Offering Help

I was reading this post from Navi earlier, and it struck a chord with me. I struggle with this a lot. I run the normal raid in my guild, and one night is an open, everyone can come night if you meet my minimum requirements. And thank goodness for guildies who don't mind doing a bit of carrying.  We take everyone, and some of the people would like to come on the slightly stricter, I need you to kinda know your shit nights but they just aren't quite there.

Our guild doesn't really have the best environment for asking for advice and getting help improving. Individually, I can approach several people with questions about their class and get helpful advice, but these people don't offer it up. And we don't encourage people to seek it out. I haven't ever been in a place that just offers up help. Even here, at vet school where most of the people love teaching, you have to go to them. And that's tough for a lot of people- especially if you view WoW as a game, something for fun, but not something to work at. I could easily turn WoW into a full time job trying to coax and coach people. Of course, what I want and what's actually best may not be the same thing.

And I know I'm part of the problem. I am supposed to be policing the group a little better, as far as who can come and who can't, and I'm not. I don't know how to tell someone they need help. I worry that I'm upsetting people. For example, we had a guildie who used to come all the time, on many alts, going as far back as coming to flex runs with me in my last guild. And one day, I told him he was welcome to bring whoever he wanted to the open night, but he needed a little more work on that particular toon before coming to the slightly stricter night (I have a hard time calling it "closed" because it really isn't). And they pretty much stopped coming. They come along later in the night, if one of their friends asks, and they're great and bring their main and help when we're struggling. And when I think about them not coming now, I feel bad. I have no idea if they don't come for personal reasons, too many raid nights, or if it is what I said. I do tend to be self-centered and think I'm the cause of everything though. I do think they talked to another player, and improved their skills with that class- but they have not brought that toon, or any other alt, to my raids. I don't know if it was since then, or if it tapered off. I didn't notice it until some weeks later. But that makes me worry about telling people I need them to improve for the harder bosses.

I have managed with some people who clearly need the work, telling them they can't come on the second night unless they improve, and offer to help. That is with classes I know a lot about (so, basically resto and feral druids). I get prickly if someone who doesn't play my class or role tells me what to do- oh if people could've heard me the day the tank tried to tell me how to heal. Or seen the look on my face. Cause, really dude? REALLY? Yeah, you better just stop there.

I may be a tad sensitive about some things...

I need a lot of improvement myself. Mostly with communicating. Rather than ask healers to call out CDs, I found an addon to track all the things. ALL OF THEM. Which, super helpful as raid leader- I know who rezzed whom in combat, and the timer left, no matter what the toon. Can track all the ring CDs and who popped it, plus all the big CDs and if I cared to several of the minor ones. Awesomely helpful addon.  Does not foster communication beyond knowing who's tranq is off CD for me to call out (often unnecessarily because my healers are usually on the ball!)

Anyways- how to foster a helpful atmosphere. Once upon a time, in a land far away, we thought about having an open vent night for questions and things... Not sure that'd work. Our vent is not very active outside of raids (another issues, but not one to be addressed here). And inside raids, I think I've pushed the "don't talk during boss fights please" hard enough that some people just don't talk. There are several "borderline" people as well- mostly ok, need some work but I don't know what and I don't have the time to dig through logs and find out.

I think I am going to have to take the time, to at least sort out the ones who need mechanics work, DPS rotation work, and a few need some behavior work. I've had, not really complaints, but comments about how annoying so-and-so is, and I don't know how to address that.

I'll set a few goals here:
I know at least 2 people I need to talk to right off the bat. I will do that.
-Look through logs, pick out those borderline people
-Decide if they need to be talked to
-Talk to the tanks and tank alternatives about swapping roles around, because that needs to be fixed.

Before I actually talk to people:
-pick one thing to talk to them about
-try to work in something good they do
-give them one thing to work on, and a way to work on it

Ok, those are the tentative goals for this raid. Let's see if I get to them by Saturday.

Catch-up

Wow, it's really been over a month? Time has been flying by. A few things have changed since then. Some personal stuff went down, which added a bit of stress on top of the usual. I've begun raiding again with the heroic group, and my normal group kill Mannoroth.

On the school front: I finished Rehab and moved on to Exotics! It was fun, but pretty busy. They are called in for any exotic emergencies, so I had that a few times. One really bad night had me there til 9 dealing with a bunny who further featured her leg following surgical repair earlier in the day, then back at 11:30 til 2:30am for surgery on a bird with a prolapsed cloaca, and back in at 7 to check on the bird and bunny. Those few days were bad. Interesting, but sleep was dearly missed.

Now I'm on radiology. It's been interesting, but stressful. There's a final at the end with a tough pass rate. Here's hoping I'll be ok when I take it tomorrow. The rest of this one has been pretty simple. Study cases, take radiographs, present a few cases, leave at 5 unless you are one of the few who has to stay late or cover on call.

On the WoW front: WE FINALLY FINISHED GOLD CHALLENGE MODES, YAY! And I promptly set up another group for us to take alts. Cause I have a short memory and forget how much I hate scheduling things. Then someone offers to schedule things and I remember I am a control freak sometimes. Yeah... Anyway, on to group 2, so my monk can get a pretty weapon.

I'm raiding regularly with the heroic group again. We had a 2% wipe on Archi last night. I think we'll get it. The tiredness is making me more mellow about things like the fact we started half an hour late, went 15 minutes late, and were making some silly errors. Yay sleep deprivation! Been getting just enough to be mildly amused at everything, but not so little that I am entirely dead. On the plus side, this means I don't care so much and have been feeling more comfortable in raid. I will probably hang around as long as school will let me. Or until I don't wake up in time from post-school pre-raid naps.

The normal group is doing quite well. I still have trouble telling people they can't come, but I'm working on it. We downed Mannoroth, but it took pulling in 2 heroic raiders to help. I'm hoping the additional tier will help us, and if we still struggle I'll remove some people who are having issues. Problem is, if I base it on DPS, we have some people who are ok with mechanics and have a great attitude who are just missing the DPS their gear would suggest. Everyone meets my minimum gear requirements, and I don't feel raising them is logical or would be helpful.

It's something to work on. I've been forgetting. And my monk is the back-up tank for that group, but I'm about to drop that spec for WW. Eek! Just when I got my 4-piece too, I was looking forward to tanking. I do need the practice as windalker, so I plan to respec tonight. Which I had actually completely forgotten about until I wrote that. Whoops. I may need to heal anyway, but I'd like the option to DPS if I can.

That's the short summary of the last month. Goals for this next month:
-Finally do some work on Raiding with Leashes 3
-Study for Boards (Nov 20th, TOO SOON)
-Work on telling people they need to improve for the Sat group