No leader likes to contemplate it, but sometimes people decide to quit their guild. Maybe they are quitting the game, or perhaps they want something different, but quitting a guild can lead to drama, bad feelings, and burned bridges. Over the years I have seen everything from people disappearing in the middle of the night to big drama-filled goodbyes to sad departures by people who will always be welcomed back in the Cats. I think it’s impossible to quit a guild with absolutely no repercussions at all, but with the right approach and attitude you can definitely minimize any conflict.

art by nataliedee.com

There is one universal policy about leaving a guild, no matter what the cause: any guild leader worth their salt wants a minimum of disruption to the rest of the team. If you can help them with that, it will go a long way towards making everyone as satisfied as possible with the outcome. That means no lingering drama posts on the guild forum, and no hissy fits in chat. When you do go, make a clean break and wait at least a couple of weeks before popping back on the guild website to say hi. Consider actually /gquitting during off-peak times to reduce the number of alarmed witnesses.

I think there are two basic reasons that people leave a guild: they want to move to a different guild (usually with “better” progression), or they are quitting or reducing their gametime in general. Honesty is the best policy — be straight forward about what your reasons are. Don’t make up crazy stories. To be very honest, people who are quitting WoW or going ultra-casual will get much better treatment from me than people who are hopping to a more progressed guild, but if you’re going to do the latter at least stand up for your reasons.

If you are looking for a new guild, don’t start applying before letting your guild leader or favorite officer know that you’re looking. GLs on the same server talk more than you suspect, and we have a sixth sense about these things. Part of our job (as recruiters) is to keep tabs on all the usual recruitment avenues, so there is very little ground that we don’t cover. Being honest, while difficult, is better than being caught.

And keep in mind that, in my experience, people come back to the guild or to WoW about 90% of the time. Perhaps you won’t come back to the exact same role, but history shows that you will likely want to come back in some capacity, so don’t burn any bridges.

So, in conclusion, five tips to quitting your guild:

1. Talk to your guild leader or favorite officer first. Give us a chance to fix things!
2. Be honest. Have the conviction to stand behind your reasons. Act professionally, and your guild leader should respond in kind.
3. If you start “secretly” guild shopping, you will likely be busted.
4. If you’re quitting WoW or reducing your game time you’ll probably be coming back at some point, so don’t burn any bridges!
5. Remember that your guild leader wants this process to go as smoothly as possible, so any help you can give along those lines will count for a lot.

** Note to my guild: no, no one is quitting. That’s why I decided to write this post now!

With all the current available 25-man content cleared and a surplus of very good healers, I seem to have switched almost completely to shadow in these hazy pre-Ulduar days. I’m finally hit-capped, I’ve got all the right glyphs, my keybindings are mostly set correctly, and more impressively my guildies have stopped giggling to themselves every time I go into shadow form. Really, though, I’m a 3-week old DPSer, so while I think I have a lot of the basics down now the experience and subtleties still elude me. Also, when flustered I have a tendency to stand there slack-jawed and mash on my Mind Blast — which is always on cooldown — until either it comes back up again or my brain kicks in and tells me what to do now.

Anyway, none of the below tips will help the experienced shadow priest, but if there are any other of my holy brethren exploring their dark sides some of this might be interesting:

1) Don’t rush the Shadow Word: Pain. It will stick on your target forever in most cases, assuming you’re using Mind Flay, so wait until you have a full five stacks of Shadow Weaving before unleashing the Pain. My usual single target boss opener is Vamp Touch – Devouring Plague – Shadow Word:Death – Mind Blast – Mind Flay – THEN SW:P.

2) Mind Searing herds of trash is almost illegally fun, but from my observations it only seems to be efficient with three or more mobs. When you’re dealing with two fairly resilient trash mobs, dot them both up and then do single target damage to the same one the rest of the raid is focused on. When pulling a pack of trash mobs with one big guy, throw VT on the big guy (why not, more mana and damage is good) and then Mind Sear to your heart’s content. I recommending giggling evilly to yourself at the same time.

3) This is going to sound stupid to any DPS person, but as a healer I didn’t know this: either use your tab key, or set up a tab macro. DPSers hit tab all the time to find their next target. I know, I was surprised too.

4) Shadow priests can dispel while in shadow form. This will most likely be taken care of by the healing priests and paladins on your run, but be prepared to help out when necessary. Resurrecting a player WILL knock you out of shadow form. Don’t be a Liore and end up DPSing two Naxx bosses in normal form. Also, you DO have healing spells, although god knows using one of the dirty things will seriously impact your spot on the charts, man. At least keep Flash Heal on your hotbar and be ready to use it if things get ugly or you’re about to die during a critical fight.

5) When examining the logs later (oh please, if you’ve read this far you know exactly what I’m talking about, you crazy min-maxer you) check and see how many times each of your three main dots ticked during a fight. They should be pretty similar numbers. If your SW:P is much higher than the other two, you need to watch your dot timer better.

6) Shadow priests are just going to kind of suck at some things, like the trash phase of Gothik. C’est la vie.

The thing I haven’t figured out yet: when is it optimal for me to stay on a target and not the add? Take Grobbulus — a lot of shadow priest damage takes a while to crank up, so when the blob add appears I am loathe to leave all my dots and cooldowns and switch to it, only to have to slowly build up damage on the add as well. Mind you, I know from running raids for years that getting DPS to stop casting/hitting the boss and focus on the add can be challenging, and I don’t want to be one of THOSE people. More research is needed!

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I spent the weekend offline (again!) in another city celebrating my raid leader’s birthday. Some things are more important than blogging. I know, I know…

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Still Alive

First up, this is not a complaint that getting The Undying is too difficult. It IS very challenging, but I don’t mind a good challenge and it’s nice to have something to sink our teeth into while waiting for Ulduar. Given enough time, we’ll get this achievement. Instead I’m more complaining about the concept in general.

The problem with Undying/Immortal as it stands right now is that the majority of the time someone is going to be the goose. I’ve been on two attempts and was fortunate enough to not be the person who died either time, but in both cases they were strong players with a history of being awesome and not standing in crap. They just made one split second wrong decision, and that was that.

Most of our usual 10-man team is pretty good about someone dying. There is some sighing, some awkward silence, but c’est la vie. A few people get a little grumbly and tense, but no one has yet devolved into finger pointing and namecalling. However, we’re a fairly mature, close knit guild. I can only imagine in some guilds where there isn’t as much emphasis on social niceties it doesn’t go as smoothly for the poor goose.

And what of the healers? These “no death” runs are simply terrifying from a healing perspective. I act like I imagine a new mother does around her child: “Don’t let them touch that!” “Stay away from there, you could fall and hurt yourself!” “You can play.. but don’t go out of my sight!” It feels like just a matter of time until I screw up. The Undying was actually a big part of the reason that I’m raiding as DPS until Ulduar… at this point in the game, I just don’t feel like putting myself through the wringer.

The very clear and easy alternative to the current system is to unlink everyone’s success. You have to clear Naxx during one lockout timer without dying on a boss. The dude beside you dies? No problem, he’s out, you’re still in. It’s slightly easier on the healers, and it’s not as much of a drama-generating pressure cooker. It does lessen the challenge of the achievement, but there is something to be said for maintaining an emphasis on an excellent personal performance without encouraging finger pointing and poor sportsmanship.

Between Undying and all the 8 and 20 man achievements, sometimes it seems like Blizzard has it out for those who play the WoW guild management meta-game.

Occasionally I try and prompt my guildies into posting something here, and today it actually worked. Thae has been with the guild in various forms for about three years now. He is pretty infamous for being cranky and telling people to die in a fire, and we love him for it.

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Hello, my name is Thae, and if you look closely you’ll see a silent “Rockstar Shaman” in my name. I am currently a Resto Shaman (“Healy4Life” /gangsigns), healing face for Machiavellis Cat. I have been encouraged on numerous occasions to share something with the WoW community at large. A running joke in the guild is that I have a mythical list on which are the names of all the factions, items, instances that have double crossed poor Thae. And so I bring to you the following commentary:

Things I Hate, By Thae of Uldum

The Red Dragonflight is currently at number one. Why? Simple. Keristraza, a certain mace, a terrible voice, and thirteen runs through Nexus. I was lead to believe the mace would drop. Keristraza had other plans. And to add to that, Alexstraza is a bit of a flake. And Sartharion and his three underlings — what sort of male dragon simpers about protecting eggs? The Red Dragon flight is totally on my list.

Cooking vendors, all of them. They still will not hand over a recipe for a chocolate cake. How am I ever expected to become a proper Chef without it? I run their errands daily, I pick their horrid mushrooms, I push the Rhino population to the brink of extinction, and still, no cake.

Fish I believe everyone on Uldum, even those who have not done any fishing, have caught Old Ironjaw. I have not. This vexes me greatly. Therefore, fish are jerks, and jerks get added to The List.

Liore, the GM of Machiavellis Cat She runs a great guild that relies upon teamwork. I am not doted upon, given the first shot at loot, or considered the best healer ever. The guild was dumb before I arrived, and I am not thanked enough for bringing it forward to modern times.

The Oracles I’m up to my third egg now, and still no mount. The gall of these… things is incredible. I’ve appeased their Great Rain Stone. I’ve fought primordial elementals at their behest. I’ve slaughtered the Frenzyheart tribe enough times that Darfur looks down right peaceful. All I ask is a mount. It doesn’t seem like much.

(The End)

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There’s a post over at World of Matticus on A Healer’s Most Important Skill which is, apparently.. spam healing. Hmmm. Perhaps I’m missing something, but while there are times when pure raw output is important, I would have considered flexibility and  situational awareness as being much more important than standing there hitting one button over and over and over.

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World of Warcraft soft drinks, in Alliance and Horde flavors.

Right now — well, at least until I post this — what only my officers and a couple of guildies know is that March is my vacation month. For the first time ever the Cats are pretty much totally caught up on content, we don’t have any desperate recruitment needs, and things are pretty copacetic. A couple of my closest friends recommended that I use this opportunity to finally take a little “time off” from leading the guild, and after much soul searching I decided that it was a good idea. No policy making, raid organizing, mediation, raid leading, or feeling obligated to log on for one solid month.

A WoW beach would have more giant turtles.

Fortunately, I have a great group of officers and an absolutely kickass raid leader, and they were more than willing to pick up any slack that I created. For the most part my notorious control freak nature has been pretty good about letting them do that, too. Policy making, raid organizing.. these things were a lot easier to give up than I anticipated. I still deal with things that show up in my Private Message box, mostly because “I’m sorry, I’m in the Warcraft Bahamas” seems like a crappy response. Oh, and I ended up leading the Sarth 3D raids, but only because I’m bossy as hell when it comes to exciting new encounters.

Generally letting go of many of the things that I’ve been micromanaging for years has been simpler than I expected. The tough part was something I didn’t expect, though: irrational jealousy. Along with my decrease in guild responsibility has been a decrease in the amount I play and the amount I raid. I’ve been masquerading as a casual this month, running heroics and getting silly achievements over most opportunities to do the hardcore 10-mans. And it’s been great! I haven’t regretted it, except…

On Friday night I basically stayed offline from WoW to work on my other hobby, my personal website. It felt really good to spend some time on it. Meanwhile, a guild group spontaneously formed and completed A Poke In The Eye.

On Saturday I was on quite a bit, but chose to just run a heroic, grind rep and gold, and finish up a few simple achievements that have been nagging at me. Meanwhile, a guild group spontaneously formed and finally got Shocking! while almost completing The Undying.

Do I regret how I spent my time? No! Do I resent my guildies for kicking some booty without me? Certainly not! I’m proud as all get out about our great team. And yet.. there’s that little voice. “You’re falling behind. You’re missing out.” Shut up, voice! I’m happy on vacation for a month! I’m happy that I can take this opportunity to prevent burnout and just muck around without much responsibility!

Really.. I’m.. um.. wait.. um.. what are you guys planning for next weekend? Sarth-10 3D? Hmmm…

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If you’ve ever wondered what I or many other guild leaders are thinking about during a raid or while making up a roster, read this post over at Fel Fire. It is a near perfect description.