Friday, February 21, 2014

Lots of Things


So I passed along a message to the healer I wanted to talk to via his roommate, asking him to  log on 5-10 min early so I can talk to him. Naturally he logged on right as raid was going to start. I did manage to snag him for a few minutes after raid. 

I’m not happy with how it went, but that’s because I’m not happy with my responses. I should just suck it up and say “yes, especially on the fights we’re getting to, we can’t afford to fall behind on heals, so please don’t slack cause you see me and the other healer are going all out. We’re doing it because we can’t count on you to do so.” That’s what I should’ve said, but it never occurred to me you wouldn’t keep harmony up because you’re standing around while the other healers do stuff. But I didn’t. I did mention WeakAuras to help him, and he mentioned he had considered looking into it.

So even though my end failed, I hope the fact that I talked to him at all will cause him to make some changes. I’m not holding my breath, but I’ll remember to get logs Friday and re-evaluate the situation in a week or two. In hindsight, there is a lot more I could have said. But hindsight is 20-20, and at least I’m not afraid to talk to him. I should’ve asked him why he raids, cause it feels like he doesn’t care about it. Next time, if there’s no improvement, I will.

I really suck at dealing with people. I had a script kinda pre-written for things I wanted to mention, but he went off script. Hmph, how inconsiderate of people not to do what I expect of them, right? Anyway, that threw me a bit and I completely failed to address the new issues that came up. Makes me mad at myself, and I wonder if I could address that again. I will re-evaluate at raid tonight, and see if I need to figure out how to say what I want to.

Next part- the tank. All I really want to do is say “you feel squishy, can you keep shuffle up more?” cause that’s about all I know of brewmaster tanking. I think I will make an effort to set up a brewmaster spec and go practice on the dinos on Isle of Giants. Then I can at least get an idea. And if I feel confident, I’ll maybe offer to tank flex 1. Though I am not sure about the tank challenge on Norushen. I am attracted to fire. But all this is big talk, no action.

We did manage to get Spoils down fairly quickly and Thok down in 2 pulls. Yay, people were dispelling the poison! And we got him to 58% before the first stack phase ended. Killed him right as the fire started. Our Seigecrafter pulls were abysmal, at least to me. Our belt people were awesome. Our main tank seriously considered solo tanking. I feel bad for him, and that’s part of the reason I am thinking of making a tanky spec- I can offer, cause we have 2 other good tanks, and 1 seems to prefer DPS and the other we kinda need the DPS they provide. On the other hand, we kinda need my heals too. And the healer who could replace me (at least in flex) is the tank! Or two of our top DPS. Though lately there have been a few flexes I have DPS’d in cause we had too many healers, so who knows, maybe I could tank? 

On that note- off-spec healers. We have one, boomkin who has off-spec heals. She’s using glyph of rejuv, and still casts nourish. I’ve talked to her, me, and 2 other druids have had healing discussions in front of her. No change. But she very rarely heals, so how can I really expect her to put the same effort into healing that I do? This is that expectations again. Then again, I do crappy feral DPS- thus why I always step out for Spoils if we have more than 10 people. But I do try, I read up on it and practice and look up ways to improve. And my poor druid- she has 4 different sets of gear, only one of which is in the bank. Though I could put my PvP gear there, I suppose.

Expectations. I am trying to remember that not everyone cares. Or raids as much as I do. I just know that probably half the group (at lest) does care, and those few that don’t really tick me off. Ah well, my ideal raid group doesn’t exist. Though I have imagined it- the 2 tanks I really like, the healer from that group, these DPS there, and so on. It’s a nice thought.

We also managed to get our raid leader together with the raiding officer for a discussion about this. I feel a bit like he feels we cornered him (the raiding officer), because there were 3 of us and 1 of him. Didn’t mean it that way at all- I was concerned, and wanted to be there to add my voice if needed. I also get the feeling that he has completely handed this raid over to the raid leader and washed his hands of it, so to speak. Yeah he’s a member, but it’s like he doesn’t care about raiding anymore. When we were doing flex and our normal leader was out he flat out said “I don’t know these fights, I can’t explain them, you or the other officer will have to.” Which is fine, but he’s our raiding officer, I kinda expect him to know this stuff, especially when things are planned in advance and he knows what is going on. And as he would later go on to point out, he put those raids together.

Anyway, back to that conversation. His advice was fine- recommending one-on-one with them with the raid leader. Fine, is a good idea. We’ve done that, between me and the raid leader, but a few more times won’t hurt, and I at least still have one more big question to ask them. But I feel like that wasn’t the advice I’d expect from the raiding officer, about concerns with a raid he organized and people he chose. About his roommates. Maybe I’m just disappointed, I’ve been feeling like he doesn’t care for a while. In our officer meeting he made it very clear he was the raiding officer and he wanted us to discuss changes to the raids he planned (meaning the flex we changed without talking to him first) even if he was no longer leading them. That’s been our raid leader, and me or the other officer when he’s not there. Leading, organizing, putting on the calendar. But when we got to him to discuss some major issues that irritate or concern at least half the raid, he was very standoffish and reticent to talk to us. Took forever to get him into vent, and then again  based off his very heavily emphasized one-on-one meeting idea I get the feeling he felt cornered. But we’ve had that discussion now, even if there were no clear answers given like I had hoped. 

I was just hoping for an explanation- these people were chose because <blah> and whatever. This is your raid, <raid leader> do what you think is best. Which I suppose we’ll have to do anyway. Well, we raid tonight- starting on Seigecrafter. I’ll see how the first 2-3 pulls go, then talk to the healer if I feel he needs to step it up. I’ll try to get to the tank about shuffle, and just leave the rest to our raid leader, who has played her class tanking heroics with his other guild and can offer way more help than me.

On the other hand, back to that conversation, I can see why he didn’t say much. Maybe he would’ve explained more one-on-one to the raid leader, but didn’t feel like he owed me and the other officer present anything. Oh well, we’ll get things straight. I should be ecstatic with our progress- 11/14 while the stuff is still current! We only killed the first 3 bosses in ToT before SoO came out and then our raid fell apart for a few months. So being this far along is very nice, and I credit a lot of that to our awesome raid leader. I think I’ve mentioned, but he has the patience of a saint and manages to stay calm and compliment people on good things even with wipes. Which led me to a discussion with a friend that I should never be my own manager, if I open my own practice- I suck at motivating people. And don’t get me started on what I think about complimenting people for doing the things they should be doing as a bare minimum all along. Though that’s probably my people expectations thing again.

Back to updates on my Tues/Thurs run- went back to Garrosh today. We’re doing some weird 3-heals but 2 are hybrid and 1 is going “holy DPS” thing. Yeah, I don’t get it either. It didn’t help much. Anyway, I told the RL my opinion of that, and he mentioned he was thinking of 2-healing again. I told him I feel confident in doing that with my monk, though I feel ideal would be my RDriud and the disc priest- but that druid is in another raid, so if he goes that route I need warning to clear with my raid lead the healer swap. I’ve also taken the plunge and set things up for brewmaster, so if he wants me to DPS, I need at least a bit of warning to set things up properly again. We’ll see what happens.

I have a very busy weekend! It’s my birthday today, yay! I have a raid tonight, flex tomorrow afternoon, challenge modes tomorrow evening, possibly another Garrosh attempts after that if there is enough of that raid on, going out on Sunday to a nice restaurant/hotel for my birthday, then heroic ToES that night. Then on Monday, as much of For The Alliance as we can fit in before trying to finish Heroic HoF, then flex at 8:30. Followed by a week of my normal Tues/Thurs Wed/Fri raids, and then I imagine next weekend we’ll try heroic HoF for our guild, and keep up the challenge modes so we can get as many done before they go away as we can. Whew, a busy week! 


Here’s hoping it’s a good one, that we get Seigecrafter and Paragons, both pets drop and I can win Kovok, maybe a few pulls on Garrosh, my other group gets Garosh, CM go smoothly on my shammy or monk or whoever the heck I bring, I manage to finish For the Alliance. And while I’m wishing, my staff finally drops in Ulduar, I finish my legendaries, and get the last 2 pets I need from normal SoO. 

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