World of Warcraft®

Hey everyone, I call upon the wow community to ask for it's advice on what to do for a rather delicate issue involving me, the guild my main is in and the raid team we have. I will try keep as brief as possible.
I am an officer and have been in this guild for just under a year, and raid with them every week as DPS, we are quite a small guild, some members are middle aged with full time jobs too so we don't get much time to play so as you would imagine progress is quite slow.
It took us a while to do DS normal but after we beat Madness it felt rewarding and was great fun, but now we are tackling heroic, it seems to be a whole different ball game, I am in no way boasting here but the majority of weeks I am top dps by around 6-7k higher than the second highest, not all bad but the trouble is most of the members don't seem to understand what they are doing, even after we link the tactic video's, use addons, explain tactics through Raidcall and type if necessary, still people can't seem to grasp mechanics.
It took us 4 hours, yes, 4 hours to kill ultraxion heroic a couple of weeks ago because each time someone failed at pressing or forgot they were staying in. Now you can maybe understand my frustration how I feel I can be progressing quite easily through heroic if I was in a team that understood everything, but I have grown to love the guys and girls I raid with and don't want to leave them, but at the same time I actually want to progress, something which at the moment I don't think will happen.

Anyone got some advice to help here?
Thanks for taking the time to read :)

Ultimately you are asking what you can do to improve the players in your raid without removing them from it.

- Enforce boss mods. DBM for example has a countdown for the debuff on ultraxion, making it trivial. Back in vanilla tanks swapped on gut feeling learned over wipes, now that information is easily graphically and audibly available, make sure they have access to it. Make sure they configure it to only show what matters to them so they don't drown in irrelevant countdowns.

- Notice when people are out of position/not following the strat and call them on it right then and there on voice chat before they can start to make excuses or it is too late.

- Ensure they actually know how to heal/dps/tank relevant to their class and are gearing appropriately for it. This can be tricky, players can be touchy about this but if you foster a climate of competition they may be more willing to look for an edge. Make sure they understand the basics on how to maximise dps, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgDjG_0ecTI is pretty good for the fundamentals.

- Take over their jobs for them so they have less to do, on your ultraxion example a raidlead could simply call the rotation as it happens on voicechat: "Next group is Sam and Max, Sam and Max staying in next, everyone else out".

- Finally don't be afraid to call it as it is. I have placed players on standby because they are having a bad night or they simply don't seem to handle an encounter. For some this is a good motivation to improve, mileage varies by character though.

Ultimately although you can help players become better, experience alone helps volumes as they are able to pull off their rotations without thinking and can relate new boss mechanics to old mechanics they have already overcome. Time will by nature improve them for you.

Of course, a purist will argue that you make them worse players by doing it for them. Common sense however suggests that not all players are able to take in the raw information required for this game at the same rate. Understanding who in your raidgroup can do top dps AND help out the players who are struggling is a good start to improving your raid team without kicking the people you like. Once you identify them get them organising the healing with specific targets for particular phases, or calling stuff on voicechat. I've been doing it for years, it works.

This really is a toughie. I would advise weighing up the pro's and Con's of each outcome.

Firstly your an Officer in a guild with people who you have got to know and genuinely enjoy your play time with. Should you move guilds, would you be moving to a standard rank and would you be happy to do that? In the new guild you may form some great new friendships and yet you may also not (it's impossible to tell at this point) but its a risk you would have to be happy taking with the move. Hoping that you would slot straight into a regular raiding slot, you may well progress at a higher rate and feel happier with the progress you have made.

Or are you happier to be with people you get on with fantastically, in a rank that you have worked to get to (i assume) where progression may be slower than your comfortable with but you can live with it due to the friendships you have struck up.

Ultimately its a hard decision either way, but your the only one that can make it. Think about everything long and hard before making a decision, should you decide to go further afield for your progression fix try and keep those friendships intact as it would be such a shame to leave hate the change and then feel like you can't go back.

Hope this helps a little.

It took us 4 hours, yes, 4 hours to kill ultraxion heroic a couple of weeks ago because each time someone failed at pressing or forgot they were staying in. Now you can maybe understand my frustration how I feel I can be progressing quite easily through heroic if I was in a team that understood everything, but I have grown to love the guys and girls I raid with and don't want to leave them, but at the same time I actually want to progress, something which at the moment I don't think will happen.

- Take over their jobs for them so they have less to do, on your ultraxion example a raidlead could simply call the rotation as it happens on voicechat: "Next group is Sam and Max, Sam and Max staying in next, everyone else out".

- Finally don't be afraid to call it as it is. I have placed players on standby because they are having a bad night or they simply don't seem to handle an encounter. For some this is a good motivation to improve, mileage varies by character though.

I've underlined the only things that matter in your case, your only solution until they improve is to take full control of the encounters.., if your not 100% sure your confident enough to do so, tell them that so it's not suddenly turning into a drama and explain it is to help.

The same goes for calling it as it is, be careful in how you make those calls.., spin it in a constructive way like asking them to take a few seconds in the fight to get a focus on what sequence their soaking, or what the priority of targets to be dps'd is when your working on Blackhorn, but in even the best cases a calm person can snap, if that happens don't be afraid of apologizing in a sincere way.