An Officer and a Gentlebear

Finally we get to some human interest! I have a strong academic interest in communication, leadership, and organizational behavior, and World of Warcraft guilds are like great little MBA petri dishes. If I thought I could get away with slipping “gnome warlock” into a dissertation, I would.

So recently, an Officer in my guild posted on our guild forums a short message asking for all of our stats in all of our sets. Now as far as our culture goes, I think we’re a very stat-happy and list-happy guild. We like numbers. We have minimum stats for T5 raid attendance (a.k.a. “You must be this tall to get on the ride”). We make lists of people in various categories. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s the way we are. We’ve been a functional guild for over 2 years, longer than any other guild on our server. We’re not in the top 10 for progression, but we are in the top 15. So this is, generally speaking, business as usual. I’m going to quote snippets because today we’re thinking about communication, and why not let people speak for themselves?

“For those of you declaring yourself tanks, please send me a P.M. with your unbuffed tanking stats. Please include the following:

Unbuffed stats and resists wearing your normal tanking gear
Unbuffed stats and resists wearing your nature resist tanking gear
Unbuffed stats and resists wearing your arcane resist tanking gear
Unbuffed stats and resists wearing your fire resist tanking gear
Unbuffed stats and resists wearing your frost resist tanking gear
Unbuffed stats and resists wearing any other resist gear you can think of that you happen to own, except pvp...

(I realize that some of these resist sets aren't popular, but for sake of completeness, I'm including all of them. If you don't have any items from a resist set, just indicate as such.)

I need this info as soon as possible :) Sorry for the short notice.”

Now one of our senior bear tanks responded thusly:

“Coming up with these numbers is a bit of work and I will post them later today or tomorrow.

I want to point out that, at least for me, these are not static numbers. I am continually replacing items in my resist sets as fortune allows. Additionally, as fights arise that require any resist set, I tend to concentrate my efforts on improvement of that set. Every set in current use is as good as I can make it. Period. (Right now, for Guild runs, this is the Arcane Resist for TKTE, the Frost Resist for Hydross and the 150FrR/150NR for Hydross.)

To be honest, the resist gear situation is somewhat complicated.

I have, for example, two arcane resist tanking sets: One for Curator and one for Arcane Protectors and Void Reaver.

I have two Shadow Resist sets: One for use on a few shadow bosses and one for Malacrass in ZA. I expect that I will be working on a very complete SR set as we approach Black Temple.

My point, assuming I have one, is that tanking resist sets are specific to boss fights. Right now in our progression, a raid tank only needs a resist set for Hydross (Nature 290 or Frost 290 or 150Frost/150Nature.) By the time we reach any other boss that requires a certain set, all of us will have changed our gear to a greater or lesser degree. That's the nature of our insanity.

As indicated, another tanking resist set exists and is not on your list, above: 150 Frost and 150 Nature at the same time while uncrittable. This is used during the Hydross fight.

I will oganize this data and give you a snapshot. Anticipate boredom. (Unless you are a tank. And even then.)”

And then:

“Just re-read your post and noticed that you have asked us to list our gear.

I respectfully decline to list the roughly 100 separate pieces of resist gear that I use on all sets.”

At this point, another officer chimes in:

“I'm not speaking for [First Officer] at all, but understanding the reasons may help with this chore.

We need to get a qualified list together for SSC (immediate need, others will follow). This of course, can be a GO/NOGO type of thing. Additionally, we are getting ready to spend some mats on more resist gear for other tanks, and are trying to prioritize how best to use the primals provided to maximize our inventory.

Perhaps listing ALL resist gear isn't required, particularly if you have hit a "GO" status, but if your a "NOGO" SSC tank, we need to know which pieces you have in hand, and which ones we have to provide mats for.

Again, this is [First Officer]'s project, these are only my unsolicited comments, and I grant her all rights to poke me for getting involved.”

(cue air circulation device. What’s that I smell… it’s kind of foul…)

Our GM then weighs in:

“Post your shit.”

(What’s this? Someone has thrown excrement at the air circulation device! Now we are ALL covered in excrement! I had NO IDEA that was going to happen!)

I’m not going to post the rest, because things got much more heated, and then everyone calmed down a bit and worked it out. The bear posted the appropriate stats, and everyone who went off the ranch seemed to have returned.

So how did a well-intentioned idea (hey let’s find out what you need, so we can HELP you gear up), turn into a fairly nasty disagreement among a bunch of otherwise good friends? And how did Coristad, who cannot shut the hell up about anything, actually manage to stay out of the way?

“Ask, don’t tell.”

Come back on Thursday for the rest.