Greedy Goblin

Monday, December 8, 2014

Random group progression raiding

I've returned to WoW because of the premade-random group raiding. This is a built-in feature where one creates a group and strangers can join it. This is the implementation of third party addons and sites that people used in the previous expansion.

However people claimed that this is just for alts, as "serious raiding" can only be done with a guild group. And of course here they don't mean "group of friends" (those who think that are dancing naked on the postbox), but a well-formed team with fixed schedule, where everyone knows the strengths and weaknesses of everyone and they work together like one unit.

Well, this is the first week, so everyone are progressing. And here I am with 5/7 normal and it's not the end of the week. I only raided 2*4 hours. Why did I get this far? Because raids are more like workplaces than sports teams. People don't really have to work with each other, they have to work with the mechanics. Don't stand in the bad and do your own job. If the others do it, it's a kill, if not, it's a wipe, but you can't really pick up slack for them.

Of course I don't question that topguilds move faster. But it has nothing to do with them being a "team". It has everything to do with them being well-selected and them playing a lot. They don't have to kick half of the raid after the first tries because they damaged less than the tank. Social guilds get to nowhere because they refuse to kick half of the raid, despite they are nothing but dead weight.

How good is 5/7 normal? I can't tell. What I can tell is that WoWprogress knows of 5538 guilds who killed 1/7 heroic. Which is harder than 7/7 normal. If we assume 20 raiders per guild, that's 100K people, 1-2% of the total player population. Until I get 1/7 heroic, I can't really see where am I among the players, but I can safely assume top 5%, since in last expansion only 2x more people killed 1 normal than 1 heroic boss.

However the point here isn't that I'm so good that 95% are below me. The point is rather that I'm not and still have top 5% results. Why? Because I don't bind myself to bad "friends" and boost them, wiping on the same boss until they learn not to stand in the fire. If someone fails repeatedly in my raid, I just kick him the hell out and the random finder will find a replacement fast.

Also, I can play in my own schedule. If I have a few hours to play, I can still raid 1-2 bosses, then quit the raid. These are impossible in a "team". Many good players lock himself out because they refuse to raid with "randoms". The random finder got its bad name because there are always horrible players or annoying punks, and you are stuck with them. In the premade-random, you can kick and replace them, keeping the good ones.

If you enjoyed WoW raiding and stopped because you couldn't keep fixed schedule or you got enough of the social aspect, you can return now. A few suggestions:
  • The only metric you can set is item level. That's horrible, but that's what we have. You should upgrade your gear with crafted and purchased items. The higher it is, the higher item level raids you get in.
  • Create your raids if possible. This way you can clear out useless people. Many raid leaders refuse to kick useless ones.
  • Fill up the raid to 30! This way a wipe doesn't cause failcascade. People don't seem to quit from raids with 20+ members and flee from small raids. You know, they are like lemmings.
  • Overstack with healers! The raids are lenient on DPS, only ask healers to respec if you hit enrage.
  • Same with tanks. A 30-man raid can have three or even 4 tanks and most tanking mechanic can be trivialized with one more tank. Like Brackenspore having two tanks and the add has a third.
  • Never-ever invite people with stupid names. They are - surprise - stupid!
  • Kick those who do childish stuff in raid, regardless of their DPS!
  • Stop raiding if you are tired. You can re-create it tomorrow!
  • Bring lot of Savage Feasts. People won't have food. You can buy them on the AH.
  • And the most important: it doesn't matter how hard you or your raid failed. As long as you don't give up, the random finder will fill you up with new people and you can try again.
Update: On Tuesday, 12 hours before reset, I killed heroic (old normal) Kargath Bladefist. I've never killed an "old normal" boss before on first week. Wowprogress says 9047 guilds did it, so I've made it to top 2%! Yay for - not me - but the random group raiding.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you want to quickly join those top 2% go straight for 1/7hc. Yesterday my guild spent around an hour on 6th boss normal then we went and one-shot first boss of hc.

Tithian said...

1/7 Heroic is far easier than 6/7 normal. The first boss is a pushover while the last 2 bosses have mechanics that can easily wipe even good groups (assuming you're doing it at the gear levels it's tuned for).

And since you don't need to clear normal to enter heroic, it isn't exactly a good metric (although you have to use somehting, I guess...)

maxim said...

What people do in challenge mode groups is ask people to whisper then a "Challenge Warlord" achievement and any specific CM achievements they have before invite.

Whispering a leader of the group you have signed up to requires right-clicking the group and selecting "whisper to leader", which is less than intuitive and in itself serves to root out complete noobs. Then you can judge if the person in front of you is competent by what CMs he did.

In raids, this will require more logistics, as there are 30 spots to fill, but is certainly possible.

Fidtz said...

I would imagine having a raid mod installed that can do some work for the raid leader will become a requirement for randoms in the proper end game.

I was in a very large guild once that was almost like random grouping and being kicked for not having xyz raid mod was the commonest thing.

Ulski said...

"Social guilds get to nowhere because they refuse to kick half of the raid, despite they are nothing but dead weight."

And in my experience, if you even bother to point this out then you'll get turned on. It sounds absurd that such bad performances get blamed on "bad luck" or "lack of gear" but it really does happen, and these people get furious if you point the truth out.

Back in the days of ICC, there were 'raiders' in my guild that were ToC geared and pulling 2K DPS. About 1/5th of the DPS they should have been doing for that gear level, and less DPS than a HC dungeon geared player should have been doing in Nax (~2.5-3K DPS). They also blamed their awful DPS due to a lack of gear.

And yet another excuse was not having the free time to play well. I took months out due to PC hardware failure, and even when I raided I was only playing something like 5-6 hours a week. The people who sucked? Something like 3-5 hours daily.

One of my friends these days forms raids using RealID / Battletag friends. Since he only adds people who are competent, raids tend to have a high success rate.

Anonymous said...

So you are saying I should in fact not join the group that advertises itself as: Pro raiders ony BIATCHHHHHHH, we are awesomesauce"?

Shandren said...

Not that it means anything to your point, but the new "normal" and "heroic" corresponds to the old "flex" and "normal" respectively. The new "mythic" (that isnt out yet) corresponds to the old "heroic".

This probably puts your numbers a bit off.

Unfortunately mythic wont be available on premade group finder (allthough you could probably custom it if you want), so its gonna be hard to compare your strategy with the mythic raid teams