I am a beginning raider. That ought to be pretty obvious to anyone who reads this blog, or who follows my comments elsewhere. I have a tendency to rant about my guild and our fails in Naxx. And then I have a tendency to huff and puff at anyone who insults me for failing in Naxx. Everybody learns somewhere right? Just because you learned in Molten Core, doesn’t make you better than me learning in Naxx a year late, right?
Anyway, lately things have been better. My guild finally wandered into Ulduar and had a little success there. So we nipped over to TOC10 and killed the beasts of Northrend. It’s pretty exciting to see the “big kid raids” finally opening up, and not feeling completely overwhelmed by them. But what I didn’t expect was the whisper I got last night.
We have That Guy in our guild, who at some point was a majorly hardcore raider, but who burnt out and now pugs ICC10 weekly and laughs at the rest of us for not being as good as him. In fact, it isn’t even his main in our guild, it’s his geared-to-the-teeth tank alt. He’s a very nice guy, he’s full of suggestions on ways we can improve, both individually, and as a guild. And you know he means well. He’s offering those suggestions because he really does want to help the guild advance and improve. It’s just the way that he delivers those suggestions is… sometimes offensive.
So when he whispered me in the middle of an H FOS run last night to ask me what my unbuffed mana was, I groaned inwardly, expecting problems with my gear or spec to be highlighted.
“27k” I whispered back.
“Are you Flash of Light or Holy Light spec?”
“Holy Light” I reply (which isn’t entirely true, as I’m sort of a flash of light/holy light spec/gear hybrid, I’m using the holy/ret build that many FOL pallies use, but I’m gemming/enchanting for the deep mana pool that HL pallies need. It’s intended to be functional in both raids and heroics, but I didn’t see the point in telling him that)
“Do you stack Int?” he whispered again…
“Absolutely” I replied, getting annoyed with all the gear questions.
Then we got fighting Bronjahm, and DBM did it’s thing and kept me from being distracted by annoying whispers while we fought him. Soon we were done (and by done I mean dead… the group was not effective), and the guildie warrior was urgently asking what my answer was to his last question.
“I’m sorry… bossfight” I said, “What question?”
“Will you come heal ICC10 for me? We can’t find any heals, and I told them you’re very inexperienced, so they won’t mind explaining things.”
I thought about it. This warrior really is a nice guy. It’s just that he’s sometimes kind of abrasive and elitist and, quite honestly, his I-suppose-we’ll-take-you-because-otherwise-we-can’t-go-at-all routine wasn’t very flattering. So I said no. There were all kinds of reasons I didn’t want to go. I had a headache. I was in about my seventh unsuccessful pug heroic of the evening, and I wasn’t feeling particularly confident. It was 9pm and I had to get up early the next morning. And Naelian and I make it a point to see new raids together the first time, it’s just something we like to do. Since he’s not ready to go to ICC yet, I didn’t really want to go in there without him. We had a problem in the past where one of us felt left behind by the other, and we solved it by not leaving each other behind.
So I said, no thanks, no ICC today. And I had good reasons to do so. Among other things, my first experiences in TOC led me to believe that my gear might be ready for ICC, but my skill level definitely is not. I’d already had a discouraging day with fail-pugs in heroics, and the last thing I wanted as a pick-me-up was the experience of totally humiliating myself in front of a group of competent strangers.
But that wasn’t the end of it. The warrior harried me the rest of the evening to change my mind. He linked all the healer gear that could be found in there, he told me he had confidence that I could do it… he flat out guilted me, saying that if they couldn’t find a healer they’d have to call it, so if I didn’t agree to come, I’d be telling the rest of the group they couldn’t raid that night (seriously, I have a hard time believing there were no other ICC geared healers on that night…) . He continued on and on, long past the point where I started ignoring him. If he hadn’t been a guildie, I’d have /ignored him.
In the end, the ICC pug didn’t find their healer, and they didn’t raid.
And I did feel like it was my fault.
It’s almost enough to make me wish I was ret!
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
I'm so sorry to hear that!
I think that feeling the guilt says good things about your sense of responsibility to your friends and guildies, but you need to remember, your fun and intentions in the game are equally valid and important, and in the end, what you want to d with your game time gets veto priviledges.
Thanks!
Yeah, I do feel a sense of responsibility to be helpful to guildies. Particularly when they're caught in a jam like that, but I can't always be right there on my toes waiting to help out. I'm already doing lots of things for the guild, including being the primary healer, keeping up with the bank, doing the guild website, my main brings all the fish feasts and my alt makes the fortitude runescrolls (we don't have a consistent priest)… Sometimes I just gotta log off and go to my secret alt and play around!
That was one of those times.
Ouch. I'm sure there must be some middle ground between being utterly surplus to requirements (me) and over-needed (you) but I've yet to find it. It irritates me that people who are community-spirited with a strong sense of personal responsibility get essentially treated like crap – he had no right to guilt-trip and manipulate you like that. And, for what it's worth, I think you made the right call – whatever content you're having fun with is valuable, there's no need to throw yourself at current endgame content just for the hell of it. Go when you want to go, not when somebody tries to bully you into it.
Aww tam, well I'm sorry you're having the opposite problem.
I suppose I rather prefer to be needed.
Heres another possible PoV. People do it to me, I do it to others. Sometimes the only way to convince someone they can raid is to throw them in at the deep end.
The other day we were putting together a toc 10 raid. We have LOT of alts in our guild. We're all addicts. I have three characters that have cleared the first three bosses in ICC and I'm not the only one! One of the alts is Floopsy, the paladin tank alt of our priest Lepeth. The conversation went kinda like this:
Me: Anyone for toc 10
Floopsy: I can come, but I'd rather be ret, not really got the skills to tank
Me: Oh of course you can tank, you'll tank
Floopsy: *mimblewimble*
Now many people have done this to me before. My first Kara runs were as a paladin tank and Snipper was of the opinion that I should just main tank everything and then I'd learn. When I got that message from Floopsy I thought – well his gear is close enough, probably better than my drood the first time she tanked it since that was last patch – he'll learn.
He did just fine.
Maybe the warrior thinks you're better than you think you are? And wanted to give you a little boost? Sometimes you have to pester people a bit to prove to them that they're better than they think they are.
My recent post Retribution Raider’s Crib Sheet for 3.3
I think you have a good point, here. And I agree, part of his motivation probably was to make me feel better about healing since everyone knew I was getting frustrated. I've even had that kind of good, encouraging pressure before… I switched to holy in Outland, but was very hesitant to actually test out my healing skills in a real instance until some friends dragged me in there and convinced me to try. And it was helpful.
But there's a time and place for it. The group you describe is a group where everyone knows each other, and are comfortable together, and it sounds like they were willing to wipe a little to let your ret-pally-turned-tank learn. This would have been a pug group, where I knew nobody but the warrior, and for an instance which pugs on my server are notoriously selective. I didn't care to open myself to the kind of criticism I could receive from strangers who expect all manner of leetness. In a guild group, I'd have been much less hesitant. Also, I had other reasons for saying no than reluctance to challenge myself, and I wish he could have been a bit more respectful of them.
I think saying no has to be the hardest thing sometimes, but you laid it out in your post that you had (and still have) reasons for not going on that raid. As you said, you have done alot for your guild and that something like this shouldn't guilt you into going. Otherwise it no longer becomes fun and then the game loses it's appeal.
Saying no really can be hard… and you're right, it made me want to log right out, then and there to escape… and that's not fun.
Maybe that will make me feel less reluctant about saying no sometimes?
I agree Tamarind, as much as it sucks to be in a raid and not be able to progress because of lack of a certain role, you said no and it wasn't his place to harass you about it. The anonymity of WoW seems to provide plenty of fuel for asshole-ness.
I'd hesitate to say he was being an asshole per se… just really aggressive and persistent. I like to think, like Morrighan said, that he might also have had other, nicer, motives.
Sometimes we all need a push to try new things. It took me nearly 9 months to tank anything after building a tank set since I hit 80. This does not, of course, mean it's a good idea for somebody to kidnap or guilt trip you into something. At least you understand where your guildie is coming from.
As for healing something new, I improved my reaction time by healing Alterac Valley a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away with a different addon (Healbot). After that you just have to jump in and experience the fight. At least on a paladin you can fall back on "I'm the tank healer" most of the time so you don't have to watch absolutely everything. On your first time you can't go wrong by bombing everything in sight, OOM'ing, and seeing as much of the fight as possible before you're out of gas.
Wanting to enlist you to help his raid succeed I don't blame him for….linking loot at you was a bit over the top though. If you don't want to go you don't want to go.
Remember….he could have chosen any pug healer on the entire server as well. It wasn't your fault the raid fell apart. Don't bare the burden when there was dozens of other ppl who didn't step up to his invite either.
You're right.
Thanks.