Raidguilds: What and when to care about certain elements in your guild

[Floot]

Below is a list of priorities to care about, make sure you got the first elements in order before you start concerning yourselves about the later points.
Once a certain criteria is met, you need to keep maintaining it.

0. Raidleader or caller
Have someone who is comfortable at calling out important mechanics. I put this on point 0. because I believe that it's not even that hugely necessary, addons do most of the work for you nowadays, but someone calling things out on voice probably still makes certain that people's attention remains in the game a bit longer. (Admittedly my hottest take, don't shoot me down on it. Mostly based on personal experience and my own performance in raids).

1. Raid-roster & Bench: Despite this being the most fundamental basis of maintaining a functional raidteam, it appears many raidguilds neglect this part.
If you want to assure consistent raidprogress, you'll need a raidroster of at least 25+ people, including a third tank or person who knows and maintains experience with tanking the different bosses, and including people who can offspec into healing.

There is no greater setback to a guild's raidprogress than:
a. having to replace a tank
b. having to cancel a raid due to not being able to bring 20 people

This also means that you need to maintain a healthy "bench". Something might always come up in the middle of a raid or broader progress which causes you to lose people.

2. Raid-performance and raid-buffs: Green parses and below really don't belong in a high progress raid-team*. If people are getting green or worse parses consistently in your raidteam, it's probably time to start replacing them. The only counter to this might be requiring all the possible buffs and utility for your raidteam. But even if your only mage is consistently underperforming you might want to keep recruitment open...

*The only excuse for having bad parses is if you're specifically assigned to priority targets or responsibilities that help actually securing a kill.

3. Personal maximizing: Don't even bother starting to preach about "everyone must maximize to the best of their ability" when you don't even have the previous two points under control yet. It doesn't matter if people don't pick the best talent-points, don't play the most optimal spec or class, if they're still struggling with half-decent performance or you can barely get a full raidteam together every evening. Of course you won't be meeting the DPS or healing checks if your performance logs are grey... but changing around some talent points or telling the devastation evoker to go augmentation won't help with that.


Do you agree, disagree? I wrote this list because I'm seeing plenty of struggling guilds (read: anyone stuck from heroic raiding to never achieving Cutting Edge in mythic) handling these points with the wrong priorities.

This is obviously the psychopathic approach, there will always be nuance that make things more difficult eg. grey parsing girlfriends to give an example, but the general idea should count.

[Twdft]

0. Raidleader or caller
Have someone who is comfortable at calling out important mechanics. I put this on point 0. because I believe that it's not even that hugely necessary, addons do most of the work for you nowadays, but someone calling things out on voice probably still makes certain that people's attention remains in the game a bit longer.

Dude what? I guarantee you that everyone plays better when someone calls mechanics out instead of having to look at timers yourself.

[potis]

0. Raidleader or caller
Have someone who is comfortable at calling out important mechanics. I put this on point 0. because I believe that it's not even that hugely necessary, addons do most of the work for you nowadays, but someone calling things out on voice probably still makes certain that people's attention remains in the game a bit longer.

Tell me you have never raided before properly in your life without telling me.

Aint gonna read the rest when you expose yourself as clueless instantly, but its cute to see your contradict yourself "Its not hugely necessary" but calling out on discord when with game focus, decide my man.

[Floot]

Dude what? I guarantee you that everyone plays better when someone calls mechanics out instead of having to look at timers yourself.

Admittedly my hottest take and one I'm not super-convinced about myself.

[M1r4g3]

Admittedly my hottest take and one I'm not super-convinced about myself.

Nah its true, but it depends on what level you're raiding at, the higher it is the less you "need" it(unless its world first with a 21 man team).

1) Not knowing when you're in or not is annoying which i do agree most guilds neglect and kinda just do it in a not-so-organized way.

2) Parses are somewhat irrelevant, certain parts of certain fights require higher/lower damage, like if a thing appears that needs to die asap and you have a green parse guy that uses their cd and the thing dies on time every time but the cd gets wasted a bit cause its duration is longer than the kill time of the thing thats fine, compared to a purple guy that used their cd to maximize overall dps before the thing and then couldn't kill it on time, mechanics>>>overall dmg, however there are bosses where the overall dmg is the mechanic(not just patchwerk but more like soft enrages)

3)This is a massive issue in classic, enough that i just can't take it seriously... On retail its not really much of an issue i think, most guilds seem to put effort that's proportional to their rank, doubt a rank 2k guild will use augment runes every pull etc., some minor things sure because they do stack up quite fast.

[Floot]

2) Parses are somewhat irrelevant, certain parts of certain fights require higher/lower damage, like if a thing appears that needs to die asap and you have a green parse guy that uses their cd and the thing dies on time every time but the cd gets wasted a bit cause its duration is longer than the kill time of the thing thats fine, compared to a purple guy that used their cd to maximize overall dps before the thing and then couldn't kill it on time, mechanics>>>overall dmg, however there are bosses where the overall dmg is the mechanic(not just patchwerk but more like soft enrages)

Very true.

I remember this especially being an issue in a lot of encounters during BfA. A lot of fights on which you could do some heavy padding, but killing the bosses depended much more often on strong single target damage on priority targets.

This also brings me to another point of importance for progress: Consistency in people's approach to fights. People tend to swap back and forth a lot between trying different things when they're progressing on something for a long time, but this can cause extremely unpredictable results. It's important to have consistent damage on priority targets, and to avoid half the raid switching back and forth between single target, cleave or AoE builds because they're all trying something new out of desperation.

[AudibleEscalation]

0. Raidleader or caller
Have someone who is comfortable at calling out important mechanics. I put this on point 0. because I believe that it's not even that hugely necessary, addons do most of the work for you nowadays

Most people in my shitty casual CE guild have absolutely no idea how to configure timers or WA's. It takes literally hours of our progression time to get these people to actually configure a WA or just change a "Run Away Little Girl" alert to something that they actually pay attention to.

It's theoretically possible to have a raid of pink unicorns who understand the shit they've installed and are able to configure it to the task, but unfortunately in reality 95% of people play this game without their brain cells ever connecting with any signals at all.

It's absolutely necessary to have a good raidleader if you're serious about your progression.

[Floot]

Most people in my shitty casual CE guild have absolutely no idea how to configure timers or WA's. It takes literally hours of our progression time to get these people to actually configure a WA or just change a "Run Away Little Girl" alert to something that they actually pay attention to.

It's theoretically possible to have a raid of pink unicorns who understand the shit they've installed and are able to configure it to the task, but unfortunately in reality 95% of people play this game without their brain cells ever connecting with any signals at all.

It's absolutely necessary to have a good raidleader if you're serious about your progression.

Yeah, you definitely make some good points.
One thing that absolutely improved my own raid-performance was the moment I understood I could customize my raidwarnings in Bigwigs / DBM or make custom ones through weakauras to help with the mechanics I had more issues with than others.

What is your opinion on the rest of the list?

[AudibleEscalation]

Do you agree, disagree?

What is your opinion on the rest of the list?

I agree with most of it. It's a good list.

Consistency is more important than the color of the parse. Being able to repeat mechanic consistently while correcting errors usually leads to good parses in the end anyway (unless the player is a complete shitter, in which case.. trial a new one).

Parses and logs are not the same thing. Logs are very important in figuring out what went wrong, who fucked up and how you should change your approach, but most people just look at parse colors and pretend they can make actionable decisions based on that. Fuck ranking and parses. Do the dance, correct mistakes, then optimize. Parse on farm.

Consistency in terms of signups is also important. The roster boss is hard to beat if you're bringing new trials while on progg. That's a sign of a failing guild. You need a core of good players who can sign consistently. You need to take care of your core. Listen to them, maybe promote some of them to offiicers (need to distribute officer tasks anyway) - Otherwise don't even bother.

Everyone should read Hamlet's (Elitist Jerks, WoW dev fame) old Raid Awareness is Learned and Practiced Skill. It's from.. MoP, (I think?) but people still fail basic hygiene.
It has words in it, so the chances are most raiders won't be able to get through it. But you should keep on insisting they learn to read.

https://hackmd.io/@kilotl/HamletRaidAwareness

[Floot]

Everyone should read Hamlet's (Elitist Jerks, WoW dev fame) old Raid Awareness is Learned and Practiced Skill. It's from.. MoP, (I think?) but people still fail basic hygiene.
It has words in it, so the chances are most raiders won't be able to get through it. But you should keep on insisting they learn to read.

https://hackmd.io/@kilotl/HamletRaidAwareness

That was a very nice read, thank you for the link.

[Sydrache]

After 15 years I made my first account to say I highly doubt you've ever lead a successfull mythic guild. Having a raid caller is absolutely important. Secondly if you're first thought is to replace a green parser then you have no business "leading" anyone. I've done it for years and if you're not willing to help your raiders improve you'll never gain the loyalty of your players and that's when you start losing people to better guilds.

[Floot]

After 15 years I made my first account to say I highly doubt you've ever lead a successfull mythic guild. Having a raid caller is absolutely important. Secondly if you're first thought is to replace a green parser then you have no business "leading" anyone. I've done it for years and if you're not willing to help your raiders improve you'll never gain the loyalty of your players and that's when you start losing people to better guilds.

Obviously it depends on what your main goal is.

If you just want to have a raidteam where friends can hang out with each other and chill, then this list does not apply to you and none of the points mentioned should be anything you need to worry about.

If you want to achieve CE consistently at a decent pace though (2-3 months after patch launch) then these points all matter, and even more so the priority I listed.

[Jimson]

Obviously it depends on what your main goal is.

If you just want to have a raidteam where friends can hang out with each other and chill, then this list does not apply to you and none of the points mentioned should be anything you need to worry about.

If you want to achieve CE consistently at a decent pace though (2-3 months after patch launch) then these points all matter, and even more so the priority I listed.

Do you have some basis for this list? Are you running a consistent CE guild?

[netherflame]

Below is a list of priorities to care about, make sure you got the first elements in order before you start concerning yourselves about the later points.
Once a certain criteria is met, you need to keep maintaining it.

1. Raid-roster & Bench: Despite this being the most fundamental basis of maintaining a functional raidteam, it appears many raidguilds neglect this part.
If you want to assure consistent raidprogress, you'll need a raidroster of at least 25+ people, including a third tank or person who knows and maintains experience with tanking the different bosses, and including people who can offspec into healing.

There is no greater setback to a guild's raidprogress than:
a. having to replace a tank
b. having to cancel a raid due to not being able to bring 20 people

This also means that you need to maintain a healthy "bench". Something might always come up in the middle of a raid or broader progress which causes you to lose people.

As someone whos led multiple raid guilds and been officers in countless others, the issue with the bench is this. If you aren't the top guild on your server you will have issues maintaining a bench because nearly everyone on the bench thinks they should be in the raid over another player. Nobody wants to be the 'extra' in the raid team that only gets to come in if someone else has to miss, so once they are on the bench they are almost immediately looking to move guilds either in a lateral move where they will be allowed to play or try to find an upward move to a guild that they believe will elevate them to long term success.

The only real exception to the above rule is people that are good enough to play in Top 3 guilds in their region and even then, only the top guilds in their region are usually safe (Liquid, Echo,Skyline) and everyone else is at risk (Method, BDG, FatSharkYes) etc.

[Accendor]

Nah its true, but it depends on what level you're raiding at, the higher it is the less you "need" it(unless its world first with a 21 man team).

1) Not knowing when you're in or not is annoying which i do agree most guilds neglect and kinda just do it in a not-so-organized way.

2) Parses are somewhat irrelevant, certain parts of certain fights require higher/lower damage, like if a thing appears that needs to die asap and you have a green parse guy that uses their cd and the thing dies on time every time but the cd gets wasted a bit cause its duration is longer than the kill time of the thing thats fine, compared to a purple guy that used their cd to maximize overall dps before the thing and then couldn't kill it on time, mechanics>>>overall dmg, however there are bosses where the overall dmg is the mechanic(not just patchwerk but more like soft enrages)

3)This is a massive issue in classic, enough that i just can't take it seriously... On retail its not really much of an issue i think, most guilds seem to put effort that's proportional to their rank, doubt a rank 2k guild will use augment runes every pull etc., some minor things sure because they do stack up quite fast.

Honestly, it's not only world first guilds that play with 21 people. A lot of guilds do it, even if only for certain bosses and during progression. My guild has 2 raid groups, one managed to get HoF in Sepulcher, the other one "just" got CE, but even the second group absolutely needed a 21 player to call mechanics on jailer.
Perhaps we would have managed with many more tries with just 20 people, but why spend 3 extra weeks...?

- - - Updated - - -

As someone whos led multiple raid guilds and been officers in countless others, the issue with the bench is this. If you aren't the top guild on your server you will have issues maintaining a bench because nearly everyone on the bench thinks they should be in the raid over another player. Nobody wants to be the 'extra' in the raid team that only gets to come in if someone else has to miss, so once they are on the bench they are almost immediately looking to move guilds either in a lateral move where they will be allowed to play or try to find an upward move to a guild that they believe will elevate them to long term success.

The only real exception to the above rule is people that are good enough to play in Top 3 guilds in their region and even then, only the top guilds in their region are usually safe (Liquid, Echo,Skyline) and everyone else is at risk (Method, BDG, FatSharkYes) etc.

That's why you rotate players. If player A is clearly worse than player B and therefore player B plays everytime he is available, one of them (probably player A) should not be on the raid at all.
Ofc you will never have a squad where everyone is on the exact same level of skill, but the gap can't be too wide. If everyone is on roughly the same level of skill, you can start to rotate around people between bosses, making it possible for everyone to raid.

[netherflame]

That's why you rotate players. If player A is clearly worse than player B and therefore player B plays everytime he is available, one of them (probably player A) should not be on the raid at all.
Ofc you will never have a squad where everyone is on the exact same level of skill, but the gap can't be too wide. If everyone is on roughly the same level of skill, you can start to rotate around people between bosses, making it possible for everyone to raid.

The issue is that in low, mid, and mid to high level guilds, the typical thought is that everyone is player B in your example and they think others are player A. Additionally, in the day of vaults people will be very upset if hey don't hit their vault number which I actually find to be specifically weird because except for a few cases you can typically hit the same gear through M+ which you are already likely doing.

[Floot]

As someone whos led multiple raid guilds and been officers in countless others, the issue with the bench is this. If you aren't the top guild on your server you will have issues maintaining a bench because nearly everyone on the bench thinks they should be in the raid over another player. Nobody wants to be the 'extra' in the raid team that only gets to come in if someone else has to miss, so once they are on the bench they are almost immediately looking to move guilds either in a lateral move where they will be allowed to play or try to find an upward move to a guild that they believe will elevate them to long term success.

The only real exception to the above rule is people that are good enough to play in Top 3 guilds in their region and even then, only the top guilds in their region are usually safe (Liquid, Echo,Skyline) and everyone else is at risk (Method, BDG, FatSharkYes) etc.

Yup, I entirely understand... in a way that point is more aimed at raiders than the people organizing and leading the raids. Raiders are the ones that should learn to understand that having a healthy bench is beneficial for them in the long run. They can either choose between the guild's progress being at risk and not managing to achieve certain kills... or risking to be on the bench once in a while.