Tanking and Guild Questions

So I updated the look of the site, it had been a while and I got my new header image from Pike so if you need one and like mine, I would head over there and speak with her! I really really love mine!

On the bear front, I am tanking nightly with my guild and I have to say, other than the sad, sad AOE situation, bear tanking is doing fine. I have this pally friend who swears she would rather heal me than anyone else, and that is good to hear! I am not really taking much damage and single target threat is doing pretty good.

I have also been tanking on my pally since the patch, and while she is only 75, I have to say that pally tanking has changed a great deal. Consecration on a 30 cooldown? Wow, and now I have to build up Holy Power? It is truly a different way to tank! And I'm topping the dps charts for AOE pulls! But I kind of enjoy it. :D I am still trying to get used to the new rotation, but I seem to be doing quite a bit of threat and damage while staying full on mana and so I am happy with pally tanking.

I have also run some dungeons on my 75 DK tank, and since she was frost before, blood tanking is a bit different as well. However, I am still not having issues holding threat for the most part. Occasionally some dps will unload on a target that is off on the fringes and start taking some hard hits, but I will taunt and grab the mob back. And according to my healer I'm not taking that much damage so that is nice!

My guild is fixing to set up a group 1 and a group 2 10 man raid group. I see some issues with this since we really only have a couple of good tanks and a couple of good healers on main toons. If we do it on different nights, we would have no problems since most of us have at least 3 well geared 80s. I have one toon with GS over 5600 and 2 toons over 6100 and I am competent at all three. The real issue will be how people who don't make group 1 feel. I have run into this before in guilds where there is an elite group and a not so elite group. The second group ends up resenting the first group and it causes nothing but drama. And I really don't want drama.

Add that we as a guild are trying to decide if we want to change how loot is done or not. When we ran 25s, we used dkp, which I liked because you showed up, got your points and could spend them. If you didn't show up, you didn't get points and I could outbid your ass for a piece of gear if you were there because I had more points. :D The current debate is whether to keep dkp or to go to a /roll system. The problem I see with a /roll system is that people who show up every week could really get screwed pretty quickly if their rolls just suck. I have had it happen to me a lot in our last guild. I mean, if we bring person X one week to fill in a spot and he gets the highest roll and the loot over person A and then the next week, person X can't make it so we bring person Y and they get the highest roll and get the loot instead of person A, that would piss me off.

No loot system is perfect, I know that, but does anyone have a good suggestion for a loot system they use?

Well, keep it wild and furry!

Tanking Shrinkage....

So, a few months ago, my guild had more tanks than we knew what do to with.  4 Warriors, 1 Pally, 2 DK and 2 Druid tanks.   Now however, we seem to have had a few leave for different reasons and we seem to be short.  We are down to 1 Warrior, 1 DK and 1 Druid with a couple of warriors that are willing to respec.

And so, things in guild have changed yet again.  The old guild leader has taken the reins back over since he is now finished closing his Circuit City store and has less stress and more time again.  And now, some of the officers are considering breaking into two guilds.  One purely for social and one for more hard core raiding.  My question is, what exactly does this buy us?

There would be 2 different GLs, 2 different sets of rules and 2 different banks.  The reasons behind this is so that those who aren't ready to raid or do not want to raid could have a more social guild but those that are more hard core could work on achievements and get ready for Ulduar.  I am okay with this occurring IF there is a process in place for people who weren't ready to raid but wanted to.  

If the people got a trial period.  Say they ran several heroics with a couple of officers and did what we expected of their class.  They could then "try out" at the 10 man raid level.  If they have a couple of successful raids there, they could then move on to the "raider" level of the guild.  To me, all of this could be done within one guild with a ranking system and achieve both goals.

We present ourselves as a casual raiding guild, then to me, that is what we are.  While we definitely want competent people, we don't want to be so hard core that we don't help others become better players.  My cousin is a prime example.  I gave him my old computer, showed him a few things, and I had his class leader speak to him.  He has taken his damage from 1400 to 2700 in a week and is continuing to get better and once he gets more drops it will be even better.  But we never would have known he could do it if we hadn't given him a chance and worked with him.

Right now the decision has been made to just try and work on 10 mans.  So each of our groups gets used to running together so we are ready to attempt 10 man Ulduar when it comes out.  Which brings us back to that tanking shortage and that not everyone fits into the 10 man groups.  However, I am hoping with dual speccing, we might can solve that problem since quite a few folks have a tanking set.  But I guess we shall just have to see how things expand....

Guild changes abound!

So, my guild has had some tough decisions lately.  We had some issues with a couple of folks concerning gear and had to let them go. We don't run with DKP so we expect people to only roll on stuff for their spec/class and not guilt folks into giving them gear.  It has been a royal pain and we have been dealing with it for several weeks now, but at least we can move on as a guild now.

And after we got all of that taken care of, our guild leader decides to step down and quit playing due to stress of game and stress of RL.  I will truly miss him! I think his replacement will do a fine job and we should still be a damn fine guild.  

On a positive note, we won't be raiding 5 - 6 nights a week anymore which will make my home life much better.  This bear needs more tree time!!

Gear and Loot ramblings

Okay, so we cleared Heroic Naxx last week for the first time, we were excited.  

The Betrayer of Humanity dropped.  Now we are a melee heavy guild and have been for quite some time.  Now our Raid Leader/Loot Master decides that this is a hunter weapon and therefore the only hunter in the raid should get it.  Understand, we have a lot of people in the raid for which this is a very big upgrade.  Lots of melee still using blue weapons.  But the RL says this in vent and argues with others who try to explain that LOTS of classes consider this an upgrade for them.  But he gives it to the hunter instead of having a roll off like we do for everything else.

Now, last night, we cleared 3 wings of Heroic Naxx; military, construct and spider in that order.  In he spider wing, we were trying to beat the timer, so we were hurrying and apparently the RL (same guy) decided to take his headset off.  So he never heard the MT warrior say, "hey man, I need those gloves" while he and I were still pulling trash to the last boss.  And so he let people roll for off set and gave it away before the MT warrior realized what happened.  The MT Warrior is pissed but as luck would have it, the guy (another warrior) who won the gloves doesn't mind giving them to the MT warrior, so we have to open a ticket and get that taken care of. Okay...done.

And then the RL was too far away when Inevitable Defeat drops and the GL repeatedly says to pass so we can discuss and roll.  However, this one warrior who always gets the high rolls and NEVER passes to someone else even if it is only a minor upgrade for him and a major upgrade for someone else rolls need and gets the item. (he has the full T7.5 and epics and others who have been on the same raids don't have a single piece from Heroic Naxx, LT Share!)  

Well, so now we have to deal with this.  We have another roll off and as luck would have it, the mace goes to the warrior who gave up the gloves to the MT Warrior and he was replacing a blue (Runeblade of Demonstrable Power).  So hopefully that balances out some Karma!

Now, the other issue is we have a group of people in the guild who want loot to be awarded first to those who regularly attend raids.  WTF?  Have they missed the fact we are a casual guild?  Its sign up if you can make it to a raid, not required.  Our loot rules have never said, "those who show up the most get to roll first".  Real life always comes first to us.  This is a game, and yes, while it is nice to have the same people there raid after raid, what if they can only make it twice a week?  Does that mean we shouldn't help gear them up until after everyone else?   And if you show up regularly, you will have more chances to roll on stuff anyway.  And it isn't as though they aren't some of the best geared people in the guild anyway.  They haven't exactly missed out on loot.

And then last night, Origin of Nightmares dropped.  And a hunter wanted it.  And I wanted it for tanking given it is better than my Staff of the Plague Beast.  However, I had said to give it to the hunter but I wanted it next time it dropped since the hunter had a blue.  But it was given to me since it has armor on it and so I have mixed emotions.  I am happy I was given the staff, but I feel bad for the hunter.  I really hope he gets Journey's End tonight!  I got it last week for cat when we downed Kel'Thuzad and he wasn't in the raid and the other hunter had gotten the Betrayer of Humanity so no one else rolled against me.

All in all, Loot is such a head ache.  

And in other news, I went as cat last night for the first 2 wings.  I got up to 3600 DPS on Razuvious but the fights where I have to move a lot or have a lot of adds I can't do quite as well as the ranged with the massive AOE.  Overall for the night, on boss fights I was in the top 10 every time on DPS so that makes me happy.  I didn't do quite as well on the trash pulls but once I get the hang of cat, I might can do better!

Hard Core Raiding Guild?

I met some guys on the elevator at work the other day, I overheard them speaking about The Hinderlands.  So obviously, I had to ask what classes they had, what server they were on and so forth.  I said I had a 70 Tauren Druid.  They mentioned I should roll a toon on their server and I responded that I couldn't really do that since I was an officer and a raid leader in my guild. Then they mentioned that they don't even have enough 70s in their family/friends  guild to do Kara. They asked if I was in a hard core raiding guild.  My answer was "No, we are a friendly, familyish guild."

Now, while I still agree with this assessment, I have started thinking about this more and more. Last week, I lead the 2nd Kara group, and we did ZA and Gruul's.  This week we have Kara, Gruul's,  ZA and Mags on the schedule.  That is really a lot of raiding in one week.  But we are still friendly to people, and we are accepting new members all the time.  It has gotten to the point recently that I am not quite sure who all the new members are.  And I try to make sure that I know all the new members since I am an officer.  So my question is, are we a hard core raiding guild?  How do you make that determination?

Zul'Aman and Guild stuffs

So, I have been to ZA a few times, but last night was the first time we got the first two bosses within the timer. Woo Hoo. I didn't get any good loot, but that is fine, others in the guild did. We attempted the Dragonhawk boss for the first time. And we wiped twice and weren't able to try again as it was getting late and people had to go to bed for work. Things are really coming together for our guild.

We have gotten several new members recently that seem to be really good additions, and we almost need 3 Kara groups now. Almost, we are short on healers and tanks for that, but have ample DPS.

To night we are scheduled to attempt Gruul's for the first time. I have been there before with a PUG, but others in my guild have not even set foot in there. I can't wait to give it a try with the guild, I know it will be better than the PUG was.

On a sad note, we are losing one of my good friends in guild. She has scheduling issues and is changing guilds to one that has more people online during the day since she is now going to be working in the evenings. It is sad to see her go, but I understand that it is for the best.