To stay with my savage raid group, or leave...

Hello looking for some friendly advice. Currently on A2S with my static. Where I joined a buddy of mine, since he wanted to raid with me again. We haven't raided together since First Coil. So we wanted to make a group together. But feels like our group is starting to go nowhere. But I want to start things off with a quick view of our experiences as a static.

First off when Alex Sav came out we had problems. Even getting members, since we started a fresh static, one person got the game late due to irl stuff, replacing our mch, and blm before we even started. We started 2 weeks after Savage came out as a group. First night we got pass Faust after an hour. But then we hit a wall with Oppressors. Mainly due to healers couldn't keep up with healing before/after Hyper Plasma tankbuster. Might have been due to us having a Sch/Ast as our healers pre Ast buff. Anyways it took us a solid month to just beat A1S because of lack of healing, dps, people continously messing up..which they still do...and majority of the group outright feels tanks should always stay in tank stance leading to our group to have less dps to beat enrages.

Group comp is drk, pld, sch, ast, brd, blm, drg, nin. btw

Then we get to A2S, and there we stayed for 6 weeks now, soon to be 7 weeks. Because of people not showing up...work/date/vacation/etc, which is fine, real life over game life. It's just we only get 2 raid days a week with only 5hrs of raiding a week. So our progress is actually decent. But I think people are starting to get impatient. We got to enrage this monday for A2S. So today they wanted to push, push, push for the win. We didn't even get to enrage today after 3.5hrs. We started early because today was a rare day which some members could get on earlier then normal. But same problems happen over and over again. BLM aggroing with 2 x flares before tank can get any aggro. Then standing far away. DRG keeps dying. Bombs blow up on the group, or bomb kills off the Gobwalker person. People not positioning themselves after we stated where to go several times before. Also using methods/strats I feel make it harder for the group in later phases.

Idk, I just feel people in the static currently care more about individual performance, then group performance. Well...they care about group performance but mindset is more of inline on how can I boost my performance. Then what can the group do as a whole, if you get my meaning, hard to describe.

Basically as of today, I feel like some people are starting to target me as a sign of thier frustration. I am the pally of the group. I think some are looking at my dps score since we hit enrage, no one said anything but you can tell from the tone of thier voice. Like I said the group wants tanks to be in tank stance all the time, and I tank mostly everything solo up to the 4 Doll Phase. So as a Pld I have to flash, zero dmg, but I still manage to do around 550dps while tanking with shield oath up all the time, and spamming flash. PLD can never compete with a DRK dps in tank stance. But we also changed over to a new voip recently, browser based one. Using it because it is free, and so someone doesn't have to pay for a voip like we used too. But I am having problems with making it work. I got it to work but soon after it stopped working for me, and people started to call me out for not working with the group, for not calling out bombs, and blaming me for wipes. It's not like I am doing this on purpose. But I feel I am still getting blamed for it since it works for everyone else fine, but not me.

Idk what to do. I want to stay for my friend, but the group is starting to feel like a drag, and I am starting to get annoyed. I don't like being blamed for other people's faults, or with me having issues with the new voip that is only working for me half the time, or am I at fault? It doesn't feel like it since I feel like I have to cover a lot of other peoples faults already. Shoot, I taught myself how to use the unwieldly skill Clemancy to heal myself while mting, a skill seen as total crap by the mass amount of tanks on these very forums. Since there are times I do feel I can't trust my own healers half the time. I do offer advice, but I am largely ignored. I offer to play WAR but it is seen less favorable by the healers in the group. I feel like I am wasting my time anymore, and even if we past A2S soon I really don't see this group passing A3S. Group dps is not there, and group corrdination I feel is not there either. I just feel like this group will fall apart anyways if we can't beat A2S soon. If not it will when we get to A3S.

So should I leave or stay? Part of me wants to go since one of our raid days starts 45mins after I get off a 13hr workshift. I rather sleep, then cut into my sleep time to raid anymore. Because of how things are going. I just don't know what to say to my friend in the group.

Sorry for my sloppy typing.

I only skimmed through the text as I am at uni atm, but I got the feel the biggest problems you are having are people not showing up, slow progression and people venting/disrespecting you.

My advice: if raiding is no longer fun, then don't do it. It's not supposed to be a huge chore at the end of the day. I wouldn't wprry about your dps: at this point of gearing, it's down to your dps players underperforming or you guys pulling the mobs ineffectively, but I doubt your dps is to blame. Personally I would compare the dps numbers with other similar comps, and see if you can do bigger pulls somehow or use healer aggro to pack groups up.

You mention people are blaming each other every time you wipe, IMHO this indicates it's the beginning of the end. Can only speak of my own static, but we do not blame each other when we wipe.

It's important to know what went wrong to cause the wipe, so you can all learn from it, luckily we are all of roughly equal skill level and so just speak up if we were the one to make mistake, discuss what went wrong, whether it was just a genuine error, or if we fundamentally need to adapt in some way to overcome it. But if you don't actually know what went wrong, it's hard to actually learn anything meaningful. We never blame each other. It can be frustrating if someone keeps making mistakes, but we all have off days, and these are usually what they are, rather than someone actually being a worse player than the rest of us.

We actually lost a member recently to irl issues, and had a replacement join for a few weeks, who would not listen to any advice, admit when he made any mistakes (even when we actually saw them he swore blind what we had seen did not happen), and generally made the experience no fun. Luckily he decided he did not want to stay with out party and we have found someone else. What it comes down to ultimately though, is if you're not having fun, move on.

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Originally Posted by ShaneDawn

I only skimmed through the text as I am at uni atm, but I got the feel the biggest problems you are having are people not showing up, slow progression and people venting/disrespecting you.

My advice: if raiding is no longer fun, then don't do it. It's not supposed to be a huge chore at the end of the day. I wouldn't wprry about your dps: at this point of gearing, it's down to your dps players underperforming or you guys pulling the mobs ineffectively, but I doubt your dps is to blame. Personally I would compare the dps numbers with other similar comps, and see if you can do bigger pulls somehow or use healer aggro to pack groups up.

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Right, I do want to raid, but starting to feel less inclided to stay with this group for several reasons. I am not really worried about my pld's dps at all. Pld is really just a meatshield anyways, because of the way the devs designed the job now, but the only thing I could do is slowly replace more and more of my pentamelds with ilvl210 str accessories if my group would even allow it. But I do feel the Drk should be the one holding hate up to phase 4. I see no point having a pld doing it, and flashing for zero dmg, while a drk can do it, and do dmg the sametime, and l also see little point for tanks to be in tank stance at all in those 4 phases as long as they can group the mobs together fine, which that is not even a big deal with the stun from the Gobwalker, but both those suggestions were ignored.

But I am not really worried about my dps. But I just feel the healers always want me to stay in tank stance all the time because they always want that crutch to cover thier lack of healing. I doubt I could even play a War with this group anyways. Majority of the time I feel like I get panic heals then played out healing.

But as for dps for the group as a whole. We are on average around 200-300 short on dps requirements to beat A2S.

Blm's dps is good, but they are kinda impatient sometimes flaring before tanks can get aggro, or doing 10k crits with Fire IV's at the start, they rarely target the snipers first, a stationary mob that already has a huge preset aggro on healers anyways, or doesn't even bother clumping with the group even knowing they might pull a mob. Another suggestion I asked, oddly ignored. Pulling mobs away from the pack just kills everyones dps, and flash has a hard time covering blm crits right off the bat.

Our Bard is solid player, and good with dps.

Dragoon I feel is lacking behind on dps.

Ninja is in Gobwalker but dps is fine, would be better if I played my Warrior.

Dark Knight I feel is...sometimes all over the place.

Astro is whatever main healer.

Scholar is sometimes really good for A2S when he spreads his dots from a invulnerability up target.

But yeah raiding feels less fun the more I stay with this group.

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Originally Posted by randysquirrel

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I admit I am not the best player, but I always try to do something better everytime. But idk I just feel like the only ones trying to improve is our brd, and nin. drk did practice a lot at the begininng but idk they always seems to have trouble. And don't get me wrong, but the blame game really just started. But I have seen this happen from several statics I was part of in the past, or static groups I would help out in as a fill in, or from people talking about thier statics in FC/LS chats. The tell, tell signs are just really starting, but not bad yet. But I feel like I should bail ship now then drag it out, since I have seen it before.

I just want to have fun while raiding. I don't care if people are having trouble as long as they are willing to learn, work as a group, and try to get better as a group.

My advice would be if you dont like raiding with the team, dont do it. Raiding supposed to be fun, not get bad times everytime. I would talk with your friend and change people if i had to. But yea your healers could do much better.

Going war would be a very good idea, and stance dancing as well

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Originally Posted by Tadus

My advice would be if you dont like raiding with the team, dont do it. Raiding supposed to be fun, not get bad times everytime. I would talk with your friend and change people if i had to. But yea your healers could do much better.

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Not really going to happen then 4 of the members are part of the FC my friend is from, and the other 2 are from another FC, but have affiliation with the other FC. I am basically the oddball.


Edit:

They let me go War in A1S, but not for A2S. Since they prefer my pld to tank mostly everything, and the healers prefer to heal a Pld. But like I said the healers do panic healing too much, using healing abilities a lot to heal over casting a heal. Warriors healing bonus doesn't benefit from healing abilities, so our healers have a harder time keeping a war up then a pld, and during moments in raiding I do feel forced to use Clemancy on myself while mting...I just don't see a warrior working out the way our healers are healing atm. Using panic heals a lot over planned healing.

Oh then if they kept ignoring my suggestions, and i know i could get a better static hell i would walk out of there so fast i would leave wheel marks behind. But yea if its not possible to change people then i would suggest look for another static that you feel that its better.

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Originally Posted by Isius

Things and stuff.

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Like everyone else has been saying, if its not fun anymore, you should probably stop raiding, or maybe find a new group to raid with. I have stopped raiding myself recently, mostly due to the difficulty of the raid scene now, as opposed to how it was in coil, but that's a different story. Best thing you can do if you're leaving is give them 2 weeks notice, and that gives them time to find a rep. If they find one sooner, then you can get out sooner if you plan on leaving that is. If you stay, good luck.

P.S: Savage Gear is only to complete savage, so don't make yourself feel like you need it to do other stuff, you don't.

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Originally Posted by Nyghtmarerobu

Like everyone else has been saying, if its not fun anymore, you should probably stop raiding, or maybe find a new group to raid with. I have stopped raiding myself recently, mostly due to the difficulty of the raid scene now, as opposed to how it was in coil, but that's a different story. Best thing you can do if you're leaving is give them 2 weeks notice, and that gives them time to find a rep. If they find one sooner, then you can get out sooner if you plan on leaving that is. If you stay, good luck.

P.S: Savage Gear is only to complete savage, so don't make yourself feel like you need it to do other stuff, you don't.

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Mmm...never really said anything about gear. Gear is gear, so it is whatever. Gear really is a moot point to me, it does help when you in progressing in Savage with the more Savage gear you get as you go, but you really shouldn't expect for that gear to carry you, you have to carry yourself. I just want to raid, and beat savage before the next one is out. Since I find challenge fun. I think that is fair. I rather not be a echo warrior of light with all the challenge heavily reduced, but that is just me. Others play for other reasons, and so does everyone else ingame. I just look forward to raiding more then doing other content ingame anymore.

A2S is more about the positioning of the mob packs and the efficient use of the gobwalker than it is about any one person's DPS. That's not to say that DPS is unimportant, but more to emphasize that piling things up properly makes or breaks you. If you have mobs running across the room after the BLM, that's way more of a DPS loss than having a PLD instead of a WAR is. People need to stand together so that the goblins mob up. Use healer aggro where you can - Cover is useful for when you're doing this so the healer doesn't end up dead. Honestly, if people aren't going to listen and execute the strategy correctly, they can't be all that interested in clearing and you may be better off either finding a way to remove the problem members or finding yourself another group.

I think you're right that if people are having problems cooperating to clear A2S, then A3S is going to be all but impossible.

Tension in a group is not good. You should talk to them about the static situation. what they want to do regarding progression, how they want to do it, if the pacing is OK for everyone, and so on. Be aware that A3 will be harder, if you are starting to have tension now, You will most likely explode in A3 if nothing changes. With that you should be able to decide if you want to continue with them or not.

On a second time (if you decide to stay), you can try to improve the group as a whole. Looks to me there is a lack in confidence from the healers. Propose changes one at a time in the following way: "Maybe we should try this because reasons." explain why that might help, ask the to explain why not if they don't seem to agree. Don't try to change too many things in one go. For example, you could propose to switch stance during one specific wave, if it doesn't work, go back, if it works fine, add changes to another wave and so on.

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Originally Posted by MerleSirlos

On a second time (if you decide to stay), you can try to improve the group as a whole. Looks to me there is a lack in confidence from the healers. Propose changes one at a time in the following way: "Maybe we should try this because reasons." explain why that might help, ask the to explain why not if they don't seem to agree. Don't try to change too many things in one go. For example, you could propose to switch stance during one specific wave, if it doesn't work, go back, if it works fine, add changes to another wave and so on.

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Been there, done that.

Large part of any input is normally responsed with firm no's, or outright ignored like I have been saying, aka them not even bothering to take any input I say. No responses aka ignored. Yes, I really do not have much confidence in the healers even though they claim to be good like I said before, having to use Clemancy while mting is...kinda flawed, and shouldn't really be happening, but I have gotten used to it. I think I'm just tired of staying with this group. I only stayed for so long because of my friend. But I just don't see this group going much farther. They will likely beat A2S with or without me it doesn't matter, but after that I just see them hitting a very tall wall that they will likely never able to climb.

I have already given notice I will be leaving in a few weeks time. Meantime I am going to give myself a few weeks break from Savage, while I think about what to do next.

thx for the responses guys.