Ups and downs of raiding

[alpharaposa]

This is not a post about the mechanics of raiding in World of Warcraft. This is a post about drama.

So, I'm leading the raid. I get to herd the cats and divvy the loot for the night. I looked over our roster so far this morning, and found that we were one person short.

And someone volunteered. Somebody I dislike.

That by itself wouldn't have been so bad, because I could have sucked it up and simply been polite to them and tried to ignore their habits that make me dislike them. The problem was that anher also didn't like them... and had good reason not to. This person - call him S - had several times enriched his character at anher's character's expense.

And those times when I was around, I had counseled patience because I didn't want to be the bad guy. I wanted to be fair to the guy; maybe with good examples he'd grow up a bit.

So, since this was a last minute looking for somebody to fill the slot, I tried to ask S to step aside so that somebody else who'd not gotten a chance to get big loots could come. (Also somebody that I enjoy grouping with, let's be honest.) He protested that he'd asked and signed up and everything, and would not step aside. I would have to tell him no, or let him come.

anher said that, if S came along, he's step aside and so there was room for the other person to come.

So, I could choose between raiding with my husband, or raiding with somebody I dislike grouping with. And not a guild officer in sight.

With 5 minutes until the first fight of the evening, I told S that I wasn't taking him. He left the guild a few minutes later, and it turns out that one of the guild officers was lurking on an alt and asked what was up. I told him it was probably my fault, but we couldn't get into details because there was a raid scheduled. Under no circumstances did I want to ruin a raid over personal drama.

So, that's kind of hanging over my head. If all I had been worried about was being fair, then I was given an out that would have been, at least, fair. I wasn't. I wanted to have fun. I might have to pay for that. We'll see. There's still the voice in the back of my head saying that if it were my guild, S would've been gone after the first time he asked to come questing and then started looting stuff other people needed.

(Shoulda mentioned the problems with S sooner to one of the guild officers, really shoulda.)

The raid itself was great fun. It was my first time tanking a raid EVAR. I never got to, even in the pre-expansion days when I raided on my alliance paladin. I died lots, but I've never laughed so much in a raid. We did the usual stretch we tend to, then stayed on a while longer to do a couple more bosses. All in all, a successful run.

Comments

[drewtiggy.livejournal.com]

Woot! Glad to hear that pain-in-the-ass is finally gone. (I assume it's the one that made out like a bandit in the past?)

[stryck.livejournal.com]

The one who managed to get away with the Tier 4 gloves after getting two or three other epics that night?

Yeah, that's him.

[stryck.livejournal.com]

I can think of the moment when I actually decided not to let S come along. I was thinking about me, in the computer room raiding by myself while anher watched TV or something in the front room vs. both of us in the front room on the couch together.

And if those are my only choices, there is no contest. Raiding isn't worth it.

That would have meant a lot of disappointed people, though - they would have needed both a new raid leader and off tank.

[neppyman.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a guild officer, and a frequent raid leader and loot master, you did the right thing. You can't please everybody, and sometimes you have to just tell people "no" in order to preserve group harmony. Officer or not, the raid lead gets to make the decisions for that raid, and anybody signing up has to understand and respect that.

Also, anyone who would /gquit over such a trivial matter (not to mention being so greedy on loot) is someone that your guild is probably better off without.

[stryck.livejournal.com]

I feel better about it today than I did yesterday. I'll admit I froze a bit - I kind of took the raid lead position out of default (nobody else wanted it), so I wasn't fully prepared to make a hard choice like that.

I flubbed it some in how I told him no. It's making me think over whether or not I want to lead raids for the next few weeks. I'm not sure who else would if I stopped, though.

[neppyman.livejournal.com]

One thing raid leaders usually do is assign a loot master. You didn't mention if you had put the loot on Master Loot, but I would suggest that you do so in the future.

I usually use the following rules when I'm doing loot:

First rolls are main spec. Main spec being defined as "what you are specced when you walk in the instance door". That means that, no matter how much you like playing your pally as ret, if you came to heal, you're rolling on healing gear main spec.

Second rolls are off spec.

Tier pieces are done by class, since most of them (rogues and hunters being the exceptions that come to mind) have different pieces of tier gear for different specs.

For serious raids (25-man, mostly), a DKP system is often used. If you want some details on that, I can elaborate.

[stryck.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's master loot all the way. We actually have two loot systems for our guild. For the heavy raiders ("Vanguard" groups that work through content fast), we use the Suicide Kings method. For our casual raids (of the kind I was leading), the loot master actually awards the item to the person it would be the biggest upgrade to.

Unfortunately, the casual system has a loophole for Tier pieces - if you have one part of the set, you automatically get the second one (bonuses!). However, if nobody has a piece, it goes to random roll.

Technically, S did nothing wrong according to the rules in rolling on those gloves, but after getting a LOT of loot that night, including the very nice caster staff, it was frustrating to see a Tier piece go to him on a lucky roll over people who got nothing that night.

I was a bit surprised by that, but not terribly offended by that one - them's the rules, after all. It was later on, when S asked to go questing with us in Netherstorm, then started skinning things anher needed to level up leatherworking with that I developed a serious dislike. That's a pattern.

S is an exception in our guild, which is part of the reason why I wasn't as firm as I probably should have been. With most of the people in our guild, it isn't necessary.

[anher.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he was exceedingly greedy about loot from what I saw. I don't mind a brand new toon getting some nice upgrades in a raid, but to pull the staff off Curator (after getting like two other epics) and then blithely roll on the gloves against folks who had gotten nothing that run...

That was my first experience with the guy and it left a bad taste in my mouth for the rest of the time.

[neppyman.livejournal.com]

It's kind of sad that somebody's being that greedy about Kara gear with less than two months to go on the expansion.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not knocking your guild at all. But even my tier 5 and above characters are going to be tossing their gear out in two months. It's not going to be quite as bad as Burning Crusade, where the first greens you got from quest reward were better than any item you could have gotten prior, but all the expansion gear is still going to be a huge upgrade.

For somebody to be grubbing about gear (DPS caster, if they were rolling on that staff) is really shallow.

See my response to your wife's comment above for some details about Master Looter rules. One thing that a Master Looter can do is to say, "No, sorry, you've gotten enough loot tonight - somebody else gets this one." I've had to do it before, and a good guild member will understand.

Heck, I've had guild members check out how much of an upgrade an item would be for them, versus other people rolling, and actually pass on an item, because another guild member would get a bigger upgrade on it. Now that is guild dynamics. Hopefully your guildies will be more like that in the future.