STATE OF THE GUILD 2017

primesuspect · January 2017

Hello Icrontic!

Now that we're in the middle of Legion, with Nighthold here and our raid team making excellent progress, it's time to talk about the guild and raiding in 2017

Our guild progress has been phenomenal. We got heroic Emerald Nightmare on farm very early on, plowed through normal Trial of Valor, and overcame two significantly challenging fights: heroic Odyn before he was heavily nerfed, and heroic Helya, one of those "guild-breaker" fights. According to WowProgress, we had the realm 84th kill on H Helya and the 91st of H Odyn. That makes us technically a "top 100" guild on Kel'Thuzad, something you can all be proud of.

We also have been making excellent mythic+ dungeon progress: one of our groups recently completed a +13 Court of Stars, and we've had a lot of people getting their Keystone Challenger achievements in addition to some great gear from weekly class hall chests.

Trial of Valor was a strange raid: it was short (we could clear both difficulties in one raid night) and short-lived (was only current for a few weeks between EmN and NH). We were able to make it through during the short window of opportunity and get Ahead of the Curve for several people.

The makeup of the active members of the guild has been in a lot of flux, like it always does with this game. When we started raiding EmN the group size and wide variety of gear/skill levels necessitated two separate raid nights; a "casual" group and a "progression" group. The goal was to have a small group of players who could push the content envelope for the greater guild and then come back to help others along so that everybody got a chance at loot and lore.

As time went on, though, the "casual" group slowly got absorbed into the progression team as people's gear and skills improved, while other casual players' schedules and situations changed.

Having only one night of progression per week started to become frustrating for the core of the guild as the progress team size remained steady (and even grew a bit), because at some point casual night became "well, I can't get anything for this so I'll bring an alt" and devolved into a night where people would practice different roles/specs/builds or bring alts to heroic raiding. The discussion arose: why are we even doing casual night when 90% of the people coming don't really need anything from these?

Now, we're at a point where we have a much smaller dedicated group, and almost no "casual" raiders, and a lot of content to push. Being that raid time is precious, we've decided to implement a second night of progression raiding. Icrontic in 2017 will just have one raid group.

Because of changing schedules, we have found the need to drop the Monday raid night and change it to Thursday. After discussing with everybody we have determined that a new schedule of Thursday/Sunday will accommodate the most people and make the most sense for the group. Therefore our new raid schedule until further notice is:

THURSDAY 7:45PM EST: Raid night, group assembly, summons, prep, trash, first boss pull 8pm EST
SUNDAY 7:45PM EST: Raid night, group assembly, summons, prep, trash; first boss pull 8pm EST

CONCERNS:

We do have guildies who want to raid but do not yet feel comfortable with progression content. We want to be perfectly clear that we still intend to help people with this. We will be instituting occasional "catch-up" or fun raid nights once in a while to help carry alts, low-geared toons, or anybody who wants to come through older non-cutting-edge content. If you still want Ahead of the Curve on Helya, for example, or Lingering Soul Fragments, this is the kind of thing we'll be doing. We will not be leaving anyone behind, we just will not be dedicating one night a week to this kind of content. The current idea is that we will have one of these raid nights every third Tuesday of each month; on this Tuesday raid night, everyone is welcome and we can figure out what everybody wants to do on those nights.

Those who want to be on the progression team but aren't: We want you! We want to help you become a better raider. If this means helping you learn your class better or optimizing your gear or practicing with you in higher mythic + (as a side note: mythic+ dungeons higher than 10 are EXCELLENT practice to learn your class REALLY well), we want to help! All you have to do is ask an officer (Maejah or Wolford for tanking, Protractor, Ryanfodder, Solenda, or Maejah for healing, Avisuku and Kethark for bad DPS advice) and we're ALWAYS happy to help you become better!

GUILD CHANGES:

Due to our new structure, we will be re-implementing guild repairs on raid night for ALL raiders. We will also be restructuring the guild ranks, and simplifying it a bit. New ranks will be:

Trial
Member
Raider
Officer

Guild bank Raid tab will be accessible to all raiders and officers. Repairs will be turned on during raid nights for raiders and officers.

Here's an important bit: AN AUTHENTICATOR WILL BE REQUIRED for raiders and officers. There's no excuse not to have one and we cannot risk the guild bank being compromised by WoW's shitty security (no case-senstive passwords in 2017, Blizzard? Shame).

We'll be making some changes to the raid structure and member levels in the coming days; if you see something change like your rank (demoted/promoted) DON'T PANIC. Nobody is getting 'demoted' or whatever, Blizzard just uses dumb words to indicate rank changes.

The only guild bank tab that will be accessible to non-raiders will be "levelling" stuff. Most alts will be "demoted" to "member" status since we're such a small guild and don't have the income to support repairs for alts, etc.

This is a good time to remind people that depositing HELPFUL items in the guild bank (especially gold!) is very much appreciated. Flasks, food, potions, and crafting mats are all extremely nice things to deposit. On the flip side, if you're a raider and you see something you need in the Raid Prep tab, it's yours. That's what it's there for. The general rule is: Don't be a jerk. If you see 80 flasks in the bank, don't take 80. Take 20. You understand.

Nighthold and beyond awaits us in 7.1.5 and 7.2. Icrontic is, quite honestly, in the best shape it's ever been in. We have tons of fun and lots of progress. It's a fantastic time to be in the Icrontic guild, and we are all very grateful to how awesome this team is.

Thanks everyone!