So, on with the official stuff…

Here’s the text from our recruitment post on the official thread:

Apatheia of Khadgar is a 3-day a week raiding guild that values performance and attitude.

Raid schedule:
Monday 8:30 pm – 12:00 am EST
Wednesday 8:30 pm – 12:00 am EST
Sunday 8:30 pm – 12:00 am EST

We are currently looking for 3-4 exceptional players of any class, but we’re particularly interested in the following:

1 holy/disc priest
1 resto shaman

WotLK Progression:

We’ve cleared Heroic: Naxx, OS 3D, EoE, and 13/14 Ulduar. We’ve also done medium mode IC and FL+3.

About us:

Formed at launch, Apatheia has a roster of talented people who will succeed. Our members are mostly middle-aged people with jobs, school, kids, and other responsibilities. We have a few people at the college/graduate school stage. Our players, and particularly officers, are dedicated to maximizing performance. We will do everything possible to help our guildmates achieve their potential. However, we understand that there is a minimum level of performance, and raiding is not an entitlement.

What we want:

- People who really enjoy raiding, but also realize that it takes dedication and responsibility to be successful.
- People who know how to play their class, can improvise, learn from other’s mistakes most of the time, and who will not make the same mistake twice.
- People who come prepared (glyphs, enchants, consumables), and know their role. Reliability and ability to fill multiple roles (tank, heal, or dps) is a huge advantage.
- People who have a good computer/internet connection, get along well with their guildmates, take responsibility for their mistakes, and who do not complain.
- People who are responsible for their own happiness. Who are willing to either participate in an activity someone else organizes, or organize something themselves if needed.

What we have to offer:

- We have made great progression in WotLK, and we will do better in Ulduar.
- We have a fantastic roster of like-minded players who already meet the above-mentioned criteria. We are not carrying mediocre players who blame others for their mistakes.
- Our short raiding week allows people time to spend on other activities (alts, PUG raids, kiddos, achievements).
- Good progression without a massive time commitment.
- We welcome addition and support for your drama-free non-raiding friends.
- We use a fair DKP system to distribute loot in 25-mans (modified Shroud Loot System, with fun aka free, 10 points, and half bids)

Contact us:

http://www.apatheia.org <— Forums are my preferred method of contact. I do not spend a lot of time in game outside of raid time for a variety of reasons.

apatheiakhadgar@gmail.com <—— email is second best.

Officers: Seneb, Stalwart, Ralphius, Suumaa, Verges <—- You’ll probably be able to catch these other guys in game though.

We had a guild meeting last night to discuss some of the issues that are coming up for us in terms of raiding such as attendance and progression.  It was a good discussion in which everyone who wanted to was able to ask questions and make suggestions, and my hope is that we made some solid decisions about how to handle raiding for the coming weeks to best benefit the guild.  Following this meeting, we had an extended conversation amongst some of the officers in regard to raid healing.  While I won’t get into all of the details of that here, I can report that one of the outcomes is that I am going to get my feet wet as a lead healer so that I can backup the people who usually handle healing assignments and fill in for them in a pinch.  Because I’m a Virgo and simply can’t help myself, my preparations are already underway.  Here’s what I’m doing to get ready for the job…

Reviewing healer assignment mods

I was actually a little surprised to learn how many mods are out there whose sole purpose is to help with healing assignments throughout a raid.  I’ve found some good articles discussing various options, such as this one from Matt Low (World of Matticus) on WOW Insider, that gives a rundown of some of them, and also gives advice as to how to setup macros.  The healing leads in my guild currently use Heal Organizer, so I am reviewing that.  Another of my co-officers suggested Getting This Healed, which seems to offer more functionality than Heal Organizer that makes me currently lean in that direction.  Specifically, it seems highly functional in terms of allowing you to set different assignments for different phases of a fight.  Pretty cool stuff, IMO.  The jury is still out for me, but I’m sort of leaning toward Getting This Healed at this point.  However, I want to look carefully at the different options and haven’t been able to really dig into all of them, so I may change my mind.

Reviewing healing class abilities

Luckily, I wrote a series of posts within the past couple of months detailing the healing styles of holy priests, discipline priests, shaman and holy paladins in order to educate myself and other druids as to how these classes get the job done.  I’ve re-read these guides, and also poured over the patch notes since then to learn of any changes to each healing class.  I already had a pretty solid general idea as to what situations are opportunities for each healing class to perform at maximum, but I wanted to brush up in order to make the best possible decisions with my assignments.

Reviewing Healer Performance

I’ve also spent some time looking through our past WWS reports to get a feel for how strong each healer in our guild has been with various assignments on the different bosses because, regardless of the potential for a class, true output is very much dependent upon individual personality, gear, and playstyle.  I cannot predict how any healer will do on any given night with any given assignment, but I can look for trends that will be at least resonably strong predictors of relative success.

Reviewing Healer Specs

I haven’t gotten this far yet, but I’ll be spending some time in the armory looking closely at how each of our healers is specced and taking some notes which should help to guide me in making decisions on the fly in Naxx.

Reviewing Boss Fights

My trial run giving out healing assignments will be in Naxx on Tuesday, I believe.  Although I sometimes  feel as though I know Naxx like the back of my hand, in fact, I don’t.  Not really.  I know Naxx inside and out in terms of my own abilities.  For example, I know off the top of my head which bosses need decursing or have poision effects, but I am more shaky on which ones need magic or diseases cured.  Therefore, I intend to go through several strats for each boss there over the next day in order to take some notes that should help me when assigning the correct healer for each fight.  One of the decisions we made in terms of healing assignments is not to micromanage the healers, switching up the assignments for every boss and, sometimes, trash pull.  We’re hoping to move more toward a model where we give out assignments for a series of bosses, with exceptions as needed.  I am hopeful that my added research will help me to think about in advance, for example, the needs of a whole wing of Naxx when deciding healing assignments.

I have my work cut out for me, don’t I?  Although I’ve given healing assignments in the past, it has been very informal and not on a par with the standard that has been set by our healing leads.  I want to do as much studying up as I can so that my raid leader, my raid, and the healers I work with are confident in my ability to make good decisions and keep the raid alive.  I hope to post on Wednesday a sort of walkthrough of my experience on Tuesday night, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Wish me luck!

A couple of months ago Saintflorian, one of my guildies, was deployed to Iraq.  Great guy, Saint, and greatly missed by those of us who know him.  Luckily, he has internet where he’s stationed, and is able to get onto our forums and is even able to play a bit from time to time.  About a month or so after he left he logged on while I was playing and we started chatting.  He was pretty bummed and I wanted to do something for him to show him our support and to bring him a little happiness in a far away place.  He rides motorcycles IRL, so I got the idea that maybe the guild could build him a Mekingeer Chopper and surprise him.  I got really excited about everything but the 20,000 gold price tag.  That was going to be tough.  Although lots of guildies ended up chipping in donations for Saint’s bike, we needed another way to raise some dough to hook him up with some chopper love.  That’s when I got the idea for Farmapalooza.

Farmapalooza was a 90 minute long event that everyone was welcome to participate/compete in.  The event was very successful and lots of fun, so I thought I might post it on the chance that someone else might want to try it out to raise funds in their own guild. 

The Rules

1. Everyone had to start and finish at the same mailbox in Dalaran.
2. At the start of the event, everyone had exactly 90 minutes before they had to return to the Dalaran mailbox.
3. During the event, participants could “farm” whatever they wanted, wherever they wanted in Azeroth.
4. Participants were not allowed to use crafting skills to manipulate the items they farmed in order to keep the playing field level.
5. While the participants farmed, I scanned the auction house on my Auctioneer.  I was then able to provide them price checks during the event, and my auctioneer became the official standard for pricing what was farmed.
6. At the end of the event, everyone met up with me at the Dalaran mailbox.  They then traded to me everything that they had farmed, during that 90 minutes.  We had an “honor system” where no one was allowed to give me anything that they had in their possession prior to the event.
7. If participants had “greens” or “blues” turn up as a result of their farming, they were given credit for either the price of the item itself, or the price of the mats if the item was disenchanted, whichever was higher.
8. Participants were allowed to turn over everything of value, including “grey items” which were assessed at vendor price.
9. The participant who generated the highest value of items in 90 minutes was the winner of the event.
10. Participants were given the option to donate the proceeds of their farming to the guild bank if they did not want to contribute to Saint’s bike fund (no one did this, by the way).

The prize

The officers donated prizes out of their own banks and the guild bank until we had a nice, juicy prize package including:

abyss crystal
stack of raid food of winner’s choice
stack of critter bites
spell thread or armor kit of winner’s choice
stack of magic eaters
stack of infinite dust
several other just for fun items, such as a chocolate cake and toys from the Dalaran store.

The logistics

I advertised the event heavily in advance on the guild forum, on the guild message of the day, and in guild chat for about a week before the event.  I worked with the officers to come up with a donated prize package, which I updated on our forum as new donations came in.  The biggest trouble I had with this was that Saint reads our forum, so I wasn’t able to advertise on the forum what the cause was.  I think I said on the forum that the event was to raise money for guild events and raiding mats.

During the event I had everyone turn their items over to me at the mailbox so that I could turn around and mail them immediately to my bank alt.  On my bank alt, I vendored items, mailed blues and greens to an enchanter to disenchant, and put everything up for auction.  I gave people credit for each item based upon what auctioneer told me was its market value, not for the amount at which it eventually sold.  The hardest part of the event was the math of all of this.  Lucky for me there was a very clear separation between the top player and the second place player, and between the second place player and the remaining players.  That way I didn’t have to do all the meticulous math and was able to announce a winner fairly quickly.

The Outcome

We had 7 guild mates participate in the event, and the seven of them raised 3700 gold in an hour and 15 minutes.  It was incredible!  My GM actually won the event, but deferred the prize package to the second place participant.  This guildie then said that everyone had participated and the whole guild should benefit, and donated the entire prize package to the guild bank!  Plus the event was just a lot of fun, with friendly competition and banter on guild chat and vent the whole time.  I was overwhelmed, truly, by the generosity of my guildmates and their altruism.  It was a very successful event which we plan to repeat in the near future to raise money for another guild need, and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone out there looking to bring up the guild coffers for a good cause.

We got Saint his bike about a week later and he was THRILLED with it.  =)  Here he is riding it.  We miss you, Saint.  Come home soon, amigo!

We had a shakeup in our guild of late.  We had attempted to digest part of another guild, only to cough up a furball full of raiders and angst.  There was a spattering of drama, but it didn’t cut us too deeply, as these were all fairly recent additions to the guild and I am able to truly wish them all happiness in their quest to find something different.  But there’s never a time when seeing members /gquit in rapid succession feels good, all warm and fuzzy like. 

This was the backdrop for a 25 man raid we launched Sunday night.  THE CONTINGENT had been pulling up stakes that day and leaving the guild, and when it came time to raid only 19 people were on.  The options were clear.  Call the raid, wait around, or just go kill something.  We went with #3.  The 19 of us ate fish feasts, clashed swords on armor, and trundled off to the spider wing in Naxx.  We took the first boss down, one shot.  A few more came online, asked if there was a spot, and joined the progression.  After a couple of false starts we took the next boss down.  A few more guildies filled out the raid and we cleared out the spider wing and moved on. 

It was a great feeling, fan-fucking-tastic, when that first boss fell to our 19.  It was affirming.  We were strong enough in our core that we were going to be just fine.  And then as more of our peeps came in and supported the effort, it began to feel better still.  I adore my guild.

Oh, and we’re recruiting…  =)