New Boss vs. Farm Content

This picture is not related to my post.

I’ll write on guild related stuff every now and then. I’ll have to admit I feel a little bit silly, because the days I was an officer are long gone, the guild I was officer in is history. I prefer if I can talk about stuff I do myself, I heal myself or I have to decide myself. The topic of today is a decision GMs or officers will have to do.

It is the decision of how much time should be spent on progression content and when during the course of a raid ID should be done so.

In my opinion, and that’s something I believe in very strongly, progression raid content should come first as much as possible. Don’t start your week with clearing out every boss you have on farm status and maybe do some half hearted shots at a boss you’ve never killed on your last raiding night. Challenge your folks. And I really believe that if you frontload the hard content in your raiding week you’ll gain two important things (and you’ll learn a third important thing about your raiders, I’ll talk about that in the end):

1. You will progress faster.
2. And more important: Your raid will learn to perform better even with maybe not ideal gear (rather than just farm epics until you finally outgear everything).

Let’s look for some examples:

• Naxxramas if we come to actual game content. Patchwerk is not an easy boss. For many guilds that guy is the first little roadblock. Now my advice is: Start out a raiding night on patch. When everyone is concentrated. Get some exercise on this guy. Don’t farm every quarter in Naxx you have on farm and then maybe Sartharion and then…ups….the raid week might already be over.
• Malygos. This guy is hard. If you you have cleared Naxx25 and Sartharion you might want to work on this one. My advice: Start a raiding week fresh on Malygos. Naxxramas won’t walk away. Sartharion will still be there on the last night of the raiding week.

The argument I always hear against this is equipment. “Why can’t we just do this and that, then we have better gear and can one shot this guy?”. And this might even be true, every boss will get easier when gear gets better. But: if you want to raid you have to learn to wipe. You have to learn to perform as good as possible. And in terms of gameplay, communication and means of approaching a new boss you’ll learn so much more if you frontload your new content and in this way improve yourself as a player and your whole guild as a raiding unit. And there is nothing more rewarding than killing a hard boss. Maybe even before a competing guild on your server. And maybe even without the perfect gear.

Now that is my opinion and I’m sure not everyone agrees with me. So if you want to frontload hard content not everyone in your guild might cheer. Gear is a great incentive and keeps people motivated. And thats why as a GM or officer you’ll have to consider some points:

• Explain yourself to your raid and why you’re doing this.
• Don’t get into a position where “we won’t do anything else before this boss lies on the floor”. The first raiding guild I was in broke up over Archimonde who just didn’t want to die.
• Have a good chunk of situational awareness. You did 5 tries and people are no longer concentrated? Call it a night and switch to farm content, that’s no shame.
• Keep your folks motivated to work on firstkills. Have a good portion of breaks. If theres a guild on your realm that’s more or less doing the same content as you, that’s always a good, motivating factor to work on new bosses.
• Know boss strats and avoid senseless wiping. Be sure you have an idea of how hard this boss is, maybe it really requires some more gear.
• And most important: Think if progression is your guilds goal. You can have fun with 2-3 raiding nights going through farm content and progress from there, surely at a slower pace.

In the beginning of this post I promised you’ll learn something about your raiders. And that is who is a loot whore focused on loot too much. If you are out there and you want to annoy me there is one simple way: Talk in raidchat about why we aren’t doing a boss that’s on farm status after some wipes on a new boss. That just drives me nuts. We all want our loot. We all need our badges. We’ve all been through nights of wiping that just wouldn’t end. But sorry guys, raiding, especially 25 man raiding is just no 5 man pug. You just don’t do 1-2 tries on a boss, shrug and let it be. And if you’re in a good guild I’m sure you know that even the last try of the night can bring the long awaited success.

Please do tell me how you think about this issues. Especially if you’re a GM or officer. How do you handle new content and new bosses? Do you frontloaded them or do you push them at the end of the raid ID? How is the motivation in your guild for those 3-4 raiding nights and how do you keep your guys motivated? How do you plan your raiding week and do your raiders know where they are going beforehand or at invite time? How strict are you when it comes to buff food/flasking?

Additional thought on this topic? Listen to Ciderhelms podcast.