Today, I had a discussion with a friend who is in a raiding guild, about a guild policy that they had. Their policy, as I gathered from my friend’s words and my own observation, is as follows:

On any and all raids, progression and farm alike, you may be pulled out of the raid for any boss, if the leaders feel they do not need your specific role or class at that moment. This might be for the rest of the instance, or just a few bosses, you may not be told anything definite. It might be a hardmode or normal, it might even be something you could have steamrolled in your current setup.

The policy seems to be that if there is a better option, that better option will be utilized, regardless of whether it is needed to beat the encounter. My friend spoke of this as if it was perfectly natural. (He did casually mention that if you kept signing up and were “very good”, eventually they would stop replacing you, perhaps assuming that this made it all okay. I inferred that “very good” should also refer to the state of your relationship with the people in charge.)

The other day, while I was “helping” this guild on a farm raid, I kept noticing that every boss attempt, a few people would hearth out or log off, and some new people would be summoned in. Knowing that the guild had problems with attendance, I had just assumed those people were filling in spots until the latecomers arrived, or maybe they were alts just helping, or maybe some of them had irl issues and had to go.

I was astonished when I realised it hadn’t been just those. Some of those people were simply being removed, because there was a better option online to beat an encounter they had on farm. Maybe they would be invited back, maybe they would not.

When I said that I could never commit four hours a day, three or four times a week, to raiding, knowing that I could be sat out on any content for an unknown amount of time if a better option came up, my friend responded “With this attitude, how will you find a better guild? I have been in many guilds, and most of them had this policy. You will not be able to get into any guild thinking like this.” He added, “If I am left out, I just go PVP and earn DKP by not even being in the raid. I don’t see why it is such a big deal.”

“Barring the fact that you set aside this time to raid, with an implied promise by the guild that you were being invited to raid – and now you’re spending it PVPing just in case you are needed again, when the boss would have been just as dead with you there?” I wanted to respond, but somehow managed to hold my tongue. He is rather protective of his guild.

I, of course, acknowledge that this policy and similar policies have a place. In an extremely high-end guild, or on progression content, or on farm content that is not manageable with the current setup. (Even on progression content, I know of many guilds who would rather make it work with the people who have signed up and stuck with the raid through the wipes, than bring in new people, but I digress.)

The guild in question is middle of the road by the server standards. Which was the reason why I looked into them to begin with, and which was the reason why this policy was a big surprise.

If an encounter is otherwise not defeatable, sitting out isn’t just selfless, it’s the only option. This situation comes up in every raiding guild. It is completely understandable. However, if people are frequently requested to sit out to obtain optimal makeup through content where the guild is beyond needing it – it really scares me that I’m seemingly the only person who has a problem with this.

If we take a general look, many guilds expect that you will fully dedicate yourself to the guild, and maintain this loyalty. You will be expected to keep certain attendance requirements, turn up on time repaired with needed consumables, read up on strategies, contribute to the guild bank, and various other rules that are laid down by the guild. It is all for “the guild”, this faceless entity that demands your time, effort and respect.

What most of these faceless entities don’t realise is that this is a two-way street. The guild and its members enter into an agreement, and both sides make implied promises to each other.

If members will be loyal to the guild and its aim, a good guild in turn is expected to be loyal to its members, and not just those who are favored by the GM and officers. If the members provide for the guild bank, the bank needs to provide for them. If members turn up when the raid is due to start, they expect that the raid is started on time, and ends on time. It should not only be the individual members that are expected to fulfill the promises they made when they filled out the application form.

I was in a 40 man raiding guild for roughly a year during vanilla. This was a guild that raided seven days a week, and had strict attendance requirements. Expectations from members, in attitude and skill, were high. You had to be punctual, you had to play well, you had to have read strategies and had to be able to follow commands. You were expected to have the best gear you could have outside of raids before you were even considered for a raid spot. Leaving before the raid was called was absolutely unheard of, being late always cost you DKP and a raid spot.

In return, the members knew that the guild would not just be a guild, it would be a true home for them. Most members knew each other very well and greeted each other by their real names. New babies, weddings, engagements were celebrated together. The camaraderie was encouraged by the guild leaders, who themselves were very close friends.

Loyal members who had to go on extended breaks always came back to the raid spots they left, even if that meant the guild would have to go with one or two less or a class for some time. We had a longtime member who had to be away for very long periods every summer. Everytime he came back he would promptly start signing to raids, and he would still be welcome with his old rank, in his old spot, as if he never left. He had stuck by the guild during rough times, and the guild was returning the favor.

My guild had an enhancement shaman. With a Sulfuras, which was awarded to him by the same guild. (You must realise that during vanilla WOW, a raiding enhancement shaman was more of a rarity than the actual legendary.) We even had a second one. We had an elemental one, too. We had a demonology warlock. We had arms and fury warriors. All of these were specs that no sane raiding guild would recruit at the time, yet my guild had them on their roster – the leaders being of the mind that the person behind the character is much more important than the character itself.

In exchange for the required donations to the bank, we got flasks, high end enchanting materials, and various recipes upon request. We were always required to do the best we could, on our own, nothing less was expected – but when we couldn’t, the guild bank was there to help.

Raid signups were on the website every week for the entire week. We would be expected to only sign for raids we were absolutely sure we could make, as soon as we humanly could. In exchange, lineups were often finalized one day in advance, at the latest a couple of hours before the raid – our leadership realised that those who were not chosen would want to know ahead of time so that they could plan their night differently. Those who sat out were not expected to be present at raid time. Notes of who had to sit out were kept, to ensure the rotation was fair.

I come from a guild culture like this. A guild where the members obeyed the rules laid out and made everything run smoothly. In exchange, we got more than a raid every night – we got an atmosphere where we were respected and loved as individuals and treated fairly. We had a 40-man raiding guild where the majority of the members were in harmony, and those that weren’t didn’t last long anyway.

My guild was not a nameless, faceless entity – it was the quiet rogue I lent some Greater Eternals to, it was my arrogant, talented demo warlock friend, it was the amazingly skilled mage officer who got our first 8/8 T2. It was the boisterous hunter with the Scottish accent, the bouncy Pakistani shaman, and the French mother of one. My guild was those people whose company I genuinely enjoyed, and those I meant something to as a person.

The guild was not perfect, but the basic premise was simple: Give effort and respect, and get effort and respect in return, no matter what your position in the guild.

In this case, again, it is all about respect. I found the guild’s attitude towards its members extremely disrespectful. If I commit my time and effort to raiding, I would like to know in advance whether I’m in or out. If I have to sit out for a boss once in a while because the encounter is undefeatable otherwise, no problem. Just let me know when I will be needed back. Doing it any other way implies that the members’ time is somehow not valuable.

I can’t imagine agreeing to all these conditions that everyone who plays the game and deems themselves fit to raid agree to. I can’t think of myself in yet another guild, fulfilling my end of the agreement, with the guild barely attempting to fulfill theirs. I can’t fathom being in a guild where I’m just another priest who’s expendable if something better happens to log on, damn the loyalty I’ve shown.

But most of all, I could not understand my friend’s matter of fact demeanor, the way he looked down on me when he said “With this attitude, how will you find a better guild?”. Is this really the norm? Is this really what the current raiding scene is like? Shall I just give up and throw in the towel, because I will never find a guild “with this kind of attitude” – because apparently, having expectations from your guild besides “ok, kill these bosses and gief me epix” is not acceptable? Why is it that most guilds etch their requirements into the brains of their members but don’t bother to treat them as something slightly more valuable than dirt?

When I join a guild, I am willing to not only offer my services as a priest or a druid, but also respect, dedication, loyalty, maturity, understanding and friendship. These things are what many guilds out there claim they look for, and what every truly good player should be able to provide. And any guild, if they aspire to be a truly good guild, should perhaps consider that the price tags on such things are not simply a few epics, but much, much more.

So we’re rocking it again as rogue priest…

…and it’s so much more fun than I thought it would be. I just didn’t realise how much potential Wrath arenas have.

My issue used to be that I wanted to be able to stay alive. I didn’t want games where “zerg the priest” was a foolproof strategy 100%. It still isn’t quite balanced in that aspect (you, in fact, can zerg the priest to success no matter how hard Calissa tries to peel). But I imagine it’s better than how it used to be in previous seasons.

The best part of the whole “whoa son, you got WOTLK’d” deal is that it feels to me that very few teams are true countercomps. You always have a chance. There’s always the possibility that you will gib that unprepared healer, even through HoTs and shields, while the partner is in a CC chain.

I remember when warrior/druid used to be hard counter to rogue/priest, so much so that if we won a single one it was a cause for major celebration. Now when we go out against one, I feel we have a chance. It doesn’t have to be an autoloss because they can abolish Wound and DPS on leather. It’s easier to force cooldowns due to higher damage, which ultimately means we have more of a chance of putting them in a CC chain before I get worn out from spam healing.

I also love being able to spare the mana for more offense, because in most of the cases something will die before everyone is out of mana. The amount of damage people are able to dish out assures that. You might as well spend it while you have it to force a cooldown. Out of 70+ matches we played over three days, there were only 2 I can remember in which it came down to mana (and we won one and lost one). This is also why I ditched my beloved PWS glyph to glyph Smite, and so far, lovin’ it.

“They have both trinkets down.”
“Gib during next Blind yah?”
“Yeah Blinding in 3, 2, 1, gogogoog”
/receive Tricks
/cast Power Infusion
/cast Holy Fire
/spam Smite

I love having Perception and being able to get the opener. We do it quite a bit of the time. And you have no idea how many times mindless Holy Nova spam has denied someone the opener.

I also seem to be better than I was in TBC when I comes to SWD’ing sheeps, which has immensely helped with our win rate against mage/rogue.

We also see great variety in comps – used to be that you saw maybe ten different comps in a whole season of playing 2s and that was it. Now there’s everything ranging from double DK to ele shaman/moonkin.

I quite like the new rating system, too. First off, there’s a much greater sense of progress about it. You start from zero, so there’s nowhere to go but up. If you go 50/50 at the lower ratings, you’re still going to move up on the ladder, which didn’t happen in TBC. The fact that losing doesn’t carry a massive penalty keeps people playing, especially if you’re new, or like us, just haven’t played for a few seasons. Add to this the fact that there are few countercomps (and even if there are, you just don’t meet them to start off with since comps are so varied), and you have a recipe for success.

I’ve just been playing for a few days, with a win rate barely higher than 50%,  yet I’m rated high enough to afford four Furious pieces, and two Relentless offpieces. I like this in a way, because if you’re mediocre, which I admittedly very much am, you still have a chance to get rated stuff. On the other hand, if you’re new to arena, it will still take you quite a while to get someplace, so I’m still in two minds about the system.

I quite like the MMR aspect – there have been few fights where I felt I got outplayed by some guy going for glad. Point for point, in most matches I felt like I played with people skill equal or close to my own.

Probably due for more matches tonight, so we’ll wait and see. It would be amazing indeed if one day, I could land the T1 Relentless weapon… oh well, a girl can dream.

Another achievement down, and my current favorite title in the game obtained. The DPS was so high that Sarth was dead before Shadron even came down.

So, I got kicked from a raid for the first time in ages, for basically… being bad.

Here’s the setting.

Icehowl. Being tanked in such an odd spot that, when he does the knockback, about half of the group end on the same spot. My camera angle ends up weird, and I can’t see anything, like, the DBM skull I have to see to know where to run away from. I don’t even know if I should run or if I’m safe.

And Icehowl appears to be turned towards us. Well, shit, sayeth I.

And randomly pick a direction to run to. That happens to be in his path.

Tank gets twoshotted, we wipe.

I summarily get yelled at in /ra, and mortified, I try to explain why and how I couldn’t run away, suggesting if he gets tanked in the middle I can know whether to run or not.

(Basically, this is how I did the fight previously. He would get tanked in the middle with everyone spread in a circle around him – if DBM didn’t have your name, you didn’t have to run anyplace, because everyone was already spread.)

I get screamed at yet more. “RUN. AWAY. FROM THE SKULL.” “Just run, it’s not hard ffs.” I apologise and say won’t happen again. Raid chat is quiet. I get ressed, buffed, drop a Fish Feast.

And summarily am removed without a word.

I was the only PUG in a group of guildies, so I pretty much expected being ridden hard for my mistakes, both real and imagined. What I didn’t expect was being removed after making a single mistake, for which I apologised profusely and explained reasons for.

Part of me says “well, fuck that” – had I been the group leader, a single mistake, politely explained and suggestions made for, wouldn’t have been grounds for removal. I’d probably feel happier knowing that, you know, someone owned up to their screwup and explained why. The other half says “well, it’s their group, and you did fuck up”.

I do feel totally depressed because… it’s been ages since I singlehandedly wiped a raid. I might just have acted with the best of intentions, and obviously it wasn’t deliberate, but it happened. And now I have an entire raid probably thinking “Lol, she was bad.”

Correspondingly, part of me just wants to explain “Look, I really don’t always do things like that, I swear.” And another part just doesn’t care because, hey, if you remove someone who made a single honest mistake and apologised, without even bothering to tell them anything, I probably don’t really want to group with you anyway.

But yeah. Sigh, indeed.

I had been planning for a long time to get back into PVP – the only reason I hadn’t been doing it so far is the fact that I really miss TBC style PVP. The slow, carefully planned matches and the concept that as a healer, I actually was capable of staying alive and contributing without needing a lot of babysitting encouraged me to participate.

With Wrath it felt like we were straight back to 1.x era PvP. Feeling like I was made of paper hadn’t been fun back then and it wasn’t fun now. So I pretty much quit cold turkey with 3.0 and didn’t look back.

But the new season is here and so is the resilience change, so I decided to give it a go again. My prep work was done weeks ago – I had enough Conquest for three pieces of Deadly, capped out honor, the Hateful robe lying in my bank (thanks Archavon) and the Furious boots and belt lying in my bank (thanks Emalon). All gemmed and enchanted I’m rocking 21k HP, 650 resilience selfbuffed.

So far it’s just been some AV, but I generally like what I see. It’s not what it used to be, but it’s getting better – and I can’t realistically expect everything to be the same, going from a priest with capped resilience in great gear to one with mediocre gear.

I’m due for three more upgrades today. I’m 16 badges short of the Deadly gloves, yielding me the 4set, 5k honor short of a ring, and 3 WG marks short of the resilience trinket. I think I’ll be opting for the haste one over spellpower one for maximum throughput.

My preferred bracket is 2v2, considering I’m not remotely ambitious when it comes to titles or shoulders (in fact, thanks to Blizzard’s horribly borked title system, there have been past seasons where my teammates with the exact same games played got titles and my priest did not). That, and also the facts that 1. We don’t know any mages to play RMP with us 2. 3v3 is still way too bursty for my taste. As a result, I’ve been gathering spirit pieces over crit pieces.  If I don’t find myself OOM, I could go back to gathering crit – at least making the swap from Mooncloth to Satin should be easy considering the speed with which we are able to grind heroics.

Speaking about PVP gear, here’s my bad PUG story for the day.

Did both versions of Vault last night hoping the Deadly gloves would drop and save me from grinding the badges for the last piece. Emalon goes down, lo and behold, the Deadly Mooncloth gloves in all their glory, Calissa yelling “Ely you lucky bitch” on Vent. They were literally the only piece of loot I needed from Emalon, and being one of the two healing priests in the raid, I thought I had a fighting chance.

Gloves go up for roll. The highest roll belongs to a shadow priest. The master looter has been dodgy so far with keeping track of who’s what spec, previously handing the elemental gloves to the resto shaman over the ele one, so I immediately whisper him with “Hey, that guy’s shadow, please only consider the rolls of the healing priests.” (For reference, the server etiquette is that for any and all pieces of gear, your main spec is what goes, except in the case of tanks, who obviously don’t have PVP gear made for them.)

“This is PVP, who cares about spec?”

Gloves get looted to the shadow priest.

I blow up on Vent to Moonky and Calissa, who are both in the raid. Rageudder who’s an assist in the raid also hears of it, as well as Cupid and Ita who are in the raid on their alts. The guy quickly changes his story saying he never said “who cares”, he was just confused because of all the whispers he was getting. This is funny because earlier he had kicked Ita on her warrior, and when the raid exploded, he had said that she and Cupid had left out of their own accord, because he wouldn’t invite their friend. Yeah.

But of course what’s done is done, and the priest who got the gloves isn’t willing to trade them. The raid ended with the masterlooter on six people’s ignore list, six people with whom he’d probably like to group with again in the future. Oh wellz.