The recent developer chat on Twitter didn’t give us much information specifically related to guilds, but it did raise further questions about the changes originally announced at Blizzcon related to reforging.

My concern when the changes were first announced was related to the cost and/or priority of reforged items.

For all but completely random or open-bid loot systems, reforging may require you to re-think how you distribute loot.  Before we look at how, let’s go into some background on items levels.

The Math Behind Item Levels

The item level is something that Blizzard assigns to an item based upon the stats present.  Various attempts have been made to reverse engineer the formula.  If you’re so inclined, you can read about the gory details at Elitist Jerks.

Though the formula is stats to item level, it tends to be used in reverse by item designers.  A given dungeon at a given difficulty drops items of a given item level.  Blizzard throws stats on an item, runs it through the formula, then tweaks the stats until the item level matches the target.

Item level is a fixed attribute on that item, not calculated on the fly.  For items with only the standard stats, the formula is pretty simple.  Adding sockets or proc effects is where things get a bit more difficult to calculate.  Just how much of an item budget is used up by an on-proc effect is based upon some estimation of the value of the proc.  Obviously the opinion of Blizzard vs the opinion of the community may differ in this respect.

When people claim on the forums that “item x is under budget”, it’s because the reverse engineered formula says the item level should be lower than the item level in game, suggesting that some of the stats are lower than they should be.  When the math behind this is sound, Blizzard often adjusts an item.

Stat Changes and Reforging

In the post about stat changes in Cataclysm, there was a little blurb about reforging, which I’ll quote:

While these changes will go a long way to making a wider variety of stats more attractive, we understand that sometimes you simply don’t want more Hit Rating on your gear or you’d rather have more Haste than more Crit. In Cataclysm, we are going to give players a way to replace stats on gear as part of the existing profession system. As a general rule of thumb, you’ll be able to convert one stat to 50% of another stat. While some conversions (like converting Stamina to Strength) won’t be permitted, the goal is to let you customize your gear more.

So, what we do know is that:

• reforging replaces 100% of one stat with half as much of a stat that doesn’t already exist on the item
• there will be restrictions in terms of what stats you can convert

But there’s a lot we don’t know.  First, the restrictions: is it possible to guess as to what we won’t be able to reforge?

in Cataclysm, every class cares about stamina, and every class cares about one other “core” stat: strength, agility or intellect.  I am going to assume that for the purposes of balance, we won’t be able to fiddle with these stats.

I don’t think the raw spellpower on caster weapons will be reforgeable, because that’s there purely to avoid the current formula where spellpower is a function of the other stats on the weapon.  You’re still going to see all weapons of a given item level providing the same total amount of spellpower, but rather than fiddle with stamina and intellect to get there, they want to just backfill the portion that doesn’t come from intellect directly.  Allowing us to reforge the spellpower off would quickly lead to an imbalance.

I think it’s easy to see that we won’t be able to reforge into or out of mastery, as there should never be a downside to that stat – it just boosts aspects of your spec that you always want boosted.

Spirit we probably will be able to reforge, as rather than making it interesting via talents and abilities to all classes, it is only of interest to healers and Balance druids.  Elemental Shaman, Warlocks, Mages and Shadow Priests will all have a valid reason to reforge Spirit into something else.

Resilience I’m not sure about.  There were issues at the start of WotLK where PvE gear dominated in arena because it was easier to get (much in the same way that PvP gear was used quite often in PvE during The Burning Crusade.  Allowing people to dump PvE stats for a PvP stat (and with the changes to how tanks will become uncrittable, resilience is definitely PvP-only now) might set us up for a repeat of that situation.  My money says we won’t be able to reforge for resilience.

That gives us:

• Hit rating
• Critical Strike rating
• Expertise Rating
• Parry Rating
• Block Rating
• Haste
• Spirit (probably)

In the current item level calculation, these are all equal (their stat modifier is one).

Item Levels Reduced

Because reforging halves the stat in the process, it effectively reduces the iLevel of an item.  Let’s take a simple non-socketed item like the Lungbreaker.  I’m using the WotLK calculations, because after 4.0 hits two of the ratings on this item will be folded into other stats.

The current item level calculation is:

106.29 * log( ( ( 69^1.7095 + (69*2/3)^1.7095 + 46^1.7095 + (93*1/2)^1.7095 + 46^1.7095 )^1/1.7095) * (27/64) ) – 344.36

Which gives us 265.91.  That’s close enough to 264 (the actual item level) for the purposes of this article.

If we reforge the item to swap 46 critical strike rating for 23 haste rating, the calculation becomes:

106.29 * log( ( ( 69^1.7095 + (69*2/3)^1.7095 + 23^1.7095 + (93*1/2)^1.7095 + 46^1.7095 )^1/1.7095) * (27/64) ) – 344.36

Which works out to 258.29.  The item level as queried in-game won’t change, but if you apply the formula to the item there will be a discrepancy between what the item level should be and what the game says it is.

This may turn out to be the only way to detect a reforged item – it’s not clear if the results of reforging will be invisible, or if they’ll be presented as a pair of enchants (i.e. “-46 Spirit and 23 Critical Strike Rating”).  The game does support the idea of negative stats, even though you hardly see them in current content.

Cost and Priority of Items

If your loot system uses the item level to calculate the cost of an item, will you change the cost based upon whether the item is going to be reforged?

Enchants and Gems only enhance an item.  You can make the wrong choices and not enhance it as much as is possible, but you can’t make an item worse through the use of these augments.

Reforging is different.  Let’s say you’re a warlock.  You don’t care about spirit.  An item drops that is an upgrade for you, but only if you reforge the spirit into haste.  Let’s assume that your guild uses EP/GP.  Do you pay the GP value of the item before or after it has been reforged?

What if a priest also wants the item, but can use it without any modifications?

A loot system that has a fixed price for items tends to derive that cost from the tier of content.  Most guilds that I’ve been in set a price for each set of gear, with a similar fixed price for non-tier items from the same instance.  Systems like EP/GP derive the GP value in part from the item level.  The idea is that the price you pay is related to the benefit you get from the item.

Since a reforged item is by definition less powerful than an untouched item, it follows that someone who can make use of the item in it’s natural state gets a higher benefit out of it than someone who reforges it.

Reforging is meant to make less attractive items more attractive, saving them from being disenchanted.  I don’t think (and you may disagree with me) that you are meant to be re-forging every single item that drops the way you chant and/or gem items today.

So should someone who plans to reforge an item be given lower priority on that item?

Some loot systems already break ties based upon the perceived value of an item to the various members.  For example, in EP/GP, some slots have different GP values for different classes.  A ranged weapon is worth three times the GP for a hunter than for a rogue.  In my loot policy, PR is a tie breaker only if two or more people declaring would be charged the same amount.  A hunter with a lower PR will get a gun over a rogue with a higher PR, because the higher cost means that the hunter will get more benefit from the item.

Granted, the item level difference that reforging will have is much smaller than the 3:1 ratio in the above example, but the principle is the same – more benefit has higher priority.  Loot council guilds tend to operate on similar principles, so they’ll have to deal with this as well.

Will you ask your members to indicate that they will re-forge an item when declaring to help you distribute loot?  Does your loot priority now change from “mainspec beats offspec” to “mainspec -> mainspec with reforge -> offspec”?

I’m not really sure how to answer those questions, but I do think they bear some thought before Cataclysm launches.  Nobody can make an informed decision until we see the full range of reforging patterns that will be available.  I am interested to hear what opinions you have on whether reforging will impact your loot policy.

Until Next Time

Related posts:

• Guild Changes in Cataclysm: Overview
• Breaking Up a Guild Bank
• To Officer or Not To Officer?

If you’re reading the original book alongside, this corresponds to Part 1, Chapter 3: “He Who Can Do This Has the Whole World with Him.  He Who Cannot Walks a Lonely Way”

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

Henry Ford

The principle behind this rather long-named chapter is really quite simple, and eloquently summed up in the above quote.  There is only one way to get someone to do something, and that is to make them want to do it.

To do that, you have to talk about what they want, and not about what you want.   For a raid or guild leader, these should nominally be the same thing, at least at a high level.  Whatever your guild’s purpose is, that’s what everyone is showing up for – PvE progression, PvP dominance, or clean hard mode execution for example.

I won’t go into the examples that Carnegie uses in this chapter, as they’re all very business-oriented and somewhat dated.  Instead, let’s look at some situations in which you might be trying to win your members or an individual member to your side.

In a Raid

An impassioned plea for people to focus on the next boss attempt usually come after the basic “here’s how the fight goes, let’s give it a try” approach has failed.  You’re pretty sure that everyone understands the mechanics, but the execution is just going awry at some point.  You may even understand who’s going off the rails first, but know that calling them out won’t make things any better.

In this context, you probably are going to be talking to your raid as a whole or to roles within the raid.  What wants can you appeal to?  The most obvious are the material rewards from the boss, but this only works if the boss has intrinsic value to the raid.  Sometimes you get unexpectedly blocked by a boss that you’ve had on farm for a while.  The loot is no longer appealing, at least not to most of the raid.  You can appeal to everyone’s desire to just be done with the fight – perhaps asking certain roles to double-up and keep an eye out for people who you suspect are not focusing closely enough.

If the boss is linked to trash that is particularly annoying to clear, you can appeal to everyone’s desire to not repeat that the next night.  This is effective when people are requesting to move to another boss in a non-linear dungeon.  Do you remember pushing extra hard for a Shade of Aran kill in the early days of TBC just because of how painful it was to clear the trash after Curator?

If none of these seem appropriate or are having effect, you can drop one level lower and appeal to people’s desire for loot in the future (assuming you have a loot system that can offer bonuses).  It may seem cheap or compromising to have to offer bonus DKP or EP to get people to do what they should have been doing all through the raid.  Ideally, this is a last resort offered to encourage people to stay beyond a posted raid end or to go all-out on consumables in order to push progression.  Offering strictly material bonuses regularly dilutes their value.

I know we’re all fed up of this boss, especially since he went down so easily the last few weeks.  It’s late, and we all want to wrap up.  But I’m sure nobody wants to spend an extra 20 minutes slogging through that trash again tomorrow night.

I know we can do this, and I’m sure you all do too.  Let’s take five minutes to clear our heads, then come back and take him down.  1000 bonus EP if we do it without anyone dying in phase 2.

One-on-One

This technique of speaking about what someone wants is most useful when dealing with a problem, or an underperforming player.  The problem is clearly defined, and you aren’t trying to find something that everyone in the raid wants – just what one person wants.  How effectively you can do this depends on how well you know the other person and what drives them – or at least your ability to make reasonable assumptions.

In the book, Carnegie describes mainly business exchanges – situations in which the person trying to arouse a want is equal with or at a disadvantage to the person they are dealing with.  While these techniques can certainly be applied by a guild member who wants to convince the guild to do something that they want, I’m not going to explore that in detail.  I assume that you’re either a guild leader or possibly someone involved in mentoring (and thus in a position of authority over the person you’re dealing with).

Here’s how you might deal with someone who isn’t pulling the DPS they should be:

I want you to be a part of our raid team, and I know you want to be there for our progression fights too.  I have a responsibility to the guild to bring people to our progression raids who play at the level of their potential.

I’ve noticed that there’s a gap between the DPS we know you can put out and the average DPS you’ve been putting out the last few raids.  Our DPS lead would like to help you close that gap – is it OK for me to get him to work with you over the next few weeks?

A bit wordy perhaps, but much more effective than “your DPS is too low, and I have to drop you from the raid if you don’t improve in the next two weeks”.  You’re acknowledging their (assumed) desire to play well, stating that you know they’re capable of doing better, and providing a clear path to improve that doesn’t require them to justify their current lower performance.

There is a hint of what will happen if they don’t improve (your responsibility to the guild will prevent you from bringing them along), but it’s subtle and not phrased as an ultimatum.

On Your Forums

I think it’s important for guild leaders to regularly give a “state of the guild” to the members.  Forums are the obvious place for this.   When writing long posts (especially if you don’t do it often), it’s easy to stray from your core message and start rambling, often about your personal feelings rather than about the guild and what the members want to get out of their association with it.

Thankfully, you have a chance to write, review, have someone else proofread and offer comment, then revise some more before you post.  Do not give up this flexibility and just post the first screed that comes into your head – this goes for any post that is directed at the members in general, but even more so to these report-style posts.  For better or for worse, many of your members do not find keeping up with forum posts enjoyable, and of those who can be made to visit regularly only a subset will read a long post that doesn’t immediately pique their attention.

It’s not my place to provide general writing advice here.  Keep the principle of this chapter in mind when writing to your members.  Arouse in them the desire to keep reading right off the bat, then build in them the desire to improve in the rest of your post.  I’ll give a short and contrived example for a guild that has experienced a large amount of turnover recently, and finds themselves stuck behind their old progression high water mark because the replacements they have recruited aren’t as well geared or familiar with the fights.

I’d like to make sure everyone is up-to-date on the state of the guild.  I know information hasn’t been flowing as freely as it should have in the last couple of months.  Every member of the guild deserves to know what our plans are to get out of this rut.  I will correct that mistake and provide some details on how we’re going to focus on progression and increase the rewards that regular raiders earn.

First, I’d like to thank our new recruits for stepping up and taking on content that in some cases you lack the gear and experience for.  I know it hasn’t been easy, but you’ve put forth the effort and I know you’ll continue to do us proud as you gear up and become more familiar with the fights.

Much thanks is also due to our veteran members.  I know it hasn’t been easy going backwards in progression, and I know you long to be doing the harder content we were tackling two months ago.  Your continued support both of the guild and of the new members is what makes our raids possible.

First, let me set some expectations.  Today, we’re stuck on Deathbringer Saurfang.  Two months ago, we were making regular attempts on Professor Putricide.  I’m setting a goal of being back on the Professor within three weeks, and into the Frostwing Halls within six.

That’s going to take dedication from each of you – and yes, we do need to re-visit older content to augment the gear of some of our new members.  I know this may be frustrating or even boring at times for some of our veterans, but if you stick with the guild through this, you can take pride in our re-formed raid team and be greatly rewarded in the process.

I am announcing several EP bonus rewards today: the first is a bonus of 25000 EP for being back onto Professor Putricide within three weeks.  The second is a bonus of 50000 EP for being on Valithria Dreamwalker within six weeks.  These rewards are available to everyone who holds raider rank or higher as of today and maintains a 75% raid attendance through each of these targets.

Second: to help gear up some of our new members, we will be adding a Saturday afternoon TotGC raid.  The goal of this raid is to replace some crafting patterns we no longer have in the guild and gear up our newer members.  This raid will reward 1.5 times the normal EP rewards for all members who attend.

Lastly, we are inviting our veteran members to become mentors for our new members.  You are our star performers, and we want you to turn our new players into stars as well.  A 10000 EP reward is up for grabs for anyone who who can spend a few weeks bringing a new player up to your level of skill.

For the $FACTION!

This type of communication isn’t purely based on this principle – it uses things we’ve talked about in the previous articles in the series.  Hopefully you see the technique I’m using though – keeping people interested, making them feel important, and encouraging them to improve without criticism.

Though the rewards I propose may seem large, they are rewarded to everyone who stays with the guild through this period, and won’t affect EP/GP priority that much.  In other loot systems you will have to find numbers that work for you, but the idea is the same.

What Do Your Raiders Want?

Remember that not all of your raiders raid for the same reasons.  Unless you know otherwise from discussion with your raiders, you will probably have to assume certain superficial wants in your members.  In an article on the reasons that people raid, I proposed several categories of raiders that I think are still accurate:

• the investment raider
• the loot acquisition raider
• the PvP raider
• the perfectionist raider
• the social raider

For each of these categories, you can figure out what your members want to get out of raiding.  From that, you can come up with things to talk about that will arouse that eager want.  Of course, very few raiders fall strictly into one of the above categories.  Hopefully your guild is clustered around one category, or at least divided among complementary categories like investment and perfectionist.

What Do You Want?

Do you fall squarely into one of these categories?  If not, are your motivations to raid aligned with the guild?  A raid or guild leader who is a perfectionist may find it hard to get loot acquisition raiders to keep plugging away at content that drops nothing of interest to them.

Being part of guild leadership is a service you render to your members.  That means that sometimes you have to put your own wants and desires aside and use your organizational or leadership skills to do what the members want.  Obviously if you find these to be in conflict regularly, you may not be in the right guild.  One thing is certain though: trying to force your wants onto your raiders isn’t going to achieve anything quickly.

Learn to speak to the wants, needs and desires of your raiders and you will get better results for less effort.  You’ll be guiding more than leading, and if you do it well, nobody will feel as though they were forced to do anything.  Conversely, do it poorly and you can come across as a patronizing manipulator.  Don’t try to put all of this into practice overnight.

If you want to experiment with arousing an eager want, look for people who have the greatest room for improvement.  As an alternative (or supplement) to mentoring, figure out what they want out of raiding and then speak to them privately.  See if you can lock onto their motivation and see if it brings results.  If it does, great!  You can start applying the ideas to more members before trying to influence the entire raid team at once.  If it backfires on you, then it was nothing more than an attempt to work with an underperforming member that didn’t go as well as you would have hoped.  No damage done.

You’re not going to be able to put yourself in another person’s shoes every time.  You may find that it’s just not your strength.  If so, find someone who has more finesse in dealing with people, and have them work as your proxy.  Some leaders are excellent tacticians.  Others are organizers.  Still others are charismatic.  Know when to delegate if you can’t apply this advice yourself.  Even then, make a sincere effort to not talk about what you want out of raids, lest you undermine the work your proxy is trying to do.

Next thursday, we’ll start a new section, “Six Ways to Make People Like You”, and look at the first chapter: “Do this and You’ll be Welcome Anywhere”.

This article is part of the series “How To Win /friends and Influence /guildies”.  See the introduction for more.

Related posts:

• How to Win /friends and Influence /guildies
• The Importance of Dealing with Dead Weight
• WTB Guild, Paying 180g, PST

I’m catching up on some of the Warcraft novels, specifically Beyond the Dark Portal at the moment.  I find the scenes with Nefarian taking me back to the time when I was running Blackwing Lair.

I still rate that experience as the best time I spent raiding in the time I’ve been playing WoW.  It wasn’t so much the content, but the amount of good-natured grief that we gave each other that made the experience enjoyable.

Corrupted Healing

For those who never experienced the Nefarian fight when it was current, he periodically “calls” each class, making them do something special for 30 seconds.   In the case of priests (which was my main at the time), your direct heals stack a DoT on your target.

One or two stacks doesn’t hurt much but if you really wanted to kill someone and had enough priests, you could spam rank 1 Lesser Heal on someone and quickly build up a 2k per second DoT (this in the days where a well geared clothie would have maybe 4000 health).

Every time a priest class call went out, our class leader died in 2 seconds.  It never got old.  The first time was requested by our guild master (prompting a couple of “are you serious?” responses), but after that it just became a guild tradition.  He spent phase 2 and 3 desperately trying to keep himself alive with shields and renews, but usually would up horizontal for the kill.

Everyone knew it was coming, we all had a good laugh afterwards, and we were confident enough in our abilities to compensate for the loss of a healer.

Portal Roulette

In my next guild, I played a mage.  I’m not sure how widespread the tactic is, but our key screw with your guildmates move is known as “portal roulette”.  When it comes time to portal everyone home, multiple mages stack up on each other and face the same direction.  On a count, you all start casting portals to different cities.  If you have time, you cast more than one.

The result is a massive glowing blob of portal energy, and if you mouse over it your tooltip will rapidly cycle between the various destinations.  Right click at your own peril – you never know if you’ll end up in Dalaran or Stonard.  For those of you in 10 person guilds, Spicytuna has a recommended rotation for a solo mage to get the same effect.

No matter how many times we pulled this, there was always a cry of “dammit, why am I in Thunder Bluff?” from someone who wasn’t paying attention.  Again, everyone in the guild has a good laugh with no serious damage done.

I’m sure there are other examples that others will share – clustering on someone during Gruul’s Shatter, or putting Amplify Magic on someone just as they’re about to blow up.

When you can repeatedly kill your class leader on the final boss of an instance (at the behest of the GM no less) and everyone laughs it off, you know you’re in a good guild, or at least one that knows when to take themselves a bit less seriously.

My personal experience in WotLK hasn’t replicated that.  We were never the most skilled group, so we couldn’t afford to lose anyone on purpose, especially not in the 10 person raids.  I would have loved to have been a member of the Brew of the Month club so I could pull this off while fighting Sapphiron, but I could never get the hang of ram riding.

What do you do to maintain a spirit of camaraderie in your raids?  Any interesting ways to keep spirits high, even on progression content when you can’t let a few people die and still make the kill?

Until Next Time
(image is Mr. Mischief from the Mr. Men series)

Related posts:

• Turning Over the Reins, Pt 2
• Progression Raid Scheduling Woes

If you’re reading the original book alongside, this corresponds to Part 1, Chapter 2: “The Big Secret of Dealing with People”

A feeling of importance.  My article on what motivates your raiders could have just been that one line and it would probably have covered most everyone.  How we get that feeling differs somewhat, but underneath it all that’s what we crave.

In this chapter, Carnegie lists off a number of things that people want[1]:

1. Health and the preservation of life
2. Food
3. Sleep
4. Money and the things money will buy
5. Life in the hereafter
6. Sexual Gratification
7. The well-being of our children
8. A feeling of importance

Forget about the first seven in our context, as they all exist in the real world (save perhaps for a bit of #4 – though in-game that just leads to more of #8).  It’s that last one – a feeling of importance that I think drives many, if not most WoW players.

The Desire for Greatness

The desire for greatness is easy to understand.  It’s why people expended so much time and effort raiding in vanilla WoW, strutting around town in their tier 1, 2 and 3 finery.  Not that every raider did the peacock thing, but even if you didn’t flaunt it a full set of tier gear would turn heads if you joined a 5-man group.

This was in the days before the armory and achievements.  Your avatar was the measure of your achievements.  Today of course, tier gear falls from trees and doesn’t say much about your skill as a player.  Now greatness can be quantified, catalogued and searched online by anyone.  Your greatness isn’t acknowledged by anyone face-to-face – it’s reduced to a number on a web page.

That change doesn’t mean that people desire a feeling of importance any less – only that the way in which they are made to feel important has changed.  Carnegie goes into several examples in this chapter about how various politicians and captains of industry built empires not upon business acumen, but their ability to deal with people.  Their secret was to be “hearty in their approbation and lavish in their praise”.

So, in addition to not criticising your raid members, I’m now suggesting that you shower them with praise?  When did this become a the love-in guild blog?

A Spirit of Approval

The advice in the book is mainly about one-on-one situations rather than dealing with groups.  Obviously when showing appreciation and paying a compliment to a group of people, you have to find something in common.  This can be difficult in a raid setting where sub-groups play different roles.  Will people improve their performance on the next boss attempt if they hear the raid leader say “good job healers”?  Or an even wider-ranging compliment like “nice attempt everyone”?  Don’t these sometimes feel like they’re just something to say to fill the air while people are running back and rebuffing?

I have yet to find the person, however great and exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than he would ever do under a spirit of criticism.[2]

That quote from Charles Schwab is great advice for any raid leader.  In past articles I’ve talked about the technical aspects of figuring out what went wrong for a boss attempt, and further how to talk to those responsible about the problem in a reasonable way.  But if you have the ability to diagnose what went wrong, then you must have the ability to diagnose what went right.  If people will perform better under a spirit of approval and you can point out both the things that need correction and the things that people did right, then you get a double benefit on the next attempt.

I’m not suggesting that raid leaders don’t do this – just that the praise doesn’t tend to be focused.  It’s easy to look at the various mechanical aspects of a boss fight and say “we got him into phase two with 6 minutes left on the enrage timer, good job!”.  It’s a step up to look at the interrupt meters and single out for praise the member who interrupted a large number of enemy casts.

I remember when I was raiding Serpentshrine Cavern, specifically the Fathom-Lord Karathress fight.  When we started the fight, we always gave interrupt duty on Caribdis to one specific rogue.  He wasn’t amazing at it the first time, but every cast he stopped let us progress further.  After every attempt, the raid leader would compliment him on that job.  His DPS suffered for the role he’d been put in, but everyone in the raid knew that he was playing a critical role, and that made him feel important.  Over time, he became so good at that job that we saw no casts complete at all from that mob.

In and of itself, that’s not exceptional.  Rogues have a low-CD interrupt when properly talented, and anyone with good reflexes should be able to pull that off.  What I’m calling attention to is the improvement that came from the approval and praise he received.  I think that kind of improvement can be replicated in any raid.

Acknowledging Non-standard Contribution

Absent any comments from a raid leader, people tend to judge their personal performance against dps, threat and healing meters.  It’s a nice easy number to focus on, but as we’ve discussed in the past, trying to push that number higher can lead people to make poor decisions.

When people are assigned to a role in a raid that doesn’t push that number higher, or drops it significantly lower, it’s easy for them to feel as though their importance has been diminished.  I’s a tad myopic to think that way, but raid members aren’t the ones who have the big picture in their head.  When the raid leader takes the time to specifically recognize the contributions of someone whose contribution to a kill is non-standard, they can give back that feeling of importance in just a few words.

What you have to be wary of is doling out flattery, or cheap praise.  The difference is one of sincerity.  “Flattery is telling the other person precisely what they think of themselves”[3].  Everyone tends to have high opinion of themselves.  Reinforcing that image with flattery may sound good to the ears, but it’s pretty easy to see through.  It’s the complement of something that you hadn’t already thought of yourself that stays with you and has the desired effect.

Relative Importance

One word of advice – the feeling of importance is relative.  Don’t try to find a compliment for everyone in the raid after every attempt.  Look over the meters and data as you always do, but when an improvement in a member jumps out at you, take a moment to recognize it.  Trying to boost everyone up all the time doesn’t make anyone feel important.

Did someone’s DPS jump significantly since the last raid?  Mention it.  This goes doubly so if that person has been recognized as needing improvement in the past.  Did someone contribute to the kill in some other way, perhaps by farming consumables so that everyone was able to use a flask where they otherwise would not?  Mention it.  What about that Warlock or Death Knight who took a hit to their personal DPS to ensure that the 13% increased spell damage debuff was up on as many mobs for as long as possible?  Don’t forget about them.

Don’t forget about your star performers either.  Every guild will have a few members who always do everything the way they should.  You never have to point something out to them, and you know that once you’ve explained what you want done, they’ll execute cleanly and without further questions.  It’s all too easy to forget that these people, but make an effort to point out their contributions, even if their performance is consistent from raid to raid.  You may not be able to do so every time they do well (otherwise you would be calling them to attention all the time), so a whisper after the raid may be a more appropriate way to recognize their contributions.

I encourage you to give this a try and see what results it brings to your raids.  If you notice improvement (or even people eyeing your new attitude suspiciously), let us know in the comments.

Next thursday, we’ll delve into chapter 3: He Who Can Do This Has the Whole World with Him.  He Who Cannot Walks a Lonely Way.  (Now you see why I name the articles after the principle rather than the chapter they’re based on.)

This article is part of the series “How To Win /friends and Influence /guildies”.  See the introduction for more.

[1] Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People.  (1936), pp.19

[2] Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People.  (1936), pp.25

[2] Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People.  (1936), pp.29

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• How to Win /friends and Influence /guildies
• My Dog Ate My Frost Resist Set
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What do you do when you become aware (or find yourself a part) of “The B Team”?

The B Team in a guild is a separate raid team (usually for 10 man raids) that just doesn’t seem to progress as quickly or as cleanly as the first or primary raid team.

Having two raid teams in a guild isn’t a problem unto itself.  I suggested as much in a recent article on bridging the 10 to 25 gap.  My advice in that context was to organize two 10 person teams if you found yourself short of the 20 regular raiders to comfortably back fill a 25 person raid with pickups.  It was a means to an end, not a long-term solution.

I didn’t recommend running two 10 person teams long-term because of the balance and swapping issues it brings.  You may find your second team short by two people, but the only extra raiders online are locked to first team’s instance id.  If you can get around this, or if your guild runs two distinct schedules (e.g. a day and night raid), then you may find that one of the teams progresses faster than the other.  When that happens, players can find themselves discouraged if they’re not progressing as quickly, or in some cases turn into jerks if they’re on the “winning” team.

How then do you try to avoid these problems, or address them once they’ve cropped up?

Foreward

Just to be clear, I’m not referring here to the multiple 10 person raids that a functioning 25 person guild may run on the side.  Those are typically populated by alts or pickups, and often use a different loot system.  I don’t think that anyone judges a player by the progression made in an unofficial raid.  I’m referring to a guild whose multiple 10 person raids are the main path to progression.

Downplay Comparisons

While a bit of good-natured competition within a guild can spur people on, I’ve not found it to be a useful tool long-term.  Perhaps one night you race each other for a speed clear of a farm instance, but to compare progression speed when the teams may not be equally matched isn’t fair.  When learning fights, certain combinations of buffs and debuffs can make a major difference – just having heroism or bloodlust available can make or break an encounter.

Though I’ve used the term for this article’s title, never use the terms “Team A” and “Team B”.  No matter how you try, these names (or any names from a set which has a defined sorting order like numbers) is a bad idea.  The connotations of superiority are just too hard to overcome.  Instead, use completely unrelated terms, or even made up words.  I wouldn’t recommend going with pop culture references, in case they are polarizing (e.g. Team Spock vs Team Kirk).  Quick: which is better: “Team Mittens” or “Team Flügelhorn”?

Answer: Neither.  Team Pfaffendorf beats them both.  Bonus points if you know why.

You should also be on the watch for teams judging each other, especially if one team ends up being joked about in guild chat.  Once people start to think of themselves as part of an elite group within the guild (or outside of a perceived group of elites), you’re only a few steps from a clique.  The best way to avoid that (if you can) is to mix up the teams periodically.

Mix it up

If you have 20+ raiders who all raid at the same time, try to mix the teams up a bit.  For progression you probably don’t want to do this on a week-by-week basis, but at least once a month you should re-shuffle the teams.  Have both raid leaders pick people much as you would in school sports – back and forth until only one person remains.  Just don’t do this publicly – nobody liked being the last person chosen in school and it’s not going to boost morale in WoW either.

When mixing teams, try to keep the quality of the leadership experience the same for all members.  Don’t put two amazing raid leaders on one team and leave the other team to learn everything from wowwiki.  Also try to keep the strategies for each boss fight as close as possible.  If both raid leaders have different approaches, sit down and discuss which is best.  This will help members stay focused and effective when they move from one team to the other, and will continue to serve you if you merge into a 25 person team.

If you choose not to keep the strategies the same, then make sure that whoever “owns” the strategy (typically the raid leader) remains with one team long-term.  The people they bring to the raid may chance, but members should know that if they’re on Foo’s team, they are executing a particular boss fight in a given way.  It also helps to have the strategies documented on your guild forums, preferably with a descriptive mnemonic.  On Lady Deathwhisper you might refer to the “normal” tactic and the “AoE kill zone” tactic for example.

You will need to set an expectation among members that when teams are shuffled, performance and progression might not be perfect from the get-go.  It takes a few raids for everyone to get used to everyone else’s play style.  Over time, this period of readjustment will get shorter.  Be quick to shut down cries of “the other team is so much better at this” or “I don’t want to be on the sucky team”.

If you’ve let the raid leaders pick back and forth and they’ve paid some attention to balance, individual performance shouldn’t be a concern.  You are more likely to wipe because someone decides not to give it their all or refuses to alter their playstyle to match the members they’re paired with.

Examining and Fixing

If both teams are progressing at exactly the same pace, you won’t have most of the problems I describe above.  But that’s not likely to happen.  Class balance, buff and debuff synergy, and the unavoidable differences in player skill mean that one team is probably going to move ahead quicker than the other.

If you’re switching things up once a month, you may not need to jump on this right away.  If it continues even when people are changed around, then you might need to look more closely at how the raid is being lead.  Are the raid leader’s instructions clear?  When people fail to follow them, is action taken to make sure that it doesn’t happen again?  Are subtle but important details about the fights overlooked, or does the leader assume that everyone knows them?  Any of these things can be a thorn in the side of progression.

You may wish to have the leader (or just an experienced leader) from the other team “audit” the team that is behind on progression.  Have them join on an alt.  Don’t have them take over the raid – just observe how things are run, make note of things that are different, and see if anything jumps out as a causal factor.  After the raid is over, take the time to sit with the raid leader and discuss what you observed.

Leading a raid effectively is an art unto itself, and just like playing a given class a little mentoring may be very helpful.  You may find that the issue is one of occlusion – the raid leader doesn’t realize that something is going wrong because they don’t have a given addon or perhaps just don’t know where to look among the information they do have to determine the root cause of problems.

Recruiting

Make sure your recruiting efforts are tailored to the needs of each team.  If you know that the reason one team isn’t progressing as fast is that they only have two strong healers, make it a priority to find a strong dps/healing hybrid so that you can move between 2 and 3 healers based on the fight without rearranging the group.  If the end goal is to be a single 25 person team and you only have two teams as an interim measure, then make sure you’re out there looking for the bodies to bring you up to full strength.

When trying to merge two 10 person groups into a 25 person team, you have a little more flexibility in terms of who you bring in.  20 decently geared raiders can help carry 5 lesser geared people far easier than a 10 person team can balance even two undergeared members.

Different Schedules and Alts

If your guild runs two separate raid schedules, you may have some members who can make both times, and want to raid on two characters.  Unless all of your main raiders are getting spots in a raid regularly, I would recommend against this.  It can be quite a morale hit to be seated for a raid while your spot goes to someone whose main has already seen gear upgrades this week.

Unless you have a strong need for a particular members’ alt, I prefer a policy where the guild “owns” a given raid size lockout on your main, and all other lockouts are yours to do with as you please.  Some members may choose to join PUG raids, some may not raid on alts and be available to swap into guild runs as required.  But make sure that every individual gets a chance to raid before any one person gets to raid twice.  Not doing so only slows down progression in the long term.

How do you deal with multiple raid teams?  Have any of you maintained two or more long-running teams for more than a few months?  If so, how did you work to achieve balance and keep everyone focused despite different progression rates?
Image from Robot Chicken Season 4, Episode 5

Related posts:

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If you’re reading the original book alongside, this corresponds to Part 1, Chapter 1: “If You Want To Gather Honey, Don’t Kick Over the Beehive”

I must admit: I decided to start this series right after finishing the book.  Perhaps I should have re-read from the beginning first.  Don’t criticise?  Don’t complain?  How can I reconcile that with what I’ve written in the past?

The advice Carnegie gives here is to

remember [when dealing with people] that we are not dealing with creatures of logic.  We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures brisling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity[1]

Being the introductory chapter of the book, this advice doesn’t stand on it’s own.  Or rather, it is designed to make you realize that criticism, condemnation and complaining are not the only way to make someone do what you want them to.  Indeed, the examples in this chapter serve to show how the moment you start criticising someone, you put them on the defensive.  You make it harder for you to get your point across, and even if you eventually do you leave a resentment that will make future encounters with the person more difficult.

The obvious guild management situation here is failing to perform up to guild standards while raiding.  Some people are just better at it than others.  Those who aren’t will eventually contribute to a failed attempt on a boss.  If you know that the actions (or inactions) of an individual were the start of the failure, shouldn’t you call them on it?

Maybe.

Blaming Everyone but Themselves

The problem is that people who have done something wrong are often unaware that they have done so.  They may even have a justification that in their mind makes the failure not their fault.  One of your top DPS stays in the fire for a few seconds to take down an add that was going for a healer, not noticing that a offtank is moving to intercept.  The add dies, but leaves the DPS so low on health that an AoE effect kills them a few seconds later.  Robbed of several thousand DPS, the group then hits the hard enrage timer and wipes with 2% health remaining on the boss.

Unless specifically assigned otherwise, the job of DPS is to do as much damage as possible without stealing agro or taking excessive avoidable damage.  In the mind of the raid leader, the DPS screwed up.  In the mind of the DPS, they were protecting a critical member of the raid and their actions were justifiable.  Perhaps they even think it was the healer’s fault for not keeping them up through environmental damage, or that the tank should have called out that they were going to take care of the add.

Strictly speaking, the raid leader is right.  The job of protecting the healers from loose mobs nominally belongs to the tanks.  While a DPS helping out safely (slowing or snaring the add, putting some form of protection on the healer) is usually appreciated, doing so unsafely and getting yourself killed isn’t the way to handle things.

Why Not To Criticize

The raid leader can now go and chew out the DPS member (publicly or privately).  Will it make the raid leader feel better?  Maybe.  Will it help the DPS get better?  Probably not.  The DPS probably realizes what they did.  You should know your raiders well enough that there won’t be a repeat of the incident.

But what if you don’t know the DPS player well, or you’re concerned that they will do the same thing again?  Surely you have to highlight that to them – otherwise you’re just going to waste everyone else’s time when the group wipes again.

So how do you reconcile this advice to not criticise with the pragmatic task of leading a WoW raid?  Well, the first hint is to not use a single chapter of the book or this series as guidance.  Future articles will go in depth on ways to get someone to do what you want them to do without them being on the receiving end of a tirade first.

It’s that tirade you need to avoid.  It’ s all too easy to go off the deep end with someone, making them feel as though the entire wipe was their fault.  As anyone who’s been raiding for a while knows, you can try to find out where a wipe started, but the further back in time you go, the harder it becomes to say that one person made everything go pear shaped.  Little mistakes happen all the time, and so long as someone else makes some kind of correction, they go unnoticed.  The boss dies, and everyone is happy.

It’s only when the correction is missed and the mistake is compounded that you start to set up for a wipe.  So whose fault was it?  The person who made the mistake that could have been corrected, or the person who failed to correct?  Or the raid leader who didn’t notice the mistake and call for a correction?  If you recorded every attempt and went over the footage with a fine-toothed comb you might be able to answer that question, but I doubt anyone has the time or inclination to do so.

Calling out the one person you think is responsible can do a lot of things, but what it won’t do is make the person more relaxed and capable of focusing on the job at hand.  It brings emotions and hurt pride into the picture, and from there things just go downhill quickly.

I will give you one alternate approach: rather than telling someone how badly they did something that it wasn’t their job to do, compliment someone else on the way they handled the job, and ask them to keep it up.  In our hypothetical above, you can compliment the offtank who did take care of the add.  Make sure that’s done publicly and the DPS should realize that it’s not their job to do it next time.

Criticising Addons

One word before I wrap up on addons that call people out.  I’m taking of FailBot and EnsidiaFails.  Is an automated whisper from EnsidiaFails the same as directed criticism from the raid leader?  Probably not.  The difference is how the raid leader uses the information.  If anyone who fails (including the raid leader) is treated the same, then such addons are useful tools.  If some people’s fails are called to light while others slide by, then the usefulness rapidly drops off.

Exacerbating the problem is that some failures are reported falsely.  If you’ve ever lost a tank in an Onyxia PUG when someone is running EnsidiaFails, you’ll be familiar with the spam of people “failing” to avoid flame breath.  Getting in front of Ony’s legs when she’s being tanked is a failure – getting breathed on because she’s spinning around after the tank dies is not.  You can indicate to the addon that it should stop detecting failures until combat stops, but I don’t see people using this in a timely or consistent fashion.

Next thursday, we’ll delve into chapter 2: The Big Secret of Dealing with People.

This article is part of the series “How To Win /friends and Influence /guildies”.  See the introduction for more.

[1] Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People.  (1936), pp.13

Related posts:

• How to Win /friends and Influence /guildies
• Arouse in the Other Person an Eager Want
• No, it’s *not* the tank’s fault

Today I’ll be starting what I hope will be a long-running series of articles that will take up the thursday posting slot and carry us at least until we start getting some hands-on information about guilds in Cataclysm.

As you may have guessed from the title, the series will look at the ideas of the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie and look at how they can be applied to guild management.

If you go back through my articles you’ll find that I sometimes suggest not trying to get inside the heads of your guildies.  Stick to the facts and skip the psychology.  I still believe that this approach is safe – you won’t get into any trouble by keeping things simple.  I have come to believe however that there are better ways to motivate and guide a group of disparate people towards a common goal.

Why do we play World of Warcraft?  Why do we choose to make raiding our focus instead of PvP?  Why do we join a guild instead of sticking with PUGs?  The answers to those questions aren’t specific to MMOs or gaming.  We do these things because they bring us some measure of satisfaction.  The specific personal goals that these activities fulfil differ from person to person, but it all boils down to “I want to”.

In the second chapter of the book, Dale Carnegie makes a simple statement.  When I read it, I knew that the rest of the book would be applicable to anyone in a guild leadership role:

There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody to do anything. Did you ever stop to think of that?  Yes, just one way.  And that is by making the other person want to do it.

Remember, there is no other way.

(1. Carnegie)

I’m sure every guild leader can identify with the frustration in the statement “if only these people would do what I want them to do, this boss would die!”.

I’m not suggesting that what you want your members to do is diametrically opposed to they want to do.  You’re a member too, and your members have been drawn together for the same general goal.  It’s in the specifics where things break down.  You want something done a particular way.  Certain members don’t agree.  In their minds, you’re now forcing them to do something they don’t want to do, and performance suffers (even if nobody is directly aware of why).

That’s just one paragraph of many that I think will resonate with many guild leaders throughout this series.  My hope is to give guild leaders some new ideas on how to motivate their members.

On Manipulation

As I read through the book, I was thinking about how each idea would apply to guild management.  As I did, I became worried that my articles would keep touching on the term “manipulation”.  When talking about how to influence people, it’s hard not to think that at some level you are manipulating them.  I don’t want people to think that I’m suggesting turning your members into mindless followers.  Part of the fun of being in a guild and raiding is seeing different people come together to achieve a common goal.

This series is designed to help you direct the energy and drive that your members have so that everyone’s pointing more or less in the same direction.  Rather than saying “do this because I’m the guild leader and you must pledge fealty to me”, you’re getting them to think that it was their own idea, or that it serves their purposes at least as much as it serves the guild’s.  Is that wrong?  It’s an interesting question, and one one which I invite comment.  If the guild achieves their goals and everyone thinks that they played a crucial part in doing so and that it was their idea to do so, is that a bad thing?

Getting A Copy For Yourself

If the subject interests you, I would highly recommend that you pick up a copy of the original book.  Here are a few links to various booksellers (none are affiliate links):

• Amazon US / UK
• Barnes and Noble
• Chapters Canada
• Booktopia AU

It’s a relatively cheap book (though amazingly it’s cheaper in the UK than in other parts of the world).  I picked it up almost by accident – someone had recommended it to me and I’d put it in my shopping cart at Amazon only to find that the shipping cost was more than the book.  I didn’t buy it that day, but the next time I went to buy something there it was still in my cart, and I purchased it without even realizing it (and got free shipping in the process).  Your local public library should also have a copy.

While my articles will be focused on how to use the ideas in a guild management setting, I’m sure you’ll find ideas that you can apply elsewhere in your life.  Of course, you may find that these ideas make perfect sense but applying them seems difficult.  That is what I hope to help with.

About The Book

Dale Carnegie was a lecturer first and an author second.  The original version of the book came from a publishing executive who attended Carnegie’s course.  You can think of the book as being less of a self-help book (at least the way we think of such titles today) and more of a textbook for a self-help course.

The book has been re-printed several times since it was written in 1936 (I’m using the 1998 version), but only some of the examples have been updated to be more relevant – the main points remain unchanged.  I think some of the chapter names may have been changed when the book was given an overhaul in the 80s – my copy differs from the listings given by Wikipedia.

One word of warning: the book was written in 1936, and even in the revised edition some of the examples are dated.  If you’re someone who dismisses things because they’re they seem superficially irrelevant, you might have some trouble with this book.  Of course, I think that anyone serious about guild leadership and willing to make the effort to get their hands on the book will be more focused.

The Series

The book is neatly divided into 30 chapters.  Due to the dearth of new information about guilds in Cataclysm, I’m going to start off the series with one chapter each thursday, leaving the monday post for more contemporary topics.  If the Cataclysm beta starts earlier rather than later and I find myself with more topical things to write about, then I might start covering two chapters per post.  The first article will be published this Thursday.

Here is the full chapter list, for those who would like some idea of the direction the series will take:

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

1. If You Want to Gather Honey, Don’t Kick Over the Beehive
2. The Big Secret of Dealing with People
3. He Who Can Do This Has the Whole World with Him.  He Who Cannot Walks a Lonely Way

Six Ways To Make People Like You

1. Do This and You’ll Be Welcome Anywhere
2. A Simple Way to Make a Good First Impression
3. If You Don’t Do This, You Are Headed for Trouble
4. An Easy Way to Become a Good Conversationalist
5. How to Interest People
6. How to Make People Like Instantly

How To Win People To Your Way of Thinking

1. You Can’t Win an Argument
2. A Sure Way of Making Enemies – and How to Avoid It
3. If You’re Wrong, Admit It
4. A Drop of Honey
5. The Secret of Socrates
6. The Safety Valve in Handling Complaints
7. How to Get Cooperation
8. A Formula That Will Work Wonders for You
9. What Everybody Wants
10. An Appeal That Everybody Likes
11. The Movies Do It.  TV Does It.  Why Don’t You Do It?
12. When Nothing Else Works, Try This

Be a Leader: How To Change People Without Giving Offence or Arrousing Resentment

1. If You Must Find Fault, This Is the Way to Begin
2. How to Criticise – and Not Be Hated for It
3. Talk About Your Own Mistakes First
4. No One Likes to Take Orders
5. Let the Other Person Save Face
6. How to Spur People On to Success
7. Give a Dog a Good Name
8. Make the Fault Seem Easy to Correct
9. Making People Glad to Do What You Want

I’ll turn each chapter into a link as it is published.  If the latest link doesn’t work, you may be trying to view it after I’ve scheduled it but before it’s gone live – check back on Thursday and it should work.

Until Next Time

[1] Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People.  (1936) pp.18

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A reader posed this question to me recently:

How long do you keep trying an encounter with guild members (in a non-raid environment) before you throw in the towel?  I recently spent two hours and eight wipes with an all-guild group trying to complete Heroic Halls of Reflection.  The group should have been able to complete the instance easily, but they refused to listen to any of my suggestions.  They fought the spirit waves in the middle of Frostmourne’s room, ignoring my requests to use the alcoves.  When we finally completed that, someone attempted to use the ledge to escape the Lich King (this was the day of patch 3.3.2), wiping the group.  We then tried the escape four more times, always dying on the third or fourth wall.

After that wipe I couldn’t take it any more, and I left the group, as did another member.  I hate abandoning guild members, but when they’re performing far below the standards of even the worst dungeon finder group, what do you do?

I like this question because it touches on a few different aspects of being a guild member and a guild leader.

I think it’s safe to assume that nobody’s going to ditch on a guild raid due to wipes.  That’s part and parcel of being in a raiding guild, and if you can’t take the pain of wiping, you should find another route to progress along.  The raid leader decides what encounters to tackle, when to move on to a different fight if things don’t gel.

I Shouldn’t Be Stressing Over This!

Running non-raid content with guild members is supposed to be a fun, rewarding and relatively stress-free experience.  The gear disparity be smaller than you might see in a dungeon finder group.  You probably know the people you’re playing with, and know how to work together as a group better.  You may have some kind of voice comms set up, so you can react to changing conditions faster.  And when things do go pear-shaped you should be able to laugh it off as dumb luck and move on to a clean kill next time.

So what do you do when your guild mates perform worse than a group of random people?  With a PUG, you’re probably not going to survive three wipes, and many groups will fall apart after two (or even one, but I think those people are overreacting).  You don’t want to leave your guildmates in the lurch, but at some point you just have to accept that things aren’t clicking.

There’s a few reasons why things might not gel for a heroic group:

• someone’s having an off night.  It happens to everyone from time to time
• unintentional complacency.  It’s easy to get into the “this will be easy with all guildies, I don’t have to pay as close attention” mindset.
• underperformers.  Every guild has them, and in a 25 person setting, it’s easy for your shortcomings to blend into the background.  Get too many such players together, and failure can be the result.
• too many undergeared alts in the group.  A raid-geared tank and healer can’t carry three DPS in iLevel 200 blues through Heroic HoR – mobs just won’t die fast enough.

Regardless of how you find yourself in the situation, you’re now in a state where your guildmates aren’t living up to your expectations.  You have two choices: convince the group to give up, or figure out what’s going wrong and suggest ways to correct it.

Figuring Out What’s Wrong

Let’s talk about analysis first.  Think of it as a form of mini-mentoring.  If you don’t have experience doing this in a raid settings, this may be unfamiliar territory.  Perhaps it’s an officer or class lead who does this for the guild normally.  Don’t worry – it’s not that hard to do, and knowing how will pay dividends when you are raiding.  You’ll be able to look in detail at the specific problems that you can address, answering questions like “Why did the tank you were healing die?” and “Why did my partner DPS on that add take so much damage?”.

Meters and Death Tracker

Two addons that make analysis much easier are a damage meter that tracks more than damage done.  You want to be able to look at things like damage taken (including a breakdown of which attack), enemy damage done, dispels, interrupts and debuff uptime.  I use Skada for this, but any decent meter including Recount will do the same.

You also want a death tracker addon.  I believe Recount has one built in.  If your meter doesn’t, I recommend Acheron.

Reasons for Failure

Wipes tend to start one of several ways: a DPS dies, the tank loses agro, the healer runs out of mana, or the group falls behind the instance spawn rate (portals or waves forming before the previous one has been dealt with).

If people are dying, you need to know why.  Find out how quickly someone went down, and to what boss abilities (the damage taken breakdown of your meter will help with this).  If someone is taking a large proportion of magic damage, find out if anyone in the group can dispel that type of debuff.  I’ve seen groups fail in Trial of the Champion because we only had a Shaman healer and the Ret paladin didn’t realize how much damage he could prevent by cleansing Holy Fire and Shadows of the Past.

If the tank is losing agro, then DPS just have to learn to reign things in.  I’ve talked about this before: your uber dps doesn’t matter one bit if you are exceeding the tank’s threat.  No matter what the tank’s threat level is, the DPS have to get as close as possible without going over.  If that means you need to hold off on all DPS for 10 or 15 seconds, so be it.

If the healer is running out of mana, you need to look at whether some of the damage they are healing could be avoided through dispels, or simple things like not standing in fire.  As with death analysis, look for things that can be dispelled by the DPS or tank but aren’t being removed.

If there’s no obvious avoidable damage, then look at healer rotation and synergy.  The spec, glyphs and spell choices that you make in a raid may not be as effective in a smaller group, especially with lesser geared players.

Finally, if things just aren’t dying fast enough you need to delve into damage meters.  Are there mobs that heal?  Are they being interrupted?  What about kill order?  Despite what you may have heard, marking mobs for a kill order isn’t dead.  Taking out the melee mobs when casters are pelting the group make the fights go longer, the healer use more mana, and the tank have to pop more cooldowns.

Suggesting Alternatives

Once you’ve figured out what’s going wrong, choose the way you suggest changes carefully.  Announcing to people what they’re doing wrong is likely to get them on the defensive, guild relationships notwithstanding.

Try to begin suggestions with “perhaps we can try this” or “do you think that _blank_ might have an effect”.  These may just be other ways of saying “hey you, do your job!”, but the difference in how each is received is massive.

If you get the feeling that people are hesistant to admit where they screwed up, try going first.  Saying something like “sorry, I should have interrupted that heal” or “sorry, I need to be faster on my dispels” may encourage people to look at their own shortcomings.

Setting Goals and Limits

Even in small group content, you need goals.  When everything is going swimmingly, these are completely unspoken.  Your goal is to complete the instance quickly and without anyone dying.  Once that fails to come true, it doesn’t hurt to give people specific things to focus on.  ”This time we’re going to get wave seven down before wave eight spawns” is more effective than the plain “ok, let’s do this again”.

Ideally, the group leader does this, but as I’m sure we all know the person assigned the party leader role is often not qualified to lead.  In non-dungeon finder groups, the leader may just be the person who started the group, or leadership may get passed to the tank.  Still, someone needs to step up and guide the group through something they’re having trouble with.

If nobody steps up, then it falls to you to do so.

Setting limits is also the role of a leader.  Everyone may want to quit, but nobody wants to be called a quitter.  The leader can let everyone save face by stating what the group is willing to do.  ”Ok, we’re going to give this one more shot, but if we lose someone before wave seven, then we’re going to call it”.

If the group seems hell-bent on finishing the instance but things just aren’t clicking, don’t be afraid to suggest going to another instance that you know you can complete easily.  The change of setting and quick success may turn things around.

Walking Away

Even with all of the above in your toolbox, you may not be able to get the group to come together.  If you’ve truly given it your all, don’t be afraid to say so and excuse yourself.  While this may be your go-to technique for dealing with dungeon finder groups, so long as it is the last ditch technique for guild groups, I don’t think you’re selling anyone short.

I would suggest not faking a reason to leave.  You shouldn’t need to make things up to justify legitimate actions to your guild mates.  If you really have reached your personal limit on small group content, then say so and hope to do better next time.

Applying this Elsewhere

The techniques I’ve described here scale to raid groups and to non-guild runs as well.  The next time your raid group wipes, rather than wondering “what the hell did we do wrong?”, you can start going over meters and get some insight into what went wrong.  If you notice something that nobody else has, you can share it with the group.

In Dungeon Finder groups, your response to people failing may be to get angry or frustrated.  But if you can do some quick analysis, you may be able to help the group succeed and the person become a better player.  Even if you do eventually choose to walk away, you can do so knowing that you did your best to make things better.

Thanks for the question.

Until Next Time

Related posts:

• Always have a Hidden Alt
• Don’t Criticise, Condemn or Complain
• Give Honest and Sincere Appreciation

… is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt

- Bertrand Russel

I normally don’t do “go look at this other blog post” articles, but I couldn’t resist with this:

The Dunning Kruger Effect (Critical QQ via Pwnwear)

This does explain a great deal of what we see in dungeon finder groups, and covers succinctly my feelings from the post on Selfishness.

Related posts:

• How to Win /friends and Influence /guildies
• Casual Schmasual
• If You Can’t Make Old Content Relevant, at Least Make it Profitable

The image theme lost steam somewhere around article 2...

This is part 3 of an article series: Jump to Part 1 or Part 2

Ok, so now we have some idea of how to transfer leadership and have gone into depth on the things that guild leaders do.  Now let’s talk about ways to make leadership transitions easier.

Even if you’re not going through a leadership move right now, adopting some of these ideas will make it much easier when and if that day comes.  And if it never does, you still end up with some neat benefits.

In the course of this article, I’m going to make reference to a few specific companies and/or products.  These are simply ones that I use or are familiar with.  If there’s a link to them, it’s not an affiliate or referer link.  If you know of alternative providers or products, feel free to mention them in a comment, but keep the links generic.  Thanks.

Making Contacts Generic

Much of the things that you need to transfer can be made easier by using generic contacts rather than specific people.  Create an email account for the guildmaster, one for the webmaster, one for recruiting, and so on.  Even if one person does all of these jobs, create separate email addresses so that you can split responsibilities up.  Then forward the mail from those accounts to the actual person doing the job right now.

In all of your web apps and online contacts, use the pseudo-aliases rather than personal email addresses.  This way, when the person doing the job changes (even just temporarily) you can just go and change where the forwarding points to rather than re-configuring the thing that sends the mail.

If you intend for people to be able to reply from the pseudo-address, you may need to be more selective in the manner you get your email.  Most desktop email clients let you change the “From” address in your emails.  Some let you swap between several on the fly.  Not as many web email systems support sending with alternate From addresses, but Google mail does.  If you’ve never set it up, it’s easy.  Go into your gmail settings and select the Accounts tab.  Then click on “add a mail account you own”.  This will send an email with a link to that address.  Log into the other account, click on the link, and you’ll be able to use that as your From address when replying to emails.

You can also set gmail to make the From address sticky: if someone sends mail to guildmaster@guild.com which forwards to your personal account, you will by default reply as that account.  This will save you from accidentally exposing your personal email address.

There is one caveat: once this “send as” functionality is configured, you can’t revoke it.  If someone leaves the guild, they can continue to send as lootmaster@guild.com.  But if they were using a desktop mail client like Thunderbird, they could do the same thing.  Remember, you can never trust the “From” address on email.  You can’t really trust any part of email, to be honest.  The underlying tech was developed in a simpler time before spam and malware.  Backwards compatibility preclues massive changes to email to make it more secure, so you just have to live with the way it is.

Billing Accounts

When it comes to services that require exchange of real money, you can probably get away with using a generic email address, but you can’t make up a generic name for payment details (nor would you want to).  You will have to go in and change these details, and ideally the person leaving the role will remove their billing details from the account before the next person takes on the position.  At least by using a generic email notices about the account (like “your Ventrilo service is due to expire in two weeks”) won’t be sent to someone who is no longer associated with the guild.

Your Own Domain

The cost of setting up a domain for the guild (as opposed to using a subdomain of a hosting service) is pretty small – on the order of $10 a year.  The problem is that you do need someone who has some background with web sites and the underlying tech to make it all happen.  Some web providers will let you register and host the DNS (domain name service – the thing that turns www.yourguild.com into the address of a computer on the internet) all from one place.  Others will require you to set up each component (domain registration, DNS and web hosting) separately.

Even for providers who will do everything from one place, the cost may be cheaper if you do it yourself.  For example, GoDaddy lets me register my .com cheaper than my web hosting provider did, but not my .co.uk address.  There are of course advantages to having all your domains hosted at the same place, but if you’re looking to minimize costs, consider using the cheaper option based on what type of address you’re registering.

There are a few things to bear in mind when choosing and setting up your domain.  If you plan on using something like Google Apps (more on that below), then you will need to be able to edit your DNS records directly.  Some providers don’t give you this level of control.  Also take care when choosing the admin, technical and billing contacts for your domain.  It’s quite common to set these to the same person and for that email address to be in the domain itself.

The problem is that if anything goes wrong with your DNS, you may not be able to get the domain back because the provider can’t send you email.  It is safer to go set up a separate Yahoo/Google/Hotmail account called domainowner-guildname@whatever.com and use that for your domain contacts so that you can still converse even if the domain records break.

Speaking of registration deadlines, don’t miss those.  Your guild domain name may seem to only be of value to you, but domain harvesters look for expiring domains, snatching them up if the legitimate owner misses a deadline and then trying to sell the domain for much more than the registration fee.  You don’t want to be in the position of buying back your own domain.

Hosting Everything Yourself

If you have the technical skill, you can host everything yourself.  Providers sell virtual servers, which are full Linux or Windows machines onto which you can load anything.  You set up your own web server, FTP site, third-party packages, whatever you like.  I use a service called Slicehost to do this – this blog runs on a 256mB slice that I pay $20 USD a month for.  In addition to wordpress, I have Gallery, a Wiki, MySQL and a few other little packages.  If I was really adventurous, I might even try this newly discovered open-source voice service called Mumble, which would eliminate the cost normally associated with a Ventrilo service.

The advantage to this service is that there is nothing I can’t set up quickly and play with.  I don’t have to wait for my hosting provider to approve a piece of software, then live with whatever upgrade cycle they choose.

The downside is that this requires a very skilled technical person, and it will be hard to transfer the knowledge required to set up the server to someone less technically knowledgeable.  Don’t use a system like this as an opportunity to learn how to build your own server – at least not for the guild.  You are responsible for everything – the web server, the firewall, the database, and security.  Simple mistakes that you make when learning can leave your guild site open to abuse or hacks.

If you want more control than a guild hosting site provides but you aren’t ready to jump into a virtual server, try to find a shared hosting provider that allows shell access.  Before I was on a virtual server, I used a company called Dreamhost for this.  While the web site rendering was quite a bit slower, I did have the flexibility to install whatever web packages I wanted.

Sharing the Cost

As I mentioned in Part 2, some providers offer easy ways for your members to chip in towards the cost of hosting services.  You tend to find this on things like Ventrilo (which is more gamer and thus more guild oriented) than on web hosting plans.

If your provider doesn’t offer such a plan, try to find one that accepts Paypal.  Then your members can send you money via Paypal and you can use that balance to pay the hosting charges directly without having to futz about getting the donations into whatever account you pay your credit card from.

The downside here is that Paypal does not allow you to open multiple accounts for the same person, and the accounts need to be verified, so you can’t help but expose personal email addresses that way.  You can use whatever email address you want though, so you could set up a paypal-specific email account.  Just remember to check it regularly or forward it to your primary email account.

Do take care to read the specifics of the Paypal payment options though.  They differ by country, and in some countries payments made by credit card can’t be accepted by a personal account, or they have a fee attached to them.  If your members haven’t linked their own bank accounts to Paypal, you may end up with pending payments that you can’t accept.

Delegating Permissions

No matter how you set up your guild website and voice communications, you’re going to end up with a few systems that have various permission sets.  Your forum, your FTP site, your screenshot gallery, your DKP system – all of these may have accounts that allow officers to do some of the work.  Make sure you set up this level of access.  There’s no point in the officers being able to act in your stead in-game only to be unable to add new members to the web-based loot standings or approve new forum members.

When setting up these permissions, it’s tempting to be more restrictive than is really required.  Remember that you want to set up permissions that let the officers act in your stead.  Either you make the officer permissions open enough that they can just do your job when you’re not around, or you bump an officer’s access up to your level any time you’re going to be away for a while.  The former will cover unexpected absences while the latter will not.

Wiki

A Wiki is a shared webpage that multiple people can edit.  It supports simple markup to create lists, tables and links.  Most people are probably familiar with Wikipedia.  Imagine a Guildopedia just for your guild.

Keeping track of all the information about your guild in forum threads can become confusing.  Changes aren’t tracked, and sometimes people can’t tell when things have changed.  A wiki is a good alternative for this for things like policy and tutorials.

In one guild, I used a Wiki for two things: to document policy for users and to provide “here’s how to run the guild” pages for my officers.

There are many wiki packages out there: some you run on your own server (which require shared hosting or a private machine) and some are hosted.  Among the hosted options, you usually have to pay to be able to restrict reads to certain groups.  If you’re going to put information that only officers should read, you need tobe confident that your wiki is going to prevent other people from finding those pages.  Mediawiki, the software that runs Wikipedia is very nice, but has some issues with this: pages that are supposed to be protected can be found via searches, and the search result excerpt may expose information even to those who aren’t allowed to read the whole page.

I’ve had a lot of success with a wiki package called WikkaWiki.  It offers nice clean access control including groups, and search results are properly hidden if you can’t read the page.

Twitter

Twitter is a great way to send quick updates to the guild out-of-game.  Set up an account in the guild’s name, sharing the password among the officers.  Ask your members to follow the account, then use it to post about raid schedule changes, important forum posts to read, first kills and the like.  Be careful that it doesn’t become a “stream of consciousness of the guild leader” though.  Take care as to whether you protect your tweets or not.  If you do, you have more work to do to approve followers.  If you don’t, you will get spam-bots following you and you won’t be able to post anything that is considered private to the guild.

Google Apps

I’d like to take moment to discuss Google Apps, which is a free service offered by google to host your domain.  It can provide a start page, webmail, documents, and calendar sites, all using your domain name.  I have this set up for cold-comfort.org, and I use it to store things like spreadsheets for blog posts.  I can offer my guild members email addresses @cold-comfort.org, and create any number of pseudo-accounts for billing contacts or test users for my forum.

I then forward these accounts to the proper personal email address (which is my personal domain, also using google for mail) and use the aforementioned “send as” feature so that both my personal and guild mail end up in the same inbox.

You can use Google Calendar for raid signups, though it’s obviously not optimized for things like limiting signups by raid roles.  You can organize people into groups (so members / raiders / officers /etc.) and then use those groups to protect documents.  Rather than setting up a Wiki, you could put all the passwords and tutorials in Google docs documents, then restrict them to only be readable by the proper groups.

Depending on the complexity of the spreadsheet, it might even be possible to take some of the theorycrafting sheets and upload them.  Google docs can’t do everything Excel can do, but the functionality is surprisingly good for a web app.

It’s even possible now to upload any file to Google docs (with a 1gB limit, but you can pay to increase that), so you can use it like an FTP site to store addon packages or short guild movies.

Setting up Google apps for your domain isn’t terribly difficult, but does require a bit of knowledge of DNS.  For the technically minded, you create a CNAME record with a special key, which Google then looks for as proof that you are the domain administrator.  This is why I mentioned earlier about choosing a DNS provider that gives you full control of your domain – if you can’t create CNAME records, you may have trouble bringing your domain over.

Documenting Everything

Regardless of how you host your site and voice communications, make sure that somewhere there is a list of everything the guild uses to provide service to the members.  Any third party package, any hosted site.  This can be in a forum thread that only officers can read, a wiki page restricted to officers, or a Google docs file that is shared to the appropriate group.

Make sure that this is kept up to date with information like who is paying for the service (if applicable), the date that the service runs out, the email address that members can send donations to for each service, etc.

If you choose to use a single account for officers to access various parts of the guild website rather than accounts for each person, those details should also be stored here.

You should also consider writing quick little guides to help your officers learn how various guild functions are performed.  How do they collect loot details for upload into WebDKP?  How do they do decay in EP/GP?  How do they give a new member the proper access on the forums, or in the scheduling system?  How do you add a new room to the Ventrilo server?  Having these tasks documented before a leadership break or transfer happens will do wonders to ease the job.

Changing Passwords When Leadership Changes

If you do use shared passwords, make sure you change them when someone who knows those passwords leaves the guild.  Don’t only do it if you think that person might misuse the passwords.  Security is best applied consistently – don’t try to make a judgement call on someone only to learn to your regret that you guessed wrong.  If you change them every time then it’s about the practice, not the people.

Yes, this is more work, and a bit of pain for the people who use the passwords.  But it’s the safe way to do things.  At least if you’ve documented all the places the passwords are used you can build a checklist.

Testing as a Regular user

Most of your guild websites will have several grades of users: unregistered guests, registered guests, guild members, guild officers and the site administrator or guild leader.  If you’re always logging in as a privileged user, you’ll never be aware of problems with your permission system.  You don’t want to make a post that is intended for officers only to find out that the forum you posted in is readable by all and only writeable by officers.

To address this, I create a dummy account for each grade of user (except unregistered guest, which is defined as anyone who visits the page without logging in).  Any time I add a forum or change permissions, I log into each of these accounts in turn and make sure that the changes look correct for each class of user.

Hopefully this last installment has given you some ideas that are useful whether you expect to be changing leadership in the future or not.  Or perhaps you’re starting a guild, and these tools will help you make things better from the start.

I’d like to thank Veliaf for the question that led to this series.  If you have any questions or ideas for articles that I haven’t covered in the past, please feel free to get in touch: karatheya@cold-comfort.org

Until Next Time

This is part 3 of an article series: Jump to Part 1 or Part 2

Related posts:

• Turning Over the Reins, Pt 2
• Turning Over the Reins
• Best of 2009