Slight derail: Guilds that min/max in this way aren't really what you would call 'friendly' guilds. I call them 'common-goal' guilds instead. These people don't stay in the guild because they like the people in it, though some friendships are formed over time. No, people come to/stay in these guilds for the common purpose of being the best/near best guilds on their server at raiding.

Friendly guilds play a bit different game. That's part of why it's hard to take your normal friendly/casual guild and make them into heavy raiders on the highest levels. Different reasons to play entirely.

Yes, there are always exceptions, and friendly guilds *do* take down big raid bosses, but they don't do it first. I'm not saying anyone's way is *wrong*, just that different types operate the way they do for different reasons.

That's what I've experienced as well. We never force specs, though we have asked people to respec based on the encounter if we're stuck in a rut. I wouldn't really consider us a high-end raiding guild though. We're the furthest progressed horde guild on the server and have been for a couple years (messing with mag and just set foot in SSC for the first time this week), but we raid only 3-4 hours a night twice a week.

Our GM basically has said that he'd rather people play in the spec that they enjoy than forcing them to spec for 100% PVE. I'm sure it's held us back a bit from time to time having DPS classes specced for PVP or priests with shadow specs forced to heal an entire raid due to attendance issues, but in the end people are happier when they have the freedom to play the way they want. I'd say on any given day we have maybe a dozen players in a 25man raid with optimal PVE specs, and maybe another 10 that have some sort of hybrid spec that "works" and allows them to keep up - but with a better spec they'd definitely perform better. A few others generally drag behind at the bottom of the meters, but if they served no utility to the raid there's no question they would indeed be replaced by someone else.

I know I've personally hearthed out of a raid in the past to respec because a hybrid or PVP build wasn't allowing me to play up to my potential. Unfortunately alot of other guildmates will just shrug off the poor performance and think nothing of it, and I feel that's not right.

I don't go that far, but I definitely tell players that if they can make a spec VIABLE for raiding, go for it. If the meters prove them wrong, I ask them politely to respec to something a little more useful.

So far in BC I haven't had a single problem. We are able to identify players who are not DPS'ing/healing to their potential and help them, and it's rarely a spec issue. Then again my guild is pretty solid pure PvE (we have a few arena teams, but they don't respec) so it's not generally a big issue.

That's a pretty bold generalization to make especially when I don't even think it's accurate. You're using your singular experience to summarize that of the entire player base.

I would contest that when you see a group that is specced uniformly for one purpose it is a result from the competitive drive and the feeling of being part of a team. After all, when you do form friendships (assuming that these so called 'min/maxers' are even capable of that), why would you want to be the one that lets your team down when you wipe at 1% or let the tank die because he's OOM or don't hold aggro etc. etc.?

I don't see how anything I said implies I raid to be 'better than people.' Nor do I make presumptions about how other people play the game as you are doing.

I also raid with my friends. I also raid for my own accomplishment. My point is that it's flat out incorrect to think that those characteristics are mutually exclusive e.g. a guild can't min/max while also maintaining the aforementioned while, of course, being successful and having fun.

There are always those who manage to do both at the same time. However, my experience with 'top-end' raiding guilds on the three servers I've played on has varied. On one server, the top two raid guilds were full of drama, and full of people I tried not to interact with if at all possible. Big egos, big chips on their shoulders, etc. On my 2nd server, the server I raided on, they weren't nearly as bad, while on my Horde server, it's different entirely, but, you can tell that many of the people who joined the main raiding guilds did it for the raiding, not for the comradeship. Probably the closest to what you're talking about was on the server I raided on, where the top raiding guild was a pretty nice bunch.

thebuddha, please try not to read things into my post that I didn't say. Believe me, I've not set out to impugn the min/maxers. I know several people who I raided with that do a lot of it themselves. I played a pure PvE spec while I raided, so, I specced for the team, too.

I'm going to have to agree with buddha here... "friendly" and "min/max" as you've mentioned are two completely different and unrelated characteristics of a guild.

I've seen guilds that were min/max that were very friendly and had a good time raiding, while I've seen guilds that were cut/throat and downright mean at times that didn't bother min/maxing much at all, all with varying levels of success.

Also, with regards to "common-goal", both types you mentioned there have common goals, they just have different goals.

What I alluded to before was that problems arise when the goals of a guild's leadership are different from the majority of the guild's membership. Then people start getting forced to do things they don't want to do, and no one is happy, so they don't perform regardless of what spec they chose.

After some bumpy months in late 2006 in Naxx, we revamped our guild policies going into BC. Essentially established that the guild as a whole (and particularly those wanting to raid regularly) put PvE raiding success as its primary objective. Therefore, raiders are expected to gear and spec themselves for raiding first. Want to re-spec for PvP on the weekends? Go nuts; hope you win a dragon mount. But when you show up to raid, bring your raid gear and your raid spec.

This mainly affects those hybrid classes, e.g. don't sign up to heal in raids and show up with your PvP DPS spec. We allow a little more latitude for the single-function DPS classes, but still expect them to spec for raids. For example, I expect my mages to work things into their spec like aggro reduction, +hit, mana cost reduction, and debuffs into their specs for what (I should hope) are reasons too obvious to name, but I don't really care which school they make their primary. Those players unwilling to make such tweaks soon find that they don't get invited as often as the player who are willing.

Unlike Kycan, I do mean to pick on this particular post. I think you're talking about small scale raiding likeheroics/karazhan, where mobs/bosses are not level 73, all potential debuffs/buffs are not applied, etc. I draw that conclusion from a quick armory check, where you have 30 hit rating. 30!

Even wearing frozen shadow weave vs good non spellfire set, a frost mage will not do as much dps as a fire mage. Without accounting for WE, we're looking at 300~ less dps including having a lot better gear. Under the best conditions, WE will hit for 900 and get 12-13~ casts off alltogether (he goes oom), starts with 2400~ mana uses 224/cast. Now factor in resists and crits (let's just say they cancel eachother), divide by 180 and we're looking at 65 dps!

235 dps is quite a theorycraft difference. OH, and fire ends up having higher dpm!

One other observation just from reading this thread, makes me look in awe of how people so easily lose the drive to improve if they're on top in their current guild. Just because you're #1 dps as frost in your current guild doesen't mean that frost is "good" in a pve sense. If anything, it shows that you need to light a fire under the ass of most of the other people in your guild. Since it's saying much more about them than you. Moral of the story?

Combination of in-guild/cross-guild evaluations of effectiveness = Good!
Complacency from being #1 in your guild in a subpar spec = Absolutely terrible.

Dedicated, quality players will frequently overcome their "PVP spec" in PVE.

That's just all there is to it.