3.44. Bullet Points and Lies

What Their Body Language is Telling You
Source: 9gag.com

The Read

When you sit across the table from someone, leafing through their resume, you're trained to pay attention to the cues that are present. The stranger staring back at you is now more than just a name and some impressive typography printed on fancy paper. When their credentials first hit your desk, the best you can hope for is to look beyond the literal content and examine the little things like their choice of fonts, how they've decided to prioritize their education or their experience. If their name is enormous in the header, are they demonstrating a mastery of Microsoft Word or are they overcompensating for a deficiency in their confidence? Do they describe their work history as a series of things they've done or ways they've made their former companies successful? When you look them straight in the eyes, it's much easier to read the nervousness, the constant uncomfortable shuffling; the body language of folded arms shielding them from the onslaught of incoming questions. When they're in the room with you, it's a little bit easier to tell if they mean what they say, or if the resume you hold in your hands is just a series of bullet points and lies.

But if you never get them in a room, it becomes more of a Herculean task to get a good read.

There aren't so many cues when you run a guild. You don't get the luxury of a professionally written resume, and there is no table to sit them at; all the body language is absent from the equation. Without these cues to help bolster your ability to read their true intent, you're left with what floats to the surface: their actions, their measurable contributions, and if they treat both stranger and friend alike -- the kinds of things you might consider when judging a person's integrity. If the person is genuine, it is a simple task to walk your list and scratch check marks next to the ones demonstrated by candidate X. But when a person has another agenda in mind, the items you check off your list become their strategy. The key is determining what parts of their behavior are just for show, and digging through the dirt to reveal their actual motivations.

I know this strategy because I've employed it myself. I've changed my own line of questioning to suit an agenda I felt my interviewees wanted to fulfill, and it may very well have been the deciding factor in gaining The Final Cut back in Vanilla; my last real opportunity to leapfrog into 40-Man raiding. When I began to ask about how they would handle fixed schedules, strict start times, the administration of DKP...it all added up to the same underlying theme: we're a casual guild that has the professional approach of the hardcore. In actuality, we hadn't pulled off a single, successful raid by that point. But it was enough for them to take a gamble on us, thankfully, and it paid off in dividends.

I was closing in on my decision regarding who to go with for melee officer. I had conferred with Neps and Dalans, rounded the candidate pool down to two options, and attempted to wrap my arms around who was more aligned with the best intentions of the guild. For Descendants of Draenor to continue down its current path of success, leadership had to be just right, and I was becoming hyper-vigilant at scrutinizing my decision-making process. Mistakes of the past coupled with recent events made this a choice that I couldn't gloss over.

It was time to sit both Jungard and Crasian down and determine who was going to be the best fit for my next melee officer position. I wanted their perception of things. In my mind, listening to them explain how they saw events unfolding would paint a clearer picture of who I was considering. This, in my mind, would be the best opportunity to get a read of the candidates. And when I stepped into the interviews, I prepared myself for the same treatment I dished out to The Final Cut years before. If players were prepared to tell me what I wanted to hear, how would I be able to cut through their bullshit?

I did this by asking them their opinion of each other.

---

"So, which do you like more right now?"

"I dunno, I really like the idea about armor pen at the moment, and Blood is pulling some sick numbers but you really need the gear for it. Having to re-gem everything across the board like that? Doesn't seem very practical. I mean, I like to change it up a bit, and I can pretty much do that now if I want to flip between Frost or Unholy. Strength is strength, y'know?"

"Yup."

"I'll probably give it a go at some point but right now I'm getting the numbers I need from Unholy. The rotation gets a bit dull but it's doing more than Frost at the moment, so I probably won't change it up anytime soon."

"You don't mind losing Frost's burst?"

"Well, there are ways around that. It's just a lot of Death Knights aren't paying attention. Y'know? I mean everyone seems to have a DK but that doesn't mean they know what's going on. Simple things like spreading diseases before dropping a DnD on the twin valks. Most DKs could give a shit. It's pretty common knowledge. But instead they have to resort to exploits and pulling the valks into the doorway, or whatever. Sad."

"Crasian, let's change the subject quickly. What's your opinion on Jungard?"

"Ho, boy. Jungard? Um, he's a good guy, I guess...I can't say I really know too much about him, y'know? I mean, like...we've run some stuff together. He's offered to help out on a few fillers in the Eh Team runs, so we've brought him along for those. But I know he's helping his brother run Starflex throughout the week, so other the 25...I don't get much of an opportunity to hang out."

"Do you think Jungard's competent enough to lead the melee team in 25?"

"Oh, no doubt. No doubt at all. Yah, he's sharp, he knows his stuff."

I waited to see if Crasian would offer anything else up in Jungard's favor.

"So...how's the decision on Shadowmourne coming along?"

And just like that, the discussion shifted to more important things.

"Still deciding. I'm getting close. Just a few more loose ends to tie up."

"Sweet! Yeah, let me know how it goes!"

I went into Crasian's interview with a hunch. His responses confirmed where my head was at.

"Yogg-Saron"
Artwork by Dan Scott

Insane in the Brain

Omaric and Bretthew made it clear to the 25-Man progression team that in order to execute One Light, the keeper we would have to leave alive was Thorim. By phase three, we'd already be stretched thin by moving slower, taking more damage, and receiving less heals. We'd probably be down a few folks as they lost their minds to the gaze of Yogg-Saron. All of these hindrances would add up to a drawn-out phase three; we'd need every last ounce of help during the final burn. That meant Thorim had to help us kill those Guardians. So it was decreed. During our clear toward Yogg, Omaric and Bretthew directed players to talk to Mimiron, Hodir, and Freya, removing their protective gaze from the Antechamber.

Omaric's primary tactic was, first and foremost, for players to get a handle on managing their sanity. Many of the progression raiders voiced their opinions in this department on the forums. Jungard, Crasian, Mangetsu -- folks passionate about their play and determined on being focused towards the win, shared their thoughts on the DoD boards. Omaric remained resolute in his stance: by reducing the various mistakes players could make throughout the course of phase one and two, the raid would ultimately transition into phase three with a healthy abundance of sanity. Without Freya's sanity wells as a crutch, players would have no choice but to perform with a high degree of precision. This essential tactic had far reaching effects in our One Light attempts for the duration of the raid that Friday evening.

When we returned to the instance Sunday, rested and ready to dig back in, it was as if we had never left. Each pull got a little cleaner. Transitions from phase one to phase two got a little quicker -- Bretthew expedited each attempt by purposefully walking into clouds in phase one, artificially spawning more Guardians than the default -- their subsequent deaths eating away at Sara's illusion in greater haste. Meanwhile, phase two continued to receive the spit polish. Jungard helped direct our melee in the nightmare, reminding folks to face away from the skulls as they dug their way through each dream sequence, eventually exposing Yogg's brainstem. As the attempts continued on into the evening, we closed the gap from three nightmare cycles to two. If we could burn the brainstem hard enough during those two cycles, we'd have enough sane people alive to deliver the true death to Yogg and transition the Old God to phase three.

At 9:18pm, the dual raid leaders made the call to melee: Get out now. This is it. We're pushing into phase three.

DoD defeats Yogg-Saron under the sole watch of Thorim,
earning "One Light in the Darkness (25 Player)",
Ulduar

One Light

With my back to the Old God, I resumed my role, calling out in Vent which tank was getting the next Guardian. Omaric and Bretthew did the same. Players continued to catch a peek of Yogg's horrific face and their sanity bled away. Another guardian spawned in the chaos, too close to pick it up. With maximum health, the Guardian was at its greatest strength. It turned to Sixfold, killing him instantly. The tanks fell back into our rotation. Crasian and Jungard hammered away at Yogg along with the rest of melee, risking their own sanity in the process. Turtleman came up snake eyes in the luck department and his sanity melted away. Bretthew called out to kill him, and the raid converged, blowing the undead Mage apart. More succumbed to Yogg: Abrinis, then Sir Klocker. Crasian focused on the kill as the last bits of his own mind were stripped away; the raid soon turned to kill him as well. Yogg's health continued to drop. Jungard held his faculties for a few additional moments, slashing his dual two-handed weapons into the hundred gaping mouths. Finally, he joined the list of the damned, killed by the raid amid his own insane ravings. In the last remaining percentage of health, Bretthew, Omaric and I could barely keep ourselves alive with the weight of the Guardians continuing to press down on us.

And then...brilliance.

Our screens lit up with a double dose of achievement spam. Both "Two Lights in the Darkness" and "One Light in the Darkness" had proc'd side-by-side, the result of our urgency to complete Glory. Cheers and screams filled Vent as we picked ourselves up and distributed loot. The reality of how close we were set in. Only one meta remained. Adrenaline pumped through our veins and we felt unstoppable. With forty minutes remaining in the evening, we celebrated our accomplishment by taking the raid back to Obsidian Sanctum and executing a three-drake kill for old times sake. This produced a Twilight Drake flying mount for Omaric in the process. It was well-earned and well-deserved. I took a moment to address the raid before they disbanded and headed out for the night.

"I just wanted to thank you all for the hard work everyone's been putting in on Glory. We're just about there, gang. Make sure you hit the forums and do that research on Firefighter. While I have everyone's attention, I have an announcement: I've come to a decision on the guild's next next melee officer. Most of you probably saw this coming, as the guy contributes so much to the guild and progression, that he's practically an honorary officer by this point. So it's time to make it official. Everyone, please join me in congratulating Jungard."

Again, the Ventrilo server erupted -- this time with congratulations and cheers for DoD's newest officer. A random voice piped up as the cheering subsided, "So does this mean Jungard's getting the ol' legendary axe first?"

"No," I replied, "I am."

3.43. Showtime!

The 25-Man Progression Team defeats The Twin Val'kyr in
under three minutes, earning "Salt and Pepper (25 Player)",
Tournament of Champions

The Definition of Insanity

Cheeseus had taken a bow and exited stage right. Upon his exit from DoD as raid leader, some significant hurdles remained. Omaric and Bretthew took control of our 25-Man progression team at a time when it was most critical for DoD. Only three meta achievements remained outstanding in our quest to complete Glory of the Ulduar Raider, but they were arguably the most difficult ones of the bunch. All eyes were on them as we returned to our instance locks that Sunday at the start of October 2009. How would they approach it? Would Omaric's voice impressions and Bretthew's chatty nature distract the team from focusing in on the most brutal of these final Ulduar achievements? Would the raid follow their direction, or get caught up in unrelated conversations as they began to wipe to trash? Did the boys have the capacity to keep the peace and identify problematic players, or were we headed into attempts that Blain warned me about years before; attempts where you repeat the same thing over and over, changing nothing yet expecting results. Would Omaric and Bretthew deliver? Or would they slowly drive us insane?

The lights dimmed, and the curtain went up on their first act.

For their first trick, Omaric and Bretthew drove the raid up through the Tournament of Champions and had us target a three-minute burn on The Twin Val'kyr. A month earlier, The Eh Team had knocked out "Salt and Pepper (10 Player)", so this achievement was a safe play for them. I casually suggested that they keep their strategy and opinions hidden away in officer chat. We needed to keep a handle on the perception that The Eh Team's influence was broadening in scope. Many of us had first-hand experience in performing the 10-Man version by this point, so it was common knowledge that "Salt and Pepper (10 Player)" was an order of magnitude easier to accomplish. Repeating this information to the twenty-five as a teaching device would have been a bad idea. That tactic could have been misinterpreted as "we beat it a month ago because we're better than you" -- a situation not so difficult to imagine in a game where the difficulty between 10 and 25 was blurring in the public eye every day.

After securing "Salt and Pepper (25 Player)", their next trick involved Mimiron. We were dodging mines, bursts of damage from mechanized guns, and making our way into phase three. Omaric directed the raid to leave an Assault Bot alive in an attempt to force Mimiron to destroy it with a rocket strike. As it turned out, I had an Assault Bot on me, and kited it around while Mimiron transitioned into his final phase, combining into a giant clockwork monstrosity. I scanned for the rocket blast targets being painted on the ground while the raid began to chip away at all three parts of Mimiron's body. I missed the first target by inches, but remained diligent, zooming my camera out and spinning it like a top, watching for new crosshairs to paint. Another showed up across the room and I made a mad dash for it, squinting as I prepared to mess up in some horrific fashion; the guild leader ever-confident in his abilities.

The Assault Bot tailing me sputtered, whirred, and fell backwards, while achievement spam lit up guild chat: "Not So Friendly Fire (25 Player)". We were clear to burn through Mimiron, and the steampunk Voltron soon sagged its shoulders as it ran out of power.

Their opening act was a success. The main event was yet to come.

DoD defeats Freya with all three Elders alive,
earning "Knock Knock Knock on Wood (25 Player)",
Ulduar

Knock Knock Knock

To say there was a lot going on would be an understatement.

Freya's adds made up the majority of our suffering. While Ancient Protector himself wasn't terribly oppressive (as the raid very quickly moved under mushrooms to evade the silence from Conservator's Grip), a random person would be selected for Nature's Fury, doing repeated damage to players in close proximity. If players were sharp, the Nature's Fury target would zip away from us in no time at all. It didn't always play out that way. The ring of Detonating Lashers were also not much fun. A warrior tank could deliver a Shockwave to AoE stun them, allowing the casters to chain into a massive shower of AoE damage, while we gained a safe distance from their explosives deaths.

It was a pity, then, that our warrior tank decided to become a druid.

Meanwhile, I had my own struggles to deal with. Snaplasher, Storm Lasher, and Ancient Water Elemental all spawned together, and required us to kill them within twelve seconds of one another. Yet, the "group up and AoE down" method wouldn't fly here, either. While Storm Lasher's chain lightning could be mitigated with stuns, Riskers was having a tough time of it on his own as the sole remaining rogue in progression. Ancient Water Elemental had a tendency to want to charge out in a random direction, and made it difficult to keep damage focused on him. As it turned out, both of these adds were my responsibility. Meanwhile, Snaplasher was kited away, its own damage growing as its health dropped. In 10-Man, the Snaplasher would eventually be frozen into position, affording the kiter a buffer of freedom. In 25-Man there was no such allowance. Poor timing on the part of the kiter would cause player death as Snaplasher's own life came to an end.

The deficiencies of modifying a 10-Man strategy for the 25 were starting to rear their ugly head, and the audience grew restless.

Mangetsu, along with his warlock officer Eacavissi, worked  in tandem to perfect an extended Shadowfury chain, which Turtleman helped augment with a Frost Nova tagged on the tail. This was our best bet to eliminate the threat from the ring of Detonating Lashers. Meanwhile, Bretthew, Omaric and I worked on our own system: Ikey-bear held Freya while Bretthew AoE taunted Snaplasher, Storm Lasher and Ancient Water Elemental. Without skipping a beat, Ikey would pull Freya back (as she was also subject to Bretthew's AoE taunt), while I gripped Storm Lasher and Ancient Water Elemental, facing them away and keeping tabs on Riskers so he was in range for stunlocks.

The baby steps slowly emerged over the course of the evening. The Detonating Lashers remained in place just a bit longer. Those with Nature's Fury moved away from the group a bit faster. The Snaplasher dealt far less fatal blows to random players in the raid. But it was grueling to perfect, and our attempts filled up the evening. Even when all looked good and we transitioned into the final phase, Freya still managed to play us, locking random players down with grasping roots, only to end their lives with the toss of spore-like bombs that we needed to avoid.

The worst part is when you feel like you have a phase down, only to be awakened to the brutal truth that you have absolutely no handle on what comes next -- and the work begins anew. In the days of Kael'thas Sunstrider, this sort of raid mentality was par for the course: entire weekends spent working on one phase, while four more waited in the wings. But now, in a new era of raiding where everything was a "pushover", getting a taste of what got us here was a bitter pill to swallow.

"Knock Knock Knock on Wood (25 Player)" eventually wrapped late that evening, in DoD's trademark famous last pull of the night. We sealed the deal eight minutes past our raid end time. Exhausted, we congratulated one another and retired for the night, replenishing our energy in preparation for the remaining two metas. The raid retired, rather. A guild leader's business, as they say, is often never done.

Jungard and Crasian go head-to-head in Recount as
the guild wraps up "Con-speed-atory (25 Player)",
Ulduar

An Axe to Grind

The decision on Shadowmourne still hadn't been made; a melee officer promotion hung in the balance. With two tanks now leading raids, melee lacked guidance -- a role formerly held by Cheeseus. I was lucky that talented players like Riskers were able to work through their own issues as he had on that evening's boss kill. But our guild needed to provide a better support mechanism than that. We weren't a true hardcore raiding guild; it was unfair to expect that every player could act as their own troubleshooter. It was our job to provide an official person in which to assign the responsibility. If we claimed to take players of all shapes and sizes (read: skill levels), we had an obligation to prevent them from impeding the work of our existing successful core. I needed a melee person that excelled to such a degree that they could not only keep their own shit straight, but had the capacity to clean up after other people's messes as well. Weighing the options on deck, two names rose to prominence.

First on this list was Crasian, the Eh Team's resident death knight who demolished the damage meters each night in our progression raids. Having climbed up to Elite rank, he was one of the primary drivers behind Descendants of Draenor's melee DPS being absurd throughout Wrath. Crasian was a likable guy, full of energy and carried with him a completionist mindset -- he was one of the first guild members to finish Glory of the Dungeon hero, earning a Red Proto-Drake in the process. Crasian had been sacrificing much of his spare time to help others knock out these heroic 5-man achievements, demonstrating that guild spirit I often looked for in people. Still, he was reasonably new to the guild, so his perceived selflessness had to be tempered carefully against other criteria. Crasian made a regular habit of checking in with me on the status of my decision regarding the legendary, and I assured him it was my number one priority. One thing was certain: putting Shadowmourne into his hands would secure his place in the #1 DPS spot for many months to come, and when I imagined how many heroic mode kills his boosted DPS would guarantee us, flashing images of golden achievement bars filled me with glee.

A second option existed, the yin to Crasian's yang. The warrior we called Jungard had been a steady source of high quality melee DPS since joining our 25-Man progression raid late in Mount Hyjal, way back in The Burning Crusade. Jungard was less of a show-boater than Crasian, but no less timid than the death knight when wrecking the meters. Jungard had recently helped grandfather his brother's guild into ours, augmenting the roster and adding another 10-Man team to the weekly clears. Jungard and I saw eye-to-eye on a good many things, and shared conversations over IM. He supported my changing guild structure as we moved from TBC to WotLK, and never once missed a raid he hadn't cleared with me before hand. Jungard was one of those few individuals that had never red flagged me once; never for a moment giving me a question to doubt his loyalty or honesty -- and with every bit of praise I showered on to him, he remained humble, thankful, and ready to prove himself worthy at the start of the next raid weekend. It stood to reason, then, that Jungard wielding a Shadowmourne in one hand and a Shadow's Edge in the other would be a force that few on Deathwing-US could threaten.

With my sights set on both Crasian and Jungard, the next quest in my log was clear to complete: Promote a New Melee Officer. It was time to schedule some interviews.