Friday, March 19, 2010

I got gonged and I liked it.

Gong Show took me in, gave me some loot and then shat me back out. Although I thought I did an acceptable job as a DPS paladin, they thought otherwise. Halfway through my trial, another paladin came in and eventually took my raid spot after about 3 bosses worth, and I thought he was a friend of an officer but I could be wrong. It was a pretty shady transition and after talking with the other paladin. I guess he applied to GS before I did, but couldn't join because he still wanted to raid with his previous guild. He had better gear than I did before I joined, and did more DPS than me on those few encounters, but not by a very big margin. My exodus from the guild may not have been entirely performance based, especially since these world ranked guild go through recruits like kleenex.

Gong show keeps a thread where raid members make comments about your raid performance, and here is how mine read:

Poor communication skills
Popped tons of ghosts on DW
Pulled aggro on beasts on Saurfang
Got hit by an extra block on Sind p3
Almost faceplanted an orange slime on a Putricide hard attempt and said he was fine when I asked him about it because he had rocket boots
Pretty bad at princes
Overall just dies a lot to random shit it seems, and a ret should be able to pull a little bit better numbers

Any criticism is good criticism so let's break this down.

-Poor communication skills.

I am still scratching my head about what this means, but I think this means in raid communication, i.e. raid chat and vent chat. I started to speak more towards the end of my trial as opposed to the beginning, but that's how it goes when you join any guild.

-Popped tons of ghosts on Lady Deathwhisper (HM).

Tons of ghosts apparently means 1 per attempt, and just as much as the other melee were failing on them. Granted recruits are under a microscope, but if it is happening as much as the other member melee, isn't the bar set there?

-Saurfang Beasts.

There is a bug where if you have Avenging Wrath active, it will bypass the AOE reduction buff that the beasts get. My AW buff was expiring heading into the beasts phase and I got hit by a blood beast, which in Hard Mode is a big deal; the raid is trying very hard to starve Saurfang of runic power in any way possible (BoPs on boiling blood raiders, tight taunt transitions, efficient killing of blood beasts.)

-Got hit with extra ice block on Sindragosa P3 (HM)

I never ever ever got hit with an extra block unless we were already wiping. In fact I never died to a phase 2 ice bomb, or screwed up a block position. I am scratching my head on this one as well.

-Orange Slime (Putricide HM)

This one aggravates me more than any other. I was trying my best to be proactive at killing the orange slime when the raid leader says he wants some initial damage on the ooze, and I had the foresight to use my rocket boots if the ooze picked me to chase. It did, I did. Is wiping to a bomb going off a more preferable option than using a cooldown to prevent it?

-Pretty bad at Princes (HM)

Guilty. It took me a few kills to get this one right. Shadow Prison is pretty tricky especially when there is nowhere to go when a non-empowered shock vortex goes off in the middle of the raid, or when all the melee gets a movement speed debuff right before an empowered one; this formula equals a huge pile of melee corpses and usually the ranged had to finish off the fight.

-Overall just dies to a lot of random stuff

I don't think I died any more than anyone else during attempts. The only two preventable deaths I could think of are:

1. Standing too close to the choking gas bombs a couple times when they went off

2. Vile spirit spawning right on top of the melee, waiting about 5 seconds before using any sort of AOE and promptly getting punched in the face. 5 seconds is more than enough time for a misdirect or a taunt.

-Low DPS

I was consistently in the top 5 in fights where you had to stand still and kill stuff, just what DPS paladins are good for; we have a severe penalty for switching targets. Fights where target changes happen often (LDW, Putricide, Blood Princes) I was usually hanging in the low middle range of the other melee in the raid.

Taking this criticism for what it is worth, I know where I need to improve. I also know how thin the line is between acceptable and unacceptable mistakes in world class raiding guilds. Part learning curve, part raw deal. GLHF Siqwence.

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