Alternate title that was too long to actually use: “Do you help the raid or does the raid help you? Do you help the guild or does the guild help you?”
This is a topic I have been chewing over for awhile, although I’m not sure if I know exactly what conclusion I will come to yet. Hopefully by the time I hit “post” this will actually have some sort of order or make some amount of sense.
This post will use several examples, with identities obscured to protect the innocent (although if they were actually innocent, would they need to be protected??). This post also comes with a challenge: I intend this to be a fire-starter, a topic for mutual discussion. Comments are fine, but I would really prefer if anyone who reads this would write a post of their own on their own blog and link back to this.
But this is not just a meme. I am not going to ask:
1. How many 80s do you have?
2. How many 80s do you raid with in your guild?
3. Why aren’t you on your healer you selfish jerk >.<
No, this is a conversation. An intelligent and logical discussion. Let us begin.
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Raiding. The pinnacle of PvE content in World of Warcraft. Considered by some to be the point of the entire game (mostly because they fail at pvp).
Raids are groups consisting of either 10 or 25 players in some combination of tanks, healers, and dps. Usually somewhere in the ballpark of a 2/3/5 and 2/6/17 (depending on content).
Not all classes are created equal. Of the 10 classes of World of Warcraft, 4 are capable of tanking, 4 are capable of healing, and 4 are not.
Not everyone enjoys tanking. In fact, I think I can safely say that most people do not like to tank. Just look at the LFG queue times. The tank, in some ways, is the most crucial focal point of the raid. I am not saying that no one else is important, but a tank that fails will break a raid much faster than a healer or dps that fail (again, in most cases). A tank’s gear must be adequate for the content he is tanking, or more likely he must be over-adequate in order to appease the general gearscore-using masses.
Not everyone enjoys healing. Healing is not easy, no matter how many times people compare it to whack-a-mole. Do I move my mouse back and forth between raid frames in a manner similar to whack-a-mole? Yes. But I have 8 different hammers I could use to smack that mole, depending on the severity of the situation and the time I have to deal with it. And, I have never been yelled at for failing at whack-a-mole. Just saying. If you want to call it whack-a-mole, fine, but understand that it is the most stressful whack-a-mole I have ever seen.
/end rant. Back on topic.
DPS is easy. Lol, no. Doing damage is easy. Doing a lot of damage at the same time as not dying at the same time as damaging the right target at the right time without wiping the raid is more difficult. But DPS is also in abundance. All 10 classes are capable of dealing damage, and at this point in the expansion every class is capable of doing it very well. But they are everywhere. Almost every character has a geared dps spec, and if they don’t then that player probably has 3 alts that do.
Alts, we’ll get to that in a second.
I believe it is time for our examples.
Example #1: Mr. T (no, not that Mr. T, shut up foo) has 3 geared level 80s. He is fully capable of tanking, healing, or dps’ing for any raid, and is willing to bring whichever role the guild needs most. On occasion, I have even seem him save 2 or even all 3 characters to the same raid ID in order to help the guild progress.
Example #2: Ms. L has 2 level 80s, 1 healer and 1 dps. She prefers to dps, and our scary but friendly GM allows her to dps as much as she likes. Does this make her selfish? By contributing “less” to the raid by not healing even though she could? Absolutely not. She is one of the nicest people I have ever met.* When the time comes, and the difference between a raid happening and a raid not happening depends on one more healer, of course she is willing to help the guild, and she has done so. She is awesome 🙂
Example #3: Mr. Z has only 1 level 80 geared enough to raid, and only as dps. Is he letting down his guild, is he being a selfish person by not having a tank or healer ready to raid? No. Absolutely not. Could he potentially help the guild more if he were to have those other roles available? Yes. But that does not make him wrong for not doing so.
Example #4: Mr. S has 3 level 80s, all plenty geared enough for current raid content. But he only has one, his mage, in his guild. He has not told anyone about his ICC-25 geared holy/prot paladin or his resto shaman, because he does not ever want to be asked to switch roles for the sake of the guild. When I first saw him say this on the forums, it just felt wrong. But stepping back and thinking about it, how is this different from Example #2? He wants to dps, and only dps. Ok. Great. What gets me is this: Why is he in that guild in the first place? If he is afraid they will ask him to switch roles, I think he is missing a fundamental trust with his guild that they wouldn’t ask him to do something he isn’t willing to do. But why? Why wouldn’t he? Is it because he expects the guild to help him but does not feel like he needs to help the guild?
A certain JFK quote comes to mind.
..
A question I continually ask myself is this: “Why do I play this game?”
This question is asked often in a variety of different voices and with various undertones depending on the situation.
Ultimately, the purpose of a game, more accurately in this case a hobby, is fun.
Fun. Personal enjoyment. A sense of accomplishment. Making friends. Accomplishing things with friends.
All of these are acceptable answers.
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Why are you in a guild?
Fun. Personal enjoyment. A sense of accomplishment. Making friends. Accomplishing things with friends.
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Why do you raid?
Fun. Personal enjoyment. A sense of accomplishment. Making friends. Accomplishing things with friends.
See where I’m going with this? Neither do I, bear with me.
If raiding wasn’t fun, I guarantee you no one would do it. Well, Tel might, but that is an entirely different matter. He eats nails for breakfast. Three times a day.
In order for a raiding guild to truly succeed, it must have dedicated players who are willing to do their best for the sake of others around them, not only for themselves. You know, I could easily draw this analogy for any and every group of people, be it a family, a company, a country, whatever.
..
Instead of attempting to draw an arbitrary conclusion out of thin air, I’m going say a few other things. There is far more to being a good raider than having multiple classes or multiple sets of gear for multiple roles. There are more important things.
Being available and willing to raid. I am not saying you have to be logged on 7 nights a week, real life is real life and yada yada. But more importantly, are you willing to give of your play time to help out others? Maybe even run content that your character no longer needs any gear from at all, but for the sake of others?
Are you willing to spend time to help a guildmate upgrade their gear through gems and enchants? If someone pops up in guild chat asking if anyone can cut Runed Cardinal Rubies and make Brilliant Spellthread do you log on 3 alts and show up with the things in less than 3 minutes? (Thanks again <3)
Are you willing to spend time to help an under-performing guildmate perfect their rotation, look up theorycrafting sites and help them fine-tune their gear?
Do you talk to your guildmates? Ask them how things are going? Let them vent at you when work drives them up a wall, or when their burger takes an hour longer than usual to make?
There are thousands of other ways to be a better raider, to be a better guildmate. By being a better friend.
I do not raid with strangers. I do not raid with orcs, elves, and tauren. I do not raid with pixels on a screen.
I raid with friends.
And I ❤ them all.
-Del
*No, I did not just say this because she would tie me up and flog me if I said otherwise 🙂
I think you need to re-read the story. I was the one tied up.
I write a long and thoughtful post, detailing examples of various situations and coming to a logical conclusion and statement…
And the only thing you comment on is the footnote at the end.
😛
Also, my gravatar did not update with my new picture
I think all of us would have commented on that last comment rather then the entire post Del. 😛
I think this is teaching me a valuable lessons: Jokes and serious posts do not mix.
That, or you guys are hilarious.
I’m Mr. T and I’m a Night Elf Mohawk…..eyyy!
I will not comment on the joke. Instead I’ll try to scrape up a non-meme response post.
I ❤ u
Well, it seems like you are asking a lot of questions and I’m not really sure of your specific point, but I will whip something up that I think will be a response to what you are saying.
That works 😉
I don’t even know that I have a specific point, just want to discuss the topic.
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I loved reading this. I think we’re all entitled to play the game the way we want to play it, but we are not, and should not be, immune to the feedback of our choices.
Just like I don’t group again with offensive players and their toons, I value less those that do not do all they can for their guild or their guild’s raids.
Thanks for the comment!
I must have really gotten onto something here, I have yet to find a single person who disagrees with me.
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