We have this problem too. Currently we have 4 shamans, 2 of them resto. We are actually thinking of getting our Enh Shaman to permanently respec resto, his gear is probably better then most recruits we can get. Specially seeing as we have been recruiting for resto-shamans since we started SSC all those months ago, and only gotten one application. Getting a Enhancement shaman seemed just as hard though, so we are back to square one again
We are in the same boat - if we were sure that someone would be reliable, we'd pick up and gear out any resto shaman in Kara gear, and we are 8/9 Hyjal. One of our rogue has a restoration shaman alt we attuned to BT, and his alt already picked up 3 pieces of t6 loot while his main has one due to uneven pattern drops.
The problem with picking up non-attuned people is that it is a significant investment to attune somebody, and it is only worth doing if you are sure the person you will be attuning is reliable.
I am the other end of the stick, I am the raider who was stuck in a 5/6 3/4 guild (casual guild, raids twice a week). I play a lot, average 8 hours a day on my shaman since I hit 70, not to mention other play, reading forums, etc. I got sick of that and wanted to raid in a more serious guild so I looked around. As an alliance resto shaman who was geared mainly in kara gear with 3-4 pieces from SSC I managed to find a guild willing to attune me to BT/Hyjal on a different server. Upon arriving on that server I had another guild who wanted me to join and was willing to attune me before I had even raided with the first one.
The sheer amount of interest in me when I was on a new server with no guild tag as an alliance resto shaman was suprising. Two BT/Hyjal guilds who would have attuned, and numerous guilds deep in T5 who were interested and all this for a mainly kara geared shaman.
There is a large number of great players out there in guilds that aren't doing well. They thing is there is no way to tell them apart from the ordinary players if you go looking. If you get apps that make exceptional apps they stand out, but activly looking for these players would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
I am curious on how people actually go about in their recruitment process. From what I see there are a few main methods, is there any other effective way to reach out to potential recruits?
1) Posting on your realm forum/recruitment forum
2) Posting on every single realm forum(forum ban by Blizzard)
3)Posting on other boards(world of raids etc)
4)Tapping up other guild members
5)Recruiting in the recruitment channel
As a BT/Hyjal cleared guild, we have difficulty in getting applicants for our guild. It doesn't help that we raid late for our server timings(3 hours later).
We also concluded that we have much less community awareness than other guilds as we do not have members posting like 20 times a day in realm forums stirring drama or random chatting. Other guild recruitment post can go up to over 10 pages with random chat while ours is totally empty of any chat other than bumps. Any idea of a good way to let the community know that we exist and is active on the realm?
We recruited people in Karazahn gear and geared them out. Some of them are amazing players just waiting to be discovered. Doing daily heroic pugs or Karazahn pug and finding people who aren't in raiding guild, but with a lot of time to dedicate is really nice.
Resorted to "/2 Looking for Paladins ,Shadow priest,Rogue for BT farming.Good and dedicated players only. Please apply at 'website address' for more details"
Surprisingly, we get lots more apps this way and it is not those scrubs in greens. People in TK/SSC clear guilds actually approached with an intention to apply and find out details. I would think it is a good idea to advertise in chat, although the idea somewhat cheapens your guild image. I am guessing the lack of a proper channel to reach out to the server mass is restricting our recruitment as not everyone reads realm forums and also some who are not actively looking for a new guild.
We're a small raid, raiding three times a week (4/5 MH, 3/9 BT). I think we're somewhere between casual and a little bit hardcore. Some of us play very much, others not. We're raiding since MC, some of us are playing together since two years. As we're a small guild many of us have a very high raid attendance. I am raidleader since two years. Most of the time I liked it and I think people were satisfied. Sometimes there's trouble and there will always be someone who makes waves but I think that's quite normal. But now...
Because we're only raiding three times a week we have to be efficient. When we had down Kael'thas we soon dropped the T5 instances. We recruited some new members because in November and December some classes weren't manned enough and I wanted to avoid that we would have to attune new members when we're deeper into the T6 content. At this time we're 37 people in our raid (which is not really more or less than the last months...).
At the moment we're working on Archimonde (second evening, 35 %) and raiding goes fine. Needless to say that everyone wants to participate. And of course most of the time you prefer those members of your raid who showed that they're reliable. But every raid needs a backup crew and no one always wants to stand on the sideline. Therefore I try to rotate within the classes. It worked quite good but now since we're in Hyjal / BT people are going mad a little and it hurts me to see that some reproach me even if they only had to sit out for one time because we had to attune some new members for BT. Only one time in 3 months... I really feel tired although I understand why some are acting like this...
How do you rotate people in your raid? Who decides who'll take part and who'll have to sit out? Raidleader? Classleaders? How do you decide when to recruit more members?
Last edited by shanii : 01/18/08 at 7:34 PM.
Reason: Typo
We're a small raid, raiding three times a week (4/5 MH, 3/9 BT). I think we're somewhere between casual and a little bit hardcore. Some of us play very much, others not. We're raiding since MC, some of us are playing together since two years. As we're a small guild many of us have a very high raid attendance. I am raidleader since two years. Most of the time I liked it and I think people were satisfied. Sometimes there's trouble and there will always be someone who makes waves but I think that's quite normal. But now...
Because we're only raiding three times a week we have to be efficient. When we had down Kael'thas we soon dropped the T5 instances. We recruited some new members because in November and December some classes weren't manned enough and I wanted to avoid that we would have to attune new members when we're deeper into the T6 content. At this time we're 37 people in our raid (which is not really more or less than the last months...).
At the moment we're working on Archimonde (second evening, 35 %) and raiding goes fine. Needless to say that everyone wants to participate. And of course most of the time you prefer those members of your raid who showed that they're reliable. But every raid needs a backup crew and no one always wants to stand on the sideline. Therefore I try to rotate within the classes. It worked quite good but now since we're in Hyjal / BT people are going mad a little and it hurts me to see that some reproach me even if they only had to sit out for one time because we had to attune some new members for BT. Only one time in 3 months... I really feel tired although I understand why some are acting like this...
How do you rotate people in your raid? Who decides who'll take part and who'll have to sit out? Raidleader? Classleaders? How do you decide when to recruit more members?
What I'm finding works well is do a "PST in/out <boss>" and have people message you if they need an item from that boss or if they don't and can sit out for someone else. You might have more downtime between raids but overall people will be happier if they can jump in for one boss for that elusive item (this assumes officer loot).
What I'm finding works well is do a "PST in/out <boss>" and have people message you if they need an item from that boss or if they don't and can sit out for someone else. You might have more downtime between raids but overall people will be happier if they can jump in for one boss for that elusive item (this assumes officer loot).
This is what we do for fights where we have too many people, and usually works well. If there are no volunteers, we make a decision to sit, usually the less consistent raiders. Hyjal will probably be the harder one to sit people from than BT, since a lot of people want their Hyjal rep rings or JC patterns.
We're a small raid, raiding three times a week (4/5 MH, 3/9 BT). I think we're somewhere between casual and a little bit hardcore. Some of us play very much, others not. We're raiding since MC, some of us are playing together since two years. As we're a small guild many of us have a very high raid attendance. I am raidleader since two years. Most of the time I liked it and I think people were satisfied. Sometimes there's trouble and there will always be someone who makes waves but I think that's quite normal. But now...
Because we're only raiding three times a week we have to be efficient. When we had down Kael'thas we soon dropped the T5 instances. We recruited some new members because in November and December some classes weren't manned enough and I wanted to avoid that we would have to attune new members when we're deeper into the T6 content. At this time we're 37 people in our raid (which is not really more or less than the last months...).
At the moment we're working on Archimonde (second evening, 35 %) and raiding goes fine. Needless to say that everyone wants to participate. And of course most of the time you prefer those members of your raid who showed that they're reliable. But every raid needs a backup crew and no one always wants to stand on the sideline. Therefore I try to rotate within the classes. It worked quite good but now since we're in Hyjal / BT people are going mad a little and it hurts me to see that some reproach me even if they only had to sit out for one time because we had to attune some new members for BT. Only one time in 3 months... I really feel tired although I understand why some are acting like this...
How do you rotate people in your raid? Who decides who'll take part and who'll have to sit out? Raidleader? Classleaders? How do you decide when to recruit more members?
Not everyone can see the bigger picture, even after you make the effort of explaining to them. However, if someone is at all open for explanation, I find it usually works best to simply put him in your shoes. Describe to him the situation from your perspective and ask him what he would do. If he simply says 'don't recruit, we're fine', you're probably just going to have to tell him to accept your decision and drop the issue. In my experience most people will understand the need for redundancy though, especially those people that have gone through a period of canceled raids before, either in your guild or a previous one.
Generally our raidleaders will set the conditions they want met for the rest of the night and then each class has the responsibility for their own rotation by doing their own running in/out and then simply giving the a raidleader a sign when a groupswap needs to be made. Some classes are highly cooperative and decide it together, others look towards one player (like an officer that happens to be part of that class) and for one class we've assigned a quasi-classleader. Raidleaders usually take a more firm hand on progression content though.
For recruitment, it basically comes down to making up your ideal roster and try to keep striving for it. You also need to determine factors like turnover, attendance and skill for your guild. The first two speak for themselves, but depending on your guild's culture (mostly wether you allow the kind of people to be in your guild in the first place and if they are, if you allow them in the raid on such encounters), you might not want to have people in for critical kills if you can't depend on them.
One thing about working with an ideal roster like that is that you don't strive yourself to death. If you need healers but just can't seem to get that resto shaman, getting a priest is probably a good idea before you run yourself into the ground. Sometimes we add a player to a class even when that isn't really what our ideal roster prescribes, but some classes are roughly interchangeable in this regard.
We also grab a good player whenever we can get one. This has made us end up with 4 hunters for example, but a good player of the wrong class is simply worth much more than a bad player of the right class in most cases. Besides, there is always going to be some time when people leave again due to reasons that are outside your control, having some redundancy even in non-critical roles isn't so bad. Just don't stretch yourself to levels you can't control. I'd say that getting anywhere over 40 people for a guild like this would be pushing it, but I guess it highly depends on your guild's culture as well.
Finally, it helps if you promote flexibility by making it easy for people to gear up for their offspecs. This doesn't apply to all classes obviously, but especially druids, warrior, shamans, (s)priests and paladins being able to fill a hole by respeccing or even just changing gear on the spot, can really be a nice convenience or downright save the day.
I guess my ideal roster would be something like:
2 tank warriors, 3 tank druids, 4 paladins, 2 holy priests, 3 resto shamans, 2 resto druid, 3 rogues, 3 hunters, 3 mages, 4 warlocks, 1 elemental shaman, 1 enhancement shaman, 1 dps warrior, 3 shadow priests.
I'm not quite sold yet on retridins and such, but my raidleaders might disagree :>
Anyway, remember that things will almost never be ideal for most guilds out there, so don't go nuts over it. Get some good officers, talk a lot, don't be afraid to involve your members if you can't figure it out on your own. Often there is a lot of knowledge among 30-40 people, you just have to find it.
We're a small raid, raiding three times a week (4/5 MH, 3/9 BT). I think we're somewhere between casual and a little bit hardcore. Some of us play very much, others not. We're raiding since MC, some of us are playing together since two years. As we're a small guild many of us have a very high raid attendance. I am raidleader since two years. Most of the time I liked it and I think people were satisfied. Sometimes there's trouble and there will always be someone who makes waves but I think that's quite normal. But now...
Because we're only raiding three times a week we have to be efficient. When we had down Kael'thas we soon dropped the T5 instances. We recruited some new members because in November and December some classes weren't manned enough and I wanted to avoid that we would have to attune new members when we're deeper into the T6 content. At this time we're 37 people in our raid (which is not really more or less than the last months...).
At the moment we're working on Archimonde (second evening, 35 %) and raiding goes fine. Needless to say that everyone wants to participate. And of course most of the time you prefer those members of your raid who showed that they're reliable. But every raid needs a backup crew and no one always wants to stand on the sideline. Therefore I try to rotate within the classes. It worked quite good but now since we're in Hyjal / BT people are going mad a little and it hurts me to see that some reproach me even if they only had to sit out for one time because we had to attune some new members for BT. Only one time in 3 months... I really feel tired although I understand why some are acting like this...
How do you rotate people in your raid? Who decides who'll take part and who'll have to sit out? Raidleader? Classleaders? How do you decide when to recruit more members?
We have a very similar situation to yours...a long running guild, 4 night a week raiding schedule, w/ alot of raiders on our roster. Right now we have 41 raiding members, and on a typical raid night have around 35 people in the raid at a time.
We almost never have problems with who sits out or complaints about having to sit out. As raid leader, I think I even feel worse for some people than they do themselves...there's at least a couple people (not the same people each night) who will sign on at 7:00 and just sit outside the instance all night, or play an alt or something, and I feel like they want to be in, but in reality I guess they don't care. A couple things we've done to get to a really harmonious set up like this are as follows:
1) Set expectations: When we describe our guild to prospective members, we emphasize that our goal is to see as much of the game as we can, w/out having WoW be the sole focus of our lives. In practical terms, we tell people that we want an atmosphere that if they want to take a night off, have another engagement, etc, that's ok and won't hurt them (We only require 50% attendance/week). To achieve this goal, we explain that we have a large raiding roster, which requires people be willing to sit out when they don't need loot off a boss. We're very upfront and blatant w/ this with recruits, telling them if they can't handle sitting multiple boss fights (that they don't need loot off) in a night, this is not the guild for them.
2) We use a dkp system, and give full dkp for people who are on standby. This is a big one I think, because it takes away a big part of the reason why alot of people are reluctant to sit out. If people know they can hang out in vent, play an alt or guitar hero or whatever, and still get DKP, they are happy to volunteer to sit.
3) Loot needs drive raid inclusion. W/ the exception of encounter specific needs (3 tanks for Gurtogg, decursers for archie, etc), we generally prioritize loot needs when getting people in. We're all devious little loot whores at heart, even if we don't know it, and on any farm boss, people who need loot always have priority over people who don't need anything.
4) Frequent switches. We change up the raid after every boss in response to requests to come in, go out etc. A normal raid night would go something like this:
1) Raid forms and starts heading for BT
2) Raidleader sends out an announcement "Who doesn't care about being in for Naj'entus?"
3) Those responses help the raid leader make a 25 man group, sitting those who don't care whenever possible.
4) Naj'entus dies. While loot is being done by someone else, Raid leader asks in vent/raid chat "Who wants in for Supremus." Once we know who wants in, and how many spots are needed, we ask "Any volunteers to sit, need X to sit." Raid leader makes adjustments, new group keeps going.
5) Supremus dies, same thing happens for Akama, etc etc etc
We've been doing this long enough that it takes around 3 minutes (running concurrently with loot distribution) to get the group settled and get going again. So far we've almost never had to sit someone who wanted in for loot, w/ the exception of Archimonde on our first couple kills. It adds a little time to our clears but keeps people much more happy and engaged. I'd rather everyone sit 1-2 bosses a night than have 5 people log on and never get in the raid at all.
An added benefit to this set up is we can fairly easily stack groups to make sure kills go down more smoothly. If a fight is great for rogues (Gurtogg), I can easily bring in 3-4 rogues if necessary. On fights w/ auto-kill abilities (Teron, Azgalor), I can stack the raid more heavily with druids and warlocks to mitigate that. We didn't anticipate this benefit when we made this structure going into TBC, but it helps alot with a lighter raiding schedule, since anything we can do to ensure farm bosses die in one-shots each week is important to give us enough time to work on progression. I'm sure some would consider this cheating or at least not in the spirit of the game, but whatever.
I find that I its really hard to find a bt/hyjal guild unless your keyed. I was in full ssc/tk gear and couldn't get a yes, as a resto shaman with 1800 healing and 300mp5 raid buffed. It wasn't till after my current guild got kael to phase 4 that I got a bt/hyjal guild to accept me. Im now 1-2 in healing every night and actually helping my raid, doing stuff they didn't do before (i.e calling heroisoms, telling them to use shadow pots in ros phase 3). I have many friends that are in ssc/tk gear on my server , that are excellent players and want to progress, but most guilds around here want kael vial or vashj vial min. Heck my guild is 4/5 hyjal 7/9 bt and we go to vashj 3 wipes and we call it and go back to bt.
I find that I its really hard to find a bt/hyjal guild unless your keyed. I was in full ssc/tk gear and couldn't get a yes, as a resto shaman with 1800 healing and 300mp5 raid buffed. It wasn't till after my current guild got kael to phase 4 that I got a bt/hyjal guild to accept me. Im now 1-2 in healing every night and actually helping my raid, doing stuff they didn't do before (i.e calling heroisoms, telling them to use shadow pots in ros phase 3). I have many friends that are in ssc/tk gear on my server , that are excellent players and want to progress, but most guilds around here want kael vial or vashj vial min. Heck my guild is 4/5 hyjal 7/9 bt and we go to vashj 3 wipes and we call it and go back to bt.
Some time ago, in this very thread, I made the same comments, only that instead of having raid T5 content, I had raided preBC content, and arguing with someone that my preraid gear was enough for T6 content(crafted tailoring stuff and S3 jewelry). However shortly after my posts, I received a cross server offer to fully attune me and recruit me into a T6 progressing guild, and a few weeks after in an illidan farming guild even. The issue really, and that's been discussed in this thread already, isn't so much attuning people, it's making sure the people you attune are the people you need for your guild, because while the effort to attune annoys people and it's hard to find enjoyment in doing T5 content when you're progressing thru T6, it's even worse when you have no real way to test the people you're recruiting, since you can't take them with you to raid anything.
It also vastly depends on the server you're playing, I took the chance and transferred shortly after I received the offer, I'm now raiding T6 while having raided T5 2weeks and T4 1week(well since then I've had to rerun T5 for attunements and I run karazhan pretty often for moonkin stuff, or for my alt), and I don't think the people who took the time to attune me regret it since I'm quite often in top 2-3 healer(I really can't beat our best geared CoH priest unless we're talking MH trash ^^) and have 95%attendance. However, it was a bet, especially since I had almost no T5 experience and was geared almost exclusively in stuff anyone that puts a few hours of work of grinding can get, and I don't know how much as a raid leader I would have wanted to bet on this honestly.
But all this is to say, my guild still recruits unattuned people because of the shortage of raiders on our server, and because we're only the 2nd most progressed horde guild, and haven't killed illidan yet so cross server applications aren't flowing on our message board. On some other servers, or for other highly progressed guilds, there might be no need to recruit more, simply because of luck with their current roster(no one really quitting, or only people in classes that were already overrepresented) and so on.
Still find weird a resto shaman would have trouble finding a guild though, from what I understand they're the most demanded class/spec in the game currently, as a general consensus. Draenei enh shaman and tree druids would be the next, and "real" offspecs somewhere along there too, like moonkins, elem shamans and geared ret/prot pallies. Again, I guess it depends from server to server, and some servers might have enough alliance resto shamans for all their guilds, while others have to look into the T4 raiding pool to find theirs.
I don't think there are *any* servers where there are enough geared, attuned, talented resto shamans. Definitely not if you're used to Horde-side (where resto shamans are more plentiful, and you're used to having that OP-ness) and you're looking on Alliance-side.
I know the hardest classes for the two raid guilds I've been a part of for BT/HS to find have been:
Alliance-side
Restoration Shamans
Feral Druids
Horde-side
Restoration Druids
Feral Druids
Finding a *talented* retribution paladin is almost impossible, but that's largely due to the underwhelming nature of the class, something I lay entirely at Blizzard's door. Talented boomkins are equally as hard to find, but that's largely because few people give them the chance, so there's not enough supply to weed out the idiots from to find talent. Enh/ele shamans are reasonably simple to find, simply because more people who roll shaman are willing to go with that, and, tbh, they're both stupidly easy classes to play.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein
But all this is to say, my guild still recruits unattuned people because of the shortage of raiders on our server, and because we're only the 2nd most progressed horde guild, and haven't killed illidan yet so cross server applications aren't flowing on our message board.
I very much doubt you will see a crazy amount of it even once you do kill Illidan. Problem is that aside from you, tons and tons of guilds have killed Illidan by now and tons and tons of guilds have roughly the same constitution. I think that unless you find a way to stand out from the crowd, or are able top work through your guild's social networks, you will find that cross-server recruitment isn't going to do a whole lot for you.
For various reasons, I am no longer involved in recruitment for my guild as of a week ago. But I can say that getting recruits for your guild was less a factor of your progression than of your recruitment process.
Recruits see tons of guild looking for people... but are you the person who copy-pasted your generic recruitment post to their app thread, or the person who sat there and waited without looking for them? Are you the person who copy-pasted the generic post or the one who prefaced it with a personalized post with the most relevant information to this applicant at the top (i.e. "Hi Hordewarlock, we seem to be raiding at the times you're looking to raid at and I think our atmosphere would suit you well. We're... etc")? Are you the one who posted to them, or the one who also created an alt on their server to chat them up and offer them your vent info? Time and time again applicants told me "I came here because you guys seemed the most interested in me, I felt the most comfortable with you guys, the effort you put into making the recruitment process go well made me trust that you ran other things similarly well."
I would also say to be brutally honest with people in applicant interviews. If someone says "I hate it when guilds do X," and you kind of do X, speak up immediately! Your honesty will win you points with them and you're both better off... neither of you wants that person to transfer if they're going to be unhappy and leave again in a few months.
It is a seller's market out there at the moment... so remember that first impressions are important and that people are not making simple decisions. Progression is a factor for people, but so are:
-atmosphere
-raid times
-raid frequency
-loot rules
-guild policies
-server health
-guild health/stability
...and many other things! Look for people who match up well with you on most of these issues and talk up your strong points. Be honest about your weaknesses, but think about the best things about your guild and be able to clearly describe them to others.
It's from another attrition heavy, human resources nightmare (big law firms) but I think it goes well with dealing with attrition and getting the right people in general:
Maximium upfront disclosure as to what you expect and what you are giving. There has been a very sharp trend away from "Potemkin law firm" (summer assoicates get to party on the beach in San Diego instead of doing real work) in the past couple years because junior associate attrition rates are unacceptable once they find out exactly what they are really doing with their life (i.e. working for 2000 hours a year doing document review).
Serious progression raiding is similar in that it isn't really "playing a game." If people didn't sign up for it, you will have issues.
Maximum disclosure (this is when we raid, we will be raiding a lot more once Sunwell comes out, this is what we expect, this is our loot policy, this is when you can expect to get gear, this is what will get you sacked, etc.) coupled with extensive interviewing of what the app is like (how old are they, how much WoW do they usually play, do they foresee RL issues that will cut their WoW time, why do they want to raid) won't help you get a large number of warm bodies, but they will help prevent mismatches and burnout among the people that you do get. You won't need to replace the replacements, as it were.
This doesn't work all that well if you are literally starving for bodies and on the verge of falling apart unless you get enough to field a raid, but it is a good deal healthier than a meat-grinder model long term if you can wait that long as an institution.
Slight derail (but still on-topic): I need a few guild leaders (or players given the responsibility to recruit) to contact me via PM if they would like to help test/give feedback on a tool I've been working on for several weeks, which I hope will attempt to alleviate the problem of trying to recruit adequate players.
It is not a miracle solves-all-your-problems tool, sadly, but it may be something you can add to your arsenal which will expediate the recruitment process (at least, it has for me). I don't know about the rest of you, but my biggest recruitment pain is having to sift through pages and pages of WoW Guild Recruitment forum posts looking for "the right match". This tool aims to speed that process up, significantly.
12/21/07, 9:33 AM
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