WARNING: Changes Ahead

Well where to begin. Blizzard announced some of their planned changes and new mechanics for each of the classes. Now im not going to rehash all the different changes to the different classes, or even analyse the changes .... why? Well I have no doubt they will be changed alot between now and Cataclysms release. Hell, many of the changes announced for Cata were originaly supposed to be changes in Wrath and were scrapped so I think a few of the changes will once again be scrapped. This doesn't exactly mean I wont be hitting the refresh button in the blue tracker repeatedly to see any and every little change.

Well these havent been the only changes I have been facing recently. Contingency (my guild) have been going through a few changes of its own. Ok quick summary ....

1. We cleared 1st 6 bosses in ICC easily.
2. Then we spent a few night progressing on Prof P .... following week he went down. As did the blood princes.
3. We spent about 3 weeks progressing on Queen spent a whole week getting her to below 10% each time but each try resulted in her beserking and wiping the raid.
4. The following week she went down and we spent a week on Sindragossa and wah lah! Down she went.
5. This left us with LK .... a fight which isn't exactly difficult but which requires people to do as they are supposed to, when they are supposed to.

Basically, the following 4 weeks we were on LK, now during this time we lost a few players here and there. Nothing major, but they were good players who had been part of our core group and who either quit the game entirely, or transferred servers. (Now these 4 weeks weren't entirely useless we have had a few gd tries but the problem seems to be our players. Lack of attendance to raids meant of those 4 weeks progress on LK we only actually had 8 nights trying him.

Any who....this lack of progress has caused many players in our team to now decide they dont want to play anymore and leave. This has meant that we have had to recruit new players, and generally they do not have as much exp or gear as the rest of us so there is a certain level of gearing up and teaching involved. Unfortunately, some more players have now ... somehow ... come to the conclusion that they are better than the new players and shoudlnt have to and I quote "drag them through content to get them gear". Im sorry I have warned you all before that these are the rantings of of a crazy priest and these events have driven me and my GM rather crazy. Just wondering if anyone else was facing similar problems? Or had any advice.

We have been lucky that we have now a good handful of players on trial (some better than others) who we can fill spots with and hopefully we will see some more progress soon. Fingers crossed that other players who I know are feeling a little frustrated wont buckle and chuck it all in.

In light of the recent changes to my raiding team and guild in general I have told my GM that I will take over the whole raid leading bit for a while. I dont want to toot my own horn or anything but a few raiders have told me I am clear on vent and seem to be more patient with players, as a result I told my GM that I am willing to take a more active role in raids. My first forray was into proper 25man raid leading in ICC took place on Wednesday and overall I was happy with it. We purposely took as many new recruits as possible to see if they knew what they were doing and evaluate their performances.

Anyway another quick summary .... went in cleared up to Prof P with no problems at all. Prof P we got him into PH3 twice when we wiped. Some of the older raiders (the ones who kick up trouble and complain ALOT) ofc blamed the new raiders. Pleanty of who hadn't even seen the fight before and the tanks even admitted that they had made a few mistakes in PH3 - thats why I love my guilds tanks they are good solid players who you can pretty much count on and count what they say. They admit when they fuck up, advise one another, and unlike many other tanks when wiping dont automatically blame the healers. So when they say its a healer problem I look at my healers and see whats going wrong and adjust accordingly.

Anyway Prof P went down on the 3rd try and by this point it was getting a bit late so I called a quick 10min break we then re conviened and went and killed Dreamwalker and called the raid. I thought things had went well, we had cleared a fair bit in a relatively short period of time, and sure if we hadnt died on Prof a few times we might have manaaged Princes aswell but it was no Biggy. I was happy .. even had a few people /w me and tell me they thought I had done a good job which I greatly appreciate ;) - ofc this wasnt good enough for the trouble makers and they felt the need to start complainging ... "jeese now we cant even kill Prof P" - but we did - "yeh third fucking try" - so? It's not the easiest fight in the world and we have new people who are learning the fight for the 1st time - "this isnt good enough". Please tell me that this progress for 2.5h of raiding was decent enough and that things arent all doom and gloom.

Things got alot worse the following night. The GM took over the RL again. Princes down NP, then came Queen. One of out Palas had decided they wanted to do the quest portion of Queen for their legendary. This shouldn't have been a problem, but it SSSSooooooooo was. The pala basically had to get bitten at the beginning of the encounter then proceed to bite 3 other people in the encounter and kill Queen. Problem was the pala couldnt bite people ... he sucked and in 4 of the attempts got MC'd, and 1 further attempt due to a DC. Basically, everyone got frustrated and we stopped. We then went to Sindragossa, killed the trash and went over the tactics on vent, the GM then marked 5 people for the frost tombs and asked them to take their positions.... nothing .... he asked again .... nothing .... I then went to the bottom of the stairs in an attempt to get others to move, and show the GM that I was listening ... still nothing. RAID END!

Needless to say I have told my GM I will take over the RL for a bit to give hoim a break. Prob is following this raid we have had 3 more players leave. The Pala left (most think he has quit out of shame - that his performance was sooo bad on Queen that he didnt wanna show his face again) his good friend and one of our top DPS has also left. One of our other DPS left as well just "ok im leaving /gquit" sort of thing. No speaking to an officer or GM before hand :( this annoyed me quite a bit. Prob is with these people leaving there are murmerings ... other people thinking perhaps they had the right idea. Luckily I have spoke with a few members and while there appears to be a few people who may still leave on the following days or weeks many I know will stay. They like the community and guild as a whole. Hopefully, after tonights raid (assuming there is a raid) Sindra and Queen will be dead and I will be able to silence the trouble makers by showing them that even with our new trials who arent all that well geared, and who are still learning, that we are still at the same stage of progress.

Anyway ... I know this post was prob boring and very ranty but explaining what going on and the different things which annoy / trouble me is quite theraputic and held clear my head. Anyway, I will keep you guys updated as to where we are at, and how things go, and if anyone has any suggestions or general tips I wiuld be more than happy to get the advice.


Panzee