Utilizing alts for main raid (your perspectives)

[Harekrsna]

So this is just a discussion thread to find out how various guilds and people have, do, or plan to use alts to help progress the main raid or pass time during farm.

Now that we are done with the tier I want to start gearing out alts to try and get 2 heroic runs off the ground, and I want to hear from others about their experiences with this kind of thing, success and failures, etc.

I did this back in DS but it was with a 25% nerf at the time so it was relatively easy, I imagine now it wouldn't be quite as easy but obviously a lot of top guilds do it.

Eagerly awaiting your replies.

[mob1lejunkie]

I don't play in a top guild, but I have heard from friends who do and the most common use is funneling gear to mains.

[Deleted]

Multiple normal mode clears in week 1 is the biggest advantage, the normal modes for most guilds are cleared well inside the first week, so even your slightly above average guild will pursue at least 2 runs, perhaps merging if they encounter a block.

Yeah.. no. You may clear it that easily, MOST guilds don't.

[Deleted]

Yeah.. no. You may clear it that easily, MOST guilds don't.

For the kind of guilds that this thread is talking about: yes, yes they will.

[Deleted]

I love the idea, and even feel it should be made easier for more guilds to do it, moving endgame raidning towards the feel of dota (and ye the other "moba" games aswell).

(my own guild refused to do it even if the alt is geared tho :/)

[Deleted]

if it mean you are able to get a raid underway, or a boss killed then it is a no brainer question.

[Bonkura]

what my hardcore guild did in t14 was having everyone play an alt of the same role, with a class we knew could be useful. first week of normal we just split the raid with mains/alts to distribute gear to our assumed mains as good as possible. while on the actual progress, every time we killed a boss on heroic with the main group we logged on alts and killed it on normal to either boost gear for mains who were sitting out or just max gear on our alts. when the entire raid was cleared on heroic we tried bringing in as many alts as possible for the farm with the goal to always mix mains/alts for the farm with two raids clearing everything on heroic.

the biggest advantage doing it this way I feel was keeping the roster small enough while still covering all classes so we wouldn't have to do class specific recruitments, instead just focusing on all other aspects to get the best players to the guild. being able to play your class just isn't enough if you want to compete for top ranks, making it much harder to find competent players.

[Deleted]

We try to keep 1 altrun going in our 10 man group, with no particular regard to what class everyone plays. We are changing it up though, and are going to plan out our alts more, with the intention of having every player play an alt of his particular role that might benefit on aspects that his main lacks. For example, I play a Mage and am running a Rogue/Balance Druid alt. The Rogue is simply an extension of my Mage, but to a melee position, and the Balance Druid could be used in fights where we lack multidotting capability that my Mage does not reliably bring. I could play a Warlock instead, but the Druid has too much additional utility, especially in the offhealing department, plus we have a main Warlock in the group.

We clear Normal on our alts on a weekly basis now, and we will be starting to weave in 3-4 heroics. Ideally, I'd like to get 2 altruns going, so everyone has 2 alts they could swap to, but that might be pushing it too far for some players.
The good thing about that is that we also have a 25man group within our guild, so I can plan out our alt runs on different dates than the remaining alt runs in the guild, allowing me and others to gear 2+ alts efficiently.

If you have the time and players to do this, I see no reason not to.

[Dracodraco]

Not alot of bosses have a mechanic that makes a class so stupidly overpowered that you're better off with an alt that has maybe 10-15 item levels less. The first reset or two of heroics it may be worth it switching to the alt as the item level difference will be smaller, but when we start talking 510 vs 525, for example, it's going to get shady (remember, your alt won't get gear over mains, and unless you plan to run a second "cleaning" raid during progress to make sure people who sat out on the boss gets normal mode loot, it's going to stay at the level it is at for a while).
Generally, Brewmaster Monk's have had the advantage on Lei Shen, Disc priests on Horridon, and Ele shamans/locks on Durumu this tier - any other alt would have been largely useless compared to a 10-15 item level better geared main, no matter which class.

Then there's encounter-specific setups (2x dk's required for lei shen, if you don't have them you need an alt), but those are also very, very rare.


What I'm getting at is basicly, alt runs work so well for the top end guilds because they have all the benefits of alts, but none of the downside -
They clear content in the first or second week released (meaning their main characters do not get time to vastly outgear their alts).
Time is a non-issue, allowing them to spend time doing "clear up"-runs of bosses on normal to maximize loot-intake.


If you haven't cleared the content till now, then neither of those things are true for your guild, and alts would quickly become irrellevant, unless you decide to funnel gear into one and use it for the remainder of progress (we did that with my disc priest this tier).

So the question becomes -
Are you willing to "force" your raiders into spending more evenings clearing content they've already done, but on a different character, for the off chance that some of the characters are going to be:
A: OP as fuck on a specific encounter.
B: Required for a mechanic on an encounter with such a tight enrage that they cannot be carried.
C: Usefull in the first 1-2 weeks of progress (early bosses).

My guild is ranked in the top 30, and we usually prefer to let the players do whatever they want - we don't do PTR unless people wants to (usually resulting in 10 man teams, if at all), we don't enforce alt runs (we have a 10 man that "dedicated" people have been attending, all through progress on offdays - thats how we got my disc alt), and we don't seem to suffer. Burnout is a far worse thing to deal with than quickly trying to make an alt viable for an encounter you're "stuck" on.

[Tripping]

My guild is a pretty casual 10 man, we are pretty new so we are struggling for people.
My lock is my main, but I geared up a holy pally and prot warrior in LFR and valor stuff, so I can jump in and fill any role thats needed. This way of playing suits me, as I don't like to focus purely on one character, and it allows us to keep a relatively small roster so people dont get benched too often

[Floopa]

Not alot of bosses have a mechanic that makes a class so stupidly overpowered that you're better off with an alt that has maybe 10-15 item levels less.

Lei Shen Heroic? XD

[Vereesa]

Alts done right can be a massive asset during progress (and the benefits are immediately noticeable on week 1 if you manage to run 1 or even 2 additional clears for your supposed mains) if your raid is really looking to push it. I personally don't see them as such and tend to view them more like a 'WoW pastime' if you will.

Lei Shen Heroic? XD

If you'd read the entire post you'd know he recognized Lei Shen as a very rare exception.

[Dorfie]

Lei Shen Heroic? XD

Did you just read only the first line of his post?

[Floopa]

Did you just read only the first line of his post?

Yup. I know he spoke about Lei Shen but that's simply not true. On HC progression I can think of so many (25) encounters where class stacking gave a profoundly stupid power increase to your raid:

Jinrohk - classes to immunize Ionization
Horridon - Disc Priests
Council - Holy Paladins/Spriests/Locks
Tortos - Monks (BMs for kiting, WWs for leg sweeps, MW for insane healing)
Megaera - Locks, BMs (has a CD for every breath)
Ji-kun - Nothing really IMO, I guess rogues for their huge consistent DPS
Durumu - Ele Shaman
Primordius - Melee + DoT classes
DA - DoT classes (+ Locks deserve a special mention)
Iron Qon - Locks, any melee (rogues pref due to cloak)
Twins - Locks
Lei Shen - DKs, Locks, Disc Priests
Ra-den - ranged in general

The point is, the entire tier had bosses (on progression) where if you could stack say 4-5 Elemental Shamans on Durumu you were going for gold. To deny this and say "it doesn't benefit your raid much" is purposely being obtuse. On farm sure you don't need to class stack, right now we're able to kill Ra-den taking 8 healers (which shows just how much DPS is able to be put out absurdly).

[Vereesa]

Yup. I know he spoke about Lei Shen but that's simply not true. On HC progression I can think of so many (25) encounters where class stacking gave a profoundly stupid power increase to your raid:

Jinrohk - classes to immunize Ionization
Horridon - Disc Priests
Council - Holy Paladins/Spriests/Locks
Tortos - Monks (BMs for kiting, WWs for leg sweeps, MW for insane healing)
Megaera - Locks, BMs (has a CD for every breath)
Ji-kun - Nothing really IMO, I guess rogues for their huge consistent DPS
Durumu - Ele Shaman
Primordius - Melee + DoT classes
DA - DoT classes (+ Locks deserve a special mention)
Iron Qon - Locks, any melee (rogues pref due to cloak)
Twins - Locks
Lei Shen - DKs, Locks, Disc Priests
Ra-den - ranged in general

The point is, the entire tier had bosses (on progression) where if you could stack say 4-5 Elemental Shamans on Durumu you were going for gold. To deny this and say "it doesn't benefit your raid much" is purposely being obtuse. On farm sure you don't need to class stack, right now we're able to kill Ra-den taking 8 healers (which shows just how much DPS is able to be put out absurdly).

Now you're just listing class' strengths. Again, if you had taken a minute of your time to actually read Draco's post you'd realize he made a pretty strong point in regards to mains' and alts' gear disparities. Sure Disc Priests were (and are still to this day) strong on Horridon, but does subbing in a 5.1 BiS geared Disc Priest in favor of a 520 (which was entirely possible during week 1) Holy Paladin warrant the switch just because the Priest has a slight edge due to class mechanics? Most likely not. The point is, unless your guild's roster is able to fully gear everyone's alts and mains to the same gear level and keep everyone equally geared, using mains most is more beneficial most of the time, barring the few exceptions like Lei Shen.

[Deleted]

Now you're just listing class' strengths.

Well, I could be out of my mind here. But the reason to bring an alt over a main is because that alts class has a strength on that encounter. I could be wrong about this, maybe guilds brings in classes that are weak the encounter more fun.

If I had a guardian/brm alt instead of my prot pala on council, I would have swapped to it if it was 30 item levels lower, due to class strengths.

[clevin]

For the kind of guilds that this thread is talking about: yes, yes they will.

No, given that OP's raid has just cleared the tier from the sound if it, we're NOT talking a world 25 guild. And really, what world 25 guild is coming to MMO-C for advice on how to run their raids?

Draco brings up the burnout issue which is, I think, an important one esp as summer sets in. Do your raiders want to run their alts?

[Meleti]

We don't use alts at all. We have no organized alt raid, within raid times or outside of them. Most of our guild doesn't even have alts that could step in for TOT. We killed Lei Shen HC this week, and outside of me rerolling near the end of the tier I can't recall anyone playing an alt.

I could see Top 10 US 25-man guilds using alts, but we're usually around Top 30 and alts are just a much larger time commitment than any of our raiders want to deal with.

[NeverStop]

I AFK through LFR on my alts to keep up with the legendary questline in case I need to re-roll (alt class is very OP next tier, or main class gets super nerfed). Other than that we really use alts in our main raid, except for bringing in a 508 Unholy DK because you need 2 DKs for 25 man H Lei Shen

[Exac]

I don't play in a top guild, but I have heard from friends who do and the most common use is funneling gear to mains.

Yeah, use two raids, 20 mains in a 25-man and 5 mains in a 10-man, with alt healers and tanks.