I suppose my major concern with that plan, Metro, is even given a week of time to do it in I'm not sure that we can locate and transfer the recruits we'll need. We're not in what I'd call "dire straits" because we've long had a proactive recruitment policy with some buffer room built in, but none of us want to get to that point, either... so we've been looking for recruits for several of these positions for several weeks now with less luck than we'd like... Decent Hunters, specifically, we've been keeping our eyes peeled for for a while. But we've been having issues finding hunters with comparable gear to one of our officers' Karazhan-level alt. (His alt is admittedly a beast, but still...)

In regards to recruiting hunters Zifna I've all but given up hope. We have one guy in guild that does what a geared out T6 hunter should do, destroy damage meters while having no aggro issues. We've been trying to find another hunter for quite a while now, but every prospective applicant interviewed has no idea how to set up a shot rotation, how much hit is needed to cap, the fact autoshot has a hidden timer, why serpent sting is not good dps, and so on. Thankfully we can make do with one 90%+ attendence hunter for the time being.

I would just like to take this moment to say "Hi Zif"! :p

Secondly, I think there are usually recruitment issues anywhere. We're struggling to get another couple of healers to give us a buffer if someone can't turn up. As it is we tend to run one or two healers short anyway.

We're in about the same situation. We usually end up with enough healers, but sometimes for certain fights it's just easier to bring more shaman for tremors/chain heal, or more X for Y reason, and sometimes we're running with 5 or 6 when we'd rather have 7 or whatever number, but we make it through anyway.

We've cleared 4/9 BT (stopped doing bloodboil for lack of healers) and we've spent around 6 hours on archimonde with 3-4 curse removal, 2 tremor totems, and a ton of people with no 2 minute trinket (hooray AV weekend inc). Despite that, we saw 18%, and we get a holiday weekend where people are planning to be gone, and next week we'll probably end up doing some attunements. Bleh...that's just how it goes. With this kind of progression and offering nearly guaranteed spots, it still took us nearly 2 months of recruit post bumping and such just to get a handful of garbage apps....heh.

We recently recruited 2 healers, attuned them, and now neither of them has shown up for more than 1-2 raids. When they showed up, they didn't have to sit, and they performed quite well and were mistake free on fights they haven't done (including kael, rage, and some BT stuff). After not showing up for over a week, one finally posted to say he's "got stuff going on" and might be getting switched to the night shift for a while, and the other is simply MIA. This kind of stuff is just going to happen, and you just have to keep recruiting a buffer, which is what everyone's been saying.

I really don't think there's any way to weed this kind of thing out beforehand.

Even guilds in the top 5 in the US have talked to me about recruiting problems. Our guild has done reasonably well with recruiting exceptional players - but some classes like Horde paladins, or Alliance shamans are simply very hard to find (at least ones that are not retarded).

The lack of a backflag segregates the gaming community fairly sharply - most of the best players out there are simply not flagged - and probably not raiding; flagging makes it an annoying gap to reach a good end game guild - plus it becomes a headache for those end-guilds to back-flag a new player especially if they dislike tk25/ssc. I built a championship level FPS clan, and a very solid guild out of complete pugs - no name individuals, who just wanted to game. Backflagging is critical to keep this paradigm rolling. I still believe the best players are often not 70, or simply wearing greens and waiting for a chance. Taking old blood and burned out raiders often causes problems - going for talent tends to work best. Many guild's key players simply joined when the guild was just forming for instance. It doesn't take much beyond dedication and common sense to do well in WoW.

I remember Ascent's recruitment process went something like "If you can fill out our form using proper English/grammar, you're way ahead of the curve". It had nothing to do with experience or gear - just some level of intelligence and ability to make raid times. If you're struggling with recruitment shortage, perhaps give the undergeared player who shows potential a shot. Sometimes these investments pay off in spades. Besides, if you get an exceptional candidate in full tier 6 with a key already - why did he even leave his last guild. Why is he/she joining your guild? 9 times out of 10 the answer is "ebay" or "drama." A 2000 dps rogue who is annoying and creates drama isn't worth as much as a 1200 dps rogue who helps out and fits in.

I also would venture to guess that the population of WoW has taken rather sharp dive since before the 2.1 patch, although my data comes only from eyeballing recruit quality and server numbers. The number of quality guilds on our server has also rapidly declined.

WoW has seen similar fluctuations in the past, but I can't help thinking this is due to the content cycle and sordid end game.

I remember being in a 2nd tier guild in EQ - and what drove me was the end game that I would never reach. It is truly the carrot on the stick concept, and just because not everyone will make BT (lets say 10% will) does not mean that zone is not significant to nearly half the population.

Generally how these things work unfortunately is Guild B falls apart because they can no longer recruit. Guild A absorbs Guild B. There are now half as many guilds to accommodate half as many players. And of course, history is always lost on the devs.

We were also in a similar position. We had killed Illidan after months of having an extremely strong roster of dedicated players. I wasn't ready for what was about to happen. About 3 weeks after we killed Illidan attrition hit and over the past few weeks our roster has decreased rapidly. Right now we're at about 25-27 people who raid and I'm looking to recruit almost every class.

I should have had the foresight to recruit more. Attrition always happens, atleast for us. We've been set back because of it during progression quite a few times now. During TBC our progression has been completely halted twice. First during SSC when we couldn't field more than 15 people. We had to rebuild our roster almost completely. Halfway through Black Temple it happened again; we were short and it slowed us down a great deal.

Today we are back in a similar situation to those I listed above, except that all the content is cleared. We've been clearing BT with loads of people playing different peoples' characters and 2 boxxing. We're getting by, but it's not pretty at all. The lesson to be learned from all of this is that it is absolutely essential to have an abundance of raiders. We had a minimum of 30 people on every night before we killed Illidan. My intention is to get us back to this and potentially have more than that on every night. By rotating people in and out I think it's something that can be accomplished. I've always struggled a great deal with who gets to raid and who has to sit. It's probably the hardest thing about leading raids for me. Any advice in this area would be greatly appreciated.

To the original poster, my recommendation is similar to what others have said in this thread. You need to recruit a handful of unattuned people and attune them over the course of a single SSC and TK clear. The other thing that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is that BT class requirements are not as strict as you would think. Any healing class can get the job done. You'll want 2 paladins for blessings, but beyond that you can kill these bosses with any class composition. DPS classes also matter little, except for Mother Shahraz where having fewer casters is ideal. Take what good players you can find, attune them and keep progressing.

Just to echo what other people have said: There really is no downside to recruiting every "good" applicant you come across. Even if you don't need them, it gives veterans breathing room on farm nights and allows a couple of them to sit out for newer people. This has 2 effects:

1) New recruits get gear (which they're most likely lacking)
2) The high-attendance raider they replace gets a day off, slowing down the burn-out process.

Understandable. Although you might already be doing so, try to get your name and accomplishments out there as best as you can. Guild Recruitment forums, WorldofRaids, Bosskillers, mmo-champion, etc.

Also as someone has mentioned, don't be too disconcerted in people who are sporting gear even at the Karazhan level. I know it doesn't speak well of their raid experience but, at the same time, raiding in WoW is not rocket science. Take me for example. I'm an attorney in my late twenties. In high school I played a few single player RPGs on the PC, some Nintendo, Sega, etc. When I was in college and law school I pretty much didn't play video games at all. Never played an MMO before until I came to WoW having been a fan of the Warcraft RTS series for many years.

I'm not the fastest of clickers nor the best at theorycraft but none of that is really important. So long as you see an applicant display a modest amount of intelligence and maturity and willingness to listen and learn, chances are they will turn out to be pretty solid players. Raiding in World of Warcraft is more about attitude and effort than it is about raw 'skill.'

So, if you have a fairly solid roster now and can afford to 'cultivate' someone in Karazhan level gear I would give them a shot. Just be sure to explain to them your situation and that they might often find themselves sitting because they aren't attuned. Make sure they know they are more of a long-term project.

@ the guys above talking about raid/roster size. At the moment I think Titan has roughly 30-35 active raiders on any given raid night now which is a pretty healthy size. It does make rotating people in and out a bit problematic when you can clear Tier 6 content in a little over two nights but people are pretty good about swapping when others want something from a boss. I was in for all of Black Temple and sat for Hyjal this week -- the Tier 6 helmet is pretty low priority for me at this point and there's more than enough time to get the 21k or so rep I need for the exalted ring between now and Sunwell. The more you farm, the more people get what they want and the more they will swap for other people since they don't need anything.

Honoustly, the way to go is Overrecruiting. I have been leading my guild ever since Ahn'Qiraj and its always the same story. People come and go, most of the time as they please. You just need a very strong core amount of people. And recruit around that whenever needed. I think i have told my guild after killing Kael'thas every single time that this was the last one. No need to go back, from now on we got everyone we need attuned. Reality was that up untill 1 week before our first Illidan kill. We had to attune people via Vashj and Kael'thas. We had our misrecruits as well. People we attune and then never show up. Or just Gquit at weird time. ( Or even during raids, not giving any prior notice ) You just got to live with it. And make sure you got the leadership to maintain a high level of proffesionalism.

Leading a guild through High End content requires alot of effort and detirmination. And lets not lie about it. It feels like a full time job from a leader PoV. But i feel damn good every time we succeed. And right now? we are happily raiding 3 days a week, clearing Black Temple and Mount Hyjal every Week. Though i imagine the next big task for any guild is to maintain such a stream untill new content releases. Hopefully Zul'aman will soothe most Illidan Killing guilds. though i doubt that.

Anyway i have been writing a long report on Leading guilds through the current content from naxxramas and up. Documenting personal and other people's experiences. With the goal of informing people about bosstactics, and how to build up and maintain your guild with success. Right now its on 15 pages already being only nearly half way done. If the interest is there i can post it on EJ Forums, Or more likely host it somewhere posting a link :P. Its basically a full document detailing every aspect of the game from a Leader PoV. Bosstactics/Guild Stragegy's/recruiting/How to handle certain guild situations. All in a real time sort of way. Its only intend to help other people.

Ok, I'm missing something. I thought they fixed the Raid ID "borrowing" a while ago? How does a raid that has already cleared a instance enter another?

Say Guild A clears SSC, and Guild B does Hydross. Do you just invite a member of Guild B, make him Raidleader and have him zone first? Wouldn't your own ID's send you to your own instance?

Well obviously, Guild A Shouldnt do SSC in the first place, if Guild B Clears to Vashj but doesnt kill and has no intentions to try again before the reset, Guild A Can come in and Borrow/Buy Guild's B Raid ID. This mostly applies to T6 Clearing/Finished Guilds that either dont have the time or Motivation to go through all the pre-bosses of TK/SSC. But Possibly still need the end bosses for attunement Purposes.

That's not what we're talking about.

Guild A clears Hyjal and part of BT. Guild B clears 4/5 in SSC but isn't trying for Vashj yet. Guild A asks permission (and pays if needed) to zone into Guild B's instance and take down Vashj without having to clear the rest of SSC.

Benefit to Guild A is getting recruits attuned without wasting time clearing the whole instance.

Benefit to Guild B could be cash, crafted items, the chance for one of their raid leaders to zone in and observe/learn the fight, etc. Guild B wasnt "using" their Vashj, so there's no loss to them.

Yeah, I'm surprised this isn't done more. There are dons of 5/6 SSC and/or 3/4 TK guilds out there who may not raid on the last day of a given timer. Offer to bring one of them along maybe for a shot at a t5 helm/chest (and insight into how a top guild does the fight) or just offer them some free epic gems or something as payment. If you have good relations, there's no real reason for a guild that wasn't planning on doing any more Vashj/Kael attempts in a given week to refuse.

Regarding recruiting, we've had mercifully little attrition since our first ever recruitment push, but we definitely err on the side of having a large roster regardless since that's what we're used to. We have a total t6 raiding roster of around 40, with 33-35 typically any given raid night. A dozen people have 90%+ attendance, a dozen have 80%+, a dozen have 70%+, and a handful hover more around 50%. Lots of people sit out, but they get attendance credit while playing alts or PvPing or doing whatever. When learning new content, it can be a bit tough since obviously everyone wants to attend the first Illidan kill for example, but obviously everyone knows that they can't. I usually let members of individual classes sort out attendance for farm content, aside from a few constants like our MT and myself -- they can work out who hasn't gotten to go recently, who does or doesn't need loot from which bosses, who really likes/hates certain fights, who maybe has a test to study for and doesn't mind sitting out, etc. I think this helps with retention -- a few of our transfers from other servers commented on how they'd been used to raiding so much more, but actually really enjoyed the free time and flexibility here once they adjusted to it. Being in a t6 raiding guild but also being able to take a 10-day vacation to travel somewhere without worrying that you're letting anyone down is a good thing.

I think a guild culture that is centered around being very, very lean, expecting near-100% attendance, and in fact relying on it, is going to almost inevitably involve a lot of turnover. It forces people to log on and play when they'd rather be doing something else, and the more times that happens, the closer someone is to saying "fuck this" and walking away entirely. If you run with 35+, then on any given night the 5 people who have other stuff to do or don't feel like raiding can simply do that and not feel like they're letting anyone down.

We tried that, with many other guilds, but leadership just can't understand the logic in selling it. If you're not raiding Monday, why not sell it? I've found it's a matter of what I call scrub pride. They cleared the instance; to them it's extremely valuable. We've offered vortecies, epic +15 stamina gems, and a helm off Vashj, but in the end the guilds feel they're entitled to more. I can understand haggling, but theres a point where the bargaining ends.

If people read no other paragraphs in this whole thread, I hope they read this one. There are always exceptions of course, but eventually burnout is going to occur to SOME of your near-100% players. Plus once you get content on farm, some of your players may lose the enthusiam for playing quite as much.

Over-recruit, and gladly accept the problems that come with that. It's like a manager in baseball who has 4 or 5 good outfielders. He much rather would deal with that problem, than only have 3 and then be screwed when one goes on the DL. I think most reasonable people can work out attendance anyways. If not, now's a good time to start fostering a guild culture that encourages people to think of the good of the guild first.

Finally TBC is fairly flexible. I've seen people run TK with 5 or 6 mages, or as many warlocks. We maybe ran with 2 or 3 of each. So if suddenly some of your rogues or hunters disappear, you can still pull in other DPS classes and keep moving on. Same with healers. You really want at least 2 paladins, but the rest is interchangeable.

I agree with that as well, it's a lesson that took us a long time to learn. With a tight roster the bad times inevitably come, it's a cycle. Things have been much more stable since we bumped up the number on our roster. What I need to figure out now is how large exactly we should make our roster to weather the long term, and by that I mean to get to the next raid instance, without running out of people.

As someone who is on the outside, looking in on guilds in BT/Hyjal and wishing I was there, it is nice to see that there are guilds out there who don't just care about gear/attunements.

I would have to agree that there are people a significant number of people who can play and would be great in high end guilds, who are, for whatever reason, in a situation where their gear and TBC raid experience essentially prohibits them from doing so.

For example, the guild that my small group of friends was in disbanded in April, as we were getting started in SSC. We looked on the guild recruitment forums, transfered to play with another guild, as none on our server were recruiting at the time. It ended up that the guild we ended up in was a total mess, but now our characters were stuck there. We made new characters and played around with those, and when our transfers were up we moved to a server where we could play together again at least. At that point our gear was outdated and we didn't have any experience. We choose to be able to play together on a larger server, as our only other option was to try to get into guilds that were barely ahead of where we had been 3-4 months before, and that just wasn't really appealing.

As has been mentioned earlier, this game really isn't that difficult, and having a little desire to excel matched with intelligence to do so goes a long way. I know that I could step into T6 content and do my job (ignoring gear issues), but with the gear I have and the lack of experience, I would have a hard time getting my foot in the door.

There are players out there, good players. The question comes down to, are you recruiting players or their characters, are you trying to solve the issue with a long term focus or are you just trying to bring in a few hired guns. To me, it seems like it would be better to get the good player, intelligent person, with a reasonable personality, and have them fill the slots you need. It might take a few weeks while they gear up or finish leveling up the class you need them to play, but in the long run, a few weeks seems like a good trade for a high caliber raid member and guild mate. Of course my opinion is skewed because I feel like I am that guy, but I figured I would add that perspective to this discussion.

I agree that sometimes getting someone who is intelligent and a good fit is worth it. If, however, that's *all* you recruit for, gear *does* become a massive issue. Say you get an amazing mage, intelligent, thoughtful in his approach to dps, who also has the reflexes of a cat and a 50ms consistent ping. He can dps like nobody's business ... but he's in 700 spell damage. He has the crafted gear, but no weapon, and nothing beyond badge loot.

Someone like that is valuable, yes. But if you're recruiting them to help fill a slot in your raid, they're basically useless for a solid month while you get them gear. And if you're in BT/HS, getting them gear is going to involve running Karazhan, Gruul, SSC, TK -> old instances. To a certain extent, bringing someone that undergeared to mid-late BT seems like an exercise in futility, unless you really do outgear the content (i.e. you're killing Illidan already, in which case, you don't need to recruit someone that undergeared).

We're on Kael atm, maybe one week from HS, and we're at the point that we won't even consider someone in blues. We can't. We don't have *time* to go back and gear them up in old instances. We'd consider someone in full Karazhan gear, because we're still *in* T5 instances, so we can hand them stuff from those instances as we go. But taking someone who *needs* Kara/T4 instances for drops is an exercise in futility.

I've seen guilds take completely ungeared people (pre-TBC) and gear them up in a matter of weeks. It can be done. It's probably being done now by some people. But with attunements being the crapshoot that they are, it would be a matter of intentionally going back and clearing Vashj and Kael out for that person, and praying the drops you got were worth your time. If you have to go back even further than that for their drops, then it's just not worth it.

I think a general back-of-the-envelope rule of "one tier below our progression" still holds here, like it always has.

We geared up a paladin from basically nothing to full tier 5 level gear in 3 weeks, but that was with us running SSC/TK/Hyjal/most of BT every week. We did it though because it was someone we knew previously to be an amazing player. The fact is that most of the time you don't *know* so you have to make a decision based on what is in front of you. Yes, there is great players in non-raiding gear or tier 4 only gear. But there is also a strong correlation between gear and experience/skill. Generally, skilled players have been able to work themselves into guilds of a certain level of content, and generally people at lower levels of content are less experience at the game and haven't really mastered everything needed for the end game raids.

Another factor is your recruiting process. Some guilds keep a large majority of people that pass their initial requirements. Like for us, we keep probably 80% of people who get through the interview (only about 3% of apps get to interview though and only about 30% of interviews are recruited). If we're keeping them 80% of the time we're not going to play around. Even if we are willing to cut people who don't pan out, it is still an investment. Most guilds don't bring in multiple applicants and then have them compete for the slot. Most guilds will try one person for the slot at the time and if they don't work out they've just wasted 2-4 weeks of trial period determining that the person wasn't going to work out. That is a significant investment.

The next thing that comes to mind is: why is this person trying to skip content? Even if they did get shafted by being in a bad guild or on a bad server, why don't they just join a progression appropriate guild that seems promising so that they can work through the content? Another thing we highly value is people who were there to LEARN all the boss fights. On the application we ask what instances/bosses people have cleared, but in the interview we specifically ask which of those they were actively involved in originally learning versus which they got to see after it was already farm content.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to discriminate against people on applications. Despite the similarities, this isn't a job interview. We don't have to be equally opportunity raiders. In fact we try to discriminate as heavily as possible so that we can get someone who will fit tightly with the team.

Having missed the first 6 month of BC I am not too inlined to start now and wipe with casual and inexperienced raiders in Karazhan (not many hardcore guilds are starting in Karazhan at this time...). Plus it wouldn't feel right for me to join a guild just to get me geared up (so I can have a shot at a "better" guild), since I would basically have to lie to any respectable guild to have a chance for being accepted. I wouldn't want a raider in my team that just needs better gear to get in a better guild.

If you have a hardcore mentality and are a good player there are some very good reasons for wanting to skip content. But with the attunements and keying requirements its pretty obvious that blizzard does not like their players doing that.

I think I'll just wait for Wotlk so the average intelligent mature and hardcore raider isn't 3 tiers ahead.

Being able to be picky and discriminate is obviously the position any guild wants to be in. If this were a discussion about how there are an overabundance of potential recruits for raid guilds then that point would make alot more sense. In a market where there is a shortage, sometimes you need to step outside the box a bit and expand your search criteria.

In response to joining a lesser progressed guild and working through things with them, I think you are locked into looking at it from your point of view. Someone who believes they can play with the "big boys", either because they have done it before or because they are just arrogant pricks, want to play with other people who are good at what they do. You see it as wanting to skip content, they see it as wanting to play with the best group of people they can. There are certainly exceptions, but by and large guilds that aren't at least starting in BT/Hyjal aren't the sort of guilds that are filled with top tier players. Raiding with a group that includes a significant percentage of retards who ruin attempts or can't figure out simple fight mechanics/movement has a tendency to suck the fun right out of the experience.

I definitely agree that those people who are there to learn fights have a more intimate knowledge of the fight, and that is definitely something that is of value, especially when things go wrong. To be honest though, if you recruit an intelligent person, they aren't going to have any significant issues learning the fights. There is tons of information out there on every fight in the game, not as good as first hand experience to be sure, but any recruit has the ability to prepare themselves to make sure they have a solid handle on what to expect.

In our first Illidan kill, we had 3 app healers in mostly Kara gear. One was pretty much straight out of Kara and the other 2 had seen maybe 2 or 3 bosses in SSC before they applied. Granted they were healers and there's a little more leeway in fights where you're stacking a ton of healing anyway, but even one of our Flame tanks on Illidan was a DPS Warrior who respecced and was tanking in some blues because our Feral with the FR gear was not there first day of attempts.

If you don't focus too hard on how geared your apps are, you can concentrate more on in-fight reaction time and decision making which is a more important consideration for late BT/Hyjal fights.