I joined my last raiding guild during their time of need for holy paladins. They had two at the time that would show up to around 1 out of 5 raids per week, which wasn't allowing for progression. I was beyond crappy geared at the time that I joined up, but they wanted me as I was mature and competent: I was in 95% auctionhouse greens the day I was invited to the guild and healed through every boss in SSC but vashj. Needless to say, my output was sub-par, but I didn't die or wipe the raid so I got to stay.
Through the course of the next two months, I improved my gear by leaps and bounds. The guild operated on a loot council system, so the ones who needed the gear the most got it. As I was in greens (Although to be fair I was running instances as fast as my butt could, trying to make up the gap with blue drops) I got lots of loot. I was the first to get 4 pieces of paladin t5, and the first in the guild to get a helmet token drop from Vashj on our first kill. This was before they nerfed the casting speed buff on the 4 piece bonus, so paladins were #1 in line for helmet drops.
After the month it took us to get Vashj and Kaelthas down, we finally got our foot in the BT/Hyjal door, and promptly blasted through the first few bosses in those instances. As most paladins do, I tried to do my best, but found that my performance on the various meters and log parsing tools the guild used was going down fast compared with other healing classes. Especially those damn resto shamans. During BT raids, I started to have trouble even looking busy. I'd throw out flash of light to people that where at 100% health all day long. Our raid leader singled me out (among the other paladins who were having the same kind of problem) and started to become abusive. I was urged by other officers to let it slide off my back, but the insults and accusations continued to fly. I was told on many occasions that I was being pulled along by the guild and afking through raids. My near 100% attendance, my effort put into farming mats and always being at the summoning stone on time instead of asking for summons, the fact that I'd warn my class leader if I couldn't attend a raid (something most other raiders wouldn't bother to do) was completely forgotten. I pressed on, deciding that I could live with one person in the guild being hateful, and I wanted to see the rest of the end-game instances.
It was around the beginning of Hyjal, and before we started getting into BT, when one of the paladins who had poor attendance started to show up again. Apparently he had finished a hard semester at school and was able to get back into the game. I had assumed that my place in the guild wasn't in jeopardy from him, as he had dropped out of the raiding roster. I was wrong. As my raid leader had a vendetta against me (which to this day I have not figured out) I started to have to ask for invites to raids. I heard "We're full on healers" a few times, and was forced to point out "That guy's in the instance with you, and I was on time not late. Why is he in there?" I was allowed in to replace someone, although it was usually someone else that was asked to leave, not him. We started getting t6 bosses down, and as expected, loot fell everywhere but to me. I didn't let that bother me, because I reminded myself that the same system that got me so much loot before would mean others would get upgrades as they needed it more. However, once that paladin overtook me in gear level, the loot did not start falling back to me. It continued to pile up on him, even gear that was a far greater upgrade for me than for him. That was the point where I left the server. There wasn't much point guild-hopping, I was at the top and didn't feel like starting over again.
Highly successful? Yes. Nice? By no means. Welcome to the World of Raiding, expect no favors.
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