I am requiring my guild to do their spec's "Gold" Proving Grounds - thoughts?

[Bigbamboozal]

Everyone who has a low priority/need/whatever to do PG:

If your guild and raid LEADER tells you to get gold, well then you spend 15 minutes and get gold..

Wtf are you to expect from your guildmates over randoms if not some sort of standard

How about a standard that makes sense?

[Halicia]

If ANYONE can do gold PG's, wtf is that proving to you? Not a damn thing.

'anyone' can do Flex raids too, but does that not prove to you that they at least have the capability of doing flex raids ?

Even moreso for those guilds that only raid a short time each week, you want to make sure your roster is the most capable available. Its not like he asked people to go back and clear every single dungeon, heroic, and raid on each character they want to raid on. No, he asked them to spend a half hour as their MAIN SPEC in the trials to prove they're capable enough SOLO before expecting the group to rely on their ability.

That being said, I think this may have been 'too much, too fast' for most guilds. It probably would have been better to phase it in as optional over the course of a few weeks to allow people to consume the content more at their own pace. (assuming this guild is as casual as a 1/day a week raiding schedule makes it sound like).

I would have said something to the effect of 'golds will get prio for a raidspot, and bronze is required', then step it up to silver and gold as the majority of the raid team clears that.

If players cant be bothered to 'jump through hoops' to improve their skill, then there's no reason a raid team should be expected to jump through hoops carrying and gearing up dead weight.

[Venant]

Id like my raid to require everyone get the 30 wave achievement on Endless

[Masochist]

Id rather prove myself in a raid, not some mini-game set up on the side for some entertainment. Id be kind of offended and most likely tell you to go to hell "requiring" me. HA

thats an awful lot to make of nothing

Im not sure what logical reasoning you would 'require' people to get gold

because you're literally not even worth playing the game with if you cannot get gold

that being said

getting gold isn't difficult and you shouldn't even recognize yourself as a competitive player if you cannot obtain it.

Some people cant be assed to do it, some don't have the time and some will take it as an insult

takes less time than it would for people who are bad at the game to get good at the game if they took half an hour out of their day every day to read up on their class and theorycraft

[Deleted]

Wrong. A leader can select the requirements for his team and that's what he's done. We enforced for everybody to have their legendary cape on wednesday or they would automatically be put in standby and not even considered for raid, then rotated the people who actually did.

Pretty much this. Although we didn't even have to say anything to our raiders, it was a natural thing for everyone to get their cloaks before the raid.

Depending on your guild management, the raid leader is often the GM as well or at least an officer and as such, he/she can indeed tell you what to do - in the context of raiding. We tell our raiders to always bring 300 stat food, flasks and pots, we tell them to always use the best enchants/gems, we tell them to have 2 crafting professions, we tell them to research every single encounter and probably other things I just can't remember right now.

We can tell them that, cause that's the way things are done in my guild. And if people want to raid with us, that's the terms they sign off on when applying.

All that said, I feel it might be a bit overkill for a casual guild raiding once per week. And I also have to agree, that PG probably proves little to nothing in terms of not failing in SoO. Cause the time they now have to spend on PG, they could have spend researching their class/spec and the boss encounters in stead.

When your raid is failing on an encounter, it's more often than not, the same things that cause issues. 1) Lack of preparation (both from individual raider and the RL). 2) Lack of skill and awareness and 3) Lack of knowledge when it comes to performing a class/spec/role.

While PG may help improving some players skill on performing their class/spec/role, it's not likely to have any affect on 1 or 2. Cause in PG you can keep doing it over and over again, while not slowing down anyone else. In a raid, you're slowing down 9/24 other people down, every time you make a mistake. And you can't just try over and over again, at some point you will be replaced.

Tl;dr: While I applaud your initiative to improve the overall skill of your raiders, I doubt PG will change anything for your raid. As long as you only raid once per week, it's highly doubtful, you'll get raiders who won't fail at simple mechanics. Cause such raiders will want more of a challenge.

[Bigbamboozal]

Where in any of my text did I display disrespect for my raiders?

The part where you asked them to step outside of raiding to use none raid related content to judge their ability as a raider.
Raids require TEAMWORK, can you test that with gold PG's? Can you Billy? HHHMMM?!!!!??!!
Right.

Best of luck building your new guild though.

[Tziva]

As a raid leader myself, I think it's silly.

You already raid with them, why would you ask them to prove themselves in an unrelated context? If they are sucking at raiding, you should know this already and should talk to them to shape up or bench them. Don't force them to spend time they don't want to spend doing content they don't want to do to reach some arbitrary bar that you should, as raid leader, already know if they meet or don't.

Also you're a one night a week raid group and it sounds like you take whoever has the ilvl, which probably means you're doing flex but even if not, it's obviously a casual group. While some people raid casually simply because they can't put in the hours, most appreciate not having to meet outside requirements like capping valor or rep grinds or min/maxing spec, or having to go complete unnecessary tasks to prove themselves to their raid leader just because he felt like asking them to.

If people want to require it for new recruits, whatever, but it's pretty silly to force your existing team to do this.

More importantly, your request is damaging your guild. You've already lost people. Choose your battles. Is the gain from this really worth losing team members and fostering resentment? I'm going to guess no, mainly since there isn't really a gain.

[Lynarii]

Something you have to keep in mind is that gold on one class/spec combo is NOT remotely comparable to doing it on another. Gold Damage as a Moonkin is not a gimme (and Endless wave 3 as a moonkin is absolutely stupid), whereas classes that have a lot of hard CCs, good AE, and decent burst capabilities will have a MUCH easier time of the whole thing. Other classes also get particularly screwed by the ilvl drop. Monk healers are a great example, in SoO gear and with the LMG, they have almost infinite mana so dump spirit like crazy. Take that same gear and drop it to 463, suddenly they OOM hard. I'm definably a worse healer than my guild's monk (not my main spec) but my resto shaman has gold healer and he doesn't. Because class matters (and capacitor totem is amazing).

[clevin]

As a raid leader myself, I think it's silly.

You already raid with them, why would you ask them to prove themselves in an unrelated context? If they are sucking at raiding, you should know this already and should talk to them to shape up or bench them.

This. You're just being lazy and using PG gold as a substitute for actually leading your raid.

[Airwaves]

Very casual, now. Was in Death & Taxes /shrug.

We cleared 4/4 flex which made me happy. It was after many wipes on Narushen due to simple play mistakes.

That's the gold requirement: to weed out players who want to be carried.

You do flexi... and want gold mode. Are you high? Or even better I bet you are that thing starting with "T".

You sound like terrible guild master and those people who left would be better without you. In fact I hope your whole guild falls apart for doing something so dumb.

[Rtslbd]

TIL this thread is full of casuals that can't complete pg gold.

[Creotor]

I know the goals of the guild are completely different. But the strategy has to be at least SOMEWHAT the same. Or do folks just generally not respect the other human beings they play with? Have I been in my little Island too long?

I don't think this has much to do with respect. OP believes Proving Grounds is a decent measure of a person's skill. He ran it himself and got Gold with different classes/specs without much trouble. He then decided that if it was that easy for him, it should have been manageable for everyone else as well. Those who wouldn't be able to pull it off were, in his opinion, incompetent players.

Frankly, I think the reason it caused so much havoc in his guild is because he probably didn't present it properly and set it as too much of an ultimatum.
Even then, I don't see why this is such a big deal to some people. You can be refused a spot in a raid because of being a few ilvls short of the "standard", but not because you don't have at least some evidence of being up to a certain skill standard?

However, something in the back of my head just showed itself in plain view once I read Tziva's post. This seems somewhat redundant. Indeed, OP already raids with them so he should have an idea of how good they are.

[Airwaves]

TIL this thread is full of casuals that can't complete pg gold.

What? I could more then handle gold. I just have no interest in doing SINGLE PLAYER CONTENT in a MULTI PLAYER game. If i wanted to do single player things i would go play a single player game. It has nothing to do with "casuals" there are alot of raiders in this thread against the idea.

[SoundOfGuns]

I never said Gold was hard. I, in fact, said it was decently difficult but that I 1-shot tank. Would you like to rethink your statement?

Would you like to elaborate why? The statement was not about the difficulty itself, it was about that it just doesn't mean a thing if you have Gold or not already now, and will be put off with a shrug as some other gimicky blizzard-feature once its being scaled down, and we all know it will happen. Since you have problems with reading and understanding, my friend, let me put it simply: Why making your Raiders "jump through loops" and break your raid when it proofs and solves not a single thing? Therefor, it's obvious why requiring something to be done that needs a different mindset, set of skills in a entirely different environment is a flawed idea to begin with.

I hope you could follow me this time, my good sir, and that it wasn't to complicated for you to comprehend.

[Tziva]

If your guild and raid LEADER tells you to get gold, well then you spend 15 minutes and get gold..

The question was not from a raider perspective asking, "should I listen to my raid leader." The question was from the raid leader, asking if his requirement was necessary.

Yes, if your raid leader asks you to do shit, as a raider, you should listen or find a raid that you feel asks more reasonable things. And, yes, the raid leader certainly has the right to demand whatever he wants, but that doesn't make every request a raid leader makes a good idea.

Wtf are you to expect from your guildmates over randoms if not some sort of standard

Again, this question isn't, "should I have standards of performance for my raid." It's "should I make them prove their performance in some outside venue even though I am already raiding with them and probably have raid logs and memories and experience I could be using instead."

If it wasn't a casual group, then fine.
If it was a new startup raid, or new recruits, then fine.

It's a casual raid full of people he's already been raiding with. It's totally unnecessary.

[Locruid]

Hey, it's your guild you can do what you want.

But if I'm doing an Excellent job already and someone tells me I must be required to do a silly "Proving Gorund" I would probably gquit too.

I've been playing since Vanilla, have done LOT's of PVP but you wont find a single Arena Rating on any of my Characters and you never will because I despise the Arena.

[Lackluster]

I'd tell you to get lost, if my raid performance is lacking then tell me what's wrong instead of telling me to go out and play minigames. What's next, you're going to require your raiders to get a certain rank in the brawlers guild? Perhaps getting 1750 in arenas will improve their reaction times and knowledge of other classes? Raid performance should be assessed based on just that, performance in the raid, and not some random other metric.

If you feel that people are making elementary mistakes I would suggest you log a few raids (if you don't have proof they'll just deny it) and point out what's going wrong with links to the relevant logs. I think that telling someone what skill they are using improperly or exactly what fire they were standing in will be more beneficial to their performance in that fight than requiring them to do well in other parts of the game.

[Zantos]

Ive done gold tanking one. That being said, it doesn't really help provide a good sense of if someone can actually perform in a raid or not. Especially since some classes will have an easier time then others as well as some needing to set themselves up differently to complete it then they would for a raiding scenario.

[Masochist]

You already raid with them

gonna stop you right there and say most 10 mans are usually looking for the last couple people to round out their roster, i imagine in a 25 man the roster changes up quite frequently - so maybe they don't know them, maybe they haven't proven themselves yet.

maybe they do have difficulty raid leading and diagnosing problems. who cares? it's their guild

people will either take the 15 minutes it requires to do them for the roles they play, or they'll whine, be bad, leave said guild and no one will care.

[Zantos]

I'd tell you to get lost, if my raid performance is lacking then tell me what's wrong instead of telling me to go out and play minigames. What's next, you're going to require your raiders to get a certain rank in the brawlers guild? Perhaps getting 1750 in arenas will improve their reaction times and knowledge of other classes? Raid performance should be assessed based on just that, performance in the raid, and not some random other metric.

If he honestly expects brawlers guild for healers or tanks, I question is knowledge to even lead a raid.