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Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Why You are NOT a Top Player

Now, many people reading this will first say this to me, "Myl, I am one of the best (insert class here) and I play flawlessly and never mess up.  Now, how am I not a top player?"

Now, why this may seem simple to some, it doesn't to others.  Let me elaborate.

I came across this topic while raiding one night and had it came back up again only a week ago.  The first instance was when we had a brand new healer in our guild and we were working on Cho'gall.  Now, as a healer, when some one gets the debuff at 25 corruption, you cleanse it immediately.  Well, there were some of us that were a little slow at getting all of them and the new recruit was frustrated telling us all to cleanse faster.  I then, checked the logs to see where our biggest issue was, and he wasn't even on there.  I was shocked at first.  He was doing all of this complaining and not even contributing.  I confronted him later and he said, "I don't spec for dispel magic because the top Holy Pally for Paragon doesn't have it in his spec."

I was furious.  Almost lost it and could have really just let this guy have it.  But, I calmly explained to him these reason why he wasn't a Top Player:

  1. The guys in Paragon usually are pushing much harder content than the rest of us in much lower gear levels.  For this reason, Paragon utilizes every little point they can get in a talent tree to make them better.  Not taking the Dispel Magic and only relying on priests to do it is actually a pretty common thing at that level of play.  These guys are pushing for world first every Patch and to do so in much less gear than they need, they need to get every single point out of their spec.
  2. We are not all as good as these guys.  These guys have crazy fast reaction times while healing and very rarely find themselves fixed on one thing in particular.  In a case where you are in a normal guild, the other people that do your job may not be as fast or could possibly be focusing on their raid frames to notice something like this.  A healer usually will be focused on their frames so hard they don't even notice a magic effect until a couple of seconds to late.  This is why have a spec that has Dispel Magic is crucial for everyone that isn't in a Top Guild.  There is no telling how bad the lag could be for one of your healers or if an addon that they use for this isn't working.  Having that in your spec allows you to help make up for things down the road: less mana, how long the person lives, etc.  
  3. Now, the next reason why you are not a Top Player is quite simple, you are not willing to respec per fight so that you have a 1-2 point difference in your talents.  While this relates to point 1, it is still quite different.  For example, hunters most of the time don't spec differently per fight, but, on the Cho'gall fight,  a number of the hunters in these Top Guilds would go and respec so that they had improved traps to stun the bloods.  While this is a nice added feature that hunters could do, it is not necessary.  These Top Guilds pushing that fight in particular would only have 4-5 people on the bloods while the rest of the dps just killed Cho.  That stun time would allow the the healers to conserve more mana so they could keep people alive faster in the burn phase.  Most of your guilds don't do that.  They primarily just have your ranged take care of it, but as I have said, your normal guild isn't pushing for World First.
  4. Finally, you chose us.  Now, while my guild is progressing, we still find ourselves in that middle ground: not to slow but not on pace with Top Guilds.  This is probably the biggest reason that you aren't a Top Player.  Most of you reading this post are not in one of those Top Guilds that fights for World First every Patch.  The fact is, you chose to actually take time away from the game to do other things.  A lot of these Top Guilds will raid 25+ hours a week on this content while the majority of us barely scratch 10.  You chose to be in your respective guild for various reasons, but I'm pretty confidant that if you were willing to dedicate the time it took to be in a Top Guild, then your guild would have never came into view.  
As I said earlier, you are Not a Top Player.  While this doesn't mean that you are a Fantastic Player, you just don't have the drive to put most other things aside for multiple weeks every 5-6  months.  These guys are now clearing content in one night.  Most of us normal Guilds take a night to clear farm, then wipe for a while.  It is just how it is at this point.

To those guys who are Top Players that might read this, keep doing what your doing.  And to the rest of us, please understand that just because the Top Players are doing funky things in their spec, doesn't mean that you automatically need to.

Monday, September 5, 2011

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

So, its been about a month since my last post.  Some new challenges have come forth and I thought this would be the perfect place to discuss how to deal with some issues.

The Big Talk

So, some of you might have been there at one point.  Some of you may have had to give the talk, but eventually, everyone will hear about it.  Since in my guild we are a pretty tight group of people, there isn't really a lot that gets by my guys and gals.  But, the biggest problem with having the talk with anyone in my guild, is that we are all good friends and for the most part, have played together for multiple years.  But, the life of a GM goes on.

So, 'the talk' I have had recently was with a really good friend that I have actually been playing with for several years and have met in person.  Now, the issues that we had are not going to be brought up here with him directly, but more on how to approach them.
  1. Now, when you deal with anyone in your guild who the leadership of the guild feels is either not going in the direction of the guild or is possibly detrimental to its success, you need to decide on an outcome of the talk.  Do you want the person to stay?  Do you want/need them to go?  Do you want them to just stand back from the guild for a while and not play a big role?  These are all crucial questions that you need to have with your leadership because this directly effects how the talk will go, the attitude that you take into the talk, and what you do if the person surprises you by doing something which you did not intend.
  2. When you have 'the talk' with someone, you don't really want to be just all negative.  You do want to point out some good things that they have done, even if you have to stretch for them.  The reason for this is, if you do plan on trying to keep said person in the guild, you really want them to understanding of what is about to be said.  Now, in my experience, most of the time people are WAY more receptive when you are positive first than just going straight for the throat.  Keeping the person receptive will ultimately keep a good reputation with the guild and with the community on and off server.
  3. Now, the different types of issues you will have to deal with is comes from behavior issues to performance.  One is usually easier to fix than the other, but when you are struck with the mixture of the two, things usually get a little more difficult at best.  For example, a person constantly not performing and their behavior sucks, its a pretty easy fix.  But, when you do have that nice guy/gal who is trying their very best on every fight, you really will have to kind of be the bad guy and let them know, "Hey, I'm sitting you this week because your just not performing well enough."  Now, an understanding person will say that's fine, but will be hurt by it none the less.  In this situation, follow it up with a way to help.  If you have class leaders, ask them to sit down with person or take the time out of your time on the game to sit down and crunch the numbers, stay at the training dummies, etc. 
  4. Finally, the last thing you want to do is close it up with a very nice this isn't the last straw man.  Generally speaking, telling them that they can fix the problem and that they can get back to where they were if they prove themselves will get a lot of people motivated.  But then again, so people will actually find that they enjoy themselves more when they have less responsibility.  Who knows?
Guys, the biggest thing I can stress to all of you that has to give 'the talk' is that you must first and foremost remember that you are an officer of your guild and that you must do what is in the best interest of the guild, no matter who you must have the talk with.  I've told my guys, and they all understand this, that an officer is there not to receive perks, but to serve the guild to their best possible capacity.  When you take this role, you actually take on a second job, which sucks, but that is what you get when you get all those lovely perks. 

As always, feel free to send me a question either on twitter, email, or even in the comments.  Thanks guys, and enjoy.