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  1. #21
    As just a raider in what I feel is a very casual guild. The application process is something that goes unlooked by alot of people in a casual setting. I know I for one will always admit I am not an expert in any class other than my own but one of the big things i do look at is their UI.

    I'm almost positive we've all raided with that 1 person who habitually makes the same mistake, and you sit there and wonder, "What are they looking at?" For example, I feel alot of people have a tendency to play with DBM straight out of the box. They don't take the time to configure their bars and warnings, so there's just a bell and whistle going off every few seconds and it gets to the point where it becomes white noise. I know DPS have a tendency to make their recount 1/3 of the screen for whatever reason. I never understood that. DPS also have a tendency to clutter the middle of their screen with superfluous scrolling text. Healers do that do that as well, especially the ones who don't use an combat text addon so they see their hots popping up everywhere. Again, I don't think what I'm saying is necessarily canon but I think it helps.

    Another aspect from the level raiding that I'm at is their rotation and to an extent logs. If they have seasoned logs from an established guild I think that''s more or less the end all. You can see their "good" nights and "bad" nights. We've all had our off nights from time to time and to judge someone based off of one night i don't think is necessarily fair. That being said, looking at their uptimes and overall activity can definitely clue you in on what he or she is doing. Speaking from personal experience the guild for example, recently received an in-house app from a "non-raider". This person did not have logs but i feel a comprehensive breakdown of their rotation I think would've sufficed. I'm not just talking about "Hitting A then Hitting B Then Hitting C", I'm referring to a rotation in terms of variables and what you would do in specific situations along with your basic rotation.

    What I think is the deal-breaker is their reaction to the criticism. I think guilds especially 25mans who are perpetually recruiting but are always looking for that, "healing monk, or that awesome resto shammy, or even that really good fire mage", something very class specific. What I've seen some guilds do is get really excited and almost bypass the entire app process just b/c X class happens to be on the app forums. Letting an app ripen on the forums I think is a good thing but letting an app rot on the forums is not. Finding that balance is hard though. To bring a close to my ramblings by the way it's not so much the app because there so much grey matter in terms of what each guild wants and looks for. I think what the overlapping underpinning is, exposure. Exposure to the rest of the guild via comments made, resident class advice. "Hi I'm the resident warlock, etc etc etc......" other constructive comments made, as much as the app process is made for the guild to get to know the applicant it's a two way street.
    Last edited by Armwack; 2012-11-20 at 03:26 PM.

  2. #22
    We ask several questions in our guild app, including whether the applicant has read and agrees with our charter. We also have an 'anything you want to add' question. If someone applies to the guild and puts one-word answers in any of those fields, they're not getting in to the guild. We want people who want to be part of our group and are willing to put in more than the minimum effort.

    We don't recruit outside the guild for raiders. Our raiders run weekly LFRs and pvp boss kills with people in the guild, and whenever we need an extra hand in a raid we have a list of people who have said they might be interested. We don't pug outside the guild. If that means we're bringing along someone undergeared, well, fine.

  3. #23
    * GM or Raid Leader?: Raidleader of a 25man, Healer Officer
    * Guild rank in current tier: 1/6hm MSV, 6/6 HoF, 2/4 ToES
    Main's name: Gybear
    Guild Name: Dark Asylum

    I look at the tone of the application. I am much more willing to give someone with little experience and poor gear a shot if the tone of their application shows eagerness to do their best on tough progression fights.

    Recently we had a very well geared and experienced person apply to the guild. We ask people to post world of logs entries if they have them. The person answered the question with "I already did LFR this week and don't feel like bashing my head to do it again, will post logs later". I denied that app on the spot. If that person had just said he didn't have any, I probably would have invited him to the guild based on his gear and current progression, but I don't want someone that so clearly isn't willing to go the extra mile.
    Last edited by gyver; 2012-11-20 at 07:59 PM.

  4. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by gyver View Post
    but I don't want someone that so clearly isn't willing to go the extra mile.
    ^^ this
    /10char

  5. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by gyver View Post
    I don't want someone that so clearly isn't willing to go the extra mile.
    Like Iand said, I agree with this statement fully. I've played this game since vanilla, have been GL, RL, ML, officer, MT, OT, Heals, DPS, and everything in between based off of what my guild at that time needed from me. My attitude is that I need to be as prepared as possible to make the burden as small as possible on the rest of the group, because I know the feeling of being in those other roles.

    As far as UI is concerned, I believe people are over-hyping it. If you can perform even though your screen looks like a 4-year-olds finger painting, more power to you. I've been using the default Blizz UI (Oh god I've tried several other layouts and mods, just didn't feel as comfortable) for forever, and I find it gives me all the info I need to know in places I'm comfortable with them being.

    Like others have said as well, attitude is the most important. I don't expect someone to treat raiding as a job, but you're sharing the time of 9/24 other people, please respect them enough to be as prepared as possible as you can. If you can't do that on a consistent basis, you're basically telling everyone else that your time is more important than theirs, and they need to cater to you... which is never true.

    Skill can be taught, but that requires knowledgeable officers and a raid group that is willing to take constructive criticism.

    You need to be crystal clear in your recruiting as well. Are you looking push progression as much as possible? Or are you looking for a good group of people just to hang out with during raid times and have some fun? Then you can more accurately cater your app evaluations from there. It takes a lot of things to make a successful raid group, but creating a clear mold certainly helps in tidying up the app process.
    I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

  6. #26
    2 important things:
    Logs - and that does not mean just healing/damage done but spell usage ratio, buff/debuff uptime, damage taken and so on.
    Personality - how they perform under pressure, how focused are they after 6 hours of wipes, how fast they adapt to new situations, thinking outside the box, reliability and social skills. I get that by talking to their past leaders or simply by trial.

    I care about experience in current tier if we need a person during progress so he does not slow us down, otherwise it's not really important. As for UI, unless it is something truly horrible i can't care less what they are using as long as they can do their job.

    We are 10/16HC if that matters.
    Last edited by mixerii; 2012-11-20 at 08:16 PM.

  7. #27
    * GM or Raid Leader?: Raidleader of a 25man, Healer Officer
    * Guild rank in current tier: 1/6hm MSV, 6/6 HoF, 2/4 ToES
    Main's name: Gybear
    Guild Name: Dark Asylum

    Another thing I would add is that when looking at logs DPS/HPS is a very minor thing for me. I look at damage taken, number of dispels, properly used defensives. The biggest problem we have in my guild, and the main reason we remove people from the main raiding group is when a person cares more about executing the proper rotation than not standing in fire.

  8. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by jfragment View Post
    So far I'm seeing that a good UI shows you, the evaluator, a lot more about a person's ability and experience. That being said, is this a good indicator of an important trait or is THIS the important trait? For example, the number one thing we look for above all else is personality. We believe skill can be taught. What is your req above all else, why?
    Sons of Ragnaros would like to have a word with you. :P

    Seriously, was it just the majority of players on Stormrage that fail miserably when it comes to killing their adds or what?

  9. #29
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    Former raid leader: I'd like to see that they have some personal character progression. Examples include:
    1) progress on getting reps up (further than just what you get from normal questing, don't have to be exalted),
    2) getting profs to the point where the perks are available,
    3) whether the character is gemmed/enchanted (this is a big one for me; if you can't be bothered to at least put on some beneficial enchant on gear because "you're going to replace it soon", then you're not helping the group by being as prepared as possible. Cheap gems/enchants are better than nothing.)
    4) and personality during the trial raids (if they follow directions, improve between attempts, attitude towards wiping)

  10. #30
    Deleted
    MT, Officer & Co-raidleader
    World rank : 1185 (been in a steady decline for a while now with some issues, should probably be seen as ~500)
    Spacebubble - Prot Paladin (armory in sig)

    I look for a few things, some are harder to make out from an application than others, but in no specific order:
    Motivation: it's the key to progress, if you lack the right motivation you won't put in enough effort to get the kills.
    Interest: the thing I hate the most are uninteresting applications, the ones with the cut and dry answers, usually short ones as well that leave much to be wanted. Tell me what it is that makes you special, why is it you in specific we would want.
    You don't have to be the most amazing player, we can work on that, you just need the will to want to become the best and work for it.

  11. #31
    Former Recruitment officer here

    When I looked over a application,

    Length, Detail / Depth, grammar & spelling, if people put in enough time to right a decent application, chances are their people who work on their character instead of a quick 2 minute app before they go to school

    Next is to look at gear, but more specific at gemming and enchant, to make sure it was right + putting effort in

    and then the additional section comments, and if we liked what we saw, then we'd poke for a ingame 10 min chat
    Desktop: Zotac 1080 TI, I7 7700k, 16gb Ram, 256gb SSD + 1TB HDD
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    Haters gonna hate

  12. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by jfragment View Post
    As an aside Zoom. Why did your guild go to hell? If you had a chance to redo everything, what could you have changed to reverse the guild's current state? - Thanks! J
    Well, we had a raidleader, then we didnt...
    And i just couldnt possibly find anybody that would want to take over
    About a year later, we finally got one, then he went AWOL too:/
    (He also had some weird opinions... like 45k dps as 460 ilvl was better than 50k dps as 455 ilvl.... because it was higher ilvl...)
    Quote Originally Posted by Aquamonkey View Post
    Just because Mannoroth and Archimonde are involved doesn't mean it's Legion. They could just be on vacation, demolishing Draenor to build their new summer home.
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    Did you know that salt has sodium and chlorine in it!!!! Sodium explodes when exposed to atmosphere and you clean your toilets with chlorine!!

  13. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by jfragment View Post
    At your level and set goals of gameplay, what is the most critical quality in a new raid applicant? Basically.. what is the most important trait you are looking for in this new team member?

    Some demographics would be great. (I am going to collate your answers into an article to help raid apps succeed in the apping process)
    * GM or Raid Leader? Guild Master since Sept. 2006
    * Guild rank in current tier: 25-Man Raiding: US # 134 / World #434
    Main's name: Akraen
    Guild Name: Natural Order
    What is the most important trait you are looking for in this new team member?

    We look for a variety of red flags, basically. A good UI is a very strong indicator as to someone's general competence and interest level in success. Generally those with default UI are too stubborn to admit there are tools out there that assist in raids. Sure, I'd love to recruit a badass who doesn't need that stuff-- but they generally lack the conceptual understanding of a house fly so we pass on recruits with default UIs that are unwilling to work on them.

    Here's an example of my UI, which is about what any mage should have:


    We also ask for parses. It weeds out a lot of people who don't know what they are. Also it checks motivation. Someone who really wants to join a 25M heroic guild will be able to run an LFR, log it, and upload it-- it's not difficult. We can tell a lot about a player by looking at his logs.

    But mostly, above all else-- to get into Natural Order, you simply need to answer the questions on the app well enough to indicate that you're just a reasonable, level-headed chap who isn't going to cause any major problems. I often over-recruit then trim the fat, because to keep a 25M roster you have to have layers and layers of contingency planning.

  14. #34
    Recruitment officer and Heal Lead here. What I look for in an app depends on their role but in order I expect:

    1-Complete the entire app. Its not long and there are a couple questions that are designed to make you actually think and use proper sentence structure. I am not expecting a Masters Thesis but blank questions, no punctuation, etc cause me to scroll through and very quickly hit the decline.

    2- Logs. My app even says "LFR is fine" even though we are a 10man guild. For healers I am looking at buff uptimes and spell selection. I am well aware that certain classes have some pretty substantial issues and others can faceroll to the top of the meters. For tanks, we look at their cooldown rotation and threat generation. For DPS, again its spell selection over raw numbers, but we also run Simcraft on all dps apps and compare it to the logs. For all applicants, we look very carefully at damage taken. There is no way I would pick up a monk standing in fire spamming on himself to the top of the meters over a druid who avoids the avoidable, has great uptimes but did a third of the hps.

    3- We don't even ask about UI unless there is something confusing about the logs or expected damage done is far below simmed numbers. When looking for a healer, I don't care if Grid, vuhdo, healbot or standard raid frames with Clique or mouseovers is used. While we will ask to see keybinding set up if there is a problem in general if the app can explain why they are bound the way they are and it works for then, great. I have a MS Natural Keyboard so my keybindings are not the "standard" as I use the right side of the board in combat and the left out of combat. With small hands and a large keyboard this works for me.

    4- This is probably the most important part. Attitude and personality during the interview. The GM and I interview (either mumble or party chat) all the applicants we are interested in. We want people who are going to mesh well with our team. We want people who are constantly pushing themselves to be better.

    If all these criteria are met, its on to the trial.

  15. #35
    Field Marshal Wheater's Avatar
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    * GM or Raid Leader? Both
    * Guild rank in current tier: 1496 (US)
    Main's name: Wheater
    Guild Name: Perseverance
    What is the most important trait you are looking for in this new team member? FUN! Take them in lfr second half of vaults. If they don't have fun nuking down and trying to kill the top dps during the mc they wont have any fun playing with your group. See how they do with communication on interrupts too. Spirit kings is a great fight to watch a prospect raider in action

  16. #36
    COPY / PASTE in reply. Thanks!
    * GM or Raid Leader?
    I was GM and RL of my guild for most of Cata (except at the very start of t11, and the very end of t13). The remaining members bribed and begged me into coming back as a normal raider for MoP.

    * Guild rank in current tier:
    Garbage (something like world 1500 atm). Thank you disconnects and unstable rosters.

    Main's name:
    Why?

    Guild Name:
    Again, why?

    What is the most important trait you are looking for in this new team member?
    The two most important questions on our app are the ones that ask for a recent WoL parse, and the, "how does your class fit into a 10m raid comp? What does it bring to the table, and advantages/disadvantages does that involve?". Asking players to write essays on how they play their class is useless and a waste of time. If you need to ask someone whether they know all that, you're already asking for a bad app. It's more important that they understand the different ways they can be flexible with their class to suit encounters and whatnot. Anything objective or theorycraft-related can be found from a combination of their armory and parse.

    After that, asking for past raid experience is also extremely important, and can make up for a lack of a parse. We have a player who took a break during Cata, but was pushing with a hardcore competitive guild back in tBC and Wrath. He had no parse to show us except a shitty LFR one, but seeing his prior experience in guilds ranked far above ours, we took him after speaking with him anyway. He's turned out to be a great and committed pickup.

    Asking for UI screenshot is good too, but isn't necessarily telling. There are good players in both the "I WANT TO SEE AND KNOW EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE" camp and the "i see and know exactly what i need to know" camp. It hurts my eyes seeing default action bar layouts as well, but if it works for them, and they bring exceptional play, then I really don't care.

    Other than that, we only have a few other more practical questions.

    EDIT
    About the raiders themselves, the most important thing to look for is their maturity. We're a three-night-a-week guild that doesn't raid much, and has members who are all at least in their mid twenties (with like one or two exceptions). We're a tiny guild that currently has like twenty active players in it, and those not on the raid team are all friends&family of them. That makes chemistry and overall raid atmosphere extremely important for the raid and guild overall. Having one bad egg with a bad attitude can ruin an entire raid night, and the raid's atmosphere overall. Personally, I'd rather take a player we all get along with who struggles to perform competitively than have to put up with an asshole.

    This is also because the raid has a core of players that have been around for a very long time. Four of us have been playing together close to three years now, and another for about two years.
    Last edited by PHsname; 2012-11-26 at 12:30 AM.

  17. #37
    Deleted
    Don't see the point in me posting my main's name and my guild name?

    But I'm an officer of a 10 man guild clearing Heroics.

    We're interested in the UI, gemming/enchanting/reforging - is everything perfect? If not, the applicant will have some explaning to do. If it's lack of knowledge=decline. If it's because they forgot or didn't notice=their overall application better be damn good, cause who the hell don't check their character before applying?

    Their age is important to us, don't want to raid with a bunch of kids but also don't wanna raid with someone old enough to be my mom. Why? Cause the older you get, the slower your reaction time is.

    Their level of English skills. Can't and won't raid with someone who can barely speak and write decent English.

    Their computer - don't wanna raid with someone who dc's on fights like 10 man Ultraxion.

    But not only do all of these things have to be in order, the overall impression we get, has to be good. If the player is geared and experienced but comes off as a douchebag, we aren't interested. It's so crucial for a guild, that the raid members get along and we've kicked and declined people just for this. We can't have a raider who's not a team player, who's a loot whore or who's generally not liked.

  18. #38
    Deleted
    UI, logs, previous raiding experience and generally just the "tone" of the application, if it's written half-assed or actually has effort in it. Also age. The player has to be incredibly remarkable with amazing experience/wols and merits (and show some maturity in the application) to get a trialrank under the age of ~18.

  19. #39
    Deleted
    * GM or Raid Leader? Casual Raid Leader
    * Guild rank in current tier: 904 EU, this is for the entire guild, we're one of many raid groups that strive to help each other. Our best helped us acheive this rank, I currently lead our casual group, more focused on having fun in the progression of our characters than pushing for rankings.
    Main's name: Desparatus
    Guild Name: Dominium

    What is the most important trait you are looking for in this new team member?

    That they can raid. We're a casual guild, we're not gonna penalise you if you have to go for an emergency or aren't revered with everything, but we still expect our raiders to perform well. Casual =/= Sitting in an instance not killing anything.

    If their application shows they have a basic understanding of their class I'll invite them to a raid. I do that with almost everyone (I've done it for a laugh before because a druid applied who didn't know how Guardians worked. That was kinda mean, but is was really funny seeing him gem for intellect so he could pop out of bear form and heal himself up during periods of high damage and then die because he wasn't in bear form making him think he wasn't doing enough healing creating a vicious cycle) but not all get a spot. If they show they're competent at both their role and in dealing with mechanics (and anything that comes with those two, communication as an example) they'll stand a bloody good chance at raiding with us.

    So, all in all, I look for the ability to play their role well and deal with fights in a manner that's productive and isn't tipping the weight onto anyone else's shoulder. I get fed up of DPS claiming they can avoid things like attenuation when they're only not taking damage because the healers are working extra hard to bubble their lazy arses whilst running in circles themselves.
    Last edited by mmoc56a2a40693; 2012-11-26 at 01:44 AM.

  20. #40
    Deleted
    We look for a variety of red flags, basically. A good UI is a very strong indicator as to someone's general competence and interest level in success. Generally those with default UI are too stubborn to admit there are tools out there that assist in raids. Sure, I'd love to recruit a badass who doesn't need that stuff-- but they generally lack the conceptual understanding of a house fly so we pass on recruits with default UIs that are unwilling to work on them.

    Here's an example of my UI, which is about what any mage should have:
    You seem to have a very small grid (or whatever raid frame addon) that doesn't let much room to show what is happening to the raid (e.g. on Garajal: frail soul and voodoos, threat), and you can't neither monitor healing, which you should, as the GM.

    Otherwise, an apply form doesn't show much, it can only serves at a first filter - if a player has no keybinds, or no experience, obvious things like that. But most questions guilds usually tend to ask are pointless, such as "describes your exact rotation" or stuff like that. It's stupid firstly cause even idiots can copypaste EJ guides and secondly cause it doesn't distinguish between great players and average ones.

    You can't actually know what really worth an apply before testing it in a few raids, and even still - a nice, prepared and strong apply can turn out to be a mediocre member. What really matters, in fine, is brain and motivation.

    And btw, I hate nothing more than bad guilds with mediocre progress using application forms longer than an income tax return and that can't keep asking pointless questions.

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