Officers’ Quarters: Cloak of the indifferent raider

Raids in Legion feel a little bit easier than in Warlords of Draenor so far. The world-first race to clear Emerald Nightmare didn’t last very long (which Ion Hazzikostas admitted was a mistake), and many guilds have seen success at all different levels of EN. That doesn’t mean, however, that your raiders can afford to slack off or screw around. This week’s question comes from an officer who’s fed up with a certain raider who just can’t be bothered to do the bare minimum — in one of the weirdest ways I’ve ever read.

Of all the ways you can gimp yourself in a progression raid setting (failing to gem/enchant your gear, ignoring consumables, not doing World Quests for Artifact Power, etc.), this is one of the strangest I’ve ever heard about. Although I like your WeakAuras idea, you don’t even need an add-on to deal with this “issue” (I put it in quotes because this should never, ever even be an issue in the first place). You can just create an armor set in the game’s basic UI and double click it at the start of each raid night. Problem solved.

The fact that this player has made this mistake so often and yet refuses to do anything to fix it tells me a lot about the type of player he is: lazy, selfish, and contrary. He doesn’t value the effort or time of the other players in his raiding guild if he’s willing to risk wipes on such a dumb error. Clearly he doesn’t care about his own performance, either, or the cloak problem would never happen in the first place.

We all make silly mistakes from time to time. If this happened once every few months, you could let it go. But it happens so often that your guild made a song about it, and then years have gone by and he still makes this same mistake. It got to the point where you felt like you needed to intervene, which says it all about how much of a problem it has become, and yet he still won’t take even a simple, 5-minute step to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

He just doesn’t care enough, period. Maybe he’d rather just hang out in Orgrimmar?

A Mythic example

My advice is to make an example of this player. If you’re aiming for Mythic progression, you can’t afford to coddle people. You definitely can’t afford to let people defy direct requests from the officers about things they need to do to help the team succeed. To me the biggest issue isn’t the cloak — it’s the fact that he said no when you asked him to fix the cloak problem.

Drop him from the team. Explain to the rest of the raid that you didn’t drop him because of the cloak. You dropped him because when you asked him directly to fix the issue, he refused. Emphasize the need for everyone to do what’s best for the team. Talk about the importance of everyone pulling their weight and doing what it takes to progress. Say that you’re always willing to forgive mistakes and lapses in performance as long as the person is willing to take steps to fix the issue. Furthermore, tell your team that if there’s ever any problem that they’re not sure how to fix, they can ask the officers to help. You’ll be happy to offer advice or work with them to correct the problem.

As you move toward Mythic, this incident can help you to set the tone for the type of raid team your guild wants. Those rumblings you hear about being harder on your raiders? They’ll stop for a while, and possibly forever if you stick to this policy. If you don’t do this and you continue to let people slack, you won’t just hear rumblings — you’ll hear goodbyes when your most motivated raiders leave for a guild that takes progression more seriously.

It usually takes a lot before someone decides to speak out and complain. That usually means they’re already wondering if they want to stick around, and they’re giving you a chance to fix things before they take that step.

At a crossroads?

It’s possible that your guild is at a crossroads here. Maybe you’ve been more socially oriented in the past and now you’re aiming for more of a progression-type team. If so, then you need to make that clear. Some players may not like this new direction. In this type of transition, you are likely to lose players no matter what you decide to do. Stay social and you’ll lose your progression-oriented players. Pivot toward progression and you’ll lose your socially oriented players. You have to weigh which types of players you’re happiest raiding with and which direction is ultimately best for the guild.

This issue, oddly enough, encapsulates the entire philosophy of your raid team moving forward. You have an opportunity here to send a message, if that is the future you and the other officers want for your guild. Take advantage of it!

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