How far back does raid exp matter?

[Redpanda]

As the title says. I get people that say to me blah blah blah I raided hardcore in bc and wrath etc. Usually to explain some kind of gap in their raiding timeline not that it matters for the gap, people can quit the game for whatever reason they feel like. But how far back does prev raid experience matter to you when youre bringing someone on board may it be they are undergeared or something. A lot of times in my head I dont really care what they did in bc wrath and to some extent cata. In my head the only "valid" exp is to the current expansion. If I was apping to a guild I feel like the only real thing they would care about would be what I raided this expansion. I killed everthing in H msv, 3 h bosses in hof, 1 in terrace. Full clear tot with raden. and XXX in current teir. Those are the only stats I would care to list if i was making a app. So what are everyone else s thoughts?

[Zlebar]

Personally, someone who has some great timeline kills(as in they were ahead of most guilds when they killed the boss- something like top 250-500) that has much more relevence to me than someone who has 3 heroic kills from the first tier of the current expansion but they were only top 5000. Because in my mind, those are 2 completely different raiders skill wise.

[seije]

while i mostly agree, i'd say if they made it through some of naxx in vanilla, thats worth noting (as that place was nuts at the time) and Sunwell in BC for the same reason. the mechanics may not have been as complicated back then, but there was also less synergy in class design (so you had to know your class well to make it that far) and catch-up mechanics were practically non-existant back then, meaning they had to be dedicated to make it that far. past that, hard/heroic-mode raids at 'ahead of the curve' completion are all that i would say is actually impressive.

[Solial]

When I talk to apps for my guild I ask for their raiding experience since vanilla. If they have been finishing tiers before the new ones were released it shows consistency and that is a good thing. I am not however going to look at parses from anything that isn't recent.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

When I talk to apps for my guild I ask for their raiding experience since vanilla. If they have been finishing tiers before the new ones were released it shows consistency and that is a good thing. I am not however going to look at parses from anything that isn't recent.

Pretty much this. If you compare the time they've been playing to the content they've been able to complete when it was current and have been able to do so through each tier since (or have been active in), you're going to get a great player who isn't shy about working towards progression. It doesn't even have to be someone who got in to Naxx40 or got Death's Demise, although that certainly is a bonus!

[Kelzam]

I've needed extended breaks here and there from raiding due to personal reasons, and when I come back I always get my foot in the door with any serious progression guild by mentioning my extensive raid history. In Cata I didn't make it past hard mode Firelands before I had real life issues come up. This expansion I did zero progression raiding until about a month ago. But it's not a matter of how far back but the context of what you had experience in. Much of the content back then was more challenging than today's content out the door. You were required a lot of dedication not only during raid time but in your playtime outside of raiding to be successful - Huhuran crafted Nature Resist sets via Cenarion Circle exalted; or the massive undertaking of gearing up tanks for Hydross the Unstable with Frost and Nature resistance sets. In Burning Crusade I was playing a Warlock and thus spent several weeks gearing up by farming for the Frozen Shadoweave and Spellstrike sets. Personally, my guild at the time spent about a month on Kael'thas progression. That's dedication that - if I were in the shoes of a raid leader or recruiter - I'd find invaluable compared to the rampant amount of players with short attention spans wanting instant gratification as they started with LFD and LFR and that's all they've known.

This expansion, I only started progression raiding with SoO. I was on hiatus and a friend asked me if I'd be willing to reroll on his server and tank for him. He asked me because he knew I had helped push my guild to a Horde first OS3D+10 kill back at the start of WotlK. My reputation followed me into the position I'm in now - tanking progression fights for an 8/14H guild when I didn't do but LFR and a small amount of Flex raiding the rest of this expansion. This isn't me tooting my own horn, by the way, as much as me trying to say that any good raid experience is worth considering. Would I take someone seriously who quoted Karazhan as their raid experience, or nothing past the first three bosses for their raid experience? Nope. But someone who had a Glory of the Ulduar 25-man and Algalon achievement from when they were current content or Tribute to Insanity 25-man? I'd pick them up in a heart beat, because there's a better chance that they were with that guild and stuck it out through some grueling content than that they bought it - few people could afford what my or any other guild charged for those achievements.

It's also worth saying that performance speaks volumes over anything else. Someone's word only means so much. Used to a guild would bring someone in and do trial runs of older raids to see their raid awareness, compare their DPS, etc. No one wants to take the time to do that anymore, which is unfortunate.

[Stormspellz]

experience is experience, the real question is how does it relate to the situation you are applying it to.

say you are a hm 3 day a week raiding guild looking for x, and that person in question cleared most of sunwell pre 3.0, did OS 3d, ulduar/TOC/ICC HMS while current content then for what ever reason goes casual, now is looking to get back in to progressive raiding for WoD. It shows said individual will know what to expect and understand what is expected of him, and that is just as important (imo more) then padding some logs for your guild resume.

[Belloc]

The previous tier is as far back as experience matters. I could go to a guild and tell them that I raid-lead my guild to realm-first Grand Crusader and it wouldn't mean anything because that was however many expansions ago and none of that gear is any of use to me. Sure, it means that I knew (keyword: knew) my stuff back then, but none of that necessarily applies (obviously it somewhat applies, but not in any quantifiable way) to current content.

I've seen people who were "hardcore raiders" back in the day who are reaaaally bad now. Perhaps they were bad back then, too... no way to know, really. All that matters is how someone has played recently and that, I'm afraid, means the previous tier.

Would I, personally, give someone a chance if they could show me that they did well back in the day (via achievements or videos, probably)? Yeah, I probably would... but I'd be very watchful of them and they'd get the boot just like anyone else if they weren't good enough. I certainly wouldn't expect a hardcore guild to extend the same benefit. Current tier/previous tier is all that is reliably relevant.

[Malefic]

All of it matters, every boss is different, having experience on as many different fights as possible is extremely beneficial.

[Redpanda]

I feel like previously hardcore players coming back are "interesting" to handle because they at 1 point knew their class but are out of touch and its 50/50 on how they respond when you try to show them how things are now with a "I was hard core raiding before you started playing the game you cant tell me how to live my life youre not my real dad" And Im not trying to generalize but when I was raidleading/recruiting I had been burned more than half of the time with people like this.

[Stormspellz]

I feel like previously hardcore players coming back are "interesting" to handle because they at 1 point knew their class but are out of touch and its 50/50 on how they respond when you try to show them how things are now with a "I was hard core raiding before you started playing the game you cant tell me how to live my life youre not my real dad" And Im not trying to generalize but when I was raidleading/recruiting I had been burned more than half of the time with people like this.

children and children, and that sounds more like someone who bought the account more then anything.

[Belloc]

I feel like previously hardcore players coming back are "interesting" to handle because they at 1 point knew their class but are out of touch and its 50/50 on how they respond when you try to show them how things are now with a "I was hard core raiding before you started playing the game you cant tell me how to live my life youre not my real dad" And Im not trying to generalize but when I was raidleading/recruiting I had been burned more than half of the time with people like this.

This this THIS! Current hardcore raiders already tend to think highly of themselves... former raiders are much the same way. The only difference is that the current hardcore raiders DO actually have a solid grasp on their class whereas former raiders USED to have that grasp (or, at least, that's how they try to make it appear).

Honestly, if someone were to come up to me and say that they were in the world/US first Kel'Thuzad kill back in Vanilla and then stopped playing but they're back now and can they please join my guild, I'd say lolno. Same goes for people who did Sunwell when it was progression. Many current players don't realize it, but those fights, back then, were, by and large, mechanically simple. Even Sunwell and Naxx weren't all that difficult mechanically. If those raids were to be released right now, they wouldn't last even half the time they lasted back in the day. Those raids were hard because of poor tuning, poor class balance, and other things that should be obvious when looking back on an old game.

If someone told me that they were in the world/US first heroic Ragnaros kill? Yeah, that might mean a little more. First Lei Shen kill? Yeah, that definitely helps. 100th US kill? We're back at the whole, "show me current logs" step of the process.

[Anjerith]

Raiding Hardcore in tBC just meant you put a lot of time into the game. The mechanics in fights have only become more complex as time progresses. The difference is that the abilities of bosses are MUCH easier to do some studying on - with the game itself giving you all the info you really need to perform well. in tBC and Classic, it was basically a mystery outside of some youtube videos (that were terrible) and thottbot. Thottbot itself was a mystery by itself, at the time Youtube was similarly based around a small population of players.

If you can listen, and if you are reasonably competent at your class(es) and someone pulls the faithful "I fought in the trenches!!" nonsense - agree with them. I wouldn't doubt many of them either did not actually do anything significant at the time (Sunwell being almost laughably inaccessible at level) or simply did not do any of it at all.

[Casagrande]

I run recruitment for our 14/14H guild (with about 15 H Garrosh kills now), I like to see experience going back at least 2-3 tiers. I only really care beyond that if I'm on the fence about someone.

[Thelxi]

I don't care at all about BC and wrath raiding, not to mention vanilla raiding where most people just tagged along as dead meat. I'd rather see someone that has the previous tier cleared a few times on HC than someone swearing they were in a world first guild during sunwell and are looking to get back into raiding.

[mercychan]

I would honestly only ask, "Have you ever completed a tier before the next tier/ major nerfs". I've seen plenty of applicants who have "been raiding since vanilla /TBC" with little to no real heroic experience.

I even had to reject a hunter app a couple weeks back who had "been raiding since MC" and he didn't have the slightest idea about his class.

If they've never completed a tier before and they seem slightly promising, I would probably ask them if they personally felt capable of killing heroic Garrosh this tier pre-nerfs at their skill level. If yes I would give them a trial at least.

[Kelzam]

There's some unfortunately ignorant views in here on what it means to have raided older content. Anyone can read up on a strat and execute it - dedication is what's going to get your guild through content. That the the content is old and it isn't the current content is a moot point, and if several of the people posting here were recruiting they'd be missing out on decent players. Vanilla raiding only allowed for dead weight through Molten Core - to suggest that the entirety of vanilla raiding allowed for carrying dead-weight shows a rather large misunderstanding of that content. If you had people AFK on Vael, your raid would wipe. I could list many examples of this, but the point is that if someone was dedicated enough to make it through progression content with their guild in a previous expansion and complete that content, that says a lot more than your random Trade chat player with a Legendary cloak and 560 ilvl that does less damage than 522 geared players doing ToT progression that is going to stop showing up after you wipe three times (who probably got the rest of his achievements through an OpenRaid group)

[Squirl]

A long raiding history shows commitment (if few/no breaks), experience with a lot of different mechanics, and the ability to adapt to fundamental changes in the game. It's a big plus to have been around that long. There's no real cut off for valuable raiding experience, though Vanilla is a little sketchy. Modern raiding started in BC.

However, being good at the game is only loosely connected to raiding history. I raid with one guy that started playing during Dragon Soul, and he's pretty good. I don't know how he developed any skill and continued playing during that shitshow of a raid, but he did. I think we have another raider or two that started during Cata and another few that started during Wrath, but the majority of our group have raided since BC or Vanilla. On the other side of the coin, I know people that have been legitimately playing since alpha that are terrible at the game.

When evaluating an applicant, a long raiding history is only a bonus. How good they are currently is the only factor that actually matters.

[Zlebar]

There's some unfortunately ignorant views in here on what it means to have raided older content. Anyone can read up on a strat and execute it - dedication is what's going to get your guild through content. That the the content is old and it isn't the current content is a moot point, and if several of the people posting here were recruiting they'd be missing out on decent players.

I would have to agree, I have had some of my best raiders come from taking huge breaks in progression and really only had 65-70% of the gear of my current raiders. If they have some great experience but not a lot currently relative, I generally speak to them and make sure that I know where they are as a player and as a raider. Most of you giving out blanket "no's" should take some time to review your model and check your review process. Chances are you could be missing out on some great raiders. I know that I personally have been in that situation before and it has always helped me to have a significant vent/mumble/TS conversation with whomever is the recruiting leader and whoever is being recruited.

[Brokkr58]

Personally I have been raiding since Vanilla and I will ask an app how long they have been raiding, but anything pre-ulduar really has no relevance. The game has changed dramatically since Vanilla. Wrath isn't a great comparison of today's skill set needed for end game raiding, but it is much closer then say sunwell. I also don't care about Naxx because well BC 5 mans were harder.

We have players that started this expansion that are extremely skilled and some that have played since vanilla. Raid exp gives you a nice background to pickup new mechanics more quickly, but an exceptional player will easily be able to pickup on the same mechanics. So don't get hung up on somone's past exp. Look at what the player has done recently. If it is a returning player even with a great raid history take them with a grain of salt.