English is not my first language so excuse me if there's alot of typos or grammatical errors.

We're a mid sized, more social/family oriented guild that are somewhere in between Karazhan and Gruul's Lair. When we started Karazhan we had to go with what we had, a very unbalanced raid but it did work against the easy bosses. Typically we go in with the first 2 tanks, 3 healers and 5 dps that signed up. We're still getting quite unbalanced raids from time to time (4 hunters + rogue as dps). From experience of pre-TBC raid content I assume there will be a point where you need a somewhat balanced raid or even worse, an intentionally stacked raid, to make any progress at all. Aside from the amount of each class some fights seem to call for a person geared to perform a specific role. Soaker on Curator is one example that we've encountered so far.

I've been thinking alot of how we can improve our way of handling invites to get more balanced raids. The main problem with our current method is the first 5 to sign up for dps might very well all be rogues. Unlikely, but possible and I don't really feel like wiping for hours on farm content or calling the raid in that situation. If we instead make signups based on classes (2-3 of each for a 25 raid) we have a problem in the fact that hybrids can take multiple roles so you're either short on tanks, healers, dps or a combination depending on which druid/shaman/priest/pally signed up. Both systems lack a solution for the need of players performing a specific role. The tanks on Maulgar for example.

We could ofcourse just take the best classes/players of those signed up and make the best raid suited for the encounters of that night. But that leaves room for favoritism and unfairness to a degree I'm not quite comfortable with. We're above all a social guild where raiding is not the end goal but rather a uniting guild activity.

I've put this up for discussion within the guild as well, but since a large part have no or very limited raiding experience I would like some input from the patrons of this forum as well.


Is there some fair, effective and elegant way of handling invites? How do you do it?

Am I just overacting on this favoritism thing?


PS. I might have a few questions regarding a suitable dkp system or such to distribute loot once we get closer to actually doing attempts on Gruul & co. Would it be considered bad form on this forum to create a separate topic for that?

I think, if you're looking to get a bit more serious about your approach to the raid game, the key thing to do is in ensuring that you have an acceptable class balance for the given encounter.

That means, you're not going to do Mag with 0 Warlocks, or High King without a Mage tank.

There's situations where an ideal comp isn't possible, but you should always be striving to ensure that whatever group your raiding with has the best chance of killing whatever you're working on. It's all well and good to say that x number of people get to raid because it's their turn, but it's not fair to everyone else if you won't kill the boss because of that.

I think the primary thing to do, is using the sign-ups as an incentive, make people eligible for raid spots if they sign up, bonus DKP for signing up, whatever you want.

Collective Goals > Individual Goals, make sure people understand why you're making the decisions you make, and you'll find that people will adjust to things, and as long as you're being fair that things will carry along smoothly.

R.E the DKP, there's a number of threads around about DKP Systems, I'd suggest searching the forums, then if you have a specific question, look in to addressing that.

I think you're over-thinking on the favoritism. What we do is have a sign-up thread, say, the raid is one Sunday so you post the thread Monday prior. Anyone that wants to go to that raid signs up by Wednesday at the latest. Thursday morning you make a list of who goes on the raid.

How do you make the list? Class compisistion. For Kara, do what you feel you need the most - 3 healers, 2 tanks, maybe a backup tank, 1 warlock, 1 mage, a paladin for Maiden if you don't feel confident in doing her w/o one, and go from there.

If your raiders are considerate to the raid at all they will understand in a heartbeat. This goes the same for 25man content, too. Don't take a raid that isn't able to do anything but wipe. Use your best judgement.

In the post for your Sign-Up thread make it very known that this isn't a "First Come First Serve basis anymore." Put it in bold if you need to. That's what we did and still do it.

*EDIT*

Missed the DKP question. You can either search or ask the question. I'm a huge advocate for DKP or if it's a static raiding party- loot priority w/o numbers. Whoever needs the upgrade the most, has been working extremely hard, or whatever the class concensus is. We use to use DKP for cross-class items but if it was a 1 class item, we let the class decide who got it.

I'm afraid 'social' and 'progress' are not fitting very well, in most cases. I only say that because our guild looked exactly like yours until last month and we would either get stuck in progress or lose members. What we did was to ask everyone to sign in/out for raids no matter what and make them understand why rotation is necassary. Those that cause trouble/whining over this issue do not deserve to be in the guild.

Finally, about raid composition; I will take the optimal setup without even thinking twice. There is no other way to progress at an acceptable rate than making the most balanced raid possible. Everyone deserves to have fun in raids but not on the expence of the rest (personally, I think wiping for hours is no fun at all).

Seems like the general consensus is that I am overreacting on this favoritism thing.

Yes, that would make sense to make raids more successfull and in turn more fun in alot of ways. The only problem I see here is that if you go by the policy to "strive to ensure that whatever group your raiding with has the best chance of killing whatever you're working on" that also includes taking only the best of classes, most well geared etc. Something we are entirely against. We will drop raiding as an activity before resorting to that.

I was hoping there was some way of getting acceptable raid compositions that work for most if not all encounters. A perfect system is hard to find though, so perhaps I should just go with an easy to manage flawed one and make exceptions when you get totally impossible raid setups.


On the issue of DKP I have read up on alot of DKP systems and have used a few of them myself. I'm working on a few different ones in tandem to see which seems the best suited for our guild.

Number one question right now is: Is there a good way to implement bidding into a Zero Sum system? Problems seem to occur when deciding who can bid on an item since for ZS to work you need to be able to go into negatives? This means I could be potentially outbid by someone lots of points lower than me, which defeats the point of the system.

We are a progress guild.

At raid invite time, the raid leader puts of keyword invite and everyone joins the raid. On time DKP is given. Then, given the makeup of the raid, officers decide what encounters we are going to do and the raid is trimmed down to 25 people accordingly.

On progresses encounters and encounters that still give very desirable loot, raid is picked by class makeup first, then by considering skill, gear and current attendance record for each raider.

Farm content that most people don't need anything from, our second tier of raiders usually get swapped in (IE, Gruuls lair).

As a thought on rotations, class restrictions etc. as a social guild, is it really desireable for you to have people who would consistently whine if they were not to get a spot?

If you do begin to limit based on class rather than just "healer/DPS/tank" then it signifies a big change in your raiding attitude and you're most likely to see some grumbling as people who previously could just forum-camp and be guaranteed a spot no longer can. It's an entirely natural thing for people to be upset, but it's important to identify which people are "oh, that sucks, I was having fun :/" but will ultimately come around as raids become more effective and, if the system's implemented properly, will understand that there's an element of fairness - and which people are going to whinge and whinge and whinge every time they don't get a spot that they "deserve" because they're around all the time.

Unless you're really trying to push the progression also de-emphasise skill - not so much that atrocious players are given spots over competent ones, but to the extent that your 25man isn't the same group every week and you only ever rotate a "weaker" member when there's no chance they'll really make a difference. Don't put up with useless players, but if you wish to retain your primary focus as a social guild rather than raiding, it's inevitable that you can't push for "cream of the crop" as it were.

Summary: be fair, take the class-balancing to whatever level is comfortable for your guild as a whole, and you'll probably end up with more effective raids and a guild that's still generally happy.

Instead, think of it as a "sufficiently good" chance of killing it. If you have one of your best dps'ers in the group, you know you can take a less-good second dps, because the first guy can help carry the load.

I would hope that your guild would understand that just as it's silly to go into karazhan with no tanks at all, it can be silly to, say, engage Maulgar without particular classes. They just aren't the classes they're used to thinking of as "needed".


We do the "everyone send the raid leader 'invite'" thing and everyone there on time gets DKP, and then whittle down by class needs (taking into account spec.) Modulated by attendance (higher attendance in the past = better chance to raid today), skill, and gear as needed.

My previous guild was a 'Serious Casual' guild that came up with we felt was a good solution to the problem of fitting too many players into a raid.

Partway through MC we ran into the rostering issue of having 45+ people signing up for a 40 main raid. After some angst and drama we settled on the following system:

1) Signups. Raid is scheduled and posted ahead of time and everyone who wants to go has to sign up.

2) Random Numbers: A day or so before the raid, everyone who is signed up gets a random number assigned.

3) Raid Stacking: For the 40 man raids we took the top 4 rolls from each class and left the raid leader the last 8 spots to his best judgment.

4) I lost the roll, random numbers suck: If you got rolled out of the raid (and were available at raid time case someone didn't show), you got Uninvited Alt status. This automatically got you into the next raid you signed up for in the next two weeks, bypassing the random roll and the chance of getting alted again.

This served us well all the way up to Twin Emps attempts. When rostering is left up to the random number generator there is little room for drama or accusations of favoritism.

We successfully scaled the system down for 20 mans. For Karazhan we designated 2 tanks, 3 healers and 5 DPS instead of a class based system, still giving the raid leader 20% (2 spots) to stack the raid or correct any weirdness from the random rolls.

The system wouldn't work for everyone, especially a progression oriented guild, as you'll get sometimes get a raid comprised of your lesser geared or lower skilled players. If you have class imbalances in the guild you'll probably see them in the raids at times. A few people abused it by claiming more Uninvited Alt status than they had earned but the transparency of the system got them caught pretty quickly.

I like to think we're fairly casual, fairly social, and fairly successful. Our officers (hi there) said at the beginning that raid composition would be based on A) least chance to rot loot (so putting together 2/3/5, we'd prefer a rogue/hunter/arms warrior/mage/shadow priest over, say, rogue/hunter/hunter/rogue/mage) and B) moving up first kills.

So, for example, Aran with two warlocks > *, but any other situation wouldn't result in two of the same class (ignoring the necessities of 2tank/3heal).

Beyond that, we rotate people. We don't keep a perfect list of, "Oh, he's raided more recently then you," so of course we mess up, but we also ask in guild chat, so the process is transparent. "Hey, Rogue1 and Rogue2, when did you both last actually raid?"

We use raid signups, but - and I say this over and over again - it's a tool to help our invite officer (don't laugh that we have such a thing) plan invites before raid start, rather then after. People cry, from time to time "But I signed up!", but I say to them, "Who's going to tank in the 10 rogue Kara?" or, "Well, hey, I can sign up five seconds after they go up if you like - is that fair that I win at signup craft?" Signups are available well in advance, or we just do completely impromptu, and they're not gospel.

As for stacking raid strength - and this is only because you mention Karazhan - we gently encourage weaker players (and are blunt with recruits - hi, we have epics) to be around on easier nights, to gear up first. This gently dovetails into the, "Oh, hey, what do you know, stronger raider hasn't raided longer then you have..."

I think it works for us. I think people are happy. I think we're casual/social. I think it may help that I'm a tank, I can get a free pass into places, and I sit for the good of the guild, from time to time (it's hard to be a nepotist if you're not even favoring yourself). I hope something there is useful to you.

Edit: And to specifically include examples for the topic (which wandered itself in the OP ~): For Gruul's Lair, we do invites based on who are tanks/healers are, and then walk from there, same process, larger scale. Magtheridon has been Gruul leftovers so far, and SSC will be an obvious extension of the above. In my perfect world, we would have 36 people (4 of each class) sitting 25% of the time, rotating around. Reality sort of helps this sort itself out, though.

Just make a template for classes and then let your raidleader make small adjustments where needed. Also explain why you're doing it and make sure the raidleader is someone your members respects and trust and there should be little hassle if any.