AT BLOODY LAST.
Garrosh down. Not heroic; just normal Garrosh.
It's been something like three months, although the Christmas break shook that up a bit. And the whole ordeal's taught me a few useful things about raid leading, but I'm not quite sure how to apply it.
My big skill as a raid leader has been adapting strategies to fit our group; sometimes they're perhaps a little out-there, but I can usually coax a strategy into something that's sufficiently effective to work around our weaker players. It's a necessary skill; since our guild skews old with many members with real-life responsibilities, we don't have the liberty to guarantee a consistent group; some players will have to take multiple weeks off as they shift to night shifts, my cotank can't do the final raid day of the week at all, that sort of thing.
The problem is that our weaker players... are very weak. Their DPS is acceptable; that's not the issue. The awareness, though, that's pretty poor. I've seen people charge *into* the cone attack in the shadow realm, I've seen people keep running during the empowered whirlwind without taking responsibility for their adds, we've got players who don't realise that they need to turn to attack things sometimes, and we've got players who don't swap to DPSing the weapon for the last second. I've taken to announcing everything over vent in so far as I can, but the extra workload can lead to foolish mistakes when it comes to carrying out my own responsibilities.
The better players have - understandably - been getting increasingly frustrated, and I don't blame them for that. Today there was a situation where I had the option to bring in a good guildie alt and his partner over a few poorer players who've been in on a regular basis; not a pleasant decision (Although there wasn't as much complaining as I thought there would be), but... our first go that night, we got to the empowered whirlwinds. Our second go, we were in phase 3 for our first time. Then... it was just a matter of refinement.
So, yes. Instead of tailoring the strategy to fit the group, today we tailored the group to fit the strategy. Not entirely; this was the final raid day of the week, so I took the decision to single-tank it and accept the extra healer that gives us rather than the more conventional 2/2 attempt - still working the strategy to fit the group - but being able to not have to think about compensating for the weak players, taking out that complication, allowed us the freedom to fit to the more standard strategy, and it worked.
Food for thought for WoD, down the line, though. The nature of Flex raiding is that suddenly it's *not* worth taking a person to fill the remaining spot. I'm going to have to be tougher at booting people who aren't performing to the standards of the rest of the team, and I suspect there's going to be some fireworks over that. Flex allows us to take as many people as we wish - but that's both a blessing and a curse.
