How oftern do you bench players.

[Broccoliz]

Just to throw out another opinion, since it was mentioned "benching" people could upset people and lead to them leaving; NOT having consequences (like being benched) for your weakest links is a great way to lose your top players who are tired of the extra weight on their shoulders. Making the best decision for the team's progression is your job as RL - you can still get the benched players the kill next week, and be kind/compassionate about it, AND offer them help to improve. It's a team effort, and sometimes that means taking one for the team and sitting out when you are the reason for failure. If you aren't willing to do that or understand that, you aren't a team player anyway and shouldn't be there to begin with.

[Pua]

Just to throw out another opinion, since it was mentioned "benching" people could upset people and lead to them leaving; NOT having consequences (like being benched) for your weakest links is a great way to lose your top players who are tired of the extra weight on their shoulders.

That's definitely worth bearing in mind.

[Ahovv]

That's because it may not be a guild that wants to do something as "hardcore" as that. Just because you don't understand the situation, doesn't mean it's not relevant to your argument - all that means is you simply have your head in the clouds and are unable to empathize the needs and wants of others.

#elitistmentality

I empathize with the raiders who respect others' time by showing up and performing well. Those who disrespect everyone's time by not caring enough to solve mechanics do not deserve some additional layer of empathy to keep them in the raid.

Also, this constant tossing around of the word "elitist" does nothing for you. If "elitist" means taking the necessary steps to kill a boss, then please, continue calling me an elitist.

If you can get a full raid of 20 people who don't care how much others are failing mechanics, even if it's every single pull, then congratulations. The guild won't kill anything, but you're free to have that guild.

Get a guild with 10 people who care and 10 who don't care, guess what happens? The people who care will get sick of carrying those who don't care.

Guild A will die because they aren't killing bosses. Guild B will die because the blatant differences between mindsets will split people away unless the guild evolves to start caring.

[Sierra85]

Can you expand on this?

i don't schedule my time to sit outside a raid instance while the rest of my guild gets to play the game i want to play. i understand guilds need to, but i don't want to be a part of a team where i have to sit outside and waste my precious time.

[Ahovv]

i don't schedule my time to sit outside a raid instance while the rest of my guild gets to play the game i want to play. i understand guilds need to, but i don't want to be a part of a team where i have to sit outside and waste my precious time.

Oh, that's easy then. Just find one of the countless guilds without standards. Tons exist.

[Deleted]

If you can get a full raid of 20 people who don't care how much others are failing mechanics, even if it's every single pull, then congratulations. The guild won't kill anything, but you're free to have that guild.

Get a guild with 10 people who care and 10 who don't care, guess what happens? The people who care will get sick of carrying those who don't care.

You do realise that this whole thread is discussing heroic and not mythic raiding?

When there isn't a concern of maintaining a 20+ man roster, it's fine for some players to be weaker links. In the current setting, those weaker links still provide a benefit even for the best players and the group as a whole (by virtue of extra loot and more flexible roster scaling).

Yes, that might make them "a guild without standards" by your definition, however, that is not theirs. As someone above mentioned, while your viewpoint is understandable and valid, it does not apply to the vast majority of people that play this game for something either than mythic raiding.

[Ahovv]

You do realise that this whole thread is discussing heroic and not mythic raiding?

When there isn't a concern of maintaining a 20+ man roster, it's fine for some players to be weaker links. In the current setting, those weaker links still provide a benefit even for the best players and the group as a whole (by virtue of extra loot and more flexible roster scaling).

Yes, that might make them "a guild without standards" by your definition, however, that is not theirs. As someone above mentioned, while your viewpoint is understandable and valid, it does not apply to the vast majority of people that play this game for something either than mythic raiding.

The difficulty is irrelevant. I don't understand why you think it is relevant. The original poster is getting stuck on bosses; it doesn't matter if it's Heroic or Mythic, or even Normal. If bad players are causing those wipes, they should bench them and see what happens. This is a good idea for any guild.

[Tharkkun]

Honestly we need more data than they are performing poorly before you want to bench someone. Was it 1 night? How many wipes? 10? 50? Do they fail mechanics less as the raid learns? Is someone else failing a mechanic which causes them to die due to previous mechanic? For example, someone splashed an orb by moving on top of you on Iron Reaver. Then pound killed you. Those questions have to be answered before you just bench someone. Not everyone learns as fast as the player next to you. If they did, the entire population of WoW would be in Mythic.

[Kokolums]

The trick to recruiting is not to recruit based on dps, heals, gear, or achievements. Recruit based on if they never AFK and how fast they run back from wipes. WoW is easy. 99% of this game is "can your computer and internet connection handle it" and the last 1% is effort. If they are giving an effort and not lagging out, just keep them. If 2 people are going AFK after every wipe because of x y, and z, you've recruited wrong from the start.

[Deleted]

Sometimes you just have to bench. If a player is obviously holding back the guild they do not have problems with it in most cases. The bottom line is you need to find a raid team that suits you. Similar dedication and preparation are the best ways to make a raid team function. If there are huge skill differences better players might leave but if you bench the weak links all the time they might quit as well. A healthy mythic guild will always have a team of 25+ ppl so that they can swap ppl in and out for bosses and have some slack when ppl cant make it.

I sometimes raid with a guild on an alt that are easily chilling for 10 minutes between pulls. I get annoyed but they are totally fine with it, but I know that will never realy work for me.

[Sixnalia]

I'm currently in a heroic group on my alt that was progressing up to Archi a few months back. They're family friendly and such.
Our biggest issue was purely Archimonde and Xhul, due to 3 people consistently failing mechanics or they were so caught up focusing only on mechanics they didn't do much damage.
We dealt with this by:
-Stating the expectations for the raid
-Creating a minimum performance level
-Telling members that repeated under performance would lead to benching(only on those specific bosses)

Those 3 members had very different reactions.
One of them left the guild, angry and bitter that we benched them when we saw no improvement over 10 wipes.
One asked for help in how to improve, which ultimately led to them performing much better and letting him get off the bench.
The final member just stayed benched for those fights for a few weeks. The raid team outgeared content enough to ignore some key mechanics, leading to him getting off the bench as he slowly geared up off non-bench bosses.

It worked, but expect various ways benched members will react. Try to approach it responsibly so raiders feel less threatened and see it instead as a dilemma for the whole raid, not the individual.

[Count Zero]

Bottom line is you need to know your guild identity. It usually helps to have a strong sense of that - which is made pretty clear to everyone. Otherwise, you might find yourself in a situation like right now where you're considering fundamentally altering how your guild operates ... while there are people who have been working on the previous mindset for who knows how long. Creating a bench where there hadn't been one before could have much bigger ramifications than are possible to anticipate.

Whether you switch your practices or not, use this as an opportunity to communicate with your team. You might find more people than you'd expect are fine with how things are - or you might find the lower performers will offer to take the bench until they can improve. But there are probably people who are frustrated, who haven't said anything and are just looking for other guilds quietly. You don't want them to feel like you're oblivious to their frustrations. But also if you just announce a shift out of nowhere, well, maybe there are some higher performers who wouldn't agree with that policy and would leave. Or maybe only the lower performers would start to leave, and suddenly there's a night when you would have needed to draw on them just to be able to literally raid at all ...

Any number of scenarios. A lot of the bad possibilities can at least be mitigated by communication, if not completely prevented.

[Dragon Claws]

I've only ever been benched for Tyrant.

Tyrant is practically the only fight I just cannot do at all. I had issues with her in Heroic, and on Mythic within our first 10 pulls I requested to be benched.