Friendship is Magic Guild Forum

Some ponies are being left out in the cold on raid days. Other ponies are frustrated at the lack of progress and the need to constantly re-explain fights. To solve both problems, I feel it's necessary to establish a permanent, progression oriented raid team while also leaving room for our casual ponies and people who need raid experience and gear before facing progression content.

For this reason, I am creating two separate raid teams with separate sets of rules.

(http://maradon.makeitorky.com/loyalty.gif)

Team Loyalty will be our regular Thursday progression raid team consisting of ten members who will be expected to attend every week. Team Loyalty may optionally continue their Thursday raid on Sunday. Applicants will be subject to the following rules:

• Team members will be required to attend every Thursday raid. If a member cannot attend for some reason, they must notify guild leadership as soon as possible but no less than an hour in advance. Absent team members will be replaced by any available raider. Chronic absence will result in loss of membership.
  
  
• Team members will be required to maintain a minimum gear level. The precise requirements depend on available content. A general rule of thumb is that you will be expected to have a full set of the best gear possible apart from current raid progression content. Bastiat in his DPS kit (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arathor/Bastiat/advanced) is a perfect example of someone who has done the absolute bare minimum to qualify for team raiding. I am outfitted in top level 5-man gear with a handful of good token pieces. You can take a character from quest greens to this state in maybe three or four weeks of casual play. Except in extremely rare circumstances, PVP gear does not qualify.
  
  
• Team members must have every socket gemmed, every enchantable piece enchanted, and gear reforged appropriately. Again, the armory is a handy tool. In advanced mode (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arathor/Bastiat/advanced) it will highlight slots that can be improved with a red (!) sign. Hover over the dot and it will explain how you can improve.
  
  
• Members must be able to perform competitively in a raid scenario. The Pony Way is not to harp on mistakes, but members who exhibit ongoing performance issues with no improvement plan will be encouraged in a non-voluntary manner to practice their skills in the Royal Guard team.

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• Members will NOT be required to learn how to perform more than one raid role... but it is very strongly recommended simply to avoid frequent cancellations due to unavoidable absences.

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Team Loyalty will have expanded access to the guild bank, a bigger budget for repairs, and priority access to guild materials for progression related gear enhancements and consumables. Teams and RG members alike will use the same DKP database when running progression content.

If more than ten raiders qualify for Team Loyalty, applicants will be evaluated based first on raid composition, second on current gear level and general affability. The remaining may help the Royal Guard with progression, or if there is sufficient interest we may attempt to form a second team, Team Honesty.

If fewer than ten people qualify for Team Loyalty, I will disband the guild and you can all go straight to Pony Hell.

(http://maradon.makeitorky.com/rg.gif)

The Royal Guard will be our regular Sunday raid comprised of casual raiders, new raiders, alts, and any clever ponies who happen to wander into the instance on the way to the kitchen.

There are no strict rules for raiding with the Royal Guard, but as always you will be expected to respect your fellow pony by bringing your A-game, gearing appropriately, and performing as well as you possibly can. The Royal Guard will run the most advanced content that it is able to, including Raid Finder raids if possible. The major difference is that the Royal Guard will run with whatever ponies happen to be available, with out any particular member list.

The object of the Royal Guard will be to cook up Team raiders and to provide fun and games for casual raiders who are not interested in Team level raiding.

If a raid team chooses to extend its raid to Sunday and is facing cancellation, the raid team may fill slots out of the Royal Guard raid.

If you are interested in joining Team Loyalty for raid on Sunday, December 18th 2011 please respond to this thread with the name and armory link of the character you will be attending with.

Raiding will not resume until either Team Loyalty or the Royal Guard are finalized.

[edit: Armory only remembers the gear set that you last logged OFF while wearing.

Whichever I would fit best http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arathor/Bra%C3%A9burn/simple

I will try my best if you need help. Still working on him but I can do some dmg. Should be more then ready on sunday, if needed i will update info on sing on sat
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arathor/Singulrarity/advanced
Singulrarity

I still need some work but based on my performance on Ultraxion I'm confident in my DPS (24-25k). Plus I need to raid for my daggers gems. Right now I have three blues that need replacing but I should get them replaced before sunday.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arathor/Pokeypierce/simple

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arathor/Niemand/simple

I can attend every Thursday but not Sundays. But I am quite willing to be there with feasts and cake!

You guys really need to learn about belt buckles.

Good luck guys!

I'm not interested in hard core raiding again; been there, done that.
Might join the Royal Guards once in a while though...

(EDIT: rofl, hard core together as one word gets filtered)

I always buckle up! Also after negotiations with my boss I can raid tomorrow if y'all will take me.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arathor/Vinylscratch/simple (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arathor/Vinylscratch/simple)
Here you go, this is my armory page.  I can attend the Thursday and Sunday raid as I have been for a while.  I look forward to seeing progress with this new initiative.

Hmm, the only issue I have with most guilds and serious raiding, is everyone getting worked up and real rude pretty fast. I've been in so many top progression raid guilds that it would happen to almost every single week. It stopped being fun and became a major job. Though I do want progression and to do end-game raiding. It's the major reason I joined the guild afterall. That and ponies of course. ;) I'm not the most geared, because I haven't gotten to come to many raids in the guild honestly. But I'm almost entirely at the point where all I can get is raid gear. I'm missing a couple pieces, I know. Namely gloves and a relic. I'll get them if I'm taken into Team Loyalty obviously. I have lots of experience end-game raiding too.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arathor/Disqord/simple (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arathor/Disqord/simple)

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arathor/Defahn/simple

As usual, I can attend, but I will half to get off half an hour early, if that's okay.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arathor/Stormspark/advanced (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arathor/Stormspark/advanced)

DPS is up, but I can heal as that was why I rolled this toon in the first place.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arathor/Twlitesprkle/simple

That's me same times we always raid 5pm - 8pm

Of course, Loyalty.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arathor/Asheras/simple
If you're wondering why my belt is missing a gem, it's because there's a better one I can buy with VP come next week.  It's basically the same situation I had with my helmet.  Additionally, I HAVE a better belt in my inventory but it's BOE and as a result I'm reluctant to use it.  On the subject of enchants, I don't have much money and have taken up archaeology once again in order to finance all this.

My raid attendance on Sundays, when the spring semester starts, won't be guaranteed.  However, I will make Thursday.

Not applying to the group, but I thought I would chime in on what it takes to clear normal Dragon Soul 10.

2 Tanks (One with DPS offset)
3 Healers (One with DPS offset)
0-2 Melee
3-5 Ranged DPS

DPS should be able to do 25k+ single target to clear Dragon Soul 10N.  A good way to check if you are ready is to run "Fall of Deathwing" on Raid Finder difficulty and turn Recount on for Ultraxion.  If you are below 25k at ~378 gear on that fight, consider reading a class guide.

For tanks, certain classes excel on certain fights, but for normal mode any two should do.

For healing the best bet is to take the first three that are willing to heal.  If you continue using World of Logs, I can review them and check for improvements that could be made if healers are struggling.  I'm also more than happy to give advice on any healing spec if I'm online.

I'd like to be part of Loyalty on Littlepip is there's still DPS open!

I went over logs from today, and noted some areas healers could improve.

In General
-Mythical Mana Potions and Concentration Potions are great to have handy when raiding new content.  For example, drinking a Mana Potion after the Mana Void on Yor'sahj can save the tanks life.

Storm
-Riptide should be used off-cooldown.  During AoE phases it can be put on random raid members, and if damage isn't happening to the raid the tank is always a good target for a Riptide.
-Mana Tide Totem is rather awesome to handle Mana Void spawns on Yor'sahj.  Other than that, it is good to use off cooldown if you and the other healers would regain mana from it.  (<70% is a good time to use it)
-Other than that everything looked pretty good, though some of the Healing Waves could be replaced with Chain Heal / Greater Healing when damage is high.

Defahn
-You can remove Healing Touch from your action-bars.  Rejuvenation is nearly twice as mana-efficient and has a twice the throughput.  In the situation where someone is near-death and a HoT is not suitable, Regrowth is a better bet with 3/3 Nature's Bounty.  (You can move points out of Living Seed to fill it in)
-Using a Nourish or Regrowth to keep Harmony (Restoration mastery) up is a good way to increase throughput.  Casting a Nourish to refresh Lifebloom on the tank is a good way to accomplish two tasks at once.
-Wild Growth and Swiftmend should be used off-cooldown as long as two or more players are injured.  They are the two best spells in the Druids toolbox after Tranquility.
-It is good to get into the practice of using Innervate on yourself when you first drop below 80% mana and off-cooldown after that.  On Yor'sahj, you will want to save it for the Mana Voids, as it can give you enough mana to continue healing with no problems.
-During high-damage phases the highest throughput priority is Swiftmend > Wild Growth > Regrowth (if no Harmony buff) > Rejuvenation on a new target
-Lifebloom uptime was nearly 100%, which was very good.  Sorry if I seem overly harsh, my main is a Druid healer.