Benching, loot systems and attendance

[Deleted]

We had a discussion in my guild yesterday. We are currently having some attendance issues, which meant that in the past week we couldn't go mythic because we would have had to pug too many people (6 yesterday). Instead we did other things, but it's just annoying, since we do have a 21 man roster. My solution was: recruit more, get a decent bench for if people can't make the raid or fuck up a lot etc, and if we do have more people online then spots in the raid, we rotate them.

I got told that situation was not viable for our group (3/10M could have been 4 or maybe 5 if we didn't have the attendance issues), because people who would be on the bench would simply not be online for that day and if anyone else then had to go or be unavailable at the last moment, we'd still be in trouble. According to them the only way to solve attendance when having a bench would be a DKP/EPGP loot system, to reward people for being on the bench. At the moment our loot system is simply rolling for loot MS>OS where we expect people to yield minor upgrade winning rolls if it's a major upgrade for someone else. That system works fine for us at the moment. I really dislike points for loot systems, so I would really prefer not to go that way.

We are not hardcore, and have no attendency requirement (although not being there regularly does get you a talk and not being there ever does get you demoted) but we would like to progress further and it's not going to happen like this.

So how do other guilds do this? Do you have a bench to ensure raids get to go on despite absences? And how do you keep benched people motivated to show up, even though they know in advance they will be benched? Benching per evening or boss? EPGP/DKP point bonuses? Loot council?

[Deleted]

We have a bench for people that are not needed for boss X. During farm bench is for people that don't need loot from boss X.

[Deleted]

We currently have a 24man roster of people who seemingly never have anything better to do so we sit them out if and when it's necessary, everyone is eager to raid and progress (working on mythic BH atm) so we don't have them issues, we use a loot council/best upgrade style system. Works well for us but it sounds like you have far less dedicated people.
'

[Herecius]

Benches on farm content are for people that either don't need loot from a boss or just want to chill and don't feel like killing shit at the moment.

Benches on progression are for the people who are not the composition and individuals as determined by the raid leader as being needed to get the first kill on a boss, but may end up coming in if somebody currently in the fight is fucking up or unavailable on subsequent days.

Having a 24/5 person roster for 20-man raiding works fairly well for the most part, but the raid leader must see to it that people are rotated in fairly and properly so they can get in on bosses they need loot or kills on.

[Trallnar]

We have about a 27 man roster of active raiders (though 3 seem to have decided to break till next tier) for mythic raiding and we are 8/10. We have attendance issues on our third night, sunday, due to people avoiding wiping and having real life conflicts, but we always have enough eveN if we have an unideal situation with an off spec healer or such. On farm content we switch people in and out on almost every fight as gear and players are needed for success.

The key to mythic raiding is a healthy bench. Benched people need to know logging on is worth it, and main raiders sometimes need to sit if not required for guild duccess. If you treat 20 people as core and 5 as bench, the bench falls behind on gear and has no motivation to log on, so your 3 hungover raiders that skip a day can't be replaced.

[Wilderness]

You really have to have a bench, or you are going to continuously run into problems getting enough people. 21 people means that you need 20 of them every raid night to do Mythic – not even taking into account classes, roles, or skill, that’s just a fine line that is too easily going to get you less than 20 people. People get sick, have to travel for work, have exams, go on vacation, or run into other issues that will prevent them from making raids at times. It shouldn’t be too often (depending on the seriousness of your guild) but having such a small roster isn’t going to work out well in the long run. As you are finding, you will often have 2+ people who can’t make it, and then you just can’t raid. If you want to work on Mythic progression regularly, you should have a roster of at least 25 people or so. If you just want to do some Mythic every now and then after you’ve cleared Heroic if you have enough people that’s fine, but you’ll need more if you want to raid Mythic on a regular schedule.

That does create more work for the guild leadership – they have to balance who sits out and when (for farm) as well as decide who should be in on progression. And sitting for progression isn’t easy, and if your guild has never really had to do that, its going to be a change that will be hard on some people. It has to be handled carefully and even then you still may alienate or upset people. But that’s the only way that your guild will get past attendance problems and be able to work on Mythic.

To me it sounds like some of the requirements to be a Mythic guild are not the same as your guild’s approach. There’s nothing wrong with having relaxed attendance requirements, not sitting people, etc, but that doesn’t generally work very well for progressing further into Mythic. Changing the mentality and approach of a guild from more relaxed or casual to more focused is not an easy process because its going to involve upsetting and probably losing some people along the way. Before going down that path your leadership needs to know that is what they want to do. If that’s not something they want to do – and to be honest it doesn’t sound like your guild leadership wants that responsibility or to take that path – then you will have to decide what you personally would like to get out of a guild/raiding. If you want to take it more seriously and work on Mythic, you’ll probably need to find another guild. If you like your guild, your friends there, and Mythic progress isn’t that important to you, then you’ll need to know that the relaxed attitude and approach isn’t going to change so that means you will have nights where you can’t do Mythic at all.

[Deleted]

We are not hardcore, and have no attendency requirement (although not being there regularly does get you a talk and not being there ever does get you demoted) but we would like to progress further and it's not going to happen like this.

It's not hardcore to have an attendance requirement, it's standard for Mythic raiding. It used to be standard for all raiding, from the bottom up. The reason flex came in was specifically so that guilds who had no such policy could just take what they had online on a particular night without having to bench an excess or cancel because of too few numbers. However, the top end of raiding will always have these requirements so your guild basically has to discuss what sort of guild it is. If it's a Mythic guild then it needs attendance requirements and if someone will go offline rather than be benched then they need demoting and replacing with players who want to raid Mythic. If too many players in your guild don't like that then the guild isn't a Mythic guild and the Mythic minded players will need to move elsewhere.

[Deleted]

"At the moment our loot system is simply rolling for loot MS>OS where we expect people to yield minor upgrade winning rolls if it's a major upgrade for someone else"

The bolded part is where part of the problem is. I hope i can express myself right with the following lines I'm gonna type.
So first you are right you will need to have a somewhat healthy bench, but also you will need to have atleast 3 people with somewhat healthy offspecs like tank or healer. There is always enough dps.
Second - for that ( the bench and the offspecs) to work you will need to change the loot system. No really. You have to change it. I will explain why. I myself dont consider me or my guild hardcore or anything, but over 3 years (well since I am in that guild) we went from 1-2 heroic bosses back in MoguShan, HoF and ToeS, into one of the top 10 guilds in the realm considering that is The Maelstrom with Paragorn and Scrubbusters.
Our loot system evolved from simple roll as you described it to EPGP to DKP to Loot council today and i must say Loot Council, done right, is the best way to build a healthy mythic raiding guild. Yes you will have a lot of loot whoring, drama etc, but if done right it can build a very strong and balanced core and bench, and even offspec group.
That is ofcourse if you really wanna progress steady into the raids. At the moment my guild also have a lot of members missing, but due good loot distributing we always have a suitable replacement and havent PuGed anybody so far for mythic raid.

[Deleted]

We tend to always have healers and tanks (admittedly we had a steady pug tank for the 3-tank fights who now joined the guild), but tend to be lacking in dps. All our mythic kills have been with pugs in the group. I guess there is a good point in what you're saying, there needs to be a decision about what kind of guild we want to be. If we're not getting a healthy bench, especially with the current attitude of no real attendence requirements, then this is what it's going to be I guess, with nights of not being able to go Mythic because of not enough people.

[Notdev]

Farm is easy, just take people who need loot or the kill, sit people who don't. There usually are plenty of people that volunteer to sit.

For progression? Start out doing a rotation. Don't ever schedule a benching or tell someone that they won't be needed. Rotate people in the first night every 45minutes to an hour or so until the night is over or you get in kill range, whichever comes first. Then put the best comp in (class, skill, reliability, performance wise) and pull until its dead. If people who are in are consistently messing up sit them for someone on the bench.

[Shamburger]

Farm is easy, just take people who need loot or the kill, sit people who don't. There usually are plenty of people that volunteer to sit.

For progression? Start out doing a rotation. Don't ever schedule a benching or tell someone that they won't be needed. Rotate people in the first night every 45minutes to an hour or so until the night is over or you get in kill range, whichever comes first. Then put the best comp in (class, skill, reliability, performance wise) and pull until its dead. If people who are in are consistently messing up sit them for someone on the bench.

This is pointless, especially for "progression". How can you validate wasting half the night on people that are not the best comp for killing the boss?

[BergErr]

Start logging attendence and ofc ppl on bench have to still be around. Even if they know 1day ahead that they wont get spot. Problems always occur.
Players on the bench should be watching streams from other raiders so they are up to date with tactics.
Bad attendence = byebye.

[Tokanowa]

have the points from epgp or dkp used on non gear items like mounts and for gear keep doing what u are or loot council it

[Notdev]

This is pointless, especially for "progression". How can you validate wasting half the night on people that are not the best comp for killing the boss?

It doesn't waste much time at all, since the first few several pulls are usually spent working out ability timings, cooldowns, and other things that aren't as obvious from just watching videos. Also, as a side effect, we can give people a chance to see how they handle the mechanics and their performance before we bench them, so they can't say we didn't at least give them a shot.

We're doing alright at 8/10M with a 7 hour/week schedule using this strategy, and we have fairly low turnover. I think we've lost exactly one player to another guild due to getting fed up over being sat, and he was legitimately one of our worst performers.

[Nzete]

We run EPGP with EP for bench. We also have a second raid team that does heroic progression and the 'bench' gets to raid with them that evening, so they don't have to just sit in their garrison. We have different GP for main spec, main spec minor upgrade (not warforged to warforged or +socket or same ilevel better stats), off spec (given to the most raid useful off spec and for no points... needs to be raid useful here... and concentrated on making sure that the first backup has a full set rather than first, second, and third all have some), transmog (after we have enough shards). And any dropped legendary are master looter and not by EPGP (the right to revert to loot council for a compelling raid progression reason is reserved but has not been used in my memory ... so at least since mid ICC).

We are currently 3/10M. We tend to get ~30% to ~80% of the bosses at current content on mythic (in current nomenclature) depending on which raid tier it is and how long it is out. (We tend to do worse in the first content tier. Obviously better if the tier is out forever.)

[mauserr]

The only people I think don't mind being on bench duty are the ones with no self respect. What's the fun in that? Being always the second or third choice, must feel like shit. I'd rather raid in a guild with less progress than raid only when someone's absent.

[Shamburger]

The only people I think don't mind being on bench duty are the ones with no self respect. What's the fun in that? Being always the second or third choice, must feel like shit. I'd rather raid in a guild with less progress than raid only when someone's absent.

I play a WW main, I knew there was 0 chance of me being on our first mythic BH kill as I bring literally nothing worthwhile to the raid. I sat so they could bring in a better class and they got the kill, got mine 2 weeks later. You're saying I have no self respect because I offered to sit (It looks better then being asked imo)

[BergErr]

The only people I think don't mind being on bench duty are the ones with no self respect. What's the fun in that? Being always the second or third choice, must feel like shit. I'd rather raid in a guild with less progress than raid only when someone's absent.

Even officers, gm, raidleader will go on the bench sometimes. Iv never seen guilds with raidmembers that are permanent on the bench. Over recruiting is a fact and perfect attendance is rare. My guild got 4ppl that have perfect attendance in BRF.
Many even request it because farm is boring.
For specific progress bosses u might be stuck on bench though, like if u play melee and have reached blackhand mythic. Thats Blizzards fault though.

[Clrg]

The only people I think don't mind being on bench duty are the ones with no self respect. What's the fun in that? Being always the second or third choice, must feel like shit. I'd rather raid in a guild with less progress than raid only when someone's absent.

This is just selfish, if you are in a guild doing mythic progression the most important for you should be your raid progress, even if this mean rerolling or sit in a boss because other class are needed, keeping a bench isnt an easy task, if you do it wrong people will leave.

[apinksquash]

We have a 25 man roster. On farm, I rotate people in and out based on who needs gear off the boss. For progression I rotate people in and out every few pulls so everyone gets to learn the fight and has a chance to kill it (while still keeping the team comp viable).

Note: With a larger roster you will still need to emphasis the need for people to give notice of absence. Sometimes people will think "oh we have several backups, I can just skip today." Which you will have a bunch of people do on the same day (speaking from experience here lol).