Progress + the Casual Dilemma

[L3fty]

Hello fellow WoW lovers and beautiful Unicorns

I have a burning question for all of you:

Are Heroic Raids realistic /achievable for 'casual' guilds?

-and if so, are there any examples of guilds that raid 2x -/-less a week that achieve this?

Let me bore you with some minor details to add to my query.

I would generally define a casual guild as being one that raids a maximum of 2x per week and as I understand it, the terms used to label a raider are mostly based on /time spent raiding. (Correct me if I am wrong here). I raid in a guild currently at 14/14 normal SoO , we are in the position of 2x raids a week, with some very good players in our ranks. The majority of us want to get onto at least the first few Heroics, but experience in MoP tells us this is that elusive dream.

The troubles we face are that as soon as we finish a tier 1 - 2 of our best guys leave the game. In a sense it is 'mission accomplished, cya'. Yet, we continue to farm, but due to the huge boss count in recent raids, we are simply out of time to seriously knuckle down to some HC's.

We killed Garrosh a week before the Xmas haze, and HC modes is something I have been trying to push for well over a year now. Before we consider extending lockouts and so on, do you think there is any real hope in a 2x a week raid team chowing down on the heroic content? (Most of us are now 560-565ilvl). A few of us are contunually disappointed that seemingly due to the sheer boss count in places like ToT and SoO, the farm runs are crippling us and the 'casual' mentality that exists for some raiders is a real kick in the nuts when we continually lose guys once the 'Normal' mode is clear.

[Deleted]

If days are the only factor then yes. We raid 2 days, for total of 8 hours per week, early hours off weekends.
We're 12/14 heroic and should kill paragons on sunday now when xmas wont cockblock us

Now we're probably the furthest away from casual you can get, our goal is to be the best weekend guild in the world, which we are.
Pretty much all members come from prior hardcore raiding and still wants to raid at that level but cant commit the time, this is the compromise

There's also "2day guilds" with 14/14 heroic progress out there aswell, so its doable, probably not with a casual mindset tho.

[Kalmah]

I'm personally part of a group that does pug/alt runs on weekends. We killed Garrosh normal about 2 months ago and are now farming 8 heroic bosses in 3 hours, with some time left to do a few pulls on Malkorok every week.

With 2x 3 hours or more, it's perfectly doable to progress heroics while still clearing normals. You just need to minimize downtime and come prepared for progression. It barely takes more than 3 hours to do a full normal clear, so you can easily just have progression on one day and clear as much as possible on the 2nd day.

[Nexii]

Yes Heroics are like the same bosses over but real raiders want progression. In the same way that some players are content with LFR/Flex, some are content with Normal. Nothing wrong with that but you should try to please the majority. It seems by what you're saying that most of your raiders want to do some Heroics, so try to give that to them. You have to be really aggressive recruiting though!

My raid group is in a similar situation actually. We started in late Oct with a brand new team, doing 2x week. We just killed Garrosh last week. I made the decision that we'll be going to 3x/week for Heroics, otherwise it's just so little time for progression. That or it's such a fast paced raid that to us it wouldn't be enjoyable. Thankfully it doesn't look like we'll be losing anyone due to this decision. But I strongly believe you should try to get 10 core players, if you're going to progress heroics. You can't rely on casuals usually.

[Krommm]

Your group might be fairly solid, but if you've only recently cleared reg then it's unlikely you will clear heroics at a reasonable pace within your 2 day a week schedule. Yes, it is very possible and some guilds do this. That said, most guilds run at least 3 days a week regardless of their normal or heroic progression. The biggest problem is actually using the time you have and keeping people around. If people are late or not around, it doesn't matter if you raid 7 days or 1 day a week.

TLDR; Entirely possible. Realistic due to the nature of people flaking and being lazy(bad)? No.

[Squirl]

Tons of 2-night guilds clear heroic. I don't think they would define themselves as casual though; more "hardcore on a tight schedule". Some of them add an "optional" farm day too, which kind of pushes the 2-night term, but whatever.

Most of these guilds still full clear normal the first week (or at least the next) and start working on heroic progression right away. They're really good players that clear efficiently rather than quickly.

Now, for an actual "casual" guild that is just now clearing normal, killing a few heroics is definitely possible. In SoO, the first 8 bosses are pretty easy. Norushen is actually exactly the same as normal, but with bigger numbers. Protectors is a joke too. Immersieus is a little harder than most expect, but still not super difficult.

Losing some of your best players is definitely a problem though. We had this problem in my last guild where the goal of the majority of the group was just to clear normals. Their excuse was that they didn't want to progress on the "same" fights again on heroic, which I can understand when clearing normal takes a couple months. Lots of people took breaks, others still showed up but didn't really try, and a few got really frustrated because they wanted to clear heroics. If you're one of those people, honestly your best option is to find another guild. If people don't want to do heroic, you're not going to kill anything and you'll just get frustrated.

[L3fty]

Ty for replies, some food for thought. It does make me hopeful however.

I'm personally part of a group that does pug/alt runs on weekends. We killed Garrosh normal about 2 months ago and are now farming 8 heroic bosses in 3 hours, with some time left to do a few pulls on Malkorok every week.

With 2x 3 hours or more, it's perfectly doable to progress heroics while still clearing normals. You just need to minimize downtime and come prepared for progression. It barely takes more than 3 hours to do a full normal clear, so you can easily just have progression on one day and clear as much as possible on the 2nd day.

I have heard of these Heroic Pug grps but only really as myth, or on realms that are triple the pop size, but it is cool to see folks actually do run succesful raids in that PuG environment.

TLDR; Entirely possible. Realistic due to the nature of people flaking and being lazy(bad)? No.

Yeah you pretty much nailed it here...the true problem may then be that it is incredibly rare to find players with the desire for heroics, that only commit 2x a week to the raiding scene. Maybe there is no remedy for this but I will be trying to recruit as ever.

Thanks guys, and I wish you GL with your raiding...may that tier set drop for you

[Deleted]

I think (hope) what you'll find happening is that your team will get sick of downing 14 normal bosses every week and there'll be nothing else to do but start on heroics. I think any team will naturally progress to heroics as the normal bosses become too easy.

Please don't start with Immerseus HC.

[L3fty]

Please don't start with Immerseus HC.

Which would you suggest?

Judging by Swirl's reply it would seem Norushen perhaps?

[jasdasm]

1 day 5 hours 9/14 HC but stopped raiding like 2months ago

its not about being casual.. its about the Skill of the Group

[Glyphtics]

It's not so much about how many days / hours you put in, but how much you achieve in that time. Every boss in SoO has been killed numerous times over by other guilds on Heroic, you're not doing progression comparative to what guilds went through when there were no resources available as aid (Kill videos + Guides). The strategies have been created, all your guild has to do is follow them and not play bad.

If your players are good, you can easily kill 14/14H raiding 2 nights a week. It might take you a while, but it's definitely possible. Most guilds once they achieve 14/14H are able to clear in a night or two. Assuming you're not wiping to foolish mistakes, and you can manage the DPS checks, then you should be able to put at least 3 or 4 hours into progression a week.

tl;dr: Do research before you even go in to heroics, don't waste time, don't play bad, kill dragons.

[Tapout]

Which would you suggest?

Judging by Swirl's reply it would seem Norushen perhaps?

My guild is in a very similar situation (2x week, 3 hours a day). We wiped on H Immersius for most of the first day then went on to oneshot H Nourshen.

[Berianther]

8/14H on 2 days per week alt raid and we still spend more time wiping on immersius. Should definitely do Norushen first, then protectors + immersius, possibly galakras + general before doing sha of pride.

[Schwert]

Friends guild is 8/14H on a 2 day schedule. I believe they raid 3-4 hours tops on those.
I've filled in a few times for them when they have no shows.

Entirely possible - Even if you're not bleeding edge skilled.

[Deleted]

My guild raids 2 times a week, total of 7 hours. We're 11/14 heroic and I wouldn't consider us super high skilled We slowly worked our way up, only did a few heroic bosses in the previous tiers. ToT was actually the first raid we were able to clear on heroic pre-nerfs/pre new patch.

[Crowfeather]

my old guild was super-casual. We raided 6 hours a week on the weekends, but toned that down to 3 hours by the end of DS in Cata. We pretty much got sick and tired of farming DS normal mode after doing it for 2 months staight, so we pretty much decided to move onto heroic modes. Then again, this was at the point were there was like a 25% nerf, so it was hardly "heroic" at that point, but we eventually moved up from sheer boredom. Maybe your guild will "naturally" move up like we did?