Oaklin

I had thought in November that maintaining a raid group in the face of already announced massive TBC changes (gear reset, downsizing etc) was hard, but at least it had a definite termination point, and a lot to look forward to. One and a half months into TBC, we're looking at a situation at least as difficult, with no end in sight.

Lets say you're not a super-elite guild like Nihilum or D&T, but merely (irony?) one of the top guilds on a 'normal' server. You are aiming for 25-man raid progress, and thus have to maintain 30-40+ active raiders. However, due to the way TBC raids are structured, you have to progress through Karazhan first. In fact, since the only 25-man target viable for 'normal' guilds is Maulgar (and Kazzak if you like world bosses), you will be spending the vast majority of your time in Karazhan. Thus, Karazhan raid spots are important in a way ZG and AQ20's never were. The loot is not trivialised by the 25-mans, and neither is the e-peen factor. In fact, players have nearly nothing else to look forward to. Karazhan is ... almost everything. So as officers, there are several choices.

You could run 1 Karazhan raid group and have huge numbers of unhappy people on bench. I would not have thought this was viable, but the other top horde guild on my server seems to be doing this, and getting away with it, so it must be.

You could run 2-3 Karazhan raid groups, and deal with all the associated logistical, manpower and social problems. An A/B team will also form naturally if you do not actively prevent it. A/B team setups are good for getting server/faction firsts (since A team effectively has the resources of the entire guild), but will generate huge amounts of jealousy and drama, with the added bonus of splitting your guild into cliques.

Lets say you choose to avoid the A/B team drama by splitting the guild into 2 fixed teams of roughly equal strength. You will have somewhat less drama, depending on how even the split really was, how close the 2 teams are in performance, and the power of 'the grass is greener' syndrome in your guild. Unfortunately, your raid progress will be reduced, and you will still get 2 cliques.

Lets say you take it another step further, and mix the teams up every week. The clique issue is now mostly solved, except between the raid leaders and MTs (who in my guild at least are in fixed groups each week, since obviously each group needs a raid leader and an MT). In exchange, you have slightly increased manning problems, since people are no longer terribly sure which raid times to come for, and teamwork/re-learning issues since people aren't raiding with the same team each week. In other words, even slower progression.

So now, when choosing which people to fill the raid slots each Karazhan, I have to consider the following factors
1) Which classes/players are needed to defeat the bosses for that night's raid with some semblance of reliability
2) Which players should I choose/not choose to prevent the appearance of an A/B team
3) Which players should I avoid locking into my instance because it would cause problems for the other team's manning
4) Which players do I not have access to because they are locked into the other team's instance
5) Which players should I cycle into the raid because they were left out last week. (assuming non-total underperformers)
6) How much should I allow 2)-5) to dampen the chances of actually getting a new boss down this week?

I also manage the RPP (DKP), so there's also a nasty amount of work each week ensuring that everyone in both raids as well as those who were benched/left out receive a fair share. I believe many guilds dont use DKP for Karazhan, but that would probably result in even greater unhappiness from those benched, and problems getting people to swap in/out of raids willingly.

The current level of drama in my guild is still merely moderate (as opposed to super-low pre-TBC), mostly because drama queens have largely been filtered out in the guild's first year, but the amount of work needed to maintain the current situation is painful, to say the least. Are there actually better solutions to these problems? Even if Blizzard were to 'fix' things, I don't see Karazhan becoming trivial enough to stop being a source of drama in anything less than 3-4 months.

For reference, we have Maulgar down and 1 group got Malchezaar this week while the other got Curator (plus Chess, obviously).

 

Zarat

We ran into this same exact issue. We have Maulgar on quick farm and should kill Gruul soon, but Karazhan is still by far our highest loot income zone. What we did was our first week basically had our 'stacked A team' as they tend to level the fastest anyways. We cleared all of it save for Nightbane that week. We took all we learned made a second group the next week, but kept our stacked group together. Well the second group had attendence and class balance issues and really didn't get very far. Third week we split the groups up evenly. This was working great. Group1 got Curator down the first night, Group2 was a little slower but only by a small bit. Then Group1's OT had to visit family, and we didn't have a replacement ready yet. Group2, however, was able to kill Prince. Last week We reformed our stacked group now that we could summon Nightbane and we DESTROYED him in 7-8 total attempts. We straight up one shot'd basically everything. Our second group lacked people and couldn't get past Aran. Next week we should have enough people to have 2 groups with enough extra people so that both can clear karazhan, and maybe including Nightbane.

We decided early on to not have Karazhan on our points system. Mostly just to reduce the headache of that. Because the groups are so small and there is very little overlap of people who can use any one item no one has complained about using /random. This has really been a great relief as the Guildleader.

The biggest issue I see going forward is we do not have enough tanks and healers to run 3 groups. So they will always be required in one of the two groups. DPS will have to rotate out and take longer to gear up. Nightbane just complicates this. I'm just not looking forward to rotating people out for a month to attune the whole guild.

 

• Playered

Curious to the size of your guild Zarat, as a month to attune people seems relativly high when things come down to it (unless your relating to TK25 in which I feel most guilds will struggle mainly with the Heroics for everyone rather than the actual raiding), as Gruul attunement is basicly 2 kills and your done, Nightbane is 2 weeks at most to atleast get enough to raid with, 3 if you want a really safe margin of playerbase to choose from.

 

Cull

For my guild which was just coming off of Naxx it was best for us to go with the equal A/B team setup. Originally we tried to do 3 teams but we were spreading ourselves way to thin. So far we have had equal progression from both raid teams.

The first thing you have to do when creating these teams within your officer core is to make sure you add your officers in last. This way hopefully no bias's extend into your group makeup decisions. Then you go down your list of players and look at everything...

- Attendance
- Leadership
- Skill
- Time spent In-game
- Gear
- 'annoyance factor'

Then do your best to split each class up into two groups. As more players get keyed repeat the process for the individual and place him in the best suited group.

As for DKP, we don't award anything for Karazhan.

 

thebuddha

In the long run, I think DKP for Karazhan will be more hassle than it's worth. It all depends on your guild though; some people like to work things out and others like to follow a more rigid system. It's hard to say which one is 'better.'

I think for your typical sized raiding guilds in TBC, 2 groups is optimal. Yes, you might have enough people for three but you'd likely be stretching yourself thin and if people can't show up you're left with 3 half-successful groups instead of 2 successful groups.

 

Zarat

About 35 people. We have some casuals so we had to over recruit to cover the gaps. As I said in my orginal post, our tanks/healers will always be the same due to how many we have so at best we will only be attuning 5 people per group per week (Nightbane being the limit). Much less (3ish) if we don't fully rotate our DPS classes out each week. Forcing half the raid to learn an encounter (even if only the DPS classes) Slows us down in other areas, aswell.

Gruul attunement numbers are much better because you can attune so many in that first kill.

 

Mencius

Pretty much all this was covered here...

Raid spots and leftovers

 

dascott

We have 3 groups, each with officers. We rotate people in for Nightbane kills as we can. So far A and B have killed Nightbane. I did it with B and it was a total nightmare - mostly due to an Australian tank that understandably had many issues with fear due to latency. I've never hated hordes lack of fear ward more than over the last three days. It was total frustration. Naturallly, we walk in and two shot him on the last night of the lock. Sheesh.

Honestly, getting all your actives Nightbane is going to be hellish compared to Gruul/Mag. Keep on your people and make sure that everyone is getting in on Nightbane, even if it means they give up loot farming with your B/C group for a sure kill with your A group.

What's sad is I have a nightbane kill but not a single loot from Khara. Yay?

 

Jayde

We're not as far along with Karazhan as I would have liked, since we were a bit late in starting...already we have Maulgar down and have been working on trying to emphasize the 25-man nights as a "guild building" effort.

I can certainly identify with the stuggles here, and it's been tough finding a good solution. We started with the "A team" and quickly got almost all the server firsts up to Illhoof and Aran down to 32% or first week, however there was a lot of discontent in the guild about the whole "A team" issue, and something had to give there.

As soon as we had enough people that it was viable (~33 active raiders) I looked at everyone's signup for the week and composed two pretty equal teams, with backups corresponding to class need and away days. We ended up with trouble with one of the groups in our last day, since we "lent" the other group one of our backups...but all around it worked well.

The group with the raid leader from the original "A team" was out the gates a bit faster, but we tried to give a lot of support to the other team (which had members/officers from the original group also) and help get them through Curator on their first week. All in all, while it has been "bad" for "progression" (we ended up losing "omg servar first" on Aran-Prince because of it) it was much better for the guild to not be having the whole irritation issue with running a single group, or stacked groups.

Ultimately, I think it's better in the long-run to have balanced group and take it slower...as that will help bring your whole guild up to a more even play level for the 25-man content. Given how limited and somewhat poor the progression curve is in TBC so far, I honestly am very unconcerned with progression speed atm, and mostly think that building up the guild to be on a more even field and not get upset/disorginized/jealous of Karazhan drama is probably the more important thing to do.

 

Lokoki

My guild is in a very similar situation to yours. We divide the guild up into two groups as we don't have enough people to reliably fill 3 raids, without gimping ourselves. When the weeks starts (like tonight), we invite everyone interested in going to Karazhan into one raid. We then divide people up into two raids as equally as possible. We don't allow A/B teams to form. We don't allow cliques to form. The two raids are balanced and I think we're doing pretty well. To this point, both raids have killed everything but Nightbane and Netherspite. Sure, we would have progressed farther if we stacked one raid and put "scrubs" in the other. But at what cost? Karazhan is just the tip of the iceberg. It's not worth splitting up a guild over the first raid instance in the expansion.

http://ctprofiles.net/2427034

 

Kazanir

We tried doing this, and discovered, in short, the problem that Mencius posted elsewhere: A lot of people expect to be able to raid Karazhan in greens and level 60 epics, and that just doesn't cut it. We've had to cut back to one raid to progress as opposed to gimping two raids. It's a fine balance -- I don't want to create cliques, but some people are just not prepared to raid with those who have gotten the gear and done the footwork, as it were.

 

Digo

I took a completely hands off approach and told people it's their responsibility to raid Karazhan on their own. So far, it's worked out pretty well. Slackers and hand-holders (incidentally, the most vocal opponents to this decision) will get left behind, everyone else will eventually get keyed/geared. Trying to enforce groups when people have radically different playtimes will cause more problems than it solves.

 

Lokoki

We have run into that issue, somewhat. It hasn't hampered progression, though. We had one warrior show up to tank Midnight wearing mostly tier 2 (I was tanking Attumen). He kept dying, so we had to replace him. I felt bad, but there was no other way around it.

I think as time goes on, you'll be able to run two raids more successfully. Some people don't realize how important the gear in the 5-mans is, right now.

http://ctprofiles.net/2427034

 

Mem

Sounds not to bad. Since some folks decided to give me some responsibility in my new guild (somehow I seem to attract such notion even though I was planning on just planning and leaving decision making to others), I'm really wondering which is the best approach. One really big factor in this decision is the structure in your guild. Ours is very casual, there are quite a lot of folks who haven't yet completed the attunement. Furthermore this very casual atmosphere mixed with some more progression minded people led to severe problems that culminated in the loss of about ten to fifteen of the better geared and skilled players and left us with a decent shortage of healers (especially since most druids prefer to stay feral).
Despite all these troubles we want to restart Kara rather soon again (due to the turmoil we had to take a week raiding break and have to reconfigure our teams).
We will probably try to make up two rather balanced teams (if we can muster enough healer) but even that will be a nightmare, I guess. Kara is definitely a challenge for most guildleaderships especially since my old raid seems to suffer pretty similar problems that I experience on my new server.
I think, our repair bills will be steep in the first weeks since a lot of folks are just used to farming static 40 man content without showing initiative and good footwork. May you live in interesting times is really a curse after all

 

Mooz

We were a small raiding guild going into TBC (~55, just enough to fill out Naxx raids on any given night), and once the dust settled after the expansion, we've found that we have ~30-35 people on during prime-time. But due to wacky class balance (1-2 druids, 1 paladin, 1-2 warlocks v a bunch of wars/rogs/mages), we're only able to realistically run 1 Kara group a week.

For the first week, it was the hardcore that got keyed first, we pushed a quick clear up through Prince in the second? week. Now that we're comfortable with the zone though, when we're doing a scheduled Kara run, we just ask our class channels to decide on a rotation based on their play schedules, loot they want, etc. It keeps a good balanced group, and allows people say in when they go, and at the same time allows us the flexibility of a single raidid for the guild's Kara groups.

Yes, we don't gear up as fast as if we managed to do 2-3 clears a week, but the Kara loot aren't really upgrades from the heroic loot anyway, so it's pretty moot in terms of gear progression.

 

Strifen

Dealing with Karazhan has been a tricky task and one that i’m sure has caused storms of drama within guilds. Thankfully not so much with us. So far my guild is the most progressed on the server, first to kill Maulgar and the only guild to have killed Nightbane so far. Karazhan has been a confusing question of what to do and how to handle the raid invites. What I personally think is best for a guild around the size of 35ish people would to make Team A, and Team B. I can only imagine the type of drama that would be caused if we ran one team nightly and had 20-25 people sitting outside with the people to form another raid, it would just be downright silly anyways.

What we've been doing is opening up selective raid invites on Tuesday when our raid invites go out. We have one central raid to start off where we invite everyone and create the two teams. From a bit of discussion with the other officers in my guild we try our best to balance out the two raid teams as best as possible. Making sure that each one is stepping in the instance with the most desirable raid comp and class balance. Dividing up and taking everything into consideration from skill, playtime, raid experience, and even just people who we know do or do not get a long the best. From there we split off and the two teams go our way. The biggest thing I can advise to reduce as much TeamA/B headache as possible is swap the teams around every new Tuesday, mixing the two existing teams around while bringing in a couple new people at a time. This way the two teams can actually remember that you're in the same guild playing on the same team. If you are to have two pre-made teams every week and you don’t switch it up you're right up the alley for a lot of potential clique-ness in your guild and drama through A/B team. Especially if you put the best most reliable people in team A.

 

Trepidati0n

Our guild, as a whole, isn't super progression oriented. But, we aren't sitting around either. What we did is FFA it for a while. This allowed people with similar mindsets to "gravitate" together. In a guild that can sometimes have 80+ logged in, this works. We have had our fair share of drama over this, but I think most of it has settled out since we now have 4 teams running. I think people were more upset that they weren't there for day 1 and felt entitled to it.

Since that point, most of the teams have shuffled a bit to more align playing schedules. Our "top" team (people who are motivated and have significant play time) have downed all but nightbane. The other 3 teams have all pretty much cleared through opera but w/o much stress (aka properly geared and talented, just not as much play time).

We also aren't doing DKP/etc. We are allowing the people who can use the gear decide their method of distribution. We are expecting people to act like adults and sort it out amongst themselves. If they go all drama…guess time to find a new teammate.

I think the long term benefit of this is that more people will be more properly geared for when we actually move into serpentshrine instead of a just a few "elite" people being pimped out and everybody else gasping in their blues.

Yes we are moving slower, but I think the overall progression is more "fun" since we aren't putting the cart ahead of horse in terms of gear and encounter difficulty. Wiping on a boss 5-10 times and making good progress is a lot more fun, IMO, than wiping for 2 days straight and barely gaining ground while burning 100’s of G on consumables and repairs.

I’m pretty sure that 6-months from now that Karazhan will be a once a week thing to run people through for attunement or just an off-day raiding type thing. Heroics will pretty much be the zone for gearing up for the 25-man content.

 

Keline

DKP for karazhan is quite an overkill, given how rarely more than 1 person is interested in an item.

 

Mencius

We use DKP for Karazhan as a way of getting a basis of DKP started for later instances. While most people don't have disputes over items because only 1 person usually wants the item it's nice to have a DKP pool as a guide to who put in the time to raid and who didn't.

While some people feel that sit outs aren't earning DKP and therefore DKP is unfair, the selection process that goes into raids is directly reflected in DKP standings. If you whine and cry about raid spots and then happen to be "to busy" on other nights you won't get raid spots in the future and if you do your DKP will obviously be less than those who were there for the learning process.

DKP, like it always has been, is about rewarding people who really put in the time and effort to learn stuff and get things done.

However, that isn't to say that DKP can't cause problems down the line. Generally, there has to be a upgrade force-loot policy in effect. Meaning that if an item is a clear upgrade but a person is DKP hoarding they will be force looted it, end of story.

We use a system like this to combat that type of behavior and to encourage members to build up a DKP base so they can stay competitve later on.

When it comes down to it people participate in raids for 1 of 2 reasons. First, they want to see content, learn, and progess; generally the gear and DKP is secondary. Second, they want gear and to stack their DKP; generally progress is secondary.

If you need people in raids and what them to come you need to appeal to both motivations. Yeah, it sucks to have to cater to the DKP whores out there, but if you need them than you need to. However, if you don't need them in your raid because spots are full... then fuck em. They can sit.

 

Tempestra

We run with around 28-30 raiders in my guild. That's enough to have two relatively happy Karazhan raids of 14-15 people each. Both have cleared everything but Nightbane and we're working on him this week. When we only had 20-ish people, we only ran one team and pushed hard to learn as many fights as possible. This helped tremendously when we eventually got more raiders keyed and started running two teams.

We mix up everything each week - team names, raid leaders (4 officers, 2 per group), and raiders - to assure that we don't form cliques and "Team A"/"Team B" mentalities. We're going to have to learn to work with each other and find out what everyone is good and bad at eventually. Because Bliz won't provide us with a 25-man "learning" instance, Karazhan is where we have to do it.

As for DKP, we run zero-sum on our 25-mans but don't use DKP for Karazhan. We do /random (gasp, I know) and officers have final say in whether someone is allowed to roll - taking into consideration whether it's an effective upgrade and how long they've been coming. Puts more of an onus on the raid leaders but so be it. We haven't had any real disputes, thank goodness =).

 

Lucit

We only had about 15 70s our first week in Karazhan, but since then we've been running two relatively balanced groups. We're not doing too badly - we killed Nightbane a couple days behind a guild that stacked one raid for maximum success (and also came in with a KT kill under their belts - none of us have downed more than ~8 Naxx bosses). However, I think it's worth explaining the challenges we've faced.

- Egos. My guild is essentially a combination of three Naxx guilds that splintered before the expansion. Since most of the people we picked up were officers, class leaders, etc - it's difficult to tell someone they're going to have to sit out.

- Cliques. Obviously, combining three guilds like that, you're going to end up with cliques. This has lessened significantly over the past few weeks. Part of that is just familiarity, but the fact that we don't have a set "A Team" and "B Team" really helps. You get stuck with the same 13ish people for the entire week of Karazhan.

- Depth. Since we formed as a BC raiding guild, we only have about 35 raiders to start with. So we can't stack classes to beat encounters (not that it's been particularly necessary). We also generally have a shortage of tanks and healers. We downed Nightbane with a druid MT and one lonely tremor totem.

Ultimately I'm extremely happy with our decision to run two evenly split raids. Keeps everyone happy in the long run, and guild stability is much more important than getting that server first kill.

 

Amera

We've managed to assemble 4 pretty successful Kara groups by dipping into our social rank for additional healers to flush out the last group. It's a different approach than stacking up a super group and letting them have at the zone. I'm not sure if it is good or bad yet, but it has resulted in the most loot and most upgrades, at the price of slower progression.

I'm confident I could stack a 10 raid with our best players, with 4 people waiting outside for certain fights, and clear the zone in no time. Is this worth the long-term price of bruised egos, slowed loot overall, etc? I'm not sure, but I think these are really the only 2 choices for a guild with this size of playerbase.