Raid Comp - Rolling for spots

[Deleted]

Hi, I'm in a casual raiding guild and I have a few questions about raid composition.

Our GM has an attitude where he doesn't want to exclude anybody in our raids, and he does this when composing the raids, he gets members to roll for their place in that nights raid team, people who don't get in get granted an "immunity" where they get guaranteed a spot in the next guilds raid. As an officer I believe this is actually doing more harm than good. We crawled through Tier 11, and progress was virtually at a standstill in Throne of Thunder.

One of our other raid leaders decided to start using MMO Champions tool for raid composition, and this has had quite a beneficial impact on the guild, with our progress now at 13/14N 10man for SoO, enforcing my view that the rolling for spots system was bad and needs to be scrapped. Our GM is very resistant against having a set team though, and still has a strong belief in the rolling for spots method.

Has anybody else come across this rolling for spots method when composing raids? Has it ever worked? For a casual raiding guild how have you seen teams composed? What would you think is the best method of raid composition, without losing the casual aspect of the guild?

Things you should know about our guild:
- We raid 2-3 times a week, and usually do a flexi run to gear up lower guildies
- Originally the rolling for spots method was used for any class/role we had surplus numbers of, now we do try and ensure we get 8/8 buffs, so only certain members end up rolling.
- I belong to quite a large guild, we often have two 10man groups running or occasionally a 25man. My concern is due to the GM not wishing to turn down any members, sometimes we end up carrying less skilled members, and losing the skilled members.
- A large amount of members over time have stated they wish for a decent level of progress and are not fans of this system, as a result people have quit raiding with us or left.

Any advise about raiding setup would be much appreciated. Thankyou.

[Deleted]

Probably the worst shit i've read in my 4-5 years raiding.

You bring the players, classes and buffs that best suits the current progression encounter you are doing, in that order. Skill, class utility, buffs (you'll cover most buffs without trying anyhow..)

On farm bosses you rotate people:
Start by asking if someone doesnt need anything and can sit out on that boss.
If you still have more people than you can fit:
Look at attendance, look at skill, look at size of upgrades, bench the person with worst attendance, bad skill and minior upgrade.

Also with a somewhat set team you get consistency, you learn how each other play. Strong points, weak points etc. Communication goes up cause people can react to voices rather then names etc.

All of this doesn't matter if the guilds goal is to have fun and see content.
But if majority of you want progress you should never ever let rng decide a raid comp, thats just hilariously bad as you probably already know by making this post :P

[PosPosPos]

This is just a very frivolous topic with a very simple resolution, which I will address very quickly.

Hi, I'm in a casual raiding guild and I have a few questions about raid composition.

Our GM has an attitude where he doesn't want to exclude anybody in our raids, and he does this when composing the raids, he gets members to roll for their place in that nights raid team, people who don't get in get granted an "immunity" where they get guaranteed a spot in the next guilds raid. As an officer I believe this is actually doing more harm than good. We crawled through Tier 11, and progress was virtually at a standstill in Throne of Thunder.

One of our other raid leaders decided to start using MMO Champions tool for raid composition, and this has had quite a beneficial impact on the guild, with our progress now at 13/14N 10man for SoO, enforcing my view that the rolling for spots system was bad and needs to be scrapped. Our GM is very resistant against having a set team though, and still has a strong belief in the rolling for spots method.

Has anybody else come across this rolling for spots method when composing raids? Has it ever worked? For a casual raiding guild how have you seen teams composed? What would you think is the best method of raid composition, without losing the casual aspect of the guild?

Things you should know about our guild:
- We raid 2-3 times a week, and usually do a flexi run to gear up lower guildies
- Originally the rolling for spots method was used for any class/role we had surplus numbers of, now we do try and ensure we get 8/8 buffs, so only certain members end up rolling.
- I belong to quite a large guild, we often have two 10man groups running or occasionally a 25man. My concern is due to the GM not wishing to turn down any members, sometimes we end up carrying less skilled members, and losing the skilled members.

Any advise about raiding setup would be much appreciated. Thankyou.

Hi, I'm in a casual raiding guild and I have a few questions about raid composition.

Hi, I'm in a casual raiding guild

casual raiding guild

casual

So question to OP: do you even understand the terms you just used in your topic? Because if you did, you wouldn't be making this frivolous thread asking for advice for an issue that shouldn't exist. An issue actually that lies with a MINORITY'S ideals not lining with the philosophies of the GUILD.

[NickV]

Well POS above has a point. However... I'm in a "Casual raiding guild" also. It's not a "Casual Guild", it's a " Casual RAIDING Guild". Note the difference?
We TRY to let everyone raid. But on Progression fights, you can't suck. Guild ranks are useful for that. We have a "raider" rank. That's someone who has shown they can switch targets when needed, GTFO of the fire and generally NOT make the rest of the raid miserable. The people in our guild know that if they don't earn the rank, they may not get a spot in a progression raid. Those who get annoyed by it will end up leaving. But they'll still suck as a raider and would just make the raiding game less enjoyable for everyone else anyway.

[PosPosPos]

Well POS above has a point. However... I'm in a "Casual raiding guild" also. It's not a "Casual Guild", it's a " Casual RAIDING Guild". Note the difference?
We TRY to let everyone raid. But on Progression fights, you can't suck. Guild ranks are useful for that. We have a "raider" rank. That's someone who has shown they can switch targets when needed, GTFO of the fire and generally NOT make the rest of the raid miserable. The people in our guild know that if they don't earn the rank, they may not get a spot in a progression raid. Those who get annoyed by it will end up leaving. But they'll still suck as a raider and would just make the raiding game less enjoyable for everyone else anyway.

That's why there's a different tag for that sort of guild - it's called "semi-hardcore".

"Casual" heavily implies anything goes and relaxation is the key.

[kamuimac]

yup OP answeared it for himself - he joined a typical CASUAL guild which from what he describes focuses on everybody in team having fun and chance to raid not on progress itself . people often do this mistake - they only look at guild progress and when applying to guild they dont do the guild background check - which is very often very easy - instead whipering for half an hour inv or ask for invite for the vent/mumble/ts/skype the person who is recrutiing u and ask what are the goals of guild what are the rules of bench what are the gearing rules , what is their bring alts to raid policies .

instead this people focus on X/Y progress numbers and then after they join they are unhappy with the progress pace with looting with milion tuff they didnt ask before joining and try to enfore on GM/RLs changes cause they think x/x/z change would make it so much better - veyr often it would be its usually not the goal of the guild.

*and ye i do realise there are "causal very good " 2/3 nights weekly raiding guilds in hc progres too - but their mindet is totaly different from the majority of guilds that exist and raid. and they make it very clear when recruiting to their guild that they have standards and if someone doesnt meet them hes out after trial and he need to look for another less progressed guild. (especially the guilds that raid very few days cant loose time on farming stuff while boosting to many guildies since they run out of time for actual progress)

[Téuntjûh]

I've been in a guild who used this method.
I prefer to be in for 4/8 bosses on an evening then to sitout one who evening and be in the next.
Sitting out is always a problem, certainly for a lot of casual guilds who always happen to have too many or not enough raiders.
Question, does your guildmaster ever rolls himself?

[Deleted]

That's why there's a different tag for that sort of guild - it's called "semi-hardcore".

"Casual" heavily implies anything goes and relaxation is the key.

Casual doesn't mean hamstringing your guild and the other members in it

[PosPosPos]

Casual doesn't mean hamstringing your guild and the other members in it

You are right. Because people who agree to and join a casual raiding guild should already be aware that success isn't guaranteed and socializing is the name of the game. Hence, nobody should feel or be "hamstrung" because they knew what "casual" entails. And it definitely isn't one-shot clears and 14/14H progression.

And if anyone does, they should leave and find a guild that fits their own mindset. Simple as that.

The moment a guild starts screening members for raid spots for the sake of optimizing the raid team, said guild is semi-hardcore to hardcore, no two ways about it.

[MaugrimEU]

I see semi-hard core, Hard core raiding as 4-7 nights a week with perfect 100% attendance i.e miss one raid and you're out. Raiding 2 nights a week in comparison is casual.

[Deleted]

I think through the expansions what a "casual" guild can do has changed, especially in MoP, as the standards and raid awareness has been upped compared to Dragon Soul in Cata. What I define a casual guild to be is a guild which raids 2-3 times a week, not requiring 100% attendance week in week out. If the terminology is wrong, call it semi-hardcore if you will. There is also a difference between what is raiding for fun and progress raiding, I believe casual guilds should have a balance between the two. Wiping 100 times on Horridon normal is neither fun, nor allowing members to see content.

To answer your question no, the GM does not roll himself, he puts himself as raid leader even though there are other competent players able to do the job. There have been times where other members have automatically got a slot and others had to roll.

I came to the guild one year ago as a casual member, wanting to get into raiding, but as MoP hit raiding became a difficult experience, which was not fun. We lost a lot of members including 6 officers. I climbed the ranks, became an officer, and managed to carefully recruit new skilled members and things improved. I stay for those members which helped us and the hope things will change for the better. The majority of members want progress, not too hardcore, like heroic, but a decent level in normal so they can enjoy raiding.

The reason for posting this thread is asking could the current system ever work with modifications and what have you seen other casual raid guilds do?

[mmokri]

You are casual guild, so don't give a f

[PosPosPos]

I think through the expansions what a "casual" guild can do has changed, especially in MoP, as the standards and raid awareness has been upped compared to Dragon Soul in Cata. What I define a casual guild to be is a guild which raids 2-3 times a week, not requiring 100% attendance week in week out. If the terminology is wrong, call it semi-hardcore if you will. There is also a difference between what is raiding for fun and progress raiding, I believe casual guilds should have a balance between the two. Wiping 100 times on Horridon normal is neither fun, nor allowing members to see content.

The only thing you have described so far that's changed is the fact your personal standards of how the guild should be like have been raised.

At that point, unless there is a majority consensus within your current guild that the current raid standard should be higher, then no, you should either find a new guild that suits your changed preferences, or suck it up and deal with what you have.

Making this thread is synonymous to trying to eat healthy food at macdonalds or walking into a sex toy store expecting said store to cater to vanilla sex.

[refire]

Well POS above has a point. However... I'm in a "Casual raiding guild" also. It's not a "Casual Guild", it's a " Casual RAIDING Guild". Note the difference?
We TRY to let everyone raid. But on Progression fights, you can't suck. Guild ranks are useful for that. We have a "raider" rank. That's someone who has shown they can switch targets when needed, GTFO of the fire and generally NOT make the rest of the raid miserable. The people in our guild know that if they don't earn the rank, they may not get a spot in a progression raid. Those who get annoyed by it will end up leaving. But they'll still suck as a raider and would just make the raiding game less enjoyable for everyone else anyway.

I think as others have said, that's semi-hardcore, in that your progression is limited to time not by your ability to put up with people being bad. I raid with an alt in a casual group. This is literally a group where nothing matters. We do 25 mans because most of these people starting raiding with 40 mans. We have mages in full best in slot normal including all warforged doing 180k dps. No one says anything because no one cares. The worst it may get is someone getting called out for a repeated mistake but something like sitting someone for dps or for a mistake is non existent because progression isn't what we're after. We like playing the game and we like each others company one or two nights a week.

[Deleted]

This thread was not about defining a casual guild and whether I should be in it, but whether using RNG is a wise form of management, and have others experienced this? I'd say the majority of the guild want progress, don't care if we are several months behind other guilds, but being able to have fun downing bosses. We have an average turnover of a huge amount of raiders, many have left. We've had instances where people who can pull 200k+ dps are rolled out, whilst someone doing 90k gets in, having a team full of plate wearers. Just because a guild is casual, not expecting you to be there for 100% of raids or holding them ever day doesn't mean when people turn up they should be penalised by bad management, as an officer I feel responsible for.

Back to my questions:
Has anybody else come across this rolling for spots method when composing raids? Has it ever worked? For a casual raiding guild how have you seen teams composed? What would you think is the best method of raid composition, without losing the casual aspect of the guild?

[Deleted]

This thread was not about defining a casual guild and whether I should be in it, but whether using RNG is a wise form of management, and have others experienced this?

Has anybody else come across this rolling for spots method when composing raids? Has it ever worked? For a casual raiding guild how have you seen teams composed? What would you think is the best method of raid composition, without losing the casual aspect of the guild?

I do not believe a guild should ever by run on RNG. Regardless of the guild being casual or hardcore. First off, the me casual means that you are not required to have 100% attendancy and do not raid that many hours. It has nothing to do with being allowed to be bad or not and guild management being lazy and not making decisions to benefit the raid group.

In the end, having RNG will hurt your progression. Having your best dps sit out on a progress night only to wipe at 1% on the boss. Knowing that if that DPS was there you would have killed the boss. Stuff like that will only bring your raid team down.

I used to raid in a 25 man guild back in T11 that labeled themselves as casual raiding guild. We raided 3 days a week, there was an attendancy minimum requirement of 33% although 66% was encouraged. They used a system where they kept a scoreboard of all the players in the guild. Basically the players with the highest score was brought in for raid. If you had signed up and did not get picked out for a raid, you would be notified 1 day in advance and recieved +1 score. If you signed up for a right, got accepted and did not show up you recieved -2 score.

To give an example. You have three tanks, you only need two. Adam, Brad and Charlie. The first raid they all have a score of 0, Adam gets to sit the raid out. That means he get 1 score while the others got 0, so the next raid either brad or charlie gets to sit out (presuming all 3 signed up), and the third raid whoever didnt sit out the second time gets to sit out. However on the third raid Adam had signed up and got accepted and did not show up. Charlie who was supposed to sit out logs in and helps out since Adam just vanished. Charlie still gets his +1 because he was not supposed to raid and Adam recieves a -2. This means that Adam is probably going to have to sit out 2 raids as a "punishment" for signing up and not showing up. Of course there can be exceptions to this if there was a valid reason.

This system worked extremely well for us in a casual guild. As there was no punishment for not signing up. It was a very simply system that made it so that players that got passed over would get in the next raid until it is their "turn" again. And players signing up and not showing up would get punished. Over the years I was in that guild there was never any complaints whatsoever over that system, other than that sometimes people wanted to stack the raid team on progression.

Our officers tried to be smart about passing people over. If Adam and Brad both had a score of 3, but Adam was significatly better than Brad. Then they probably passed over Adam on farm night so they could bring in Brad over Adam for progression. Of course this was never said out loud though, but that was a way we found to have the raid team stacked for progression while still being fair. Of course tanks, dps and healers were treated seperately. We did not raid with 5 tanks and 3 healers just because a few tanks had a higher score. Exceptions were also made for what certain progress fights required. I remember one fight required us to stack warlocks, so our warlocks were often chosen over others with higher score for that fight, but the raid understood why as the boss would have been impossible otherwise. In the end it would even out anyways.

I would say that you need to find a system that works for you, but straight up RNG rolling is horrible. Sounds like your GM needs to grow a pair of balls and do his task as a GM.

[ZalidtheBur]

I wonder how many posters have actually been a raid leader. It's not the most pleasant of jobs. Having to sort out sit outs is probably the hardest part of it. At least that's what I have found. I only became the raid leader as our previous one had to leave the game due to RL. I'd happily let someone else take the job if there was someone willing too Our 10 man roster is at 18 people at the moment, so I must doing something right

It of course depends on your server to an extent. The server I am on is very quiet. It is very difficult to recruit competent people, so when you do get hold of any you want to keep them happy.

I have tried a few different systems and finally decided that it was best to leave it up to RNG as that seemed the fairest to everyone. It actually sounds very similar to the system the OP is using.
I only make the dps roll, as most tanks and healers do have a dps offspec. I include myself in the rolls as we only use this system on farm bosses, or at least on bosses I know the tanks can lead it. Any dps who roll and do sit out (or volunteer to sit out) are given a sit out immunity card that is valid for 1 week. If I do sit out, I am there on vent in case I am needed. I will also change things if it is obvious there is some weakness in the team. The ones who sit out, only sit out for half the night, as we split the raid in half so there is a break at the mid point.

When it comes to progression fights (currently Garrosh), I try and take the best team from who is present. If there are too many and all are capable for the fight, then rolls come into play again.

The one thing I would add is that I am always open to suggestions from the team. If anyone comes up with a better system then I am happy to change. It sounds like the OPs' GM/RL is not as open.

[clevin]

First off, OP, is anyone else having an issue with this or is it just you? If it's a general thing then there's something to perhaps fix. If it's just you and it really bugs you I'd leave the guild.

Now... no, I've never heard of this and I think it's generally a bad idea HOWEVER, I can see it as a neutral way to deal with the "14 people signed up for tonight's 10 man" stuff. I *hated* dealing with this as RL - someone's always pissed off and it can easily lead to drama esp when the tanks and healers tend to be protected since you need them. The problem is that you have people learn a fight, then not raid for a week, etc. which slows progress. it's also annoying since people can't plan their night. They might turn down other stuff that they want to do as well since they've committed to raiding only to lose a roll. So while it's A solution, it's not a GOOD solution.

The better solution is to run Flex for now. Everyone gets in and while it's not normal, so what? keep in mind that in WoD Normal will be flexible so this is only an issue from now until then.

Even more basic, people need to understand the goal of raiding in your guild. If it's progression focused (even if it's not high end, but simply "Clear Normal when it's current") then raid comp needs to account for that and you need to take the people who will make that happen. If, on the other hand, the goal is "make sure everyone who wants to raid gets to raid even at the cost of progression" then a rotation scheme will happen (or you run Flex). If the purpose of the raid is clear then people whose goals diverge from that can choose to adapt or leave.

But seriously... run Flex. This is precisely the issue it was made to solve.

[MisterMine]

Making this thread is synonymous to trying to eat healthy food at macdonalds or walking into a sex toy store expecting said store to cater to vanilla sex.

what does vanilla sex mean to you?? holding hands??
sex shops dont only sell 12 inch black dildos and anal beads u know

(and they sell salad at mcdonalds)

[lunchbox2042]

We roll to see who doesn't have to be in for the boss.