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  1. #41
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    The player makes far more difference at normal levels than class or gear imo. In hm, with stretched stats and luck drops being so strong, with a player base which is already performing reasonably well, I can see class/gear being a big issue.

    If you can't do normal as any class then it's because peeps are failing mechanics, with a couple of dps check exceptions.

  2. #42
    Normal modes aren't tuned tightly enough and don't contain exceptional mechanics that require class stacking, nor class avoidance. At the server first-heroic mode progression level though, you would do best to eliminate all non-rogue melee and stack as much cloth DPS as possible. Bring one protection paladin to soak up plate DPS gear (which is what they use anyway), a BM monk, disc priest, resto druid, MW monk, and then as many warlocks and mages as you can find and you will do well. Avoid plate melee at all costs, and avoid warriors and DKs altogether; Gorefiends grasp and skull banner aren't worth the loss of additional warlocks and mages.

  3. #43
    I'll use a 10man guild as example here and go with my own experience in the matter.

    I tried having a guild with 10 core members, we were going to raid three days a week. We all said we could attend all the raids but then real life happens.
    Someone gets sick, needs to study, work late and therefor getting these 3 raids of becomes very hard with only 10 members.

    We have since then added more members and its working out much better for the guild than a 10man roster.

    The most important part with having people benched is that they understand why they are benched.
    During progression we would bench people who made a lot of misstakes or if their class and specc were performing badly.
    We always try to run with the best we have for each fight, and if that means one class gets to sit out a bit more they understand why.

    However we always try to get every raid member as much raid time as possible during progression and especially during farm.

    Having a stream up during your raid will get the people sitting out an option of watching the progression making them more prepared to step in!

  4. #44
    Stood in the Fire Weightlifter's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tyrantworm View Post
    The player makes far more difference at normal levels than class or gear imo. In hm, with stretched stats and luck drops being so strong, with a player base which is already performing reasonably well, I can see class/gear being a big issue.

    If you can't do normal as any class then it's because peeps are failing mechanics, with a couple of dps check exceptions.
    Yes. One time we had a huntard with ilvl 523 doing 60k DPS on normal megaera, while there was also mage with ilvl 504 doing 140k

  5. #45
    Quote Originally Posted by Weightlifter View Post
    Yes. One time we had a huntard with ilvl 523 doing 60k DPS on normal megaera, while there was also mage with ilvl 504 doing 140k
    What i find funny is that said people will say "only if i had XXXX piece", as if one particular drop would double his/her DPS

  6. #46
    How do you guys keep a bench?

    In my 10 man we have people miss more frequently than I would like due to any number of real life situations. Every time this happens it holds progression back due to either having to carry a bad pug or cancelling raid altogether. We are 2/13 heroic and would be much farther if not for the lost progress time. A bench or rotation is the obvious solution for us but I just can't make it happen. Every time I mention a rotation people throw a fit. I have actually lost good raiders due to trying to set up a rotation. They take it as a personal insult.

    That doesn't even count trying to recruit. Every conversation/interview I have with a recruit ends abruptly as soon as I mention the words rotation or bench. It seems everybody wants a guaranteed spot with no penalty if they don't show up.

    I really enjoy raiding and am a competitive person by nature so watching our server ranking drop constantly just drives me crazy. How do you guys make it work?

  7. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by Boneshatter View Post
    How do you guys keep a bench?

    In my 10 man we have people miss more frequently than I would like due to any number of real life situations. Every time this happens it holds progression back due to either having to carry a bad pug or cancelling raid altogether. We are 2/13 heroic and would be much farther if not for the lost progress time. A bench or rotation is the obvious solution for us but I just can't make it happen. Every time I mention a rotation people throw a fit. I have actually lost good raiders due to trying to set up a rotation. They take it as a personal insult.

    That doesn't even count trying to recruit. Every conversation/interview I have with a recruit ends abruptly as soon as I mention the words rotation or bench. It seems everybody wants a guaranteed spot with no penalty if they don't show up.

    I really enjoy raiding and am a competitive person by nature so watching our server ranking drop constantly just drives me crazy. How do you guys make it work?
    Keep looking for people. There's no other way. You DO need to have more than 10 raiders, else every time someone can't come you are not progressing, and even with a 90% attendance almost every other raid someone won't be there

  8. #48
    Dying to simple things like ionization, sand traps, force of will, anima pools, tornados, fire, lightning whip, thunderstruck, static shock...etc etc are all things that the raider can learn about before he even enters the instance. The excuse of "I didn't know about so and so mechanics" is gone. YouTube guides are all over the place and if they cannot read up on basic boss abilities in order to be able to perform their dps or healing to the best of their ability then they should be sat.

    Why waste the raids time explaining fight mechanics? Get someone in who already knows the fight basics. If you're new...KNOW the fight abilities and how it affects your role in the raid.

    For example: Wiping on farm content because the new guy decides he wants to come in for some loot and doesn't understand the concept of ionization. There is no excuse for that at this point in time.

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  9. #49
    In all of my time playing, I have never seen a real casual guild bench anyone. The ones that are benching people and claim to be casual raiding guilds aren't really casual at all.
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  10. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by taheen74 View Post
    In all of my time playing, I have never seen a real casual guild bench anyone. The ones that are benching people and claim to be casual raiding guilds aren't really casual at all.
    Then how did all the "real casual guilds" you mention deal with the fact that real life exists?

    I see having 12-13 raiders on a 10 man roster a must, but i might be wrong

  11. #51
    Quote Originally Posted by Danishgirl View Post
    I honestly don't see how class balance is any different for casual guilds than for heroic guilds or anything in between. We all know, that "Bring the player, not the class" isn't true and that's why you won't find any sane guild who runs with 4 melee and 1-2 ranged dps or 3 Resto Shamans etc. Cause we all know, that to some extend, we do need to bring the class and not the player.
    Ugh... Peeves me off to no end that Bliz spew that player not class nonsense while I still end up every tier knowing damn well that if I benched 2 of my 3 melee for ranged DPS, it would make heroics insanely easier. As far as my opinion's concerned, 3 melee 3 ranged is not melee heavy, but seemingly Bliz feels we should be running 1 melee max if we don't want to gimp ourselves. I wish they'd stop adding more melee specs though (DK/WW) if ranged is pretty much always going to be the better option. Bugs me no end that running 5 ranged and 1 melee is no problem, but 5 melee and 1 ranged? Good luck with that...

    I know they can't balance between specs for shit but I do wish they'd try harder to level out the playing field between ranged and melee DPS. I'm far more likely to bench someone for SoO just to replace a melee DPS with a ranged, than for any lack of cooldowns/buffs from that player. Yes stuff is doable with 3 melee (Horridon heroic is good fun) but it sure as hell makes it considerably harder. We are casual raiders but even I'm starting to think it just isn't worth the aggro to keep 3 melee raiding each week - quite probable I'll either ask them to reroll or force them to rotate, and bring in some ranged.

    I'm also loving the MoP added fun bonus of constantly feeling I should bench our other tank for a Pala (or force them to reroll) so he can solo tank all over the place (with the Bliz feels its fine to cheese mechanics with BoP); why they design bosses intended for 2 tanks in mind then let people bullshit through them with 1 ability to remove a tank is beyond me. Does a great job of making me feeling like I handicap my raid by sticking to my Druid instead of rerolling to a Pala though. Probably a similar feeling for a 10-man group without a Disc.

  12. #52
    Elemental Lord clevin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Injin View Post
    The real reason for benching players is that the normal raids are overtuned, which coupled with the fact that there is nowhere else to learn the skills needed to raid can mean frustration all round. Example - we had a guy this week, i'd seen him in a HC scenario, had good dps. Brought him to the raid, he did fine on jinrokh/horridon. Got to council and "captain sandtrap" is now how I think of him. His dps dropped like a stone because it was taking all his mental effort to avoid shit on the floor*. There is nowhere to find that out except in the raid itself.

    From the guys perspective, he was offered the chance to raid and then he's had it cruely taken away again. his issue with benching will be that the game (or his raid leader) seems arbitary and learning to play right is insurmountably difficult because theres nowhere else for him to go practice. To improve, he'll just have to wait for another chance to embarass himself in front of 9 other people. Not good.


    *yeah, yeah he's bad. You are a horrible person if this was your first thought, go fuck yourself.
    This is a failure of the leveling dungeons and the level 90 dungeons. They're so easy that you don't really have a chance to die in there unless you're a complete idiot, so you don't learn PVE basics.

    On the other hand, how many times do you need to tell someone "When bad stuff appears on the ground under you you need to stop whatever you're doing and move" and have them do that? In LK I raided with a mage like this - he'd always try to finish a cast, etc and die early. No matter how many times I told him that it was far more important for him to live than to do that, he kept dying. So, yes, it's rough to learn in raids only but you should be able to get the basics (move out of bad shit) pretty fast. The harder things (dpsing efficiently in those environments, etc) is what separates decent from excellent players.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Theholypally View Post
    Dying to simple things like ionization, sand traps, force of will, anima pools, tornados, fire, lightning whip, thunderstruck, static shock...etc etc are all things that the raider can learn about before he even enters the instance. The excuse of "I didn't know about so and so mechanics" is gone. YouTube guides are all over the place...
    BZZT! the topic is casual raiding. Casual raiders generally don't spend time outside the game watching videos. However, after a few wipes I'd hope people learn that sand traps hurt, etc.

  13. #53
    If you are racing for world first progression, you want the absolute best class for every fight.

    However you can very, very easily kill any boss, on heroic or otherwise, with any raid comp.

    One of the biggest advantages a class can bring right now is lock portals for shit like iron qon which help a bit, but assuming your raiders aren't terrible any of them should be able to run out of the tornado area quickly and easily without them.

    You don't need to stack shit or only bring specific fights and change comps per fight. There is no point. If your guild is so terrible they can't kill a boss without stacking the absolute best classes to counter every mechanic in the fight, then that is a skill problem with your guild, not related to class balance.

    And for the record i've never seen a casual guild bench people to bring in other classes on each boss. Quite the opposite is true where they will wipe all night on a single boss just because they don't want to kick a baddie off their team that can't follow mechanics.
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  14. #54
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    Quote Originally Posted by Boneshatter View Post
    How do you guys keep a bench?

    In my 10 man we have people miss more frequently than I would like due to any number of real life situations. Every time this happens it holds progression back due to either having to carry a bad pug or cancelling raid altogether. We are 2/13 heroic and would be much farther if not for the lost progress time. A bench or rotation is the obvious solution for us but I just can't make it happen. Every time I mention a rotation people throw a fit. I have actually lost good raiders due to trying to set up a rotation. They take it as a personal insult.

    That doesn't even count trying to recruit. Every conversation/interview I have with a recruit ends abruptly as soon as I mention the words rotation or bench. It seems everybody wants a guaranteed spot with no penalty if they don't show up.

    I really enjoy raiding and am a competitive person by nature so watching our server ranking drop constantly just drives me crazy. How do you guys make it work?
    Do the raiders get annoyed by not having a raid or pugging someone to fill a spot? If not, not much you can do. If yes, explain that the only way to avoid it is either 100% attendance or rotating 1-2 people per fight (meaning they'd still be in for 10/12 fights at least really).

  15. #55
    OP, when you see players badly being outperformed by yourself every damn raid night, dosen't it get tiring inn the end? Back inn Cataclysme when I was still on my now completely 100% dead server, we could barely recruit people, even trough we we're the best alliance guild left. We only got 2 recruits trough hole Firelands period.

    So that meant we had to be happy with what we had. We had this mage - A nice honest guy - But no matter what he claimed to be improving, it never got better. He always feelt behind on DPS, and wasen't the best to avoid silly mistakes. On one particulary night when we we're dying to Staghelm before more wiping on HC ragnaros I got tired and looked on WOL; Even trough this guy had really good heroic gear (At that time our 2nd best geared ranged DPS I think) he didn't even get into top 200 WOL for mages on Staghelm - He plain sucked.

    Edit: We also had a warlock. Abit more casual player, think it was cause of work, that he didn't always get a spot, and often he didn't perform to well, but inn the end he improved quit abit, to a point where I would much rather have him over the mage. Atleast when he said hes trying to improve, he did it.
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  16. #56
    Herald of the Titans Advent's Avatar
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    I have a question. What on earth is a half casual guild?

    Somebody explain that to me.

  17. #57
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    Do Flex raiding, never have to bench anyone, problem solved.

  18. #58
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kaiarra View Post
    Ugh... Peeves me off to no end that Bliz spew that player not class nonsense while I still end up every tier knowing damn well that if I benched 2 of my 3 melee for ranged DPS, it would make heroics insanely easier. As far as my opinion's concerned, 3 melee 3 ranged is not melee heavy, but seemingly Bliz feels we should be running 1 melee max if we don't want to gimp ourselves. I wish they'd stop adding more melee specs though (DK/WW) if ranged is pretty much always going to be the better option. Bugs me no end that running 5 ranged and 1 melee is no problem, but 5 melee and 1 ranged? Good luck with that...

    I know they can't balance between specs for shit but I do wish they'd try harder to level out the playing field between ranged and melee DPS. I'm far more likely to bench someone for SoO just to replace a melee DPS with a ranged, than for any lack of cooldowns/buffs from that player. Yes stuff is doable with 3 melee (Horridon heroic is good fun) but it sure as hell makes it considerably harder. We are casual raiders but even I'm starting to think it just isn't worth the aggro to keep 3 melee raiding each week - quite probable I'll either ask them to reroll or force them to rotate, and bring in some ranged.

    I'm also loving the MoP added fun bonus of constantly feeling I should bench our other tank for a Pala (or force them to reroll) so he can solo tank all over the place (with the Bliz feels its fine to cheese mechanics with BoP); why they design bosses intended for 2 tanks in mind then let people bullshit through them with 1 ability to remove a tank is beyond me. Does a great job of making me feeling like I handicap my raid by sticking to my Druid instead of rerolling to a Pala though. Probably a similar feeling for a 10-man group without a Disc.

    I completely agree with you in this. We've cleared almost all 13 Heroic bosses without a Paladin in the roster. Knowing how much easier things would have been with at least 1 Paladin in the roster and pref a Prot, makes me wanna puke all over. But "Bring the player, not the class" is the worst pile of dog crap GC can say. Cause in stead of trying to balance the scale between ranged and melee, they removed the buff melee had in Cata - just for being melee. And in stead they gave ranged dps the ability to move while casting even more.

  19. #59
    I think it depends on why you are getting benched. Me and another healer in got benched during progress on sha of fear. That was a bad decision because the other 2 healers was new in the guild and had worse gear than us two and it wasnt healing that hold us back. This was in a social raidingguild.

    If you get benched because you are bad then you need to improve. Rotating ppl is good so i wouldnt mind skipping one week of raiding or 1 night sometimes.

    So basicly it all depends on why you are benched and what kind of guild you are in.

  20. #60
    Scarab Lord Triggered Fridgekin's Avatar
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    We're a fairly small, tight guild in that our raiders have known each other for a long time. Some since TBC and others as we picked up along the way so it's much more personal than some guilds who may have a high turnover rate or recruit large pools of players. The drawback to this is that we're all so familiar with each other and tend to put up with a lot of shit when it comes to our progression which can make us fall even further behind due to being so polite to one-another. Also, being on a medium population server where the horde:alliance ratio is .5/1 can hurt in the recruiting department so we're generally taking the players we have.

    Unfortunately, even for our modest guild, there comes a certain point where we have to bench someone who we feel is being a burden to the group. In our case, we're close to clearing a raid before a blanket nerf or using the next tier gear but are unable to do so due to one of our Hunters who has very little raid awareness which puts much more stress on our group to the point where we've had to essentially nine man some of the bosses by the skin of our teeth.

    I understand that someone will always finish last in terms of DPS or HPS but the key is whether or not the person who is last has properly executed their roll and not become a liability to the group. Our Hunter can do some great DPS but that DPS doesn't mean anything if he decides to stay in the middle during Storm on Iron Qon and die in spite of being told several times to move out. So, in this case, we're benching him for a DPS who has more awareness in spite of having less gear.

    TL;DR - Even Casual guilds can have skill standards when it comes to their own progression.
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