Raiding is fun, and it is supposed to be... but what do you do when fun and progression clash.It's a tough situation, on one hand a raid needs to perform but at the same time everyone needs to be having fun doing it. It is clearly possible for these to co-exist but only if every member is putting in as much effort as every other member.
I like to run my raids as a fairly tight ship. I like to make sure every member is meeting the minimum requirements, i.e. Geared appropriately, gemmed, enchanted, reforged, and spec correctly... and yes there are some right and many wrongs for all of those. This is where one of the biggest problems can arise...How do you make sure everyone is getting the most out of their raiding toons?
If you're in a Bigger Guild, ie 25man with 2 or 3 teams running, you probably have Class Leaders. The Demi Gods who walk amongst us and know the ins and outs of all that is our Toons, and hell... be happy that they are willing to put in the Time to learn all this and openly share it upon request. For the rest of us there is ElitistJerks, Rawr, TankSpot and various other Tools and Think-Tanks filled with these people, who seem to thrive on just being able to tell us the break down of all our Stats, Abilities, Talents, Glyphs and much much more.
So here is the rub... If all this info is freely available why not use it? In short some people just don't care enough to goto the effort to learn these "ins and outs". The "Why should I?" question is something that still sends me into conniptions. I mean really... we play games to Win, you're not going to play Tetris for 5 years and just keep slamming down the blocks without rotating them and just hope that all will fall into place of its own accord.
Some don't have the time, and to be honest time is something that is an absolute premium in my life at the moment (hence the no post for weeeeeeeks), so I can totally dig that. But but but don't get angry when your DPS is barely average, or you're OOMing before the boss is 50% dead, or you can't hold threat to save you're life let alone the rest of the group. If you don't have the time to find the info yourself DONT BE AFRAID TO ASK one of your Guildies, or someone from a reputable guild, or even that other *insert class/spec here* in that Baradin's Hold PuG you just did that creamed you... Almost no one is douche'y enough to have a shot at you for asking questions, so DO IT!!! lol. But really... if time is an absolute luxury to you wouldn't you want to make the absolute most of it when Raiding???
Last are the people who 'Think' they know what they are doing and wont take any advice from anyone, even the Dev's would probably have a hard time telling these people that you just can't stack Stam, as a tank, like you could back in Wrath and not have threat issues. These are the ones that burn me as a GM and RL, and thank christ I've rarely ever had to deal with it. Generally the only way to get through to these peeps is by blatantly proving them wrong in no uncertain terms... sounds brutal i know, but i'm yet to find the soft sugar coated, marshmallowy softness way of doing this.
For my Guild I've been compiling Links and Descriptions of the current, most thought to be accurate, information about Spec, Talent, Glyph, Reforging, Stat Weights and Rotations, just so there is no excuse for anyone in the teams not to be up to speed. Probably a little too much, but I want to remove the Excuses for not doing it
I don't know, I guess what i'm really trying to say is... We generally play games to win, we Definitely Raid to win because Winning is Fun... I've never met someone who wasn't happy to Win, with the exception of the girl in the middle of the 'Human Centipede'
Comic from Flintlocke's Guide to Azeroth, possibably the best WoW Comic ever.
