Duane: Greener Grass

My long term readers might remember Duane, he is not a real person, he is merely a character I have created to represent "my guildmate". It has been a long time since I had to write about him as the guilds I have been in are mostly devoid of drama and even when there is some drama it isn't anything I felt the urge to write about. But this week that changed....

It's been a frustrating couple of weeks, sign ups for raids have dropped as the beta boss, end of expansion boss and the sun boss all hit simultaneously. Combined with a few of the regular raid team deciding that now is a good time to take a break things are tough but not a major disaster. 

To be honest it's nothing unexpected though, the same thing happened at the end of TBC and at the end of Wrath. We have a few new guildies too and the good news is that these folks ARE signing up for raids. The bad news is they are not used to Dragon Soul beyond LFR and as a result their gear levels aren't in the high 390's and therefore their DPS is lower than we are used to. End result? we don't blitz 8/8 in 2 hours and have to comeback on our 2nd night. No big deal right?

This week we started heroic attempts on Morchok, signups drop even lower, raid balance sucked balls, 3 healers (with no viable OS), 2 rogues, 2 ret pallies and a boomkin gave us a very inflexible group that sucked for normal fights like Zon'ozz let alone HC Morchok. 

However, the real kicker was our Duane, our new MT quit the guild 30 mins before raid start. No prior warnings, no consideration to the fact that he had signed up for the Wednesday and Thursday raid as our MT. Duane hadn't been around long, had piss poor gear when he arrived and  always seemed to me that he was a bit fresh to the tanking game in Dragon Soul. He made good progress and as over time got the needed gear and became a reliable tank. Like many, he had his faults, but the worst thing was he let us all down with an unexpected guild change.

Having changed guild for my own selfish reasons recently, I wanted raid and have fun rather than not raid and therefore not have fun even if that meant leaving friends behind I'm in no position to make a negative judgement of his actions. However, there are ways to achieve personal goals and create a good impression by leaving your old guild without creating bad feeling and I know I achieved that because my friend's list on Shadowsong is about 40% bigger since I left Saturday Knight Fever and joined Exhumed.

Duane has joined a guild, they are 6/8 HC. Sour grapes? No I'd rather miss the kills than get boosted through them but if his idea of fun is to go chasing progression, get carried through HC bosses and not have to earn the right to those kills, it is his 17 euros each month and as long as that doesn't stop me having fun then good luck to him.