How does your guild plan for Legion?

[iamahleong]

We're a semi hardcore raiding guild raiding twice a week and i've been approached by a few people about our plans in legion now to really get me thinking.

Now, what does your guild have planned out. Or better still, if you're an officer how did u plan ?

[Jellospally]

We don't really do anything special. Some do beta/alpha testing if they are around. The rest just read up w/e gets posted on our forums.

None of us officers really play the game atm nor does anyone in guild outside tuesdays or care because all you can really do is wait till its out and maybe know the fights if they tested.

[Bunnychaser]

Most of the prep for expansions happens in my experience happens in the weeks before the release date--- honestly, this far in advance, months before the prepatch, there's nothing to do other than make gold.

Just make sure you have a balanced roster of reliable players, and the gold to support your guild. That's all you can really expect at this point.

[MidnyteTV]

I'm the GM and Raid Leader of a community-oriented Heroic-only guild. Because so many people want to switch classes, we are holding a "Roster Draft" to select classes. Grandfather clauses for your existing class are in effect but if my guildies want to switch, I placed them in an order based off of seniority/attendance.

In terms of what we are doing and how we're going to do it....

We are gunna get back on our raid schedule when the pre-patch hits and trying out new classes for those that want to switch. We break off into 5-man squads for leveling/dungeons once the expac hits and then keep the forums and TeamSpeak active for information.

The only real plans I make are how my roster will shape out (draft), make recruitment plans/posts just in case I need bodies, and get the schedule posted.

[iamahleong]

Hey thanks guys for the input. @Jellospally, im guessing for your case. "preparing" means learning the fights of raid before hand. Aside from that are there anything else thats worth preparing for?
@Bunnychaser, Thanks! and yea roster is one of the things we've been juggling about
@Marcus, i think like bunny mentioned, rostering for the raid is the only thing that can really be 'monitored' at this point

What i'm really interested in, or looking out for is ..

- how do u actually prepare the roster? 20 people? 25? or just recruit as many capable or potential raiders as you can for now
- Do u expect your raiders to buy BOE's in order to get geared asap
- do you plan/push people to hit max level asap ? in order to go for raids (i personally feel.. there's no need for this unless you're one of the guild striving for world/server first etc.)
- how do you start 'confirming' the roster? or when? (this is probably going to be done when the xpac hits right before , or during the raids i assume)

[clevin]

Hey thanks guys for the input. @Jellospally, im guessing for your case. "preparing" means learning the fights of raid before hand. Aside from that are there anything else thats worth preparing for?
@Bunnychaser, Thanks! and yea roster is one of the things we've been juggling about
@Marcus, i think like bunny mentioned, rostering for the raid is the only thing that can really be 'monitored' at this point

What i'm really interested in, or looking out for is ..

- how do u actually prepare the roster? 20 people? 25? or just recruit as many capable or potential raiders as you can for now
- Do u expect your raiders to buy BOE's in order to get geared asap
- do you plan/push people to hit max level asap ? in order to go for raids (i personally feel.. there's no need for this unless you're one of the guild striving for world/server first etc.)
- how do you start 'confirming' the roster? or when? (this is probably going to be done when the xpac hits right before , or during the raids i assume)

I don't raid seriously anymore but my take on your questions would be...

1) 25 or so if you want to end up in 20 man mythic. I'd think about whether it's faster to gear up in two smaller normal/heroic raids or one 25 man. The availability of alternate tanks and healers will figure into that too.
2) If you do, tell them now so they can stock up gold. Don't spring this on them at the last moment. Depends how serious you are, too.
3) Depends a bit on whether the delay raids from launch. If the raid won't be available for 2 weeks post launch then as long as someone hits max level in time to gear up they're fine.
4) I'd go with core people who've been in your raid for tiers and then fill in with what looks good class-wise. This may well change over the first reset or two.

[MidnyteTV]

Hey thanks guys for the input. @Jellospally, im guessing for your case. "preparing" means learning the fights of raid before hand. Aside from that are there anything else thats worth preparing for?
@Bunnychaser, Thanks! and yea roster is one of the things we've been juggling about
@Marcus, i think like bunny mentioned, rostering for the raid is the only thing that can really be 'monitored' at this point

What i'm really interested in, or looking out for is ..

- how do u actually prepare the roster? 20 people? 25? or just recruit as many capable or potential raiders as you can for now
- Do u expect your raiders to buy BOE's in order to get geared asap
- do you plan/push people to hit max level asap ? in order to go for raids (i personally feel.. there's no need for this unless you're one of the guild striving for world/server first etc.)
- how do you start 'confirming' the roster? or when? (this is probably going to be done when the xpac hits right before , or during the raids i assume)

Here is the short answer to your questions:

1. I am balancing my roster around 20 people. 2 tanks, 5 healers, 13 DPS. I have plenty more raiders but you want to get a base number in mind so you can recruit the right amount of healers and DPS.

2. No. BOEs can be expensive at the start of an expac. I'm old school, I encourage my raiders to focus on the fights and progression and gear up through raiding. That way instead of focusing on buying gear, they can focus on killing the boss which awards gear.

3. Yes and No. My guild has a contest where we throw money in a pot and award the first max level the pot (usually around 30k gold). The only requirement I gave my raiders in WoD was be max level and have 630 heroic dungeon blues (give or take a piece they can't get to drop).

4. I'm confirming my roster through our draft that I explained. It will be done about 1-2 weeks before launch. That way everybody knows what they are bringing to raid and they can level that toon first. If your guild knows who is doing what before the expac launches, it gives them incentive to get a hold of their class's abilities while leveling/dungeoning for gear.

EDIT: Also make sure your guildies know what loot system will you be using and put it in WRITING on your website before the first week of raid.

[Deleted]

We roughly know what players we want to keep and what players we need to either replace or they need to change. Ie. Attitude or performance. So we just recruit until we have a roster of players that are mostly and i mean like 95% reliable.

We aim for around 2/3 of the "Stronger classes"(mages, rogues, hunters, locks etc). I pushing healers and tanks to play other classes in their role only helps when progression roles around and you can use w/e is best. Roughly a roster of 25 is good enough.

Yep spend as much gold as they can to get prepared for the expansion. All the boost gold is meant for BoEs, craftables and consumables.

We split run so we expect everyone to have 2 chars max level and geared as much as they can.

As for confirming the roster first check who wants to reroll and if its viable or they can play it. Then just fill any gaps.

[Summer]

Most effort is going into thinking about our comp... A lot of people want to reroll to this or that, how do I fit all the pieces together? Recruitment is ongoing, I want a big roster to tide us over the people who end up not liking the new expansion quitting.

Other than that, selling boosts for gold so people can pay their way to BoE's etc. I expect they can buy at least something since we've been handing them gold.

Following / participating in alpha testing and thinking what sort of comps might be good for each boss (AoE, ST, burst, what?) though tuning is yet to be done. Slowly starting to gather tactics stuff on the forums.

I don't expect people to hit max level instantly but by raid release they need to be ready or they'r not raiding. What constitutes "ready" will be defined around launch time.

[DDM]

Everybody is complaining about the lack of content.
But a lot of the raiders also are rushing to get all the bosses down as fast as possible with a huge amount of time and effort like leveling up as fast as possible, buying BoE's, split runs, buying pots and potions for a huge amount of money ...

That's so weird in my opinion ...

[Nethlord]

How does your guild plan for Legion?

Plan, well:

I bring the Whisky
Someone grabs the Rum
Another brings the Beer
And that guy gets the Vodka
But there is always that person...that is drinking daiquiris.

13/13 Mythic complete.

[psyquest]

I am currently planning on recruiting as much as possible. We are currently 28, hoping for 40 players. Last xpac we got completely trounced because we relied on our old guard and went with 23 players. 5 guys stopped playing from the old guard and we just could not recruit. result was getting behind each tiers and being incapable of attracting the caliber of player we are used to.

This time, I am going for "as much as possible" knowing plenty will either stop or fail to make the mark.

[Deleted]

Not much. Though it shouldn't matter that much for reasons: It's mainly about people, actual people being reliable and online, and not so much the classes, and more than that, the classes can't be planned very well since patch to patch they change.

[Rooskie1993]

I raid in a top 10 US guild and have for years, prepping for each expansion sometimes can be different depending on what is being released in said expansion for example this is how we prepped for MoP.

Everyone had MoP beta so we were all required to do raid testing and we each had our own group for dungeons because we were going for a realm first 90 20 way tie which we achieved (if you all ding within 1 minute of the first person you all get realm first 90/realm first class). We practiced running monkeys on beta etc.

In terms of other stuff the only way you can prepare for an expansion is getting a lot of gold which usually happens shortly after farm starts and you start selling full clears and mounts.

Usually my guild buys epics for raiders since we have so much gold stocked up as we're top 10 US and going for ranking we want every advantage possible, we also required people to have 1 alt at lvl 90 by the first raid which everyone did (most people had 2 lvl 90s 20 hours into mop launch like myself) and both to be geared in full heroic blues.

It really depends how hardcore your guild is and that will change how hard you prepare.

[Adramelch]

Everybody is complaining about the lack of content.
But a lot of the raiders also are rushing to get all the bosses down as fast as possible with a huge amount of time and effort like leveling up as fast as possible, buying BoE's, split runs, buying pots and potions for a huge amount of money ...

That's so weird in my opinion ...

The ones that do this typically aren't the ones that complain about "having nothing to do". They might still complain about lack of content, but that's fair game, because they refer (in WoD's case) to lack of content outside raiding and that's not connected to how fast they clear the raid.

[Deleted]

What i'm really interested in, or looking out for is ..

- how do u actually prepare the roster? 20 people? 25? or just recruit as many capable or potential raiders as you can for now
- Do u expect your raiders to buy BOE's in order to get geared asap
- do you plan/push people to hit max level asap ? in order to go for raids (i personally feel.. there's no need for this unless you're one of the guild striving for world/server first etc.)
- how do you start 'confirming' the roster? or when? (this is probably going to be done when the xpac hits right before , or during the raids i assume)

In my case, being Raid Leader and co-GM of my guild, this is what I'm doing along my staff:

1) We are forming a 20-man roster with people that is really interested and willing to give his all to reach Mythic and progress (we are not aiming for top server but we wanna see and do Mythic at the time and not after-nerf). But we're more than 20 since we have some people that due to rl causes cannot assist all days to raid and so they are in an special group called rotational raider that will come to normal and heroic, loot after mythic raiders and will only raid mythic the days someone from mythic fail or if I consider a rotation is required. And yes, for the moment being, we haven't had any problem with this method and people itself are the ones asking to be rotational (all comes from making everyone think about the guild being the number 1 priority at any time).

2) I don't expect them to do so, however I know some will do and every one of my raiders know that those little extras are something I really value and will consider when the time to loot comes.

3) I don't expect so and I won't force anyone, since in Legion you'll have two different and equally valid ways to do high end (Raids and Challenge Dungeones), if by the time we ding 110 we are still not enough to do raids (2-2-6) I'll organize challenge mode dungeons and those of us that are 110 will gear while other people level. Even tho I know every one of my raiders and members of my guild and I know they will level fast to be able to do content with guildies since that's the kind of guild me and my friend have created.

4) The roster is being confirmed and built right now. We ask people once a month if they still are thinking about playing non stop and from the very start on the alpha, about what class and spec they'll play and so. If you can do it today, don't do it tomorrow.

[Zogarth]

Disband and hope some cba to return a year after all content was cleared.

[owbu]

having done this 5 times now, we found the best way to plan it is to not really plan it. The beginning of an expansion seems to have a similiar effect on players as spring has on sex hormons. People, who definetely will never play again show up. That one guy who was definetely rolling Demon Hunter decided he loves his Monk too much. 3 guys promised to show up again, but when acutally playing the game found out why they quit in the first place. 3 other guys you havent seen since Wrath are suddendly playing 24h a day again.

In the end, when the raids open, you post a "there will be a normal raid on thursday" post in your forum, you see who shows up and form groups around those people (there is always tons of people showing up :>), if you need a specific role filled there is TONS of desperate high levle randoms to be found in chat and you just go from there. Within 2 weeks and starting actual raiding the chaos will be over and you havent even wasted tons of your time planing things you cannot and need not control.

[Rooskie1993]

having done this 5 times now, we found the best way to plan it is to not really plan it. The beginning of an expansion seems to have a similiar effect on players as spring has on sex hormons. People, who definetely will never play again show up. That one guy who was definetely rolling Demon Hunter decided he loves his Monk too much. 3 guys promised to show up again, but when acutally playing the game found out why they quit in the first place. 3 other guys you havent seen since Wrath are suddendly playing 24h a day again.

In the end, when the raids open, you post a "there will be a normal raid on thursday" post in your forum, you see who shows up and form groups around those people (there is always tons of people showing up :>), if you need a specific role filled there is TONS of desperate high levle randoms to be found in chat and you just go from there. Within 2 weeks and starting actual raiding the chaos will be over and you havent even wasted tons of your time planing things you cannot and need not control.

Well to be honest that's not true, to me it sounds like you don't have a properly structured/organized guild that doesn't have a solid roster which therefore means you pug a lot (going from what you said). In guilds who have a set roster usually there's stable players but this is usually in guilds who are at least in mythic not top tier guilds maybe not even guilds who end up killing the last boss before the next expansion but guilds generally with more structure won't have a problem planning for the expansion.

[Sonnillon]

Only thing about Legion planning will be to keep the demon hunter population in the roster under control ^^, make sure the tanks stay the same with couple of healers as well .

For high end or heck even decent-medium progression guild keeping track on people is kinda self-explanatory and must, but for a casual group like mine you cannot plan too much ahead and hope that people stick to the game and to my group. Tried this "over planning" at the start of expansion - almost cost us a normal HM :P.