The Ironsong Tribe

((OOC hat!))

With the advent of BWL tomorrow, I'd just like to talk about a raiding "issue" that I feel is important for my (and perhaps others) continued enjoyment of raiding with the tribe.

The fights are getting tougher, more expensive, more time consuming, and dare I say it, more frustrating at times, than they ever have been. This is a trend that is likely to continue. But, they are also getting a lot more interesting. A LOT more interesting. To me, a raid encounter is fun precisely because it is a difficult problem solving exercise.

As a tribe, in MC, our strategy for raid encounters has always been "listen to directions, do as you're told, and don't coach or suggest alternatives during the raid." We're good at following directions (despite some errors during attack calls), but while this has been successful against the established "easy" raid bosses, I feel that this approach adds significantly to the frustration players such as myself experience during a difficult encounter.

I often have ideas for how to approach an encounter that I'd love to discuss during the period between wipes, and I'm sure others do as well. I understand that this would lead to chaos in raid chat, if it were allowed, but I do think there should be an avenue to discuss strategies in real time, during an encounter. This is different from coaching...I don't mean:

"The warlocks totally screwed that one up for us, they need to learn to play. If I were them, I wouldn't have bothered with <insert>."

But rather:

"Maybe if we put the warlocks on the east side of the room, they'd be out of range of the AoE and still be able to cast their curses."

I've seen suggestions like this squelched in the past, for the sake of reducing confusion, but not being able to speak about ideas like this really does kill a lot of the fun of these encounters. Its about problem solving, not simply following directions. Otherwise, we're just 35 people pushing buttons in an assigned sequence. (Dance Dance Revolution is fun, I suppose, but not exactly stimulating intellectually)

Anyway, I think I've rambled enough. What I'm suggesting is a strategy channel ("IronStrategy" or some such) where people who are interested in hearing such babble can join and talk about it...and preferably try any good ideas that come up.

Quote:Very important: Raidchat is not the place to discuss strategy; it gets confusing. If you have a suggestion, send a tell to the raid leaders.

and

Quote:If you have an idea or suggestion, send a tell to the raid leadership.

Seem to be the relevent portion of the Rules of Engagement.

I'll start off by saying that up to this point, these rules have existed not only for the obvious reasons of avoiding confusion but also to avoid having to help people reinvent the wheel for these fights. By far the majority of questions, comments and suggestions regarding the encounters Ironsong has done have been based on inexperience, misinformation or simple lack of knowledge of the fights. There's nothing wrong with this - we are there to learn. By contrast, numerous officers have not only researched all the raids we've done so far from multiple sources but also previously successfully participated in most of the MC ones.

By posting what we feel is the most comprehensive guide, deciding on our own approach to the strategy and then proceeding with it we avoid having to privately or in /raid explain to each newer person with the same idea that either doesn't work or doesn't provide enough of a cost/benefit ratio exactly why that is. You are right, these fights are tough and take a lot of expense, time and frustration. If you feel that way imagine what it is like for the raid leaders?

I don't know who made you feel that you or someone else was squelched. If it was me or any other officer I apologize. All we ask is that you bring the ideas to us as I quoted above. The discussion in /raid is just not doable. A strategy channel would either be pointless (if no raid leaders were in it) or just the same in terms of our time and attention/distraction as just talking about it in /raid. I regularly have people suggest changes in group makeup, ask me reasons for certain actions or positionings for fights, offer other ways of trying this or that aspect of the fights. I'd say at least half the time I end up acting on them or at least discussing the possibility. It's not always possible for me to reply and I occasionally miss tells.

Continuing with a strategy we've already decided upon is not squelching anyone's idea. Not all ideas are worth wiping to attempt. If by squelched you mean that the person was told to not contribute that certainly should not be happening. I don't think it's necessary for us to debate particulars. On the flip side, on numerous occasions data or ideas gleaned from Tribe members has helped us achieve victory over our foes.

All that said I do take issue with you suggesting that following and executing an agreed-upon strategy is merely button pushing. I find that rather insulting actually, though I don't take it personally. The strategy for Onyxia was very widely and well known when we defeated her for the first time, does this reduce our accomplishment in this encounter to button mashing? Hakkar? Ragnaros? The thrill of discovery and problem-solving is certainly part of the fun of raiding but doesn't have to be on a macro level. For me, getting a fight down is about first learning the macro level strat and then learning all the micro level fine details of what I personally need to be doing to make this strat successful. Honestly, while they have the steepest learning curve even those who first defeat encounters never do it without some knowledge of what they are going into. Whether from betas, Test realms, insider/leaked tips or whatever, it's a fact. Turning that info into execution is the challenge for us all.

I exhort folks to continue to contribute your opinions to raid leadership as many have been already and as encouraged by the Rules of Engagement. I also exhort you all to learn everything you can about your class and the roles it can or will play in encounters /and/ really practice and hone that knowledge each time we make an attempt. Bloodfeaster, I know that for examples such as you provided the Petkeepers channel should be acceptable. If Eveline is reluctant to alter the macro level strategy to date it's largely been because she has done all these fights save Ragnaros prior to our raid. (She's also used to getting her way - have you seen her Shadowbolt crits? They hurt! Ow.) In BWL we are going to be wanting - needing - a team effort.

For my part, this comes a bit out of left field because of how much of this I get and reply to but that could be the heal channel influence on me. Since we have all members of three - soon four - different classes in there discussing and questioning what's happening with healing I'm just used to it going on. So like I said above I understand that this may have not seemed to be happening as much as it could from your perspective. I also understand that the wrong impression could have been given and freely admit that officers are certainly no less fallable than anyone else. : )

Specifically regarding tomorrow night, I suggest everyone come ready to attempt the strategy as presented in my newer post and as described tomorrow night by Kosath and myself. Assuming we don't beat Razorgore (a good assumption though God knows by now with this Tribe anything could happen) let's start up a discussion thread here about it. In between attempts use your appropriate channel or /whisper if you have some hot ideas that might improve upon what we are doing. Just really, everyone, don't go overboard - raid leaders are juggling a lot.

Heh. Bottom line - I want input without being flooded with whispers. I /also/ don't want people to as a result of this post send me joke whispers about how I don't want whispers. It was funny at first but it's really not anymore. It's still me getting whispers, and I really try to read everything in guild, officer, whisper, raid, and heal channels at all times. I don't know how many times I've been killed as Tae because I was answering questions instead of defending myself solo. I blame Krell, as should you.

Thanks for your concern, BF. I hope this helps and addresses your issue.

Tae

PS: Honestly, while others like Kosath dread the upcoming 25-man caps on 70th level raids, I really think that once we figure out how to /form/ 25-man raids they will be much better as far as this issue goes. The smaller tighter raids will be more like Zul'Gurub which I think had a lot to do with Ironsong's great success in the Core. Not just in equipping us beyond what the early MC raiders had but also providing us with practice on encounters that, proportionate to the number of people involved, were arguably quite harder. Half of MC is just learning as a raid leader how to get 40 people to all do something at the same time, let alone anything complicated. We showed in some of the early raids that at least some of the bosses in there could be done with as few at 27 people in 5-man/UBRS/ZG gear at the time if they were really on the ball. Smaller groups let individuals and their skills shine more brightly which I think touches on your issue obliquely.

What the?

Krell
Hunter and causer of all deaths it seems

"Speakin' of knowing who ta listen to, twenty or forty folks can't all discuss what dey gonna do. Da miltary ain't a democracy! If ya got an idea, tell de person in charge privately, or everyone gonna get all confused about dey jobs. "
-Ironsong Rules of Engagement

Jumping off what 'tae said:

It's never been the policy not to suggest things during a raid- just that the appropriate place to suggest them is to a raid leader, not to the raid in general (because that does get confusing). If you have as suggestion, by all means send a tell to a raid leader! If you've ever been made to feel that this is inappropriate, then we've done something wrong. It's actually very helpful for us, and we often act on suggestions.

What we can't do is spend valuable time rehashing and justifying every aspect of our strategy before each attempt, which is inevitably what happens when you get 30+ people trying to figure things out together in real time- in raid chat *or* in another channel. It's much, much, much more important to focus on how to do what we just did better than to come up with something new, and that's what we need the time between attempts to be used for in order to succeed.

We never attempt a given encounter more than 3 or 4 times a night. That's barely enough time to master the execution of one strategy! Wiping is far more likely due to an imperfectly executed strat than one that doesn't work, and it's a zillion times more important to keep focus and energy on executing the current strategy to the best of our ability than coming up with a new one mid-stream. Obviously, minor changes in group composition, positioning, and individual assignments happen (frequently based on suggestions from tribe members), but the time to completely "re-think" a strategy is not when we're in the instance- that's what these forums are for

P.S. Krell backed into some whispers, I saw him!

Krell Wrote:What the?

See, asking another question!

Tae

There's a lot to respond to, so I'll try to be comprehensive, but if I miss a point, I'm sorry!

I didn't want to focus on the failures of the current system. I wanted to be constructive and I believe I succeeded in doing that. But the gist of the response, as I understand it, is "we already take suggestions." Now, I never meant to imply that the leadership intentionally ignores suggestions, or doesn't care about them. If I even suspected that were the case, I would have left a long time ago.

My own experience with the system in place is that it hasn't worked. I'll paraphrase some of the responses I've received (and some of these are from a long time ago, but are much the reason I don't bother anymore):
"Its simply not possible to do that."
"Thanks, I'll look into it!" (never mentioned again)
"Now is not the time for this discussion."
Or, rarely, no response at all.

That is not to say that suggestions aren't accepted and used, or to say that the leadership has failed. I mean to say the opposite: the leadership has a lot to worry about, and if they are doing their jobs, there simply should not be time to address everyone's concerns and suggestions in real time.

To date, there has been only one suggestion I've made that I -think- was accepted and used, in the Ragnaros fight. But after having tried to follow up on it a few times, I've never gotten a response. I don't think I'm being ignored, just have poor luck in having someone read my chatting.

I take issue with the implication that the majority of Ironsong raiders are so inexperienced or naive that their suggestions simply would not work. I think that the majority of us (not necessarily the majority of suggestions you receive, but the majority of US) are quite capable at playing our classes, and perhaps even more than one class. I would pose that, though we have capable leadership, many of us are just as qualified to make strategy judgements as they are. We aren't the leaders (nor do we want to be), so we don't make the decisions, but we know just as much about the encounters and we've done our homework too.

I say 'we', but I don't want to speak for anyone but myself. I don't think the level of interaction provided by the current system is satisfying...and I don't think its anyone's fault. I just don't think this system can support it and keep these encounters fun.

I'm sorry if it was offensive when I referred to button-pushing, but I believe it highlights what I'm trying to say perfectly. To answer your question about our previous encounters: yes, it does reduce the accomplishment. I'm proud to have been with Ironsong when we took down Onyxia, Lucifron, Mags, Ragnaros. These fights boiled down to practicing a well-defined strategy that was established before we even encountered the boss. While it takes a certain amount of skill and coordination to execute these strategies, for many of our current raid encounters, it DOES boil down to pressing a button when the attack call comes, and stopping that button pressing when told.

Ragnaros is an example of a fight where it requires more skill than that, to defeat. Everyone has to know how to recover from a variety of situations they could be presented with, during the course of the fight, and I believe that the types of people who are good at reacting to those micro situations are the same type of people who like to think about the macro strategy.

I understand that BWL will also have defined strategies for each boss that have been set up by other groups months ago. But these fights are harder, and like Ragnaros, we will have to adapt our strategies significantly to fit our own group's needs and abilities. Significantly MORE than we have in the past, as I'm sure the leadership is aware.

I think that allowing open discussion of strategy during the raid is not a decision to be feared. I know its not a democracy, but the current system destroys the synergy (to use a buzzword, but it describes the situation) possible from allowing ALL of the members to discuss the strategy. I might have an idea that a leader doesn't like, but someone else might have an improvement to that idea that I hadn't thought of that makes it viable.

Having a channel for these discussions:
1. Relieves the stress on the leadership, by not requiring them to respond to every suggestion. Inexperienced raiders that pose unusable strategies will certainly find it hard to convince more experienced ones in the channel. And if by some miracle they manage to convince 20 more experienced raiders that its a good idea, perhaps its worth attempting a wipe, anyway.
2. Allows a dialogue that far exceeds the potential of a 2-3 message exchange of whispers with an already overtaxed raid leader.
3. Gives those of us who actually enjoy thinking about the problems posed by raid encounters an outlet to discuss them.
4. Recognizes that, while winning a fight is the ultimate goal, the FUN comes from participating in the fight, and that includes how the fight happens.

Finally, I'd like to say that petkeepers is a great channel, and I'm sure ilheal is, too. I've never feared making suggestions in petkeepers, and I'll continue to do that, but I still think that there is a need for a channel for more global raid strategy discussion. I'd rather have that than have to join ilheal just to run a suggestion by the healers, or whatever equiavlent channels may exist for rogues/mages/warriors, if any.

Krell, do something about this.

Fleethoof Wrote:What we can't do is spend valuable time rehashing and justifying every aspect of our strategy before each attempt, which is inevitably what happens when you get 30+ people trying to figure things out together in real time- in raid chat *or* in another channel. It's much, much, much more important to focus on how to do what we just did better than to come up with something new, and that's what we need the time between attempts to be used for in order to succeed.

I both agree and disagree. I don't think that broad changes in raid strategy are appropriate before a single one has been given enough attempts to determine that its simply not viable, rather than not practiced well enough. However, I think that ideas appear and disappear in real time, during each encounter, and 30+ people trying to discuss them IS beneficial to the raid.

I don't want to say that the leadership has to justify themselves, perhaps we should make this clear--they have the ultimate say and they shouldn't feel obligated to justify every decision they make. This isn't the real world, its a game. Sometimes you just try something because you feel like its going to work.

But stopping 30+ people from talking to each other about what might or might not work is decidedly the wrong way to go about it. Its stifling to require all suggestions to be presented to a leader rather than to each other. It should just be made clear that a suggestion is just that, and just because you've mentioned it in a channel doesn't mean anyone is required to use it.

I don't think that in turn replying in detail to you would be useful or productive to this debate, so I'll simplify:

Go ahead and create a strategy channel.

I retract my poorly phrased response to the idea. Suggesting that it would be pointless is clearly untrue if it meets a perceived need for a number of players. Also, there is nothing stopping you in any case as channels are effortless to create and we officers have no desire to enforce the Rules of Engagement outside the specified venue (Raid Chat). Do please make sure people are following the basic Ironsong CoC - I've seen problems in IronsongOOC a few more times than I would like so I'm wary of extra "official" channels - but otherwise run with the idea.

Good luck tonight!
Tae

Shillatae Wrote:Go ahead and create a strategy channel.

I suppose I'll give it a shot, though its marginally disappointing that I couldn't find some more common ground on the value of this. Maybe I'm the only one who cares. :wink:

I do enjoy a healthy discussion, though. I hope that's all this was, as I certainly tried to avoid pointing fingers and being negative. I'd love to hear other folk's opinions, too, if any tribe members have them.

I think my change from "that idea is pointless" to "you should do it!" indicates some level of common ground. To be honest I just don't have the IRL time to write more lengthy posts noting where I see value in what you say and where I disagree. I nodded enough to revise my opinion especially as I realize that you obviously can do it anyway. : )

Really though, even in the most negative tones this is a good idea. Even if it were true that I considered the Tribe a simian rabble there's always the "thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters" factor to consider. Hee. I think I've demonstrated or at least indicated that I have a rather higher opinion of our members than that, too, especially relative to some raiding experiences I've had.

I hope that this helps some folks feel more a part of the raid experience and have more fun. If I/we get useful suggestions out of it all the better, seriously. I take what I can get - I'm busy staring at heal bars and drinking sweet, sweet mana potions.

Tae

Shillatae Wrote:To be honest I just don't have the IRL time to write more lengthy posts noting where I see value in what you say and where I disagree.

I usually have barely enough time to keep up with the forums, let alone respond in them. Just been a slow week at the lab, so I had some time to gather my thoughts.

I also have an undeniable urge to click on every emoticon button. Hopefully this is transient.

Now, I never meant to imply that the leadership intentionally ignores suggestions, or doesn't care about them. If I even suspected that were the case, I would have left a long time ago.

Ah, good! It was the "our strategy for raid encounters has always been "listen to directions, do as you're told, and don't coach or suggest alternatives during the raid."" bit that misled me, I'm glad my understanding was wrong and apologize for beating everyone over the head with the 'send a tell' a bit if you already knew that. Thanks for your second post, I think it helped clarify a bit more of what/why you're actually proposing with this idea.

"But stopping 30+ people from talking to each other about what might or might not work is decidedly the wrong way to go about it. Its stifling to require all suggestions to be presented to a leader rather than to each other."

Hah, there's no way to stop folks from talking to one another, even if we wanted to (which we certainly don't). As 'tae said, if it will add to your enjoyment of the game, by all means, go ahead.

The only thing I really want to (personally) avoid is the impression that the discussions in the strategy channel then *become* an alteration in the strategy, unless it's been communicated in raid chat by an officer. ESPECIALLY if it's something that contradicts raid instructions (as opposed to something that's just not mentioned in them, that's all fair game). I.e., brainstorming is great, let's just avoid the chain of command getting kinked. ; )

Make sense?

To elaborate a bit on the idea of a strategy channel, I think the idea is not so much to create a medium for people to discuss the overall strategy of the raid (IE: no one is going to suggest that, say, the melee classes not jump back during a Rags knockback) but more suggest tweaks or ideas that may help the overall strategy.

For example, during our first attemps at Ragnaros, it seemed healing was focused primarily on the melee classes, while the ranged classes, who are responsible for the vast majority of the DPS in the encounter, were left high and dry for heals. The warlocks especially were finding it hard since they were having to waste valuable time life-tapping to re-gain mana, then had to banadge up and hope they didn't get a lava surge or a knockback before they got their health back up.

This caused a lot of wasted DPS time, killed a lot of the ranged DPSers in the process, and generally kept us from doing the damage that we really needed to do to Rags in order to win.

Since that first attempt there has been some discussion on the matter and it seems to have been heeded. Healing of the ranged classes is much, much better, and it allows us to keep up constant DPS throughout the entire enounter. But instead of having to wait for the second or third attempts before this became the norm (or going into ilheal and asking wth is going on ), it would have been awesome to have had a channel where the ranged classes could have made a plea for more heal treatment.

Going further, there have been other tweaks that have more or less worked themselves out. I'll be honest in that I'm very greedy about wanting Oryx in my group during Rags. He keeps us alive since his heals are more effecient for the amount of our HP, and keeps our mana bars going with his Mana Tide. Could having other shaman being primarly responsible for ranged classes, leaving the priests and druids to concentrate on the melee classes be a more viable set-up? Might be worth a shot, and it wouldn't hurt to be able to discuss that on the fly during the encounter.

I think that's what the channel is mostly being pitched as. Not to override the established overall srategy, but to work out the kinks, the micro issues that a raid leader shouldn't have to worry about by having 30+ people send him/her a flood of tells.

Anyway, that's the way I see it. I blame Krell for my dissent. *hides from Sreng*

::chuckles:: Well, given that we downed Ragnaros in a total of four attempts in one night I have a hard time taking concerns about how quickly or slowly we adapted our strategy on that fight too seriously. Look, because we've done so phenomenally well no examples are really going to help here. Either the way we do things is fine or we're all so good that we do it despite how draconian the Rules are, so it's a wash. I'm not saying you are wrong, just that the example-counterexample method doesn't work here.

I totally agree with the point about the micro level and in fact am the one who brought it up. I knew we were talking about BWL here though and what that would entail. I can't tell you how many people asked us all about kiting tonight and that's a macro level change. I can ask Kosath to post about the game mechanics and why we want to avoid kiting as much as possible but I posted a perfectly good strategy that's demonstrated by several guilds to work fine and be geared for a guild with the DPS to kill Ragnaros handily which we do. We then walked in and destroyed eggs down to 7 or 8 after one attempt. We identified a couple of mistakes that were made that should improve it even more next time.

Working out where people stand and what not is great, that's what a lot of tonight was and that's what's helpful to us. For me, learning how mana intensive healing is going to be so I can decide when and how much to help DPS is key.

Someone start a thread about Razorgore and lets get to it. I think the purpose of this thread has been accomplished, Bloodfeaster is getting the strat channel rolling. Take your experiences tonight with this strat and let's see what we can improve. I have some thought already.

Tae

Let me thank the participants for posting their thoughts in a non-criticizing manner.

I think the best venue for discussing strategy is in the Ironsong Forums.
I encourage all Ironsong raiders to post their strategy thoughts in these forums for our raid/boss encounters. I and all of the raid leaders actively read the forums and do process the information that is posted their into our battle plans.

While posting, please be respectful and considerate to your fellow tribe mates if you have contrarian strategy thoughts.

As officers we discuss many different strategies for boss fights, in the officer forums. We discuss the pros & cons of each strategy, and develop a strategy that we feel plays to Ironsong’s strengths and equips us with the best chance at success.

As a raid leader I feel it is my job to put forth a ‘battle plan’ to the tribe. As a raider it is your job to execute that plan. It’s up to each raider to develop how he/she is going to do their job for each boss, develop their own individual specific ‘battle plan’. (Do I heal over time, AOE, spam direct damage, etc) Each raider must assess his/her own skill sets, strengths/weaknesses etc. We all strategize on the micro level.

As a participant of Ironsong raids, the raid leadership does welcome your thoughts and comments. We do spill the same foe’s blood. And we are all combatants. As a raid leader I am open to suggestions, strategy tweaks, etc. But these suggestions must be reviewed, analyzed, and integrated into a marco-level battle plan. And often times the heat of the battle does not afford adequate time to give each strategy suggestion the necessary time to review fully its benefits.

In-between each failed boss attempt the raid leadership does discuss why we failed and what we could do better, and we try to implement ONE tweak that could shift the battle to our favor. That is usually all the time the brief pauses between the battles affords us.

If you do have a strategy you’d like to discuss gimme a tell, in a non-raid situation and we can get on Ventrillo and discuss it, or post it to these same forums.