10-man Roster (Gear/Subs/etc)

[Bombino]

Background
I'm in/an officer of a relatively new raid group atm, it's not too hardcore 8/13 but got a very late start this tier with tons of people missing for summer, we are planning to full clear next tier. I have some hardcore 25 experience but am very clueless as far as managing a 10 man roster.

As far as healers go, we only have 1 healer sub, which is worrying b/c one of our main 3 healers will be missing all of November.
As far as range go, we have basically no replacements - our current range are Warlock, Mage, Spriest (me)
As far as tanks we are secure, with two possible replacements just in case.

Basically our only sub is an enhancement/resto shaman who we are having an unbelievably hard time telling to go ele/resto instead. I am considering rerolling Resto Druid and making the guy who will be gone for a month change to Mainspec DPS since I never miss that way 3 healers will be secure. But then there's the issue of finding a range who can keep up in DPS.

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Question
What are you guys finding you rotate in/out of 10 man a lot? It would seem that mage/lock being so OP that keeping them in for gear (esp during the start of 5.4) would be essential. So is the 5% haste range your rotate person? plus maybe a melee or something? Is anyone at all rotating mage/lock or anything completely different from what we are leaning towards?

Any answers / suggestions would be greatly appreciated. So far, we are recruiting a hunter, four of us are leveling a hunter just in case, and two of us are working on our resto druid alts.

[Inthislzon]

It depends on what kind of progress you intend to do, as "full clear" can mean the entire time range since "we managed world first on heroic garrosh" to "we killed heroic garrosh the day before pre-expansion patch hit". That being said you need to be able to get 2 tanks and 3 healers at nearly any time (but one of those healers might be an offspec).

DPS wise, take whatever you need to have full buffs (the less slots you waste there the better), then stack mages/locks.

[Deleted]

You dont want to have too many replacements in a 10man guild, people will start to complain that they arent raiding enough which eventually will cause them to leave the guild.

I would say max 3 replacements.

[Inthislzon]

That's right too, don't overrecruit.

Also make your hibrid's offspec ready. My guild expects every hibrid DPS to be able to either heal or tank at a decent level, for those times your mainspec tanks/healers can't make it.

[Elios]

With so many subs you are going to have problems with spreading too much items between your players...

[kaamila]

in 10mans, the reliability of those 10 players are huge. if u have a player who likes to miss days alot or get on alot later than raid time, you need to replace them no matter how good they are. in t14 my guild finished world 85th with 0 subs. and that caused us to miss 2 straight weeks of progression on heroic sha cuz 2 people had computer problems consecutive weeks. having 10 people that you know will always be on to raid is crucial in a 10man.

[Superlolz]

You dont want to have too many replacements in a 10man guild, people will start to complain that they arent raiding enough which eventually will cause them to leave the guild.

I would say max 3 replacements.

How do you go about rotating 13 raiders? Especially during the first couple of weeks on a new tier? (Looking for advice)

[nowish]

How do you go about rotating 13 raiders? Especially during the first couple of weeks on a new tier? (Looking for advice)

Do you mean in terms of gear? You gear up the people that you know are good / dedicated enough to be there all the time first, and should only really rotate (if it's not needed due to class or w/e) if there is a really strong weap/trinket that no one in the normal group need (apart from maybe a minor sidegrade). My guild had a couple of dropouts during the first weeks, 2 of them beeing healers and forcing some annoying rerolls. But the key is to have helpful friends that are socials, who wouldn't mind stepping in and helping you out if they have spare time. We got a couple of world 30 kills even tho we had the dropouts, and took in socials to fill the spots. Socials who are not expected to raid, but are willing to helpout / want to raid if the opportunity arise.

[clevin]

I wouldn't reroll resto druid yourself. Instead, spec disc and use it as an offspec if you are down a healer, subbing in a DPS to replace your shadow spot.

Ideally (after buffs are covered, etc), I'd want to have a melee dps with a tank offspec. You *say* you're fine on tanks but you need 2 and if you don't have them, the raid can't go, so you want some fallback if one of them is sick, etc. That stuff WILL happen. For example, if I was one of your tanks... I was very sick this last week and wouldn't have raided. If you had no backup for me, you'd be screwed.

Don't pressure the enh shaman to play ele. I get it, the gear between ele and resto more alike, but if that person hates playing ele and will be DPS 80-90% of the time, you just have a pissed off raider. Instead, consider making them one of your main healers with enh has the backup spec. You might put them in the slot of your healer who will be gone in November.

BTW, I'd strongly consider making the healer who will be out November a bench player. Otherwise you end up gearing someone who will be gone for a month and then having to use a probably less geared healer who's not seen the farm mid-progress. That can make a farm fight harder, progress slower, etc. Also consider the impact on your subs when you let that healer get a regular spot even though you know they're going to be gone for a month. If I was a backup healer I'd wonder why I'm sitting vs old Bob the disappearing healer.

[Kalmah]

If you have 13 people, you better have a good reason. For us, it's because we expect that 1-2 person(s) will be absent on average for each raid, so we need that many.

When 13 actually show up for a raid, we rotate on a boss by boss basis, it's a bit annoying but it makes everyone feel involved and part of the team, which is good for overall morale. If you consistently bench the same people, they'll eventually get the hint and look elsewhere.

[clevin]

If you have 13 people, you better have a good reason. For us, it's because we expect that 1-2 person(s) will be absent on average for each raid, so we need that many.

When 13 actually show up for a raid, we rotate on a boss by boss basis, it's a bit annoying but it makes everyone feel involved and part of the team, which is good for overall morale. If you consistently bench the same people, they'll eventually get the hint and look elsewhere.

I agree with the last bit but rotating on a boss basis slows the raid down and can add its own drama ("but I need the X off boss B!!!"). There's no easy answer to subs. You want people who can step in but if you never let them, they'll leave. The best advice is, as stated, to not overrecruit subs - there's no point in having 3 subs if your 10 are almost 100% reliable.

A couple of things you can do are...

1) set performance criteria for the core group and enforce them. If a core DPS stand in fire, does 55% of their expected DPS, etc bench and pull in a sub.

2) if you have 13, run Flex regularly so that everyone knows the fights (Flex fight mechanics are the same as normal). That keep bench people up on fights and gets the team to do things together.

3) Remember than if you don't rotate tanks or healers you're rotating 3 dps into 5 slots... that will mean all of the DPS are expected to sit a high % of the time but the tanks and healers... aren't? Hmm...

[Inthislzon]

13 people on a 10man roster is not "too many", as long as one raider can't make it to couple raid nights a MONTH (and that will happen for sure) you are looking at 11-12 people every night. Also you don't want anyone to have "i can't get replaced so doesn't matter if i fail" mentality

[clevin]

13 people on a 10man roster is not "too many", as long as one raider can't make it to couple raid nights a MONTH (and that will happen for sure) ...

And if the subs are ok raiding that little. In my experience the issue is that the subs don't want to raid just 20 or 25% of the time which is what a couple of raid nights per month comes out to (figuring 2-3 nights a week raiding). OP needs to poll everyone, figure out attendance, figure out any time a raider will need off (for example, Thanksgiving weekend), etc.

[Inthislzon]

And if the subs are ok raiding that little. In my experience the issue is that the subs don't want to raid just 20 or 25% of the time which is what a couple of raid nights per month comes out to (figuring 2-3 nights a week raiding). OP needs to poll everyone, figure out attendance, figure out any time a raider will need off (for example, Thanksgiving weekend), etc.

Ah well, i was counting on 5 nights/week.

When i say a couple raid nights a month i'm also saying over 90% attendance (misses 2 out of 20). Maybe should have explained myself better.

90% attendance is not bad by all means, but that also means 1-2 people missing every night, 2-3 should two events happen at the same time.

If raiding 3 nights a week missing one night a month still gets you over 90% attendance.

[clevin]

Yeah, the more nights, the more chances for a sub to raid. Rotating is easier then too even if people aren't missing since you can rotate folks in and out and everyone is still getting significant time. Two nights a week and things are harder. OP can clarify that if they want.

[Barrun]

Find "auxiliary" players, peoples spouses/siblings/roommates or just randoms who no longer raid (you'd be suprised how many of them there are) and don't want to be committed at all, but when needed are willing to login - just have to make sure they can take criticism and are actually serious about their performance. Keeping people benched that want to be raiding every raid night is generally asking for trouble, not many people have the patience for that and will eventually find greener pastures. Having hybrids capable and geared to play offspecs is also vital to a healthy 10 man. Telling your shaman to go ele instead of enhance is likely a road to resentment and under-performance or overall unhappiness, I wouldn't advise it. If you have healer subs then missing one of your main 3 shouldn't be a problem, hell, most fights are 2 healable if your healers aren't brain dead, most often easier to two heal - might be worth giving it a try. Forming relationships with other guilds on your server can help solve the problem of absent players as well, people generally have alts which they want to raid with, and those people generally have experience raiding. Most 25 mans have quite a few benched players, so even if your raid times overlap with a 25 mans raid times you can likely find one of their benched players willing to hop on an alt to fill your void - and if you get lucky and find the right person it can be even better than having your usual raider with you. =P

[Deleted]

The size of your 10-man roster depends on what you ask from your raiders in terms of online presence.
My guild always cleans Tiers in heroic mode since T11 and we have a roster ranging from 14 to 18 members.
The reason is that we have 5 raid nights but only 3 mandatory raids per week for each individuals.
Works perfect for us because we REALLY want our maximum freedom when it comes to real life stuff....and we still get to clean full heroic mode in a decent time span.

....also, we are pretty much guaranteed to never disband because of "our MT/starplayer/officer just quit". As the guild master, this is quite important to me: people come and go all the time in WoW; a roster of 10 or 11 players is just asking for trouble in the long run imho (no, lasting 2 tiers is not "long run" in my eyes). Note that I have the most respect for those hardcore tight 10-man rosters who I admire since ~T11 (Hordlinge, Modest, etc...). Props to you guys

[Nobleshield]

I will add that having people on standby is always a good thing, as my guild is now finding out the hard way as we are losing a healer for like 2-3 weeks when SoO comes out but don't have any replacement available, so we are getting screwed royally.

The standby/bench thing has to be approached correctly though, or you'll just piss folks off and they'll leave if you continually bench them because the "core" person is on; nobody wants to join a raid guild and then not actually get to raid unless someone happens to be out. Flex will go a bit towards alleviating this as you can bring all your bench and core for Flex nights, but Flex < Normal < Heroic so it's not fixing the issue.

[Krommm]

2-4 subs should cover 2-4 nights a week fine. Though, from past experience 4 or more subs (sometimes even less) is stretching it as people will vanish without any raid time. Been in mostly 10-12 person rosters and it usually worked out if healers/tanks at least had a 90% attendance rate. Also stretch your gear as best as you can without gimping the raid, 10 man gets an obscene amount of unusable loot. (Lost our druid so we're going into Siege with no use for leather AND mail int gear ugh)

[CptAwesome]

We run have 13 people in our team, it's all about flexibility with roles and just being mature enough to swap in and out and just discuss who needs what.

Roster-wise we have 2 main tanks, one with a dps offspec and 1 feral druid who acts a backup tank. 4 healers, 1 of whom has a dps offspec (elemental/resto shaman). The rest are a mix of dps with the elemental shaman having a resto offspec for emergencies. Having people that can play properly on a 2nd spec makes a huge difference and gives you so many options but if they're just sat there 20% below everyone else there's no point in using them. However, any serious raid needs to have this flexibility because you have bosses like Animus where you might want 3 tanks, 3 healers and then you have Ra-Den where you can go as low as 1 tank, 1 healer but there's no point in doing that if you're dropping a 2nd healer for a tank in his offspec doing 80k flat.

As far as rotating goes, just discuss it like adults. Who needs which boss and what do they need from it? Who sat out last time? Does anyone want to sit out a fight cos they're hungover and photosensitive? It's easy if people are grown up about it and not just fighting for "their spot".

You seem to have the wrong mindset by designating the shaman as your "sub" you really should just have roster of equals and trade them in and out as the fight/their needs require. Also note that if you have a sub they usually start to fall behind on gear which quite quickly renders them useless on later bosses when you might want to bring them in to very your setup.