Comparing Raid Guilds

[Deleted]

That just because a guild states they raid exactly three days for three hours often enough doesn't mean it's true. I mean I don't mind I can understand that people pull a couple extra hours while they are still motivated right after patch release it still seems silly to me to hide it.

Well, I think most guilds do this to some extent. Atleast guilds where all the raiders are motivated.

For example my guild had a 5d / 5h schedule. Though we raided probably for more than 40 hours a week for sure. We did not force any extra days or hours. We simply had our 1900 to 2400 raid times strict, but we always asked "Can people start earlier", and after 2400, we always asked "Can people stay later?". If a single person said no, then we stopped, no hard feelings. But most of the times everyone wanted to continue, this means that we often started at 1700 and ended at 0200. It all of course depended on the day, but it was completely volontary of all members in the team and a single player could chose to call the raid.

So while we raided more than what we "say" we do, what we say we raided was simply the required raid hours, if the entire raid team wanted to raid more we did.
Since everyone in the raid team was motivated and shared the same ambitions, this happened quite frequently. And I think this is something that happens in a lot of guilds, simply that the team wants to raid more. Which in my opinion should happen in any guild where all the players are on the same level in playing in terms of commitment and goals.

So I can understand a lot of 3 day raid guilds doing 4 raids a week because their raiders want that sometimes. If their raiders want that every week they should consider upping to 4 raid weeks a day as a guild, but doing extra raids cause people want it is nothing wrong in my opinion. If you however try to hide it, then it is something wrong. I have no problem saying that we raided more than our said hours, I do not see why there is a need to lie about that. At the same rate, I think that most 3 day raid guilds that did extra raids have no problem saying they did 4 raids a lot of weeks.

[Tiberria]

Well, I think most guilds do this to some extent. Atleast guilds where all the raiders are motivated.

For example my guild had a 5d / 5h schedule. Though we raided probably for more than 40 hours a week for sure. We did not force any extra days or hours. We simply had our 1900 to 2400 raid times strict, but we always asked "Can people start earlier", and after 2400, we always asked "Can people stay later?". If a single person said no, then we stopped, no hard feelings. But most of the times everyone wanted to continue, this means that we often started at 1700 and ended at 0200. It all of course depended on the day, but it was completely volontary of all members in the team and a single player could chose to call the raid.

So while we raided more than what we "say" we do, what we say we raided was simply the required raid hours, if the entire raid team wanted to raid more we did.
Since everyone in the raid team was motivated and shared the same ambitions, this happened quite frequently. And I think this is something that happens in a lot of guilds, simply that the team wants to raid more. Which in my opinion should happen in any guild where all the players are on the same level in playing in terms of commitment and goals.

So I can understand a lot of 3 day raid guilds doing 4 raids a week because their raiders want that sometimes. If their raiders want that every week they should consider upping to 4 raid weeks a day as a guild, but doing extra raids cause people want it is nothing wrong in my opinion. If you however try to hide it, then it is something wrong. I have no problem saying that we raided more than our said hours, I do not see why there is a need to lie about that. At the same rate, I think that most 3 day raid guilds that did extra raids have no problem saying they did 4 raids a lot of weeks.

The problem though with the concept of not forcing people to add hours or days and then advertising a certain number of days is that realistically, if you want to add raid time, you need all or at least almost all of your raiders to be OK with it (obviously not all, but most guilds don't have a 10+ person bench). It then puts a lot of pressure on the few people who really don't want to or can't raid later to agree to it. Sure, you can put your foot in the sand and refuse, but most people won't because of social pressure and/or the fear of losing a raid spot or loot if you don't go alone with it. That becomes especially hard if it's a new trial that just joined the guild. Regardless of there being a general consensus to go late/raid more days or everyone on the surface agreeing to it, I can almost guarantee that it pisses people off when you try to do this.

[Blueobelisk]

The problem though with the concept of not forcing people to add hours or days and then advertising a certain number of days is that realistically, if you want to add raid time, you need all or at least almost all of your raiders to be OK with it (obviously not all, but most guilds don't have a 10+ person bench). It then puts a lot of pressure on the few people who really don't want to or can't raid later to agree to it. Sure, you can put your foot in the sand and refuse, but most people won't because of social pressure and/or the fear of losing a raid spot or loot if you don't go alone with it. That becomes especially hard if it's a new trial that just joined the guild. Regardless of there being a general consensus to go late/raid more days or everyone on the surface agreeing to it, I can almost guarantee that it pisses people off when you try to do this.

It does the even matter if someone in your raid group doesn't like extended hours, what matters is that you falsely advertise. It's kind of scummy to me. If you say in your guild times "during progression we'll add hours" or "we may push later if people choose too" it might be okay, but always adding time when a raid comes out? Yeah, you're raiding extra hours. It's not like raid time matters after you first clear instance or during farm time, you should advertise what you do when raids are new.

[Libretto]

Ironically my guild, which advertises 5d/4h during progression, actually raided less than that this tier due to holidays, attendance issues and such. Our fifth day is optional, we in fact had two people in on our heroic garrosh kill who both would not raid on the fifth day whatsoever due to other commitments, and neither was penalized for it. What people have to realize when doing comparisons is that raiding hours / days are an indicator of the guild's attitude and atmosphere as much as anything. A guild which raids three days strictly, obviously has an atmosphere where maximizing yours and others' time is important. That can put pressure on people to perform, which can be a good or bad thing depending on the person. A guild which raids five days or thereabouts, will often have less of this pressure, but this atmosphere may be too lax for some people.

We quite literally killed garrosh on the last night we had available to really do so, as we had a large number of key people going on vacation or being unavailable due to holiday family commitments after that.

Should my guild get some sort of "bonus" on wowprogress rankings if we can show we didn't raid the optional fifth day half the time during progression because people didn't show up (and weren't forced to)? Should a three day guild that added an extra day or extended their raid hours get a penalty? No.

Ranks are ranks regardless of time investment or lack thereof. The bottom line in the end is that your guild gets the job done whether it takes two, three, five or seven days of raiding. How much work and skill it took is entirely subjective and is something that you can decide for yourself, but which no external metric or website can possibly measure, which is why none I'm aware of tries to.

[Novx]

http://www.wowprogress.com/pve/us?fa...=&class=&spec=
http://www.wowprogress.com/pve/us?fa...=&class=&spec=
http://www.wowprogress.com/pve/us?fa...=&class=&spec=


Wowprogress does let you split raids based off the # of days the guild raids. Sure, it doesn't give you a rank specifically for your time committed per week but that is fine by me. I would much rather me US#14 and beat a handful of other guilds that raid 4 or even 5 nights a week to 14/14H compared to being just known as the #1 3day guild. Sure, being in the top of your "time committed" bracket is nice (and that doesn't just mean #1) but I personally get a lot more satisfaction knowing that there are guilds out there still to this day that are 13/14H and raid 5+ nights a week.

[Dubalicious]

Wowprogress does let you split raids based off the # of days the guild raids.

The guild admins can enter however many days they want.

[MrExcelion]

Rankings only appeal to me in terms of helping recruitment but nothing else. It's not something to get upset (nor elitist) about. If it makes you happy, more power to you, but I don't see it for more than it is and avoid being judgmental of other guilds. Raiding to me is just a hobby with no money or fame on the line. I will say that I did care about server rank when I raided in Vanilla and TBC, but grew out of that eventually, and overall I feel the WoW player base has matured in the same fashion. Anyhow, every person looks for different qualities in a raid team. Find the one that possesses all the right stuff. Don't get too caught up in the metrics, unless that's what you're looking for primarily. Wowprogress has added a lot of rankings lately that the community seems to not care about.

[Kildragon]

#1 problem with comparing guilds based on attempts:

Guild #1 raids 20 hours a week and kills boss after 100 attempts. Due to their raid hours they kill it in week 1 with an average iLvl of 500.

Guild#2 raids 9 hours a week and kills boss after 100 attempts. Due to their lower raid hours they kill it in week 3, with an average ilvl of 515.

Both guilds killed the boss in 100 attempts but guild #1 had no strategy guides and 15 ilvls less gear than guild #2.

So in reality, the only fair metric is the time based metric. Attempt based metrics would be super complicated due to the need for average i lvl measurements on top of attempts measurements.

[xiic]

#1 problem with comparing guilds based on attempts:

Guild #1 raids 20 hours a week and kills boss after 100 attempts. Due to their raid hours they kill it in week 1 with an average iLvl of 500.

Guild#2 raids 9 hours a week and kills boss after 100 attempts. Due to their lower raid hours they kill it in week 3, with an average ilvl of 515.

Both guilds killed the boss in 100 attempts but guild #1 had no strategy guides and 15 ilvls less gear than guild #2.

So in reality, the only fair metric is the time based metric. Attempt based metrics would be super complicated due to the need for average i lvl measurements on top of attempts measurements.

You're over exaggerating some things. We killed heroic garrosh in 270 pulls compared to 500+ for paragon and we did it in ~5 more ilvls than them 3 months after they did. Unless you're in one of the terrible 4+ night 25 mans still not 14/14H, the ilvl difference is not nearly as big as people think it is. BL and Method and Paragon all run so many gear runs the first week that it basically evens out.

[Deleted]

You're over exaggerating some things. We killed heroic garrosh in 270 pulls compared to 500+ for paragon and we did it in ~5 more ilvls than them 3 months after they did. Unless you're in one of the terrible 4+ night 25 mans still not 14/14H, the ilvl difference is not nearly as big as people think it is. BL and Method and Paragon all run so many gear runs the first week that it basically evens out.

Ofc the difference is that huge, especially on a fight like Garrosh. We killed it in 200ish pulls at 566 ilvl when we started and 568 when we killed it. If we would have had 2 higher item level, 570, it would have shaved off atleast 100 attempts from our 200 attempts. Having 1 or 2 extra item levels on Garrosh makes the world. Most guilds reaching Garrosh now is at 572-576 item level, at which point Garrosh is a stupidly easy fight. I have the outmost respect for paragon for downing it with their item level, knowing how much extra only 2 item levels would have done for us, I can not imagine doing it with 3 item levels less then what we have. I really understand why they needed to resort to 1 healer.

[xiic]

If we would have had 2 higher item level, 570, it would have shaved off atleast 100 attempts from our 200 attempts.

Are you high?

[Deleted]

Are you high?

Not at all. A vast majority of the wipes was due to lacking 1-2% in damage. The fight in itself is extremely easy. Having an heroic weapon or a heroic trinket more and overall a few more set bonuses and other pieces would have drastically reduced that amount of wipes as the reason for wiping was lack of gear. About half of the wipes were at 565 item level so they were kinda wasted. Having been at around 568-570 from the start alone would have cut an insane amount of attempts.

You do not seem to realise how large the difference is on garrosh between a few item levels at those gear levels. There is absolutely nothing hard about the Garrosh fight, it is simply a gear check, one that you start overgearing in 10 man at around 570 item level, heck even below 570 (577-579-ish) you could feel that you were on the edge of overgearing the encounter.

Just consider the difference that Paragon had 2-3 item levels lower then us (the same item level we had when we started progress). Paragon are without a doubt a better and more tight knit raid team then mine was. We had several new players swapping in non-raiders etc sometimes during progress. It would be foolish to say anything other than that Paragon was miles ahead of us in terms of player skill and teamwork. Probably in terms of raid composition aswell. Yet, they having a few item levels lower caused them to wipe more then 300 times more than us, even though they are better players. Hopefully that will put in perspective for you how big difference those few item levels does.

[xiic]

. Yet, they having a few item levels lower caused them to wipe more then 300 times more than us, even though they are better players. Hopefully that will put in perspective for you how big difference those few item levels does.

Nah, it can't have anything to do with the fact that literally no other guild on earth had ever seen the phases they were working on. No youtube video to look at, they came up with that shit themselves.

I hate to break this to you mate but 2 raid lvls does not equal 100 wipes.

EDIT: and every boss in this entire game can be boiled down to a gear check given enough gear. There is no split second decision making to be made, everything is repetition until it clicks or you get enough gear to brute force it.

I'd like to see a 25 man guild other than method execute three empowered whirlings without a monk tank yolo kiting in 570 gear.

[Rawrstance]

I'd like to see a 25 man guild other than method execute three empowered whirlings without a monk tank yolo kiting in 570 gear.

I would like to make this my new sig.

[Deleted]

Nah, it can't have anything to do with the fact that literally no other guild on earth had ever seen the phases they were working on. No youtube video to look at, they came up with that shit themselves.

There were really no surprises in the first three phases, they were exactly like normal with no real big changes. The fourth phase was the only "new" thing to the fight but it was still easy at best. If it was tactics and not dps holding paragon back, they would not have used 1 healer. It almost feels insulting to Paragon if you think that the new mechanics in P4 was holding them back. P4 was extremely simple and easy to execute and the blizzard boss mod explains all the mechanics more then enough. A group not knowing the mechanics of P4 should understad them after 1-3 wipes.

And while it is true, every boss in the game can be boiled down to a gear check, Garrosh was basically the patchwerk fight of this tier. Nothing but a silly gear check. The only skill check in garrosh is seeing how well you can play your class to see at how low gear level you can beat the gear check. I do not think you can comprehend how much different the fight is at different gear levels.

May I just ask out of curiosity which parts of the fight you found difficult and caused you the most wipes?

[xiic]

There were really no surprises in the first three phases, they were exactly like normal with no real big changes. The fourth phase was the only "new" thing to the fight but it was still easy at best. If it was tactics and not dps holding paragon back, they would not have used 1 healer. It almost feels insulting to Paragon if you think that the new mechanics in P4 was holding them back. P4 was extremely simple and easy to execute and the blizzard boss mod explains all the mechanics more then enough. A group not knowing the mechanics of P4 should understad them after 1-3 wipes.

And while it is true, every boss in the game can be boiled down to a gear check, Garrosh was basically the patchwerk fight of this tier. Nothing but a silly gear check. The only skill check in garrosh is seeing how well you can play your class to see at how low gear level you can beat the gear check. I do not think you can comprehend how much different the fight is at different gear levels.

May I just ask out of curiosity which parts of the fight you found difficult and caused you the most wipes?

P4 was a joke, we killed it accidentally on our third ever attempt at it.

We spent a lot of time trying to do toes in under 50 energy before we gave up and we spent a lot of time working on doing p3 whirlings with little gear and 3 melee. We also had several unfortunately flaky trials so re-teaching 1-2 new people every night soaked up a lot of time.

I don't think 1-2 ilvls was as big of a deal as you say it is. It is certainly not 100+ pulls worth of gear.

[Novx]

There were really no surprises in the first three phases, they were exactly like normal with no real big changes. The fourth phase was the only "new" thing to the fight but it was still easy at best. If it was tactics and not dps holding paragon back, they would not have used 1 healer. It almost feels insulting to Paragon if you think that the new mechanics in P4 was holding them back. P4 was extremely simple and easy to execute and the blizzard boss mod explains all the mechanics more then enough. A group not knowing the mechanics of P4 should understad them after 1-3 wipes.

And while it is true, every boss in the game can be boiled down to a gear check, Garrosh was basically the patchwerk fight of this tier. Nothing but a silly gear check. The only skill check in garrosh is seeing how well you can play your class to see at how low gear level you can beat the gear check. I do not think you can comprehend how much different the fight is at different gear levels.

May I just ask out of curiosity which parts of the fight you found difficult and caused you the most wipes?

This is going pretty offtopic but do you understand what a patchwerk fight is? Garrosh is the exact definition of what it is not. It has 2 transitions, a 4th phase in SW, multiple parts of the encounter there interrupts come into play, etc. It took us 157 pulls to kill Garrosh and we had a 574.5 ilvl average - November 21st - (http://www.wowprogress.com/guild/us/...ting.tier16_25). In no way was a 1-2 ilevel difference going to make or break our kill. It more came down to people scumbagging as little as possible and getting every little bit of damage we could onto the boss and even playing it safe at times (doing an extra whirl). Obviously the fight is easier with more gear but that fight isn't really a gear check.

[Deja Thoris]

In no way was a 1-2 ilevel difference going to make or break our kill. It more came down to people scumbagging as little as possible and getting every little bit of damage we could onto the boss and even playing it safe at times (doing an extra whirl). Obviously the fight is easier with more gear but that fight isn't really a gear check.

If, at 574 ilevel you had to "get every little bit of damage you could on to the boss" then its clearly a gear check. If you take 2 ilevels of each raider how would you have made the gear check when it was already so tight for you?

[Novx]

If, at 574 ilevel you had to "get every little bit of damage you could on to the boss" then its clearly a gear check. If you take 2 ilevels of each raider how would you have made the gear check when it was already so tight for you?

It wasn't tight for us, we could easily have done another whirl and been 100% safe.

[Mirri]

It wasn't tight for us, we could easily have done another whirl and been 100% safe.

Ok good, try doing it at 6-7 ilvl lower and let's see if it wasn't a dps check still. Fact of the matter is you out geared the content.
The difference in difficulty from 566-568 is much greater than your 574-572. Mainly because you have already out geared it at 572-574.