Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog

I’ve said  that – while anyone can run a GDKP – not everyone should, and if you want some more basic information on them  Looking for More has a post ” GDKP: Get your Moneys Worth” with some information for people new to GDKP’s  and  Elitist Jerks has a very detailed  explanation / comentary on the subject here

In Another TOC GDKP on Wednesday night we pull Beasts.  Raid Leader dies in 1st min.  Several other people die in fire.  We survive Acid and Dread.  On Icehowl we survived 2 crashes,  on the 3rd  someone got hit,  we killed Beasts it with 2/3 of the raid dead.

We get to loot, and Raid leader  has forgotten to set loot master – loot didn’t go through the Loot mod.  10 min later every who needed/greeded/DE’d ( Yes some of them did.)  the loot handed it over to the loot master.  Raid Leader asks for help with mod.

Mod is working by the time we killed Jarax – and surprisingly  after one wipe on him and no one leaving we kill him.

There was no leadership – we may have killed things because we had some awesome people who knew their roles but every fight was messy  as there  were plenty who didn’t.   It takes confidence to Raid lead,  and this guy had 4 assists.  I am assuming friends, and guildies,  but not one  tried to lead.  In between other people in the raid joking about shoving pieces of anatomy in various places  ( 2 more to add to my ignore list)  I was trying to remind people to kill the adds. – Don’t run legion flame through Melee.  On Twins me and another healer  took up soaking duty because the raid leader said ”   Just take  any colour”  There was no strats explanations/ refocusing.  Just –  lets kill  sh*it

 I heckled the RL once with a ” Don’t Run GDKP’s if you don’t know what you’re doing”  but  it should have included don’t try and raid lead if you can’t at least pretend to know what you’re doing”  and some people in the raid just wouldn’t let up on the heckling – pointing out all his failures,  and instead of helping solve his loot issues  they  complained non stop.  He looted all the loot to himself on Jarax, and 4 people started shouting in raid chat ” He’s ninjaing.”    ( he wasn’t)

He lost control,  he lost respect.

In the end on  4/5  because he called it after one wipe on Anub  and 800 gold each  and arguments over the value of the loot from the 1st boss that hadn’t been added to the pot. The RL hadto give the gold to someone else to distribute because they couldn’t handle the stress of people tapping their foot, telling him to hurry.  He told the raid to never speak to him again and logged off.

At the end,  if I had been the one running the GDKP  I would have burst into tears and not logged on for a week. But then I would have been somewhat more organised.

They could have saved themselves so much stress – so here’s my advise  if you want to run a GDKP

• Test the mod before you use it live.  Grab some friends and guildies, and run a dungeon,  or a lobie raid. ANYTHING.  It will save stress and time, and make it a smoother run for everyone.
• Check that you are loot master. TRIPLE CHECK before pull.
• Work out what you’re going to do with Orbs/trophies / Patterns.   Do you save it for a goodie bag at the end of the run – or Auction them off as you go. Communicate what you are doing.
• Learn how to Manually add an item  ( chances are something will screw up once)
• Learn how to Pause bidding,  relist an item,  change the starting price  
• Don’t offer freerolls on items not bidded on.  ( yes he did)
• Work out if you are going to Raid lead or not.  If your not  – give it to a friend – handling gold, bids & leading is not an easy task especially if you are only new – trying to lead,  or pseudo lead with a ‘ Of course everyone knows what they are doing  – and will do it.’  doesn’t work. Ever.
• If your the raid leader.  LEAD.  Don’t let other people do it for you.

One thing I will add – as an optional.

•  No Vent no Gold.  You Shouldn’t need it for easy things – TOC,  ICC 4/12   I know. But I think that success is more likely  if you can get your communication right.    Even the best dps may need prodding – or their focused changed.  A raid leader is  also more aware of more than things ( or should be)  then the average raid pleb and vent allows that to be communicated.   A Dps doesn’t really care that a tank is frozen in place with a debuff, a healer notices, and  a good off tank would know, and when they got the fire debuff already be moving over to the other tank.  But what happens if healers can’t see that specific debuff on that tank because of their raid frames, and think he is just taking normal damage,  if the other tank is not aware,  then one of your tanks is now frozen,  on a wall, on the other side of the room.  A ‘give me fire’ by that tank,  or a ‘get fire to the tank’ on vent will get you a better response then a raid warning/raid comment.

But in regards to vent – if you don’t want to use vent.   I would suggest that you either have no one in vent,  or everyone in vent.  Because I’ll lay bets that the person your telling to do something  is one of the 5 people who is not there. If people are on vent,  they won’t read chat,  of they are relying on chat,  then they aren’t on vent ect .  Get your communication consistent.