(WoW) Raiding and Ranting

So Saturday might have been destined to be a slow raid night, given some people were away, but we still had 13-or-so level 80 characters on come normal raid time. We attempted to 13-man the 25-man version of Noth in Naxx, but it didn't go so well. I think we got him about a quarter of the way down before debuff removal slipped and we lost almost everyone to a burst of Curse of the Plaguebringer. I think it might have been doable if we had our normal crew on their mains (or if we'd drawn Patchwerk for the weekly), but that spell is rough.

So we reorganized and sent a group through the 10-man version, beating him easily, then put together a mostly-alt run into ICC. It was slow and rough. There were lots of pauses. It took three tries (I believe) to down Lady Deathwhisper. It was later than usual when Saurfang spanked us and we wrapped for the night. Low DPS output was a hinderance. We had a few people still sporting dungeon blues (not bad for Naxx, but pretty bad for ICC), and some people that just don't seem to perform well regardless.

Now, I don't mind "carrying" people to an extent. If Marrogar isn't down in the first four minutes, or we wipe a few times here and there, that generally doesn't bug me. We've all had to build up gear and experience. What frustrates me more is when we have people who neither show improvement nor any communication abilities.


We had one person who was new to raiding and who's spent most of his time doing PVP. I don't know what I expected. I thought their gear would be reasonably good (though PVP gear isn't perfect for PVE, DPS gear usually isn't bad for it), but again, I think I saw some dungeon blues in that set, plus lots of missing gems/enchants. Well, gear isn't everything. But their damage output was pretty low (which I'll probably mark as less than 3k DPS with the ICC zone buff at +30%). But numbers aren't everything.
Then we got to the point where the raid leader was telling him where to stand and he wasn't doing it. Okay, we find he's not on Vent, so we give text directions and... he still doesn't seem to get it. And through it all, he's not saying "what?" or "okay, how do I do this?" No, he's saying nothing, so we don't have any way of knowing if he's understanding what he's being directed to do for the fight.

Another person has been involved in raiding before, now and again. He also doesn't communicate much and even having gotten some decent drops along the way, has shown no signs of improving as far as DPS. I constantly wonder what he's thinking or doing that isn't working, and have come to... well, expect virtually nothing from him, to be honest. If I had any sense that he was trying to contribute more, I probably wouldn't be bothered.

Nevermind that one or both hunters were dropping freezing and frost traps for Deathwhisper's adds, which are about the worst possible choices.

I want to help and support guild members. They're all friends-of-friends or family-of-friends, or something. But at some point, isn't there an expectation of improvement? If they need help in doing so, can they not ask? Heck, can't they say anything (other than "Oops" after rolling on gear they can't use when the raid leader says "roll for need")? Whether or not on Vent chattering away, raiding requires some degree of communication skills with your team, even if only to acknowledge orders and tactics. Failing at that is really not a good sign.