how does ‘raid progression’ factor into selecting raiders and distributing loot?

someone recently asked me how ‘guild progression’ will affect selection of who is raiding when and how loot is distributed. a good topic blog answer for all. keeping in mind that in the long run, everyone gets to go more than they want and everyone gets more than enough loot.

there are a lot of different models of selecting who is going on which raids and who gets what loot. in keeping with our philosophy of keeping it simple and keeping it fair, you can expect us to simply apply common sense. first things first! if it ain’t written down, it didn’t happen! hence, writing it down now so that folks can take due notice. we are not going to get into some complicated formula-based system to pick raid seats nor for giving out loot. we will do what makes sense for guild progression. and guild progression is a strategic thing, not a tactical one-raid/individual thing.

all of which is to say, while it may be complicated to lay out the general guidelines, it will be simple to implement and follow.

‘guild progression’ affects seat occupancy and loot distribution in two main ways: 1) helping the guild progression has a positive reward response towards getting you a seat and loot, if that makes sense; and, 2) seats and loot are distributed in a manner that has the greatest positive impact to guild progression, if that makes sense. the ‘if that makes sense’ part is where some guilds fail or fall apart or get into drama. since we are a ‘no bs, no drama’ guild – we would like to side step that problem and move on!

best way to explain how we will approach this is to lay out some scenarios that align with the two main ways guild progression affects seats and looting. bear with me as this might be longish – but will be the ‘it was written down so it happened version’.

1) helping the guild progression has a positive reward response towards getting you a seat and loot, if that makes sense. it makes perfect sense to everyone that if you have ABC (level 70) and XYZ (level 70) and they are exactly equal in all respects, that if XYZ helps the guild progress and ABC does not, that ABC should not be penalized, but XYZ should be rewarded where rewarding XYZ does not counter guild progression (otherwise what the hell was the point?!).

scenario: ABC and XYZ group with three other 70s to do instances they all need. are they helping guild progression? yes. but not really anymore so than helping themselves (they all needed it). they are in fact benefiting from being in the guild because that way they did not have to pug it and can get the instance done with the least amount of fuss. participating in the group helped the guild, and it helped them. attendance alone made none of them more entitled to a seat or loot drop than any of the others. if loot will advance each of them equally, roll for it! if however, a loot drop would make a more significant progress advance by giving it to one of them, obviously that is in the best interest of the guild for them to get it. but where it will affect all of them equally, they all roll for it.

scenario: ABC works hard at individual progression and XYZ spends many hours helping 60s get to 70 and gear up. are they both helping guild progression? yes. but XYZ is helping others beyond benefit to themself and common sense says they should get a return for that sacrifice if it makes sense by furthering guild progression. so if ABC and XYZ are equal in all respects and there is only one seat available for the raid, XYZ should get it if available. if both can go, XYZ should have preference over a loot drop – unless it is going to make a much better improvement for ABC because that helps the guild overall progress quicker.

so helping others where you get little or no benefit is rewarded with returned favor by the guild – makes plain common sense. goodness all around! it won’t be unbalancing or unfair to those focusing on individual progress – but helping the guild more than yourself pays back obvious dividends. not expecting any complaints there.

2) seats and loot are distributed in a manner that has the greatest positive impact to guild progression, if that makes sense. the name of the game is guild progression – progressing through current content on to the next piece of content. where allocation of raid seats and loot furthers guild progression, so shall it be done. this is actually rather simple. if it will make a huge positive impact to have one toon over another get a piece of gear, we will do what we can to get that toon the gear – which starts with putting them in a seat in the raid to get a chance at the drop. having said that, common sense shall rule the day. can’t have a bunch of toons waiting weeks for a turn to go on a raid! and if a loot drop provides benefit to all pretty much similarly, roll for it! we are not going into some fancy got-to-have-a-multi-million-dollar-website-tracking-point-system to distribute loot. we are in this as a family called a guild. if we can’t distribute loot in a way that makes common sense and is rewarding to all, we should just pug it all the way!

scenario: no scenarios required. if it makes a huge difference to our ability as a guild to make advances in content progression, it goes to them. if not, everyone is on equal footing to roll for it or pass!

an interesting side effect of the above two main ways that guild progression affects seat and loot allocations is that early on, the individual-focused route gets gear before we raid and then waits until the raid catches up to close to par whereas the guild-focused goes in less geared but catches up quickly. after that, everyone progresses equally. so in the long term, there is no real advantage one way or the other.

it does do a few very important things though. not the least of which is allows different playing styles to co-exist in harmony with no bickering. it also prevents a raid from gearing up some toons who become too geared up for the rest of them and then leave after the guild geared them (the most geared early on geared themselves) – since the raid will gear up the least geared and bring everyone to the same level of gearing (sort of) which is more conducive to the raiders working through more content together (rather than less conducive). it is also very easy to track and therefore reduces grumbling. and finally, it just makes plain common sense (big fan of that) while accommodating without restriction different playing styles.

so helping others and feeling like you are falling behind the ones that are out there for themselves right now? don’t worry – you’ll be caught up in no time. and in the long run, a large clot of 70s raiders start to gel and progress at the same rate. and frankly, that is bloody well key. because if you gear up a 10-man and then try to do a 25-man with 10 well-geared toons and 15 rag-tag geared toons, it never works — neither for morale or content. gear em all up as closely as possible and you have a fair shake chance at the 25-man content with as little a disruption to raiding as you can hope for when transitioning from 10-man content to 25-man content. laying the groundwork now for fair and common sense will save us grief and drama later.

again, this is really only a short term concern, because long term, everything equals out no matter what you do. = )

recruiting Mages!

we have a shortage of mages and their crowd control! room for 2x 67-70 mages that can level up and join our 70s to gear up for Kara. if you see a mage played well, talk to them about our guild culture. currently, Turlock is our only semi-active 70 mage and we are going to need more to flesh out the number of Heroics and our Kara raiding. specifically, looking for mages who understand that crowd control and staying under the threat threshold are more important than big numbers. they do not need to be at 8,000 mana and +600 spell damage with a sustained ~650 dps – but they should be on their way to it.

reduce dependency on pugs in the current 60-70 push

during the current push of 60->70, we recommend reducing guild progression dependency on pugs. pug dependency can inject delays in group formation, can cause a revolving door on the group roster and have zero accountability to complete the instance or support our goals; as such, they are not the most efficient means to completing instances. where we have suitable guildies online, do what we can to fill the group seats with them instead of a pug – even if that means interrupting grinding or leveling if we can. in other words, we’d rather see a 70 or two fill out an AC group and get it done than see three of our guildies not be able to get it done due to pug fissure and failure. granted, the top priority groupings start at 70 and work down. i.e. it is more important for the 69s to hit 70 than to fill a Ramps group. and no one should feel obligated to help. of course, helping your guild can only bring a good return on investment!

calling all 68-70 toons!

thank you in advance for the personal individual progression sacrifices you are making in focusing on guild progression as a whole and helping us reach a critical mass of 70s.

calling all toons level 68-70: for the next 3 weeks, focus your energies into leveling the 60-67 toons to be 68-70 with you.

while it will temporarily slow you down, it will definitely pay back in dividends. you all know this already for the most part, and it was simply missing an ‘official’ post with direction. the main reason for the post is to reach the 70s that are offline or to reach those that have not been online at the time that we have been having the online discussions and came to this plan agreement.

to give you an example, there is a healer at 67 and a tank at 69 and leveling them both would help the current 70s with their Heroics!

i can tell you that just a couple of hours of support each day cuts days off the leveling timeline and will allow us to have the critical mass we need to complete the rep grinds and gear grinds so that we can start Kara raiding earlier. it is also giving us the chances to work together with the very same people we will be raiding with and the value of that cannot be overstated.

with the right support every day from the collective of 68-70 toons, it looks like we can start raiding in Kara as soon as early to mid April. we have enough tanks and healers to start – we just need to get everyone leveled, rep’d and geared!

again, thank you in advance.

what to do if not “60+ and in the push to Kara”

had a good conversation last night with someone in the mid-forties levels who joined our guild just after we launched the ‘big push to Kara’ effort and the conversation centered about life in our guild when all the toons 60+ are on strict focus to prep for Kara (incl get to 70, rep grind, gear grind, and complete Kara as a guild). obviously, with everyone 60+ focused upwards, there are significantly fewer times that they are looking backwards and helping the lower level toons. also, there are simply fewer lower level toons than before – when I log on now, I tend to see the bulk of the toons being at least 50+ and typically 60+.

understandably, it can feel like you are not getting legendary guild support if you are below level 60 right now. you aren’t. and that is a conscious decision we took. the good news is that it is a very short period of time that is affected. the sooner we are in Kara raiding, the sooner life returns to normal – so to speak – and lowbies get lots of offers of run throughs and help from higher level toons. if you look at things only with eyesight extending to the immediate, yes, there is a shortage of help. if you look further forwards, you can see that not only do you get help, but now, you can go to Kara, too (and beyond)!

the guild needs to progress as part of its transition to raiding and with it comes some sacrifices. the 70s have to sacrifice personal immediate individual progression to help the 60+ reach their levels. the under 60s sacrifice getting as much help in order for the 60+ toons to ‘do their thing’ and meet the progression goal. we are not an individual-focused me-me-me guild – thankfully – we are a collection of individuals that are guild-focused (for the most part and for most of the time!). this is one of those times where the lower levels need to band together to help each other rather than rely on the upper levels.

it is a good time to get to know other lower levels in the guild and forge those relationships. it is a good time to look backwards yourselves and seek out the toons that are moving up towards you and help them so that you now have several toons your level to level with. e.g. I pointed out 3 toons in the 30s that the mid-forties should help because then they would have a foursome with all the key roles in it already – they’d be able to do any group quest, quest or instance at level together instead of neither the 30s being able to without some pugs and neither the 40 be able to without 4 pugs.

for now – dig deep into our guild culture and help each other so that you have enough peers at level and progress in a similar wave upwards. it is after all part of the essence of our guild. i know it can be frustrating seeing all the 60+ toons online and none of them helping you with Duskwood or Tanaris. but for now, for just a short while, i have asked them to focus on getting to Kara – bear with them for a short while and you’ll find that you get all kinds of help again and instead of a VC run through right now, you get a seat in Kara with 9 other well-geared guildmates or you get help doing Heroics to get geared for Kara — and we cannot position ourselves to do that if we do not currently go through this growth pain.

as always, i do see higher level toons offering to help (they need breaks from hardcore leveling) and i do see run throughs and i do see counter-gank-assistance happening – it just is less prevalent than usual for right now.

if you were thinking of re-speccing to a healer – now is a good time to tell me

as you all know, one of the defining cornerstones in our guild is that we will not ask you to re-spec. ever. play what you think you will enjoy playing. having said that, i tend to let ‘nature take its course’ when it comes to specs and raiding. case in point: we have several healing-capable-class toons about to be 70 or at 70 but they are still planning on being DPS-spec. however, we do not have enough healers to raid Kara. i’m pretty confident that nature will take its course and those 3x healer spots in the raid will get filled. i know the 2x tanking spots are filled. and we have more than enough DPS to fill the 5x dps spots. now, it may be the case that if no one that can heal wants to heal — and we will respect that — that we have to recuit 3x healers in (no small task at all!) – but it is unlikely that we will be able to flat out recruit 6x healers in and therefore be able to run two raid groups so that we don’t have a long line of DPC-spec toons waiting for a raid spot. i.e. some of the healing-capable DPS will likely re-spec because it will practically guarantee them a spot in the raid.

caution: do not re-spec before you talk with me! if 8 of you go and re-spec all at once, well… actually… no, that would be fine by me! so ignore the caution!

but seriously, if you are thinking of re-speccing to healer, do it BEFORE you get completely geared up as dps and we recruit/assign the healer spots to someone else! 4x healers is a comfortable number to have if we are going to run one 10-man raid a week, 8 if we are going to run two raids. so far i have two 70 healers and Rhael is on a long vacation from WoW and Morepi has not re-specc’d yet nor has he played in weeks (but he will return when needed). so if we had to put money on it, we have zero active 70 healers right now.

the line to sign up for raids as a healer starts here! tell Ironhelm!

‘raid times’ scheduling is beginning!

last night, Dorkonus recommended that we begin scheduling our ‘raid times’ and use them – for now – to level our 60+ crowd (we have 20+ of them) and to get ready for Kara. it was discussed in general chat and well received. in the terms of a good Guiness ad, “Brilliant!”. standing up ‘raid times’ does a number of things for us that are important to our ability to actually do raids. for one, it helps us all set aside time in our normal rl and game time that we know is going to be on a fixed, predictable schedule – and it allows everyone to have input into adjusting it so that we can cover the best periods of time (e.g. Saturday morning may be a terrible time if none of the healers are available!). it flips the mind-switch from a ‘casual online whenever’ mindset to a ‘my guild needs and expects me online at these times’ mindset. it should also shake out pretty fast if we have two shifts rather than one (i.e. some can only play at night and some only on weekend daytimes). we’ll see. for now, scheduled times will be ‘adjustable’ to fit the greater needs of the guild.

from the perspective of benefit to the individual toons, there is a defined time(s) each week when you know you will be able to get all-guildie groups to either quest or do instances/raids. you get a chance to work closely with the same people that you are going to be raiding with and learn how to work with each other and the specific particulars of each toon (e.g. just how big a heal does that healer land on average?). and of course, to the toons not yet Kara-ready, it is a huge boon because you get loads of help to quickly become Kara-ready — which in turn moves the date closer for when we can all start raiding Kara as a guild.

all 60+ should make a very serious effort to take advantage of this and all 70s should make a serious effort to support it. in other words, if you are 60 or higher, show up! granted, the initial scheduling may not suit your rl schedule and so you may need to wait until the scheduling both expands and adjusts. if that is the case, send Ironhelm an in game mail to that effect so that I don’t lump you into the “disinterested and unengaged” group! (Note, to date we do not have any of those.)

Dorkonus has recommended we start with one day a week: Sunday afternoon. This Sunday, 2 p.m.- 5 p.m. (server time), we will be working on Kara preparations. depending on how many people show up, i’ll break us out into groups as the circumstances need. later tonight, i will add the event to the GroupCalendar.

if Sunday 2-5 pm does not work for you, *let me know*. tell me when does work for you. we are not trying to edge people out, we are beginning what is one of the most complicated and difficult things to do in WoW – find time periods where we can reliably and consistently field 10-man – and subsequently 25-man – raids despite everyone having real life demands and living in different time zones!

at this point we do not really have a basis for a good feel on how often we will raid per week per raid group. (i.e. will we have two 10-man raid groups raiding twice a week each but on different days or one 10-man raid group raiding 3 times a week?) however, starting now to shake out and get sorted out will help firm up ‘how much raiding can this guild raid if this guild were a raiding guild’ (say that fast 3 times!). so send me or tell me that you are planning on raiding, which toon(s) you plan to raid on, which role(s) you plan to perform, and when you can – or cannot – raid.

see you Sunday afternoon.

honey, pick up a healer on the way home!

as you are leveling to 70, or rep grinding, or doing heroics, or… keep an eye out for good healers. they are the players that are just plain good players and know their class well – especially their class’ role in a group. it’s not about gear – although if they know how to gear up, that is a good starting indicator. it’s about those spells landing like they knew they needed to be cast even before they were needed.

i encourage you all to look for those rare individuals and recruit them to our guild if they are level 60 or higher. we already are ramping up to begin raiding and are at most two months away from actively raiding Kara on a weekly schedule – that is a short time to find and help good players level, rep, key, and gear for Kara. right now, we are mostly short on healers – like everyone else.

also, if you see one of our healers online, ask them if they need help – the sooner they get to your content, the sooner they can heal for you!