Our Guild's direction

This is probably as good a place to put this as anywhere so here goes.

Last night's raids into Shadow Labrynth and Old Hillsbrad pointed out several things to me in glaring color. Now please take this how it is meant and it is NOT meant as a slam on anyone. We need to have thick hides if we are to progress in the instances and we need to have more communications. Mistakes will be made and probaly made several times before we get them right and open and frank discussion is the ONLY WAY we will imporve.

1] We need more level 70 healers. Real healers not folk impressed into healing service that do not have their heart in it.

2] We use fear WAY too much.

3] We need to do things as a guild more often so we get used to how we each play and react to any given situation. Only by doing it over and over again as a group will we get to move along the instance progression.

4] We need to train folk in the fine art (and it is indeed an art) of tanking. Tag is perfectly set up to help as he has all the instances from Ramparts on to do still (though he would help even if he did not have quests in the instances). The lower level ones are GREAT training grounds for new and aspiring tanks and healers too. The critters do not kill quite so fast and there is more time to think and offer ideas to each other as we progress thorugh the instance.

That is probably the most important thing we need to do as a guild - build up the talents of the individual players so we can succeede and progress in preperation of Wrath of the Lich King.

Getting more folk to use these forums would aid that end too as this is the perfect place ti disect what happend on a raid or instance run and better ourselves as a group.

Tag you engineer you I was goign to put it in tomorrow during maintenance but you had to jump the gun lol.

Our biggest problem is a lack of dedicated healers. Nod does a good job but as was evident when we tried to do a Heroic BM druids were not meant to do monster healing.

Tanking IS an art, just like kiting and healing. Also it is important ot have knowledge of the instance, but that we got by running them a few times.

Forget the lich king.. if we want to make it through Kara we need to get better.

And we CAN get better if we start doing more as a guild rather than as a group of people in the same guild doing our own hting. I am as guilty (maybe moreso) than most but if we want to play with the big instances we need to play as a group MUCH more often.

Maybe we should think of setting aside a night a week about 3 hours or so to just group our 70's and near 70's for quests instance runs keying whatever as long as we do it as a group.

So, Healing as a resto druid is very different from healing as a priest, paladin or shaman. With a p/p/s (priest paladin shaman) the healer can let the MT drop to about half health before starting their healing, they have the 1.5s flash type heals, and the 3s major heal. resto druids rely mostly on HoT's. this means that we need to pump at least a 2 stack of Lifebloom into the tank before he takes any big hits, damage mitigation. For those of you who don't know Lifebloom is a 7 second Heal over time. w/o any bonus heal, it heals 243 over 6 seconds then at the end it heals 600 in what is commonly called the "Bloom."Tthe heal stacks up to 3 times. with bonus healing of 1200 a 3 stack of LB heals 493 ish per second, this is a pretty powerful heal, and one of the most mana effecient in the game, but if the MT drops below 1/2 hp, I have to pull out all the stops and start burning my mana, when a druid is forced to cast regrowth and /sigh Healing touch, (yuck) they can go through their mana pool very quickly. we also have a AOE Hot called tranquility, this heals everyone in the area for 1200 every 2 seconds, plus bonus heal, but the major issue with this, is that it is almost like challenging roar or challenging shout, it pulls aggro like mad, i can almost always bypass the tank's threat doing this, and the only time i have to do it, is when the group has made the battle a FFA, not allowing the tank to gain threat before blasting down on mobs.

I have never played a priest or paladin very high level, so i'm not 100% sure as to how the healing works with them, but i have grouped where we have had them as healers, my biggest problem with them is that they can let the MT drop to lower HP so there is no guarantee that if the MT takes a huge Crit from a mob, he won't just up and die. we all know that if the MT dies, we are screwed, the healer is next to go, then the dps are just playthings for most mobs.

Quick note about DPS- If a dps pulls aggro, and the Main healer can't heal him/her in time and the dps dies, it is the dps'ers fault, if a dps'er is hit with an aoe, multiple times and the healer doesn't heal him or her in time, it is the healers's fault. I have seen more dps'ers that have to go repair mid instance because they pull aggro too much and do'nt have heavy enough armor. They are usually lower on the damage meter because they spend half their time dead.

We are still hurting for lack of a dedicated healer class.

/bump bringing this to the top cuz i edited my old post

FEIGN DEATH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FTW

I am guilty of pulling aggro a lot, but my gear lets me do that. On cal i would be a two hit wonder but plum can take abuse... although 10G repair bills are ot uncommon

Nice post Nod.

Quote :

I have never played a priest or paladin very high level, so i'm not 100% sure as to how the healing works with them, but i have grouped where we have had them as healers, my biggest problem with them is that they can let the MT drop to lower HP so there is no guarantee that if the MT takes a huge Crit from a mob, he won't just up and die. we all know that if the MT dies, we are screwed, the healer is next to go, then the dps are just playthings for most mobs.

Here is a perfect example of why we need to guild group more. Many healers, not just priests, allow their main target to get way lower than I am comfortable with before they start healing. As Nod said this can lead to disaster especially aginst Kharazan type boss monsters. My Priest (and any of me that acts as a healer) will start healing as soon as their main target gets to the point where my biggest heal will bring them very close to full. I will also throw smaller heals on others taking damage and have grown to love that heal that heals a character when he gets hit then jumps to the closest character to do the same several times. As soon as I no longer hear that distinctive sound of that heal jumping I will launch another out.

But this is the kind of information we need on each other to be successfull in the higher end more dangerous dungeons. It will also help us make the right groups and have the right number of healer types in them for the play styles of those involved. Not every one heals the same way.

Quote :

Quick note about DPS- If a dps pulls aggro, and the Main healer can't heal him/her in time and the dps dies, it is the dps'ers fault, if a dps'er is hit with an aoe, multiple times and the healer doesn't heal him or her in time, it is the healers's fault. I have seen more dps'ers that have to go repair mid instance because they pull aggro too much and do'nt have heavy enough armor. They are usually lower on the damage meter because they spend half their time dead.

This is another VERY important point for me. I see no need to 'lay blame' when a wipe occures. They happen and will continue to happen even after we get stuff on 'farm status'. They usually happen for a variety of reasons and while it is good to look back and see what caused the particular wipe of the moment so we can avoid whatever it was that caused the wipe. We must also realize that sometimes a wipe is caused by a monster gettign 'lucky' and is actually not the 'fault' of anyone. This abilit to analyze a wipe and not make the individuals nervous that we are 'looking for the culprite' is in many cases the distinguisher betweens guilds that work and ones that fall apart.

I want us to work. So be very careful when discussing and analyzing a wipe to NOT be the one looking to lay blame on someone. Usually there are many things that lead up to the wipe. Understanding them is VERY important. Who 'caused' them is irrelevant.

Tag... That was a beautiful post about wipes and fault. IT IS important to find out why the wipe happened, like the run we did where we did not pull far enough and pet and tanks got feared into another group, but it is important to nopt lay blame in an assholish way.

It is important to to give constructive criticism that is meant to help the group overall.

Thanks tag

I will be the first to admit that i have wiped many groups. sometimes because i didn't know any better, and sometimes because i was just plain not paying attention and got too close to a mob. i agree with plum in saying that it is important to find out why the wipe happened and correct the situation. you can ask ouchy about using snake traps in the second room of S. Labs, guaranteed wipe there it was actually kind of funny to see 8 snakes feared around the room and aggro the whole room except the boss. honestly, i see no reason to be mean to anyone about wipes, unless one person causes them repeatedly, then if they are a pug, find a replacement and /boot

HAHAHAHAHA gotta give ouchy a call. BTW, i di dnot know snakes could be feared.... guess ill use explaosive.

Most of the time people know who caused the wipe and they just say it..my bad!! I've done a few. WHere it is important to find out is things liek the snake trap,,in all my ubber hunterness i did not know they could be feard. i know pallyes can kill them in one shot with [fill in the blank].

Thing is we should be able to laugh about it. with dailies 10G repair bills are nothing

/makes a mental note to NOT use snake traps in full rooms