What to do with a masochist guild?

[Kaiten]

Maybe they want to tackle the bosses as hard as possible?

This is literally the worst possible reason. If they want to be obstinate about strategy, tell them to get back into blues and attempt it. It's ridiculous to not attempt to do something that'll make attempts easier solely because of ignorance.

[Itisamuh]

I thought every raiding guild was a little bit masochistic.

[Deleted]

From what I see you're wasting time in a bad-mooded guild. Wiping 2 hours on a farm-content boss due to flawed tactics is worst thing imaginable for me. My guild is kind of opposite of yours, we raid 2 days a week (total 8 hours) and managed to kill 11/14hc without too much trouble - bosses usually down under 20 pulls, Thok survived 2 progress nights and 50 wipes. We tend to find most effective strategies like using double desperate measures on Protectors (Sun + Rook with interrupt rotation going on gloom) or the H dark shaman 3-tank tactic. Strategy is then well executed, we avoid RNG and other luck-based crap that prevent us from re-killing boss the following week. Thok kill was a perfect run, with no CR used during the fight and every raid member alive save for 2 people that died during last 2%.

Following your guild's mindset we should go into the fight without any gear equipped. There, we just made it harder (or plain impossible). Extreme example but that's how I see it.

[Senen]

• Killing Klaxxi Paragons in the hardest possible combination (Hisek left alive so long he starts 1-shotting people for example).
• Nobody picks up buffs from Klaxxi bosses.
• Having half the DPS spam AOE on Garrosh P1 adds that would just die to Iron Stars (total waste of dps).
• Pushing Garrosh phase transitions when there are loads of adds up and Ignoring Desecrated Weapons.

I don't see anything utterly shocking here.
We kill Hisek pretty late too and usually don't bother to pick buffs because they're rather useless in NM and some needs extra effort to make them work correctly.
For NM Garrosh, the dps in p1 is not remotely important so aoe is not really a problem. The only reason to focus Garrosh is if you want to transition earlier.
There are a lot of strats that ignore Weapons and just position the raid so that it doesn't cause any trouble. Also, if an Iron Star is being cast, you can transition to p2 with adds alive without any problem.

• Pushing Thok into green/poison phase when his HP was low enough to go straight to red/fire and kill it (unnecessary dots, takes longer to kill, extra chase phase).
• Having the raid focus on extra adds when Nazgrim is under 10% HP (ends up like 3 more waves when we could just kill the boss instead).

Here it's a problem of live decision making.
It's important for a RL to admit - after a wipe/kill - that he has made a poor decision.
It's also important that during a try, everybody follows the decision made by the RL, because even if it's a bad decision, it's better to act together and try to make things work that having half the raid follow the RL and half the raid doing otherwise. Do not argue with the RL during a try.

Anyway, it's up to you. If you really think your RL is bad and unwilling to question himself, you should leave.

[Thelxi]

Most decent guilds would actually want their raiders to come up with ideas and advice.. I would definitely leave them and look for a more progressed guild since you seem to outskill them anyway.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Always have a safe word.

[Osmeric]

How to deal with masochism?

(shrug) Beats me.

[Count Zero]

Well, if you hadn't mentioned the heroic Shamans attempts I'd ask if you were in my guild ... lol

[Deleted]

To be honest, one of the biggest reasons I haven't left yet is because I'm actually quite a casual raider, and it's hard finding a decent guild that raids on an acceptable schedule.

There are several good guilds on my server that I know would take me, but they all raid like 4 hours a day, 5 days a week and are full of elitist dickholes. That's why I'd prefer to improve this guild rather than leave.

I know exactly how you feel, but judging by your post you have done everything in your power. You can't make a guild improve that doesn't try. I have been in that situation and once you hit that certain point, the guild just won't improve. It'll start to fall apart unless you perform DRASTIC changes. Also don't believe that you just need a tier to adjust.

[Lavathing]

Although I understand the frustration of potentially being ignored as an officer, some of the things you are stressing over are not a big deal and/or actually make sense.

Killing Klaxxi Paragons in the hardest possible combination (Hisek left alive so long he starts 1-shotting people for example).

Although I don't recommend it for normal, you leave Hisek up for quite a bit in heroic, and he never "one shots" people randomly. People are just not soaking aims properly. You should be killing Hisek early on normal, but if you dont, it isn't something to get angry about and people should just get better at soaking aims. You should only need ~4-5 people per aim at most.[/quote]

Nobody picks up buffs from Klaxxi bosses.

Our raid didn't bother with half the buffs when we were doing this on normal either. Even on heroic a lot of the buffs are pretty meaningless as well. On normal, the buffs only provide a SUPER minor DPS increase and/or SUPER minor utility.

Having half the DPS spam AOE on Garrosh P1 adds that would just die to Iron Stars (total waste of dps).

You're incorrect about it being a total waste of DPS. For example, someone like an elemental shaman or destruction warlock is not losing any single target damage on the boss by AoE'ing, so there is no "waste" of DPS at all. Additionally, many classes do MORE single target damage to Garrosh when AoE'ing. Again, for example, by AoE'ing the destro lock has full embers and should get a TON of havoc'd shadowburns onto Garrosh. To be honest, telling people not to AoE on Garrosh and just let Iron Stars do the job seems very strange and I wouldn't ever recommend that. Not sure why this one got you upset at all.

Pushing Garrosh phase transitions when there are loads of adds up and Ignoring Desecrated Weapons.

I'm not fully understanding this one. If you're talking about the "heart phases", you know thats on a timer not a HP percentage right? The only other transition it could possibly be would be the P2->P3 transition. In which case its not a terrible idea to just push him into that phase ASAP, regardless of adds. In fact, you get extra time to clean up adds by pushing him into transition and allowing him to do his RP. Finally, depending on your DPS and strategy, and when in the fight you're talking about, you can ignore weapons. Generally our group just ignores the last few weapons of P2 to push Garrosh to P3 before we get an empowered whirl. Finally, there is obviously no reason to DPS weapons in P3 unless you need to dot them up for procs.

Nuking P2/P3 adds on top of eachother - and tank AOE'ng and healing himself as they spawn so all the adds agro and stack on him.

The first legitimately dumb thing here. All adds should just be ignored by DPS in P3, burning Garrosh. However, the tank should kite/hold them away from the boss because a lot of cleave is passive these days. (ie. cloaks)

Nuking heroic Dark Shaman at the pull so they put Iron Totems down while the wolves are still alive (tombs everywhere, extra prisons).

No, just no. Iron totems start at 95%, no even if you had them do some ridiculous "single target the wolves and ignore the boss" strategy, passive cleave would likely bring the bosses to 95%. This is a pretty crazy thing to be mad about to be honest. Why wouldn't you AoE nuke at the start and do huge boss damage while still killing the wolves quickly? Asking people to single target the wolves is just wasted DPS that the bosses could be taking. Additionally, tombs just dont spawn randomly, have your ranged be smart and be standing somewhere that you'd like tombs to be dropped. Also, prisons are easily dealt with, just use a CD or put an absorb on them.

Pushing Thok into green/poison phase when his HP was low enough to go straight to red/fire and kill it (unnecessary dots, takes longer to kill, extra chase phase).

What? This makes no sense. Why on earth would you ever want to go straight to fire phase? This phase is the most damage, lowest DPS, and most annoying phase of them all. You should be trying to kill Thok in the frost/poison phase so you never have to deal with fire. Your logic here makes no sense. You say it takes LONGER to kill Thok in poison phase than fire phase? How? In poison you stack up and just DPS, in fire you need to be constantly moving. Additionally AoE healing in fire phase is nearly impossible. In fact, early in this tier on heroic Thok you avoided Fire almost entirely. When you got to fire phase you immediately stacked up and pushed him back into the fixate phase to kill him. Fire is never good, I'm not sure why you think it is?

Having the raid focus on extra adds when Nazgrim is under 10% HP (ends up like 3 more waves when we could just kill the boss instead).

You're right on this one, that is just stupid. At 10% you should just have healers and one tank go to where the adds spawn, keep them locked down, and have DPS burn the boss.

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Not trying to be mean here, but overall it seems like you're mostly getting angry/upset over things that are so minor and don't matter or things that you are legitimately wrong about. In the latter case, it would make sense why they might be ignoring some of your suggestions. Finally, even if all of your suggestions were actually factual and helpful, it is ultimately up to the raid leader. Even as an officer, the raid leader has the final say. If you do not like that, perhaps it is time to find another guild/make your own raid team. Best of luck!

[Netherspark]

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[Darkfriend]

You either accept that people won't change and stay, or find a new guild.

You always ask yourself, "Do I want to raid with these people, or go elsewhere?"

Example, my 10m guild tends to have attendance issues due to IRL. But we're friends, so I stay. It's more fun raiding with them.

So do you like raiding with these people? Stay and accept it may not change.

[clevin]

They're likely ignoring you because of how you phrase things. Even if it's somewhat even-toned, the continual "I know a better way..." will be rejected by some people even if it's better. At this point I'd do two things in your shoes:

First, talk to the RL (ideally on vent) one on one and say something like "Hey, I'm not trying to be that guy, but I've seen some tactics that I think are easier and would help us avoid wipes... but it seems like we don't ever try this stuff. What's up?" and then LISTEN. Don't start arguing right off, listen.

Second, if the RL is just obstinate and insists on doing things that you feel are wrongheaded, leave and find a guild that fits you better.

I will say that HOW you give ideas is a huge determining factor in whether they're accepted. "Hey, mind if I make a suggestion...?" is one way. "Dude, we're wiping a shit ton and I know a better way" is another. Guess which way will be listened to?

[Netherspark]

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[MisterMine]

I've been in this guild for about 5-6 months now, and there's a recurring problem that won't go away: They seem to always do everything in the hardest possible way and won't listen when I try to show them a better and easier way to kill bosses.

At first when I joined I was a little more experienced in the current content so I gave advice, explained tactics and they were happy to follow that. They even made me an officer right away, but as we've moved into SoO the strategies they've been implementing are often badly flawed and executed pooly. People ignore some tactics and otherwise make the fights harder just to pad the dps meters. We stack in stupid positions, waste cooldown uptime, waste time on unnecessary movement and generally never take advantage of anything that would help us.

Generally, the raid leader either doesn't understand alot of the tactics, or just insists that we follow some useless plan that makes it harder. It's not that the players are bad, they just do things in this stupid way,

Some examples of the kind of thing they do all the time:

• Killing Klaxxi Paragons in the hardest possible combination (Hisek left alive so long he starts 1-shotting people for example).
• Nobody picks up buffs from Klaxxi bosses.
• Having half the DPS spam AOE on Garrosh P1 adds that would just die to Iron Stars (total waste of dps).
• Pushing Garrosh phase transitions when there are loads of adds up and Ignoring Desecrated Weapons.
• Nuking P2/P3 adds on top of eachother - and tank AOE'ng and healing himself as they spawn so all the adds agro and stack on him.
• Nuking heroic Dark Shaman at the pull so they put Iron Totems down while the wolves are still alive (tombs everywhere, extra prisons).
• Pushing Thok into green/poison phase when his HP was low enough to go straight to red/fire and kill it (unnecessary dots, takes longer to kill, extra chase phase).
• Having the raid focus on extra adds when Nazgrim is under 10% HP (ends up like 3 more waves when we could just kill the boss instead).
• Generally ignoring anything that would make our lives easier and just doing the opposite instead.

I've always been vocal in trying to explain how to make things easier (never shouted or been condescending, just saying "hey we should do x for y reason") and while they used to listen, now I can tell they've gotten pissed off and started ignoring me (literally acting like I never said anything).... so now we're in the position where they are just making every boss harder for no reason.

We've (somehow) managed to kill 6/14 heroic bosses now, and I think this is the source of them ignoring me, believing they don't need my advice, but these were nearly all harsh and messy kills that barely made it, some we only killed once. Most weeks we end up abandoning some heroics and spend 2 hours+ wiping on normal Garrosh...


I don't really want to leave the guild (seems rude), how can I make them listen without sounding like an arrogant prick? Or am I just expecting too much? I spent most of my time in Wow raiding under the leadership of a highly skilled and knowledgable leader, so I've never had any issues like this before.

you need to realize the only masochistic person in this guild is you for sticking around...

[clevin]

Well this is really the issue. Before, I'd ask to make a suggestion, and they'd ask what it is, and then decide if we'll do it or not. But now I either get immediately dismissed, or there's just this *sigh* over vent, then they carry on like they never heard me.

The way I phrase things is just saying: "We should position ourselves here instead of there, so it's easier to do x", or "if we do this we can avoid y".

At this point, then, if I were in your shoes I'd simply find another guild for WoD and in the meantime not bother giving any feedback to this guild. Keep raiding if you want, stop if it's too frustrating.

Keep in mind that it's possible that the way you gave feedback in the past has led to this now, so think about how you did that in case you want to give feedback to a different group in the future.

Also, honestly, as a former RL it can be wearing to ALWAYS be told that my way of doing something was wrong and there was this other way that it should be done. I'd listen, but sometimes the other way wasn't necessarily better, it was just different or the player was caught up in the "But [some world 10 guild] does this so we should!" cycle.

Keep in mind that it's possible the wipes aren't a tactical issue at all but due to mistakes in execution.

[MisterMine]

Not talking about Aim - Multishot hitting people for 400k because his buffs are so high. Plus leaving Xaril and Kaz'tik alive for ages -- basically killing all the easy bosses right away, and letting the more dangerous ones stack up damage buffs.



Why? You have the option of making yourselves stronger or more effective just for right-clicking something, but refuse to do it? That's not really any different than not bothering to enchant your gear.



It's spamming damage on things that will die whether you do it or not, when you could be attacking the boss instead. You seriously believe that AOE'ing the boss does as much damage to him as single-target? It's a waste of time.



No. I'm talking about pushing him into phase 2 when a wave of Warbringers has just spawned, and pushing him into phase 3 when there's a bunch of Sha adds up and at high HP. And I mean ignoring Desecrated Weapons in phase 1 and 2, sometimes we have three axes up in the middle of the room, covering our stack positions.



we do not use that strategy - the Tank/leader doesn't believe in kiting the adds, and half the dps just nuke them wherever they are.



Because there's no reason to put unnecessary prisons and tombs on people just to put big numbers on the screen.



That is my point - they don't listen and do not position themselves. They drop tombs loosely around the areas we need to be clear.



The Fire phase gives the whole raid a damage buff, combined with hero/bloodlust you can kill Thok much faster and avoid further phases. Fire patches are a joke and there's no need to slather us in dots that the healers struggle to dispel properly.




When dozens of "minor" things are stacked on top of eachother and for prolonged periods of time they are no longer minor. My point is these fights are largely about control, which is not being exercised. Efficiency is being rejected. The end is that we have the option of doing things to make raids easier and smoother, but refuse to do it.

In the end this is just a sample of my raiding life, you're not the one spending hours watching flawed tactics fail while people die to foolish situations that should have never existed.

Why make things harder for no reason, especially when repeated wipes occur which could have been prevented?

this post is a blatant proof of why you guild doesnt listen to you : half of what you said here is soooo fuckin wrong yet you say it like anyone who would disagree with you is an idiot. protip : you are the clueless one here

on thok : you dont save lust for fire phase, you use it on pull. all trinkets and procs lined up + no one moving > small dmg buff you get in fire phase where everyone has to move. by a LOT ( same thing for nazgrim, lust on pull > lust on berserk stance)

on shamans : in the current state of the game, its literally impossible to kill dogs before they bosses get to 95%. literally every single class/spec has some form of cleave, and it would be retarded to not use it (for some class/specs its built-in their single target rotation too)

you talk about efficiency, yet pretty much all you say would make your raid be less efficient. the problem is not the strategies, theyre perfectly fine. the problem is the players executing them (ie : you ). if you dont agree with a strat and decide to not do it, you are the problem.

[Issalice]

Either speak with the GM or leave at this point. Sounds like you are just trying to be helpful and they aren't interested in the advice anymore. Persisting might just make things worse.

[Nivrax]

It's spamming damage on things that will die whether you do it or not, when you could be attacking the boss instead. You seriously believe that AOE'ing the boss does as much damage to him as single-target? It's a waste of time.

I agree with much what Lava said. For Destro locks, you gain dps by rolling Immo+RoF and spamming Chaos Bolt into boss, and then Havocing shadowburns onto him.
For Dark Shaman, by not cleaving all bosses you prelong fight and make certain classes (Combustion spread) pretty much worthless because so much of their damage coming from opener. Longer fight = more chances of screwups and wipe to enrage in lower gear/lost players. We had plenty of wipes on this boss to everything, despawning, guys up on hill failing on something, guys standing in poison in lower area, not using cd on prison etc. But we NEVER had ANY problems with set of tombs. And both lower group tank and healer are pretty vocal if something is making their job hard, this never was problem.
Dunno what you are raiding, but on 10 normal, Klaxxi buffs are worthless. You can maybe take Bloodletting stuff, Scorpion is most likely dps loss, Aim is personal dps loss and neglible boost if used correctly, Amber Prison should never need to be used (if you need it on normal, you need to sort people dps priority or positioning), Manipulator pet might as well summon minipet. I have no experience with healer ones. On heroic using them starts being viable/recomended.
On Thok you hero at pull (most dps gain due to trinkets and cds) or during bats (if hc), why would you want on excecute when you can have dead people and stacking/spreading is pain. If you can get Thok to fire phase and have hero avaible, blowing it early will make Thok dead before he chomps fire prisoner and heal (or let you transition immidiatly)


From my point of view, you focus too much on small things that doesn't matter in long run, which I'd guess had your guildies label you as whiner/grumpy and just ignore altogether. Whoring dps in p1 Garrosh and getting one set of tombs on Shamans should never wipe you, just let dps have their fun. Killing adds on <10% Nazgrim it's stupid I guess. Having adds clumped and aoed on Garrosh or leaving weapons while not running appropriate tactic, those are legitimate problems. Did you ask them after wipe, do they know WHY they wiped and how NOT TO wipe to same stuff?

Overall I would limit to those really raid-wipe mechanics and try to make them understand what caused them. If they don't get why add meleeing tank for close to million is making them wipe, then there is really no chance for them.

[Lorry]

No one ever thinks they are wrong. Your rebuttals above show that many of your strats/suggestions are equally/more flawed than the ones you are pointing out.

You are just as much to blame in this situation as anyone you are trying to blame. More so when you consider you are still trying to push your opinions when it's clear they are not valued.

Your nitpicking about such minor things shows that the issue is yours to fix. Stop trying to control everything and everybody when the only thing you can actually control is yourself.