lol

Two best trinkets in the game for me:

1) [Madness of the Betrayer], from Illidan 2) [Tsunami Talisman] from Leo

Someday ...

I blame the DPS on Vashj :X  Myself excluded because I am so great.

Because throughout raiding history in WoW, most players that play solely dps classes have no idea how healing actually works or what it is like to heal.

The thought process of the typical numbskull dps'er must be:

"We wiped.  Well, I know *I* wasn't fucking up ... and I know our other dps'ers, they were all doing what they had to do (pewpewing).  Tanking is like dps, right?  No one pulled aggro so tanks were okay.

IT MUST BE THE HEALERS' FAULT."

They have to blame someone.  And with Vashj, there's a lot of shit going on all at once so it's easy to get overloaded if you don't stick to your job.  Furthermore, she's a raid/guild-breaker.  People wipe on her for ages, people quit the raid or the guild and it's gg, "LF raiding guild" in trade chat.

 Theres another guild that I have close ties to that I will not mention name of. This guild uses DKP as a reward, but more as candy to a child. DKP is thrown around so recklessly that it has little value. For examply, last week he offered 3x DKP for showing up to Leo attempts. All fair no doubt, everyone loves a reward. But when the raid screws up or he gets mad at an individual he docks DKP. The pallies out smarted him and said "Fuck" the DKP. They began doing all pally loot on their own. (Reference to these pallies is past tense, only one remains in the guild and does not raid). He often times loses a lot of dedicated raiders due DKP imbalance. Similairly if the Government 'give and take' dollars like it was dirt the value of the dollar would be extremely worse than today.

In conclusion we notice that this is one of the least progressing SSC raids. But due to the overwhelming large ammount of players on Gorgonnash, he continues to replace ex-members by offering sign-up DKP, "End game raiding", and a good time. Of course, this raid leader is a great speaker and very good at manipulating people. 

Ewiges - Absorbing the stupidity of the world for over 20 years.

Garreth, I'm glad you brought up this subject, because it's actually 1) part of why I really like DF and 2) something I am well versed in.

As some of you know, part of my background includes a Psych degree (please, no jokes), Human Resources, and working with Juvenile Delinquents (again, please no jokes).  Finding ways to motivate peope to improve performance is a cornerstone of my interests, my position at work, and the agency I work for.

Positive and Negative Reinforcements are subset of the concept of Operant Conditioning.  One of the biggest misconceptions about these terms when used together is that positive means "good" and negative means "bad."  Actually, what they are really referring to is positive being an "addition" (meaning something gained) and negative being a "subtraction" (meaning something withheld or simply not gained).  

In its simplest terms, positive reinforcement means that you present a pleasant stimulus to encourage favorable behavior (response) to reoccur in the future.  Negative reinforcement means that you remove or stop an unpleasant stimulus to encourage favorable behavior (response) to reoccur in the future.

In terms of wow, positives can be loot, dkp points, oral or written praise from peers or leaders, etc.  Negatives are would be something like bopping to prevent death, invising to drop aggro, DI-ing to prevent a wipe (or a repair bill...), not dpsing in order to not get aggro, not getting yelled at by peers or leaders, etc.  Some things can be interpretted as both positives and negatives; for example, a mana potion adds mana, and prevents you from going OOM.

The converse to positive and negative reinforcement are punishment and extinction, which work in a similar, but opposing, manner.  Punishment involves presenting an unpleasant stimulus to discourage unfavorable behavior.  Extinction involves removing or stopping a pleasant stimulus to discourage
unfavorable behavior.

Examples of Punishment in WoW are yelling at people after they have fucked up,  putting the dunce moon on someone's head, dying after pulling aggro, getting booted after you didn't pay your time card, getting banned after being a jerk in general chat, etc..  Examples of extinction would be withholding of heals on someone who shouldn't have pulled aggro, docking dkp for poor performance, removing ability to chat in guild after someone being particularly douche-bag-ish, or not giving out a raid invite to someone who flaked or performed poorly.

Research shows that Positive Reinforcement is the most effective of these tools, by far.  It is the most likely to achieve a desired outcome, and it also allows everyone involved to focus on the positive aspects of the situation (yay!  the boss is dead!  phat lewts!!!).  Punishment can be somewhat effective, but only when used in a timely manner (right after the undesired behavior) and consistently. Deaths/wipes are a great example of effective punishment.  You fuck up, you gotta walk back and start again, every time...  Extinction usually happens when the consistency piece is lost, however, because if people are only consequenced for poor behavior some of the time, there is little incentive to change it.  Even though punishment is effective in theory, it usually has side effects involving anger or resentment that can lead to new problems.

/ends Psych 101 lesson 

 
"Choosing the second option in a game is almost Hitleresque when applied to the raid as a whole.  But to dole it out upon a small and absolutely essential
contingent of your team for no other reason than you don't play that
role (the raid leaders/officers are all tanks/dps), is downright sick."

 I like how you emphasis healers there. ALL the roles are essential. Tanks are essential. Healers are essential. And yes, even the role you like to dump on so much, DPS, is essential. You cannot do any boss without all 3. If it were me, I wouldn't dock pts from any one role or class, cause it takes all 25 people working together. Why blame the healers? maybe their tanks are too squishy? Maybe their dps is taking too long or taking unnecessary damage? I highly doubt its any one role's fault.  IF you're going to dock points, do it raid wide (bad option, but better than taking it out on any one class).

On the one bright side, at least all the healers are being docked. If all the healers get docked 10 pts (or whatever), then none of the healers will have an advantage over any other healer when loot drops. Its not like the pallies are only being docked 10 while the priests are being docked 20.  So in one regard it really doesn't matter at all. But on the other side, the whole idea of docking pts for wiping (providing it wasn't intentional asshattery) is just dumb.

/flings poop at Garreth

I vote all the gnomes but Zifter cuz he's bald and bald gnomes are the best for bowling

Re #3, Mag: Instead of "exterminating a race" I was going more for "blaming our problems on this subset of the population", ie the rise of Nazi power in recession-weary Germany following WWI and the blaming of said troubles on the Jews.

It's a raid led by myopic dps classes with no idea how the fight works from a healing perspective, and there are wipes, and it definitely can't be the dps's fault. It must be the healers. Yeah! That's the ticket! Those shitty healers are the reason we're not on Illidan yet! Boo to the healers! Dock their dkp! Send them to consecration camps.

Yeah, I really did just type that.

I'm just impressed that this thread was Godwinned in the first post :D