Officers Quarters > WoWMar 4, 2015 6:00 pm CT

Officers’ Quarters: Horridon level is hard

Horridon still gives me nightmares. Before we get to that, though, we have questions about recruiting and about a trio of raiders who refuse to raid unless their friend tanks. We also have an in-depth question about the proper progression path in Warlords and how it has affected raid morale.

OrcHuntsman

My question is this: What tips can you give a GM who’s in all honesty is not that good at the job in finding players that fit the very unique raiding seclude we have (only doing guild raiding on Tuesday nights).

Recruiting is the most difficult part of leading a guild. Only raiding one night per week is going to be a big drawback for most players. The good news for you is that you don’t need most players — you just need a few. Somewhere, someone out there is looking for a guild that only raids one night per week on Tuesdays. Your schedule is perfect for that person. So don’t treat your schedule as a flaw — it’s a feature.

Because it’s such a niche schedule, you might have to look off-realm for those players. Don’t be afraid to advertise in places other than trade chat or your realm forums. In the meantime, make use of the group finder and other tools such as Open Raid to fill in for those Tuesday night runs. Be friendly and patient with the players who run with you and they might just join the guild.

Pangurrban

I agree that the raiding format has changed and created new challenges to our Raid Leaders and the team members as well. One of the issues we have had to deal with is a party of three that will not raid unless all three of them are invited and guaranteed a position. This is a married couple and a friend of thiers. The Friend wants to tank (we have two tanks in very good standing) and the other two are dps.

If one (the tanker) gets told we have the tanks will you go dps, he logs off until after the raid. The other two then decline. We have moved on without them but there is a “bitterness” in the chat talk.

I’m glad to hear that you did not give in to their demands. Players such as this are a drag on raid teams. They set themselves and their friends above the good of the guild, and guilds have no place for people like that. Either you’re part of the team, or you’re not. They’ve decided that they’re not. Thus, they shouldn’t be.

It’s fine if married couples want to raid together — and I’m sure most of the time you can accommodate that without an issue. Where I draw the line is when they refuse to help because they don’t get everything they want.

So, one out of three players switching specs is a dealbreaker for the entire triad? Your guild is better off without those people. No individual’s preferences should ever be more important than the raid or guild as a whole.

This last question is a long one, but it’s a topic that deserves it:

sylannia1

Hi there, good to see this column back again!

My experiences so far in WoD raiding is a lot of people seem to be expecting too much and think that some modes (should) be faceroll easy – and get disappointed that my guild’s progress isn’t higher. I think the mind-set is, that heroic for them is as easy as what old normal was and I don’t think that is the case at all. There seems to be an expectation to progress through heroic mode super fast and that isn’t happening.

When Highmaul came out we tried to jump straight into heroic version and quickly realised we couldn’t manage it easily, and had to go through normal then heroic – by the time we got to Mythic I think a lot of people were fed-up, kinda burnt out. Now with BRF out we’ve jumped into heroic again and seems to be going a bit more smoothly, clearing bosses at a steady pace – but still having a struggle on some DPS checks, I can however tell that my guildies are once again losing some morale as they seem to have expected us to have pretty much cleared all heroic bosses already (probably exception to Blackhand).

Think this is greatly making my guild lose morale much more than we would’ve say if we were progressing though SoO of Throne of Thunder normals > heroic.

I’d like to know how to remind people that its not as bad as they think and in general how to boost bad morale when things aren’t going how they expect it to. Are people expecting too much, there seems to be a lot of blame going around, from people saying that others aren’t playing the right DPS spec etc, and obviously this is a ticking time-bomb.

I’ve never quite felt as much negativity as I do now whilst raiding, and hope it gets better soon – as raiding for me so far this expansion hasn’t been that great.

Your guild is not alone here. My guild, which cleared up to and including Heroic Paragons in Mists, has had a similar experience.

During Throne of Thunder, the final tier prior to flex and the system we have now, Horridon, Slayer of Social Guilds, caused intense debate in the WoW community. He was extremely difficult for many guilds even in normal mode, and as the second boss in the tier created a nightmarish roadblock for the rest of the zone. Players debated whether Horridon’s difficulty was appropriate for normal, or whether the far easier Jin’rohk, Breaker of Nothing/No One, should be closer to the standard tuning.

Many argued (as I did at the time) that WoW needed another difficulty level. We didn’t know that one was already in the works. Now we have one. Blizzard has set up the new normal (old flex) as Jin’rohk level and the new heroic (old normal) as Horridon level.

Horridon level is hard.

Also, keep in mind that for the first tier of an expansion, Blizzard intended that most guilds would have to gear up in normal before progressing to heroic. Ion Hazzikostas himself said that “Normal Highmaul was designed with the expectation that players would arrive with dungeon items.” Maybe I’m extrapolating too much, but to me this means we were expected to progress from dungeons to normal raids to heroic to mythic. This was a surprise to many guilds, who, like yours, dove headfirst into heroic because we thought we could take the same progression path of dungeons to old normal/new heroic raids.

Now that we’re into the second tier and we have some heroic+ gear from Highmaul, Blackrock Foundry has been doable for us on heroic, as it has been for your guild, but it’s by no means a cakewalk. We skipped normal for BRF and we’ve been OK, but progress has been slower than expected versus past expansions.

How do you keep up morale in the face of these changes? First, acknowledge the changes. Help your raiders understand that where your guild is and what you’ve done is the path that Blizzard planned for you in Warlords (and presumably will be for all expansions moving forward). There’s nothing abnormal about your guild’s progression. To prove it, compare yourselves to other guilds on your realm that you were typically similar to in progression during Mists. I’ll bet you most of them are about on par with your guild now.

If you’re having specific problems that you didn’t have during Mists, your officers need to address those. If players are slacking or being stubborn about obvious changes they could make to improve performance, your officers should motivate them to do better for the good of the raid. Otherwise, you need to just keep trucking along. You will get to mythic eventually.

It’s been a difficult transition for many guilds, but don’t despair. The Foundry has some incredibly fun bosses and great moments. I think it’s well worth the effort. Happy hunting!

/salute

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