ICC25 Roadmap -- Wall of Text

[Inori]

Forged Alliance Roadmap -- Wall of Text Below

Reading over the other threads, I have a better understanding of the issues people have with the current state of the guild and I want to assure people that their feedback is being read. For those reluctant to chime in on the forums, a sentence or two is fine. Even if someone else has stated a viewpoint that you agree with, you need to chime in so that your voice is heard.

What's going on with the 25 man raids on Thursday? -- I don't know. The immediate problem is that we don't have enough people. The recent adjustment we have made is to add a DKP incentive for showing up on Thursday (reference the other thread). We will see in a week or two if this makes a difference or not.

Why don't we run the raid weekly and/or VoA25 on Thursday? -- There is only one reason to not run the raid weekly on Thursday; we all got locked to the raid weekly (25 mode) before Thursday. There are only two reasons to not run VoA25 on Thursday; Alliance doesn't have Wintergrasp (the usual reason) and we all got locked to VoA25 before Thursday.

Wait, if we can run the raid weekly and VoA25 on Thursday, why are we running them on Tuesday? -- Because I am playing it by ear. In my mind, I am convinced that as a guild, we can clear the first wing plus Festergut on Tuesday if everything goes well.

What do you mean by everything goes well? -- Everything going well means:
1) We have 25 people ready to go at 8:00 PM. Raid composition is solid: 3 tanks + 6 healers + 16 DPS.
2) We don't wipe on trash.
3) We don't wipe on bosses.
4) We don't get distracted by an extra ICC25 weekly (Deathwhisper add quest, frost giant quest).

Wait, the four things you listed above sound very familiar? -- Yes, they are the various reasons for the past several weeks that we have not pushed to Festergut on Tuesday night. It takes a different form each week. I really am paying attention during the raids. One week I tried pushing for chain pulling the trash and this ended up causing trash wipes which held us back. One week, we had a mix up in healing assignments and had wipes on bosses. Several weeks, we've dealt with the extra ICC25 weekly quest. Just about every week, we were not ready to go at 8 PM with a complete raid.

So back to the original question, why are we sometimes doing the raid weekly and/or VoA25 on Tuesday; sometimes even before the ICC25 raid? -- Because I am playing it by ear. If we have 25 people ready to go at 8:00 PM, I will NEVER vote for us to do VoA25 or the raid weekly first. We WILL do ICC25 and push for Festergut. Whenever we don't have 25 people ready to go at 8:00 PM, I am resigned to stopping after Saurfang.

Why are you resigned to stopping after Saurfang? -- I have a mental note in my head that the fastest clear we have done of the trash plus first four bosses is 2 hours. I can go back through the WoL logs to double check, but the mental timer I have in my head is 2 hours. If we're still filling a raid with people at 8:30, I add 2 hours to that and that puts us at 10:30. That leaves me 30 minutes to clear more trash, kill Stinky, and give instructions to the raid so that we can do attempts on Festergut.

What will it take to change that mental note? -- I'd have to witness a raid where from the time we pull the first two mobs at the entrance to the death of Saurfang that is less than 2 hours.

With everything you've mentioned above, it seems that we're doomed to the pattern of clearing the first wing on Tuesday night, awarding bonus DKP for a no-raid on Thursday night, and getting nowhere. Do you have any other ideas? -- I'm hoping that the bonus DKP (or cancellation of a Thursday night TV series) will get more people to log on. If that doesn't happen, the next idea on the roadmap is to extend the raid ID every other week. We'll do a Tuesday clear through Saurfang on the first week, then do a Tuesday progression clear of Festergut and beyond on the second week. We'll open Thursday nights back up to 10 man raiding.

Hold on, that sounds like a bad deal. That means I'll probably miss out on easy loot, reputation, and emblems because I'm not doing the easy first wing on a weekly basis. -- I'm hoping that with the 5% raid buff, we can regularly clear Festergut, Rotface, Blood Prince Council, and Valithra to make it worth people's time. I'm also prepared for this experiment to fail.

So what happens if it fails? -- We resign ourselves to being a one wing guild. In Burning Crusade, we were always a tier behind (we were in Black Temple when everyone else was in Sunwell; we were in Hyjal when everyone else was in Black Temple). Being a one wing guild means that we've improved (at least we're not in ToC25 still)!

What about recruiting? -- Recruitment will always be a problem. I'd like to say that Forged Alliance has a niche -- it is a primarily adult/family guild that takes a stab at 25 man raiding. The alternatives are obvious. Progression guilds like the one on my old server had plenty of adults/family style people -- they just happened to be adults/family style people that could tolerate kids and obnoxious people that normally wouldn't be tolerated in FA. Blizzard also threw a wrench in things with 10 man raiding. A lot of adults/family style people are content settling into smaller 10 man guilds. You see these people all the time in PUGs -- they are the well mannered people who have a good attitude, but have guild tags that you don't recognize.

Why do you keep pushing for 25 man raids in the first place? Why don't we just free up both Tuesday and Thursday night for 10 man raids? -- We don't have enough healers to pull that off. As it stands, we struggle to put together 6 healers for a 25 man raid. It takes 3 healers to do a 10 man raid, so we're already backed into a corner -- that's two groups; three groups if you try to 2 heal it. As of late, it seems like more people are taking an interest in the tanking role, so there should be enough tanks, but the shortage are healers. The other reason that I push for 25 man raids is that I can only bring the guild resources to bear on 25 man raids. Forged Alliance does not meddle in the running of the 10 man raids; those raids are handled by the individual 10 man raid leaders. Raid leadership is not an arbitrary task -- those raid leaders have to put together a viable raid composition of tanks, healers, and solid DPS to do current content like ICC10. I will go out on a limb and say that those raid leaders will not go to the lengths of instruction, troubleshooting, analysis, explanation (this is different than instruction), coaching, and inclusion that we do for the 25 man raids. The biggest word there is 'inclusion'. In a 25 man raid, we take everyone in the guild that we can. We try to arrange the strategies and coach people that are having problems with the fight mechanics. In a 10 man raid, the individual raid leaders can pick from the alts of veteran players. To the extent that the 10 man raid leaders do not want to instruct, troubleshoot, analyze, explain, or coach, they can simply choose to bring the alt of someone who knows what to do.

Well, if we stopped running 25 man raids, that will free up my raid ID and I can just go with a PUG that gets further than Forged Alliance. -- That may very well be true. I haven't participated in an ICC25 PUG yet, but I believe that they will hit a wall in terms of time constraints. ToC25 is a one night instance. ICC25 is not going to be a one night instance for a while; I don't think a PUG will get much farther than what they can clear on just the first night (it will be a while before you find people willing to get locked to a partially clear ICC25).

I completely agree with Mark that labeling ourselves a 'casual' guild is not synonymous with lack of progress. The label 'hardcore' does not mean raiding 25 man content 6 days a week in order to do a full clear. Those 'hardcore' people can clear ICC25 normal mode in one or two nights -- they just happened to reach that point after a few weeks of practice that required more than two nights a week. A casual guild like ours should be able to clear ICC25 in two nights given enough time. We need to solve the attendance problem first, then I can worry about the performance problem second. Blizzard has done us a favor by giving us a progressive raid buff so that we don't have to strain as hard, but I'd like to have us meet them halfway by stepping up our own game.

Maybe the ultimate answer is to call off all 25 man raids until the zone buff is 30%.

-HP

[WarmApplePie]

You talked a little bit about recruiting and I'd just like to say one more time that I believe that it where our answer lies. We can not be the only guild in the entirety of the WoW servers that are adults with kids and other things to do that try to act mature in a casual raid environment. More people like us do exist out there. We've NEVER seriously gone and tried to look for them, or even advertised ourselves so that they can come find us. Sure we'll get a few annoying people or otherwise rotten apples, BOOT them. It's as easy as /gkick Noob. Chances are good if we recruit five then three will be keepers, we're only a few people short from 25mans on Thursday.

Raid performance is another issue. We have toons in our raids that aren't ready for ICC25. Either their gear or their skill aren't up to par. If you notice something and don't try and help them out you are hurting all of us. Nobody here wants to have their feelings hurt, and nobody here wants to do the hurting but by not coming prepared and/or coming without the proper gear/gems/enchants/skill is just demoralizing people and making the raids harder to fill. We're in a tight spot right now because we're short players. Recruit. Find three more to fill Thursdays, and another three after that to give us flexibility to bump the under-performers.