Matt Answers Your Questions

As surprising as this may sound, I don’t often get a lot of email. Most of them can be easily answered with a few lines and a link. Some of them require much more detailed responses and get turned into posts. The emails that deserve more than a few lines and don’t require posts, I’ll compile together. I’ll end up doing this once a month or so with emails that either myself or the rest of the WoM team don’t get around to answering.

I got into a discussion with a friend the other day about what is easier/harder to play: a tank or a healer – specifically priests and warriors?

He’s convinced that its harder to play a priest (holy/disc hybrid) and I said playing a warrior tank is harder (I have played a disc priest and prot warrior all thru the Wrath Beta and my live priest just hit 80 a few days ago due to tank shortages). I was wondering if you could propose it out to the general community on what they think is harder to play.

Thanks 🙂

My gut instinct here says a tank would be harder. But then again, that’s because I’ve never really played a tank. I think if I logged around 72 hours on a Warrior or something I might be able to get the basics down. Tanking and healing are on two separate ends of the spectrum that there is just no comparison at all whatsoever. Both call upon different sets of skills. One guy has his eyes glued to his raid window while the other guy is glued to cooldowns and boss cues.

But I’m sure there’s a few players out there that can tank and heal effectively. What’s your take?

I am the Paladin class leader of my guild and main holy paladin. I have been reading the post about healing Sartharion 3-drakes. One suggestion involved having a holy paladin use righteous fury to help pull threat on whelps. It’s not something we have tried yet, as we have been using 2 add tanks and 1 drake tanks. However the idea is definitely worth investigating to see if it could work for us as well. However, I am unsure of the spec used by the paladin healer to survive the adds. I have some ideas, but i would like to see a definite spec that has worked, without gimping the healing output. I think that healing output is less, which is why it was mention, that the add tank healer will need help, but i would like to be clear on the extent at which you sacrifice healing talents, for survivability.

Also did the paladin use any pvp gear for increased stamina?

From,
Psychotaz

I can’t exactly offer much help here. All I know is that the spec did reduce healing effectiveness slightly but not enough to warrant a panic. I believe it involved picking up Divine Guardian (the bubble spec). To really make use of Righteous Fury, the Holy Paladin needs to pair up with and stand on top of the add tank. The first time we tried it, we used it with a couple of PvP pieces to see if it would help increase survivability. But we quickly found out that it was simply unnecessary. Any Paladins want to jump in?

It’s times like this I wish I had a Holy Paladin on retainer somewhere for a consult.

In our guild we have 2 raider ranks:

  • Noob
  • Raider noob

The standard for raider noob in BC used to be that if someone had 90% attendance for 2 months and solid performance in raids, they would become a raider noob. However, since the release of wrath all of our recruits have been of exceptional caliber, now probably 23 or so of our 28-29 raiders all have very good performance and 90%+ attendance. This has been wonderful but leaves us with a problem with promotions, we can either promote almost the entire core of our guild to raider noob (as almost all of them have been here for 2 months+), but that would severely alienate the few who don’t make it up to raider noob.

We could increase the duration (which is what we have been doing), but that would only be a temporary solution. The last option I can think of is to increase the standard for raider noob (only our clutch healers, top 5 dps etc), but this would require demoting some of our existing raider noobs, which hardly seems fair as well (they are all good players). Any advice you have would be much appreciated.

Well, you’re in a bind. There’s no doubt about that. There is a way but it’s going to involve a lot of heart to heart talking with your raiders. Let them know that the time has come to restructure the guild ranks. Be honest with them about it. The good ones will understand and won’t mind the change in title anyway. A rank is a rank is a rank. It’s just a label. It’s how you treat the players that count. Let your guild know what the problem is. Heck, you could make a third tier rank that says Ubernoob that’s nothing but the best and the brightest. But then you’re just adding on another layer on top of that, right?

Are you sure about the alienation problem or is that what you would feel? Remember that no WoW players are exactly alike. How one person could react to an event can be completely different to how someone else reacts. You can either axe all the ranks entirely (and set one unifying rank), set the ranks based on seniority (length of time in guild), or availability of raiding (my preference). A player that can’t make all raids is automatically a sub for me or if they’ve demonstrated inability to make all raids (or have disappeared for extended periods of time). Otherwise, everyone’s a raider. I run a tight ship with 3 other senior staff and a loot council.

At the end of the day, remind your guild about who they are and what they’re made of. You said it yourself. You have 28-29 skilled raiders with an impressive 90%+ attendance rate. A lot of guilds would kill for that. If they’re married to their rank and title to the point where they’re willing to quit over it, then maybe it’s time that they walk (which also solves your rank problem anyway since it’s one less person to worry about).

8 Questions Your Guild Should Ask Itself

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I have to share this. I saw an excellent post on Plusheal asking for advice about a fresh and new guild trying to find it’s legs (actually it was about how to democratically disagree, but that’s a topic for another time). One of the Plusheal acolytes, Caveat, replied with a great list of questions to help “reality check” your guild. Here it is!

  1. Do you have a clearly defined identity?
  2. Do you have a clearly defined schedule?
  3. Do you actually FOLLOW that schedule? (some of the best recruits we have had recently left a guild whose raid times started the same as ours- but while we start pulling within 5 minutes of that time, the other guild routinely failed to pull for 45 minutes or more. We went thru that stage, and figured out we were shooting ourselves in the foot )
  4. Do you have legitimate and fair looting system, with defined rules that are followed?
  5. Do you have a plan for progression?
  6. Do you have fun playing together?
  7. What is your vent environment like- are you foul mouthed teens or boring old geezers? (Each is ok, but appeal to totally different players)
  8. How are you with female players?

What would you add to the list? More importantly, how would you answer these questions about your own guild?

Image courtesy of OwnMoment

Bonus: More Matt and Wyn for Your Friday

As per the terms of NAFTA, since I interviewed Auz, it’s only fair that she gets to take a few shots at us as well.

Enjoy!

Also Wyn put up a new poll on the side from a comment that was made earlier applauding the increased Horde presence. To what faction do you swear your allegiance?

Do you consider yourself Horde or Alliance?

  • Thrall is my homeboy. (52%, 148 Votes)
  • I'm Jaina-licious. (48%, 137 Votes)

Total Voters: 285

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Is it Time to Quit Raiding? 16 Questions to Find the Answer

With the recent disbanding of Death and Taxes, it’s time for another moment of introspection.

When is the best time to retire? Or at least, go on a hiatus from raiding? While it may not be applicable for everyone and their guild. Here’s a few questions you’ll want to ask yourself before hanging up your armor and weapons for good.

  1. What are the goals I have for this game? Have I achieved what I set out to do?
  2. Am I even interested in raiding anymore?
  3. Am I getting personal satisfaction from raiding?
  4. How many raids have I attended in the last 60 days? How many mandatory raids have I missed?
  5. Do I have the time to dedicate myself to raiding so that I don’t hinder the progress that is being made by them?
  6. Am I satisfied with how raiding is being handled?
  7. Are my contributions being noted or appreciated?
  8. Did I give this guild’s raid groups enough time to stabilize and progress?
  9. Where does this Guild expect to be in raiding a month from now? 6 months from now? A year from now?
  10. Do I have conflicts with the leadership that cannot be resolved in a way I’m satisfied with?
  11. Will I still be raiding in 6 months or will real life activities take over? (School, work, etc.)
  12. Is this guild dying?
  13. Am I getting tired from raiding? Is it sapping my energy and cutting into my life responsibilities?
  14. Am I an asset to this Guild’s raid?
  15. Could I be doing anything else other than raiding right now?
  16. How will my departure affect the guild? Will they survive without my presence?

EDIT: I forgot to hit the save button. I wanted to add an extra note that this post was inspired by this post at Problogger. Don’t forget to attribute your posts if you borrowed the idea from someone. Stuff like not crediting the original source would’ve gotten me expelled.

Ask Matticus: Should I Leave my Guild?

Cathia recently responded to one of my latest posts in order to ask me an important question:

Hey matticus,im replying not because of iRaid but because i have an question,i role an holy priest myself and i have 1850 bonus healing but i still do kara and grulls only and i realy want more then that.Im waiting for my guild to go for 25 man raids but seems like is going to take more time before they start them.Should i leave them and adventure on an new guild or will that be incorect to them.Thx for your time

Well, you’ve just answered your own question. Your Guild will obviously want you to stay because your healing is an asset. But like you said, Cathia, you want to do more than what your Guild wants to do right now.

So what’s a guy to do right?

I was in your exact same situation almost a year ago. I was stuck in Karazhan and Gruul for about 3 months and I was getting tired and bored of raiding the same places. The first opportunity I had to depart the Guild, I took it and have never looked back since.

You can either stay in your Guild and raid unhappy or leave and try to find a new Guild that will satisfy your craving to raid. But do make your intentions known to your leaders, at least. Try to work out why you’re unhappy and what’s going through your mind.

I’ve got some bright readers here. Why don’t you folks chime in and let Cathia know what you think? Should this player leave for greener pastures?