Post by madrox on Dec 8, 2007 9:50:02 GMT -5
I found this on a site and I figured it would be good for us all to read. I've copy and pasted this from someone's site, it's a shadow priest on the Arthas server. Their guild has everything on farm up to Illidan Stormrage, they are leetsauce raiders. In his spare time he writes guides etc. for other raiding guilds, and here is a little bit of what he wrote. He has a strategy for every boss as well, but this is just some general stuff. Everyone should read this, because the boss order listed below will possibly be the way we do it.
So this blog today is about Motivation. How do you keep a guild wanting to press for new content. Or how do you get a guild to want to go back and do old content to fill out those last few gear slots on a couple members. Its a problem, some people gear up faster than others, or they get what they want from a zone, then they no longer feel motivated to do that zone. Members start picking their raid days. "Well, lets see, i want T5 chest, so i'll do TK still. But i don't need anything from SSC, so i'll skip any day we schedule SSC for and go to the movies instead".
- Make attendance count. If someone goes low on attendance, it should impact their ability to even be allowed to purchase gear. Skipping SSC now means there is a good chance when an item drops they want in BT, they won't have the attendance teir to even let them bid.
- Keep a raiding roster robust enough that you can kick someone out of a raid for under-performing at any time and not have that player's absence from the raid penalize the other 24 members of the raid. Also helps you weed out people who routinely come under prepared for a raid (no flask? gtfo of my raid).
- Encourage your raiders to read sites like bosskillers, EJ forums, this blog and etc. There are so many videos (warcraftmovies.com, filefront.com, etc.) and "How-To" guides to every encounter in the game. When doing old content there is no reason to not have a working idea of the fight before even beginning, just makes for a smoother night.
- Gear. So many new recruits try to sell themselves, "I know i am in mostly blues and greens, but i am really a good player honest". No. They are lazy players, or needy players who think they are good. Good players have good gear and don't have to explain themselves. Don't let under geared people on your raids. If they don't have the drive to help themselves, you will end up carrying them forever till they quit or you kick them out of frustration.
Hrm and i still haven't addressed motivating a raid. Some guys like to yell a lot. I fondly remember that sound clip of the Onyxia raid with the 15 year old yelling at the top of his lungs, "THATS A 50 DKP MINUS!!!". Man i want that guy on my raids. And no doubt, yelling does work. Some guys are just dumb and need to be yelled at and ridiculed for any information to sink through their thick skulls and stick to that tiny molecule doctors suspect might be their brain. I find it more effective to just remove these people from the guild. Yelling is too disruptive to the 90% population of reasonable people on the raid.
Lay out the fight before engaging. Explain and explain again. Explaining everything is faster and cheaper than running back to your corpse 15 times that night. And encourage people to ask questions. There is no such thing as a dumb question if its going to save me 40g in repairs that night. If you're doing content that is a card carrying member of the monthsbehind.com club, your raiders should have watched a video and done some reading on their own also.
When wipes happen, take 5 or 10 minutes before engaging again. Ask the questions that need asking. "What happened?" Where did the break down start? Too many times people just jump to conclusions, "Healers suck!" or "Tank sucks!". Avoid that. Ask, who died first? Why did you die? Or "why are we behind on damage?", bust out the combat logs, bust out the damage meters. Who is under performing? Who missed a heal on the tank? Treat a wipe like a crime scene, go over it, learn from it, and then fix the problem. If its newbery, give the newb a 2nd chance to prove he's not a newb. If he's routinely a newb, replace him. If its a fundamental problem "we need a grounding totem", get one. Sometimes a fight just calls for a class make up you don't have. And you can try again all you want, but if you are missing a key hunter or shaman or extra tank or you're doing a fight that favours melee with a bunch of caster dps, re-think if you should be there with that particular raid make up.
Wiping endlessly saps motivation and in many cases is a guild killer. Think of how many guilds wiped out on Razergore or Vael or Twin Emps or C'thun and simply folded and gave up. Wiping is part of the game, its going to happen. Its up to the raiders to learn from it and fix the problem that is causing the wipe to occur. Otherwise your guild will join a thousand other guilds as just another "also-ran" or "could-have-been". When you hit these harder encounters, you either rise to the occasion, and it may take a few weeks of wiping to realize just how far you have to rise to meet the occasion. Or you wipe, give up and throw in the towel. The 2nd option is no fun. Try to figure out how to make the first one happen.
So what do you guys do to motivate your guilds? How are the inevitable raid wipes handled?
---
I often get tells, "where should we go next?" or "whats harder, Voidreaver or Lurker?" or some variation along those lines.
So here's the list. Its not the definitive list, but if i was starting a new guild focusing on 25 man raids, this is how i'd start out:
1. Heroics: Get revered with most 5 man dungeons, farm gear and crafting items from here. Should be revered or exalted with most dungeon factions, this will open the door to a lot of great starting gear.
2. Karazhan: I'd split my guild into two teams (12 members in one, 13 in the other) and start running Karazhan. If i have over 30 members in my guild, i'd make 3 well balanced teams. Yes this may slow down your karazhan accomplishments initially because you don't have an "A" team. But overal 3 balanced teams will farm more loot than 1 super team. And since they will all progress at about the same speed, you won't end up with 1 team bored with karazhan and ready to move on while the other team or two teams struggle.
3. Gruul's lair and some other stuff. If you are heroic geared out, even if you haven't cleared Karazhan yet you can start trying some of the other T4 level mobs out there. Don't be discouraged if you wipe. 60% of any kill is just familiarity and execution. The other 40% is gear to beat the enrage timer/keep the tank alive etc. I'd start with going into SSC/TK and trying the trash packs. They can drop random epics and they also drop patterns and Nether Vortexes which will help your guild out. Lurker in SSC is all execution with low gear requirements to beat (assuming you scald the water before engaging). Void Reaver in TK is a bit of a dps race, but very low skill level to accomplish. Maulgar imo might actually be harder to learn than VR or Lurker, but he is also an easy mob to put on farm status.
So the list:
Heroics
Karazhan
Maulgar
Gruul
Void Reaver
Lurker
Doomwalker (may want 30+ for first kill)
Hydross
Al'ar
Kazzak (probably want 30+ for first kill - and shadow protection pots)
Magtheridon (assuming 10 people in your guild know how to click)
Morrogrim
Karathress
Solarian
Leotheras
Vashj
Kael'thalas
Beyond that what you get into is pretty linear. And Vashj and Kael'thalas are harder than Rage Winterchill, Anetheron, Kaz'rogal, Azgalor, Najentus, Supremus, Akama, Teron and Gurtog are. So if you can kill Kael'thalas and Vashj, you really open a door on some very fast progress if you are willing to put in the time to learn it.
So this blog today is about Motivation. How do you keep a guild wanting to press for new content. Or how do you get a guild to want to go back and do old content to fill out those last few gear slots on a couple members. Its a problem, some people gear up faster than others, or they get what they want from a zone, then they no longer feel motivated to do that zone. Members start picking their raid days. "Well, lets see, i want T5 chest, so i'll do TK still. But i don't need anything from SSC, so i'll skip any day we schedule SSC for and go to the movies instead".
- Make attendance count. If someone goes low on attendance, it should impact their ability to even be allowed to purchase gear. Skipping SSC now means there is a good chance when an item drops they want in BT, they won't have the attendance teir to even let them bid.
- Keep a raiding roster robust enough that you can kick someone out of a raid for under-performing at any time and not have that player's absence from the raid penalize the other 24 members of the raid. Also helps you weed out people who routinely come under prepared for a raid (no flask? gtfo of my raid).
- Encourage your raiders to read sites like bosskillers, EJ forums, this blog and etc. There are so many videos (warcraftmovies.com, filefront.com, etc.) and "How-To" guides to every encounter in the game. When doing old content there is no reason to not have a working idea of the fight before even beginning, just makes for a smoother night.
- Gear. So many new recruits try to sell themselves, "I know i am in mostly blues and greens, but i am really a good player honest". No. They are lazy players, or needy players who think they are good. Good players have good gear and don't have to explain themselves. Don't let under geared people on your raids. If they don't have the drive to help themselves, you will end up carrying them forever till they quit or you kick them out of frustration.
Hrm and i still haven't addressed motivating a raid. Some guys like to yell a lot. I fondly remember that sound clip of the Onyxia raid with the 15 year old yelling at the top of his lungs, "THATS A 50 DKP MINUS!!!". Man i want that guy on my raids. And no doubt, yelling does work. Some guys are just dumb and need to be yelled at and ridiculed for any information to sink through their thick skulls and stick to that tiny molecule doctors suspect might be their brain. I find it more effective to just remove these people from the guild. Yelling is too disruptive to the 90% population of reasonable people on the raid.
Lay out the fight before engaging. Explain and explain again. Explaining everything is faster and cheaper than running back to your corpse 15 times that night. And encourage people to ask questions. There is no such thing as a dumb question if its going to save me 40g in repairs that night. If you're doing content that is a card carrying member of the monthsbehind.com club, your raiders should have watched a video and done some reading on their own also.
When wipes happen, take 5 or 10 minutes before engaging again. Ask the questions that need asking. "What happened?" Where did the break down start? Too many times people just jump to conclusions, "Healers suck!" or "Tank sucks!". Avoid that. Ask, who died first? Why did you die? Or "why are we behind on damage?", bust out the combat logs, bust out the damage meters. Who is under performing? Who missed a heal on the tank? Treat a wipe like a crime scene, go over it, learn from it, and then fix the problem. If its newbery, give the newb a 2nd chance to prove he's not a newb. If he's routinely a newb, replace him. If its a fundamental problem "we need a grounding totem", get one. Sometimes a fight just calls for a class make up you don't have. And you can try again all you want, but if you are missing a key hunter or shaman or extra tank or you're doing a fight that favours melee with a bunch of caster dps, re-think if you should be there with that particular raid make up.
Wiping endlessly saps motivation and in many cases is a guild killer. Think of how many guilds wiped out on Razergore or Vael or Twin Emps or C'thun and simply folded and gave up. Wiping is part of the game, its going to happen. Its up to the raiders to learn from it and fix the problem that is causing the wipe to occur. Otherwise your guild will join a thousand other guilds as just another "also-ran" or "could-have-been". When you hit these harder encounters, you either rise to the occasion, and it may take a few weeks of wiping to realize just how far you have to rise to meet the occasion. Or you wipe, give up and throw in the towel. The 2nd option is no fun. Try to figure out how to make the first one happen.
So what do you guys do to motivate your guilds? How are the inevitable raid wipes handled?
---
I often get tells, "where should we go next?" or "whats harder, Voidreaver or Lurker?" or some variation along those lines.
So here's the list. Its not the definitive list, but if i was starting a new guild focusing on 25 man raids, this is how i'd start out:
1. Heroics: Get revered with most 5 man dungeons, farm gear and crafting items from here. Should be revered or exalted with most dungeon factions, this will open the door to a lot of great starting gear.
2. Karazhan: I'd split my guild into two teams (12 members in one, 13 in the other) and start running Karazhan. If i have over 30 members in my guild, i'd make 3 well balanced teams. Yes this may slow down your karazhan accomplishments initially because you don't have an "A" team. But overal 3 balanced teams will farm more loot than 1 super team. And since they will all progress at about the same speed, you won't end up with 1 team bored with karazhan and ready to move on while the other team or two teams struggle.
3. Gruul's lair and some other stuff. If you are heroic geared out, even if you haven't cleared Karazhan yet you can start trying some of the other T4 level mobs out there. Don't be discouraged if you wipe. 60% of any kill is just familiarity and execution. The other 40% is gear to beat the enrage timer/keep the tank alive etc. I'd start with going into SSC/TK and trying the trash packs. They can drop random epics and they also drop patterns and Nether Vortexes which will help your guild out. Lurker in SSC is all execution with low gear requirements to beat (assuming you scald the water before engaging). Void Reaver in TK is a bit of a dps race, but very low skill level to accomplish. Maulgar imo might actually be harder to learn than VR or Lurker, but he is also an easy mob to put on farm status.
So the list:
Heroics
Karazhan
Maulgar
Gruul
Void Reaver
Lurker
Doomwalker (may want 30+ for first kill)
Hydross
Al'ar
Kazzak (probably want 30+ for first kill - and shadow protection pots)
Magtheridon (assuming 10 people in your guild know how to click)
Morrogrim
Karathress
Solarian
Leotheras
Vashj
Kael'thalas
Beyond that what you get into is pretty linear. And Vashj and Kael'thalas are harder than Rage Winterchill, Anetheron, Kaz'rogal, Azgalor, Najentus, Supremus, Akama, Teron and Gurtog are. So if you can kill Kael'thalas and Vashj, you really open a door on some very fast progress if you are willing to put in the time to learn it.
