Comments on: Rules for Raiding

By: gromitdaddy

gromitdaddy — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 16:34:44 +0000

I wouldn’t call it tough, or draconian. It all looks pretty good to me. I’ve come to realize how lucky I’ve been with my horde guild… We have a RL rank structure and set of rules that translates beautifully to the game and the guild. No arguments, talk is mostly clean, and it’s a remarkably relaxed and laid back atmosphere. While they all want to get each raid done, there’s no need to do it now. Everyone’s content to get it done when it gets done. So what I’ve seen here, looks pretty good.
It sucks for me a bit, cause friday and saturday nights are our horde nights, and I don’t really know if that can be changed, but oh well. If you can ever use the services of one of the Grom family, let me know

By: Special Delivery: Roundup Of This Week’s Best WoW Posts | World of Matticus

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 15:41:18 +0000

[...] Rules for Raiding – Analogue from Looking For More has posted her guild’s prospective raid rules and is looking for your thoughts on them. They’re covering things like attendence, strategy, tasks – and how raid members should behave in regards to these things. She’s asking us readers if we think they’re reasonable or whether we’d raid under them; an interesting question… [...]

By: Dominus

Dominus — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 10:20:50 +0000

*borrows these rules for his own guild*

Very nice ruleset, loving it

By: ReversionLFM

ReversionLFM — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 14:15:53 +0000

That is more or less what we have, except some people have those spread across different alts. Bringing hybrid’s only is pointless and too limiting.
Besides, there is no extra status. Analogue manages the raid and I call the strats. Anyone that wants to have stat input can speak up. Analogue and I are the loot council (within the guidelines) and anyone that wants to have input on a drop can speak up.

All this input on these comments has given me a lot of insight on just how unique our raiding style is. We started off making pugs with just a couple good friends and then some puggers to pad things out. I think that had a big influence on how we do things now.

It just ends up being a lot diffent than managing a bunch of semi-professional raider strangers.

If a friend is not working well in a role you help them or move them to another role. If a friend can’t make your standing raid times often enough they understand that you can’t give them priority on the invites.

By: ReversionLFM

ReversionLFM — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 14:08:09 +0000

I think a ‘no alts’ rule is pointless. The things I want in a member of the raid are knowing their class, being able to follow the plan, getting along well with the rest of the team and generally being someone I don’t want to kill if I spend several hours a week with them. Finding the last 4 items is harder than finding the first one. And if we get people that are good they are generally good at several classes. If someone is bragging about being able to do better than someone else the fact that they know more than one class is NOT the problem. The problem is that they are a jerk. I frequently run into people that I can play better than. I don’t point it out!. I also run into people better than me and they don’t mention that either. Instead we compare notes on how the lower performing person might improve. For that discussion it is very useful to have people that know many classes. We have people in the raid that with between two and EIGHT 80s! Some with more I think. I only have two on this particular server. Between those two I have 3 specs/roles for which I am geared good enough to down the LK and know how to play. Which is my ‘main’? Who cares! I would rather have people that can adapt. Some people are not as good on a particular character. I would MUCH rather take someone who fits will in our group and ask them to bring a different alt than to have to boot them and find someone else.

We are going into CATA where there will be new fights and stuff. If we are working on something and decide we need a little more CC or a little more decurse I don’t want to have to boot someone and then find someone completely different. Far better to swap a couple roles and stick with people who work well together and know each other’s skills.

Again, if someone in the raid is insulting or bragging that is a completely different issue unrelated to how many are ‘alts’.

By: Analogue

Analogue — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 02:20:35 +0000

Oh, that’s gotta be Starship Troopers though I never watched the movie version – insult to Heinlein’s venerated memory, that.

By: angry eldi

angry eldi — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 02:09:43 +0000

A DSPP raid is simply a raid group made up of Hybrids ONLY

Druid
Shaman
Paladin
Priest

EVERY raider is required to have either a healing of tank spec with a viable dps spec. AND BE ABLE TO RAID IN EITHER AT ANY TIME. Raiders who have Healing AND Tank specs are afforded extra status (raid leader-assist, loot council spot, strategy vote)

In short:

“These are the rules. Everybody fights, nobody quits. If you don’t do your job I’ll kill you myself. Welcome to the Roughnecks”

bonus points to those that guess the movie- without google

By: angry eldi

angry eldi — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 01:54:05 +0000

You have to get raiders to commit but you don’t want to be a male appendage about it.

You could try a “commit to all raids for the next 4 weeks no exceptions”. That way you weed out the people who are flakes. But you allow for flexibility AFTER the initial period.

I think everyone likes to be treated as an adult. If you set time limited absolute unbreakable rules. People either understand what you are doing and comply or show their true unprofessional behavior. AND you find out behavior sooner rather than later.

Nothing worse than having someone you count on like a tank healer not be reliable.

Personally I believe alt/main raids are a BAD idea. Nothing worse than having someone critique a fellow raider with the statement “on my xxxx I could do that better than thou”. DRAMASIGN THE LIKES OF WHICH GOD HAS NOT SEEN!!!

Gevlon over at greedy goblin blog has a “no alt” policy and I think it’s the right way to go. With “no alts” you have no loot drama over gee this guy gets loot for his main and alt comments. With “no alts” you don’t get the “I’ll jump on x but I sux at it” bad raid effects.

But… But…. how do you MAKE a raid happen? what happens if you don’t have tanks?

Ah then you need to go to a DSPP raid! see next post

By: Analogue

Analogue — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 23:18:43 +0000

You mean you aren’t going to make a special rank just for me to use as a threat? BAH! What good is bribing you anyway?

Yeah, I meant internally we will not consider someone who says they’ll come and then not show to be the same level as someone who is there every time.

By: ReversionLFM

ReversionLFM — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 23:17:49 +0000

Yeah, it is not a demotion so much as…. when Analogue starts setting up the invite she stacks up the raiders we need. Mentally or somewhere jotted down she has a list of who are the ‘primary’ ones we invite based on attendance, reliability, their own interest levels, their availability, etc. So she sends out an invite. Then, if we are a couple short or get some ‘declines’ she pulls up her mental list of people that know their stuff but for whatever reason did not get invited at first. This might be people that simply can’t commit to a regular raid but might be free that night. Or it could be people we ran with before but, by virtue of unannounced attendance issues we hesitate to put them in that ‘first tier’ of invites.

You could almost say that people don’t even have designated slots and it is all up to Analogues tyranny that week. But, to clarify for people what gets them a lesser chance of an invite, there are these rules. Or guidelines, or whatever.

It is sort of like being a freelance raid leader and we are using the guild as our pool. Actually that is totally what it is.

You are right in that this might be a very poor system if it was the only raid in the guild and people had applied to join or something like that. But it is a more casual guild and there are at least a couple more standing raids or semi-regular raids. That and the guild is VERY alt heavy so all the raids have a lot of the ‘usual suspects’.

In this sort of environment I think we can pretty well pick and chose our raid without annoying anyone overly much.

What also make this raid different is that we started it off with a set of ringers and then added more ringers until we got to people that were good but not consistent enough to be ringers.
For example we have Me, Anlogue, her brother, the guild leader (trout), and a great blogging friend (Repgrind). That is half the raid right there. And, depending on what alts are used that could be all of the tanking and healing. So that gives us a ton of flexibility.

So, no, those are not rule so much as guidelines. Or you could way they are ‘fair warning’.

It is not 100% attendance we require. It is just demonstrated reliability. That ‘value’ is a mixture of ‘do they rarely miss’ and ‘do they warn us when the miss’.

Because we are alt heavy in this guild we also have the option of deemphasizing role performance. If we are not happy with someone in one role, or it is just not the optimal mix, we can as them to change to something else.

This flexibility has given us a great group. I think the fact that we got to the LK on our first week of raiding and down him on our second says a lot. And we are 6/12 on heroics. All that with a group that included several people that had not gotten past PP and at least one that had not downed Saurfang.

Another for having the ‘low tolerance’ rules is we are trying to rapidly for a group that is going to be very well positioned for cata raiding. This requires us to shift things pretty mercilessly.