[Guild]2 Raider ranks: Will it work?

[Thundertom]

We're a casual 10 man raiding guild.

We have now cleared all normal content with pretty much all our raiders.

So, we're on to heroics. However the question arises; Will our raiders be up for it?

I took us a long time to get to Ragnaros, and it sometimes comes down to a few raiders not playing as good as the others. That sometimes slowed us down. We try to help these people, and they improve somewhat, but they're still behind on the rest.

However we still managed, even with the "weaker" raider in a team.

Now we're facing heroics, and I fear some of our raiders can't deal with the almost perfect playstyle heroic raiding requires.

So some of our raiding officers want to form a "strong" team for heroics, some of the weaker raiders will be left out, or will be put in a normal/alt team. I'm not sure how they will take this. These are people that made the guild what it is. We've always been a helpful and social guild.

I'm not sure how to handle this.
- Should we add an extra raider rank, with strict limitations for the stronger team?
- Mixed teams, with stronger players making up for weaker ones? (This might not work at all?)
- ??

Any other suggestions?

[gynshon]

Your leadership team needs to sit down together and work out the goals for your guild. Once those are established, a guild meeting is called to inform the members the direction you are going. If progression is the path, then be gentle when informing the lesser skilled players that raid spots are limited to highly skilled players because that is what the content demands. Inform them you will be forming a 2nd raid team and they are welcome to be part of it and recruit for that raid team.

One or two players might be a little hurt in the ego, but if they care for the guild, they will brush it aside for the betterment of the guild.

[Thorror]

It all depends on what you are looking to accomplish in your guild.

1. If you want to move quicker through content, including heroic content, then you will need a better group of raiders than carrying keyboard turning droolers through the fights

2. As you say, they are what makes the guild the guild that it is and being a helpful and social guild. If that's your goal then you can just keep the groups the same as they currently are, and keep doing normal modes and maybe just a little work on the heroics.

3. if you do suddenly "kick" people out of the raid team they are used to, there is bound to be hurt feelings i'm sure so it's up to you if you want to deal with that to help the progression of the guild

just my 3 cents

[Arrowstormen]

Making two raider ranks will lead to the same thing we have in Harry Potter with the Death Eater scene in number 7 book, where the people Voldemort likes the most is closest to him on the table. Two raiding ranks will make some seem better than others, and while people understand that some people take on the hard work as officers and Guild Master, making two ranks would just really split up the guild, and make rank 1 raiders feel bad. I know that if I got put in as rank 1 raider, I would feel terrible, even if it's true (which it probably is).

[dewiniaid]

Posting from my phone, so if this is all on one line I apologize. Mmo likes to eat my linebreaks.

Two raider ranks is asking for a lot of drama. It creates an attitude of superiority (Hey we are better than the B team) as well as putting people on the defensive (What do you mean I'm not good enough?) It may still work for you, however, depending on the general personality types of your guild.

Good luck, regardless of what you decide. The step towards harder-core raiding is a tough one for any guild, especially when some of your raiders want more and others are happy where you are.

[Deleted]

Well, you could have been much faster by kicking the bad players out in normal-mode progress.
Since time wasn't important, you left them in, so why kicking them now?
Maybe you could kick their asses so they improve?

Its also quite lazy from you, to ask some people on a forum...
Make up your mind, fast progress with new people or slow progress with funny people you know well.
Make a decision on your own, you are a leader, you have to do decisions on your own.

[Kaeliri]

My guild is facing a similar situation. We've taken to solving it by doing run through strats before pulls to make sure our "problem/weaker players" pay attention and know whats going on. We also have 1 player that runs with the failbot mod turned on. That way its clearly seen who's making mistakes to what without the person feeling as though they're being singled out. If after 2-3 attempts said person is still making the same mistakes we'll call them out and ask what issues it is they're having, then tell them they'll need to either fix it or be replaced. Can't hold up an entire raids progression because of 1 person.

My $0.02, have a meeting with the players that are what you consider holding the group back. Instead of kicking them make a list of the things that you would like to see improvements on. Tell them that if they aren't able to keep up with the rest of the group that you'll have to replace them.

[rhoark]

Don't make a new raid for bads. Make a new raid for pros. That way no one feels they've been kicked out of something. Also, don't talk about it in terms of rank, just a roster for raid A and a roster for raid 1.

[Kurzior]

Your leadership team needs to sit down together and work out the goals for your guild. Once those are established, a guild meeting is called to inform the members the direction you are going. If progression is the path, then be gentle when informing the lesser skilled players that raid spots are limited to highly skilled players because that is what the content demands. Inform them you will be forming a 2nd raid team and they are welcome to be part of it and recruit for that raid team.

One or two players might be a little hurt in the ego, but if they care for the guild, they will brush it aside for the betterment of the guild.

This exactly. It depends on the social structure of your guild (mostly real-life friends?, or just in game but know each other well, etc.) but ultimately, the decision should be based on where you want to go. If you end up going into heroic progression with a player who is less skilled than his possible replacement, everyone is going to be frustrated when you don't kill then boss because of him. Ultimately, its probably better this theoretical player gets his feelings hurt a little than for everyone in the guild (silently or otherwise) blaming him for a lack of progression.

If you don't really care about how far you progress, and everyone accepts that, don't worry about it. Get the kills you can and be happy with that. Just be sure you don't have a group of people who really want to do serious progression being held back by less serious guildmates. Either short term, or down the road, this won't lead to anything good. The better players might leave for a more serious guild or they might all stay and you just have to deal with a lot of bad blood in guild.

Assuming you want to try for real progression, my best suggestion is to make sure everyone is aware of this decision. Make sure a sizeable portion of your guild agrees with this decision so it doesn't just seem like a one-man decision. Put together what you want for a primary raid team, but don't assign a higher rank to these players. Then make sure that the players not in this group still have things they can do, whether its slower heroic progression, normal mode raids, maybe even heroic T11 content if that's what interests them.

Bottom line, make sure everyone can feel like they're still involved in guild activity.

[Wilderness]

Switching to 2 ranks and 2 teams (one with the "good" players and one without) is absolutely going to cause drama, hurt feelings, and very likely gquits. What you are thinking of doing is changing the focus of your guild from a more relaxed, friendly, casual raiding guild to one more focused on raiding and progression than just having fun.

There is nothing wrong with that, and if you have a core group of raiders who want to go down that road than they will inevitably leave for more serious raiding guild if you don't. However, you will need to be ready to deal with the fact that people will get upset, they will be bothered by not being included, and that you will lose some people from your guild. It will be a hard transition on your leadership, and if you do want to take that path I suggest that you all (leadership) talk everything through well in advance, plan it out as best as you can, and be ready to respectfully deal with people who are not happy.

[Thetruth1400]

My guild is facing a similar situation. We've taken to solving it by doing run through strats before pulls to make sure our "problem/weaker players" pay attention and know whats going on. We also have 1 player that runs with the failbot mod turned on. That way its clearly seen who's making mistakes to what without the person feeling as though they're being singled out. If after 2-3 attempts said person is still making the same mistakes we'll call them out and ask what issues it is they're having, then tell them they'll need to either fix it or be replaced. Can't hold up an entire raids progression because of 1 person.

My $0.02, have a meeting with the players that are what you consider holding the group back. Instead of kicking them make a list of the things that you would like to see improvements on. Tell them that if they aren't able to keep up with the rest of the group that you'll have to replace them.

I think this sounds like a good idea. Run with the mod, then after repeated problems just whisper the person and say something nice like, "Hey, I see you're having trouble with this every time. Is there something I can do to help?" If they get defensive and don't improve, maybe it's for the betterment of the guild that they leave.

Two ranks is going to cause a lot of problems. No matter what you name them, the people are going to realize that group A is better then group B eventually and feelings will be hurt. If you want to progress further though, chances are, some feelings are going to be hurt.

Maybe try something as simple as "Sign up here if you want to do heroics, or sign here if you're content on normal modes." Maybe the players that are struggling in normals wouldn't even be interested in heroics due to the problems they're having in Normals. Just a thought, but it could work out.

[Thundertom]

Thanks for all the replies.

Well, we've always been a raiding guild (2 years anniversary soon).

We have progression in mind, but usually this didn't come at the expence of our social side.

For us, Firelands came just in time, as we had cleared BOT and BWD TOTFW 2 weeks before it. We had a discussion about direction before, but since Firelands hit just in time, the progression oriented people had a new bone to chew. The discussion was abandoned.

It seems as if Firelands is here for a while still, and we can clear it on normal in 1 evening, leaving our other 2 raiding nights empty, or attempting heroic BoT/BWD heroics.

I think we have a touch cookie to crack (if that is even an expression).

[Volitans]

We have "Raider" rank, and "Raid ready" someone with the rank of "Raider" can pretty much be expected to be part of every raid (comp dependant) based on attendance, performance, and gear. These are a couple of the top-dps, tanks, and healers. The "raid ready" ranked people are used to fill in empty slots.

That way you can optimize/maximize for progression. Keep the remaining raid-ready people on reserve, and bring them in for farm content, or to replace someone that is failing. This works for us because we use epgp, so people on the bench get equal credit as people in the raid. Just my $0.02

[Agallochh]

Two different groups is a terrible idea. We tried it simply for our 25m to do 10m raids during ICC. The 'A' group was composed of the ten top players. They went and downed LK with just 15% buff. On nights where one of the best 'A' groups players wasn't in attendance, they'd poach the 'B' group members for the week, leaving 'B' group to pug, and most often they just didn't complete the run.

Drama ensued, B members being upset that A members got the better treatment. Pretty soon our 25m roster fell to shit, and finally the guild pretty much disbanded.

Not saying that's how it always is, but its my personal anecdote.

[Buf]

My guild has a 5 tier system. Meaning we raid with 5 different ranks

Intiate - for those who just joined the guild and are still on trial

Member - for those who we accept into the guild and just don't have enough experience in the guild

Raider - for those who have shown exceptional promise and generally don't stand in shit

Core Raider - For those who are amazing raiders, top the meters, and don't stand in shit

Officer - all the same as Core with Guild responsibilitys.

We base our loot off our rank in the guild so it is important to do your best. We usually base raid comp by who the first 10 on are. and fight difficulty.

[seijo]

Sounds like you just need to make up your mind what type of raiding guild you really are.

You say you're a casual raiding guild, but you're sounding like you're wanting to take the guild towards a hardcore raiding direction. Most casual guilds I know are happy just clearing current content on normal. You may also want to poll whether or not your raiders feel the same way. Believe it or not, I enjoy most of the people I raid with and a few of them make some pretty stupid mistakes sometimes. Your raiders may not be on the same level as you are in terms of a hardcore stance of excluding some not so great players.

But to answer your question, your idea is just asking for drama. Not a good plan.

[Deleted]

Since this is about swapping from casual to raiding, not just ranks.

Put it on discussion, recruit more "hardcore" and get an alt or social run in for the rest that will likely still clear 7/7.

[Sly]

My view on this is that drama is inevitable. If you've got two groups of players on fairly distinct different skill levels, one group will always be unhappy. Either you keep one group and the better players are going to be annoyed with slow progression due to carrying people who like to stand in fire or you make two groups and the worse players are going to feel excluded. That being said, your good players are going to have an easy time finding another guild (since they're good) so I'd be more worried about losing them than the bad ones. If your guild members are decently mature they'll understand.

[PHsname]

My guild has like three raider ranks, lol. There are the officers, then the veteran raiders who've been with us for a long time, and the normal raider rank, which is just the other people.

We're a weird guild that formed under weird circumstances, though.

[lglkle]

In wotlk my guild couldn't field a full 25 man so we would break up to 2 ten man raids. Always mixed it up with good players and weaker players (to give both groups a good chance to complete the raid). It was massive failure. Neither group would get to LK heroic mode because they would put the really good tanks with bad dps and the really good healers with bad tanks and good dps. Each week we'd lose a really good player who was tired of getting stuck with bad players. Now we have a guild that doesn't raid because it's just a few loyal good players and 8 bad players.

I strongly urge you to man up and just form one strong group. Then once you have the content on farm bring in the weaker players.