Guild Drama: A Treatment Plan

Over the past few weeks, I've had the opportunity to contemplate the structure, dynamics and success of certain guilds...which, of course, leads to the question "What makes a guild successful?" It seems to be inevitable that guilds have drama - there is no way around it. However, a guild is marked by how it addresses and deals with the drama. Drama intervention, by necessity, occurs on multiple levels - GMs, officers and even guild members are crucial in dealing with the situation.

There are, also, different types of drama, and each must be dealt with accordingly.

"Bad Day" Drama: Sort of self-explanatory - someone has a bad day and simply is easily stirred up, etc. I find the best way to handle this is a combination of patience and talking with the person privately - allow the person to vent to you in private will often diffuse the situation. Also, trying to create a lighthearted situation in the raid can assist in calming folks.

"Sensitivity" Drama: Some folks are sensitive to just certain subjects/words or whatever. This is one of the more difficult types of drama to deal with, requiring careful treatment, understanding, and a lot of patience. At times the "sensitivity" relates to specific situations or words. When dealing with Sensitivity Drama, the key is to identify what has triggered the sensitivity. Until you are able to identify the cause, it's nearly impossible to know how to begin dealing with it. Again, the key is to spend some time (preferably in private) talking with the person, encouraging them, mediating, etc. Often, the key to diffusing a situation is showing the person that someone does care.

"Drama Queen/Troll" Drama: If a guild member is prone to repeated disruptions of this sort, the easiest (and perhaps the wisest) course of action is /gkick. The motivation behind this sort of behavior is generally singularly to gain attention through the disruption of normal guild operations. Troll drama is designed to change the topic of discussion from your normal focus/topics to whatever the troll has put forth. The Troll-style drama spreads rapidly through the ranks, as it is generally designed to do. The repercussions can be devastating - often it ends with multiple guildies upset, angry, frustrated, disatisfied, ultimately causing a mass exodus (whether en masse or a steady trickling of departures). While most of the other forms of drama are easily dealt with (and worth the effort to correct), troll drama should be ended the moment it begins before any damage can be done - which general means /gkick. Hand-in-hand with this, however, is the importance of training your guildmates how to react when this sort of thing does (hopefully rarely) occur. The best course of action is NO reaction...do not provide the troll what he most desires - attention.

To Rez or Not to Rez

Essy was in Kara recently with a druid healer and a boomkin and began pondering the timing/use of battle rez's. Of course, playing a resto druid, I'm subject to all sorts of second-guessing, though I do try not to. In the three boss fights we did (with more than one attempt on two of the bosses), not a single battle rez was thrown.

This got me to thinking about the all-too-valuable battle rez (BR) and how/when I use it. I was certainly surprised that neither of the druids in that group used the rez, particuarly as it would have been well-spent, at least on one or two of the fights.

Now that the BR has a 20 minute cooldown (instead of the previous 30 minutes), you can theoretically throw 3 an hour per druid, which is effectively (at least in lower level raids), one per boss fight.

There are clear times when you wouldn't use a rez:

- when you are clearly going to wipe, even if you use the rez
- when it is clear you will down the boss in very short order and you have enough dps/tank/heals (with the CD, better to save it for the next fight)
- when you are fighting Shade of Aran and he does flame wreath (note on this one that you CAN rez, but the person should not accept until flame wreath is over - otherwise it counts as someone moving and you wipe)
- when you are fighting trash and almost to a boss fight. I find it is better to save the BR for the boss fight rather than waste it in a trash fight

When you *should* use a rez is a little less clear, but nonetheless important. It certainly can be subjective. Here are a few of the things I look for in making that decision:

- what percentage health is the boss? The lower his percentage, the more likely you're going to kill him - and the extra dps could make a difference in getting it done
- healer goes down. If a healer goes down and you're not clearly in a wipe situation, that person will nearly always get my BR.

On a separate note, whether to BR a tank is entirely dependent upon the situation. In some fights (like Prince), the tank will probably never be able to get threat back. In others, not only will he, but someone else can tank in the meantime until he's up and his health is back. In fact, last night in Mag's (that attempt still ended with a wipe, but it was a really good try), our main tank went down. One of the other tanks grabbed him, so I BR'd the main tank and he managed to get threat back rather quickly. Our problem in that fight was more with everyone being so knocked off balance by our MT's death, that we missed the next click when a dps or two died.

I'm sure I've left lots of other situations out, but these are some of the main elements in deciding whether to use by BR. If you have other things to add, I'd encourage you to mail me or comment.

Evil Battlegrounds Tactics

I can't help myself.... playing a rogue in the battlegrounds is just plain fun!

Something that fills me with a particular amount of glee... stealthing to a base that the Alliance simply has no hope of taking (at least not anytime soon), and randomly sapping the horde sentry. I remain in stealth, but it causes them to over-guard that one base, rather than sending extras out to attack (or guard) another base.

/evillaugh