there are always big swinging changes come the start of school in the Fall. we have a few of our own.
first Kara: until now, we have had a select few individuals heavily supporting the Kara raid split across two days (Wed & Fri) and using it to help others get gear. those same individuals for the most part have been playing the role for many months now. add to the mix recent recruiting successes over the past couple of months and we find ourselves with a enough geared toons to run Kara and clear in a night.
effective immediately, we will have a Kara geared/badge run weekly and a Kara gearing run/wipe club. huh? Geared toons are not restricted to the badge run. they can run the wipe club Kara raid as they choose – but out of courtesy, clear it with raid leader or guild leader first in case too many folks shift one week and end up canceling the badge run by absenteeism! the wipe club is where the toons not geared to clear Kara will raid until they are geared to clear.
as an example, Ironhelm will run with the badge run of Kara (but can choose to run with the wipe club to help if needed) and Ironbow will run with the wipe club — given room on either raid. because ironhelm is geared to clear Kara and Ironbow (in this example) is not.
there are a lot of reasons behind this decision – not the least of which are that the geared toons have already paid their dues in the wipe club and it is time for them to reap the badge run rewards and spend their time in the Gruul’s and Mags wipe clubs. allow me to be very clear about that: just because you are in the badge raid for Kara does not mean you are no longer in the wipe club in another raid dungeon. Ironhelm is definitely in the wipe club for Gruul’s and Mags seeing as we seem to always pick the pugs that wipe!
second, for Gruul’s and Mags we will continue to loosely staff half a raid and pug in the rest; however, we intend to find some non-guildies that are good raiders and group up with them on a regular basis rather than constantly pug in totally new faces each time. this might take a few weeks and there will always be a few seats filled by fresh faces; however, that is the gist of it.
lastly, ZA: the badge raid for Kara = the wipe club for ZA.
there has been a lot of pressure lately – a lot of which was self-induced by the raid group – to progress. we seem to have learned a valuable lesson that progression grinding quickly burns raiders out. especially if you try to progress too quickly. gear does not mean you can tackle the strats and knowing the strats does not mean you can do them without the gear. there are plenty of progression guilds out there where they flog themselves on progression until they quit the game. we are not one of them.
we are getting back to the basics: like having fun. yes we will raid, however we are not raiding against a progression clock. and once LK expansion comes out, and we all get to 80, we will raid through the content to the end content (w00t for all content being 10-man content). sure we will do some of it 25-man, perhaps even all of it. however, remove the pressure to push through at a pace that the raiders as a whole cannot sustain or meet.
with 10-man raids in LK covering all of the content, we will be easily able to run a friendly reward competition to “first downs” across two raid groups (at least) in our guild. however, friendly pressure is the only type we will plan for.
= )
peace out.
