couple of days but im impatient 

[Beren]

The LFG group tool is probably the greatest thing ever. Free 13g and 2 extra emblems for using it every time after the initial daily? Um. Yes please. I may never sleep again.

[Alex C]

I'm not digging it so much, but mostly because I'm on the youngest/crappiest battle group. I have never seen so many 1k dps huntards in my life. I've come to the conclusion that it'd be faster to roll with 2 tanks, 2 healers and me. That way if people are AFK odds are we can still push forward.

[Alex C]

Also, it'd double the odds of getting a decent one of each!

[clockworkjames]

The LFG group tool is probably the greatest thing ever. Free 13g and 2 extra emblems for using it every time after the initial daily? Um. Yes please. I may never sleep again.

This.

I can also imagnie meeting up with some xrealm old buddies, might be akward or awesome.

[BeoPuppy]

I love it. This morning, at 6.30, I managed to get into a random dungeon (GunDrak). Before 3.3 at 6.30 I couldn't get another player to /wave at much less do anything constructive with.

[clockworkjames]

Yeah man, I moved to a lower pop server horde heavy as horde but I can find a group easier than I ever could on my high pop old server. The progression on this realm is miles ahead and I know people in all top guilds in RL and game.

Pretty much just boosted playing experiences by alot.

[Alex C]

Yeah, really, my big complaint is that I do 5-6k dps in heroics and a lot of pug tanks can't handle that. Not really Blizzard's fault; the implementation itself is great.

[EDIT]

I know that sounds harsh, and I know that it's perfectly possible to scale down one's dps, but I'm just a bit bitter because I keep running into sub-par warrior tanks who are both a li'l inexperienced and who also sink every point into protection and parry, without even glancing at some of the nice threat producers out there. I'm considering writing up a basic warrior threat guide and seeing if I can talk one of my warrior buddies into posting it on the wow forums. After all, prot warriors haven't been flavor of the month for ages now, so it's just sort of assumed that people know what to do with them, and a lot of the newer guys really seem to struggle at first because of it. Unless you already know to go to places like tankspot and EJ, warriors are a tough class to find info about. At the very least, I'd like to see more puggers running with at least Impale and Incite.

[pilsner]

Between Vigilance and Shockwave, a prot warrior who can't keep up with 5-6k snap dps is just shit.  Absolute poop.  On the other hand, heroics are so god damn boring sometimes it's fun to pull aggro.   I played feral, and to break up the monotony of heroic farming pre ToC would go in in dps gear and sometimes spend half my time in bear.

You've got to watch snap aggro for bear tanks though, especially poorly geared ones.  Swipe only does so much, and because taunts are so limited, if you are doing high multiple target damage it often makes sense to give a bear a 2-3 second aggro lead before you unleash the beast.  A lot of bears don't glyph maul because it's not optimal for most boss encounters.

Of course, this assumes things haven't changed since I stopped playing, which was a couple of weeks of ToGC was unlocked....

[Alex C]

Yeah, half the problem is that it often takes some doing just to get the scrubby warrior to Vigilance me. On the one hand, I understand the reluctance. Rogues have good threat tools plus we have that nifty .7 threat modifier. Beyond that, we scale really well with buffs but are a li'l vanilla in 5 man settings. All else being equal, I could totally understand why someone would put Vigilance on a ret pally or fury warrior instead of me. But with that said, I have a 5500 gear score and a lot of people should be able to tell at a glance that I outgear your average weekend pugger. The good tanks I've ran with in Heroics take roughly a third of a second to recognize where the Vigilance should be going, whereas the bad ones have needed a nudge to use Vigilance on  anyone at all. I don't really expect everyone to necessarily immediately pick up on that, but when you combine such things with a lack of threat talents, I often end up overtaking the tank shortly after tricks of the trade wears off or when we move to the next target. It's not like this ever gets me killed or anything, since I have 38% dodge and about 26k health when buffed along with survivability cooldowns, but I'm not really fond of having to throttle down to the 3-4k dps range, particularly since a lot of the time the other dpsers are only putting out 1.5k-2k dps. I have things to do people!

[pilsner]

You do assist off the tank, right?

[clockworkjames]

My understanding is it matches you your gear level, and with tricks it's designed so you can burst as much threat for those few seconds.

Pulling aggro for any reason is being a prick, it will even make your tank quit. I left a group today after saying to press F or let me mark and stop attacking whatever target you want, I left on the mob before the first boss because he laughed, marked up (fury dps was leader) and attacked the mob he had not even marked up. It wasn't using lfg, he /w me when I was doing a daily saying "lf uber geared tank (new instance name HC) don't apply if you aren't good gear" so I should have known he was a prick, if is guildie wasn't the healer I would have told him to stop healinf him and just dropped aggro.

A tank deliberately dropping aggro so someone dies is just as bad as a dps deliberately pulling aggro, it makes the tank feel like he has failed.

If a dps want's to tell a tank how to tank, they can learn to do their own job and manage aggro to suit the situation (whatever the situation, even if it does mean not doing 6k dps). Failing that reroll a tank and see if you can keep up with what you would demand.

[Alex C]

You do assist off the tank, right?

No. I've played the game off and on exclusively for high end raiding guilds for 5 years without figuring that out yet.


Seriously though, I'm Tricksing the tank, waiting 3 seconds, attacking, sustaining dps and then somewhere around 30% of the mobs health left I pull aggro if I don't lay off. If it's the second mob in the pull and thus didn't get a full tricks build up I often end up throttling down and skip using Envenom not to pull threat real early. Usually, this is because the tanks are screwing up in rather elementary ways. Were I with anyone from my guild, this would be a complete non-issue, even the tanks that are just alts. Hell, if even the rest of the dps is worth a damn it's usually a non-issue because the mob dies too quick for it to be a problem.

As for being matched up by gear level, maybe it's just the pickings in my battle group, but I'm usually stuck waiting 10-15 minutes at best to get a PUG and then everyone is usually a few tiers of content lower than I am gear wise.