Dealing with Bad Raiders (or How do I help reform raiders into better ones?)

[Alroxas]

I sometimes think there should be a "WoW Coach" profession, just like tennis or golf coach.

Actually, there were (still are) some of these services floating around. Sentry Totem was doing class coaching till they closed their doors and I think Skill-Capped does coaching for PvP (paid teaching though).

Others will remain average at best till the end of days.

I can understand but for us the current comparison (at least on AMR's inforgraphics) is that our best players hover around the 75th to 50th percentile median whereas the bad players are like in the low 20th percentile (or even lower). I suppose at some point, we're just going to have either cut the team down or be satisfied that we won't be able to progress as deeply as we'd like.

So any advice on how to analyze dps rotations or healer performance? Right now that best I can do is look at a second log and compare how many of which spell was cast. This lets me give vague feedback like "Well other hunters seem to cast X 40% more than you do". This is even harder with healers though.

Others can correct me if I'm wrong, but log reading seems to be tied very closely to understanding how a spec works. For instance, I know that frost mages seem to highly value the 1:1 ratio between their procs and the instant spells cast for those procs (i.e. FoF -> IL, BF -> FFB). Meanwhile, back in MoP, for restro druids it was having high Harmony uptime (not sure if this is still current for WoD). And for brewmaster tanks, 100% shuffle uptime with talents like Serenity.

In the end, I usually have to find sources regarding how a spec works to then be able to analyze logs for performance. I still can't figure out how read warrior logs (Fury specifically).

You can't. If you've had the basic conversations and they haven't been motivated to improve, then they never will. You can try to guide them, but the desire to be better has to come from within, and either they have it or they don't.

Hmm... so then are there ways to inspire bad players to become motivated to improve?

[ohlins]

By replacing them. If you keep bringing them along then they don't need to improve.

[Airlick]

My guild is in that spot. We have maybe 23 players that regularly come to raids, but no more than 15 of those (and even that is stretching it) are worthy raiders. The rest are fillers, and they are not doing a good job. Since we're a national guild, we don't have the luxury of being able to boot people. I would personally kick them anyway and find foreigners to fill for them, but I'm not making the decisions. I'm sure that it won't take more than 2 months until the guild disbands (as in, raiders leave or stop raiding) or we go international, since some people are literally uncarriable and mythic BRF is more challenging than HM.

A holy priest refusing to use Renew takes the crown here. Not even kidding. He's the best example of a player that just refuses to get better. Everyone and their dogs have been telling him to start using Renew, but he just won't. He gimps himself and our healers, but again, we HAVE to bring him because we can't fill for him. Terrible, really.

[psyquest]

I recruit for my guild. I only take people that have a learner profile. If you are a great player, you are always trying to learn new tricks. If you are a good player and want to learn you can become a great player. Players that just come in to raid, dont try and optimise their gear, their dps, their positioning, are not worth it in my book. I have about 16 great players, I will not get them ever again to put up with players that are not interested in improving. Our officer decided that for our sanity it was better to raid efficiently with less than 20 that carry 5-6 people that could not be bothered.

We are unlikely going to go back to mythic raiding soon. We finished both last two xpac as 2nd guild on our server in progress, raiding 3 nights, as efficiently as possible. We are not interested in lowering our standard to take on people that are not carrying their weight. Even if that costs us mythic raiding.

[Kazuchika]

I do fear the response that Cuppy made about their case of a player going ballistic being repeated with some of our case(s) as well.

If they can't handle criticism they're not an asset to the raid and you're better off without them.

[DeadmanWalking]

You can reform players who don't perform, unless you suck at interacting with other human beings.