In hockey, there is a term called line juggling. Typically, when a team has difficulty scoring and getting momentum going the coach will start juggling his forwards together in the chance that they will click, find chemistry, and score.
On Sunday, Carnage has been able to consistently transition from Phase 3 to phase 4 while losing no more than 1 player. We were able to get Kael down to approximately 70%. Earlier in the night, one of our Paladins had to leave due to personal problems. Instead of 4 Paladins, we ran 3 Paladins and replaced him with a Resto Druid.
Tonight we’re diving back into Kael. The confidence is there. In fact, all of our future signup raids have changed from SSC/TK to Mount Hyjal/Black Temple.
But here’s what puzzles me.
Apparently, we’re dropping our Resto Druid and bringing our 4th Paladin back into the lineup. Both of these players are trial members so there’s no issue of seniority here. Now I also know it’s not my place to question the wisdom of the raid leaders. My job is to make sure our players in the raid have the health required to do the job they need to do. I’m not the one deciding who gets benched for the rest of the period or who gets coupled with who out there.
But Sunday was the furthest we’ve ever gotten on Kael. Why change what has arguably had the most success? Not only that, but our last two attempts that night were so spot on that we got him down to that 70% range (+/- 10%) consecutively.
How does that old adage go again? If it ain’t broke don’t fix it?
I’m not going to openly question the decision of the GM’s in this one. It’s out of my hands anyway. They have more to handle on their plate without me asking why we’re changing the lineup. I just found it surprising. I don’t know enough about Paladins in a 25 man situation. I don’t know what kind of advantage we would capitalize by bringing a 4th Paladin (Kings, Salv, Might/Wis, Light?).
But for all you young GM’s out there, if you have a set group of players that have been able to deliver success then I say stick with that group. Ride their momentum. Players are on a hot streak for only so long.
On the other side of the spectrum, if your raid continues to have troubles on a raid boss that you should not be having problems on, then start raid juggling. Get your prot pally to respec Holy and your Warrior to respec prot. Start changing things up. Move your healers around, put your tank healers on the raid, your raid healers on the tank. Something is not working and you’ve given it 9 tries. It’s unlikely it’s going to work on the 10th. Bite the bullet, start juggling.
(About to head out, just have time to post)
I notice many raids stick to the same strategy and do it over and over; that and it is also mostly with casual guilds.
On our vashj attempts, we hardly switched people out, and we were doing the raid in extremely unoptimal means, such as having a warrior use his hitbox to hit the strider.
If you want to get the boss down faster, you have to be mean, and not worry about stepping on peoples toes. If those that get replaced get mad and leave, well.. they won’t survive past the ssc/tk level.
Maeve is probably just used to 4 pallies, we’ve run 4 pallies for the past year or so, he feels it works.
It also depends on how your groups are set up and on the auras used.
Generally a pala is considered more desirable than a druid both because of blessings and auras, and because GoW is rather “meh” in comparison to other supporting abilities.
A druid however is unmatched in keeping the raid topped-up and supplying the tanks with a constant stream of healing that provides a nice buffer in case of trouble.
Pala’s on the other hand are better in healing spike damage fast.
As for raid juggling, as a casual raiding guild we are doing it a lot, usually because we have no other choice but to invite everyone that has the time to raid and fulfil a certain main role.. eg healer or AOE or whatever.
Well TBH, if under 10 tries you are still having trouble, it might be that either some of you are undergeared or someone is screwing up on the tactics. In any case I am sure that if you take a look at either recount or at the battle logs, you can locate easily who has been the breaking spot in your team and maybe juggle him out 😀
Poor druid.
>.>
<.<
I’m not biased.
We are trying to move on from TK/SSC as fast as possible by getting everyone their vials. While our core group (especially the main tanks) are coming along for our weekly runs against Vashj and Kael, it is quite a dilemma: Bring the same group back each week until they are “farmable,” or swap as many people out for vials as we can in order to move on with progression.