An enormous factor in how enjoyable raids are is definitely the people. I would say the difficulty of it is 75% the people and 25% the actual fights.
Back when we only had 1st Coil, if you'd asked me if I liked raiding, I would've said no. My RL friend was the static leader and cobbled together a group from the FC, with me as one of the tanks. We were decent - got up to Twisters before 2.2 came out - but I wouldn't say we meshed all that well. A couple of people's personalities grated on me, one of them had a bad habit of starting idle chatter in Vent when we were trying to clear a phase that was giving us trouble, and we had a couple of flakes who sometimes wouldn't show up unless we found them through Facebook or someone else knew their number, and wasted a lot of time trying to get ahold of them or find a replacement the night of. Actually learning the fights was just exhausting, and the myth gear was equal to, if not better than, what dropped in the turns. I pretty much only stayed out of a sense of loyalty to my friend and FCmates and my personal policy of "if it is within my power to tank it, then point me in its direction and I'll go greet it with my face".
My friend had to take a hiatus back in May/June. A few more members left the game. Our SCH took over and we merged with another FC static that had fallen apart. If you ask me now if I like raiding, I'd tell you yes. All of my group are chill people, we never yell at each other, when we wipe we go over what went wrong and how we can do better, if our strat needs adjusting. Skill-wise, we are decent but not amazing - we raid 4-5 hours a week; it took us about 3 weeks each to beat T6-T8, and then T9 took 13 weeks... yeah, a lot of hours. A lot of wiping, a lot of food and potions, a lot of making mistakes, a lot of watching your friends make mistakes and swearing not to repeat them, then making the same mistakes anyway until it's been ingrained in the very fiber of your being "Don't do this thing! Do this other thing instead!" And when you finally down the boss and see 8 achievements hit the chat, oh man, it's euphoric.
I wouldn't have been able to stand the process if I didn't love each of my static members so much. Those wipes aren't something I view with frustration, but as some of my most hilarious stories. I know I am very fortunate in this regard. Now that Coil is fun to me and the lockout has been removed from SCoB, I'd like others to be able to experience it as well. I jump into T5-T9 learning parties quite a bit, but they remind me of how I felt with my first Coil group. Players don't quite trust each other, they don't talk about what went wrong in the previous attempts, and there is always that one flake who has to leave after 30 minutes when it took an hour to bring the group together. When you are dying over and over with people you don't like, making inches of progress if even that, patience wears thin very fast. And when that atmosphere becomes the face of raiding for someone with no static, the whole idea of raiding is just more trouble than it's worth.
I ran T7 last night as a bard for the first time and volunteered for Renaud duty. I was horrible. I missed hiding for a few shrieks and voiced about 6 people, clipped the healers with Circle of Flames, and at one point Shadowbind wore off and I had a brief moment of panic when I saw the Renaud barreling towards me before I remembered that it hits for 600 damage now instead of 14k. We had no right to win that fight had it been in its pre-nerf state, but it was completely doable now. More importantly, it was fun.
That is what raiding is to me. Wiping with friends and having fun. The nerfs did their job, IMO. But the "finding 7 others who will support you instead of rage" part will always be hard. Player skill and knowledge of mechanics can always be taught, but a teammate's attitude is nigh impossible to change. Post-2.5 I really hope SE looks into adding smaller raids, maybe 4 or 5-mans, if only to ease the process of finding good people to play with.
(Oops, that got more rambly than I meant, apologies. And people above me have pretty much said what I wanted to say, but in far fewer words...)
Back when we only had 1st Coil, if you'd asked me if I liked raiding, I would've said no. My RL friend was the static leader and cobbled together a group from the FC, with me as one of the tanks. We were decent - got up to Twisters before 2.2 came out - but I wouldn't say we meshed all that well. A couple of people's personalities grated on me, one of them had a bad habit of starting idle chatter in Vent when we were trying to clear a phase that was giving us trouble, and we had a couple of flakes who sometimes wouldn't show up unless we found them through Facebook or someone else knew their number, and wasted a lot of time trying to get ahold of them or find a replacement the night of. Actually learning the fights was just exhausting, and the myth gear was equal to, if not better than, what dropped in the turns. I pretty much only stayed out of a sense of loyalty to my friend and FCmates and my personal policy of "if it is within my power to tank it, then point me in its direction and I'll go greet it with my face".
My friend had to take a hiatus back in May/June. A few more members left the game. Our SCH took over and we merged with another FC static that had fallen apart. If you ask me now if I like raiding, I'd tell you yes. All of my group are chill people, we never yell at each other, when we wipe we go over what went wrong and how we can do better, if our strat needs adjusting. Skill-wise, we are decent but not amazing - we raid 4-5 hours a week; it took us about 3 weeks each to beat T6-T8, and then T9 took 13 weeks... yeah, a lot of hours. A lot of wiping, a lot of food and potions, a lot of making mistakes, a lot of watching your friends make mistakes and swearing not to repeat them, then making the same mistakes anyway until it's been ingrained in the very fiber of your being "Don't do this thing! Do this other thing instead!" And when you finally down the boss and see 8 achievements hit the chat, oh man, it's euphoric.
I wouldn't have been able to stand the process if I didn't love each of my static members so much. Those wipes aren't something I view with frustration, but as some of my most hilarious stories. I know I am very fortunate in this regard. Now that Coil is fun to me and the lockout has been removed from SCoB, I'd like others to be able to experience it as well. I jump into T5-T9 learning parties quite a bit, but they remind me of how I felt with my first Coil group. Players don't quite trust each other, they don't talk about what went wrong in the previous attempts, and there is always that one flake who has to leave after 30 minutes when it took an hour to bring the group together. When you are dying over and over with people you don't like, making inches of progress if even that, patience wears thin very fast. And when that atmosphere becomes the face of raiding for someone with no static, the whole idea of raiding is just more trouble than it's worth.
I ran T7 last night as a bard for the first time and volunteered for Renaud duty. I was horrible. I missed hiding for a few shrieks and voiced about 6 people, clipped the healers with Circle of Flames, and at one point Shadowbind wore off and I had a brief moment of panic when I saw the Renaud barreling towards me before I remembered that it hits for 600 damage now instead of 14k. We had no right to win that fight had it been in its pre-nerf state, but it was completely doable now. More importantly, it was fun.
That is what raiding is to me. Wiping with friends and having fun. The nerfs did their job, IMO. But the "finding 7 others who will support you instead of rage" part will always be hard. Player skill and knowledge of mechanics can always be taught, but a teammate's attitude is nigh impossible to change. Post-2.5 I really hope SE looks into adding smaller raids, maybe 4 or 5-mans, if only to ease the process of finding good people to play with.
(Oops, that got more rambly than I meant, apologies. And people above me have pretty much said what I wanted to say, but in far fewer words...)