Loot RNG and Attendance RNG

RNG is well random, weird…

As I sit back and think about what my goals for the next few weeks are in WoW, it has brought to my realization that there are certain things about this game that are both frustrating and difficult when it comes to trying to be the best that you can be. The RNG associated with gear is a difficult pill to swallow, just because there are certain pieces of gear that will just make you that much better when it comes to a certain stat. And while you farm instances for the gear that will give you that little edge, some times that instance doesn’t reward you ever. The most drastic example of this that I have at the current time is the Unbreakable Chestguard. My guild has killed cat lady every single week that since the Ulduar patch day, and I have yet to see that piece of gear.

Normally I would not even care that a piece of block value / block rating gear drops or not, however, in building my passively unhittable set, it is a requirement (not even something that will help, but something that is really needed to get to passive). So, since mid April (I think), we have killed Auriaya every week, and yet we have never seen it. In contrast to that, every player that is covered by the vanquisher token has every off set piece of gear possible. We have had double vanq drop off every boss in the instance before in a single raid lockout. Also speaking of Ulduar, we went back a few weeks ago, and cleared the instance to get the last of our shards for our next mace, and we had the worst RNG possible, one shard off Yogg and nothing else. Now granted, the shards are not guaranteed to drop, but to get that small percentage off all the hard modes we did, plus all the other bosses, it is pretty incredible.

Ulduar is not where my story of bad loot luck ends either. In Trial, both normal and hard mode, I have yet to see a neck, a cloak, a trinket, or a belt. While my fellow tank has both the belt and the neck from a PUG the one week he missed, our guild has never seen any of those drop yet. It gets so frustrating to see tanks that can PUG the instance, that are not part of any guild on our server that has the ability to do a hard mode, wearing the gear that we have never seen drop. I am happy for them, that they have the chance to show off their 40k unbuffed full stam gemmed, double stam trinketed selves, but for our guild, we have just been unlucky.

Raid attendance and repercussions

A few of the officers in my guild had a nice lengthy chat this past weekend about our attendance issues. We are a guild that prides ourselves on raiding progression two nights a week and keeping up with guilds that raid 5 nights a week, yet we have issues with getting people to show up for the SECOND night of raiding. Tuesdays are easy, we have 35 people in the raid and we get to pick and chose the best comp with the best players, but Wednesday rolls around and people mysteriously disappear, and Sunday which is our Ulduar farming day is even worse. When it comes down to it, a lot of our members think that because we don’t raid as much, that they don’t have to show up.

Well what can you do, you can not force people to show up, but you can replace them. We have recently talked about retooling our ranking system in game to reflect raiding attendance more. And, in combination, we will be instituting new priorities on loot based on those new ranks. When we were a Sunwell guild, and a damn fine one at that, we never really had these problems, but then again we were in a different age of raiding, where it took a higher level of skill to even step foot in the instance. Now, we have to revisit loot rules and attendance policies every new instance, and stress to our core that we are constantly doing what we can to fill the raids.

In the end, we always progress, and we always kill bosses, but it is quite a bit more stressful on the officers than the normal raider will ever see. The things that we deal with selflessly in the name of the guild are quite the sacrifice on our sanity, and as a result every now and then you have to vent (as I am doing now). But in the end, it is always very rewarding to see your guild turn around after issues like this, and plow through content, have the attendance, and have everyone happy with their shiny new epics.