Being asked to sit on progression night
primesuspect
Beepin n' BoopinDetroit, MI Icrontian
Hey team,
I wanted to address something that happened last night and acknowledge that I probably handled it poorly:
Last night we had a bit of a struggle with mechanics on the Xavius fight. A discussion came up about the timing of phase transitions which required the big add to be dead before the dream ended and little adds starting coming out. During a moment of frustration I looked at the aggregate DPS numbers for the last few attempts and saw that our DPS wasn't quite up to snuff to push that phase.
I mentioned a number: 200K dps minimum, and what I meant was that this should be the average we need to push that phase. I want to be clear that I was NOT looking at the most recent attempt, in which a few people were under 200k due to early death.
I want to make clear that we fully understand that every fight is unique, and DPS numbers are all over the place depending on a lot of things, some random. Looking at the overall logs for this entire expansion, there is nobody that is immune to a few bad bouts of luck / bad proc RNG / early death due to other people failing mechanics, etc. We understand that DPS is not always 100% under your control.
I've always said that we are not a huge numbers-focused guild, and I want to make sure that this is clear. Nobody was asked to sit last night, so I want to assure the people that voluntarily left that this was not what I was asking.
That said, we DO need to get better at mechanics. Whenever we have officer chats and discussions about what we can do to push progress, the number one thing we always acknowledge and discuss is that, as a guild, in general, we just sort of aren't really great at mechanics. It gets very frustrating when everybody KNOWS that they're supposed to not drop (pools/tornadoes/poison/blades) in bad areas, but after dozens of attempts we still do. We ALL make mistakes, we all flub mechanics (even our SUPER SICK TOP TIER RAIDERZ), we all screw up and this is totally normal and acceptable; but when it's a consistent thing where sometimes it feels like people aren't paying attention or not fully "being there" it gets a bit more frustrating than being able to shrug it off.
We're all adults (except for @Plottie!) and we all understand that adult life is sometimes unpredictable and stressful and distracting. We have dogs, we have kids, we have jobs, we have parents, we have partners, we have neighbors, etc. We get it. Life happens and sometimes you can't bring your A-game to a silly game night with your friends. THAT'S FINE.... but on progression night we need your A-game, and so we ask that if you are mentally checked out or distracted in some way that prevents you from bringing your best for these three hours, that you acknowledge that and sit one out. Nobody is going to lose their place in the guild or on the team.
I cannot stress this enough: Mechanics > DPS, ALWAYS. I also cannot stress this enough: there will always be a place for EVERYONE to raid; maybe it's not progression night but on our other raid night we will always take everybody no matter what. If we can't clear a piece of content on a non-progression night we'll just move to something we can clear. Everybody will get to raid, and eventually we will get you your kill, no matter what.
So, the TL;DR: I'm sorry for making it sound like DPS was the issue last night when it wasn't: it was mechanics failures. If I offended you, I sincerely apologize. Bring your A-game. It's okay to sit out if you're not feeling it. I love you all.
Comments
Unless you're a sick paladin. We don't make mistakes, we're just showing off our bubble.
Dying is the fastest and easiest way to make good raid calls though!
Boy howdy.
#twhs
Teen wolf high school?
AAAAAOOOOOOOOOOO