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This is a similar deal to something Big Bear Butt wrote about a while back, with a slightly more personal twist. It's partially because of our meteoric pace that people don't have all the stuff they need outside of raiding, but it's also just common sense stuff.
If you aren't willing to enchant your gear with at least something, you are wasting my time. The quality raiders get new pieces of gear and immediately go out and get their enchants, gems and are prepared. They know ahead of time what drops from what boss, whether they want it, whether they're willing to poke on it, and what they'll need to have in terms of reagents if they need to enchant it. They know what gems are optimal for their spec. They know what their magic numbers are for hit, spell hit, damage, crit, haste. They know whether it's worth it to break a set bonus or not. And if you don't know this stuff? You are wasting my time. You are wasting my time because you aren't bothering to get better. You're taking 5 extra minutes to think about whether something is better for you or not and wasting 5 minutes of raid time to do so. That's two hours worth of people's time, right there, because of your selfish ass. Or you're getting gear that other people could use more effectively than you because you have no clue whether something's good for you or not, which means we will not do as well in the future.
If you're willing to roll on a piece of loot - especially T6 loot - you must be willing to spend the money and time to get it improved as best it can. If you're not doing that, you are not worth giving the item to over anyone else. If that means you have to grind rep with a faction, tough. Everyone else has done this. If that means you need to farm or do dailies for money, tough. Everyone else does this too. These are excuses, and if you're making excuses for this behavior, you are wasting my time. You are wasting the time of every raider there who actually cares.
So if you don't have the rep for a head or a shoulder enchant for your class: you shouldn't roll on that piece of gear. It is effectively off-spec for you. And you shouldn't whine about it either. If you haven't gotten a head enchant after 2 months of getting a piece of gear, you have no basis to complain about anything.
If you don't know what to do in a fight, at least on some level: you are wasting my time. Yes, everyone is going to make mistakes now and then, especially on new content. Even the best raiders will. And sometimes those mistakes will wipe the raid. But if you consistently make the same mistake over and over, you are not worth bringing. If you consistently make the same mistake and cause the raid to wipe, you are definitely not worth bringing. If you have to ask questions about the fight that are based on the strategy that has been posted, that are clearly spelled out in the strategies and the information: you are wasting the raid's time again. If you are told that a fight is about surviving and you consistently do things that cause yourself damage...why should you come?
The fact is, there are a number of people out there who are willing to put in the time to learn this stuff. They know their class. They know their spec. They know their gear and what they're going to get next from badges, drops, and what exactly their enchants and gems are that they need. They know each boss fight coming up and what is expected of their class, even if they've not done it. They know how to play their class and how to do the best for that class. And they are begging for a shot to show the raid that they can do this. BEGGING.
I want a lot of friends in raids. I do. I want to joke, I want to have fun. I play this game not for the accomplishment or the loot, but because I like hanging out with people and socializing in some way while doing something entertaining with my wife. But I am really getting tired of people who are there to just waste my time, friends or no. I don't expect everyone to do the same amount of work I do to know their stuff; I find it fun to do the research and play with optimizing things, but I'm sure a lot of people hate that. I do expect them to do some small degree of work though. If they don't want to do the research, I expect them to find someone who has and ask their opinion.
So figure it out for yourself: am I wasting the raid's time? Am I wasting my friend's time? What can I do to get better? What can I do to make the raid better?
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5 comments:
There is no room for non-commited raiders in T5 / T6 level raiding content.
Factually speaking you can't bring people along that have limited time, skill or even troublesome internet connections. You can't afford to bring them along because they will halt your progress.
But is your frustration with the people or with the game mechanic that doesn't allow for any mistakes to be made?
You have a choice in who you bring along. If you bring along only those who can meet the challenge and are unable to field a raid due to lacking manpower then perhaps people are wasting your time... but then again maybe the game mechanic is too prohibitive.
Then again maybe you're just wasting your own time... maybe their gear was 'good enough' and you deprived yourself from a few assets to take along to the raid.
Specify the minimum requirements per instance and absolve yourself from the headache of telling people to enchant. They can either meet the minimum requirements and come along... or not. And since you can control what you set as minimum requirements you can practically force them to enchant / gem appropriately.
Hey, Captain.
The sad thing is...there is room for some non-committed raiders in T5/T6 content. At least at this point. There are enough easy encounters where someone not doing their best won't kill the raid, and there is enough luck based stuff where a raid can be successful even with someone failing over and over again. My frustration isn't with that mechanic; if you're going to dedicate 15-20 hours to do something with 24 other people, I think it's only fair that you put in the time to do it well.
And while I'd like to control things like minimum requirements, I'm not RL or GL. Even if I were, some times you have to take suboptimal players because of specific needs. Healers are the common one here, but there are enough demanded positions of other specs/classes that sometimes it's good enough to bring a bad player if they have the right spec.
Just wish I could tell those people to own up to that.
Hmmm true I suppose. But then you will always have people that consider themselves prepared enough.
If they breeze through an encounter with run A and then they will generally not be inclined to make improvements to do the same run again. After all, why improve when it went great the first time.
People won't improve themselves until there's a sense of urgency (i.e. you can't join this raid until you meet requirement x).
If there's no set minimum requirements for a run then the preparation stops at: "Yay I am on the roster lemme grab some buff foods".
I've met my fair share of GL's and RL's who simply assume people will read the strats, improve their gear and do their bit to get things running smoothly. I haven't seen many that even considered that someone was reading the wrong strategy. And there's an arseload of outdated strats available.
I am not sure how often this occurs on T6 level content but unless you actually specify what people should read, how they should do things and what they need to be aiming for there's no accounting for what people will do.
It takes a great (wo)man to admit that they're doing things wrong and once you're set in a certain way of playing it gets harder to break the habit.
It's much easier to make a stupid excuse, to play insulted or become an utter bastard about it.
Until you can say 'this is how we play the game' and point at the resources everyone is using in your guild you will run into a lot of people that are wasting your time whether they mean to, don't mean to or just plainly don't care.
An interesting topic for me simply because I would fall squarely into the 'wasting your time' category ;)
Yeah, I think you really hit the nail on the head. Things have been very easy for us, easy enough to where we're well progressed beyond what people would have ever expected. It's hard to tell people to start doing something better when things are already going great.
But it still drives me a little nuts.
What's really obnoxious is that we do spell out damn near everything. We link to the strategies we're going to use, we call out specific people and tell them what they'll need, we specify addons that they should have and when to update them, we link to movies, we link to enchant/gear guides. And people don't bother to read them. Drives me nuts. The only recourse is to threaten, but that's tough too, as these are people who are friends. Ah well.
Just wanted to say that your writings and subjects you touch on are really interesting and informative. Rock on!
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