MTRs is a guild with some most excellent people in it. We have many players who are damn fine raiders as well as damn fine people. I couldn't ask to spend time with a group of better people.
Where we do sometimes suffer is that our toon make up isnt always the most varied. This post comes from one I made yesterday but I thought I would illustrate the pressures we sometimes face in 10 man raids.
NOTE - This is just my thoughts on the current members of MTRs and others will have different opinions - dont try to work out who is who - it'll just drive you mad and I won't be saying.
I have quickly gone through the roster of the guild and below is my breakdown of toons I would be comfortable taking to a 10 man ICC run - nothing special - say just the first six bosses.
Looks really good doesn't it?
However obviously many of these are classes with dual specs - so what we are actually looking at is 60 characters with the possibility to run in 94 positions. But flexibility is great.
I would take all of these into a 25 run - but this time I would be more restrictive on positions I would put them in. For example someone I would be comfortable tanking the first part of ICC 10 I would be less comfortable with tanking ICC 25. Also some with offspec heals I would limit to DPS etc. The same 60 characters for ICC 25 changes a little:
So not too much trimming but our 60 toons are now fulfilling 81 positions down from 94.
Moving onto ICC 10 past the first 6 bosses, or ICC 25 past the first 6 bosses I would be a little more stringent. Low DPS becomes an issue, people can be carried less. I, for example, wouldn't run Sardonica as a DPS past these points. Badly geared/speced/gemmed/enchanted toons get put aside at this point as well. This the biggest cut and I being strict - this is progression raiding for the guild.
The list looks like this:
I understand some might think that I've been brutal with this cull. Down from 81 to 52. More importantly down from 60 toons to 39. But still that's plenty to run a 25 man.
However, there are 26 'real' people behind these 39 toon. 11 people have two characters to progress, one has three.
26 is on the cusp of viability - and as a social guild it would be impossible to get all 26 on-line simultaneously due to time zones and ages (We have people who are from the US when some of our younger members are in bed etc).
My final table gives an indication of how the actually real people playing various toons can impact on the guilds raiding. We have 9 tanks - which is plenty. However the 9 tanks are all played by different real people - but 5 of those people have multiple toons in the above list. Some, although able to competently tank dont want to by preference.
And talking of preference there are the preferred toons people want to play - we all have them. Many will say they don't mind but deep down I know that some secret wish to bring a specific toon. My last cull is where I know either of these preferences. If in doubt I've left them in - these are my guesses so forgive me if I am incorrect.
I do not blame anyone for having preferences - I understand completely. In fact the above list has dropped Sardonica for Puraa. Acids comment is spot on - "I can even tell (pretty obvious) you love your hunter more."
The above list of 32 positions covers 30 characters played by 26 people.
If I was being entirely honest with myself I would further cull the 26. This would be for hardmode raiding - the creme de la creme so to speak. I still have some concerns about getting out of the fire, underestimating just how different HMs are etc. The 26 would go down considerably - less than 20. From the list the likelihood of getting 10 on at the same time and being able to make a viable raid with a wide range of classes/specs in the run would be difficult - especially in the area of DPS where a sizeable chunk of our top DPS are hunters. Hunters are wonderful characters but too many can be problematic especially if you arent able to bring replenishment to the party.
I worked out the above to address a comment received on a prior post about raid configuration - the thing is sometimes people aren't available, sometimes you take what you get. Sometimes people get saved and only have another toon to bring. Sometimes you get a mass of hunters all wanting to run. It's often difficult to say no, and so the deep progression that I know we are capable of achieving isnt happening.
How do we resolve it is the $64,000,000 question - offence is often caused without intent and guild politics often sours an evening before its even started. Even I couldn't choose just 10 out of the above 26 - even if I just picked my favourites (which of course I have).
Where we do sometimes suffer is that our toon make up isnt always the most varied. This post comes from one I made yesterday but I thought I would illustrate the pressures we sometimes face in 10 man raids.
NOTE - This is just my thoughts on the current members of MTRs and others will have different opinions - dont try to work out who is who - it'll just drive you mad and I won't be saying.
I have quickly gone through the roster of the guild and below is my breakdown of toons I would be comfortable taking to a 10 man ICC run - nothing special - say just the first six bosses.
Looks really good doesn't it?
However obviously many of these are classes with dual specs - so what we are actually looking at is 60 characters with the possibility to run in 94 positions. But flexibility is great.
I would take all of these into a 25 run - but this time I would be more restrictive on positions I would put them in. For example someone I would be comfortable tanking the first part of ICC 10 I would be less comfortable with tanking ICC 25. Also some with offspec heals I would limit to DPS etc. The same 60 characters for ICC 25 changes a little:
So not too much trimming but our 60 toons are now fulfilling 81 positions down from 94.
Moving onto ICC 10 past the first 6 bosses, or ICC 25 past the first 6 bosses I would be a little more stringent. Low DPS becomes an issue, people can be carried less. I, for example, wouldn't run Sardonica as a DPS past these points. Badly geared/speced/gemmed/enchanted toons get put aside at this point as well. This the biggest cut and I being strict - this is progression raiding for the guild.
The list looks like this:
I understand some might think that I've been brutal with this cull. Down from 81 to 52. More importantly down from 60 toons to 39. But still that's plenty to run a 25 man.
However, there are 26 'real' people behind these 39 toon. 11 people have two characters to progress, one has three.
26 is on the cusp of viability - and as a social guild it would be impossible to get all 26 on-line simultaneously due to time zones and ages (We have people who are from the US when some of our younger members are in bed etc).
My final table gives an indication of how the actually real people playing various toons can impact on the guilds raiding. We have 9 tanks - which is plenty. However the 9 tanks are all played by different real people - but 5 of those people have multiple toons in the above list. Some, although able to competently tank dont want to by preference.
And talking of preference there are the preferred toons people want to play - we all have them. Many will say they don't mind but deep down I know that some secret wish to bring a specific toon. My last cull is where I know either of these preferences. If in doubt I've left them in - these are my guesses so forgive me if I am incorrect.
I do not blame anyone for having preferences - I understand completely. In fact the above list has dropped Sardonica for Puraa. Acids comment is spot on - "I can even tell (pretty obvious) you love your hunter more."
The above list of 32 positions covers 30 characters played by 26 people.
If I was being entirely honest with myself I would further cull the 26. This would be for hardmode raiding - the creme de la creme so to speak. I still have some concerns about getting out of the fire, underestimating just how different HMs are etc. The 26 would go down considerably - less than 20. From the list the likelihood of getting 10 on at the same time and being able to make a viable raid with a wide range of classes/specs in the run would be difficult - especially in the area of DPS where a sizeable chunk of our top DPS are hunters. Hunters are wonderful characters but too many can be problematic especially if you arent able to bring replenishment to the party.
_________________________________
I worked out the above to address a comment received on a prior post about raid configuration - the thing is sometimes people aren't available, sometimes you take what you get. Sometimes people get saved and only have another toon to bring. Sometimes you get a mass of hunters all wanting to run. It's often difficult to say no, and so the deep progression that I know we are capable of achieving isnt happening.
How do we resolve it is the $64,000,000 question - offence is often caused without intent and guild politics often sours an evening before its even started. Even I couldn't choose just 10 out of the above 26 - even if I just picked my favourites (which of course I have).
1 comment:
Wow, I just had major flashbacks to when I GM'd a casual guild in BC. Taking people in greens to tier 5 raids because no one else was online at the time, trying to accommodate taking peoples alts because they all of a sudden didn't want to play their character that they had been raiding on for the last 3 months. I dealt with all this for the majority of the expansion and I didn't begrudge them for it because nothing had been made clear in the rules and requirements when we started 25 man raids and I really did love the group of people I played with - they were fabulous.
I only disbanded the guild due to personal reasons (none of the above) and about 5 months later ended up in a much more progressed guild. This was a real eye opener for me because while it seemed way more strict, it was infact so much simpler and easier to deal with.
The rules were fairly clear, commonsense and everyone just followed them - all the bullshit was cut out. I actually started to really resent some of the people I used to play with because it now seemed so selfish what they had asked especially when they all of a sudden decided to change their spec/main.
Anyway enough about me, some quick suggestions that may or may not be of help (I can't really tell how many people you have online at the moment for example) so my apologies if these aren't useful for you.
**Make a couple of basic rules - nothing too flash just something to ensure you don't deal with issues in the future. Things like, you choose a main character and spec to raid with and they need to reapply if they wish to change this. If reapplying is too full on, perhaps just a formal request via ingame mail, something to make them really consider it.
**Recruit a couple more people that you feel will fit in with your guilds atmosphere. It will be hard at this stage of the expansion but its worth trying. If you can get 35 individual players that are keen on raiding then you've got plenty of room for real life etc when people can't make it.
**Don't stress too much about perfect raid make up. Yes it helps but it isn't the end of the world, you can still do it without every possible buff. My guild has run with 3 resto druids and 0 resto shaman since halfway through Ulduar and while that isn't considered optimal we've still managed.
**Keep your DKP system simple. I know you have written posts about DKP in the past and I haven't read them (Sorry!) so you may have addressed this already. Basically when I tried to conquer the world of DKP to be fair to casuals in my BC guild, I now shudder at what I put in place because while everyone put up with it, seriously it didn't help us out in the end it just caused me headaches and didn't gear the people who kept turning up.
**If you have a set raid time, give it 15 mins to get off the ground and call it if there aren't enough on after that. If you keep waiting and don't actually start till an hour after raid time on a regular basis, it just means that no one bothers to show up on time. If you call it, then people know they have to get on if they want t o raid otherwise it just won't happen.
Hope at least one of these is helpful for you and good luck!
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