Why Guilds Don't Progress, and "Seeing Content"

Namthe recently quoted a (casual?) friend of his, whom responded to his (widly-held) complaint of raids being too easy...

Are you kidding me? You can’t wait 4 weeks for a new challenge while less hardcore players get a chance to see the content you’ve been taking for granted?

This made me stop and think, about what keeps guilds from seeing content? Is it difficulty?

I'm fairly convinced that it is not how hard Bosses hit, or how many HP they have, and that the 3.0 nerf won't result in any significant, widespread availability of content - it actually hurts the still-raiding player base.

The reason guilds don't progress comes down, plain and simple, to issues surrounding its members. Lets look at some situations...

1) A guild doesn't possess 10 or 25, active, raiding members (plus extras for replacements)

2) A guild has enough raiders, but they don't log on in unison.

3) The guild is a revolving door, and new members force the re-learning of old content, while keeping any consecutive time on new content from happening.

4) A guild does not have enough members willing to put in the time/effort/consumables/repairs to learn new bosses / boss mechanics.

Nerfing a bosses health and damage does not change any of those factors. There are no fights that cannot be overcome by a fairly-regular, dedicated, prepared group of people willing to put in the time.

Now, those seem like reasonable requirements. And you may be thinking - my guild is like that, why aren't we farming Kil'Jaden? 

Time. LOKI got off to a late start, and has consistenly progressed, but that didn't put us into deep Sunwell before 3.0. There are countless other guilds that didn't form (or get past the above barriers to progression) until recently. And what do these guilds need? - Another month of being about to work on content. 

Example: Kadomi and (Daughters of the Horde) just got Hex down (Congrats, btw!), and were working on Zul'jin. I'm positive that they would have killed him pre-wrath, and had a satisfactory conclusion to BC. Likewise, LOKI was on the cusp of downing Kalecgos and being a legit Sunwell guild. In both cases, another month would have provided what would have felt like a legitimate, capstone achievement. 

What we got, however, was an anti-climatic *poof*. Robbed of any real chalange, we now wonder the glove, uncovering map, working on achievements, and occassionally going into instances where the single perk is spending time with the people we've struggeled together with in the past.

Honestly - if casual player's real desire was to just see the content - they could always come back at 80. However, I'm willing to bet that the great majority of such lv 70 players have not gone back and "seen" all of BWL, AQ40, ect. And its not how hard a boss hits, or their max HP thats keeping people from doing those encounters - its the same reasons they aren't raiding current content - there aren't enough people interested in putting in time and effort.

Regardless, whats done is done: we have been left with meeningless content a month earlier then we should have. Sigh.

First Night with 3.0 (Long)

Part One: Summary of the Night

Part Two: First Impression of Warrior Skills/Talents

Easy.

Really the only word. Possibly to the point of uninteresting. Read on...

We cleared BT in under three hours. Three hours, and probably could have done it an hour shorter if we hadn't taken so long to realize our full potential, and swapped people less.

Najentus died in 1:46, before even doing tidal shield a second time.

Supremus died in ~3:00, after a single kite phase.

Akama died in 50 seconds.

Teron took ~2:00 min.

Bloodboil died in the middle of his second Fel Rage.

RoS didn't finish her first enrage, and had over 1:30 left in P2 when we pushed it to P3.

Shaz and Council were faster, but had no exciting landmarks.

Illidan was one-shot. He did shadow demons twice, the whole time.

All the trash was AoE'ed down. We did 3+ Supremus pulls at a time. Akama was done in two long pulls. Everything that was remotely close got done together, and with minimal tank damage, and tons of threat everywhere and on everything. And the efficiency of AoEing, combined with the 30% less health, made it just fly.

Now - for as exciting as this all sounds - it just felt too easy by the end. It felt like a run-through, and we aren't even rocking Sunwell Gear (yet). I had fun flexing my new skills (more later), but by the end, nothing was really challenging. Our healers were board to tears - since we were taking far less damage, and the fights were so short that their healing was a shadow of what it once was.

-Warrior Details-

I consider myself as having taken a low threat spec. No Impale, Cruelty, AttT, Puncture - and I still out-threated everyone on single targets. By a large margin. In avoidance gear. I had to try at some points, so I get the impression that threat talents will just reduce the margin of effort needed.

Shield Block: I macro'ed this into Shield Slam, by the end of the night. I didn't need the on-demand protection, and the extra threat/damage was nice. 

Vigilance: This was fun. I had DPS asking for it specifically, and it was pretty big in maintaining the large lead I had. I also tried to remember to stick it on people that were subject to large amounts of damage for its damage reduction component - Bloodboil's Fel Rage targets, and Illidan's Shadow Barrage Target.

Warbringer: The mobility was nice. The pace of the night was so fast, that I really liked being able to charge around - like when I intercepted the feral druid that was headed towards the next pull, then charged his target - that was fun to see in action.

Sword and Board: This was a general fun talent, and made secondary aggro a breeze. I'll take some time to get the sound/animation completely down in my head so that its automatic, but I see that in the future.

Shockwave: Between this and Thunderclap, I could tank most any sized group. My only complaint, was that there were times I got lazy while waiting for the cooldown to come up, and could have spent more time tab-targeting around. 

I still want to get some more experience with talents before I make final judgement, though.

I felt as effective at AoE tanking as our paladin. It was hard to tell without my fully configured scrolling combat text, but I think I tanked the bulk of pre-Shaz trash. Typically two AoE groups, a Pain/Pleasure Pack, and some servants - all together.

In Summary: I can't wait for Wrath, but its now more urgent. We now have power well above the content available, and need some content designed with it in mind. I really hope that raiding continues with its scheduled course until the expansion, though, and that people don't get disinterested.