Zophos

I've posted on this previously, but I'll summarize my experience. Pre-BC, I was in effect handed a guild that was near the top on the server and had to build it back up from scratch, ultimately clearing most content prior to the expansion's arrival. That tuned my senses to what I actually wanted in a raiding guild (and not simply what I had been handed), and as such, I ultimately quit the leadership of that guild, took a few month break at the start of the expansion, and reformed a guild with the bare bones 10 people needed. We've since cleared all T4 and T5 content and have only 3 bosses remaining before Sunwell. With that, here are what I consider to be guiding principles in my experience:

1. The game is a game, and the moment one loses sight of that, destruction is imminent. Finding like-minded people who seriously invest their time is not a violation of this principle, but a cognizance that every person (if you believe in them) is a valued member reveals that it's not a matter (except for the absolute top guilds) of how much time is spent, but how it is spent. Said another way, plan your guild for a year from now and not a month from now; not in its schedule persay, but in the mentality you wish to preserve in the course of it.

2. Good people manifest their goodness rapidly and bad people, if one is keen to it, do so with equal rapidity. The application process, in my view, has become one in which you ultimately look for any weaknesses that would jeopardize the long-term health of your guild. Thus things like spec, raid role, performance, and anything else are carved underneath this heading, and when the application process seeks to either imbue or test a person's character (by which I mean personality, not avatar), you're ultimately much better off. We reject 90-95% of applicants either in the pre-trial or trial phase, and it's something I am personally proud of, because it says anyone with our tag has, at least in my mind, achieved a certain distinction that is a reflection of their worth as a person. This doesn't imply a homogeneity of personality - we have a wide array of behaviors in our guild - but rather an agreement on a philosophical level.

3. When rules are set, they're set for everyone. If you can't hold yourself or your friends to the standards you put forth, you may not be fit to lead. Loot systems are good examples, particularly if they're not quantitative. For most guilds, if you can't put forth your policies in unequivocal terms, showing no one is beyond reproach, you'll be on thin ice in time.

4. Leading is diplomacy, and because it's a game, your personal opinion as a guild/raid leader is generally secondary to either the opinion of the guild as a whole or when one considers the benefit that can come to the guild in the pursuit of an action. This is not to ignore your perspective altogether, and often executive decisions must be made, but you have to work with the people you have and the time in which you have them. As such, and again because you appeal to an extracurricular point in people's lives, every setback needs to have as a reflex response, "What's the best way to handle this?"

5. In line with (3) and (4), decisive action does not imply immediate action. However, once you decide on a course, don't stray from it. An example is membership removal. With two exceptions in three years, I have never removed anyone during peak time play for their conduct or lack of it (e.g. inactivity). I give every removal adequate consideration, but then I don't hesitate when I've come to my conclusion. An intelligent membership will, in the long term, respect thoughtful decisions even if they don't agree with them.

6. In my view, all members are responsible for themselves in one way or another. We have an age restriction policy in my guild that has worked very well, and we also have expectations on performance and preparation. When I come to a raid, I assume everyone is aware of what generally to do and how it will be done, and we spend our time sorting out the finer details and/or executing that vision. In that way, the guild leader who distributes responsibility implicitly (that is, every member unto themselves, which itself does not require a strict leadership structure) is not there to coddle people, and this further aids in the vetting process.

7. Finally (and I say finally just to end this line of thought), recognize why you're doing what you're doing each day. This is equivalent to maintaining a passion about a circumstance, but it further implies that you should always come to each activity with expectations, contingencies, and goals. Every leader will get frustrated and will inevitably blow off steam to some segment of the population about it; I'm guilty of that more times than I can count. However, in the trust your guild mates have for you, you as a leader must preserve it by ensuring you keep things fun for yourself. I know all too well how the administrative side of things can seem to etch into the fun one is seeking, but tomorrow is another day, and as long as one budgets time with some intelligence, that fun does not have to dissipate.


Nothing I've said I believe is terribly novel; these are all guiding principles, in one way or another, of basic management, and I know I've kept to minimal detail because I genuinely feel that the idiosyncrasies that define a guild are deeply secondary to the mentality that is shaped in its formulation. My members and I for the most part all keep full-time jobs and we only raid 3.5 hours a night, 4 days a week, and while we could be further (though I chalk some of it up to our later start), we've been the slow and steady counterpart to a server that sometimes has chaos in its raiding scene - the tortoise to the hare, to fit the analogy. We keep under 30 members and we almost all raid each night, and we all generally like one another, and that in itself is a rare commodity. Nonetheless, I hope this helps a bit.

Guild Master - Epignosis

 

Dralmoo

Does this include every random person in greens who fills out an app? Or are you really rejecting the vast majority of qualified toons because of personality issues?

Personally I'd say we reject most applications immediately but of those who make it to a trial, we ultimately accept the majority. I feel like there are many more 9/9 or 1/6 guilds looking for raiders than there are raiders to fill those spots. I can't see turning away that percentage of people who make it to a trial being practical.

 

Zophos

If you visit our website, we lay out our expectations pretty rigorously and quantitatively, so unless an applicant completely didn't read that (which is grounds in itself for denial), we generally don't get too many of the "all in greens" apps; I'd say 1 in 30 may be that way, at most. Our private application (which I use primarily for later reference) is very simple: it asks if they've had any contact with decision makers in the guild, if they can regularly meet our defined raiding times, for a brief description of their gear and experience, and if they satisfy the aforementioned rules. To me, these define the core things you need to know about someone, and I've adopted this simplistic approach over time after once using an "application from hell" in the past. In this way, while questions like raid availability and expectation satisfaction overlap, they offer red flags and immediately can be used as a later reference, be it during a trial phase or when their membership is considered.

I myself cannot speak for where a 9/9 x/6 Sunwell guild finds themselves; we're 7/9, pushing 8/9, and I know we have a lot of BT farming in store for us still. That having been said, on our realm, the long-time dominant guild (Top 100 US) recently disbanded for a host of issues, not the least of which was trouble with recruitment. Having known their guild master for years, I know he struggled with finding the right people for the task. My argument to situations like that, however, and also in response to what you proposed, is that while there will invariably be issues in which gear and experience is a factor - our quantitative numbers for character profiles are a testament to that - you get much more insight from the worth of the person by placing before them challenges that extend beyond the raid environment. For this reason, I tend to take Paid Character Transfers less, and with the removal of attunements and excellent badge gear, we have a sufficiently thriving raiding population that now our concerns first and foremost are finding people who can understand how to rapidly adapt to new circumstances. And in that task, I believe solid leadership (not to toot my own horn) can impact that person's capacity drastically.

As always, my experiences can be an exception to the rule, but I ran a Naxx guild with a roster of 65 and now run a BT guild with a roster of under 30, and I am infinitely more content in the latter position. It was far from easy and there were plenty of times I wasn't sure it'd work, and every other typical raid "thing" happened to us as it does to most others, but our members regularly remind me of how grateful they are about how few people we ultimately accept, because (I wager) a value has been ascribed to their position, no matter our progression, and that's something only time can foster.

Guild Master - Epignosis

 

Psyche

The guild I am in has a (fairly) long history. They started out as a group of PvPers pre-TBC. After most of them got the rank they were aiming for (mostly Rank 13 & 14), they had nothing else to do, and decided they might as well try to raid. I left a guild that was at the time working on the Twin Emps, and joined a guild that was starting Molten Core. And I can honestly say it was the best decision I have made in my time with this game.

I think a lot of people (and guilds) lose sight of the fact that this is "just a game". In ten years, is anyone going to care who had the first Illidan kill on the server? In ten years, will you still be playing video games with people you met back in World of Warcraft? Some of the people in our guild are starting to branch out to other games such as Call of Duty 4, and soon Age of Conan. They plan to continue to play together, and possibly build up new versions of our guild in these games. Your goal, in my opinion, is to have fun with the people you spend your leisure time with, be it on a game or in real life. This ,however, doesn't mean you can't find like-minded people that want to be the best and push the limits, clearing content and getting epics.

They are currently working on the Eredar Twins (I just hit 70 2 weeks ago after an extended break). But we maintain fun relationships via an internet game. If you are looking to start up a new guild, I would advise to first try to find people you would enjoy your game time with, even if they aren't the best geared around.

 

xmod2

Check with the guild's raiding policy. If they don't have one then I'm not sure how much further they plan on going.

In our case, people who sign up for the general Kara pool are given priority over those who didn't. Group comps are built from signups and you're expected online for raids 30 minutes prior to start. 10 minutes before start time, anyone who is not online forfeits their spot and we take subs/pugs from people who are online. People who come online after the 10 minute cut-off and hadn't notified an officer prior are given the same priority as non-signups. If they have notified an officer, we normally just run light on members till they can get on and summoned in.

We're currently working through SSC/TK, but we've tried to keep a formal raiding and loot policy from early on to reduce drama like you mentioned above.

 

OzzymandiasKJ

I can't really make the call regarding what is/isn't "normal" behavior. If you're feeling left out of the loop or disrespected then its your obligation to do something about it. Some guilds may have rules that senior members are saved raid spots, while others might have first come first serve policies. If you feel like you're not being appreciated or you're not having fun in this particular guild then I would reccomend looking for another one. And when you find the next one its important that you have a serious interview with their recruiter so that both you and the guild are comfortable with the established rules/policies when you join.

This is a perfect example of why I said a recruiter should expose everything about their guild during an interview, "warts and all".

 

Octaviann

The guild I'm in started as a casual guild, primarily a group of friends plus their buddies that they'd met in game. It gradually grew as several of us did instance runs regularly and eventually invited the regular participants to join the guild. These eventually became more or less "guild runs" of various instances. Now, our biggest goal is to get a group of people to 70 and geared so that we can start raiding. I'm not an officer or the guild leader, but I'd like some advice on how one should go about getting a guild of non-70s or non-raiders ready for raiding. Right now we have a small core group of 70s who are officers, and a slightly larger group of us who are very close to 70 (high to mid 60s) who want to eventually raid. I'm part of this second group. What should we (both the guild, and the group of pre-70s) do in anticipation of this fact to make our transition from casual to raiding go smoothly?

My first instinct is to say that we need to get somewhat decent gear so that we have a better chance of being invited to raid, as well as learning about raiding specs, etc., but I'm wondering about anything else we can do.

 

Magenorn

My guild is progressing through BT now, and we are on Bloodboil, I think we will down him soon. There is, however, a problem with the DPS. Specifically the mages, they constantly perform 1% or more total damage done than the overall average. When i say 1% total damage, I am referring to the 6-8% of total damage done per a raid member, where the other mages do 4-5%. I retired from raiding for the better part of a year, until I was called back into raiding by my fellow officers, who wanted me to show the other mages "how its done."

I used to raid as 10/48/3, but recently have come as 10/0/51 to test out a new strategy. The other mages in the guild have had consistent problems as fire, to the point that I have advised them to try out other speccs, even arcane. I am at my wits end. Two of our mages, whom I kicked from the guild, were outdpsd by the main tank on most fights! Does anyone have any advice on what I could do to help them increase their DPS and help us progress further?

PS: With the latest scheme I have been trying, I come as 10/0/51 (as I previously stated) and they come as 40/0/21. I have them follow strict guidelines on rotation and cooldown usage. However, from my experience I do better DPS as 40/0/21 over 10/0/51, but I don't trust them to properly utilize the Water Elemental.

 

Bazookatooth

You'll probably want to include a WWS and carry this discussion on in that thread. Just from what you mention here, though, it seems very odd that a fire mage couldn't out dps a tank - seems there's something else going on.

 

Astmathic

Me and some oldschool friends decided it was time to start over and make a new guild. Some of us had been either casually playing since tbc hit or just not playing at all. We joined together and started recruiting around 4 weeks ago. First raiding night was 3 weeks ago when we went into kara with 2 groups and cleared it all in one night. Now that is not that impressive nowadays since you basically can pug everything up to some t5 encounters.

However to relate to this topic we made the "edge". We just said that "Do you want to see all of the tbc content before wotlk?" and people started to make applications. The fact that we chose a high pop realm also helped a lot. Since we basically just said that you shouldnt be mentally challenged and know the basic rule of raiding (Move out of the fire) and gear wasn't that interesting we got a ton of applications.

What is interesting though is how to build up your raiding force. As I see it you either get your steady 25 man and then try to keep as many as possible or just massrecruit and then kick the ones that dont meet your standards. The really hard part with the kicking technique as I see it is two problems:

1. You cant be a softy. If you start getting emotionally attached to the people either step down as gm or just quit the guild. You cant be that.
2. You must be a very good player. If you cannot prove that you are really really good then it's hard to make others understand that they dont meet the standards but you do.

We are implementing the "kick all that cannot move out of the fire" technique. It works pretty good, 2 weeks raiding in 25 mans and we have 3/4 TK and 2/6 SSC. Not that any of those fights is hard anymore.

My point here is that, in my own opinion of course, the most important things when you start a new guild is:

1. Have an edge. This doesn't go just for the guild but the officers and GM as well. As an officer you can either be a really good raid leader, a really really good player, a really good theorycrafter etc etc. As long as you are standing out in one point the flaws are accepted.

2. Don't be a softy. A person can be really really nice but are you building a hardcore raiding guild or a group of friends?

3. Make sure the first raids happen and that you kill stuff. Progress makes everyone happy.

That's about my 2 cents from this experience.

 

Rougher

I was in a somewhat successful raiding guild on our server pre-BC that fell apart during BWL. There was a bunch of people from that guild that went on to form a new guild, and did somewhat well to a point, as they had the gear.

Instead of just following the pack and continously getting stuck on the same content, we took 3, and only 3 people from the guild that fell apart and decided to form new guild ourselves. One was one of my best friends IRL, so we ended up spending many hours talking about it, planning from both a loot and recruitment point of view, and thinking about how/if we really wanted to go about this.

In the end, we decided and still have the belief that the person behind the character and their attitude/skill is the most important factor you can have in a raider. The gear itself is simple to get, and skill can carry you farther and quiker than someone with gear. We started off small, doing runs of ZG and AQ20, which was still fairly new, and expanded on that, and ended up catching and passing quite a few guilds on our factions side, finishing I think around 3rd on our server Alliance side when TBC dropped.

Looking back on the experience, it was hard, but I think the smartest move we made was to try to recruit people that had NOT raided previously, or had very limited experience. Some of those players that do lots of heroic and 5 man runs, and get in the occasional Kara/ZA pug are GOOD players, they may just not have had the chance to get into a guild that raids and prove themselves. The other reason we took this route was because we wanted to bring in people and train them, instead of having them bring in old, bad habits from previous guilds. Some of the best raiders we have right now are people that we took that were clearly smart players, but had no raid experience. Since we used some unconventional strats, it was far easier to "train" these new players and get them to buy into it than take an experienced raider and have them tell us we were wrong for doing it a specific way.

The only other suggestion I would have is to have a tight knit officer core. We ran with 3 co gm's, and each of us had different traits and could make respected decisions. One person was a true people person, who knew how to get the most out of people (probably the biggest asset). I was more of a strategist/theorycrafter, and the other was a mix of the two. But like many others have said before, its important that you get people you trust, respect, and that buy into your philosophy as to where you want to bring the guild. Those are the people that won't jump ship at the first sign of trouble or as soon as a different opportunity comes along.

 

Hildegard

We are an RP-Raid, which is something different from what you may expect it to be. RP-Raids have mainly some rules different than other raids.

1. We do not use voice chat
2. We use in character speaking when using /s, /y or /e
3. We only take players being capable of playing out their character, which usually requires a certain amount of cultural knowledge and education
4. We only take players that have a certain skill level, even tough we are not progressing fast paced
5. We raid not to progress or to get gear but to enjoy the encounters, we do not spoiler a lot before engaging them
6. We don't hurry or keep people together by putting up goals to down the next boss or get certain loots

Our raid solves the topic of being attractive without the need of fast progress, but with a quality of play. We spend only eight hours of raiding each weak. But we spent quality time. We rarely wipe on encounters that we have beaten already. We are a raid not having our own guild - except for alts to access a common guild bank.

The attraction here comes from being different and from spending quality time. We get as - I think - the only raid on our server cross-server applications and raiders from more fast-progressed guilds often ask us if they can join us for a night to enjoy the spectacle.

What we try to do is in some way close to being serious casuals. We do not have a loot system and just give the items away and we never ever have any problems with that. We enjoy raiding more like an interactive movie with many friends. I think many guilds somehow want to prove themself something by killing this or that, but I think that is only really attractive to males from 16 to perhabs 24. Our point is to use raiding as an fun after work. I can't really see the achievement in becoming raiding guild Nr. 1 on an server no one else cares about.

So we attract players by not being competitive, but to have quality time. We use quite a lot fine-tuning, we discuss class synergies and strategies in detail even with graphs and stuff like that. We develop our own strategies without using bosskillers.com or something like that.

Many players enjoy this a lot more than raiding for a competition used to hold together the raid.

Just my two cents.

Hildegard Sprigglespruxx - Wissenschaftlerin am Institut für Pfuschkunde

http://forscherliga.wikia.com/wiki/Hildegard

 

Zophos

We have an inverse fortune: our mages tend to always be in the Top 5 DPS in T6 instances, and it's in part I imagine because I've aided in grooming them by being the GM and raid leader. We run a 3 mage raid, 2 fire (myself and another) and 1 Arcane (40/0/21), and any of us can top the meter on a given night. That having been said, if your guild members (or former ones, from the sounds of it) are having trouble as Fire, these are things you should be examining either with Recount in game (AddOn) or with WWS, the content of which is reaffirmed in Class Mechanics on this forum:

1. Bad fire mages cast Scorch too much. Certain fight mechanics can require a reapplication of 5 stacks more often than other encounters, but in general, it shouldn't need to be cast much beyond the start of an encounter/phase. With additional fire mages, your frequency of recast has also reduced. In a typical WWS parse of a raid with two fire mages doing respectable DPS, scorch should only be cast 5-10% of the time. That's a rough guideline, yes, but is something to examine. Again, you can do this inside Recount in game if you prefer.

2. Most fire mages, in my experience, don't understand the limited importance of spell critical strike rating. Ensuring the hit cap (164 with EP) is of primary importance, then haste (yes, haste), then damage, and then finally crit. If you check my Armory, I am a decent example of what a mage can have for gear roughly at your level of progression. (EDIT: I am logged out in PvP gear, but by this evening I will be in PvE gear and usually am.) Even for an Arcane spec, crit takes on less value than the average person might think.

3. Most fire mages aren't making full use of their skill set. Assuming a 2/48/11 spec (or some variation, but namely Fire with Icy Veins), Combustion should be used as frequently as tank threat permits and after a full scorch stack. (Yes, this is obvious, but I can't count how many applicant mages I've seen pop Combustion at the start of a fight because, according to them, they took Incinerate and somehow think that's better.) Using it in tandem with other damage bonuses (destruction potions {if feasible}, Drums of Battle, active trinkets, Icy Veins, etc.) can often be quite useful in many BT fights where your "important" damage is constrained to specific intervals. (Supremus, Akama, Teron, Bloodboil, and RoS are all this way).

4. In line with (3), even if fire mages are doing all of these things, they won't keep up with more synergized groups. That is to say, if your melee or other ranged DPS have multiple leatherworkers, shadow priests, shaman, or other members which the mages don't have, it's not a fair comparison. I don't deny that our mages are aided in being Top 5 because we have a Resto Shaman with Leatherworking and a Moonkin Druid as part of our group each and every night. That having been said, our melee group has 3 Leatherworkers, an Enhancement Shaman, and a Feral druid, and our remaining DPS have similar opportunities, so we keep the synergies even. This doesn't explain being below the MT in damage, mind you, but it would explain percentage gaps.


There's more, but I'd say those are 4 major mistakes that cause people to think certain classes, mages along with Hunters perhaps the most popular among them, are simply incapable of the damage output that high end raiding demands. I myself don't excuse any DPS except the MT group warlock for being much lower than anyone else, and our WWS/Recount logs have shown we're all now very competitive with one another.

Guild Master - Epignosis

 

Runnybabbit

As a former minion of Ozzymandias, I would like to emphasize the importance of having an edge, although what attracted me to his budding guild (indeed, what led me to transfer to KJ just for the opportunity) wasn't what Ozzy articulated as his edge in the OP. Thirst for competition was a good selling point, don't get me wrong. You're not going to inspire people to join your cause if your ambition is be "eh, pretty good...like, if we have time."

What set Ozzy's guild apart was his tone. After reading his recruitment posts and interviewing pre-transfer, I wouldn't have been able to identify any particular structural attributes of the guild that made it special in my eyes. What made me want to join was the manner in which his vision for the guild was communicated. It was clear. It was focused. It was explicit. It gave me the distinct impression that the guy in charge had his shit together. And at the end of the day, that's all I really look for in a guild. If the GM and core officers know their stuff and aren't assholes, then you've got that "edge" on pretty much any other startup guild on your server. And if you are effective at marketing that edge (i.e. you have a good tone), you will attract the type of players who will make your guild a success.

 

Melkortopia

That. Sounds. Awesome.

That's the first real motivation behind raiding, other than competetion or "progression", that has been pursausive. Well done, sir. Perhaps when WotLK comes out and I start casually leveling a deathknight (mostly for the fun/experience of it), I'll roll on your server and keep a lookout for you guys. :]

 

Hildegard

Thanks a lot. I appreciate what you say. The only problem with rerolling on our server could be the language barrier, as the Forscherliga is a German Server.

Hildegard Sprigglespruxx - Wissenschaftlerin am Institut für Pfuschkunde

http://forscherliga.wikia.com/wiki/Hildegard

 

killets

Two things to note...

1) To the OP clicking on your name sends me to a non-existant Ozzymandias on Mal'Ganis (your WoW info in your profile is wrong). Switching it to Kil'Jaeden, I noticed that your guild is completely empty. So I'm wondering if you should put a disclaimer saying you started a new guild, and disbanded it after a short time.

2) As the guildmaster from one of Blackrock's oldest guilds, I figured I'd throw in a few tips on building/sustaining a guild, which as a few people have noted is more difficult than inviting people.

• Keeping people interested in your guild. People need to feel a part of something that doesn't waste their time. Being a frequent visitor of this board is obviously step one.. no one wants to follow a clueless leader, and this board offers a wealth of information on not only boss fights, but on guild management.
• Being resilient enough to rebuild time and time again when key members leave. As I'm sure every long-standing guild knows, people take breaks, quit the game, RL takes hold, becomes disinterested, or something along those lines. If you want a truly successful guild, being able to stand pat in the face of adversity is a must. Observing all the guild formations and destructions on my server for past 3 years have pretty much taught me that your leaders need to be willing to rebuild when key members leave. Closing the guild b/c a few of your "core" raiders becomes casual is one way to kill a guild quickly.
• Be willing to "home-grow" talent. As most guilds I've been a part of in this MMO and others, the people I know are the same people I leveled up with. It's really those bonds which prevent top-flight talent from jumping off the ship for someone's better and faster ship. In the case of people already 70, you can simply look at "gearing" as a form of leveling. The people you start out with in heroics, and karazhan, and zul'aman are going to be the most dedicated to your cause, and will probably end up being your core officers in time. Valuing the relationship you build over time is just as important as recruiting already established players, simply b/c "home-grown" talent tends to be more loyal (and loyalty really helps with guild survival in tough times). When things go sour, its these players that you "home-grew" that will sustain your guild until you rebuild.
• I know you recommend recruiting people who might even be beyond your progression, but honestly, I feel like a distinction has to be made between players coming from broken guilds, and players still in guilds. A huge portion of players who transfer will probably not help you form a strong core (there are major exceptions of course), since these are the players abandoning their own guild when things become tumultuous. These types of players are fine to "supplment" your guild, but I would be wary on relying on them to help right your boat if it ends up sinking. Of course, this is completely different from people who just don't have a guild b/c their guild literally blew up, or simply stopped raiding, but I felt this distinction had to be made. Most of the applicants I get are players "guild-shopping" for the best available right now. It's almost like an employee who is sending out his resume to hundreds of companies while still under your employ.

 

Mode

By far the hardest part about converting a group of people from players to raiders is getting them to commit to a time. You will, by necessity, have to leave some people out some days because there's just no way to make the time work. Blizzard did a good job getting people on the road to commitment, but you have to seal the deal. Organize 1-2 days a week where everyone sits down and just does an instance together. Heroic, non-heroic, what matters is that people show up and are ready to go run something.

You need to figure out who is good at what they do and who is not. DPS meters are good, but equally important is figuring out who is just the better player. A hunter that does excellent DPS is useless if he is always dying because he stands in the (fucking) fire.

---

If you're looking for a novel way to filter people, ask them how many alts they have. I've found the strongest predictor of player performance is the number of 70 alts they have. In my experience, players with lots of alts perform worse than players who have just their one character. This is both because of less gear due to split time (Don't underestimate the value of just being around; I don't know the alts of -ANYONE- on my friends list, so if they're not on their main, I'm not giving them an invite to something), less practice, and just less general attachment to their character. This doesn't mean no-one with lots of alts is a good player, just that someone with one or no alts is more likely to know what they're doing.

I believe most RP servers have at least one guild like that. I know the guild Suncrown on my server has a strict belfs-only policy that I believe they continue to enforce in raids. The trouble is finding these guilds because they very much keep to themselves. There's an entire hardcore rp sub-community on every RP server; they can really add to the atmosphere even for the non-rpers (such as myself). Unfortunately, there are downsides to RP servers that you should be aware of before you consider rolling up on one. The players are friendly, but generally of a lower quality. There are also the belfs. I moved a particular bank alt from silvermoon to thunder bluff both for efficiency reasons and because two friday's in a row I logged in and had to listen to two belfs having gay belf sex.

 

Xaev

Though I haven't had any experience consistently raiding outside of ten mans since summer 2007, I felt that this was something worth commenting on. In my experience, I've encountered situations that were almost exactly the opposite of what you describe here: the players that I know with two or three other 70 characters not only tend to have more experience because they play the game more, but also understand the mechanics of multiple classes and tend to have a better grasp on the framework upon which the game is founded. While I'll concede that some do have less attachment to an individual character, this is not entirely a bad thing as it sometimes means they're willing to switch mains if it's for the good of the guild.

 

Khaleel

I'm pretty surprised by this. I have a lot of 70 alts, and I've found that it's completely enhanced my knowledge of the overall game. I really understand each raider's position now. I would have thought that would be pretty common for other Raiders.

Now that's just funny.

 

Mode

Let me clarify: My purely anecdotal experience is that people with more 70 alts are better at general tasks (You know, like not standing in fire) and less good at specifically playing their class. If this conflicts with others general experience, I'd be happy to hear it.

 

Bula

Lots of players will master a class and then move onto another one. Your blanket statement may be consistent with your personal experience but several million people play this game and you don't even know 1% of them.

 

Morwen

Playing the game is, well, not hard. There are other games where experience helps you a lot in making real-time decisions, in WoW you pretty much hit a hard cap on how well you can play individually after a short amount of time because there's not much variety (possibly high-end pvp is different, but we are talking raiding here). While it's true that there's a substantial experience gap between someone with 20 days /played on a character vs. 100 days, I don't think I've gotten any better at playing my main class between 100 days and whatever it is now (300?).

Personally I feel the reason I don't play quite as well on my alts as I do on my main has nothing to do with understanding the classes and everything to do with UI layout. I (and I imagine most people) built my UI around all the things that are relevant for my main class and share that across several characters with minor tweaks here and there. But that generally creates suboptimal views/keybinds when I play another class.

In almost all cases, raiders who miss the fire are not idiots, they just have their UI set up in such a way that whatever they are paying the most attention to is impeding their ability to notice the fire.

 

ozweepay

So, once you get a new raiding guild started, how do you evaluate your raiders and decide who stays and who goes?

Suppose you are a mage GM (like one of our respondents above); you know mages inside-and-out, and you are in a pretty good position to judge what kind of job a given player is doing. But your sole shadow priest is at the bottom of the damage chart. How do you judge the quality of that player?

What about the healers... that disc priest isn't doing well on the healing meters.

And that prot warrior takes more damage than your feral druid tank...

I've asked other people how they evaluate players, and often I've heard "you can just tell." But surely there's something more objective than this we can use?!

 

Zophos

I'll assume you were referring to me. I've encountered every single example you've cited, so I feel I'm decently qualified to offer my experience.

If a shadow priest is at the bottom of the damage chart, there are a few things you should be either examining or asking. First and foremost, check their gear and spec. The general rule of thumb up to T6 for shadow priests is to balance investment in Shadow Focus with hit gear they acquire through raiding, implying all socketing is left to +damage items. If they're not socketing as such and keeping that balance, it's a first sign that they may not know what to do. In addition to spec, if the shadow priest is ending up with low damage because he/she thinks he/she has no mana, then I'd check they have a spec which includes at least Meditation and (optionally) Mental Agility, and that they're using Super Mana Potions whenever able. The typical SP spec is 14/0/47, some use 20/0/41, but without Meditation, the SP is dead in the water. If gear and spec check out completely, I'd then ask about their cast sequence. They should be making use of Inner Focus regularly (given the spec above) and link it as they see fit. Some ways to do this are to tie it to their active damage trinket (which they should have and be using - if they're not, that's another sign) and Mind Blast. Also, if they feel they're not able to do adequate damage because they're being threat capped, they can spec out of Improved Vampiric Embrace. Beyond that, SPs need to learn to balance their own health with the need to (sometimes) incorporate Shadow Word: Death into their rotation. All of that is a very cursory summary of things you can find in the Class Mechanics forum about Shadow Priests, but they're objective things you can examine. If all of these things check out and they aren't improving with instruction or guidance, then the player really isn't fast enough to micromanage the class as is needed, in my view. These rules of thumb, however, begin to break down as you enter further into T6, as most Shadow Priests simply will not be able to keep up in DPS with equally competent raiders of other classes, making their utilitarian role (Misery, Shadow Weaving, Vampiric Embrace/Touch) one of the primary motivators for their presence. (EDIT: I also haven't talked about socketing for haste either, but your problem seems more fundamental than that; an SP with no haste socketing can still perform way above what you seem to be suggesting.)

Including a Discipline priest is also something you must choose to do; we have done so for a long time ourselves, running an 8 healer raid (on most fights) with 1 Priest having Pain Suppression. He's always low on healing meters, but as you inspect the Class Mechanics forum, it's pretty clear that you're losing a ton of healing talents by doing so. We recognize this when we assess his performance and we likely will be moving him out of Discipline now that we've learned almost all of Hyjal/BT. As such, I would stray a bit from examining the healing meter alone, but rather examining whether he/she is making use of their skill set regularly, which Recount or WWS can assess; if Power Infusion and Pain Suppression are not being used basically whenever possible, it's an area in which they need to improve.

As for the protection Warrior, there are some obvious checks you can do via the same mods; is he using Shield Block at every cooldown, is he understanding of how to balance avoidance with mitigation, and is he receiving equitable balance in the group composition? Generally the Warrior who takes more damage is not appreciating one of these elements adequately, but without more information, it's hard for me to offer anything quantitative.

I hope that helps a bit.

Guild Master - Epignosis