Tough Call: Fighting Progression Frustration

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Image courtesy of leonardobc

This week the crew has been hitting our heads against a progression boss, and the talk around the campfire has a decided air of frustration to it. As a leader, you need to be aware of your team’s motivation levels when tackling new challenges. Encounters surpassing your raid team’s ability level can often turn frustration into futility.

But how do does a raid leader handle this precisely?

The same way we handle any problem – with planning and execution.  Sun Tzu, who probably would have been a Vodka/Paragon level raid leader, teaches us:

“The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.”

It sounds simple, and when you’re doing it well, it really is simple.  Knowing what needs to be done ahead of time and adjusting as you go along are the two key ingredients to successful raid progression no matter the size of the raid or the strategy being used.

Below are a few points I recommend keeping in mind when your raid team is approaching difficult content:

Planning For Raid Progression

  • Read, understand and analyze the intended boss strategies as dictated by your raid leaders well in advance of attempting the fight. This allows you to see mistakes as well as make changes easily.
  • Be honest with yourself about the capabilities of your team. Have an idea where your weaknesses and strengths lie. This could be include aspects ranging from movement, DPS, healer skill or people with high raid awareness.
  • Know when to call a wipe and when to extend an attempt to see the next phase. Part of your team being dead might still allow the rest of the raid to practice key mechanics of the fight.
  • Experimentation is good. Figure out what works and what doesn’t when you deviate from a typical boss strategy. It might just be easier for your team.
  • Ensure your team is on the same page. Present a united and focused front for your troops to follow.

Sometimes, though, even our best-laid plans… well, you know what happens.  So the question becomes, what next?  What do I do when my team is getting weary, my strategies are in question, and I need a win quickly?

First of all, do not ditch your plan just because it isn’t working.  A strategy can fall apart in a lot of places. It may be execution, it may be a certain raid composition due to attendance; it could be any number of factors.  Find out where the strategy is failing and decide which elements you can change.  Can you swap personnel?  Slight positioning adjustment?  Time your cooldowns better (this is often a fix in Cataclysm raiding)?
Whether your plan needs a complete overhaul or just some minor adjustments, it is still crucial to address the frustration of your raiders and regroup.

  • Do not avoid the tough conversations. When your members bring up their gripes, listen to them. Answer appropriately.
  • Know the difference between toxic negativity and someone just blowing off steam. Sometimes people just need to vent. However, there is line between getting out some frustration and poisoning the morale of your squad.
  • Give responses that are logical and concise. You need to lay out for your team exactly what you’re doing, why you’re doing it that way,  and why you don’t think it can be done in an alternative way.  The more details, the better.
  • Accept suggestions and give them their due consideration. After all, if the 9 or 24 other people in your raid aren’t intelligent enough to help you with their observations, then you probably shouldn’t be raiding. Applaud valuable and constructive criticism from your raid.
  • Kill the boss and go out for beer!

Remember, the future is brighter.  Your raid will down this boss and will continue downing bosses. Success breeds further success.  Get out there and prove you’re all winners.

Reader Question

Last week, regarding my post on Real Officer Set-Ups, Kalette asked:

“Do you have any comments on how to incorporate this into a 10 man guild with two separate 10 man teams?”

Recently I had a conversation with Matticus about different ways guilds could operate more than one progression-oriented raid team within the same guild. (See Matt’s post here for his thoughts.) My feeling on the idea is that when you’re setting up policies for your guild, (attendance, loot, recruiting, critique, etc) they should apply to everyone playing that portion of the game, not just your raid team.

Clearly each raid needs their own raid leader, both of whom will need to be equally trusted by the GM, and trusted to work alone, because at least one of them will likely be raiding in without you overseeing them.

Beyond that, I think you could pull off a two 10-man raid guild with the same positions mentioned before.  You may have to get creative about which officer raids with which team, but in theory your role officers could oversee recruiting, critique and mentoring for every raider under their domain.  Since we’re talking about smaller numbers, they would each be responsible for roughly the same amount of players as they would in a healthy 25-man team, they would probably just need to be better at analyzing WoL logs parses since they can’t see everyone first hand.

Another approach is to combine a few roles, and have those role leaders cooperate with each other.  Tanks and melee DPS can easily be combined, and you could put ranged DPS and healing in a group together.  Then each 10-man raid would have one officer over each of those pairs.  Outside of raid, you may naturally specialize and have one ranged/healing role leader who is more attuned to healing and another who is better at the pew-pew, but so long as they can learning from each other, you can benefit from both being specialized.

By the numbers:
1x GM
2x RL
1x each Role Leader

Alternative:
1x GM
2x RL
2x Tanks/Melee Leader
2x Ranged/Healing Leader

I think the key caveat I’d make is that recruiting should still be done on a scale of “does this person meet our guild’s standards”, not just will they meet the needs of Raid A or Raid B.  When you’re fielding two squads who are both responsible for pushing progression and increasing your guild’s standing, it’s important to make sure that every raider meets the criteria to deserve that guild’s name above their heads.
Kalette, great question; I hope this helps.  If not, call me dumb and I’ll give it another look.

As always, leave your questions/comments/paternity suits in the comments.  I’ll lovingly read them all.  Also, if you have a topic you’d like to see addressed in a future episode of Tough Call, just let me know.

Lodur’s Addon Spotlight: GTFO

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GTFO is the best addon you’re probably not using right now. GTFO stands for exactly what it sounds like, “Get The F$%# Out”. Simply put, the addon gives you an audio alert whenever you are standing in something that is causing you harm. Why is this a good thing? Well, right now there are a lot of area effect boss damage abilities that still can hit you even if you are “in the clear”. Take for example Valiona, both in Grim Batol and Bastion of Twilight. The dragon has a frontal cone breath that causes massive amounts of damage if you sit in the fire. Many times I’ve been outside of the visible effect, yet still took the damage as if standing in it, didn’t notice at first and became so much Dwarven BBQ (I can admit when I fail :]). After installing the addon though, this just isn’t a problem anymore. It plays a subtle, yet noticeable, tone to indicate that I’m standing in bad.

I’ve always been a bit of an audio queue player. Even with my boss mods and power auras I’ve always set sounds to alert me to what’s going on. Personally I find it a lot less intrusive than visual cues, since most of my attention is on the health of those around me, and staying alive through boss mechanics.  The less I have to tear my eyes away from the fight and their health totals, the better off everyone is.

The addon allows you to set thresholds for sound, and adjust the various audio alerts so you can customize the experience. The sounds the addon come supplied with are distinct and different enough from those provided by Big Wigs, Deadly Boss Mods and DXE that it is quite distinct and can be picked out easily among the cacophony of other sounds and it even has the ability to integrate with Power Auras to give a visual notification of when you’re standing in bad.

Setup is pretty easy as it works right out of the box. After installation if left alone it will simply buzz an alarm in your ear whenever you are standing in something that is causing damage. Now, it won’t only buzz once, it will continue to buzz and make noise until you are out of the area taking damage. Honestly that’s better than yelling at any raider to get out, because you don’t have to clutter mumble or vent with your lamentations of raiders standing in fire. The mod itself is pretty lightweight, so it won’t break the memory bank or cause any sort of disruption.

Let’s face it, sometimes we get tunnel vision when raiding or running any form of content. How many times have you be so focused on squeezing out that last heal or that last little bit of DPS and missed the bad headed your way? It’s happened to us all at least once. This addon though, this little sound chiming in my headphones to let me know I’m missing the fact my kilt’s on fire, has helped keep me alive through many, many fights.

I think this addon is well worth the pick up if for no other reason than to test it out. As an added bonus to raid leaders, if your group is running the mod, recount shows the number of audio alerts people receive so you can also double check to make sure that they were responding to the alerts or standing in the good, not the bad. Give it a try, have your raiders give it a try, you may fall in love with it just like I did.

GTFO [Curse] [WoWInterface]

ELIZABETH PENEPENT

Holy Word: Sanctuary, Some Work Needed

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Sanctuary could definitely use a buff. I stopped using it a while ago because it wasn’t cost effective. At least its nice to know that it’s being acknowledged as weak.

I had a talk with the devs about this very issue yesterday, and they are well aware of this subject, and tend to agree with those of us (one of my mains is a holy priest) who have noticed that Sanctuary could do with a buff.

There are two things that have to be dealt with here: 1) Holy priest AE healing is pretty decent as-is, and 2) we don’t want Sanctuary to be so similar to Healing Rain.

Again, the devs agree that a modest buff is a fair solution, although it is hard to know when or by what magnitude such a buff might come along.

–Kaivax

Ideas on buffs? You know its going to be one of those spells where it’s going to be difficult to buff. Could adjust the Mastery, the mana cost, or the overall power of the spell. Had an idea of maybe introducing a glyph of some kind. What would said glyph do? I haven’t gotten that far yet.

Matticast Episode 12 – Officers, Healing Assignments, and Multiple Guild Raid Groups

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Welcome to Episode 12 of The Matticast. This week Borsk, Matt, Kat, and Brian, discuss:

– Officer Options and Hierarchy

– Healing Assignments

– Running both a 25 and 10 man raid within the same guild.

Don’t forget you can send us your questions or topics or tweet us with the hashtag #matticast

Subscribe to the show: iTunes | RSS

25 Man Guilds Slowly Dwindling?

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Another 25 player guild on my server has called it quits. Seems like a number of them have decided to stop altogether or switch to being a 10 player guild instead.

I can almost count on one hand the number of active raiding 25s. A year ago, during ICC, there  must have been over 20 guilds that did 25s across both factions.

Now? Well, there’s over 30 registered. But it seems like a decent number have them have stopped altogether. It might be due to other games like Rift. I have a hunch it might be related to the difficulty levels of the content. During ICC, the instance gradually got easier due to the buffs. In Cataclysm, the only way the ways get easier is through practice and gear acquisition.  I can’t help but wonder if patience is wearing thin. I know during vanilla, bosses were next to impossible. It would take multiple weeks or even months just to get a new boss taken down. Thinking out loud, I can’t help but wonder if players are fed up with raiding 25s as a whole and looking to jump down to 10s.

No plans on throwing in the towel yet. But I feel like I’m part of an endangered species. How’s your servers looking? Any prominent guilds closing up shop or switching focus?