I am requiring my guild to do their spec's "Gold" Proving Grounds - thoughts?

[clevin]

TIL this thread is full of casuals that can't complete pg gold.

1) HAven't bothered with PG yet.

2) The OP's raid is casual. They were in FLEX.

Next time read the thread so you sound like less foolish.

[SoundOfGuns]

Even then, I don't see why this is such a big deal to some people. You can be refused a spot in a raid because of being a few ilvls short of the "standard", but not because you don't have at least some evidence of being up to a certain skill standard?

Good point, yet, as i said, Proving Grounds is not a suitable way to measure it. That's what World of Logs is for, and it is pretty good for that, as well as the observation of fellow raidmembers, depending how big your raid is. But i totally agree... iLvLs are a bad way to decide upon someones fate in terms of raid-chance too, but it depends. It's an obvious example, but i cant make somebody with a losely 465 Gearscore go with me into Siege of Orgrimmar when my goal is to rush through the first encounters to repeat it on heroics for example because you can bet that there IS a strong difference between a very good player in that gear, and a "just" good player in 510-530. Technologically. Proving Grounds is more about enforcing a playstyle in a (like i love to state) very strange situation, therefore doesn't say much about how the player will behave in a real raiding environment.

Proving Grounds sure says that there is a certain skill standart in you if you have it, and no doubt you have knowledge about your class' ability, but it doesn't mean those who don't, do not have this standart, nor that those that HAVE Gold still can keep up doing a good job during an actual Raid-Encounter.

[Tziva]

gonna stop you right there and say most 10 mans are usually looking for the last couple people to round out their roster, i imagine in a 25 man the roster changes up quite frequently - so maybe they don't know them, maybe they haven't proven themselves yet.

maybe they do have difficulty raid leading and diagnosing problems. who cares? it's their guild

people will either take the 15 minutes it requires to do them for the roles they play, or they'll whine, be bad, leave said guild and no one will care.

Kinda sounds like the raid leader cares to me, since he's asking for our thoughts on the issue.

Like I said, it's well within his right but I still think it's totally silly and especially not worth it if he's losing his raiders because of it.

[Halicia]

But if I'm doing an Excellent job already and someone tells me I must be required to do a silly "Proving Gorund" I would probably gquit too.

If you're doing such an 'excellent job' why would you want to waste your time wiping with people that can't pass bronze ?

In my experience, the people that say they do 'an excellent job, but cant be bothered', are NOT the ones doing an excellent job. They're the ones doing the bare minimum to avoid being replaced.

[Taedros]

Getting gold in proving grounds is not going to help you fix your issues in raid. That I am 100% sure of. The proving grounds do not have the same mechanics that boss fights do.

[Tankitbetter]

You do flexi... and want gold mode. Are you high? Or even better I bet you are that thing starting with "T".

You sound like terrible guild master and those people who left would be better without you. In fact I hope your whole guild falls apart for doing something so dumb.

The part where you asked them to step outside of raiding to use none raid related content to judge their ability as a raider.
Raids require TEAMWORK, can you test that with gold PG's? Can you Billy? HHHMMM?!!!!??!!
Right.

Best of luck building your new guild though.

This. You're just being lazy and using PG gold as a substitute for actually leading your raid.

TIL this thread is full of casuals that can't complete pg gold.

Hyperbole

As a raid leader myself, I think it's silly.

You already raid with them, why would you ask them to prove themselves in an unrelated context? If they are sucking at raiding, you should know this already and should talk to them to shape up or bench them. Don't force them to spend time they don't want to spend doing content they don't want to do to reach some arbitrary bar that you should, as raid leader, already know if they meet or don't.

Also you're a one night a week raid group and it sounds like you take whoever has the ilvl, which probably means you're doing flex but even if not, it's obviously a casual group. While some people raid casually simply because they can't put in the hours, most appreciate not having to meet outside requirements like capping valor or rep grinds or min/maxing spec, or having to go complete unnecessary tasks to prove themselves to their raid leader just because he felt like asking them to.

If people want to require it for new recruits, whatever, but it's pretty silly to force your existing team to do this.

More importantly, your request is damaging your guild. You've already lost people. Choose your battles. Is the gain from this really worth losing team members and fostering resentment? I'm going to guess no, mainly since there isn't really a gain.

I am choosing my battles. The people that I lost? 2 out of the 3 are people who consistently have problems in raid. These are players that have been worked with in the past. These players didn't ask for help - they got to silver, tried gold (what I assume is a few times - I do not actually know) and then gquit while saying awful things about the guild. They didn't ask for help. They just quit because their attitudes were bad.

People who are replying here are automatically assuming a few things

1: That the people who left were awesome raiders. (A side note: I will state that a few of the people having problems are generally good raiders. I've been mildly surprised that two of them have problems. However, I worked with them, gave them advice, and they prospered for it.)
2: That I am a mean person who hates his guildies.
3: That the class of players I am working with are the same class of players you work with.

The first two are automatically false. The 3rd is most likely false.

[thedingleberry]

Requiring gold for a 1 night a week raiding casual guild? You better be offering at least 3 nights if you want people to prove their skill. It sounds more like you are managing a guild that should be doing flex raids. Also, 1 night of failures on new tier bosses does not mean your group sucks. While heroic raiders can usually plow through most bosses, the average guild takes some wipes to get used to new mechanics. Just have some patience. If you are wiping on a single boss with no improvement for a couple week, then you should consider raising the requirements and benching people.

[Alvito]

Getting to certain points in proving grounds for some classes has zero carry over to raiding. Disc priest are switching to holy to advance and even with that holy priests aren't doing well. Each pure dps class has one spec that is tops and in most cases it isn't the one you would raid in. I am not trying to take away from people that have done well or anything like that but on my shitty druid I can breeze through the healing part even with gear below the item level nerf due to their mechanics.

[TheBaron87]

Your raid would learn more from spending 10 minutes on the forums than they would spending time doing proving grounds.

I don't think anything more wrong has been said in the history of these forums. Someone who knows how to play can learn a raid fight quickly, but there's no guarantee that someone that spends (in some cases I've seen first hand) MONTHS learning a single fight will come out any better of a player. The proving grounds is the best raid preparation tool this game has ever had, and I don't believe anyone unable to pass gold is pulling their own weight in normal or heroic raiding. The players that can't pass it are being carried, and they know it. They want to GO TO raids, so they can get loot, but they don't actually want to raid for the sake of it. Someone who honestly likes to raid for the fun of raiding would enjoy testing themselves at the proving ground.

If I were running my guild I would remove ilvl and experience requirements on players and just use proving grounds. It says a lot more about their skill than how long they've been farming LFR or getting carried.

If you feel that people are making elementary mistakes I would suggest you log a few raids (if you don't have proof they'll just deny it) and point out what's going wrong with links to the relevant logs. I think that telling someone what skill they are using improperly or exactly what fire they were standing in will be more beneficial to their performance in that fight than requiring them to do well in other parts of the game.

You're suggesting giving people directions to every single new place they want to go instead of just teaching them how to use a GPS. PG is a teaching tool just as much as a test, and if the entire raid is being asked to do it, INCLUDING the raid leader, nobody has any grounds to complain about being singled out. This isn't about improving performance in one fight, it's to improve performance in all of them.

[Airwaves]

Hyperbole

That is the best response you can come up with? We are right that is why.

If you were my GM I would tell you plan and simple I am not doing single player content in an MMO. If that is a problem then kick me because it would be your loss not mine.

[Masochist]

1) HAven't bothered with PG yet.

2) The OP's raid is casual. They were in FLEX.

Next time read the thread so you sound like less of an idiot.

so?

maybe they dont want to raid flex for an entire tier

you think anyone is actually ever just content with being a 10M N raid guild that only knocks out a few heroics every tier? thats the kind of guild i join whenever i come back to the game, because it's the best kind of guild. after an expansion or tier they either stop playing or push harder.

you don't get anywhere doing anything by sitting on your hands and waiting for a miracle to happen

well, that's not true. but let's just say, for the formation of the team that works together as a cohesive unit. that doesn't just fall into your lap.

Kinda sounds like the raid leader cares to me, since he's asking for our thoughts on the issue.

I meant, why should we care? It wasn't really a question specifically directed at you, but all the people making a big fuss over the literal 15 minutes it takes to acquire this achievement. I did it and it was fun.

[Deleted]

A lot of people are throwing around the "c-word" here.

Get this through your heads people:

Casual =/= bad.

The OP has 1 raid-day a week, and presumably wants the time to be quality over quantity. Best way to achieve that is to take a harsh stance on fuckups and make people who are normally online chatting and doing other shit actually go and improve their play.

If you are one of the people holding back the raid and wasting everyone else's time, you'll fail PG gold until you learn how to move from fire. It's all basic mechanics.

If you are one of the good players, PG gold should be a breeze and you'll be done with it in 30 minutes.

There is literally no way a person could bitch about this requirement unless they utterly fucking suck and can't get past silver. In which case, they should not have signed up to raid and waste everyone's time with subpar DPS and constant deaths.

Considering you can learn how to play, gear and enchant a class in 10 minutes and boss guides are like 5 minutes or less there is no weight to the "i'm casual" defence anymore. If you want to raid, however casually, then know your shit. Otherwise don't raid, because wasting everyone's time simply because you're lazy and would rather sit in Shrine on trade chat is bullshit.

[Airwaves]

There is literally no way a person could bitch about this requirement unless they utterly fucking suck and can't get past silver. In which case, they should not have signed up to raid and waste everyone's time with subpar DPS and constant deaths.

Oh I can bitch about it. Single player content has no place in an MMO and I believe it is a gross waste of dev time. That is why i have no interest in ever even looking at them let alone getting gold. Which I would get easy.

[Tankitbetter]

Oh I can bitch about it. Single player content has no place in an MMO and I believe it is a gross waste of dev time. That is why i have no interest in ever even looking at them let alone getting gold. Which I would get easy.

That is the best response you can come up with? We are right that is why.

If you were my GM I would tell you plan and simple I am not doing single player content in an MMO. If that is a problem then kick me because it would be your loss not mine.

It sounds more like you have a problem with Proving Grounds itself - not my requirement. Your comments are extreme and unhelpful. "I hope your guild falls apart."

It's why your comments are useless. It's why your presence here is useless. It's why I will be ignoring any more of your posts that contain the aforementioned problems.

[Deleted]

snip

Tbh, asking them to get gold on proving grounds is useless. Instead of asking them to waste time waiting for the next round to spawn, ask them to spend 10-15 mins watching 2-3 vids of the bosses you're progressing on.

[Archmage Alodi]

getting gold doesn't mean anything it's just easy for some classes and specs like frost mage. took me no effort and skill to get to endless wave 10 . proving grounds is just a bad joke :P

[Airwaves]

It sounds more like you have a problem with Proving Grounds itself - not my requirement. Your comments are extreme and unhelpful. "I hope your guild falls apart."

It's why your comments are useless. It's why your presence here is useless. It's why I will be ignoring any more of your posts that contain the aforementioned problems.

That isn't all I have said. YOU DO FLEXI RAID. You could do that shit naked it so fucking easy. The fact that you want them to even try PG in such a casual guild is disgraceful. That is why I hope your guild falls apart.

It also doesn't prove shit. It proves there good at proving grounds. Not team work which is what raiding is about.

[Floopa]

This has to be prized for the most silly idea I've ever read. Proving grounds just highlight which classes perform incredibly well at low gear scaling and teach players (especially healers) how to heal in a non-raid situation where the player is strained for mana and can abuse certain mechanics. In proving grounds as a Mistweaver I need to regen full spirit because the legendary meta doesn't function and no MTT is available. In a raid I can play with 6k~ spirit and end the fight on full mana. The two situations are completely different. Anyone who thinks, at least from a healer P.O.V, that it teaches healers how to play in proper raiding situations are delusional.

TIL this thread is full of casuals that can't complete pg gold.

TIL, scrub players from guilds who can't compete in the PVE race thinking casuals are bad.

[Tziva]

A lot of people are throwing around the "c-word" here.

Get this through your heads people:

Casual =/= bad.

I know casual isn't bad, and I don't think anyone is saying. But casual usually means limited time investment, at minimum, which means some people probably won't be too happy being forced to spend time doing extra stuff that isn't necessary. Casual also means, for a lot of casual raiders, that they won't be held to the same standards that might exist for more serious raids. It doesn't mean people are bad or have no standards.

The OP has 1 raid-day a week, and presumably wants the time to be quality over quantity. Best way to achieve that is to take a harsh stance on fuckups and make people who are normally online chatting and doing other shit actually go and improve their play.

That's totally fine. But I don't think that equals mandatory proving grounds, especially with people he already raids with. You can absolutely take that stance without ever forcing raid members to step into PGs.

He asked our opinions. I think it's unnecessary and a little silly in the circumstances, and in no way does that mean I don't think raid leaders should have standards or that casuals are bad or whatever it is people are interpreting disagreement to mean. I just think it's a silly requirement. *shrug*

[Deleted]

Single player content has no place in an MMO

In current WoW, single player content absolutely has a place.

Individual responsibility has never been emphasized in raiding more than it is in today's game. Things like combat resses are restricted so you can't afford to waste them, mechanics are much less forgiving and in most cases will cause a wipe because the bosses are tuned much more tightly than they were historically. You can't get away with a half-dead raid anymore, especially not in 10man where every member's contribution is much more meaningful.

People used to be able to hide in 40s, 25s and the easy mode 10mans of yesteryear. Since Cata, individual performance matters too much for your "solo skills" to be undeveloped.