I have a guy in my guild who posted on our forums today that he is quitting the guild as soon as we stop raiding pre-LK. His reasons boil down to:
1. We have too many people in the guild.
2. We aren’t progressing fast enough.
3. I don’t treat the healers with enough respect.
Translation - the raid leader sucks. Yeah, I’m terrible at the job, and look at the big line of people waiting to take over for me. Oh, what’s that? No one else wants to lead raids? Wonder why.
Yes, I chew out the healers. Why? Because tanks die on simple trash pulls, AOE classes don’t get healed on AOE pulls, or the main tank dies in the first five seconds of a boss fight. 90% of the time, these can be blamed squarely on the healers. Yes, there is the occasional unlucky parry or crushing blow, and sometimes AOErs jump in too early, but it’s been my experience that it the healers either casting too slow, or they’re not paying attention. Hyjal is a perfect example of this. When I’d give the healers a pre-pull pep talk before we started a series of trash waves and told them to spam the crap out of their heals for the first 30 seconds while we get CC and kiting organized, and the tanks pick up the rest of the mobs, the tanks almost always lived. But if I didn’t make a point of saying, “Abominations incoming, healers wake the hell up!” tanks died constantly. Coincidence? Nope. And it gets worse on boss fights. Healing the tank is great and all, but how come you can’t keep yourself alive. It never ceased to amaze me that healers made up 1/3 of our raid when we were fighting Archi, but not counting main tank deaths, they made up more than half of the deaths during the fight. Any raid leader that has a had a couple priests and paladins die at the same time on Archi with the resulting Soul Charges can attest to how frustrating it is. Our healers have also displayed a great love for standing in place after being teleported by Mother Sharaz and dying in the first couple minutes of that fight. So yeah, I chew them out. Pre-BC I raided as a healer, so their complaints about how hard it is for them to heal and avoid standing in fire like a bunch of condemned witches fall on deaf ears.
Apparently the big problem is that instead of singling people out, I just say, “Healers, you suck like a five dollar crack whore.” or something to that effect. I know who my best healers are. When there is a problem with healing I never assume it’s them. I know it’s the people who half ass it. Do you think it would improve things if I singled them out everytime we wiped due to poor healing? We have never had the luxury of picking and choosing our healers. Another place that Blizzard cocked up their game design is setting things up so healers need to make up about 30% of raiders, when I doubt they make up more than 20-25% of the level 70s who want to raid. How bad is that 5-10% difference. Try killing a boss for the first time with 6 healers, when it’s designed for 8. That means we have to take whatever healers apply and then raid with people that suck. And if I constantly told them how bad they suck they would stop raiding altogether.
Last week’s Archimonde kill was a perfect example, we wiped six times in a row. Fed up with the tank dying over and over, I hearthed, respecced to healing, put on my healing gear which isn’t as nice as most of our healers have and then healed the shit out of the MT and the melee dps. We killed him on the next attempt. I was out of practice and had my hot keys all set up wrong, so I stepped in the fire once, but you know what I did? I moved out of it and healed myself! Neat trick huh? It would be nice if a few of our healers could master that one.
It’s very easy when you don’t lead raids to play back seat driver and second guess every call I make. I’m not perfect but I don’t see anyone else volunteering to take over. Why have I let alts in raids? Because we average about 60-70% attendance from most of our members. This means, I’ve had to let people play alts that we might need at some point. Why have I let casuals raid? Because lately we have 20 people showing up to raid. Raiding isn’t perfect. But don’t blame that on me. There are 24 other people in the raid (on a good day). If I was able to pick and choose from a big pool of raiders, we would blaze through content. You raid with the guild you have - not the guild you might wish for.
Why do so many people assume that someone else will fix all the problems. Take some initiative, fix it yourself, or work with others to fix things. You don’t like stuff, fucking change it, don’t just complain about it. That’s what my blog is for.
20 responses so far ↓
1 Jonny // Sep 19, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Looks like someone needs a hug, but please.. look elsewhere for it.
2 Excedo // Sep 20, 2008 at 4:42 am
Love you’re blog! Keep it up =D
3 lethalnl // Sep 20, 2008 at 4:48 am
i can so see myself in this
i was a gm/rl for a few months, i hauled their ass through mh, then bt and when we got to mother and summer vacation hit, BAM everyone was gone
talk about being ungratefull
ime you have to hold the healers hands for them to preform propperly, i singled them out if they were slacking
or: “xxx” MOVE THE FUCK AWAY FROM THE FIRE when they were standing in it for 3 secs….
my motto used to be:
if you hate me, then you most likely suck
due to me shouting at people that sucked all the time
and hell, i turned some of em into half decent raiders
4 Ben // Sep 20, 2008 at 5:52 am
Love the blog. You write in a very funny way. Maybe because I can relate to it so well. I always have to remind myself… “How stupid is the average person? Remember that 50% of the population is more stupid then that.”
Good luck with Archi
5 Oneman // Sep 20, 2008 at 6:18 am
I’ve led a couple of raids back in vanilla wow, but i’m very shortfused. I would kick people for mispulling or not reading up on tactics beforehand. After that i felt more comfortable by advising someone who was more diplomatic or social but less skilled in the game. I still get horribly annoyed when i see people fuck up, doing stupid things, not thinking. In my opinion there are several types of players, but i would say the archtypes are 1. people who play to win and 2. people who play because they have nothing better to do. Nr. 1 people are in topguilds and progress because they will do whatever it takes and go the distance so to speak. While Nr. 2 people don’t read up on tactics, come unprepared, plan all sorts of real life stuff while they are supposed to be raiding and usually don’t have the slightest idea how to play their class in endgame pve. In short i feel your pain, but namecalling never solved anything.
6 Hammerfrost // Sep 20, 2008 at 7:29 am
Well… simply find another hardcore guild.. i dont see the point in having your own guild.. it doesn’t matter :p
7 Phoenix // Sep 20, 2008 at 9:20 am
I say you line up everyone that is failing in your raids, summon them to an arena and make sure you have a full raid waiting for them. Once they arrive, boot them from the group. I doubt I need to explain what to do next.
I did this with about 10 people from my guild. 6 people stopped being tards for about 2 months. 1 person never signed on again and eventually delete or transferred their character. The other 3 did not fix their issues and we kicked from the guild and became blacklisted from every guild on the server. When you force someone of your own faction to have resurrection sickness, they get the idea that they need to shape up or ship out.
8 Nymphomania // Sep 20, 2008 at 10:19 am
He speaks the truth, people QQ too much and don’t do anything about it. Keep up the good job mate. Raid leaders deserve more respect
9 Bravo // Sep 20, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Well it is the same old story as ever, most people that play this awfully simple game somehow still manage to not grasp the simplest of concepts.
In real life you can just avoid these kind of people, in a guild you are often stuck with them.
10 Park // Sep 20, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Love the blog, keep it up. I know it definitely feels good to vent lol. I lead a guild before TBC was launched, so I know your pain as far as attendance goes. I gave it up and decided to be a follower >.> worked out well.
I’ve left raids, groups, hell even guilds for reasons in this blog, I can’t stand playing with people that are bad.
Keep telling it like it is brosefffffff
11 Sehrish // Sep 20, 2008 at 4:06 pm
I’m curious what you think about expansion. Are you going to still do the 25s? Or just find 10 notfuckingretards? I was pretty happy about all raids have a 10 man version, because I just can’t find 25 people who don’t have their head up their ass. Actually, my favorite are the fuckers that complain ‘we don’t raid enough’, but then don’t show up on the days that have been schedule for a week, or complain that they can’t get into badgetzan or ZA when they show up 2 hours late.
I feel like I have the exact same problems/history as the host, except my guild started MUCH later. I plan on dumping the jackasses when wotlk comes out as well.
12 admin // Sep 20, 2008 at 4:33 pm
A few replies…
To Hammerfrost - I have my own guild because chicks dig power!
To Sehrish - I was actually thinking last night that maybe just doing 10 man raiding would be fun in LK. I’d like to give Warhammer a try, Fallout 3 is coming out next month, and I’m moving back to Vegas so my time will be limited. Either way, I know I’ll still have things to bitch about!
13 Mcrush // Sep 20, 2008 at 8:24 pm
so i play a healer, the two best tanks i have ever seen can attest to the fact that 1/4 of all tank deaths are the tanks fault for not shield blocking, not Last standing, potting, or w/e granted
i have done 3/6 SW so ive been down the rabbit hole and seen the devil himself, heal brutallus then tell me healing isnt hard.
14 errgf // Sep 21, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Half of these replies are sock puppets.
15 Greg // Sep 21, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Assuming you (anyone reading this) are not in an elite guild that can afford to boot anyone who is less than a great player, in most other guilds, especially “casual guilds”, you’ll find that at any given time, approximately 50% of people are below average. This shocking revelation (/sarcasm) even applies to healers! The people to really watch out for, are those that disagree with my 50% below average statement.
Kidding aside, Mcrush is right, when someone dies, it may or may not be a healing issue. Most of the time when I died in a raid, as a DPSer, it was my fault.
What makes healing so much more difficult than dps’ing or tanking, is that healing is very much a team effort. One or two poor healing team members can make ALL the healers look bad.
A great leader gets average people to perform better than average. Any idiot, and I do mean ANY idiot can lead a raid were everyone is over-geared for the encounters and the guild has the instance on farm. It’s the wipe-fests that test the good leaders.
When I lead raids (taking a long break now) I used to make extensive use of addons that parsed combat logs, so I could see all heals and all damage taken by any player for 15 to 20 seconds preceding their demise. Yes, these addons take a little time to learn, but when you say that person X messed up, you can post to raid chat why you think that individual was responsible for the wipe.
Rather than accuse the responsible individual(s), I would try to say (because I too make mistakes) something like:
“Hmm, it looks like the MT-player didn’t get any direct heals for about 7 seconds before he died. I see him taking 1 crit, a few regular hits, no crushing blows and only 1 HoT ticking on him, in those 8 seconds. Main tank Healer A and B, what happened? Possible answers: could be an AFK, could be mistake (selected wrong target), could be a bad healer, could be Healers jostling for placement on the healing meter (Solution: for most encounters, ban publishing meters, especially healing meters and NEVER be stupid enough to tell a healer that kept their assignment alive that they need to do better on the meter - sorry, pet peeve of mine
The only thing that really matters is did your healers’ assignment(s) live, and if they didn’t, then why?), they had to heal themselves (could be because they made a positioning mistake - standing in fire is a favorite 
), or more than likely, they tried to do more than their job and help the raid healers… it’s harder than you think for a healer not to heal. The key is to figure out what really went wrong (you need data/proof/at least reasonable evidence to support a claim), and make sure that those responsible for mistakes know what to do differently next time, and do so in such a way that those people with potential to be great come back to the next raid.
I was in a casual guild that at it’s peak raided with probably over 260 different toons (we had several raid groups). I saw many people progress from being down right awful to becoming amazing, and that progression had very little to do with gear. For those few that just can’t, or don’t want to figure it out, I used to tell them in a very matter of fact way why it wasn’t fair for me to invite them versus someone that had spent the time to learn to play their role well, when I had an oversubscribed raid. When I was short of players, it was a good time to give them another chance…
AngryRaidLeader, no matter what you do, you’ll never make everyone happy all the time, but if you are angry all the time, you defeat the purpose of getting angry in the first place.
Rant over. Gratz on the Blog. Have fun.
16 Janster // Sep 22, 2008 at 12:09 am
I heavily agree that blizzard has cocked up healing. Mostly cause its soo deathly boring compared to other classes (watching health bars 4tw) and its so hard compared to say ..mage…that its like playing another game.
Btw, if your protadin and MT dies instantly on pulls in MH, its not because your healers suck, well mostly, it’s because the Protadin aoe’s sucks up all the big green bastards, and then the other thanks are asleep, and don’t pull them off the protadin fast enough = insta death.
Secondly, tanks that charges into the oncoming pack, when there are necros = death.
Hope it helps
17 Sfets // Sep 22, 2008 at 2:06 am
Well if your healers fail…Pay a little bit more attention and see where they fail.It better to
tell them one by one where they do wrong so they can fix it.Also set up a healing officer that others respect.MAke him organize healers and Make healers report if they are oom or running from fire or feared or w/e on a healer channel.More or less make them act as a team.
All this yelling and QQing is just the retard greek way to Rl.Its funny though.
Our Rl set healers positions only the first time we get to a new encounter.After that he never bothers again.Healing officers does the positioning of healers and he can notice where
someone did wrong.So just a whisper with “hey {nick} you did that… and it killed you .Better avoid it by doing This” works better than insulting-Yelling-QQing ppl on Vent
18 Kirali // Sep 22, 2008 at 5:41 am
Brilliant summary! I am (well … I was) the healer leader in a raidgroup for a long time. I chewed them out often. I talk more in vent than the raidleader! And it brings results.
19 Gaiwyn // Sep 22, 2008 at 7:51 am
Nice post. How hard is it to move while healing? A good healer is more than a mana manager; he has situational awareness, thinks two steps ahead, and knows what is effective under any circumstances.
I feel that if you play a class-type, and play it considerably well, that you have every right to offer your advice (and criticism) to people playing that same role.
Since I have tanked, healed, caster dpsed, melee dpsed and range dpsed, all effectively, I can tell anyone in the game where they are going wrong (or right, or could improve) at any time.
Many times I have proven, as you have, that something is not only possible but easily doable, even by someone that doesn’t play that class-role every raid (eg. dispelling on Maiden — it used to annoy me a little when healers repeatedly failed at dispelling, as I knew I could easily do it within a second of the debuff landing).
Screw tact; smacktards ought not to be given game access. There should be an age and an IQ limit in this game.
Gaiwyn of Proudmoore
20 Animemonster // Sep 25, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I’ve played almost every class. And in every class role, I actually listened to the raid leader, and ended up doing best in whatever role I was in (other then DPS - I was a sucky rogue).
This brings to mind the Baron Geddon fights me and my guild went into. We were far from a raiding guild at the time (we only just downed Rag for the first time before TBC hit) but we had fought and defeated Baron Geddon several times.
Usually, at least one dumbass would become the living bomb. And yes, they would blow up everyone, and there would only be ten people left in the raid. However - Those last ten people were 9 of our greatest assets (myself as a troll priest included) and we would take Baron from 80% or so and kill him.
Oh, it took forever. Trust me. But we were still able to do it. And we made a whole lot of people feel really really small. It’s not that we meant to - it’s just that we were the best at our roles we were in. And people who underestimate the power of Troll Berserking, know not of its healing bad-ass-ery.
I’m not saying that I’m the best, by far I know I’m not. But what I’m saying is that, I know what you’re talking about, I know how you feel ( I sub-lead the healers underneath of the raid leader, and I had a pretty decent group of healers with me) but when the fuck ups started happening, I think I yelled at them just as much as he did.
I’ve made mistakes too. The maiden fight Gaiwyn’s talking about? I would often go from tank role in Kara to Healing role as a Paladin (I was pretty bad ass at that too) and I have made the mistake between heals, not to refresh Blessing of Sacrifice quick enough before the mass stun, or missing a dispel. So even though I think I’m good, I know I’m not the best. And out of all the people that wander in this game, yes some of us may make mistakes but always remember - A better-then-average player is better then a 13 year old prepubescent know it all elite player any day.
Plus, we don’t hurt your ears on Vent/TS. The Screeching..the screeching!
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