Extending 25 vs. starting fresh

[Thunderfly]

The real question is: should we be making decisions in a democratic way?

I still feel like the FNG around the guild (probably because I am), so I apologize in advance for overstepping any boundary. This question is key, at least from my perspective. My opinion, for whatever it's worth, is that democracy feels good but makes for poor leadership. I might be skewed a little since I work in a decision-making role that sometimes means I have to make an unpopular decision for the good of the objective. And by sometimes I mean often.

Same applies here I think. Selfishly, I want upgrades and I want to be a key player and I want to be away from the fringes and be one of the players that people look forward to raiding with. But none of that should matter, because our collective objective is to get to the end of the end game content and see some Lich King smackdown. If we leave it to democracy, I'm going to hazard a guess, we'll be split 50/50 between extending to starting again.

Whatever the guild leadership decides, I'll go with, and that's how I think this situation needs to be handled. If we think collectively, we all want Putricide to bite the dust, and we all want to get at Arthas quickly. I trust those who lead our raids to know the best way to get us there. If that means starting again to get people's rep and gear up, then great. If that's extending every single week until we get the bugger to die, again, that's great.

In other words - Tex, whatever approach you think is best, let's agree to support it and bring Putricide the good news.

Sorry for the wall of text. I fully expect at least one 'tl;dr'

[Anjubee]

Maybe this is a bit harsh, but I tend to agree with the no alts on guild raid times. If Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8pm-11pm are designated guild raid times, then people should be on their mains, ready to go, be it 10m or 25m. While I understand the desire to gear/rep alts, I don't understand why that can't be coordinated during a different time slot (be it earlier on the same night or a different night altogether). Bringing an alt to a guild raids just slows progression, not only in swapping, but experience and gear wise too. No matter how sick people might be of the first 4 bosses because they no longer need gear or rep, isn't it still better overall for people to bring their main to get through the trash and bosses as quickly as possible?

I like Brad's suggestion of starting earlier to clear stuff with alts, etc.. but from what I have observed, we rarely have the numbers that early on mostly because people are still getting off work, eating dinner, etc? Maybe that can work for a 10m, but I have my doubts on a 25m run starting earlier than 7:30.

With that said that, I am all for raid extensions for the sake of progression.

[Chamomile]

Back to my original suggestion of starting early. I wasn't suggesting that we start the 'real' raid earlier but instead start clearing to the content we are challenging. That way fewer people will likely care if alts are going along for clearing trash and the bosses we're able to regularly down. If we have an extra hour or two specifically for trash clearing, we can still get the loot drops from a fresh instance and still be able to challenge the more difficult bosses once the 'real' raid time starts.

Have to agree with Anju on the alt / main thing. Gearing your other characters is a nice change of pace, but don't do it on a progression night. As was stated earlier, if we can't get an appropriate ICC25 together, a progression ICC10 is better than gearing alts on an evening when we're trying to clear content.

[Devinoch]

I am very much in favor of getting a progression ICC10 man team together for Thursday nights. As for 25 man, getting the practice down is for the best, but I can go either way.

[Tsquared!]

From what I understand from last week, we are starting over ICC25 this week. What is our objective for this week? Are we doing a speed run with mains to get to Putricide again as fast as possible or are we bringing in alts and spending more time with people who may not have had significant time on certain bosses...just curious if we mapped out a strategy or not with this alternating week progression process.

T

[Chamomile]

I'm still hoping we can start the trash clearing around 6-7 so we can get to the real action at 8.

[Texaporte]

I'll be logging on tonight at 7 and starting fresh - however, I don't expect everyone to be there, and we will make judgments on who's coming to raid with us at 8:00, the official raid time.

We can honestly clear trash up to Marrowgar with like 1 tank and 2 healers, as long as we're not reckless.

As for strategy: I'd like to make sure we get Putricide killed as cleanly as possible before we move on to teaching Blood Queen. There are a few people who had to step out early last week, and I want to make sure they have experience with the plague wing, since rotface and festergut require some practice before we can make the whole plague wing as easy for us as the first 4.

[Logos]

I hope to be on tonight - Bao is home and can hopefully take Reed for most of the raid time.

[Texaporte]

With our 7:30 PM start to trash clearing, we got to Putricide right around 9:30 last night before we had to start shuffling the raid roster. Does this schedule agree with other people, so we don't extend next week, or should we extend next week?

[Chamomile]

Works for me. Starting a little earlier would be nice too.

I vote against extending until mains aren't expecting loot from early bosses any more. Losing the extra drops from the early bosses really sucks IMO.