I'm Here to Kill Dragons

Since becoming an officer in Darkfall a couple of weeks ago I've been leading raids.

Initially it started out with the GL asking for someone to lead raids during Darkfall's traditional raid times: Sun- Tues. Because he now works at those times. The GL would continue to lead raids on Thursday. However, that kind of randomly stopped. He can only raid on weekends now. I think he and his wife are playing together on the weekday evenings. (Which is adorable!) So I've added leading the raids on Thursday as well.

The schedule as it stands right now: Progression raids on Sun, Tues, and Thurs. Older raids for guild achieves on Monday, if people actually want to come. These raids are all from 9pm to midnight Hyjal server time.

I'm okay with this. Honestly I've been leading PUG raids since the end of BC when I put together a PUG for TK: The Eye. During Wrath I did some more with setting up and leading the Uld10 raids that got our drakes.

So now in Cata it shouldn't be quite so intimidating to be leading the Darkfall raids. However, Darkfall are the people I care about. They are my WoW family, and I don't want to let them down or make a fool of myself in front of them. I tend to feel personally responsible when we fail to kill a boss. And I tend to want to avoid conflict, so I'm unlikely to call people out on their problems.

All of this is leading up to me admitting that Darkfall hasn't killed any Cata boss except Argaloth. We've spent multiple nights wiping on Magmaw and Halfus. But either due to a bad dps or a bad healer (or both) we have entirely failed to get either of them down. I think we were close *once* on Magmaw.

I was talking to a coworker about this today, he said:
"Your job is to kill dragons. The guild leader's job is to keep people happy."

And he is totally right.

You can't do 10k dps on Argaloth? We need to find someone else to fill that raid spot.

You can't two heal Argaloth? We need to find someone else to fill that raid spot.

I'm not sure how to evaluate tanks. Maybe: You fail at taunting at the right time at Argaloth? You crumple like a wet paper towel when Argaloth hits you? You fail at using any cooldowns at all on Argaloth?

I need to get my brave on and only let people into the raid who can perform.

There are only two or three people I'm worried about failing that check. Most of our raiders are actually quite good. But in a ten-man it only takes one person who needs to be carried to make everything very hard, And two people being carried makes it impossible.

So tonight, we'll do Argaloth first, if we have TB. And if you can't fulfill your obligations to the raid then we will find someone else to replace you before we go to Magmaw.

I'm here to kill dragons.