Guild Topics

Can’t live with them and you can’t live without them. Guild topics for your perusing.

Chamber of Guilds: Integration of Cliques

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Chamber of Guilds meetingI recently stumbled upon a forum thread on WoW’s Guild Discussion forums about an organization called the Chamber of Guilds. Curious, I decided to go check it out.

So what is it?

Roundtable is a cross-server, cross-faction guild that allows past, present, and future guild leaders and officers to get together and discuss any issues that they may be experiencing and see how other guilds deal with it. Everything from guild involvement and events to instances and loot is discussed. This is more a “Chamber of Commerce” type situation where we exist to provide information and discussion. How you apply that to your Guild is completely up to you.

Turns out their next meeting was on Sunday the 13th and I signed up for it to learn more. Think of it as an online conference involving GM’s from a variety of Guilds around WoW. Every 4-6 weeks, they all gather up on Ventrilo to discuss topics that are of interest to other GM’s. In these talks, GM’s share their experiences and solutions with other GM’s so that everyone learns.

Boy, what an experience! Even though I wasn’t a GM, I’m technically a recruiting officer for Carnage. I’ve certainly been in my fair share of senior positions in other Guilds.

You have to be in the same Guild as everyone so you can participate effectively. If you don’t have a mic, you can still comment in Guild chat alongside those speaking on vent.

After a brief introduction by the main speaker (Penlowe), we instantly dived into the topic of the day.

Cliques Within Guilds: Are they a problem?

The main issue here was on the topic of cliques. A good way to kick off a good discussion is with a definition, which is what the speakers did.

Guild:
Def’n: an association of people with similar interests or pursuits; especially : a medieval association of merchants or craftsmen

Clique:
Def’n: a narrow exclusive circle or group of persons; especially : one held together by common interests, views, or purposes

A problem that is a frequent occurrence among Guilds of any size, any level, and any progression is the formation of cliques within Guilds. Typically, these are close knit groups of friends who have known each other for a long time. What typically happens is that there are players who will run with no one else BUT the players that they know and that they trust. Obviously a clique by itself is not able to tackle higher end difficult content which is why they apply for Guilds as “package deals”. Now they could come in groups as small as two or in groups as large as a self sustaining Karazhan team. Depending on the players, this could be a severe problem as they could all refuse to run with certain other players and grind Guild progression to a halt.

This could manifest itself as an even larger problem when such a large group of players could effectively dictate the course of actions a GM could take, particularly when the clique consists of your main tank. I would not be surprised if GM’s have been held hostage in a manner similar to this. I’ve often said before that a Guild revolves around their tanks and healers.

Dealing With Negative Cliques

What was suggested was that Guild objectives be made known to them before coming in. Tell them that you are a casual guild with little to no desire for end game. Or tell them that you are a progression guild which values performance over preference (my personal stance). If there’s any problems or issues that have arisen, it should be “nipped in the bud” (I could not have put it any better myself). Deal with these brushfires swiftly before it grows into a forest fire. GM’s need to be willing to grow emotionally distant and effectively give these players a way out or fire them. Sometimes it pays to be heartless.

Encouraging Cliques to Integrate

1 of the proposed methods that some of the GM’s suggested was to force rotating Karazhan rosters and here’s the reasons why:

  • Players grow outside of their comfort zone and learn to adapt to other players
  • Helps eliminate why cliques exist in the first place
  • Players become more sociable

The downside is that there is going to be a large amount of player shuffling going around so that different raid days can be accomodated for different players. I heard an example from one GM where she had shuffled a student with a curfew and a working security guard who had to do his rounds. Time’s were scheduled so that players who had not had an opportunity to tango with a boss could have a shot at taking him down (IE, Nightbane).

Closing Comments and Feedback

The talks were about 2 hours at max and it seemed like everyone had a good time exchanging ideas and techniques. Not everyone had a mic and those individuals had to type in guild chat to keep up with everything. As a first time participant, I restricted myself mostly to typing in game. From what I know, there are minutes being compiled. I even recorded the entire 2 hour conversation before my power got jolted for a second erasing the first half of the discussion. My plan is to convert it to an MP3 and compress it down to little audio clips for anyone interested in listening. Think of it as audio highlights.

My participation was limited. I was more of an observer than anything. I had a mic active but I felt out of place using it. Actually, I felt kind of intimidated. Everyone in there seemed to literally be a GM and I felt outranked in every aspect.

Maybe it was the fact that I appeared to be surrounded by female speakers =).

Whatever the case, I will definitely be at the next Chamber of Guilds meeting. It certainly makes for good blog discussion. It was made clear to me after the meeting that all leaders and officers are welcome (which includes class leaders, officers, GM’s, raid leaders, recruitment, etc). What do you think about cliques? Do you have any within your Guild?

Staves vs Maces and Off hands

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Staves vs Maces“First off i have to commend you for your hard work at making your blog the only one i have ever read. World of Matticus has almost all of the priest information i could hope to read and I have put to use many of the tips found therein. But i can’t find anything about the debate of Staff vs Mace+Offhand (healingwise). Is there a certain point where a staff would be better than the duel wielding combo? Is a mace-offhand settup always better? Please let me know what you think. Thank you for your limited time.”

That was an email I received from a player last night. Incidentally enough, I had a post about this already lined up. What excellent timing!

Back before Burning Crusade, there was one weapon that truly defined a Priest. Those who had it were idolized by Priests everywhere. When you saw it on the back of a Priest in front of you, immediately you would feel an aura of safety. I am referring to [item]Benediction[/item]. Oh how times have changed.

I’m going to present argument from two different sides: The best possible Priest approach and the team Priest approach.

The Best Possible Priest Approach

Do you want to be THE Priest? Do you want to have so much healing and MP5 that you can bring back Elvis? Then this is the setup for you. From what I’ve noticed, a Priest with an MH/OH combo will have slightly higher healing bonuses and a little more mana regeneration than a player with a Staff. But staves aren’t completely useless in their own right. They might lose a bit of +healing when compared to to the MH/OH, but there’s a lot more stats (stamina, intellect, etc). Therefore, if you care that much about min/maxing your Priest (in other words, making it as best as possible), then grabbing an MH/OH is the best way to go. But you have to realize that you’re not the only class that is able to use it.

You’ll be in direct competition with Paladins and Shamans (maybe Druids).

The Team Priest Approach

You don’t want to be the best Priest possible. You know that all the maces are being greedily eyed upon by the other healers because they are way more powerful. You also know that your fellow healers won’t give that awesome healing staff a chance and that it will get sharded. I have seen this happen far too many times. Healers are passing on items that help them in favour of getting an even better item. You may or may not know of my thoughts about this. Precious loot should not be wasted because you never know for sure when you will get the weapon that you want. I never once saw Light’s Justice or Shard of the Virtuous on my Priest.

I hope you can understand my main argument here. I’m not arguing from the perspective of being the super best healer. I’m arguing from the perspective of a healer who wants to contribute to the best of his or her ability with the tools they have.

By accepting the staff, you remove yourself from competing against the Shammies and the Pallies. Let them fight over the mace and spend their precious DKP. A simple minimum bid just gave you nearly the same amount of healing at half the price. Again, this is dependent on your Guild and the style of loot distribution that you have.

Think about your raid healer setup.

In Carnage, we have:

  • 2 Holy Priests
  • 3-4 Paladins
  • 1 Resto Shaman

The Paladins and Shamans are going to go after 1H’s because they want something to complement their Shields. The other holy Priest doesn’t like staves. That leaves me to obtain loot at half price because these turkeys aren’t going to use it anyway! By taking it, I benefit the raid as a whole because it increases my healing and speeds up the gearing process.

I even save a little DKP because I don’t have to bid on both a mace and an offhand. I don’t have to wait for 2 bosses to drop the 2 items that I need. I only need to kill 1 boss repeatedly.

I am sacrificing my potential to be the best possible Priest later to help the raid now.

To finalize

Whatever weapon you choose to go with is affected by different factors.

  • Your guild
  • Loot distribution methods
  • Your style of play
  • Personality
  • Phase of the moon

Just understand that arguments can be made for either class. I don’t view myself as a selfish raider. I want to get to the end of the game as fast as possible and if I have to lose 30 healing over it, then I can sleep soundly with no problems. Besides, the extra stamina means I’ll live just a bit longer then Paulina Priest over there.

That’s why I opted for my new staff instead of waiting on Vasj to drop her mace.

What weapon do you use?

  • Main Hand and Off Hand (47%, 16 Votes)
  • Staff (32%, 11 Votes)
  • I like to go in there without any weapons (21%, 7 Votes)

Total Voters: 34

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WoWosphere Weekend Warmup

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I’m retiring my 3 stars. There’s simply too much blogging material and not enough stars to hand out! Starting on Saturdays, I’m going to be summarize what’s been happening here with me, my blog, and my other fellow bloggers out there.

In Game

We’ve had a wall with raiding recently. Last Thursday, one of our MT’s had DSL issues, our Paladin’s hard drive crashed, another healer has retired, and we’re losing a rogue to the US Army. I knew the holiday season was tough, but holy moly. As far as I know, we’re going back in on Sunday.

I’ve acquired a whole level of respect for Paladin tanks. We set up an on-the-fly run with a friend of mine and he literally tanked the whole instance by himself. We brought in a DPS Warrior for off tanking duty because we didn’t expect him to tank as much anyway. 3 hour Karazhan runs are ridiculously awesome. We downed every boss with the exception of Netherspite (due to execution, in my opinion).

World of Matticus

  • 5 Gaming Lessons from Matticus: I got tagged the other day by GMW. The concept here is one blogger comes up with a list, then “tags” other bloggers to come up with their own unique lists. It doesn’t even have to be a list! They’re just tagged to “do” something. In this case, it was a list of lessons that I’ve learned from WoW or gaming.
  • WoW Bloggers <3 WordPress: This is just something I noted last night. A lot of bloggers are switching platforms from Blogger to WordPress.
  • Why Do You Play WoW?: This is a guest post from Leiandra. I didn’t want to leave my blog completely dry so I sent out a plea for guest bloggers to help me out. Thanks again for responding!

I’ve got a larged sized to do list which I can’t get started on just yet. 1 exam down, but I still have 3 more to go.

  • Complete blog design overhaul
  • Mag strat and overview
  • Tips for WoW Bloggers who just moved to WordPress
  • Getting my other blog underway

The WoWosphere at a Glance

  • Veteran Hunter blogger BigRedKitty has switched! Be sure to update your bookmarks and RSS feeds accordingly. He’s also opened up some new forums! Fellow blogger Pike is also considering the switch.

    Matt’s Reaction: I love the forums! I’m even debating opening one of my own soon. I also think Pike should switch =).

  • Fate has a great post up effectively summarizing what the trends seem to be in class issues. You’ll remember a few days ago Blizzard put the call out for feedback on what players felt to be the problems with their class. They even created threads on every class forum.

    Matt’s Reaction: One of the points Fate made was that each class seemed to be complaining that every other class was imbalanced and should be nerfed. If that’s the case, then Blizzard should sit back and do nothing because if every class complains that other classes are overpowered, would that not then imply that every class IS balanced?

  • There’s been some recent blog discussion on the gender of your characters on WoW. Nothing’s wrong with players playing a character of the opposite gender. Some play it to express themselves. Others play it to avoid being cliche’d. The rest do it for the ass (or so they claim).

    Matt’s Reaction: I chose a Dranei and Human females purely for performance reasons. I need as much possible real estate as I can get on my screen. I’m not the only one who feels that way.

  • GMW and her Guild discovered a neat way of adding colour to your Guild MoTD’s and Guild Notes!

    Matt’s Reaction: Instead of the usual green text, now you can color code your messages for importance. I haven’t quite discovered a practical use for it yet, but I’m not an officer and I don’t have the authority to alter my own Guild Note. But, I think by color coding Guild Notes, it would be easy to tell at a glance what kind of specs certain players are in the Guild without having to repeatedly ask them. For example, tanks could be blue, healers would be white, and DPS would be red. This way, there would be no confusion as to whether Paladins were prot or holy (or Priests shadow or Holy).

  • Nibuca at Mystic Chicanery created an excellent list of fun Pally tricks to try!

    Matt’s Reaction: I like tip 3.

Blog Spotlight

  • I’ve spent a lot of time reading Rohan’s Blessing of Kings. One of his recent posts addressed the topic of welfare epics (AKA PvP purples). There’s been some discussion about the skinning differences between PvP and PvE. Another point that was brought up is the seeming lack of progression that the PvE aspect has. The only thing stopping alts from going into Hyjal/BT is attunement. That is a barried that PvP doesn’t really have except for rating brackets (even then, at 3 AM you might find a 1500 team playing a 2300 team and by sheer luck/disconnects steal 40 points off of them) In PvE, it’s possible to directly skip over T4 and go straight for T5 (Remember the attunements were lifted).

    In fact, several months ago on my resto shaman, I raided with a group of friends into Karazhan while wearing a combination of greens and blues. In June, I sported +600 healing! That number is far below my minimum recommended stats. But my friends were extremely geared and my lack of healing didn’t really hinder progress. In one run, I replaced my greens with purples (T4 gloves, Curator shoulders, Chess Shield, Netherspite’s Chest, Attument’s bracers, Moroes’ Belt, Opera trinket).Should I have to go through that chain of progression again? I don’t think so.

    My Priest did most of the work learning the encounters and helping my friends get gear as well. I had a good support network in place and good contacts. I think this debate sounds akin to having a level 70 running you through Scarlet Monastary. Different application but same principle.So in PvP, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with characters in blues getting epics. They’re still putting in time and effort to get it. An S2 geared player will acquire S3 gear far faster then a blue’d character with little resilience.

    My Shaman took six months to get the entire S2 set. This is just the armor alone. I did not purchase the weapon, shield, or totem. That’s a long time just to get the armor. Don’t forget the fact that this was during the summer before the AV changes. I had lots of time which I piled into the AV queues earning 7000+ honor per day. Obviously with school, it is no longer possible. But winter break is nearly here, and I’ve already picked up the Vindicator Bracers…About the visualizations of the gear, I think they should be kept the same way. I know I’m definitely a minority in this for sure, but hear me out for a moment.

    Most of us don’t have the time to armory other players to determine what they’re wearing or what spec they’re playing (having a macbook by your side lets you do that). But information and intelligence is key to any kind of warfare! The more information you have, the better off you’ll be!

    One of Sun Tzu’s famous quotes:

    So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will fight without danger in battles.
    If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
    If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself

    A key piece of information is the level of gear that your opponents are wearing. One glance at a Priest with dark wings, and what does that tell you? He’s wearing S2 shoulders. Like it or not, we rely on visual cues to inform of us what’s going on around the world. If PvP and PvE gear models were drastically changed, that’s more information we have to know. Out in PvE land if the models were to change, a new player with absolutely no idea of what PvP models look like could check out a player and find out the hard way that this is NOT a player they want to pick a fight with.

    Lastly, to change the models and textures would require more work to do on the part of Blizzard. I’d much rather have them work on new raiding content then armor which I will replace anyway. I’m paying 15 bucks a month to solve hard encounters, not appear on an Ironforge’s Secret fashion show.

Again, I wanted to apologize to everyone for my reduced blogload this week. It’s crunch time for many students. I’ve got 3 more next week so expect similar activity. Wish me luck =(.

I started this piece at 9 AM. It is now 1 PM.

Encouraging Raiders to Sign Up and Why

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For a list of suggested add-ons or web scripts regarding raid signups, scroll down.

This is a problem that’s plagued many Guilds. Many members are simply too lazy to sign for raids. I’ve found it very frustrating as a former Officer. I know other Guilds who are suffering from the same problem. It makes my life easier if I know who is going to show for sure and who isn’t.

Let’s take a step back for a moment. Why is it necessary for people to sign up to raid?

Answer: Having Raid signups allows the leadership to determine who will show up for sure and who will not be. I would like to know what kind of assets I have available going into a Raid. I guarantee that all of us have been in a situation where our raid comes to a halt (or doesn’t even get underway) because we’re missing a certain class. Then we spend the next hour trying to find a pickup player. Then we wipe twice on a boss. Then we call it a night. It would be nice to know before hand what players will be there and what needs to be there. With information like that, arrangements can be made in advance to look for other players to fill that void.

On the other hand, I’ve heard of various reasons as to why people don’t sign up. It goes something like this:

“I can’t figure out how to use it.”

“It’s broken. I get some kind of an error.”

“I don’t want to download that add-on.”

I think that just about summarizes almost all of the excuses I have heard in the past. As leadership people, the onus is on us to show them how to operate the tools that they need. The methods you have chosen for signups will be narrowed to one of two methods: Either it’s an in-game addon or some webpage based script. I guess forums can be used, but that’s amazingly tedious.

Enforcing Signups

Now you’ve determined the method which your Guild will use to sign up. The only obstacle in the way is people’s willpower and the laziness factor. Three years and $10000 on tuition has told me that people will take the easiest route to perform an action. Why? Because everyone is inherently lazy. We’re not going to do anymore work then is required. But if we have to work for it, there damn well better be an incentive.

Let’s take a page from Skinner and look at the concept of reinforcement. There’s several ways we can influence people to sign up.

Positive reinforcement: If your Guild utilizes DKP, you can consider giving 0.5 DKP or some other arbitrary number to those who sign up and show up early. But do that only if both conditions are met. This may require additional work on the part of your number cruncher. Not the best idea but not the worse since it involves additional work. Let’s take everyone into account here and don’t forget about the guy who does the DKP who has a degree in science, mathematics, or engineering (or accounting). On a side note, power to YOU DKP guy! You deserve a raise or a beer for having to handle that kind of stress and responsibility. I salute you!

Negative punishment: Players who signup have first priority over loot (okay, so it punishes the guys who don’t sign up). The guys that don’t signup, even if they have more DKP, are forced to wait in line. Carnage utilizes this system well. I recall this precedent being set and followed twice while I’ve been with them so far.

Don’t ask about the psych terms. I learn better if I can apply these principles in real life (or virtual in this case). =)

Next question: What if I’m not sure if I can make the raid? Should I sign up anyway? I know I’ll be late, too!

Yes, sign up anyway. Leave a note explaining your circumstances. Maybe you might need to work overtime. But there is always an off chance that you can make it home in time for a raid. Maybe you live in LA and for some reason the freeway isn’t tied up with traffic or something (Hey, it’s possible!)

Addons and Scripts for Signups

Check out the following links. They just might provide the solution you need if you’re wondering what kind of sign up interface to use. I’ve used most of these at some point during my career. Personally, I favor web based signups because of convenience.

Web Based

phpRaider: This is Carnage’s interface of choice. Actually, we use a slightly dated version. But it still works.

Features (direct from the site)

  • Support for any number of classes, races, and class/race combinations.
  • Support for any MMORPG game.
  • Support for any number of attributes assigned to character profiles such as resistances, damage abilities, talents, and more!
  • Raids are arranged in an easy to view calendar format showing only pertinent information. When clicked, a detailed list of class signups and raid information become available.
  • Post announcements for your members to see.
  • Create any number of characters for each user profile.
  • Extensive permission settings allow you to customize who has access to what features of phpRaider.
  • Ability to signup for multiple raids and create recurring raids.
  • Completely free to use!
  • Much, much more…

Requirements

phpRaider requires a web server (IIS, Apache, etc), a MySQL database (4.0 or higher), PHP (4.0 or higher), and a minimal knowledge of software installation.

RaidNinja: This is an alternative to the above. I remember installing this months ago and I scrapped it for a certain reason. I can’t remember what exactly, but I do believe it was technical. It’s last update was on August 9th and is sitting on version 2.0. I think I might have to install this later on my server and see how well it is. Here’s a sample of what it looks like.

Addons

Guild Event Manager: Looks good in theory. It’s an in-game addon which allows players to signup without the hassles of having to make an account online and such. Events are made in game via a private channel with a password so only your members will have access to the schedules and such. The Guild Leader doesn’t need to be online for this to work. Don’t ask me how or why it works, but that’s the theory behind it.

I’ve never used this addon extensively. I tested it with other people to see if it could fit with our needs (HI JOSH). But, the trials didn’t last very long (partly because our Guild didn’t last very long). At the time, it was easy to use and had lots of features. Now I’ve read mixed reviews about it (mostly on the WoW forums) but the latest version came out on the 30th (2.27).

Group Calendar: Here is another promising addon which I have not had the opportunity to try out. Some of the latest updates include:

– Support for guild addon data channel
– Simplified setup and security
– New event types for doctor, dentist and vacation (doctor and dentist are not shared with the network)
– Notification for new events (minimap button and dates flash when they have new events)
– New tooltip for each date shows a summary of events for that day
– New tooltip for each event shows an attendance summary
– Events can now be created as ‘closed’ which won’t allow signups and players can only be added manually (or the event can be opened later)
– Reminders for events are given at 60, 30, 15, 5, and 1 minute before start time as well as at start time
– Calendar can be set to start the week on a Monday (use ‘/calendar mon’ command)
– Events can now be restricted to members of the your own guild in multi-guild alliances
– Players can now be manually added as ‘not attending’
– Minimap icon changes to an upcoming event one hour before the event starts
– Compatible with The Burning Crusade expansion

I really like that Doctor/Dentist feature. I don’t know why, it just stood out at me. Has anyone used this before? Your thoughts?

Anyway, the last alternative you have if none of these work out for you is to use your Guild Forums and get people to make posts saying they’ll be attending or not. It’s going to be tedious. If theres any other raid management solutions I’ve missed, please do let me know. I’m going to lay down the groundwork for a “Guild Website” series in the next upcoming days. It’s aimed at Guilds who want to establish an online presence but are unsure of as to how to do it.

Setting your Raid Schedule

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In past guilds, we would set a day or four to raid. We would raid on those nights of the week until we accomplished our goal or until it was no longer practical to do so. I don’t know about you, but raiding with no end in sight does seem a bit demoralizing until you get a boss down. One of first policy acts a newly minted GM needs to do is to decide when their guild plans to raid.

Conquest raids from 6PM – 9 PM flat (Pacific). It doesn’t matter if we’re one shotting bosses or if we’re wiping like no tomorrow. It’s three hours in duration no matter what we do. With that in mind, it’s absolutely important for us to maximize our time in the raid instances. Some of you may set your raid times to end at 10 PM or 11 PM. But all too often, I’ve noticed on several pug raids that I’ve taken part in is that there are set start times, but end times are insanely flexible.

So consider setting a final, non-negotiable end time that everyone can look forward to.

Why?

It gives you and your raiding team a specific time to look forward to

Would you prefer a 9-5 job or a job where you would clock out whenever your boss says so? You might be wiping on trash or boss attempts, but at least you will know HOW MUCH LONGER it’s going to go on for. If you stare at the clock and notice that you have 30 minutes of raiding left, all of a sudden, you realize that you can actually endure one more wipe if necessary.

Everybody tries to get out of a raid

My dog ate my mouse.

My in laws are in town.

My exams are here.

What’s more, people give these excuses in the middle of the raid because they don’t want to raid anymore. They’re looking for an easy way out. It’s all human psychology. They come up with a BS excuse that may or may not be right with the intent of getting out of the raid so they can do something else. By setting an end time, your raid mates can plan their life around it.

For example, knowing my raid ended at 9 PM allowed me to delay construction of my 1500 word essay on criticizing Lysistrata until after the raid. It allowed me to calculate that I could watch the NHL season openers on Wednesday and finish the paper which would have been due this morning.

Clearly this is a poor example of time management, but if I had not known when our raid would end, I would have missed out on watching the NHL season openers. That would have been deeply tragic.

Which days should I pick?

Tuesdays are server reset days.

Friday and Saturday nights often have people out doing other stuff (like parties or social events).

Sundays will have holidays throughout the year that players may miss out on.

The time of day will also matter. Make it too late and raiders that work won’t be able to join you. Make it too early and people might just be getting off work or class. Many of the guilds I’ve seen schedule their times between 7 PM to 11 PM. This gives everyone optimal time to eat dinner. The raid also ends early enough for everyone to get enough rest during the weekday.

Keep time zones in consideration. The hours between 5 PM to 9 PM are optimal for players on the west coast and east coast (North America, of course).

You can choose whatever days and times you’re comfortable with. Just make sure you tell everyone so no one gets confused!

How long?

Lastly, the amount of days spent raiding will also have a huge impact. Whether you’re aware of it or not, raiding three days a week versus two days a week can be far more draining. You might think to yourself ‘Oh its just an extra day’, but to some people it’s a lot more time for them to invest in. It’s also dependent on your raid’s ability to solve certain encounters. If you easily clear to Shade of Aran, but have a harder time cracking him below 80%, then chances are your raid isn’t ready to take him down yet. There is no sense in scheduling another day of four hour consecutive 80% Aran wipes. It demoralizes your team, it adds unneeded expenses, and your team won’t try hard at all because they know they can’t do it yet. It’s best to try the boss a few times, gauge the probability of success with your team before calling it and coming back when the week resets.

In the end, you know your raid team best.

If they’re willing to jump back in there and continue running into the brick wall, then do it. Perseverance helps. For the past two weeks, we’ve been getting Leotheras down to phase 3 where he is below 10% every attempt before our guild wipes. If that’s the same with you, then maybe coming back another night would be the right answer.

Having a refreshed raid is far more effective then a fatigued raid.

Know your Guild and what they’re capable of doing. Push them to the limit, but don’t tip them over the edge.