Short Query: What are your strategies to prevent your veteran raiders from burning out quickly, by having to re-train new people in raid instances, night after night?

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Backstory: We maintain a large pool of players with which to pick & choose from when it comes time to schedule raids.

The Plus: We don't have to "kick people out" for not raiding, we just rotate more dedicated people in.

The Minus: We have a LOT of players that need to be geared out, and to gear them out, they must learn the instances...and that requires training.

The vets are fairly patient...but even they have their breaking point, and they want to have fun too. What isn't fun is relearning the Karazhan fights night-after-night-after-night, because so many new people move through the instance.

I had a quick pow-wow with my officers last night to discuss various solutions...all of which have ramifications:

1. Drop Karazhan off the schedule and let the guild fend for itself -> Karazhan runs begin to fall apart, horribly.

2. Tighten teams up; Like another thread on these boards, we use a simliar "east" vs. "west" team mentality, but these pools are also huge. Technically we could tighten them up to only the same 10 people, reducing re-train burnout -> Kara runs would slow down or not run at all, due to not all 10 people's schedules working together.

3. Announce an official line-up of Raiders that are to be used for 25-mans and Karazhan, so that we are not accepting new people into the raiding schedule -> Mass attrition, after people discover they are not going to have their hands held.

I'm not saying that any of these ramifications are necessarily bad; they may be just that: necessary in order to continue at a reasonable pace, while ensuring people have fun running the instances and enjoying themselves, without having to spend their evenings re-teaching people fights. This post may very well just be a sanity check; perhaps you are all having to "re-train people" week after week, and it is a necessary evil that we just need to buck up and get used to.

What I'd really like to hear are how some of your guilds handle this, and if the consequences to these kinds of changes are warranted in order to raid successfully.

We go with a 50/50 approach, for example getting the signet off Nightbane. We had 5 guys who knew the fight and already had theirs and 5 new new guys.

Worked like a charm and twoshotted him (some minor bad "luck" on the first try and 60ish wipe).

There is no cure. Simple as that really. Have real life get togethers regularly perhaps so people feel a more real life connection and a larger sense of responsibility is the only concrete suggestion I can give.

Lacking that you can try gimics like making a 'team fat kid' and throwing all the people who the Shade of Aran chant is made for and hoping they're cool about it.

You can have everyone make a list of Kara drops they want and sub the newbies in on a fight or two if nobody in the "A-team" group wants that particular item.

Or you can just put up with the revolving door and pray you never get hit too hard by it. It's a pain in the ass but it's a problem that will be around forever.

We had a team that started first (the first 10 to be keyed and ready basically) and the slow fat kids.

We have enough for 3 teams really, but we only run two.

Started off with 2 seperate teams, locked in with each other.

Evolved to a draft. 2 MTs picked their teams. Kinda worked like a fantasy football draft. Pick a healer, other MT picks two, then the first picks 2, etc. Then they did OTs, then DPS.

Everyone in our guild has played with each other for a while and at that point everyone knew the instance, so it was a fun jumble.

Now that everyone has a lot of the loot they need, we are forming by who needs what. For example we have 2 healers who want mace off maiden. We make an effort to pop them in seperate groups.

People get nights off since we only run 2 teams, people are able to switch out, etc.

Gruul and maulgor tend to be pretty friendly to a few new guys as long as they are decent players and are capable of looking around themselves.

Of course, as Vhex said, there isnt much of a real cure-all. You need to find what is gonna work with your guild. You need to find a way to make it fun.

In short, your guild needs to pick a direction, and realize whichever way you go, you're going to lose people. Either you stay family style as you are, and see your more hardcore/raiding oriented people leave, or go raiding and lose the people who aren't able (for whatever reason) to keep up. It's a painful process, but with careful planning you can minimize the fallout.

My guild started out family style, but as vanilla went on, we slowly morphed into a raiding guild (basically the guild, while still close, is basically there to raid, although we do the RL gathering/light non-serious pvp/swapping people in for bosses that characterizes a more social guild). We're pretty casual by the standards on this board, but none of the raiding core could really handle reteaching fights week after week to ungeared and underskilled people (basically you can substitute Molten Core and BWL in for Karazhan in your description and describe my guild history) Good luck to you and your guild.

edit: oops i guess i should mention the transition, although this won't help you. :/ Basically we did a combination of 1 and 3 for the 40 man runs, and took advantage of the PVP-impending BC slump attrition to trim the fat (gee, the terminally unprepared stopped showing up, what a surprise), and started BC with essentially the same core roster that suffered through the retraining family style era, and now we're doing just fine in the BC with the roster showing up prepared and having fun raiding together. We still have a decent number of family style members, but they're the type that have to be dragged kicking and screaming into anything labeled "raid" (and I'm fairly certain that most of them don't even know where to start the "kazakhstan" key chain)

Without discussing all the various theories behind this, I'll just report that we dropped Kara off the schedule at the same time we started 25-man raids aggressively (just before the Gruul nerf) and it worked wonders. We outlined what we expected from the independently-run Karazhan raids and told people to step up and make it happen without the guild officers having to micromanage. The very next week 3 groups cleared Karazhan instead of two (one missed Nightbane only) and we steamrolled Maulgar and Gruul.

Your mileage may vary. =P

I think Rhyd hit it right on the nose. I realize this may be somewhat of an indirect answer to your original question; but the problems you mentioned remind me of many guilds I have been a part of in the past.

I've had a few experiences in guilds that are too divided between hardcore raiders, and casual players. I'm not sure the differences between the two playing styles are reconcilable.

In my experience, there would be the core raiders on one hand - people who showed up prepared, spent time gearing themselves up, and performed well in raids. People who derive their enjoyment in the game out of progression.

On the other hand you have people who play casually - there is nothing wrong with this style, of course - but these people tend to be much less serious about upgrading their gear, and making time to raid.

I've seen a few guilds try to mix these play styles, and none of them have been successful in doing so. The casuals will want to be more laid back about raiding. This can be extremely frustrating for the core raiders, who want to progress, and expect people to do everything possible to better their character and their guild. A term I've heard thrown around a lot is "hand holding" - they don't want to be doing it for their casuals.

Of course, that's a generalization. But I do believe that guilds that try to mix the two ideologies inevitably end up with serious issues. The raiders want to raid, and see the casuals as holding them back - the casuals want to relax, and see the raiders as overzealous about raiding. The end result, in all guilds that I've been in with this problem, is that either the guild picks a direction and sticks with it, or they fall apart. Either tell your raiders that the guild is not going to be a hardcore raiding guild with the goal of leading the server in progression (so that they can make an informed decision about either dealing with the casuals, or leaving the guild), or tell your casuals that they need to step it up, or leave the guild.

I have to quote for truth here. The guild I'm currently in, by nature, is a casual guild. I won't go into any details but we had a problem recently of this same nature. There were no major problems and everything has since been ironed out. My point is you can't balance the two very easily. I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's impossible. I used to be hardcore, raiding 6 days a week playing 8 hours a day. I don't do that anymore because I'm married. I could probably still survive in a hardcore guild with my "closer to casual" playstyle due to the fact that I am hardcore by nature. I can go into an encounter, get a quick rundown and do my job. But yes, its more worth it to just cut your losses and pick a side.

Set a standard for what it means to be a raider in your guild. This can be based on a combination of factors including attunements, rep, gear, attendance, preparedness. This group must have priority on loot and raid invites.

Ask the people in your guild if they want to be part of this group. Explain to them clearly what it entails. If they do, then let them and have everyone else be the non-raiders. Not everyone wants to be a hardcore raider

Make sure you hold people to the standards that you set forth. Confront people who don't and give them three options 1) improve 2) become a non-raider 3) leave.

This, of course, will cause some drama as people tend to feel they are entitled to much more than they actually are (i.e. if i show up half as much as that guy I should get half the loot), but as long as you handle it objectively then your guild will be better off for it (raiding/progression wise).

This might seem a bit harsh at first, but eventually it will make for a much better playing experience for all since instead of forcing people into specific roles you allow them to play the way they want while still putting the guild first.

We've had much the same problems. None of the solutions are terribly good. We have ended up with 2 12-15 person "rotations" with little cross-pollination. We've worked out raid schedules and rotations based on player schedules to cover needs for each raid night (we do 4 nights per week, 3-4 hours each night). The "first ones in" are on Shade of Aran, and the "later" group is on Curator now.

The re-training (and gearing-up) takes its toll on the week-in, week-out steady participants, to be sure -- we had a raid-wide meeting yesterday to talk about this very problem. The consumable usage gets pretty painful also, and some of the less-regular participants aren't prepared/aware that they need to bring so many.

We have talked about rotating others in for farm-status bosses (Attumen, Moroes, Maiden), particularly once the "core" people get the item(s) they are looking for. I think this approach is probably the best for the overall guild, since it prevents loot from rotting that will benefit us at the 25-man level.

(We just went to High King Maulgar for the first time yesterday as a get-your-feet-wet experience. Pretty interesting for everyone...)

We have similar issues. Our problem is not Kara though, we do well there by basically going with somewhat fixed teams. The guys who hit 70 first made the first group and went through a few weeks of retraining replacements, but by now its pretty solid group. There are of course still replacements needed, but it is rare for people to switch between teams unless its needed to get off the ground. The second group isnt through the instance yet but getting there so everyone is learning at the same time. Yes that has the A vs B team issues but it prevents the OP's problems and as long as both groups are progressing nobody really minds. Also it weeds out people who only show for farm attempts as you cannot get into a farm group because its full by the time stuff is on farm.

But the 25 mans hit us like a truck. We didn't have 25 true raiders so we brought a few casuals. Some of them worked out well, some not at all. There was so much complaining by some of the serious raiders that after only 2 nights of attempts we gave up, announced that certain people won't get raid invites any more except for farm raids that need bodies and that we won't do 25 mans until we have a full raid of serious raiders.

There was no drama fallout from that, but time will tell. We still have not returned to the 25 mans and some of the raiders are getting impatient.

I have to reiterate the point being made earlier by a couple people. Decide what you want your guild to be and then the answer results from that. The people that don't fit what you decide will have to move on. Casual/family does not coexist peacefully with dedicated/raider. You have both types of people in your guild because you haven't officially chosen which route to take and told people what would be expected of them and everyone else.

1.) Raiding guild. A raiding guild expects a certain attendance from members, expects them to be prepared for raids whenever they are on at raid time, expects them to perform at a certain level that is appropriate to the guild. Because you have a certain minimum attendance percent, you also have a maximum number of people on your roster. You have enough people so that you can pretty much guarantee you'll have the people you need to raid what you want to raid. The higher the percent attendance, the harder core your guild is, the smaller the roster.

2.) Casual/family guild. A family guild puts the bonds its members have above the desire to progress/not wipe. No one is kicked for anything short of bad behavior. Depending on restrictions, everyone who is level 70 may be entitled to a chance at a raid slot. The members of a casual guild have to be aware that in choosing to be "fair" to everyone they take the bad with the good. A lot of the people that want to come will not be very good, probably not be prepared, and probably have low/spotty attendance


One of the things here is that a lot of family guilds got used to having content available to them that was the right difficulty (AQ20, ZG, MC) that wouldn't totally destroy them if they did it. Right now there is no content that really fits that bill except maybe a few bosses in Kara. A lot of guilds are faced with the choice of switching to a raiding guild or just not raid at all. The people in the more family oriented guilds that want to raid start jumping ship for guilds that are capable of doing the content.

The choice lies before you. The raiding guild route is not an easy path to choose. It's harder on your leadership by far. It requires tough decisions and strength on your part. But it also allows you to do the raid content and not wipe to people who really shouldn't be doing those raids in the first place.

The family guild route will ultimately end up seeing some of your hardcore members leave for guilds more appropriate to their playstyle.

We are a semi-casual guild. We have been struggling with this problem for a long, long time, and with the Bc raiding style it just wasn't doable any more. What we did was the following:

- Implemented a raiders rank, with some minor demands included (like raid attendance, willingness to learn, consumables farming etc). Raiders get prio on raidspots, and in theory prio on loot, but so far we haven't had any situation arising where we have had to use that prio.
- For those not willing to meet the raiders demands, they become normal member. Our normal members are welcome to sign for raids but only get spots if there are any.
- When we recruit, we only recruit for raiders rank. Having a set amount of raiders makes it very easy to see what we are missing.
- Since we like to have our friends/family in the guild, we have a friend-rank. If you are friendranked, you cannot sign for raids. You are ofc free to run fiveman instances and heroics etc etc, but anything administered by the guild leaders are out of your reach. This way we don't have to worry about their skill at all.

For signups we use a Google Spreadsheet, everyone fills in once a week which days they'll be available the coming raidweek and then we build raidgroups from that. This way we get different groups from the same small and dedicated pool of players each week, and it works really well. We still need to recruit and as such don't always get two Kara-groups going, but at least we have a fair chance of distributing spots evenly and fairly. We are making good progress.

Think lots of people have it right. The early raiding game in TBC is less condusive to family & friends type raiding that mixes hardcore and casual. Loads of people have noticed that and my former group did too.

In reality there is no good answer because for some of us the family & friends thing still trumps performance. The core of the situation is that for some of us the divide between casual and hardcore runs within family and circle of friends. But of course no progress isn't really fun for anybody so it's kind of a choice between two things (deciding hardcore/casual pace vs maintaining social circles) that noone in the situation wants. Result is still that there is an unusually very high bleeding rate at both ends of the spectrum (hardcore and casual). Not sure if the promised changes for 2.1.0 will fix this though it may alleviate some of the problems but that remains to be seen.

Retraining always existed though, just in the past it had far less of an impact. You could safely bring a handful of new people to a 40-man and have them learn by quick prepping and infusion. Within a few tries, maybe even a 1-shot the situation is clear. Gearing happened more naturally anyway and the startoff wasn't as gear sensitive as Karazhan already is.

The only times we re-wiped at bosses in vanilla was when a key role-player needed to learn a challenging and detailed strategy (new primary lead tank at Vael, new tanks at 3-bugs, and new tank at twins, new MC-priests at Raz). Now every single person has to relearn and have appropriate gear levels to make Karazhan smooth, so the impact of the relearning is much more prominent (10 instead of 40, so 4 times as much theoretical impact, I think the actual impact is even bigger due to the way the encounters are designed).

So unless you go tight team and very high attendance, I think you are going to see this relearning aspect until just about everybody you hire comes in with Kara experience (which we will have in a few weeks to months anyway, so it's temporary). Then you look at a 40->25 or less than doubled sensitivity to relearning and people that you'll get will generically be better geared overall just due to the time since TBC came out.