Respect and Raiding

The last few weeks we've been raiding things have been rough. Tempers have been frayed, there's been snapping and failure upon failure.  Last night's alt raid was evidence of that. Several of the more experienced raiders left the raid when a novice accidently pulled a trash mob. There was speculation that it was James who pulled the mob as a joke. He did do that a couple of weeks ago. Then there was speculation that it may have been Mrs Pangit and upon watching the video provided by the innocent James it could have been Pangit himself or a priest. It doesn't really matter who pulled the mob, it is a minor infraction it takes a few minutes to kill the trash mob it's laziness that makes us skip this mob. What was really disappointing was that several of the more experienced core raiders left the raid for a variety of reasons. As a result Pangit and Mrs Pangit have left the guild. I'm considering demoting the people who left the raid because it's not respectful to leave your guildies in the lurch like that much less officers in the guild and senior raiders as well. The mob pulling was not done on purpose on this occasion it was an accident done by a new raider most likely. Unless you've never made mistake you have no business having a reaction like that.

Luckily we were able to get up to Gorefiend anyway without the more experienced raiders on their alts. It was a great job guys and thank you to all the people who stepped up to the challenge of getting those bosses down with low numbers and an undergeared healer (me).  We had a great night after those other players left and it proved to me that we don't need the core raiders in that particular raid group. The alt raids are going to be run by Steve and Steve's mates from now on. I will try to gear my healer up so that I can be a bit more helpful to you. I will be trying to recruit for the alt raid which is really raid group 2 now.  Jas did return to the raid and for this reason she won't be demoted. The only officers who actually behaved like officers were Bashybashy and Bainmar not really a surprise to me as I know that these guys are always consummate professionals and don't take themselves too seriously. We do expect a little bit more of a serious tone on progression bosses however, it is a game guys and it would be great if we could relax a bit and have at least some fun in a respectful way.

In the main progression group people need to respect Jas more and shutup so that we can hear her explanations and stop talking over the raid leading she is attempting to do. Bashy(John) has set up ts so that the tanks can talk together without the rest of the raid hearing the calls for taunts and whatever else tanks need to discuss. It's very important that everyone show the respect that I know you feel toward Jasmine. You all know she is the best person for this job. You can show this respect by allowing her to set up groups to explain the fights to everyone to call the appropriate instructions as they occur. Officers can talk to her about what she would like assistance with instead of guessing what she might want you to do. Ask before the raid or just prior to the fights in whisper.

In other great news, I'm going back to University where I belong. Fortunately or Unfortunately depending on who you are I won't be able to attend the guild raids until after May. As you know I'm on the slow track to achieving my doctorate in psychology and I must prioritise this life goal over my aspirations in Warcraft.  This is your time to shine guys. I know that you will be fine and I'm really hopeful that you will do well. It's going to be great to see you achieve your potential without an old lady hunter holding you back. You should be sailing up the progression charts. I will still be able to attend the alt raids and weekend raids depending on the study and work commitments that I have.

It's been a great thing for me to be leading the guild and meeting all you beautiful people as Potter calls you. I've learned a lot about myself and my capabilities as well as my inabilities as a leader. I'll be on the lookout for a new GM for Riftwarriors over the next few months and if nobody emerges through the talented people in our guild I'll keep leading until I find the right person. As you all know I really love playing WoW, it's one of my favourite things to do. Before WoW my hobbies were cleaning my house and going to the gym. Gaming certainly opened up a new world to me and I've had so many good times, met so many great peeps. I've got 11 years of fun online memories to recall. The last few have been made really special by the members of Riftwarriors.

I'll still be around and I will be available to talk over whatever needs to be discussed. I wish you all the best of luck in the upcoming raids and hope that we can get over the funk we seem to have found ourselves in. Hopefully if you all Listen Up to Jasmine you'll be kicking some serious raiding arse.

Good Luck Rifities. It has been wonderful raiding with you and being your Guild Mistress.

Alt Raids Progressing Nicely

The alt raids are going well. This is a great opportunity for new raiders and old raiders to get together and gear up as well as have some fun.  There is a minimum item level requirement to enter into the normal raids which is 690 and this is pretty achievable by doing LFR's and mythic dungeons so grab your wives and friends and other family members to do these things together.  Pangit has been very good with explaining the fights in great detail however, it is also helpful to watch the fights most of them can be found here.  If you hop on vent you don't have to talk you can just listen so please do hop on teamspeak the details are in the guild information tab.

If we ask in guild chat for your item level you can find this by opening up the character window  and clicking on the arrow at the bottom right corner in the top section you will see under the "General" tab a list of things one of those will say "Item Level" it will have some numbers there to the right this is your item level it will look something like this 690/692. If you mouse over the numbers you will see equipped that's the number we are looking for it's usually the number on the left.

People are starting to get enough gear to come to heroics and this week we will see Trissa on her priest Jandessa starting in heroics.  I'd like to see you all moving toward the main team however, if you don't feel confident enough it is fine to stay in the alt runs until you feel ready to join. We do require you to be on ts for the heroic raids. You will be promoted to social raider this will give you access to guild repairs and a few other things however, the potions and flasks are used for the raids not for dungeons or questing. The item level requirement is 705 for heroic.  If you have that send me a whisper and we will try to get you a regular spot.

Thank you to all the guildies for the massive amounts of herbs you've been sending me.  This has really taken the pressure off me trying to single handedly supply the bank with potions and flasks. Thanks for the help.

I would like to start to provide food for guildies too so if we can get some kind of fun activity together which will make fishing less boring that would be great...is that even possible.

Frustration before Achievement

This week we had a bit of "frustration" in  Heroic HFC. We are still a good team and we can certainly kill those last two bosses.  Our road block isn't skill, dps, healing or tanking. It's not our teamwork or movement that is holding us back.  The thing that is holding us back is our heads. It's tempting to go back to easier content that we can complete without too much trouble. These bosses don't present too much of a challenge and we would certainly benefit from getting more guildies geared with these first bosses. In the next few weeks we can do that. I know it feels like I'm pushing you hard into areas that you feel we aren't ready to attempt.  It is good for our morale to be downing bosses and getting gears on the easier content. Hopefully we can get something from doing these things.  However, I'm asking you to collect your thoughts, rally yourselves, grit your teeth and brace yourselves for success. I know we can kill Heroic Manno, we've done that boss before. I know that we can do Heroic Archie (mythic) and Xhul'horac. We just have to push past this feeling of frustration to get to that feeling of achievement.

In my longish life I have experienced these feelings of frustration and wanted to go back to do things that were easier for me.  I've experienced the sensation that everything is just too much to deal with and felt like throwing in the towel. The reason I haven't is because I know that just when I think there is no reason to continue, no hope left, that I have given it all and I have nothing left to give, I know that if I dig deep and push myself hard that I can bloody well do it.  I can succeed, I can get there. It seems that last little bit of fuel in my emotional tank is the stuff that pushes me over the line. I know that it is the same for everyone. I'm asking you guys to not give up on ourselves, don't give up on me as your leader and push through the frustration and get us those last two bosses.  I know we can do it.

I am going to give you a break and we are going to go ahead with the plan to go through the whole content of the raid from beginning to end. We can go backwards for a while because we need to do that before we can go forward again next week this is the plan. The following week if we haven't already reached and killed Archie we are going to go straight to Manno and Archie until we kill Archie. You've got to do this guys because really deep down you know that you can.

Right, I love you all...Trust me we are capable of this task, straighten up your tiara's and tutu's, tuck your tissues in the top draw, put away your wah, wah faces, tighten up your hob nailed boots and get this shit down my princesses :)

Random Acts of Kindness and Team Work

One of the things I love about our guild are the random acts of kindness I see everyone doing for each other most of the time with our team goal of doing well in the raids. I'll often hear the stories of how crafted gear or items pop up in people's mailboxes or how an afternoon is spent running someone's alt through mythic dungeons to get gear. These things are what makes our team so great and one of the big reason I'm so proud to be your Guild Leader.  I have been the recipient of these random acts of kindness and I'm always so touched by the efforts people have gone to.  I got the crafted weapon arrive in the mail some time ago. This week I got game time given to me by two guildies. I want to send out a BIG thank you to not just the people who have helped me but to all of you for helping each other in game and in real life with things such as helping guildies move house, helping people with homework assignments and generally just being there for each other.

The alt raids have been going really well. New raiders are learning the mechanics and how to raid.  It's lovely to see Mrs Pangit and Trissa attending these raids it would be great to see more family and friends coming along to these Saturday raids.  If you guys are interested in seeing some of the mechanics this is a good place to start. These videos take only two minutes to watch.  Don't worry if you can't do these things exactly like the videos.  Our guildies will explain what our plan is before the fight. If you want to see how it looks when normal people do these fights you can see our raid team here.  As you can hear people do make mistakes and we still manage to complete the fights.  We still appreciate everyone trying as hard as they can to work together.

We've been seeing some really great video's recently with Brenton and James working together to make them look as good as they do.  I'm sure Brenton would love some melee prospective as well so if you have the ability to record fights and are fine with sharing your view of the fight have a chat to Brenton aka Alysith about sending recordings to him.  It's really great seeing these videos it is a reminder of how the team work so well together and treat each other with respect. Some of the videos do show the lighter side of raiding as well.  These are usually posted on the facebook page.  Don't forget about teamspeak you can always log on to that and just listen if you don't feel confident talking yet you can reply in text in guild chat.  It can be very nerve racking talking in teamspeak.  Recently we had our unofficial guildy Swift  with Sarior play a great practical joke on us in this regard. We all thought Swift was a 16 year old girl for about 4 weeks and then he spoke in teamspeak with a deep 16 year old boy voice saying "Surprise" Very funny guys.

We just have two heroic bosses to get down until we move onto Mythic.  Some of the raiders might not move onto Mythic HFC with us so we are recruiting again to fill any potential gaps. Here are the first couple of Mythic fights.

Bainmar, Leeroy and I have had the pleasure of having some WoW pal visitors over the last few weeks.  It's been really lovely catching up with you in person guys.  We look forward to seeing you again soon. Leeroy is always up for a group hug, some "accidentally" spilled coffee which has been "accidently" knocked over by his tail and a nice long walk.  Bring your comfy shoes :)

2016 Here We Come :)

Rifties have been having lots of fun over the holidays and some of us just couldn't stop raiding every now and then.  Our first official night back saw us steaming right ahead into 38th position on the server. We have just three bosses to go and then it's onto Mythic if everyone feels confident to move ahead with gear and skills.  I'll be posting the guides here and on the Facebook Groups Page.  Try to get a few goes in PuGs if you can even if they are failures it will give you an idea of what to expect and you might pick up a few tips. Practice makes perfect.  Of course for some of us Mythic HFC is old news and have completed most of the bosses already in their main raid teams or with friends.

I'm continuing with the recruiting and hopefully I will stumble across a few good players or at least some more potential raiders. We are just four players short of being able to have 20 guildies attending the raids regularly.

Recently we have had the pleasure of Hannah's hunter, Ely on the raid team while her regular team are on a break this has been terrific. We also picked up Kyle aka Banglord, with a name like that he's fitting in very well with the guys and has felt the agony and thrills of an all night arena spam with Bainmar already. Everyone has been very welcoming. I'm very please that Ely has decided to come out of the shadows and chat with everyone and be active in the guild after being a Rifty for a few years now. We will be seeing more of "No" with his deep and sexy American Voice. Well recruited Pangit.

We still have our alt runs going ahead on Saturdays and Sunday nights if you want to get a bit of raiding experience while we are not on progression bosses come and join us. For the more experienced raiders this is an opportunity to pass along your raiding knowledge in a way which promotes attendance to raids.  We are extremely fortunate to have players in the guild who have been raiding since Vanilla WoW through to current content. We have people who have been in guilds that sat in the number one position on their servers for years and some raiders who are currently raiding in top raiding guilds and who have alts in our guild. I'm really grateful for their input and staying in the guild to help us out. Apparently we are quite lovable and our raids are really fun. I won't name names because they want to be anonymous and are humble, a common trait in top raiders, I've noticed. You never know who you are raiding next to guys so be respectful.

We all had to start somewhere so cast your minds back to when you first raided.  Fortunately for me I was picked up by a guild of Gay Guys who wanted a mum type person in their raid team.  They patiently showed me the ropes, I then went on to join one of the top raiding guilds where I actually raided with Awolleader although the raid teams were much bigger then he slipped under my radar. I know can you imagine Awoll going under any radar. That was Lux Et Umbra. Yes I was in a guild with a latin name which means "Light and Shadow".  I'm still friends with many of the raid team who have gone on to much bigger and better things. I'm very grateful to the people who gave me a chance and I would hope that all of the guildies in Riftwarriors will be keen to give other players a chance particularly beginner raiders. After all if we train these people up they will be great raiders. Much better than PuGs. Treat new raiders with kindness so that they come back and stay.

Happy New Year Rifties.  Lets hope we can crack the top five on Jubei'thos.  And keep the momentum going through to the next expansion.