Cold Comfort

Guild Management and Leadership in WoW

Become Genuinely Interested in Other People

Mar 11

Posted by Karatheya in HTWFAIG | No Comments

This article is part of the series “How To Win /friends and Influence /guildies”.  See the introduction for more.

If you’re reading the original book alongside, this corresponds to Part 2, Chapter 1: “Do this and You’ll be Welcome Anywhere”

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years of trying to get other people interested in you.[1]

The principle of this chapter is that if you are genuinely interested in people and they know that, they will reciprocate in your personal and business dealings.  Among others, Carnegie relates a story of US President Theodore Rosevelt, who greeted each of the white house staff by name when he returned for a visit two years into his successor’s term. The head usher reportedly said “It is the only happy day we had in nearly two years…”

So how to apply this to guild relations? Not directly, at least not in the same way as is described in this chapter.  Not everyone plays WoW to form real-life friendships.  Some people may take their relationships in-game into the real world, while others may know only basic facts like real first name and occupation.  Yet the way we interact still follows basic societal norms.  I don’t think many of us have a completely different way of looking at interpersonal relationships that we use in-game but not in real life.

If you appreciate people being friendly in real life, you will probably appreciate them doing so in game.  If you dislike people who screw over the little guy, someone who does so in game will get to you there as well.  So we can apply the principles in this chapter to in-game relationships with ease – we just need to respect whatever boundaries someone may have about becoming interested in their personal life.

Don’t Be Creepy

Let’s take an example from the chapter.  While conducting an research interview with the president of a company, a man finds out that the president’s son collects stamps.  The interview doesn’t go well, but the businessman remembers that his company takes in letters from all over the world.  He gets a bunch of stamps from the receiving office and calls back the next day, whereupon he is ushered in and gets the information he was looking for.

Taking a genuine interest in someone’s personal life to gain a business advantage isn’t a bad idea – in business.  Taking an interest in a the real-life activities of a guild member’s child could come off as very creepy.

Some people play WoW to escape from real life.  When they’re in game, they control how much of life bleeds over.  If they casually mention something about real life, that isn’t necessarily an invitation for you to bring up the subject at some point in the future.  By doing so, you’re taking control of that line, and it could easily backfire.

Of course, if someone talks about real life and solicits opinion from guild members, that’s an entirely different situation.  I’ve known several guild members to go through real life tragedy where a loved one was sick or passed away, and I think it helps for someone to hear that their online family is concerned for their well-being.

Keep It In-Game

So where is the safe ground?  Simple – be genuinely interested in what people do in game.

While everyone in a guild shares some common goal, we all have little side projects that we work on.  Some of these (like What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been or The Loremaster) can take months or years to complete.   These aren’t the “because it’s there” achievements – if you’re putting serious effort into them, it’s important to you.  If you know that someone is working on them, ask from time to time how their progress is going.

A lot of people do PvP.  I never have, save for a few battlegrounds in my 30s on my first character (long enough to be branded a Master Sergeant under the original honour system).  I’ve never done arena, and the few times I’ve entered battlegrounds has been strictly for something that has PvE benefit.  I just don’t get enjoyment out of that aspect of the game.  Because I dislike PvP, I don’t really care what others get up to in it.

At times, I’ve been downright hostile to those who let their PvP interfere with organized PvE events.  As a healer, I remember the days of the “PvP virus” and never understood why someone couldn’t just wrap up 6 minutes before we started raid invites to ensure that their flag had dropped.

But my guild members who PvP obviously find value in that activity, or they wouldn’t do it.  Just because I don’t care for it doesn’t mean that I can’t be aware of their goals, and ask them how they’re doing.  Is someone gunning for a particular rating in arena, or to finish in one of the upper brackets to get a title or even the 310% mount?  It doesn’t weaken me to ask “hey, how’s the rating race going?”.  Sure, I could find out on the armory if I wanted, but that doesn’t have the same effect.

Compare the previous question to “hey, I notice your rating is 1950 this week – you think you’re going to get the mount by end of season?”.  The former encourages them to talk about something that interests them, even if the topic isn’t interesting to me personally.  The latter prompts little more than a “yes” or “no” answer.  Which do you think is going to leave the person with a sense of “they’re interested in me”?

(more) In a Raid...

Tags:

Reforged Loot Distribution

Mar 8

Posted by Karatheya in Cataclysm, Guild Management | 5 Comments

reforge Reforged Loot Distribution

The recent developer chat on Twitter didn’t give us much information specifically related to guilds, but it did raise further questions about the changes originally announced at Blizzcon related to reforging.

My concern when the changes were first announced was related to the cost and/or priority of reforged items.

For all but completely random or open-bid loot systems, reforging may require you to re-think how you distribute loot.  Before we look at how, let’s go into some background on items levels.

The Math Behind Item Levels

The item level is something that Blizzard assigns to an item based upon the stats present.  Various attempts have been made to reverse engineer the formula.  If you’re so inclined, you can read about the gory details at Elitist Jerks.

Though the formula is stats to item level, it tends to be used in reverse by item designers.  A given dungeon at a given difficulty drops items of a given item level.  Blizzard throws stats on an item, runs it through the formula, then tweaks the stats until the item level matches the target.

Item level is a fixed attribute on that item, not calculated on the fly.  For items with only the standard stats, the formula is pretty simple.  Adding sockets or proc effects is where things get a bit more difficult to calculate.  Just how much of an item budget is used up by an on-proc effect is based upon some estimation of the value of the proc.  Obviously the opinion of Blizzard vs the opinion of the community may differ in this respect.

When people claim on the forums that “item x is under budget”, it’s because the reverse engineered formula says the item level should be lower than the item level in game, suggesting that some of the stats are lower than they should be.  When the math behind this is sound, Blizzard often adjusts an item.

(more) Stat Changes and Reforging...

Arouse in the Other Person an Eager Want

Mar 4

Posted by Karatheya in HTWFAIG | 3 Comments

This article is part of the series “How To Win /friends and Influence /guildies”.  See the introduction for more.

If you’re reading the original book alongside, this corresponds to Part 1, Chapter 3: “He Who Can Do This Has the Whole World with Him.  He Who Cannot Walks a Lonely Way”

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

Henry Ford

The principle behind this rather long-named chapter is really quite simple, and eloquently summed up in the above quote.  There is only one way to get someone to do something, and that is to make them want to do it.

To do that, you have to talk about what they want, and not about what you want.   For a raid or guild leader, these should nominally be the same thing, at least at a high level.  Whatever your guild’s purpose is, that’s what everyone is showing up for – PvE progression, PvP dominance, or clean hard mode execution for example.

I won’t go into the examples that Carnegie uses in this chapter, as they’re all very business-oriented and somewhat dated.  Instead, let’s look at some situations in which you might be trying to win your members or an individual member to your side.

In a Raid

An impassioned plea for people to focus on the next boss attempt usually come after the basic “here’s how the fight goes, let’s give it a try” approach has failed.  You’re pretty sure that everyone understands the mechanics, but the execution is just going awry at some point.  You may even understand who’s going off the rails first, but know that calling them out won’t make things any better.

In this context, you probably are going to be talking to your raid as a whole or to roles within the raid.  What wants can you appeal to?  The most obvious are the material rewards from the boss, but this only works if the boss has intrinsic value to the raid.  Sometimes you get unexpectedly blocked by a boss that you’ve had on farm for a while.  The loot is no longer appealing, at least not to most of the raid.  You can appeal to everyone’s desire to just be done with the fight – perhaps asking certain roles to double-up and keep an eye out for people who you suspect are not focusing closely enough.

If the boss is linked to trash that is particularly annoying to clear, you can appeal to everyone’s desire to not repeat that the next night.  This is effective when people are requesting to move to another boss in a non-linear dungeon.  Do you remember pushing extra hard for a Shade of Aran kill in the early days of TBC just because of how painful it was to clear the trash after Curator?

If none of these seem appropriate or are having effect, you can drop one level lower and appeal to people’s desire for loot in the future (assuming you have a loot system that can offer bonuses).  It may seem cheap or compromising to have to offer bonus DKP or EP to get people to do what they should have been doing all through the raid.  Ideally, this is a last resort offered to encourage people to stay beyond a posted raid end or to go all-out on consumables in order to push progression.  Offering strictly material bonuses regularly dilutes their value.

I know we’re all fed up of this boss, especially since he went down so easily the last few weeks.  It’s late, and we all want to wrap up.  But I’m sure nobody wants to spend an extra 20 minutes slogging through that trash again tomorrow night.

I know we can do this, and I’m sure you all do too.  Let’s take five minutes to clear our heads, then come back and take him down.  1000 bonus EP if we do it without anyone dying in phase 2.

(more) One-on-One...

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Portal Roulette, Corrupted Healing and Other Mischief

Mar 1

Posted by Karatheya in Off-Topic | 2 Comments

MrMischief Portal Roulette, Corrupted Healing and Other Mischief

I’m catching up on some of the Warcraft novels, specifically Beyond the Dark Portal at the moment.  I find the scenes with Nefarian taking me back to the time when I was running Blackwing Lair.

I still rate that experience as the best time I spent raiding in the time I’ve been playing WoW.  It wasn’t so much the content, but the amount of good-natured grief that we gave each other that made the experience enjoyable.

Corrupted Healing

For those who never experienced the Nefarian fight when it was current, he periodically “calls” each class, making them do something special for 30 seconds.   In the case of priests (which was my main at the time), your direct heals stack a DoT on your target.

One or two stacks doesn’t hurt much but if you really wanted to kill someone and had enough priests, you could spam rank 1 Lesser Heal on someone and quickly build up a 2k per second DoT (this in the days where a well geared clothie would have maybe 4000 health).

Every time a priest class call went out, our class leader died in 2 seconds.  It never got old.  The first time was requested by our guild master (prompting a couple of “are you serious?” responses), but after that it just became a guild tradition.  He spent phase 2 and 3 desperately trying to keep himself alive with shields and renews, but usually would up horizontal for the kill.

Everyone knew it was coming, we all had a good laugh afterwards, and we were confident enough in our abilities to compensate for the loss of a healer.

Portal Roulette

In my next guild, I played a mage.  I’m not sure how widespread the tactic is, but our key screw with your guildmates move is known as “portal roulette”.  When it comes time to portal everyone home, multiple mages stack up on each other and face the same direction.  On a count, you all start casting portals to different cities.  If you have time, you cast more than one.

The result is a massive glowing blob of portal energy, and if you mouse over it your tooltip will rapidly cycle between the various destinations.  Right click at your own peril – you never know if you’ll end up in Dalaran or Stonard.  For those of you in 10 person guilds, Spicytuna has a recommended rotation for a solo mage to get the same effect.

No matter how many times we pulled this, there was always a cry of “dammit, why am I in Thunder Bluff?” from someone who wasn’t paying attention.  Again, everyone in the guild has a good laugh with no serious damage done.

I’m sure there are other examples that others will share – clustering on someone during Gruul’s Shatter, or putting Amplify Magic on someone just as they’re about to blow up.

When you can repeatedly kill your class leader on the final boss of an instance (at the behest of the GM no less) and everyone laughs it off, you know you’re in a good guild, or at least one that knows when to take themselves a bit less seriously.

My personal experience in WotLK hasn’t replicated that.  We were never the most skilled group, so we couldn’t afford to lose anyone on purpose, especially not in the 10 person raids.  I would have loved to have been a member of the Brew of the Month club so I could pull this off while fighting Sapphiron, but I could never get the hang of ram riding.

What do you do to maintain a spirit of camaraderie in your raids?  Any interesting ways to keep spirits high, even on progression content when you can’t let a few people die and still make the kill?

Until Next Time
(image is Mr. Mischief from the Mr. Men series)

Tags: , ,

Give Honest and Sincere Appreciation

Feb 25

Posted by Karatheya in HTWFAIG | 1 Comment

This article is part of the series “How To Win /friends and Influence /guildies”.  See the introduction for more.

If you’re reading the original book alongside, this corresponds to Part 1, Chapter 2: “The Big Secret of Dealing with People”

A feeling of importance.  My article on what motivates your raiders could have just been that one line and it would probably have covered most everyone.  How we get that feeling differs somewhat, but underneath it all that’s what we crave.

In this chapter, Carnegie lists off a number of things that people want[1]:

  1. Health and the preservation of life
  2. Food
  3. Sleep
  4. Money and the things money will buy
  5. Life in the hereafter
  6. Sexual Gratification
  7. The well-being of our children
  8. A feeling of importance

Forget about the first seven in our context, as they all exist in the real world (save perhaps for a bit of #4 – though in-game that just leads to more of #8).  It’s that last one – a feeling of importance that I think drives many, if not most WoW players.

(more) The Desire for Greatness...

Tags: , , , ,

The B Team

Feb 22

Posted by Karatheya in Best Practices, Guild Management | 6 Comments

vlcsnap 2010 02 21 15h59m03s213 The B Team

What do you do when you become aware (or find yourself a part) of “The B Team”?

The B Team in a guild is a separate raid team (usually for 10 man raids) that just doesn’t seem to progress as quickly or as cleanly as the first or primary raid team.

Having two raid teams in a guild isn’t a problem unto itself.  I suggested as much in a recent article on bridging the 10 to 25 gap.  My advice in that context was to organize two 10 person teams if you found yourself short of the 20 regular raiders to comfortably back fill a 25 person raid with pickups.  It was a means to an end, not a long-term solution.

I didn’t recommend running two 10 person teams long-term because of the balance and swapping issues it brings.  You may find your second team short by two people, but the only extra raiders online are locked to first team’s instance id.  If you can get around this, or if your guild runs two distinct schedules (e.g. a day and night raid), then you may find that one of the teams progresses faster than the other.  When that happens, players can find themselves discouraged if they’re not progressing as quickly, or in some cases turn into jerks if they’re on the “winning” team.

How then do you try to avoid these problems, or address them once they’ve cropped up?

Foreward

Just to be clear, I’m not referring here to the multiple 10 person raids that a functioning 25 person guild may run on the side.  Those are typically populated by alts or pickups, and often use a different loot system.  I don’t think that anyone judges a player by the progression made in an unofficial raid.  I’m referring to a guild whose multiple 10 person raids are the main path to progression.

Downplay Comparisons

While a bit of good-natured competition within a guild can spur people on, I’ve not found it to be a useful tool long-term.  Perhaps one night you race each other for a speed clear of a farm instance, but to compare progression speed when the teams may not be equally matched isn’t fair.  When learning fights, certain combinations of buffs and debuffs can make a major difference – just having heroism or bloodlust available can make or break an encounter.

Though I’ve used the term for this article’s title, never use the terms “Team A” and “Team B”.  No matter how you try, these names (or any names from a set which has a defined sorting order like numbers) is a bad idea.  The connotations of superiority are just too hard to overcome.  Instead, use completely unrelated terms, or even made up words.  I wouldn’t recommend going with pop culture references, in case they are polarizing (e.g. Team Spock vs Team Kirk).  Quick: which is better: “Team Mittens” or “Team Flügelhorn”?

Answer: Neither.  Team Pfaffendorf beats them both.  Bonus points if you know why.

You should also be on the watch for teams judging each other, especially if one team ends up being joked about in guild chat.  Once people start to think of themselves as part of an elite group within the guild (or outside of a perceived group of elites), you’re only a few steps from a clique.  The best way to avoid that (if you can) is to mix up the teams periodically.

Mix it up

If you have 20+ raiders who all raid at the same time, try to mix the teams up a bit.  For progression you probably don’t want to do this on a week-by-week basis, but at least once a month you should re-shuffle the teams.  Have both raid leaders pick people much as you would in school sports – back and forth until only one person remains.  Just don’t do this publicly – nobody liked being the last person chosen in school and it’s not going to boost morale in WoW either.

When mixing teams, try to keep the quality of the leadership experience the same for all members.  Don’t put two amazing raid leaders on one team and leave the other team to learn everything from wowwiki.  Also try to keep the strategies for each boss fight as close as possible.  If both raid leaders have different approaches, sit down and discuss which is best.  This will help members stay focused and effective when they move from one team to the other, and will continue to serve you if you merge into a 25 person team.

If you choose not to keep the strategies the same, then make sure that whoever “owns” the strategy (typically the raid leader) remains with one team long-term.  The people they bring to the raid may chance, but members should know that if they’re on Foo’s team, they are executing a particular boss fight in a given way.  It also helps to have the strategies documented on your guild forums, preferably with a descriptive mnemonic.  On Lady Deathwhisper you might refer to the “normal” tactic and the “AoE kill zone” tactic for example.

You will need to set an expectation among members that when teams are shuffled, performance and progression might not be perfect from the get-go.  It takes a few raids for everyone to get used to everyone else’s play style.  Over time, this period of readjustment will get shorter.  Be quick to shut down cries of “the other team is so much better at this” or “I don’t want to be on the sucky team”.

If you’ve let the raid leaders pick back and forth and they’ve paid some attention to balance, individual performance shouldn’t be a concern.  You are more likely to wipe because someone decides not to give it their all or refuses to alter their playstyle to match the members they’re paired with.

Examining and Fixing

If both teams are progressing at exactly the same pace, you won’t have most of the problems I describe above.  But that’s not likely to happen.  Class balance, buff and debuff synergy, and the unavoidable differences in player skill mean that one team is probably going to move ahead quicker than the other.

If you’re switching things up once a month, you may not need to jump on this right away.  If it continues even when people are changed around, then you might need to look more closely at how the raid is being lead.  Are the raid leader’s instructions clear?  When people fail to follow them, is action taken to make sure that it doesn’t happen again?  Are subtle but important details about the fights overlooked, or does the leader assume that everyone knows them?  Any of these things can be a thorn in the side of progression.

You may wish to have the leader (or just an experienced leader) from the other team “audit” the team that is behind on progression.  Have them join on an alt.  Don’t have them take over the raid – just observe how things are run, make note of things that are different, and see if anything jumps out as a causal factor.  After the raid is over, take the time to sit with the raid leader and discuss what you observed.

Leading a raid effectively is an art unto itself, and just like playing a given class a little mentoring may be very helpful.  You may find that the issue is one of occlusion – the raid leader doesn’t realize that something is going wrong because they don’t have a given addon or perhaps just don’t know where to look among the information they do have to determine the root cause of problems.

Recruiting

Make sure your recruiting efforts are tailored to the needs of each team.  If you know that the reason one team isn’t progressing as fast is that they only have two strong healers, make it a priority to find a strong dps/healing hybrid so that you can move between 2 and 3 healers based on the fight without rearranging the group.  If the end goal is to be a single 25 person team and you only have two teams as an interim measure, then make sure you’re out there looking for the bodies to bring you up to full strength.

When trying to merge two 10 person groups into a 25 person team, you have a little more flexibility in terms of who you bring in.  20 decently geared raiders can help carry 5 lesser geared people far easier than a 10 person team can balance even two undergeared members.

Different Schedules and Alts

If your guild runs two separate raid schedules, you may have some members who can make both times, and want to raid on two characters.  Unless all of your main raiders are getting spots in a raid regularly, I would recommend against this.  It can be quite a morale hit to be seated for a raid while your spot goes to someone whose main has already seen gear upgrades this week.

Unless you have a strong need for a particular members’ alt, I prefer a policy where the guild “owns” a given raid size lockout on your main, and all other lockouts are yours to do with as you please.  Some members may choose to join PUG raids, some may not raid on alts and be available to swap into guild runs as required.  But make sure that every individual gets a chance to raid before any one person gets to raid twice.  Not doing so only slows down progression in the long term.

How do you deal with multiple raid teams?  Have any of you maintained two or more long-running teams for more than a few months?  If so, how did you work to achieve balance and keep everyone focused despite different progression rates?
Image from Robot Chicken Season 4, Episode 5

Don’t Criticise, Condemn or Complain

Feb 18

Posted by Karatheya in HTWFAIG | 2 Comments

This article is part of the series “How To Win /friends and Influence /guildies”.  See the introduction for more.

If you’re reading the original book alongside, this corresponds to Part 1, Chapter 1: “If You Want To Gather Honey, Don’t Kick Over the Beehive”

I must admit: I decided to start this series right after finishing the book.  Perhaps I should have re-read from the beginning first.  Don’t criticise?  Don’t complain?  How can I reconcile that with what I’ve written in the past?

The advice Carnegie gives here is to

remember [when dealing with people] that we are not dealing with creatures of logic.  We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures brisling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity[1]

Being the introductory chapter of the book, this advice doesn’t stand on it’s own.  Or rather, it is designed to make you realize that criticism, condemnation and complaining are not the only way to make someone do what you want them to.  Indeed, the examples in this chapter serve to show how the moment you start criticising someone, you put them on the defensive.  You make it harder for you to get your point across, and even if you eventually do you leave a resentment that will make future encounters with the person more difficult.

The obvious guild management situation here is failing to perform up to guild standards while raiding.  Some people are just better at it than others.  Those who aren’t will eventually contribute to a failed attempt on a boss.  If you know that the actions (or inactions) of an individual were the start of the failure, shouldn’t you call them on it?

Maybe.

Blaming Everyone but Themselves

The problem is that people who have done something wrong are often unaware that they have done so.  They may even have a justification that in their mind makes the failure not their fault.  One of your top DPS stays in the fire for a few seconds to take down an add that was going for a healer, not noticing that a offtank is moving to intercept.  The add dies, but leaves the DPS so low on health that an AoE effect kills them a few seconds later.  Robbed of several thousand DPS, the group then hits the hard enrage timer and wipes with 2% health remaining on the boss.

Unless specifically assigned otherwise, the job of DPS is to do as much damage as possible without stealing agro or taking excessive avoidable damage.  In the mind of the raid leader, the DPS screwed up.  In the mind of the DPS, they were protecting a critical member of the raid and their actions were justifiable.  Perhaps they even think it was the healer’s fault for not keeping them up through environmental damage, or that the tank should have called out that they were going to take care of the add.

Strictly speaking, the raid leader is right.  The job of protecting the healers from loose mobs nominally belongs to the tanks.  While a DPS helping out safely (slowing or snaring the add, putting some form of protection on the healer) is usually appreciated, doing so unsafely and getting yourself killed isn’t the way to handle things.

Why Not To Criticize

The raid leader can now go and chew out the DPS member (publicly or privately).  Will it make the raid leader feel better?  Maybe.  Will it help the DPS get better?  Probably not.  The DPS probably realizes what they did.  You should know your raiders well enough that there won’t be a repeat of the incident.

But what if you don’t know the DPS player well, or you’re concerned that they will do the same thing again?  Surely you have to highlight that to them – otherwise you’re just going to waste everyone else’s time when the group wipes again.

So how do you reconcile this advice to not criticise with the pragmatic task of leading a WoW raid?  Well, the first hint is to not use a single chapter of the book or this series as guidance.  Future articles will go in depth on ways to get someone to do what you want them to do without them being on the receiving end of a tirade first.

It’s that tirade you need to avoid.  It’ s all too easy to go off the deep end with someone, making them feel as though the entire wipe was their fault.  As anyone who’s been raiding for a while knows, you can try to find out where a wipe started, but the further back in time you go, the harder it becomes to say that one person made everything go pear shaped.  Little mistakes happen all the time, and so long as someone else makes some kind of correction, they go unnoticed.  The boss dies, and everyone is happy.

It’s only when the correction is missed and the mistake is compounded that you start to set up for a wipe.  So whose fault was it?  The person who made the mistake that could have been corrected, or the person who failed to correct?  Or the raid leader who didn’t notice the mistake and call for a correction?  If you recorded every attempt and went over the footage with a fine-toothed comb you might be able to answer that question, but I doubt anyone has the time or inclination to do so.

Calling out the one person you think is responsible can do a lot of things, but what it won’t do is make the person more relaxed and capable of focusing on the job at hand.  It brings emotions and hurt pride into the picture, and from there things just go downhill quickly.

I will give you one alternate approach: rather than telling someone how badly they did something that it wasn’t their job to do, compliment someone else on the way they handled the job, and ask them to keep it up.  In our hypothetical above, you can compliment the offtank who did take care of the add.  Make sure that’s done publicly and the DPS should realize that it’s not their job to do it next time.

Criticising Addons

One word before I wrap up on addons that call people out.  I’m taking of FailBot and EnsidiaFails.  Is an automated whisper from EnsidiaFails the same as directed criticism from the raid leader?  Probably not.  The difference is how the raid leader uses the information.  If anyone who fails (including the raid leader) is treated the same, then such addons are useful tools.  If some people’s fails are called to light while others slide by, then the usefulness rapidly drops off.

Exacerbating the problem is that some failures are reported falsely.  If you’ve ever lost a tank in an Onyxia PUG when someone is running EnsidiaFails, you’ll be familiar with the spam of people “failing” to avoid flame breath.  Getting in front of Ony’s legs when she’s being tanked is a failure – getting breathed on because she’s spinning around after the tank dies is not.  You can indicate to the addon that it should stop detecting failures until combat stops, but I don’t see people using this in a timely or consistent fashion.

Next thursday, we’ll delve into chapter 2: The Big Secret of Dealing with People.

This article is part of the series “How To Win /friends and Influence /guildies”.  See the introduction for more.

[1] Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People.  (1936), pp.13

Tags: , , , ,