Taking in a raider from a much higher guild - seems to me to be a huge no-no

[Astynax]

Are you sure about that? I often say that your best heroic raider could be your worst mythic raider, and it can work the other way. The person you didn't think was that good may actually have been very good and sacrificing personal percentiles to get jobs done that others weren't and ensuring that mechanics were dealt with when others were ignoring them.

Depends on how you were measuring how good they were in your raid.

This is so very true. You cant just simply look at DPS meters and rankings to determine who is good or not. There's many in our runs who pull high numbers but many know that it's because all they do is pad or tunnel. Kilrogg if you ignore adds and just straight tunnel boss and cleave hulk you save a ton of time from having to swap to bloods or berserkers and we have 1 who literally has next to no add damage done yet top meters for non visions DPS. Boss still dies now so no one says much.

Same with Iskar, can totally wreck your rankings to down the resonance, or be a epeen padder and just AoE everything when adds come out with a high risk of the resonance getting his cast off but have high DPS.

They could be carrying your group in mechanics and you wouldnt even know it when you do another role if all you look at is meters.

This was much more important during progression when thresholds were very tight, like having to kill gurtogg before 3 stacks you could straight ST to help pass that DPS check, or be a shit padder and just cleave everything for meters. Tyrant Phase 2 too, burn her to phase and or pad for meters. Top guilds likely will look at these things and would rather have someone who does all the mechanics properly with good damage than those who just straight pad

[Cheze]

the only concern would be his expectations; like, is this a guy that's gonna get super frustrated with repeated casual-ish mistakes on fights like xhul? Or is that the kind of low intensity environment he's looking for as the expansion winds down?

if his attitude seems decent it's probably fine

[Airlick]

Depends on the attitude of the raider in question. I have raided with people that were much further down the progression line than I was. Had a few that stayed for a very long while in my guild and we never had problems with them - they knew what to expect from a guild like ours, they didn't expect to clear raids in one day and be free to run circles in a city for the rest of the week.

Then I also had issues with "hardcore" raiders that would join our guild runs (I was on a small server back when it happened, it was a couple of instances, anyway, we had serious roster issues so we sometimes needed to find replacements) and leave after a few wipes.

But there is no inherent problem in recruiting players that are much "better" than your guild. If they are understanding, they will get along fine and you will have a good source of knowledge and a person that can reliably get you through important mechanics. It's a potential win-win situation.

[IxilaFA]

Are you sure about that? I often say that your best heroic raider could be your worst mythic raider, and it can work the other way. The person you didn't think was that good may actually have been very good and sacrificing personal percentiles to get jobs done that others weren't and ensuring that mechanics were dealt with when others were ignoring them.

Depends on how you were measuring how good they were in your raid.

I've done enough evaluating of players to know that there's more to their abilities than how high they parse on fights. That wasn't the issue with the person in question.

[AgilityTank]

We were having roster issues, and since I have some friends in a higher-up guild, I asked them to help us out so we could go mythic. The end result is that we now have 3 of that higher guild helping us out on alts (and sometimes a main, when they decide to take their alt on their main raid). The 'downside' is that they poached one of our best players.

Your definition of friend is rich

[Harekrsna]

I'm a guy who has been in a top 20 progression guild, and who simultaneously raided with casual / bad / less progressed guilds. I also eventually left a top end guild to raid lead one of the crappy ones I had been raid leading after progression because I liked the raid environment so much (we ended up turning it into a world 100 guild within about a tier and a half).

So here is what I would consider:

1. Its unlikely that he will be a pain to you guys since he knows hes joining a less progressed / weaker guild. More than likely he will be really respectful and quiet, and not very likely to give input about how to progress unless what you are currently doing is just flat out wrong and will never result in a kill. If he is smart he'll just whisper the raid leader and let him know that this is how his guild does it and it will work better or something, or if the guild likes his input he may just say it in mumble if everyone is comfortable with that. (You can also let him know ahead of time if you don't want him to be constantly second guessing rl over voice to just whisper you if something you are doing doesn't line up or whatever, that way you can save face with the guild while benefiting from having a better progressed player in the raid).

2. He is more than likely not going to stick around that long. Depending on how bored he is, how much he enjoys his alt, etc. Your best bet is that he'll stay through the end of the tier / for you to get Archi mythic. It is entirely possible though that he will get bored before then. There have been a few times I've stopped raiding with second groups because I grew bored either with the toon, or with the people I was raiding with - I've never left a group though unless real life got in the way if I was a big fan of the people I was raiding with (like these are people I really want to be around kind of thing - which I've only experienced in one guild in my entire wow career).


Personally I would never not take a better progressed player unless they seemed really flaky or just in the interview I felt like they were a dick (reasons I'd reject any recruit). I've accepted people from really high end guilds before while my guild was bad and they've raised the bar for the rest of the raiders and helped the guild improve dramatically. A specific example is that when I first quit the top end guild I was in and went to raid full-time with my casual group that was bad at the time, a death knight joined up who previously was in a top 10 guild. He joined us because of his job schedule changing (we raided weird hours) and because his other guild wouldn't let him play death knight dps (forced him to tank). He got world 1 parses on every fight throughout ToT and in the first half of the tier was more than doubling the next guys damage on our roster. His ability to outperform made the competitive players in our guild really step up and learn how to get their dps up and by the end of the tier we had 4-5 dps who were consistently ranking top 20 in their class/spec. So bringing a more skilled player into the guild helped other players reach for greatness.

Also this player at no point made fun of, ridiculed, or talked crap about anyone elses dps. We'd all joke about how we were going to beat him on this fight and how he'd better watch out (of course we never could at first) and it was a lot of fun.

So yeah. Take him on and trial him, the worst that can happen is it doesn't work out (just like any recruit).

- - - Updated - - -

I've done enough evaluating of players to know that there's more to their abilities than how high they parse on fights. That wasn't the issue with the person in question.

Personally I never understood the argument that they are doing bad dps because they are doing "jobs." You can still get a very competitive rank while doing the fight properly. You might not get gimmicky #1 ranks, but you'll be highly competitive and if good still beating 90% of the raiding dps while executing mechanics and properly target swapping. When I see someones dps drop going into Mythic it tells me they can't handle clicking their buttons and avoiding mechanics at the same time, or they don't know how to preempt mechanics.

[Kristya]

Be an adult and talk to the raider like an adult. Express your concerns and see what his take is on the whole thing. If he has an attitude like he's too good to follow the orders of a less experienced raid leader, or if he gives the impression that you should feel lucky to have him, then he's probably not going to be a good fit.

On the flip side, if his attitude is more of "it could be fun to raid in a less stressful environment for a while and I'm happy to help however I can" then maybe it could be for the best?

[IxilaFA]

Personally I never understood the argument that they are doing bad dps because they are doing "jobs." You can still get a very competitive rank while doing the fight properly. You might not get gimmicky #1 ranks, but you'll be highly competitive and if good still beating 90% of the raiding dps while executing mechanics and properly target swapping. When I see someones dps drop going into Mythic it tells me they can't handle clicking their buttons and avoiding mechanics at the same time, or they don't know how to preempt mechanics.

I'm willing to give people the benefit of the doubt for the first couple dozen attempts they do on a fight. It takes awhile to get into the flow of the fight to the point where you can do top DPS and still handle mechanics. But for the most part I agree. Going into Mythics shouldn't result in a DPS drop of more than several thousand, and if it does, you need to figure out how to do your rotation while doing mechanics.

Really when I'm analyzing whether someone is a good player I'm looking at several things. 1) Survivability, 2) Knowledge of their class (do they use their defensive and personal CDs? Are Mages Ice Blocking mechanics they can ignore, etc?), 3) Ability to handle difficult tasks that are assigned to them, and 4) Pure performance.

[Deleted]

"Just playing" in a top40 Guild doesnt mean he/she is a good player overall.
Every Guild has weak(er) players and some "bad" guilds have players that could easily raid top20-30 if they would have the time

Edit: Just take him in for a few raids,if hes bad decide whats best for the guild and dont take him,if hes a good player and for example just wants a second raid for an alt he won´t cause any trouble imo

[Deleted]

read between the lines

I thought so.

Infracted for spam - Wilderness

[Deleted]

Obviously I was never going to give an answer to the guy blindly without talking, but this thread was useful in canvassing opinions and getting some information from people on both sides of the spectrum.

We're on a christmas casual schedule now anyway which is mostly banging alts & mixed mains through bosses depending on who needs what but I've invited him along to see how he feels about it all. I still think it'll be a massive culture shock but I definitely went to painful lengths to reinforce we are little more than a casual guild facerolling our way through mythic.

[Vaerys]

This thread is great at exposing prejudices

[Youn]

I grab alts and help other peoples guild. Our only progression rule in our guild is we aren't allowed to help other guilds on the server get kills of the same level as we are currently working on. So, I can use an alt to help a heroic guild advance but cannot use a character to help a mythic guild advance.

And that pretty much is how you gear alts, 90% of the time.

[Count Zero]

I have known several people to step down in progress, and who did so successfully. I've also known some who tried to do so with the most earnest intentions but it wound up not being a good fit because they just couldn't adjust to the pace. And I've also known some who presented themselves as wanting a slower pace but in fact they wound up having been kicked from the higher-progress guild and are trying to re-establish their resume.

Whether it's worth the risk of disruption / drama, something you gotta weigh for yourselves.