If you had to choose between those two persons. who would it be?

[Deleted]

Raider A every time. You can improve a raiders skill, you often can't improve a raiders attendance.

[Jeleh]

The guy with lesser skill can always improve is the view I would take. Assuming that being in a progression guild they are at least able to play at the peak of their class some of the attempts I would go for the guy I can rely on. Sitting around waiting for someone to turn up/finding a replacement to start the raid is worse than a guy making a mistake a few times in my view. Unless you are very top going for realm firsts take the reliable player.

[Saphyron]

in my guilds case since we have trouble even getting 10 people together i would value attendance over skill.

to prove my point.

Last week one of my best dps if not the best.(warlock) came to me and said that he has a lot going on in irl and he does not have the time to raid much anymore but he would most likely be able to show up at 1/3 weekly raids.

I said: "Sorry matey we already have trouble with the roster and 1 person who I will not be able to know when comes is too much to handle. I will have to find a replacement for you. But you are welcome to stay on standby if we need a dps when you are online."

[IxilaFA]

in my guilds case since we have trouble even getting 10 people together i would value attendance over skill.

to prove my point.

Last week one of my best dps if not the best.(warlock) came to me and said that he has a lot going on in irl and he does not have the time to raid much anymore but he would most likely be able to show up at 1/3 weekly raids.

I said: "Sorry matey we already have trouble with the roster and 1 person who I will not be able to know when comes is too much to handle. I will have to find a replacement for you. But you are welcome to stay on standby if we need a dps when you are online."

Funny thing about my guild is when I was going through my attendance struggles, they always told me the same thing "Sorry we need to find a replacement for you if you can't make 50% of the raids, but you can be on standby!" And then on progression nights they always brought me in anyways, because I smashed their other healers. People had told me multiple times that I was the only reason they made any progress.

Also you definitely cannot always teach a less skilled player. Sometimes people just don't improve on the stupid little things that could wipe an attempt just as it's going good. Focus on the game is almost harder to fix than player availability, when people just don't seem to care enough about downing bosses that they will pay attention for 10 minutes straight.

I most definitely don't want to sound like I'm being arrogant here, I should mention that I hated every minute of that year when I was going through those issues. It was very stressful to feel like I was letting my guild down if I wasn't there, and I was letting my work down if I tried to take a night off to raid. So I wouldn't automatically label someone who has poor attendance issues as not being into the game. Also I don't think random absences are to be excused, there's never really a reason for that.

[Recke]

First off, I'm no leader. My opinion is that of my own on this, with no real leadership qualities necessary.

But, It's definitely an equation or so I'd have to go with, where a player is as valuable as a relative value. Something like w = (1x+1.5y)*(1+n) where w= worth, x= skill, y= activity, n= something relative to how their interactions with other pans out, where the higher a value, the more others enjoy playing with them/less aggravating they are.

But in this case, I'd take the skilled player. However, if a player who is skilled is putting in notably less activity (only logs on to raid, or doesn't try until he feels it's the kill attempt because he's waiting for others to figure out the fight), then I'd start taking the player who wants to be there.

[Saphyron]

Difference between you and him is that you show up. he has told me that at the most he will be able to make 1 day per week.

[Deleted]

Have had similar situations in my own guild before and sometimes you just have to make a hard decision. Imo you go with the better player, tell him to attend more or ask him if his IRL situation is likely to continue preventing him from having a 100% attendance. If it isn't, I'd start looking for player C. The player who has the skill level and attendance you're actually after.

Being nice to people only get you this far and in the end all guild leaders must decide, whether they want a social guild or a raiding guild - to put it a bit on the top.

I've had to both bench and replace people whom I like, just because someone else performed better. I've also had to replace really skilled players, cause they couldn't attend enough raids, thus preventing the guild in progressing.

Personally I've always believed, that the guild>any one person. Cause as a guild leader you not only have to consider the 2 people from your example, you also have to consider the rest of your raiders. Nobody wants to always carry that one person, just like people will get annoyed when the skilled person yet again fails to show for a raid.

[Keashaa]

It's the same difficult decision like:

Player A dps/hps skill level 7 but tactic/movement skill 9
Player B dps/hps skill level 9 but tactic/movement skill 7

Which one would you choose?

[Howard Moon]

I voted "lesser skilled more active". He is bound to get better with practice.

[Atherions]

Get the active guy and mold him into a better player

[Airlick]

Have even a less skilled back-up than raider A as a sub for raider B. You can do some progress and let the less skilled part of the raid train mechanics even without raider B, and when raider B is online, you will probably sky-rocket with progress. At least that's my raiding experience. My guild always valued raiders like hypothetical raider B.

Obviously, raider A MAY improve, but he may not and he may keep ruining progress for the rest of the guild. If a guild is trusting enough to give him time to improve, that's their call, I know I wouldn't. Again, that's my raiding experience, I have yet to see a raider improving a lot. I could always see if a person has potential or they will be just a raid filler.

[Deleted]

If your guild is good, you can bring any motivated player to your level. Take the dedicated player and mold him.

You can improve them, but just like with anything it is very rare to get someone to be better at something in their own free time...it happens, but it's rare.

[yurano]

Raider A every time. You can improve a raiders skill, you often can't improve a raiders attendance.

To be honest, you can't really improve either. Most players hit a skill plateau and thats that. Very few have the capability and attitude to continue to improve marginally over a long period of time.

[Deleted]

Neither. I'd find someone that could bring both to the table.

[dokilar]

when our guild was still playing wow attendance was awarded more than performance. we never cared about being server first or second, hell we didnt even care when the bosses died, we played the game to have fun. not thats not to say we didnt take the game seriously but we always had the philosophy that if you showed up consistently it most likely ment that (even if you were bad) you were willing to put in the time and effort to learn the encounter.

so me personally? i would take the less skilled more active person. they might be less skilled now but i would hope that the lesser skilled person would eventually get better from all the time they spent playing. if they obviously had a poor attitude and didnt care to get any better however i would take the other person. a good attitude and a willingness to improve/learn was always a good rule of thumb when we played.

[Raelbo]

Obviously there are exceptions, but for the most part, skill is a function of time and effort put into the game.

So my answer is made with a proviso: I would choose the *more committed* player. That doesn't just mean the one who shows up to raid every week, but who also spends time doing his due dilligence, capping valor every week, making sure he always has enough consumables, who has worked at getting his spec, gear and rotation sorted out, and who reads up on boss fights before the raid.

The more time and effort you put into raiding, the better you get.

If you give a less skilled, but highly committed player more raid time you'll eventually land up with a player who is both skilled and committed, which is ideally what you want. If you give the raid time to a slacker who is resting on his laurels, you will land up with an egotist who never performs to their full potential and more than likely has an attitude problem because they believe they are special.

This is a truism of real life. People who work hard for something generally end up being better at what they do than those who are more naturally gifted, but lazy.

[Deleted]

Obviously there are exceptions, but for the most part, skill is a function of time and effort put into the game.

The more time and effort you put into raiding, the better you get.

This is true to a certain extent, but the starting point for people is so very different that "talent" almost always comes out ahead. I have had raiders who are spending hours and hours a day trying to improve, never even becoming average, and raiders who simply login for a raid (and that I'm frustrated at for not capping their valor) never screwing up and crushing the meters. Wow isn't so advanced that you need to spend more than an hour or two to perform relatively close to your class maximum potential, if you are bright enough.

This is a truism of real life. People who work hard for something generally end up being better at what they do than those who are more naturally gifted, but lazy.

For menial work, yes, for more advanced matters, not really. That our society and school generally discourages/don't make use of talented people properly does make the difference smaller than it should be though.

[Deleted]

Who's more fun to have in the raid? That guy wins!

[nightfalls]

Hypothetical shit is hypothetical, aka shit.

In the hypothetical land, I'll take an 8 over a 7! Amazing!!!

In the hypothetical land, I pick between A and B, without regard to the remainder of the team, in a complete vacuum. Every A is competing against B! Amazing!

[Deleted]

well reading you hypotical scenario, i would go for player B.
there is nothing wrong with him prioritzing IRL obligations, actually punishing for it would be bad raidleading.

however there is ofcourse a turning point that said raider B, is not able too attend then 50% or less of the raid nights. its becoming a pain for the raidleader, in such a scenario since its completely random in raider B will be there.

in my guild we actually had this scenario, except that raider B also had random no shows quite often without a quick explanation on the guild forum.
which was very frustrating for our officers since they had no idea each night if he was going to be there or not. and if he was there he often was suprised he had too sit out on encounters in favor for Raider A.