When Should you leave a Guild?

It's time for another update, and this time around I'm going to talk about when to change guilds. To really have a background on where I'm coming from on this post, it would really take some familiarity with a blogger named Gevlon, AKA Greedy Goblin. His perspective on the game is often refreshing and he always attempts to look at things from a new perspective. He likes to challenge social behaviors and point out where they are unproductive or counter-productive, and suggest a more productive behavior to replace the default 'monkey' responses that are almost automatic.

From a raider's perspective a guild is a team that advances through current end-game content together, first tackling the normal encounters, then moving on to hard-modes, achievements, etc.

There are a lot of important aspects to a raiding guild's progression. A good recruiting staff, a loot distribution method that helps the guild's advancement through the content, and skilled players. If any one of these is missing a guild's advancement can be slowed, stopped or even reversed. By reversed I mean not able to take down bosses that they previously killed. This happens when skilled raiders leave the guild to go elsewhere, and the main reasons are lack of advancement and a perception of unfair loot distribution.

So this brings me to the aspects that should be weighted when evaluating your current guild in making a decision to move on.

1. Progress. How often is the guild downing new bosses? Progress rates vary wildly between guilds. If a raid is composed of 100% skilled raiders, then the guild will advance quickly, as that percentage approaches 0% the progress will come to a halt. By a skilled raider, I mean someone who optimizes their performance for the best possible output for their role, and who is capable of responding to events in a boss fight as they are needed to kill a boss. This relates back to having skilled players in the guild.

2. Attendance. Is there a full 25 man team with enough skilled players on standby to fill a 25-man raid for the current progression raid? This relates back to a good recruiting staff. A guild can be great, but if a few skilled players quit the game or leave the guild, the guild's progress will slow or halt very quickly unless those players are replaced with equal or better players.

3. Loot distribution. How fairly does your guild distribute loot? There is a risk vs reward aspect to loot. The lowest geared players are often going to be the newest recruits to the guild. The best advancement of the guild would be to give loot to the player with the lowest ilevel gear in that slot when the loot is optimal for his spec, or if the loot is not optimal for any spec give it to the player with the ilevel item who it is not optimal for. This of course is quite opposite to most loot distribution systems, and the reason for it is simple, players can quit a guild anytime they want with no repercussions. This is the risk. Most loot systems delay new players from getting loot one way or another or limit the amount of loot that new players get. However you have to consider how quickly you are getting geared. After a month or two in a guild you should have a fair chance at getting gear, if 25 pieces of loot drop you should have a fairly good chance at landing a piece that is optimal for your spec. Each boss on 25-man drops 4 pieces of loot, so 25 drops equates to roughly 6 bosses, which should be easy even for a guild that only raids twice a week.

So setting aside the emotional aspect of the decision, here are some firm items you can use to weight your decision: 1. Progress, 2. Attendance, and 3. Loot Distribution. If you find any of these aspects lacking it's always best to first bring it up to your guild officers, or guild master. Give them some time to fix the issues, but if you think you have given them sufficient time, and the problems continue then it's time to start looking. Put in applications with other guilds quickly, because sometimes the application process can take a long time.

Difficult Choices

So patch 3.2 hit last night, and I'm feeling the aftermath. CoDS went into the new 10-man crusader raid last night and got chewed up and spit out. We wiped a few times on the very first mini-boss before figuring out that we needed to switch tanks once the main tank got the bleed effect. Also the 15-yard radius around the boss in which spell casters shouldn't stand. We finally downed him but with only 3 left alive out of our 10, and the jormungers (or however it's spelled) ate us rather quickly. I'll chalk it up as a lesson learned: we are way undergeared for that content right now, even the first few mini-bosses. I am glad we got to see a fight first-hand without already knowing the fight, and able to analyze it and down it.
So in the aftermath of the patch I started updating all my addons and updated my rawr with the new gear today, and while I was playing with rawr noticed that my spec is no longer ahead of the Frostfire nor the Fire spec in damage. So that leaves me with a difficult choice now. Do I switch specs to the more popular frostfire spec and fire spec as my main and off spec, or do I keep my good old frost spec as a back and just jump into the fire spec, or do I keep arcane as my secondary spec. I'm a bit conflicted as I have really grown to like my arcane, and I have gotten quite good at it, but I'll be starting all over again if I go with either of these new specs, and I'll now be looking for spell crit gear vs spell haste gear, which means no going back once the change has been made. I guess I have been fighting the inevitable, since Blizzard has piled on the spell crit with the Tier 8 gear, so why fight it? I'll probably swap out my frost spec first so that I can keep my arcane spec available in case I have trouble with the learning curve of a new spec. After I'm comfortable then maybe I'll drop my arcane spec as well.

Malygos and Heroic Naxxramas cleared

Just a short update today.

I picked up The Spellweaver's Downfall, as Circle of Dark Scholars downed Malygos for the first time as a guild on 7/31. It was quite a fun night, then following on the success of Malygos, our joint run with Dread Pirates full cleared Heroic Naxxramas on Saturday, which was a first for me, so I now also have the achievement for Heroic Naxxramas.

As a side note I was very dissappointed with Gown of the Spell-Weaver. According to rawr this is not an upgrade over my Tier 7 chest piece Heros Frostfire Robe. The loss of my 2-piece set bonus is the critical part in that, because if I swap in the Tier 7 head Frostfire Circlet for my Faerlina's Madness, then it would be an upgrade. I'll have to stick with the Naxx runs and see if I can't pick up that tier 7 head.

I also picked up several pieces from Heroic Naxxramas, and I was very dissapointed to find that most of it was downgrades for me. Bindings of the Expansive Mind vs my Cuffs of Winged Leviathan, reasons here are that spell crit is far less valuable than spell haste for Arcane and Frost, and I'm already hit capped, so the spell hit is worthless, and the lack of spirit. Mantle of the Corrupted vs Valorous Frostfire Shoulderpads, again the loss of my 2-piece Tier 7 set bonus, the lower spell power (due to the socket in the tier piece), and the spell hit is unused because I'm already over the hit cap. The one upgrade that I did get was my tier 7.5 chest which replaces my tier 7 chest.

This all brings into very sharp focus the complexity of choosing loot. I ended up with several of these pieces because I rolled on them instead of letting them go to be disenchanted, so rest easy that I am not a total loot-whore. I use rawr on a regular basis to generate a list of upgrades from available items in game, but the interface leaves some things to be desired. I would primarily like the ability to filter the list by raid, so when I run Heroic Naxxramas I can see a list of what I need from just that raid, but in the lack of tools like this, it can be very confusing to new raiders on what piece of loot they should really go after, and what they should pass on.

Naxx 10 Cleared

Our guild cleared Naxx 10 last night. We had been wiping on Thaddius because of people not making the jump, or crossing the charges, but last night we downed him on the 2nd try. Move on to Sapphiron, after several wipes with only 2 healers, we convinced a pugger to switch to his Druid and heal. I even got to load up decursive and decurse the drain life's for this fight, and after several tries we took down Sapphiron and I won the key to Malygos. After downing Sapphiron, we moved on to Kel'Thuzad and he was a really fun boss fight. We wiped on several attempts mainly due to Frost Blast taking us out before our healers could react. On my last feast for the evening, early into the fight our off-tank dropped, but our main tank sayeth that we should continue, and he'd tank the adds. So on we went, and on, and on, and finally we downed Kel'Thuzad without any off-tank, thanks to our excellent heals. We all celebrated, then distributed loot (nothing dropped for me on Kel).