When to call a heroic raid
by Allison Robert 
Apr 3rd 2010 at 8:00PM
It's easy to cancel when you know for sure that there's no way it's going to happen (e.g., if you're looking at a half-empty raid, or the heal team has decided to play hooky en masse), but for us the trouble is usually in that ill-defined area between what an undermanned raid can do and what everyone would rather be doing. If you're missing a few DPS for a normal ICC clear, that's not a big deal, particularly if you're using the 10% damage/healing/health buff. However, not having those DPS for heroic attempts (especially for tougher heroic bosses like Sindragosa and Putricide) is basically a death sentence at this point. The question then becomes, is it worth it to clear the content on normal so the night's not a total waste, or do you cancel the raid, bank on better attendance the following night and hold out for a kill that may not even happen?
For us, the answer is usually the latter, and I'm wondering how other people deal with this (apart from recruiting for a bigger bench). While attendance has been always been a thorn in raid leaders' sides, the normal/heroic mechanic in Icecrown content's resulted in the seeming absurdity of postponing a raid when we're missing as few as two heavyweight DPS. Nobody likes to see a raid night wasted, but it's also no fun to look at that Deathbringer's Will that just dropped and think to yourself in agony, "Maybe if we'd waited a day, it could have been the heroic version."
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Artificial Apr 3rd 2010 8:17PM
You can always just shard the inferior version if you get heroic version the next night.
Pyromelter Apr 3rd 2010 8:19PM
Except this isn't TOC. If you kill saurfang on normal tonight, you can't do him on heroic tomorrow night.
Daniel Apr 3rd 2010 8:29PM
It seems to me that your basic problem is seeing failure as failure rather than as a learning experience. First, if you keep delaying the raid then all that does is encourage people to delay the raid. There is no penalty for not raiding. Imagine if you were to do the raid and get it? Boy, would those slackers feel left out. As it is, you're letting the slackers control the raid schedule which I always think is a bad idea.
But let's say you go anyway and wipe. At least you have learned something. Learned more about how the fight works, more about how to push your class to its limits, and best of all you got to do what you wanted to to.
It just seems to me you are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good and that is creating perverse raiding incentives in your guild.
Allison Robert Apr 3rd 2010 9:10PM
I think there's a really good point there about the degree to which the attendance or non-attendance of even a few key parties is dictating the content the guild does, but in defense of the people who are out, I would decline to characterize (most of) it as slacking. Like many guilds, we have a forum specifically set up for people to post out in advance of a date they know they can't be there, and our raiders are generally good about dropping a line.
Consequently, we know in advance if there's a troublesome date coming up and, say, one of our warlocks is going to be working late, and one of our retadins is going to be traveling, and one of our hunters is going to be at a family function. If you've got 2 or more 10K+ DPS players who can't be there, that does change the landscape while you're evaluating encounters.
In general our attendance is actually very good (particularly considering that we're in the waning days of an expansion, and historically that's never been a great time for raiding guilds), but ICC heroic -- even with the 10% buff these days -- is still tuned around fielding a full raid. Or, to put it another way -- we know we can 23-man heroic Lana'thel, but 23-manning heroic Sindragosa isn't in the cards.
Attendance also changes how we approach particular fights. If 2-3 ranged DPS are out for the evening and we're running melee-heavy, then Deathwhisper and Blood Princes are going to be a friggin' nightmare. And, as much as I agree with you that there's still something to be learned from encounters on which you're running a less-than-ideal raid makeup, it's an incredibly demoralizing and unhappy experience to keep wiping on stuff you've one- or two-shot in weeks past, and the bite is doubled if you're "wasting" heroic attempts on Putricide, Lana'thel, or Sindragosa.
So, because you can't do both the ICC normal and heroic versions concurrently, the ultimate question is -- at what point do you say it's just not worth it to raid at all? Or, failing that, switch to normal and swallow having to shard gear right and left?
toddcore Apr 3rd 2010 9:47PM
The demoralization factor is key. It's easy for people who have never had to organize raids on the level Allison is talking about to throw around "easy answers" like doing the encounter on normal difficulty or chain wiping.
The first mistake many people make when formulating such assumptions is that the guild in question is similar in any respect to whatever guild(s) the person making said assumptions is familiar with. A guild who's attempting Heroic Lich King probably doesn't have a great deal to learn from 18 or 20 wipes on Deathbringer, and 3-4 hours of play isn't going to greatly increase the proficiency of players of that caliber.
The real answer here is that the best solution is different for every guild. If you have a guild of people that would *rather* wipe for 4 hours than not raid at all that's a fine solution. If you have a group of people who would resent being forced to wipe all night on content they've already learned and completed then you're likely better off giving them the night off. If you're not intimately familiar with your group's unique preferences you can easily make what was simply an inconvenience into a truly unpleasant situation.
There is no single answer to a problem like this. Everyone has their own goals and the best solution will always be dependent on what those goals are, both as individuals and as a group.
Daniel Apr 4th 2010 1:07AM
Allison. I used the term slackers not to reference the idea that the people missing the raid were being lazy but that they were slacking in the eyes of what the guild wants to accomplish.
The fundamental fact of the matter is that the people who are missing the raid are leaving other people in a no win situation. The only thing that will breed over time is resentment. I comprehend that you wish to be kind and understanding about the reason people are missing the raids. But how far are you personally willing to bend? How often are you willing to accept suboptimal results in your evening of game playing so that others can achieve optimal results in their non-gaming life?
I'm not saying that it should be all about you; but it shouldn't be all about them either. I think that in a healthy guild the question you ask is not relevant. Maybe I'm reading too much into your comments but as I see it your question about about when to call a raid is really just a fill in for the real question in your heart: why are you in a guild that's not meeting your needs.
Allison Robert Apr 4th 2010 3:30AM
I genuinely like the people in my guild, and I've been playing with many of them for years now, so for me this doesn't proceed from the "F*** this place!" impulse. Honestly, there's really no deeper motive here than just some thinking out loud on the issue of what's best for a guild when a few evil stars align and the raid's in an awkward place relative to the difficulty of the content it's doing. However, rereading what I've written does make me wonder if it's coming off a bit more urgently than that, though, and I apologize.
To put it in more reasonable perspective, I would estimate we wind up canceling a raid perhaps once every two to three weeks, and what usually happens is we just regroup the following night with better attendance and do the content we were going to do anyway (we're 9/12 heroic ICC). This does, however, have the effect of limiting the amount of time we have to push heroic ICC content or doing wonky things to raid composition even with a full raid. So that brings us back to the original premise of the article, and the question on whether guaranteed frost badges/tokens + a speedy clear is worth the quite-likely possibility of sharding most normal-mode drops and not getting a heroic kill that week. The answer probably depends on the guild and how long they've been clearing normal ICC.
For us, there's generally a bigger payoff in saying, "Screw it," going to go PvP or just play alts, and coming back the following night. I think it speaks to how raiding has changed between BC and Wrath, really -- in BC this choice didn't exist, and the only question was whether your guild could clear the content, period. Then again, I recall pre-nerf Sunwell having some pretty stringent raid composition requirements too, to the point where no shaman on a given night resulted in another "Screw it" scenario. This problem isn't *that* new.
It's discouraging if you don't have the people (albeit much more so if they're not expected absences), but to be frank, players aren't responsible for the encounter design that makes certain raid comps an unfortunate necessity. To put it another way, Frank-the-Hunter might be unintentionally putting you in an awkward spot because he's going to a birthday party Wednesday night, but Frank's not responsible for the encounter design that makes running another melee DPS on heroic Blood Princes such a slum. So I honestly don't see much point to resenting people for unavoidable absences, particularly because we stress that RL > WoW.
Knob Apr 4th 2010 5:48AM
You say you want to explore other options than recruiting a bigger bench? I'd say that recruiting a bigger bench is the most efficient cure in terms of the guild's longevity. Most of the time people don't want to over-recruit since they don't feel comfortable leaving people on the bench. I sympathize with that and I admit I have been guilty of that too when I was the GM of a raid guild in TBC. The consequence was the guild disbanded near the end of TBC and I'm now a regular member of another (and boy do I love being just a regular member!)
It's heartening to know that the GM/officers/RL do not like benching people since it seems unfair, but unfortunately there'll always be people who'll take undue advantage of it and continue holding back the guild because they have nothing to fear. It also puts a sense of entitlement into the same people since they feel like the raid/guild will not be able to function if they're not around. This'll lead to more problems down the line.
The best thing to do is to create competition among spots by recruiting. When someone knows that they'll be replaced if they don't show up or show up and under-perform, you'd be surprised how their "RL emergency" sorts itself out. I'm not saying that real life is less important, but if you had a real emergency in real life you probably wouldn't care too much about losing a raid night or two.
Now I know recruiting can be tough and I always chuckle when guild members ask the guild leadership on why they aren't recruiting (like raiders are available in a tree and the guild management can just pluck them out), but it starts by posting on the realm forums, the official guild recruitment forums (both Horde and Alliance for the x-factioners), the MMO-C forums, the WOR forums, Wowprogress...anywhere and everywhere there's a guild recruitment factility.
Competition is the best cure for slack. Embrace it instead of running away from it.
Mak Apr 4th 2010 11:58AM
I think this is also an issue with how few of the bosses in ICC are optional. As in you can what, skip VDW if the door is open? (We've had nights where it is, and nights where it isn't.)
In Ulduar with your hard-modes, at least you could skip a few. And there were more optional bosses (though many of them did not have hard-modes). If ICC had more optional bosses they you didn't have to clear to move on to the others, it would allow you to bite the bullet and skip a few heroic versions while leaving a few up to come back to later.
Ethan Apr 5th 2010 1:34AM
You're right that no-shows are one of the biggest problem any guild has, to say nothing of people that only show up for farm nights and never seem to be able to make it on the day you do Professor or LK or whoever the next big hurdle is.
People that are doing heroic ICC are on a different level. Remember, this article really only applies to the top 1-4% of guilds*, which most likely doesn't mean either of us.
*according to http://wow.guildprogress.com/Icecrown_25 and http://wow.guildprogress.com/Icecrown_10
Anathemys Apr 3rd 2010 8:56PM
Well, if you're actively looking for members, or know another guild who's under-staffed, you could just run on normal as a trial period.
Always sounded good to me.
EasyAnswer Apr 3rd 2010 9:01PM
Well, its basically a matter of if you really need that ~10% boost in the item. If you need a major upgrade for your gear, then go normal. If your gear is 1337 and you just want that extra boost, then get some friends to go for a heroic run.
Pebbles Apr 3rd 2010 9:51PM
Leadership of the guild master and officers is critical in this sort of situation. It is patently ridiculous that an end-content progression guild makes no progress in months, solely due to lack of leadership. Things come up that can keep anyone from making raid every night, but when it is the same people every week and they only make Tuesdays consistently, commitment to guild progression comes into question. When there are no consequences for this kind of habitual slacking, the dedicated raiders are the ones who suffer.
Succulent Apr 3rd 2010 11:32PM
Yeah, it's just difficult applying consequences.
You don't want to say to someone you consider core "You're raid banned for a week" because then you're screwed for a week anyway. What do you do? Limit their loot? Then they might not show up because their loot is limited.
It's really difficult. Unless you have people fighting for spots in raids, giving a consequence for negative actions is hard.
Gousuke Apr 3rd 2010 11:23PM
My guild has the big issue of attendance. The first 10 man group is ALWAYS on time, every single week. They have consistency, so there's no relearning the encounters. I'm in group 2, which has never been consistent since the patch hit. We are always getting different people, some of which can't adapt to the rest of the group, meaning we get knocked back a notch by wiping in the plague wing again when we one shotted it all last week. It really is a pain when we get to sit and see the other group get to Lich King when we only recently killed Putricide. Only 3 of us are actually consistent every week. :(
Lorne Apr 4th 2010 7:28AM
Sounds exactly like my guild. You dont happen to play on Thrall-US do you? XD
Succulent Apr 3rd 2010 11:29PM
My guild has been having this issue recently, it's really irritating.
We wanted some tries on Arthas, as we've been doing pretty well and we just needed some fine tuning, but there's always a problem. Like a missing healer or a missing OT or whatever and it just keeps getting pushed further and further back...
The worrying thing is I've already noticed some people saying "It's just gonna be pushed back again" which can lead to people not showing up which means it gets pushed back and so on. Then you're dead in the water.
Slackers are highly annoying. People who just decline because they don't feel like it at that very moment they sign or they want to level another character or whatever or people that sign and don't turn up. Why? All you're doing is wasting 9 or 24 other peoples time. I for one, have to make sure I have this slot available, so it's a massive chunk of my evening wasted if the raid doesn't happen.
Sure it's a game and it's about the fun. But if you join a raiding guild that's making some serious progress, you make a commitment there.
Adoisin Apr 4th 2010 11:15AM
My guild is a 10 man casual raiding guild. As a guild leader, I let things get too casual. We have been growing recently, and trying to help new 80s gear up enough for some raids like ulduar before we take them into ICC. As a result, my core ICC group feels their spot is promised to them, regardless. This weekend, as I started the raid, 2 of them were in battlegrounds, and 3 of them were running heroics when the raid was due to start. This was not the first time this has happened, so I finally said enough was enough.
We took the 'standby' folks who were not really geared. Three of them had never even set foot in ICC before. Granted, we did not do it on heroic mode, but we were able to get the first wing down with only a couple of wipes. Our undergeared folks got a few nice items as well. They were excited to be able to be included, and the gear was a huge bonus. Plus the "core" folks finally figured out they are expendable, especially when you have several other people waiting on them to "just finish this one thing."
A few of them pouted about it, but we have the same raid times every single week, on the same days. It isn't like it's a spur of the moment thing. If they want to go next week, they will have their gear enchanted, gemmed, have flasks, food, whatever. It is unreasonable to expect 9 (or 24) other people to wait for you to do what you should have done already. If you cannot be responsible enough to take care of your own gear or whatever, how can an entire raid expect you to be responsible enough to handle whatever role it is you need to be performing in a raid?
Maxpowr Apr 4th 2010 2:16AM
This is why on our guild website, we have an availability forum and members are required to post if they can't make it. Even if the reason is not really legitimate (aka too tired to raid), at least it will give officers an idea of what kind of composition we have for raid. I don't think it is too hard to spend 3 mins and say you can't make raid. It also removes the burden from the officers of wondering where people are that don't show. My guild does keep track of attendence and when people don't show w/o a post, they tend to get benched on farm night aka phat loot Tuesday when we have 30+ people ready to go.
Sometimes we end up with a less than desireable comp and unfortunately it may be a detriment to the raid at times. I remember one raid we had 13 melee show up and only 5 casters and some fights become overly difficult to the point where the GM should have just called raid instead of us banging our heads against the wall on 'farm' content.
My officers take the "attrition" approach to new content and it can be VERY demoralizing. Many people do not want to spend 6+ hours on a single boss over the span of two days and see little to no progress (LK, heroic Anub are prime examples). I don't think it is really a question of 'learning content' either, especially when you have downed them before. From those experiences, the most difficult hypothetical question I feel officers face is...
"Do you take a player that habitually shows up to every raid but has so-so skill (DPS/raid awareness) or do you take the person who is a great player but only shows 1-2 nights a week?"
Rekkla Apr 4th 2010 3:30AM
Lol, wish we had Arthas25 down so I could relate to this predicament.
But we're almost there, and I'm planning on the 'obvious' solution you mentioned, and that is just recruiting for a bigger bench.
It gives me a warm feeling of security to see 2-3 talented people in party6, and what we've been doing is having people volunteer to sit out fights where they don't need loot and to just cycle people in and out of active playtime to ensure that what you're talking about doesn't happen.
Attendance lulls happen, and - for us - we dont get always much notice when people decide to take a break, dial down their playtime or just quit. But our cycling method is accepted by those who sit out sometimes because we remind them that this is the price to pay for having ever-valuable depth.