9 raider and 1 raid capable member (later promoted) were online at raid start last Saturday. 2 tanks, 3 healers, 5 DPS. So we continued Ulduar (log) doing Hodir in 5 and Freya in 4 tries. Someone had to leave after an hour but another DPS shown up, so we could continue.
Some people were disappointed by this speed. It's not that just 2 bosses were downed in 3 hours. It's rather that only 12 tries (3 on Thorim) were done. Overall 1914 seconds was spent fighting, that's barely more than half an hour. I completely understand that such performance can make a serious raider go away.
I tried to remember downtimes, but besides a few (I mean 1 or 2) short AFK, there were none. We were discussing strategies, finding solutions. It took some time while I figured it out: it has to be this way! The whole point of the project is to simulate a group of casual but non-retarded raiders. We are new to the class/role. Among HC raiders, there is not much need for talking. Everyone knows what to do, everyone knows their class inside out, and everyone knows why they wiped last time (or at least those who should know).
We on the other hand are "new" to the class. I play mage about 4 hours a week. It's absolutely not a failure that the 1000 SP enchantshaman dropped healing stream instead of the 1850 SP resto or that the hunters did not instantly deterrenced blow.
A HC guild is doing a boss until it goes down. After the 30th try of Steelbraker I knew when to run, when to heal the MT, when the lightning soaker, where to run from the lightning to stay in range of my targets without thinking. I could do my optimal rotation with my eyes closed. On the other hand I haven't seen Hodir since 8 months, and I was healing. He was like a completely new boss to me. It's not a failure if someone does not know how far he has to stand from the animated edge of the icicle to not get hit, or when it's too soon or too late to run to the frost circle. He is there for the first time (for months). It wasn't a failure that we wiped on the first frozen blows. We had to figure out a survival rotation (hunters deterrence on every odd blow, rogue cloak, DK anti-magic on every even blow, I frost ward every blow).
It is progression. 5 tries for a progression boss are not too many. We wiped more times on the original Blue Ulduar, but we could make 25-30 tries in 3 hours since we knew each other and our classes inside out.
What I want to prove is that a group of casual raiders who are new to the class and new to encounter, have not farmed gear can progress. We can. Not like the HCs, 10 tries/hour without a word. With discussion, thinking, sometimes Alt-Tab reading what the ability exactly does (because "it's some kind of AoE I guess" is not enough). With 2 boss/week, Ulduar would last 6 weeks. Well within patch intervals. The content can be done by a completely casual group. As long as M&S are excluded.
Besides being a progression report this post is being a message to HC raiders, especially those who has/had an alt in Undergeared, but stopped coming with the feeling "it's much less pro than my guild, it's impossible they reach anything". This has to be this way. I know you are HC, and alien to the casual raiding. But the point is that casual raiding is possible and does not mean "social" raiding, where every retard is a "friend" and must be dragged over content and must not be criticized for having lower damage done than damage taken. If you find this goal worthy of support, come or come back to Undergeared. The atmosphere will be alien to you. You are HC, this is casual. But proving that an undergeared casual can clear the content is the only way to end the "success needs no life" nonsense. Success needs brain and brain only.
I'll be online around 19:00 (almost) every day with Koltas for Undergeared and Gevlon for ganking project. Also, every raider of Undergeared can invite. If you can't catch me, just send a mail and we find time.
PS to trolls: Adam wrote: "Dps have been steadily pushed into this corner where the only thing that matters is the numbers that you put out. That is what makes a good dps, apparently. So don’t be surprised when the dps stand in the goo and then expects to be yanked out by a priest. Because you asked them to stand there." I can't tell how true it is. After every post like this, I get a dozen of trolls "lol ur DPS is #@$@ lol, u suck". And again, my DPS was low. But not once we wiped because of enrage or healer OOM. We wiped because they couldn't keep us up with all the AoE damage. So check damage taken, and think! I can do much higher (Elder Ironbranch), but I rather be the last in a kill than #1 in a wipe. In casual raiding, you must improvize. This does not mean that keeping low damage taken and high damage done is impossible. I just can't do that, and choose the more important. If we'd have more wipes this would obviously increase as I practice more.
Some people were disappointed by this speed. It's not that just 2 bosses were downed in 3 hours. It's rather that only 12 tries (3 on Thorim) were done. Overall 1914 seconds was spent fighting, that's barely more than half an hour. I completely understand that such performance can make a serious raider go away.
I tried to remember downtimes, but besides a few (I mean 1 or 2) short AFK, there were none. We were discussing strategies, finding solutions. It took some time while I figured it out: it has to be this way! The whole point of the project is to simulate a group of casual but non-retarded raiders. We are new to the class/role. Among HC raiders, there is not much need for talking. Everyone knows what to do, everyone knows their class inside out, and everyone knows why they wiped last time (or at least those who should know).
We on the other hand are "new" to the class. I play mage about 4 hours a week. It's absolutely not a failure that the 1000 SP enchantshaman dropped healing stream instead of the 1850 SP resto or that the hunters did not instantly deterrenced blow.
A HC guild is doing a boss until it goes down. After the 30th try of Steelbraker I knew when to run, when to heal the MT, when the lightning soaker, where to run from the lightning to stay in range of my targets without thinking. I could do my optimal rotation with my eyes closed. On the other hand I haven't seen Hodir since 8 months, and I was healing. He was like a completely new boss to me. It's not a failure if someone does not know how far he has to stand from the animated edge of the icicle to not get hit, or when it's too soon or too late to run to the frost circle. He is there for the first time (for months). It wasn't a failure that we wiped on the first frozen blows. We had to figure out a survival rotation (hunters deterrence on every odd blow, rogue cloak, DK anti-magic on every even blow, I frost ward every blow).
It is progression. 5 tries for a progression boss are not too many. We wiped more times on the original Blue Ulduar, but we could make 25-30 tries in 3 hours since we knew each other and our classes inside out.
What I want to prove is that a group of casual raiders who are new to the class and new to encounter, have not farmed gear can progress. We can. Not like the HCs, 10 tries/hour without a word. With discussion, thinking, sometimes Alt-Tab reading what the ability exactly does (because "it's some kind of AoE I guess" is not enough). With 2 boss/week, Ulduar would last 6 weeks. Well within patch intervals. The content can be done by a completely casual group. As long as M&S are excluded.
Besides being a progression report this post is being a message to HC raiders, especially those who has/had an alt in Undergeared, but stopped coming with the feeling "it's much less pro than my guild, it's impossible they reach anything". This has to be this way. I know you are HC, and alien to the casual raiding. But the point is that casual raiding is possible and does not mean "social" raiding, where every retard is a "friend" and must be dragged over content and must not be criticized for having lower damage done than damage taken. If you find this goal worthy of support, come or come back to Undergeared. The atmosphere will be alien to you. You are HC, this is casual. But proving that an undergeared casual can clear the content is the only way to end the "success needs no life" nonsense. Success needs brain and brain only.
I'll be online around 19:00 (almost) every day with Koltas for Undergeared and Gevlon for ganking project. Also, every raider of Undergeared can invite. If you can't catch me, just send a mail and we find time.
PS to trolls: Adam wrote: "Dps have been steadily pushed into this corner where the only thing that matters is the numbers that you put out. That is what makes a good dps, apparently. So don’t be surprised when the dps stand in the goo and then expects to be yanked out by a priest. Because you asked them to stand there." I can't tell how true it is. After every post like this, I get a dozen of trolls "lol ur DPS is #@$@ lol, u suck". And again, my DPS was low. But not once we wiped because of enrage or healer OOM. We wiped because they couldn't keep us up with all the AoE damage. So check damage taken, and think! I can do much higher (Elder Ironbranch), but I rather be the last in a kill than #1 in a wipe. In casual raiding, you must improvize. This does not mean that keeping low damage taken and high damage done is impossible. I just can't do that, and choose the more important. If we'd have more wipes this would obviously increase as I practice more.
12 comments:
It's evil, isn't it ?
Being a raid leader. Such a social position for someone like you :)
You need to convice those people to continue raiding, even though they don't think it is fun. Even though they think that they could do better than you, but they don't want to try.
You try to convince their brains, but in the end they are there because of their emotions. They want to show the world what is possible, but right now there is still time to leave, w/o admitting failure. Admitting failure is something the kind of player who joined your project hates most.
Good luck with this project. You will feel like talking against a brick wall. And you actually are.
@Nils: those who are there because of their emotions have already left and I don't even want them back. Such people will never do anything new, exactly because they fear failure more than they want any success. Such people can be great grinders but never pioneers.
The success of the blue project is an interest of all HC raiders. Currently the widespread belief that "being successful = being no-lifer". It's not only affect the opinion of the socials (that can be ignored), but also cut them from reinforcements. I've seen many-many great players stuck in "fun" guilds because they don't think they have the time to be HC, despite they have everything needed to be one. Also, the "middle" playerbase believes that it's OK to cater the low-end as they just play less.
@Gevlon
I wouldn't say middle guilds set out to cater to that sort of player but being "Casual Hardcore" is something that is rarely achieved. Typically officers in such a guild don't enforce the kind of ruleset you need to create progress because "Hey, we're all pals here right?"
And lets face it. The people with better self discipline already play in hardcore guilds because they can balance their own playtime better.
I still intend to raid in the Undergeared project, and I want to see it succeed for the reasons stated above. But I have also said often that Saturday's are bad for me. Thankfully, due to the nature of the project, me not being around 80% of the saturdays is *not a bad thing*. Gevlon would just need 125 people like me to somewhat reliably form a 25 man raid. That won't happen, but it's still that 10 < 10.2. There's not much I can do about my attendance on Saturdays, considering I have HC Raid obligations as well during the week, and the girlfriend and friends demand social time.
If you are thinking about maybe joining but hesitant about your time, give the above a thought.
Also, funnily enough, the (semi)HC Guild I am in atm has by far the most social atmosphere of all I have been in. I think loot council plays a big role in this.
Chopsui.
I think what you are showing is something that even those M&S know is true, though they say otherwise because the truth is uncomfortable to them. The truth is that you can get far in the raiding game if you are concerned more with the challenge than with the gear rewards. Most M&S (and even a fair number of successful raiders) are too focused on gear rewards.
Prior to tBC, I was with my friends in our little casual guild, and about four of us used to join this other guild on ZG raids. This guild had more than 500 characters, yet they struggled in ZG and had problems with attendance for a 20 man.
So we joined them in ZG and we progressed. Eventually, about 7 or 8 of our guild would join 12-13 of theirs and we were killing most of the bosses in a single night. We knew that we were carrying at least five of them (one of them was a hunter whose DPS was lower than you could get from just using auto shot, I am not exaggerating) but we were having fun and seeing new content.
We were not surprised to find that once we had the early bosses on farm, the other guild had more than 20 people who wanted to raid ZG and were angry that our little guild was "taking up their spots" in the raid. Whenever any one of them managed to get into a raid, he would demand that we "kill boss X tonight" because there was a drop that he wanted.
If you let that kind of player infest your guild, you won't get anywhere.
I'm current 8/12 ICC10 heroic so I guess that makes me "relatively" hard core. Incidentally, which I don't really think so. We cleared the entirety of ICC10 (includes 8/12 heroic and some wipes on heroic bosses) in 4.5 hours.
This post, if correct, does give me some insight into the minds of the casual. And the accusation is that HC = no lifers. In case people are not aware, HC means performance expectations, preparation (watching vids, reading strats, consumables), skill, dedication, and importantly, no "AFK time".
The "HC style" of raiding has been proven successful and have stood the test-of-time. This "casual style" of raiding is slower because people devote less time on preparation.
Good luck in your project but I think you'll find it hard to convince HC players that this slower style of raiding is the way to go.
Also, as a healer, I disagree with your assessment of a good DPS. A good DPS needs to firstly put out the numbers. They walk a fine line between maximising DPS and playing too defensively. If everyone in the raid plays too defensively, healers will struggle and you may hit the enrage.
Gevlon, have you read Chastity's post on Righteous Orbs? I'd be fascinated to hear your response.
I think, unlike with someone like Markco, the back-and-forth between two intelligent bloggers like Chastity (or Tam) and yourself could be fantastic to read.
I am not sure where the "success needs no life" thing is coming from. I have not met a single person who has claimed that to progress in raiding requires this.
In fact, instance lockouts sort of prevent the no life thing. I know, I guess in theory you could try to wipe on the progression boss 30 times, but in practice, most guilds give it 5 tries or so, and then regroup for next week with some better strategies, and hopefully some better gear.
You are prevented from running the initial bosses again (for loot) by the lockout, so there is basically nothing else to do until next week. So its about 4-8 hours and you are done. That does not seem excessive per week.
Maybe world/realm firsts would require greater dedication, but certainly not normal raiding.
You can't watch the fire and DPS at the sime time as the rest of the raid? I say you would improve with time. Well, so could they - and i'm assuming that they're good players who know what to avoid and what to hit, unlesse they wouldn't be raiding with you.
On a different matter: why are we talking about your DPS? Have you installed the ePEEN addon?
@Gevlon
I can see what you are trying to do here and I completely agree. Its those elitist mentality of the need to have 5k gearscore to run TOC or ULD ruins the fun. Its more about the the players over the gear, but at the same time there will be a limit (i think you know this thats why you ran ULD instead of TOC 10).
All i can say is don't let those people kill the fun. Play the game and have fun.
BTW i looked through the logs and just wandered did you give the FM buff to anyone? If you did the logs didn't record it. But if you didn't this would help :D
Cheers, btw nice blog you have going here.
You really need to stop talking about what hardcore raiders do and don't do.
I recently interviewed a HC raider who have had 4 tries on a boss in 12 hours, because the guild didnt want to use attempts.
It's a fallacy that HC guilds dont spend time between wipes just wondering what happened and what can be done again, especially when working with limited attempts.
Just folleowed a link here from a guildy
You guys are awesome - I'm all BiS & min-maxed, but you knw what, what you're doing sounds MUCH more fun XD
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