Officers' Quarters: Tier transition trouble
by Scott Andrews 
Dec 19th 2011 at 1:00PM
For many guilds, the release of a new raiding tier isn't as cut and dry as simply moving on to the new bosses and leaving the previous tier behind. These days, there are a number of reasons to continue with older content: finishing legendary grinds, completing achievements, and downing unkilled bosses on either difficulty. This week, a guild leader feels conflicted about how to approach the raiding schedule with so much unfinished business in Firelands.
Hi Scott:
I'm the guild leader for a medium sized guild. The guild is about 9 months old at this point, and we've had our share of raid member turnaround. Through each generation though, we've gotten stronger. Now that the team is pretty solid and showing up on schedule weekly, a problem has reared its ugly head, and its name is Dragon Soul.
You see, because of the constant turnaround, we were stuck in tier 11 longer than we should have been, and are only now at the point that going 6/7 in Firelands can be done in a couple of hours. We still don't have a Rag kill under our belts. Compounded with that, our Legendary recipient is only in the second collection phase.
But with the new dungeons dropping 378's and Deathwing taunting us, some members of the raid group have voiced in interest in raiding Dragon Soul. One member (who got a Rag kill with another team a couple weeks ago) said he can't wait to kill Rag so we "never have to go to Firelands again." That really REALLY aggravated me, but I kept my cool in Guild Chat.
The plan that was set forth at the launch of 4.3 was to continue Firelands, adding in LFR Guild runs, and reevaluate our approach after the holidays, as we are all expecting attendance to start becoming sporadic here shortly. Personally, I want my guildie to get her legendary before we abandon Firelands, as that is what we committed to do.
I sincerely believe that it won't be long before we have our Rag kill, and from there we can start full clearing Firelands in one evening, using the other raid night to work on Dragon Soul progression. That being said, I have a strong suspicion that approach will lead to us once again having to recruit for an open spot or two. It's not like Dragon Soul wouldn't help me too. I'm a Rogue. The Fangs are MINE! But I'm willing to wait until Firelands is completed and simply being farmed before I worry about them.
So, what now? Do I abandon a promise to a guildie for the sake of progression? Do I put it to a democratic vote from the team? Do I force my will upon the raid team?
Oh, and if you're wondering why this issue is such a concern, it's because I did EXACTLY what your book told me not to: I'm a Raid Leading Guild Leader.
Sincerely,
Unsure.
Ha! Yep, it's not always a fun (double) position to be in!
Your guild is not alone in this dilemma. Others are facing the same quandary. My own guild has been raiding Firelands 10-man on off nights to finish up a third staff. It's also given us a chance to help more players earn the meta-achievement (such as myself, since my PC blew up the night we did most of the normal-mode achieves). However, it's often challenging to fill up that 10-man raid. People who were raiding Firelands nonstop since midsummer have had their fill of it, so finding volunteers can be a struggle.
You seem angry that one of your raiders expressed boredom with Firelands. I think that's more an indication of your own frustration with the situation. You're feeling a lot of pressure to move on, so the person who's being vocal about it is making you feel that pressure even more. Don't take it as an insult or as a criticism; that player simply wants to be done with that content, and it's perfectly natural for him to feel that way. I'm certain he's not the only one in your guild who does.
Your guild is not alone in this dilemma. Others are facing the same quandary. My own guild has been raiding Firelands 10-man on off nights to finish up a third staff. It's also given us a chance to help more players earn the meta-achievement (such as myself, since my PC blew up the night we did most of the normal-mode achieves). However, it's often challenging to fill up that 10-man raid. People who were raiding Firelands nonstop since midsummer have had their fill of it, so finding volunteers can be a struggle.
You seem angry that one of your raiders expressed boredom with Firelands. I think that's more an indication of your own frustration with the situation. You're feeling a lot of pressure to move on, so the person who's being vocal about it is making you feel that pressure even more. Don't take it as an insult or as a criticism; that player simply wants to be done with that content, and it's perfectly natural for him to feel that way. I'm certain he's not the only one in your guild who does.
Your three options
Let's examine the three options you mentioned, one by one.
Option 1 Give up on Firelands and begin Dragon Soul. That would probably make a lot of people happy at this point. It might even give your guild a nice morale boost heading into the holidays. The holidays can be a dangerous time for guilds. Players who were waffling about continuing to play WoW may, after a week or two away from the game, decide that now is a great time to quit. Seeing Dragon Soul before the break may convince them to stick around longer.
The downside of course is that your staff recipient will be very disappointed, as well as anyone who really wanted to clear Ragnaros. You always have the option to go back at some point. And honestly, it would help progression to have someone with the staff in your raid. But it's going to be very difficult to convince people to go back once you move on.
Option 2 Put it to a vote. Pure democracy is a beautiful thing, but with major guild decisions, it often creates more trouble than it's worth. A public vote will merely turn players against each other. There could be some heated arguing over the issue. Your staff recipient may also hold a grudge against everyone who voted to move on.
On the plus side, you won't be accountable for the choice, so you're off the hook -- in theory, at least. I'm sure if things go sour people will blame you for it anyway.
Option 3 Force people to stay in Firelands until Ragnaros is down. The outcome of this will all depend on how long it takes. If you go this route, you'll need to emphasize that the notorious lack of raid content between expansions will certainly mean that you'll all be completely bored with Dragon Soul before the Mists of Pandaria roll in. Thus, there is ultimately no point in rushing to the next tier.
You may find yourself losing raiders over it if it goes on too long, and that is a real risk. I think you'll have to gauge the public feeling on it from week to week.
You mention Raid Finder runs, and they are indeed a great way to get people into Dragon Soul who really want to see that content. The bosses aren't the same as normal mode, but at least people will get familiar with some of the mechanics. The slightly better gear will help, too.
But wait, there's more
Here are a few other options that might be preferable to the three above.
Option 4 Use raid lockout extensions to your advantage. It will slow down the staff assembly, but you might consider carrying over a lockout just for one week to spend as much time on Ragnaros as possible. The encounter has a lot going on, so it just takes practice. The upside to this is that if you get him down before the end of your week's raids, you'll have time to look at Dragon Soul. Then you can move forward with your plan to raid both.
If you find yourselves stuck on Ragnaros, you can dedicate the last hour or so of each week's raiding to a Dragon Soul boss. Each time you down a boss, extend the lockout to the next week so you can start working on a new one. The first half of Dragon Soul is arguably much easier than the early Firelands bosses were when that raid was released. It's not unreasonable to think that you might be able to get a new boss down every one to two weeks even with just an hour in the zone.
Option 5 Raid Dragon Soul on off nights. If people really want to see it, then they'll be willing (as long as they're able) to add a night of raiding to their schedule temporarily. This could assuage those who are extremely anxious. Also, the additional gear can only help you to clear Firelands faster (not to mention you can begin the daggers quest line).
Option 6 Dedicate one night to each, regardless of progress, until the staff is done. It's a compromise solution, and like all good compromises, it will leave everyone slightly unhappy, but no one ignored. You'll eventually have to kill Ragnaros to get the staff made, but that will come in time.
The problem I see with this is that people may show up for the Dragon Soul runs and ditch the Firelands runs. However, if you go on with Firelands-only raiding too much longer, you're probably going to experience a drop in attendance anyway. My suggestion to combat this is to give priority to people who showed up to Firelands when you're putting the Dragon Soul raid together. (That depends, of course, on having more raiders than slots.)
Well, as you can see, this situation has many different approaches. If I were in your shoes, I would choose option 6. That solution gives you the best chance at keeping your raiders interested without giving up on the staff and the Ragnaros kill.
/salute
Recently, Officers' Quarters has examined how strong new leadership can create a guild turnaround, the pitfalls of promising more than you can deliver, and lessons learned from Scott's own guild demise. Send your own guild-related questions and suggestions to scott@wowinsider.com.
Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
DracoSuave Dec 19th 2011 1:08PM
Fights in DS not named 'Ultraxion' come down to execution, so fine tuning those skills will help a lot.
However, I will note: If your guild doesn't have the patience to down Rag, it might not have the patience to down Yo or Zo for that first time.
Starlin Dec 19th 2011 1:14PM
My team was in a similar situation. We ended up doing option 5. You'll always have people that don't show up on the off nights. It helps to offer that they can use an alt as a way to entice them to show up. Put your feelers out for some back up raiders ahead of time so you're not stuck pugging from trade.
ObiChad Dec 19th 2011 1:19PM
As someone who's guild was in a similar boat, I can say that FOR US, the first four bosses in DS were easier than Rag, and defeating Rag is by no means required to progress in DS. In fact, this whole expansion, Blizzard seems to be on the model of the last boss in a place being a good bit harder than the rest of the instance. I would suggest something like option 6 or 4. Depending on your DPS, Ultraxion will likely be a bit of a speed bump (it is for us) and after a few weeks you'll likely be able to clear to Ultraxion in one night, giving you any other nights free to work on Firelands. Right now we're doing one week of clearing up to Rag, and the next week extending the lockout and working on Rag, then repeating, all while also clearing the first four bosses in DS every week and getting some attempts in on Ultraxion. Overall I think that's a decent compromise and a good way to keep things interesting. Good luck!
Pyromelter Dec 19th 2011 2:37PM
I was thinking along these lines. Why not do dragon soul first 4 bosses, you'll be able to farm much better gear which will help on ragnaros. (Won't help completely, but more dps means less time to make mistakes, more HP means more margin of error for tanks, etc.)
As far as farming firelands, that's gotta be a tough sell at this point. You had 6 months to get a staff, and many higher end guilds have multiple staves (see Scott's statement above). If the guildmate is a month or more away from completing the staff, it's going to drive a lot of people away, forcing the guild to continue to do firelands that much.
Emophia Dec 19th 2011 1:19PM
I really don't understand why you'd be so aggravated when someone mentioned he was sick of Firelands.
He's been in Firelands for half a year Of course he's sick of it, I would bet a thousand gold that he is by far not the only one in your guild that is sick of it too. Feel for them, especially with how much more sick of they probably are because they;'ve been banging their head against Rag for some reason.
I'm also wondering, you say you have a solid group, but then how exactly have you not killed Rag? Pugs on my server have been doing it months before 4.3 came out.
Cheb Dec 19th 2011 1:38PM
Completely agree. We're a 25 man guild that got 2 staves made before Dragon Soul dropped, and now we run a 10 man on the weekends to try to get our third staff done since he's on the last collection part. It's a real trial getting people to show up, and I don't blame them at all. Firelands was fun the first few months, but now a lot of our raiders are sick to death of it. To encourage people to come, we've opened the run up to Dragon Soul ready alts (as we need the maelstroms to supply guildies with enchants) and we do achievements.
LynMars Dec 19th 2011 3:12PM
Our group's mostly solid, but we're stuck on Rags right now. Some people cannot handle transitions or make one silly mistake they know better than to make, but forgot from the week before, or weren't paying attention, etc. Our arcane mage is somehow having problems with burst damage on Sons, so the raid leader is actually going over to her place to see what's going on with her setup; she should be able to do this.
I like my raid group; casual folks, not all of them excellent players, but competent enough. On twitchy fights like Rags though anything from computer issues to a player with slower reflexes can slow up a team. It's a very busy fight. We'll hit our stride sooner than later I think, or come back to Rags in a bit.
We're going with option 6 ourselves. One night is Firelands, working on our staff, and some time in Dragon Soul hitting the first couple bosses for gear if there's time, if not, we head over there night 2 to work on progression, checking Baradin Hold either time.
rayden54 Dec 19th 2011 6:44PM
PuGs on your server kill Rag. PuGs on my server simply died out. Which server you're on makes a big difference.
Martin Dec 20th 2011 2:40AM
He was aggravated because the person that said it had already downed Rag with a pug. So to that person, game was won, screw the others let's move on.
I'd be pissed too.
goldeneye Dec 20th 2011 5:38AM
One should always be thankful for the one guy capable of telling you what everyone is thinking while everyone else is bottling it up. Note that this is not the same as the one guy who tells you what he alone is thinking.
There's a place for both though.
shotiechan Dec 20th 2011 5:35PM
@Emophia
This guild sounds a lot like the one I left, and in their particular case, they were on a very, very small server with terrible progression. Only a handful of the most top-end guilds on that realm could kill Ragnaros, and certainly our guild couldn't-ours couldn't even get past like the second boss because of behind-the-scenes drama for a long time (ironically largely in part because of the raid leaders-who thought it was fine to stop a raid mid-run to go yell at members basically).
So basically, even with what a guild/raid leader thinks is a solid group, sometimes a "solid group" on one server or to one person isn't quite as "solid" as a group on another realm. And at least in that case, that tiny server didn't really support pugs in that way, so it's not unheard of.
Deathknighty Dec 19th 2011 1:26PM
No offence dude, but if your guild can't down normal mode Ragnaros you have some pretty serious issues*.
*coming from someone who's never even set foot in Firelands and has no right to declare such issues within another person's guild.
TimR Dec 19th 2011 1:51PM
Why make such a derogatory comment when you admit you have no idea what you are talking about?
Ragnaros is significantly harder than the other FL bosses, and probably harder than at least the first four bosses in DS, I'd say.
Deathknighty Dec 19th 2011 2:33PM
Oh dear, doesn't seem that came out the right way.
All I was trying to say was that if Firelands normal is still giving you trouble then you might want to investigate whether there are any major problems with the way you're going about things that are hindering you, but that's just my two cents, and not a terribly valuable two cents considering my lack of experience on the subject.
Apologies if I offended anyone.
Also while I'm here, I should say that my personal recommendation is to take your guild through the Looking For Raid version of Dragon Soul once or twice to see how you get along and also to let them get a bit of experience with the fights, and if it seems like you have a decent chance of succeeding in normal modes, then go ahead and try them for a lockout.
Sunaseni Dec 19th 2011 1:51PM
My guild chose option 6, though we have already killed Ragnaros, but I'm on step 3 of the Legendary. I've got 4 more weeks to go to get to 250 Smouldering Essences, so we're stuck in Firelands for at least another month. Thankfully, we can guarantee 6/7 (all you need on the last step) in one night, full clear if we do it perfectly, so we're able to dedicate 3 nights to DS and 1 to FL.
This set up allows us one night where we don't have to worry (too much) about fine-tuning or any of that, since we know the fights like the back of our hand. It also gives us a night for players returning from breaks to gear up and get stuff before shipping them off to DS.
Of course, this is just what happened to work for us, and other guilds will be different.
Joudoki Dec 19th 2011 1:55PM
We have the same issue in our guild; do we stay the course and continue to get in attempts on Ragnaros? We've been soooo close (19% health total at wipe), close enough that switching to Dragon Soul almost seems like an insult. But then again, we've been working on Rags for so long that people just want to wash their hands of it. In addition, we've lost some people to The Old Republic, which hasn't really helped.
The compromise we made is that we'll start raiding DS on both of our raid nights. The idea is that we'll work on DS now, and once we've started doing pretty well in DS, we'll return to FL to rape Rags. It'll be less legitimate (at least, in my mind) since we'll be doing it in tier gear that wasn't available at the time FL first came out, but it's hard to be "legitimate" if your core raid team falls apart.
warpknight6 Dec 19th 2011 1:59PM
My 25 man guild was able to go to Dragon Soul as soon as it came because we were 3/7 heroic FL.. so this might not exactly be applicable but..
What seems to be the best idea in your situation, to me, is to just knock out Ragnaros (probably won't take as long as you think now that everyone has some extra goodies from 5 mans, VP and LFR), and then go into Dragon Soul, but continue getting staff bits on off nights. My guild usually raids 3 nights a week but arranged a special 4th night (10 man only) to get the legendary pieces for our 2nd legendary.
Jaq Dec 19th 2011 2:03PM
My guild had much the same problem as the letter writer...kind of.
We were late bloomers on tier 11, but we cleared it just as Firelands launched. We were 4/7 before the nerfs, then hit 6/7 the week the nerfs came out. And never got Ragnaros.
Why?
The legendary.
The guy working on the legendary and his brother were officers. They flatly refused to lock Ragnaros until he was dead. The brother in fact quit the guild when the rest of the officers voted one week to lock it. We decided eventually to unlock it...and the guy making the legendary started showing up only once a week. 4.3 dropped and Ragnaros is still alive, and the legendary hasn't been made.
In 4.2 we catered to one person and the guild suffered. In 4.3, my intent is to clear Dragon Soul. In my opinion, the solution that benefits the most in the guild is the one you should go with. You might annoy the one guy making the legendary...but staying in Firelands might annoy the entire guild.
MacAndy Dec 19th 2011 2:07PM
My guild downed Rag the night before 4.3 went live. Our next raid two days later we downed the first two bosses in DS, in pretty much the same gear. The next week we downed the next two DS bosses. Since then we've had attendance/RL issues. :-(
Although it makes juggling things a bit tougher, from a pure difficulty standpoint it makes sense to me to jump ahead and do the first couple of bosses in DS, get some sweet upgrades then go back and hand Rag his fiery @$$.
trisco2001 Dec 19th 2011 2:15PM
Our guild managed to down Ragnaros when we too were at the point where we could easily clear up the first six bosses in one night and spend the entire second night on Ragnaros. We were thrilled to finally be able to say we beat the final boss of a tier before the next tier came out.
The progression we made on Ragnaros came down to making sure that everyone's role was firmly understood, to make sure that people were held accountable for their mistakes, and to make sure everyone had no more than one task to take care of at a time. That way, when a mistake was made, it was guaranteed to be one, and only one, person's mistake.
One big trouble for us was the Sons of Flame transitions, with three different variants and little management, the transitions often dissolved into chaos with no one to blame. As the tank, I could easily wrangle two adds until DPS could come support me with stuns and burst damage, but I'd too often see 2 DPS on one add and 0 DPS on too many.
I wrote a program to generate charts, one per person, to indicate where they should be depending on where the hammer falls, and it generated something like this:
http://i42.tinypic.com/15fmwdj.jpg
White B: Support healer: Tries to do just a bit of burst DPS to slow the add until the DPS can reach it. A holy fire and a few smites was fine, but a holy paladin with glyphed holy wrath, hammer of justice, and talented exorcism was *awesome*.
Orange T: Support DPS: Always goes to where the most dangerous adds are, then helps Support Healer finish off add. Ours was a feral druid.
Red V: Main Tank: Supports the Support DPS and Healer, and deals with the Lava Scions in the second transition. Our blood DK with death grip for emergencies.
Blue T, Cyan A, Green B and Orange F: Standard DPS assigned to a single add.
Pink G (me): Support Tank, using burst DPS and stuns to lock down the furthest adds until help arrives.
The great part about this system was that here every add was the responsibility of a particular player. If that add hit the hammer and exploded, one single player was responsible, and 95% of the time this was because they were in the wrong place or didn't save a nice cooldown for the job.
Hopefully this helps to show that chaos can be controlled if personal responsibility can be introduced (and enforced). Ultimately you succeed and fail as a team, but a raid leader on tough content needs to take an extra step to make sure that the reason you wiped "this time" is never "darn bad luck".
"Bad luck" is okay when you're learning the fight, but when people understand the fight and have been wiping to it for weeks, they really want to know why, and being told that the wipe was due to something both unidentifiable and out of their control can become a little demoralizing.