Yesterday we held Wintergrasp for three straight victories. We lost the fourth because by that stage the horde were so annoyed they must have turned up with everyone on the server and the zerg was impossible to stop. We now have almost 40 level 80 players in the guild, so at any one time at least 10 of us are going into WG. The strategy planning is interesting because we have to make provision for two things: how to win against the horde and how to counter the random idiots who will show up on our own team. Someone will put forward a good attack plan but then we will spend most of our time working out how to send our moron allies off out of harms way, while thinking that they are at the cutting edge of the battle.
Anyway, after the third win we decided to do a VoA 25 man run. Half were guildies and half were PuGs. Crucially, the tanks were members of our guild, so we could easily control the run. A few of the PuGs were very loud-mouthed in the lead up to starting the run. I don’t know if they were excitied about seeing a 25 man VoA on the server after 60 years of not having one or if that was their normal behavior, but whatever the cause they were vocal and moronic. Gevlon may not be the best tactical leader but he sure is the best leader of the group when there are morons to be dealt with that I have ever seen. The first boss we did was the stone giant, and Gevlon announced before the fight that this was a dps test and anyone who did under 1500 would be kicked. Nobody was kicked. Then we did the Fire boss with the same conditions applying. Still nobody was kicked. Don’t get me wrong, they were vocal about this, but when it came time to put out the damage they got their heads down and did it. Then we moved on to the Ice boss that drops the sweet 270 loots. Gevlon came up with a fantastic plan: the lowest ranged dps on the orbs wouldn’t get any loot. There was howling about that, but when it came to the fight everyone did what they were supposed to do and we one shotted the boss. He dropped, and within 10 seconds the chat was filled with something like this; (I’m para-phrasing)
“Gevlon you fucking piece of shit you can’t fucking run it this way who the fuck do you thinkl yopu are you fucking son of a whore …”
He went on for quite a bit longer. Then unsurprisingly, he was kicked. This was a shadow priest, (there were no cloth drops), who put out 6800 dps, and who had been one of the vocal idiots during the whole run. I asked in chat what was his problem as I genuinely had no idea. His problem was with the rule for ranged dps on orbs. Forcing him to do his job had caused his dps to drop below some of the melee on the recount chart. Thus his temper tantrum.
I was staggered by this. I mean, we all make fun of gearscore, we all argue over recount and what its positive and negative points are, but at the end of the day most of us doing the arguing here in the blogosphere are somewhat sane and rational. So to see recounts true effect on players who don’t think somewhat sane and rationally is … insane. This guy had the biggest dummy-spit that I have ever seen in a PuG, and a PuG that was a complete success with no wipes and just one or two deaths. And what was it over? It was because someone succeeded in forcing him to do his required task at the expense of the recount meter. Because he did his task we got the boss down. But this upset him, a lot. Because he was only 4th on recount for that fight. It makes no sense whatsoever.
Now I know that Gevlon used recount at the beginning to threaten players with being kicked if they didn’t perform, but that was a minimum number, not a maximum. All you had to do was your required task and be above 1500dps. If the highest dps got a reward then that would be different as this players dps would have been “compromised” in such a situation.
I like recount and I refer to it often to gauge how I am performing. But the extent to which this tool is misused had escaped me until this situation yesterday. Gevlons idea of lowest ranged dps on orbs gets no loot was a brilliant one in this case. But going on how players are motivated by recount in a negative way, you will need to come up with a plan like this for every fight just to get players to do their job. Based on this, Blizzard has a sure-fire way to create a boss that a 25 man PuG will NEVER get down: make it so that a successful attempt will require dps players to run around and do all sorts of jobs so that if they do it properly their dps will never go above 2000. Or even better, include a special prize that the boss give out to a player in a group that wipes whose dps was over 10,000 lets say in this case. Evil.
Some players dropped the group after this but we decided to try the last boss anyway. But as we got there, one of the hunters misdirected the boss onto our group, left the instance and we wiped. Apparently he too was very annoyed at being forced to complete a task at the expense of his dps. Another PuG who had been fairly quiet for most of the run then said that we would be lucky to ever form a 25 man PuG again on the server and he dropped the group. So to sum it all up; we nuked the bosses, never wiped, and got the loots, but we will never form another PuG again because we made people do their jobs.
Oh, and no rogue loots dropped, sheesh.
ps; apparently the priest was not kicked, he quit group himself. And the rules were all clearly stated in raid chat before the first boss went down and players were saved to the raid.
The Noisy Rogue 
May 21, 2010 at 8:40 am
Let me guess these pugs were guildless or not in a raiding guild right? I think you have played pvp for most of your game time and not known the tears and frustrations of trying to get into pugs without a guild to back you. Quite simply we live and die by our gscore, achieves and reputation for dps. Without the achievments for ICC10, even with a Gscore of 5024 no one would touch me. Eventually I made my own pug with a few guildies and people I met in Voa and Toc10 pugs who knew I did 7k dps as they had seen me. We cleared the first 4 bosses easy as. With that achivement and my reputation for doing good dps v my gscore from 25man voas I bartered my way into a 25man ICC pug. I now have storming the citadel 25. Now do I target the orbs? yes always have. Do I stand in onys fire? no I dont. Why? because if I dont target the orbs I WILL be called on it in raid chat and if I stand in the fire the healers will NOT heal me and it makes it harder to get into future raids when the best of my server is given evidence of huntardness. That said I understand the frustration of that shadow priest, given the conditions of your server and the evidence just provided to 24 other raiders that they can only do 6.8k dps on ice watcher. Thats gonna hurt their chances to get into an icc pug.
May 21, 2010 at 8:42 am
Oh btw I have followed you for a while, first post though 🙂
May 21, 2010 at 9:02 am
I can understand the reasons, but I’m still a bit wondering at the method if it was as you say: “the lowest ranged dps on the orbs wouldn’t get any loot”. That is harsh. There will ALWAYS be someone who is lowest. They may be very, very close, but they’ll be slightly lower. If they were doing their job properly and the boss went down I really can’t see any reason for excluding them from loot. I probably would have been pretty pissed too tbh, if your recount of this is correct.
May 21, 2010 at 11:15 am
Agreed with this. It’s not being ‘forced to do your job’ that makes you quit, it’s being saved to an instance where the RL has a dumb, illogical loot rule. The first bosses – fine, a minimum dps set is reasonable.
Being last on the dps meter meaning you get no loot, when you’re doing a job that will lower your dps? Silly.
May 21, 2010 at 11:21 am
Lowest dps on the orbs.
May 21, 2010 at 11:58 am
Lowest DPS on orbs or not. SOMEBODY will be the lowest unless they happen to tie with another person for last place. You should have said “You will do a min of 1.5K DPS on orbs or no loot”
Those puggers were right. You can’t pick up people for a random pug and then deny them loot. If you want to run by those rules you do a guild run.
May 21, 2010 at 9:06 am
Wow, people are so stupid
May 21, 2010 at 4:56 pm
So much truth in those words.
BTW, first time reader, and first time poster.
Very interesting article, Noisyrogue. xD I’ve been following Gevlon’s undergeared and ganking projects and it’s good to know the opinion of some member other than Gevlon himself.
May 21, 2010 at 11:04 am
This sums up why Gevlon will never be successful with people. It is an issue of trust and honesty.
In the real world, management is about working with people to get the best out of them. Gevlon has only succeeded in alienating them, in a situation where the run was a success and he could easily have made friends and influenced people.
Instead he proved himself to be a bully who demanded that people dance to his whims. He could have been honest and told people his requirements when advertising the raid, but he deviously waited until players had invested time in the raid.
In this case, Gevlon’s behaviour on the orbs was particularly reprehensible: he didn’t (according to your account) tell people of his whim until they were already saved to the raid, giving them no choice but to agree to his bullying tactics or give up on VoA for the rest of the raid week.
All he had to do to keep everybody sweet was to be upfront and honest about these conditions when recruiting, rather than underhandedly waiting until people had little choice but to accede to his whims.
If he had explained beforehand that these were his conditions, people who signed on for the raid would have been happy to accept them. Imposing them afterwards is what is particularly repugnant here.
Trust is the reason people will be loath to join another of Gevlon’s raids. Trust is important. You work hard for your boss because you trust him to do the right thing for you and the team. He works hard for you because he trusts you to do the right thing for him and the team. When that trust breaks down, when you can’t trust your boss or he can’t trust you, it’s time to get out.
Who would join a raid with Gevlon when he has proven that he is quite willing to impose new conditions on you when it is too late for you to do much about it? What’s to stop him from deciding next time after the fight is over that loot priority will be given to people in his guild? Could any player honestly trust him not to do this? He has proven that he doesn’t feel bound to be honest in his dealings with his fellow players. Why would anyone agree to join a raid in which so untrustworthy a player is leader or lootmaster?
May 21, 2010 at 1:39 pm
I agree with your sentiments but disagree with your conclusions. History shows us that from Genghis Khan to Pol Pot dictatorships and cruel methods do work, even if we find that distasteful. The less alternatives there seems to be the more people will capitulate.
I suspect Adam is right, they will be back.
May 21, 2010 at 2:11 pm
And is it accurate with comparing a dictatorship with asking ranged dps to actually just do their job or they will not be rewarded? I mean, this is like schools not holding atheltics competitions becuase they don’t want to make the kid who comes last feel bad.
May 21, 2010 at 2:52 pm
I was trying to separate the method from the result. I agree that my example is extreme, but only to make the point.
What you were striving for, a group that does what they’re supposed to do, I agree with.
Like Dacheng, I don’t think the method is the best one, what I was trying to show is that it might still be effective, albeit in a limited way.
When you teach kiaking are you firm but fair, encouraging as well as critical or do you feel that as long as no one drowns and you get paid it doesn’t matter how they felt about the experience ? I suspect the former or your repeat business would suffer.
May 21, 2010 at 4:07 pm
With kayaking I am firm but fair – I am responsible for their lives so I need to be. I also feel that Gevlon was firm but fair here. The rules were clearly stated. They choose to stay, and only had the tantrum after the loot had dropped. Says it all I would think.
May 22, 2010 at 5:00 am
“History shows us”??? Sorry, Chewy, but you need to hit the books again. Genghis Khan was neither a dictator nor cruel with regard to how he ran the Mongols – he was merely the chief others chose to follow because he was a successful military commander who rewarded his subordinates well. As for Pol Pot, he ran his country into the ground and then his army deserted him when the Vietnamese had had enough and invaded. He was most likely murdered by his former followers. Hardly a success.
There have been some successful tyrants, but there have also been successful democratically-elected leaders, and others from the various forms of government in-between. There have also been plenty of failures of all stripes. Assuming that being a dictator guarantees success is foolish.
May 23, 2010 at 4:45 pm
@Wilson
Yes, you’re right, using Genghis Khan as an example was inaccurate (read further down).
However, getting all bent out of shape about the historical inaccuracy you’ve missed my point entirely.
May 21, 2010 at 11:18 am
Gevlon is so awesome I can’t even breathe.
The very best way to handle morons is to make fun of them. It is the only positive thing that can be made out of them.
May 21, 2010 at 11:19 am
@Nightgerbil; actually 90% of my WoW time has been PvE, this is my first major PvP experience in the game for any length of time. On this realm with only 3 major guilds including ours, 25 man PuGs just do not happen. Everyone will touch you on Ally Magtheridon because there is just no other choice. Everyone knows everyone also, which makes these players behavior even more astounding as we are organising the only successful 25 man PuGs on the server. 6.8k dps on our server is actually very good.
@Larisa; harsh, maybe yes. But definitely effective. Was I surprised and thinking it was harsh? Yes, I was. Did it work? You bet it did. After seeing the type of players that we are dealing with on this server should we do it again? Absolutely.
@Dacheng; I’m sorry that I didn’t make it clear in the post but Gevlon put these stipulations down before the first boss was cleared.
Also, Gevlon and the rest of us for that matter, are doing what we have to do to progress on this server. We have some extremely good players in our guild. Our tank is actually quite very well known from another server. He transferred across for the project. Other players in PuGs are continually asking him why he stays on “loser Magtharidon”. This sums up the Ally player base that we are dealing with. For the most part in order to stay on the faction on this server, you’re a loser.
May 21, 2010 at 12:33 pm
I must agree with Snieh. You could have motivated people to dps the orbs without making yourself into jerks, for instance making a minimum requirement. I don’t agree with putting up expectations on PUGs, but that was definitely to overdo it.
May 26, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Thanks, Adam, for clarifying that here in the comments, and for adding the postscript to your article clarifying it there, as well.
The right time to have laid down these stipulations would have been upfront, when recruiting for the raid, rather than after the raid began; but we can all agree that that is at least better than waiting until after a boss goes down.
May 21, 2010 at 11:19 am
I agree with Larisa.
The reason the guy is pissed off at having lower recount numbers is not because his DPS would have been higher if he could have DPSed the boss, but because he happened to be the lowest ranged DPS and thus was automaticly denied loot.
May 21, 2010 at 11:22 am
He wasn’t the lowest ranged dps.
May 21, 2010 at 11:20 am
As a tactic it obviously worked, as a strategy I think it would be flawed.
Gevlon made some clever decisions about how to get people to do what he wanted on this single occassion, possibly at the cost of any future pugs.
“….but we will never form another PuG again because we made people do their jobs. ”
I think it’s the method used to get people to do their jobs that caused the tension rather than the doing, effective though it obviously was.
“When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right. ” Hugo
May 21, 2010 at 11:22 am
There is no cost for any future pugs. We are running the only successful pugs on the server. If you want to get the loots you need to play by our rules. Trust me, next week they’ll be there.
May 21, 2010 at 11:23 am
The shadow Priests name was Rosey, he heappens to be in the same guild as my mage alt on magtheridon.
I actually saw this unfolding in Gchat, at the very least most of the people in Intruders consider Inglorius Gankers to be worthless at raiding.
I found that the Gchat turned childish when the members of the guild that was in the raid started bad mouthing you guys.
Rosey was actually waiting for toralon to go down before he did his rage storm, apparantly you cut him off before he completed it.
Either way i don’t hold this agianst you guys and i’m sure you’ll still be able to do VoA 25 PuGs as theres not much choice with who to run with on the server.
Hope you have better luck in future runs.
May 21, 2010 at 11:31 am
Hey Koushirou, thanks for the informative comment.
Yeah, the guild chat was extremely childish, I think Gevlon was very restrained at putting up with all the crap that was flying around, (the worst offender was a warlock if I remember correctly).
I’m saddened that Intruders think this way as we have some extremely strong raiders in our guild and we are also still gearing up. With gear being low we still managed to do some ICC hard modes last Sunday. I would hope that Intruders would reconsider their position and start working with us instead of against us all the time. If they don’t, no big loss as we already have 40 level 80’s and a lot more on the way.
May 21, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Some extra info: the priest was NOT kicked, just ignored and he left himself.
On our last week PuG when Toravon died we had 5 people alive, because 2 out of 7 ranged cared to damage the orbs (a hunter and an spriest). This time I barely seen orbs and no one died. The healers DPS-ed in boredom (until a retard figured out he is better tank and taunted. He ate heal like a clothie)
Guilmembers later told the same as Larísa, and I see I was wrong in not setting a numerical limit: 160K damage done on orbs.
I don’t think we lost the chance of 25 mans, the same way as the “mean” boss does not lose his workers. These punks want their gloves&pants just as much as a McJob worker wants his 2$/hour.
The spriest told it himself when he was informed that he can leave if he doesn’t like the rules (was announced BEFORE saved): “I have no other chance to get it than this fail PuG”
May 21, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Thanks for clarifying those points for us.
May 21, 2010 at 1:17 pm
I guess it comes down to whom you want working for you. The mcjobs, that are only there for the money, and will fuck you over if a better offer comes along, or people who enjoy playing/working with you.
I’d chose the latter, Gevlon the former. I’m sure that his ganking guild will win more WG than my guild will.
May 21, 2010 at 2:11 pm
The thing here is you acknowledge the rules and have a shot to the final prize, or you dont, plain and simple.
The threat just makes players more focused on the final prize, i bet that if the priest had got some loot he would not even say a word.
Btw im curious, did Gev watched who was the last on the orbs? Would he get any loot, bending the rules stated if he perfomed acceptable??
ps. (long time reader, 1st time poster :))
May 21, 2010 at 2:11 pm
@Chewy
I just want to say that your interpretation of Genghis Khan is incorrect. Despite the fact that he was brutal to his enemies, he was actually a very good leader who treated his troops fairly.
Mongol society is very fluid. You are free to leave your Khan to join another if you feel that said Khan is better. In fact, one of the main reasons he was so well-liked was because he split the spoils from the battle in a relatively even fashion.
May 21, 2010 at 4:20 pm
I stand corrected, I’m not an expert on Ghengis Khan it was simply the first person to come to mind to illustrate my point (incorrectly as it turned out), thanks for the additional information, I’ve learned something.
May 21, 2010 at 6:45 pm
Heh, glad you pointed that out. I was about to throw a history-nerd-fit over him comparing Genghis to Pol Pot. 😛
May 21, 2010 at 2:35 pm
I always try to get raid leaders in VoA to somehow penalize people who don’t damage the orbs. (this is usually self interest, coz I do it and know 90% of the other hunters don’t)
I won’t say “lowest DPS” is the way to go, but certainly something along the 160k lines, like Gevlon suggested, certainly is. This will mean they did enough damage to kill one orb (iirc), which is a good measure that they tried to do their job instead of just having some splash AoE on the orbs.
I wish more raid leader’s followed Gevlon’s ruling on this. Everyone who disagrees probably wanted to slack, so I really care not.
May 21, 2010 at 3:42 pm
To those who felt that this was not the right way to run a PUG– those players who felt that Gevlon was being unfair are free to form up their own PUGs and run them the correct way. Or, they can join someone else’s PUG and accept the rules as they are given.
I get the feeling that the PUGers who complain the loudest are the ones who rely on others to carry them through content. If they took a few turns in the raid leader’s shoes, I suspect that they would not really like dealing with people like themselves.
May 21, 2010 at 4:03 pm
I was directed here by Gevlon’s latest post … Awesome read. Terrible players.
All I have to say is this:
What the fuck were all of you ridiculous GearScore worshipping monkeys doing BEFORE GearScore existed? I swear, GS has made people in this game more ego-centric than ever before.
To Gevlon and you, Mr. Noisy, AWESOME job on giving out those rules. Yes, someone will always be lowest on the meters, but I think that what they were going for was NOT having a pug doing 1200dps, and thus being carried for the run.
When I do a heroic random, and end up doing 48.7% of the group damage, I cry. So, keep up the good work, lay down the law, and ALWAYS retort with “We may have given that rule, but we one-shot everything, and the run was done quickly. Thank you for actually doing your job, you’re now on our ‘do not invite’ list.”
Guillex
May 21, 2010 at 4:36 pm
I think the outcome that Gevlon was trying to achieve was spot on (everyone doing their job), but I do agree with a couple of previous posters that next time it would be better to simply state all of the requirements up front, before any bosses were down and people were saved, and instead of a “lowest ranged dps on orbs gets no loot” tweak it a little to set a minimum cap there as well – i.e. “if you do less than x damage on the orbs you get no loot.”
This will allow you to get rid of any posers up front, as they’ll leave if they know they can’t meet the requirements, and will still ensure compliance without any surprises or complaining once people are saved.
Happy rogue’ing!
May 21, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Gevlon and Adam have been clear. They requirements were stated up front, before anyone was saved.
May 21, 2010 at 9:09 pm
I went back and re-read and that is actually NOT clear at all: “The first boss we did was the stone giant, and Gevlon announced before the fight that this was a dps test and anyone who did under 1500 would be kicked. Nobody was kicked. Then we did the Fire boss with the same conditions applying. Still nobody was kicked. Don’t get me wrong, they were vocal about this, but when it came time to put out the damage they got their heads down and did it. Then we moved on to the Ice boss that drops the sweet 270 loots. Gevlon came up with a fantastic plan: the lowest ranged dps on the orbs wouldn’t get any loot.” Based on this chronology, the rule for Toravon was only stated AFTER the first two bosses were downed. Again, I don’t have a problem with that rule as long as it was given up front, but this doesn’t sound like it.
May 21, 2010 at 10:23 pm
Nosnum,
Read the *comments* to this post. As Everblue said, Gevlon and Adam have been very clear: the requirements were known in advance of any bosses being killed.
May 21, 2010 at 11:39 pm
Next time try reading through the comments before posting your own, I swear posts like yours are worse than “TLDR!”. Also, if you weren’t there and saw the rules firsthand it doesn’t affect you in any way, so get off your high horse.
I’m a raidleader and I give props to Gevlon for requiring people to do the correct job in order to ensure a win. The rules were clearly stated up front (in raid chat, I’d assume), which means that Blizzard will back you up in the case of a ninja or anything similar. You don’t owe anyone anything if they decide to get saved after agreeing to rules they don’t like and then leave. People will join a VoA pug for only Toravon’s loot, so if they leave after Archavon they’re only hurting themselves.
I’m tired of pugs feeling entitled to whatever if they don’t perform their job. If VoA was actually hard these people would never be able to complete it because they’re too busy maintaining their ego to be part of a team. What they fail to understand is that by causing a wipe by their own bad actions, they’re wasting the time of 9-24 other people who should and will start to be very upset with them.
I generally kick these people before we pull anything because they can be replaced in seconds. On a server where there are no other successful pugs? They can be replaced in nanoseconds.
May 22, 2010 at 5:21 am
Check the comments, you’ll see that Gevlon and Adam clarified those points. It’s not in the post itself, but it is in the comments.
May 24, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Though this is an old thread and I doubt anyone will revisit it, I just wanted to follow-up that yes, Gevlon did clarify that all rules were stated up front, so given that I completely agree (as I walready stated) that what they did was perfectly fine.
Lol, Andrux – anger much? I’m sorry that I missed Gevlon’s clarification, but you need to take a Zanax, dude.
May 21, 2010 at 6:49 pm
Who cares if the shadow priest doesn’t come back? Who cares whether a bunch of kids get all butt-hurt because they’re told to fulfill their resposibilities to the group?
Do you even want those people in your raids?
Let them suffer in failPUGs alongside M&S that do 2K to the boss and ignore the orbs. That’s where they belong anyway.
May 21, 2010 at 8:54 pm
I think a few people are missing things.
Lowest dps “On Orbs”.
If everyone were around 6.5k on the orbs, and one person around 6k, I’m pretty sure that person at 6k would be able to argue a valid point and get the loot. Any sane person will allow an argument if it’s valid, and 500 dps is definitely within acceptable range. Now, if he did 2400, then that’s not really valid. Instead of putting up decent numbers and then arguing, the idiot decided to start a confrontation from the start.
Plain and simple, he got what he deserved.
May 21, 2010 at 11:56 pm
Gevlon is just rewarding the guys with highest gs in the first place. If you have lots of high gs range dps and one poor guy who works hard but is very undergeared compared to the others he has to work much harder to have a chance.
Chances are he will come last, when the others could out-dps him by just spamming one spell.
Time for the Gevlon-worshipers to use their own brains rather than blindly praising everything that he says…
May 25, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Go read the replys more closely. Gev already stated that making it a ‘lowerst gets nothing’ instead of ‘anyone below XXX minimum’ was a mistake and he should have done it the other way.
May 22, 2010 at 3:15 am
Incredibly enough, I just wrote a blog post on just this mentality only in a raiding guild setting.
In your case, since the people in the raid had no ties to your guild and therefore no real repercussions you got an ear full. In our case the people who value recount over doing the correct job have to do it stealthily but I have no doubt this mentality is keeping us from killing one of our final hard mode bosses in ICC 25.
Great post and I have put a link to it in my post so my (scant few) readers can read it.
ps. If you would like to see my post its at server5th.blogspot.com
May 22, 2010 at 10:42 am
Its an interesting discussion. If the dps WERE informed of the rules before hand and are part of a raid guild so have ICC spots why the hell were they getting their knickers in a twist for being asked to do their jobs?
On my server this doesnt happen. quite plain and simple we are desperatly trying to earn our way into pugs. We have to prove our dps is spread evenly over the orbs and ice watcher, while having high dps and if we cant do it, forget it you might as well delete yr charcter because your NOT going to the ICC.
@ Noisy rogue really? I can do a server/faction transfer and I could raid ICC with you guys providing I a) wasnt fucking up and b) did good dps? I am trying to kill the lich king as my main game objective. As much as the ganking project intrigues me that for me is what i want to see.
May 22, 2010 at 11:42 am
Really most of those pugs should have been grateful to get into a VoA at all. They seem to forget very easily that WG is being held and won for them by a small minority – of which was running that pug group.
May 22, 2010 at 6:20 pm
@Gevlon
Just because you’re the only outlet on the server for VOA doesn’t prove the success of the method. You probably could’ve reserved half the loot, and some other crap, like “you must take off your helmet to stay in raid”. Would people do it? from the sounds of it, probably. Would it be smart? not really.
I know i would’ve left, after hearing the rules on Toravon. The first 2 were fine (except for getting saved before toravon). all you did was take advantage of someone elses situation.
I wish you had tried emalon, as you couldn’t simply check recount for that.
Kudos on clearing VOA, i guess.
ps: could you clear up the innaccuracies in the main post? They give it a vibe it shouldn’t once you read the comments. (said before being saved, priest wasn’t kicked, he dropped, etc…). Makes me wonder if the nerd rage is entirely truthful.
May 22, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Interesting. As many pointed out, there would be no VoA Raid (or opportunity for anyone to do VoA in the first place since IG is doing all the work in WG anyhow), so they have nothing to complain about. Whatever conditions you set are better then nothing, which is what all the random PuGs would have had without you. Actually now I think about it that “loot goes to guild” isn’t really unreasonable (as I understand it, on Magtheridon there are no VoA pugs), as the rest would have gotten the badges at least.
On the other hand the optimal solution was perhaps to set some arbitrary number for DPS on the orbs. In your system there are many ways for people who actually did the work and deserve the loot as much as the people above them (on orb dps) could end up getting nothing. I understand that it’s easier for you to just say “last person on dps gets nothing” thus ensuring everyone does their best at almost no expense to you, but then you don’t really need to have a post where you are all surprised people were angry at you.
May 22, 2010 at 7:28 pm
how much Boss-DPS tradeoff is acceptable for good orb DPS?
I recently was in a VOA25, where I was top hunter vs orbs, but bottom overall vs boss, by a substantial margin.
The obvious edge-case is killing the orbs, but doing zero damage to the boss.
just wondering what the warning signs are that I am focussing too much on one aspect of the fight.
May 23, 2010 at 1:40 am
In VoA 25, usually the only problem that can crop up is insufficient dps to the orbs. The strategy is rather simple: if you are ranged and there is an orb in the room, you shall dps that orb to the expense of everything else (which is in this case dpsing the boss). All range dps should be following that, but most don’t – they range from leaving one orb on half health to killing one orb and then returning to the boss to completely ignoring the orbs to maximize dps which is utter fail. Looks to me like you’re doing fine and the other hunters weren’t doing their job properly.
May 22, 2010 at 9:32 pm
When I ran VoA pugs, my rule was “ranged with zero* damage done to orbs get last priority on loot”. If nobody else wants the item, I’m not going to be a complete douche and shard it, but if anyone else wants it, even for offspec, they get it over the lazy moron.
People who do less damage than tanks also lose priority on loot. Sorry, 2k dps warlock, I’m going to give that to the 7k dps warlock.
Yeah, that’s a very low benchmark, but then Toravon isn’t the pinnacle of raiding and I guess it motivates people enough to get the job done. I think only two people ever failed it.
*Once I passed a piece of loot to the next highest roller over a mage who had 11k damage done to ice orbs who in return raged “WTF I HIT ORBS”. Sorry, throwing one spell doesn’t qualify as “doing your job”. Especially for a class with no ramp time.
May 22, 2010 at 11:34 pm
My personal stance on this is that having a rule stating, ‘”the lowest ranged dps on the orbs wouldn’t get any loot,” is pretty irrational. Especially considering the run was successful, I think players believing their DPS was compromised is not the true reasoning behind their anger. It likely came from the fact that the boss was downed, people did their jobs and someone may still have been denied loot. This person is most likely a newer player, who is not as strongly geared as the others. So having them not recieve loot is having a negative impact on their ability to improve in two ways: First, they do not get better gear, better stats= better DPS. Second, they will remember the run as being negative, and will be less encouraged to join another PUG in the future to improve their skill.
As for another solution for DPSing the orbs. Just set a reasonable DPS minimum, knowing that if every player reachs that minimum the raid will be successful.
Anyways, those are just my thoughts. I wasn’t at the raid so what I say may have no relevance if their were other occurances in the raid that were not mentioned in this post.
May 23, 2010 at 8:07 am
Regardless of how obnoxious he was, the Priest was right. You don’t get people saved to an instance before introducing a loot rule like that. That’s just not how you run a raid group, especially when pugs are involved.
Had he announced the “lowest orb DPS doesn’t get loot” rule before any bosses were downed and given any ranged who disagreed with the rule time to leave before getting saved, that would have been much more reasonable. But I get the feeling most of the ranged DPS would have left after hearing such an asinine loot rule.
May 23, 2010 at 8:29 am
I think that if your reading comprehension is this bad then you must be one of those players who has great trouble following even basic raid directions.
May 23, 2010 at 10:47 pm
You’re so right, it’s 100% my fault that you can’t write the events as they happened in chronological order and have to put a P.S. at the very bottom of the article clarifying your mistake.
May 24, 2010 at 6:57 am
I’m going to spell it out for you so it’s real easy to understand. When you write a post, you have no way of knowing which direction it is going to take. Posts that end up generating a lot of comments, (and you never know which ones will do that either), inevitably require some clarification from the ensuing discussion.
If you don’t believe me, you try it sometime.
ps; is it 100% my fault that the ps was written before you commented, so undoubtedly you can’t read?
May 24, 2010 at 7:51 pm
What, are you carving this shit out on stone tablets? You broke the backspace key on your keyboard?
You published a poorly-written and confusing post. You didn’t read what you wrote before you published it. You are the hunter ignoring the orbs of the blog world. Man up and take responsibility for your product. Don’t attack the readers because you can’t write well.
May 23, 2010 at 8:10 am
Shadow priests are pretty bad on the orbs by design. Even when I dot all of them, I can’t come close to orb damage done by for example moonkins. So it’s a stupid rule. I could only hope some puggie is retarded enough to handle orbs worse than a shadow priest.
May 23, 2010 at 11:04 pm
@benny
cause its hard to read the whole thing before you post a comment amirite
May 24, 2010 at 3:52 am
All the Pug shadow priests Ive been meeting – most of them tagged with respectable guilds seem to have it in their head that they shouldnt be dpsing adds/spikes/dispelling and the like. Maybe the chips on our shoulders from being a poor mans Dps has bruised our egos so much that doing a job right is less important then beating the non hybrids.
May 24, 2010 at 6:59 am
That’s very interesting that you should say that.
May 24, 2010 at 10:11 am
Part of that probably has to do with Shadow Priest mechanics. If the rest of the group sucks, then doing the job properly causes our damage to skyrocket by being able to roll 4-5 sets of DoTs. If the rest of the group is up to par, though, doing it properly is like pissing in the ocean; it makes no difference, and you look pretty silly. So if you’re in a group you think will succeed, it’s more to the group’s benefit (by getting more loot/hour) to just stay on the boss, and if you’re in one that you expect to fail, why exactly are you there?
May 26, 2010 at 10:48 pm
Exactly.
Affliction warlocks, too, have that problem. Focussing something other than the boss causes so much damage loss that it’s just not worth it.
Using trinkets like Nevermelting Ice Crystals practically forces you to keep that DoT rolling. And with 800+ haste those DoTs don’t stay up long in the first place.
On Toravon I just throw some Unstable Afflictions on the orbs to proc 4T10 more often but that’s it.
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