From what you wrote, including the copy of the letter “wayne” sent you, I can completely understand his point of view.
1. People get burned out. If you are the one constantly being relied upon, it is even worse. I’m just dps, but I’m relied upon and sometimes the weight is just too much to bear. Sometimes I want to play an alt without being guilted into helping them clear content.

2. You said this person would go with you guys before anyone else would (or at least the impression I got). I would think that says much more than him wanting a break. It says that he was there for the hard times when nobody else was. I would think this would be deserving of a break.

3. I am pretty well geared except for a couple of pieces as are many people in our raids. I think some of us need to take a break if only to allow other people slots so they can be better geared.

He may not have expressed his needs in the best way, but he knew you’d be disappointed.

Your post makes it sound like you’re disappointed precisely because this guy’s been rock-steady up until now, and the sudden ‘on break until Ulduar’ therefore comes as a bolt from the blue. If this guy wasn’t part of your ‘core’ until now, I’d guess that simply saying ‘time for a replacement’ would be much easier.

I’ll agree the sudden ’see ya’ is pretty badly done. But it may be that he has better reasons than his note lets on, and simply made some bad calls in handling things, or else some bad assumptions about how the guild would deal with this.

It might be worth it to drop ‘Wayne’ a brief note to express the surprise/disappointment, and see if he’s willing to work with you a bit. If he’s not, then yeah, I’d cheerfully join the other commenters who say ‘find a new full-time healadin’.

If your readers come from a guild with a different environment, they are likely to respond differently than I. There are raiders out there whowork their way through content by jumping from guild to guild, taking the loots they need and moving on to a guild that has better progression. And there are other players out there who see nothing wrong with this sort of behaviour. It all depends on what sort of player you are and what sort of guild you are in.

And to the folks who suggest this is Blizz’s fault … if you’re bored with raiding, are you bored with your guild? Your professions? PvP? Real RP? Just chilling out with your guilides (assuming they are as good a set of friends as we have)? I think if you look at WoW as “a game where I go to raid” then you’re missing outon some really fun content, both programmed in and spontaneously created by the players around you.

Oriniwens last blog post..Behind Every Guild Leader …

“Hey Wayne,
No worries, have a nice break from WoW. Unfortunately since we still need a paladin in our raids we will be recruiting another. Simply put once Ulduar is released you will be competing for a raid spot against them, and since we reward people with higher attendance rate with spots first you may find yourself out of luck.

No hard feelings, just thought you’d like to know, thanks for understanding

Matt”

Don’t hate the player, people…. hate the game.

Melf_Himselfs last blog post..Review: Defense Grid

You have people like Wayne who raid to get gear.

You have others who gear to raid.

He has made it clear what kind of raider he is. Is this the kind of person you want raiding with you? Is this the message you want to send to your other raiders?

Seems simple enough a decision to me. In my guild he’d never raid again with us.

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