Time to Recruit Perhaps?

Aezelkvalae · Post by **Aezelkvalae** » March 5th, 2009, 12:26 am

First I want to thank Daghi for taking some initiative on the new application suggestion. IDK if we will go with that, I'm not an officer but at least it is a step to get moving. So, perhaps this whole post is me overreacting and feel free to tell me so. However, for 5 weeks now solid we have struggled to pull together a viable 25 man raid. If you stop and look at the list of people in the guild who used to raid regularly in BC you will realize we have lost quite a few core raiders. IMO the truth is, we no longer have enough regularly active members to have even two solid raiding nights. I realize recruiting and finding people who mesh well with our guild is tough. However, the solution to that is to have a very thorough application form that lays out exactly what kind of raid AND personal behavior is expected in both guild chat and out in the general WoW universe representing Forged Alliance. We can't be afraid to both #1 say no to applicants and #2 ask people to leave the guild after a trial period if they aren't working out. Some of you may know I complain a bit about certain things, however the core raid group we have is good. We manage to down bosses even though we are short-handed, start late all the time, and have people playing offspec to be able function. However can you imagine how good it could be if we could start on time, have 25 people every night, and not be scratching for the right raid composition. We are a casual raiding guild, not a hardcore raiding guild, so I think the answer is to have more bodies available instead of putting pressure on people to show up when really real life isn't going to allow them to. Lastly, I think we have gotten a bit lax in our expectations of our fellow raid members. Just because we are a casual raiding guild does not mean IMO that people shouldn't be expected to put the minnimal amount of work into their class. There used to be a time in this guild when 25 man raiders were expected to come fed, flasked, and having looked up boss fights ahead of time. Maybe I'm off base but it feels like right now our level of expectation of our raiders has fallen somewhat low. I like the other aspects of this game, but to me the fun part is raiding, and I know many other people in this guild feel the same way. When I go to graduate school full time, hold down a job on the side, and have tons of other real life activities just like many of other people in the guild do, it has become frustrating to work hard to show up and be ready and then see raids not happen due to attendance problems. Anyway, my 2 cents.

Nagashi · Post by **Nagashi** » March 5th, 2009, 7:56 am

^ Agree I have been thinking this for weeks. I make sure my kid is fed,her homework is finished and my housework is done all in time to be ready for the nightly raid. I make sure I have food buffs, flasks, elixirs and potions. Then I log on early (most times) so as to avoid the que, then wait... and wait... and wait.. until we either start very late with not quite enough ppl or we call the raid off. Makes for not wanting to even try at all. In the meantime I see scrub guilds all over getting drakes, acheivements and all the other neat stuff from consistent raiding while we lag behind.

WarmApplePie · Post by **WarmApplePie** » March 5th, 2009, 10:28 am

/signed

All I have to add is that if we actually showed up on time and ready to go we could clear the current content in 1 night and then be even more casual. We've cleared spider wing in 20mins. I've been there when we started late and still cleared Plague and Military in an hour and fifteen mins. We can clear Naxx in one night. That would give us more time to be casual players!

There is no reason to spend 3 nights in Naxx unless we're going for achievements (soon hopefully

As far as where to recruit, we have a bunch of friends in General Goods we could see if they wanted to raid. And some of us seem to be close with people from Masquers, we could see if they wanted to merge. That's just an idea for drawing players from already established connections. Besides that I would recommend the EJ forums. They actually have a forum for recruitment threads. It costs money to post there, but if we ended up getting people to transfer to our server to play with us then we would know that they appreciated our raid style. I would also suggest to stay AWAY from the wow realm forums lol.

sxycoree · Post by **sxycoree** » March 5th, 2009, 12:19 pm

I really don't have much input cause the previous posts have preety much said it all, I just agree with all of the above. I am hoping that all my items will soon be returned and I'll be able to start raiding again. I love raiding and look forward to it every week. I really hope that we can get enough people that it becomes as regular as it was in BC, so whatever it takes to get there I'm all for it.

Daghi · Post by **Daghi** » March 5th, 2009, 1:42 pm

I agree, I think we should start looking at recruiting some new raiders. I attempted to go through armory and make a list of the number of raiders in the guild by classes using the ranking, but then I realized those numbers don't mean much because of innactives and alts. So I'll just say what class I think we should be recruiting from what I've seen in raids. We should recruit ~5 people, 3 healers and 2 dps
Rogues: 1-2, any spec
Warlocks: 1-2 any spec
Shamans: 1 resto, 1 other
Pallies: 1, holy
Priests: 1, healing

Beiner · Post by **Beiner** » March 5th, 2009, 1:54 pm

A Spriest wouldn't hurt either. I'm not sure if the new content requires any type of raid composition, but simply because we don't have one that raids with us (except Inori from time to time).

WarmApplePie · Post by **WarmApplePie** » March 5th, 2009, 6:38 pm

Aight so in my infinite boredom at work I decided to do a simple Excel sheet showing raid attendance. This way maybe we can see more exactly what classes we need to recruit. Mostly I did this because I was bored but hopefully it'll help. I just put X's in the boxes to show that people were there more then 2/3rds of the raid, but I did originally take down the percent of presence that people were in a raid. Although some numbers were funny, for instance 1 day we only had 25 raiders but 5 people were there less than 66% it said. So I just put X's in the box for them that day because they had to be there. If there is anything you want me to add to this, or anything you want me to change about this let me know. I'm sure I'll be bored tomorrow.

Edit - try the link now.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key= ... CLT1SgWmDg

WarmApplePie · Post by **WarmApplePie** » March 5th, 2009, 6:41 pm

Oh also I was going to take the people that were there for 2/3rds of our raid and insert their class into (http://raidcomp.mmo-champion.com/) so that we could see what buffs we needed. Although I'm starting to think that 2/3rds attendance isn't that good and we should be looking for more like 80% or higher.

Kaittlynn · Post by **Kaittlynn** » March 5th, 2009, 8:50 pm

Just putting my 2 cents in... We do have friends in GG and Masqu that could come...BUT we need to solidify a FAIR loot policy for them in order to start bringing some one else in. It is not fair for them to not get loots just because they are not in the guild. It is nice to gear up guildies, but when we are in a situation where we wouldn't really be able to go without them, it is only fair to get them loots too. Getting someone from GG to start running with us is not risky like a new guildmate. The fact that there are still good friendships there despite the guild name change should be enough evidence of that. I can't speak for them, but I would think that some of them would like to be regulars in our groups. We have been running consistent 10 mans with them without any problems (and I didn't expect a problem in the first place). To be quite honest, I still consider them to be my guildmates. I joined FA coming on two years ago. I came to follow my husband who had decided to switch here to play with Chuunks. It wasn't long before we both got very close to many FA guildies. We have pretty close ties to everyone in GG and I really don't think it matters what name is under their names... to me General Goods = Forged Alliance.

I think that it is obvious that we need more people, but we pretty much would have everyone that we needed if we teamed back up with General Goods. In the end if we did recruit, we are taking a risk that they will be bad players, loot whores and QQ more than we already do. If we got together with a fair loot policy to benefit GG or masquers we already know that we would have their loyalty and commitment...Just my thoughts, take em or leave em...

Rathr · Post by **Rathr** » March 5th, 2009, 10:50 pm

Jim(wapau), I cannot believe you spent two hours of your work time creating this spread sheet. Get to work!!!

Daghi · Post by **Daghi** » March 6th, 2009, 12:36 pm

Jim, thanks for making that spreadsheet, even if we don't end up recruiting anyone that information is good to have. I would LOVE if FA and GG merged, it would do a lot of good to boost our active raider numbers, plus we wouldn't have any of the unknowns we would have with recruiting people (not to mention I kind of like those guys). IIRC in an old guild whenever there were non-guildies in the raid we would just /roll on the loot. Which is a lot simpler than having to somehow incorporate them into the system we have now (we'd have to retro-actively add points for the loot every non-FA has previously gotten) or creating a new system to handle all this. OR we could use our loot system for items non-FA people can't use/don't want /roll for others. IF we don't end up merging what we could do going foward is just add them to our DKP list and they gain and spend DKP like everyone else. Even if we do merge we still may need to do a little recruiting, which is fine, I can be a real jerk over the internet and anyone who still wants to join after talking to me is bound to atleast be decent.

WarmApplePie · Post by **WarmApplePie** » March 6th, 2009, 2:46 pm

So even though not everyone has responded, I'm sure 98% of us feel the same. GG joining back up/raiding with us would be a good thing, but has anyone asked them how they feel about it yet?

Even if they do come raid again, there wasn't that many of them that left. Look at my spreadsheet there are only 13 of us that have been to ~80% of the raids. That means we're 12 "dedicated" raiders short. Now we could probably handle the next content if we had 20 "dedicated" and ~10ish that rotated in/out or came when schedules allowed. That'd be 80% of a 25man raid, that's halfway decent and realistic I think.

Blizzard (and the players too) like the hardmode encounters.. I'm not harboring grand delusions of 3drakes, but 2 would be nice and doable. And striving for that 2nd level in Ulduar would be something I'd like to think we could do.

WarmApplePie · Post by **WarmApplePie** » March 6th, 2009, 4:16 pm

Aight so to follow up. I've made this little diagram to show how we can start. Some of the names can be changed where needed, the specifics are fluid, this is just a simple thing to help us get started in the right direction. HAPPY FRIDAY!!!

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfpq225b_1cxqrkn3j

Tsuni · Post by **Tsuni** » March 6th, 2009, 4:20 pm

I agree we need more people, but what I really agree with is the need to be careful who those people are. I've been in two guilds now that started getting worried about raid attendance and took in a mass amount of people at once and died cause the meshing went terribly. I really don't want to see that happen again.

But ya like Wapau said, we should be able to do 2 drakes and it'd be really nice to push for hard mode stuff eventually in Ulduar. If only we can get a good handful of quality raiders that don't mind the semi-casual way things are done here and aren't loot crazy and self-centered. And they need to be people that play a lot or it'll just be like it is right now, a guild full of good players with inconsistant schedules. I've talked about this to some people before, but I think the biggest issue right now is you don't need guilds for the current content. Naxx/Sarth/Arch are so easy and drop so much loot that even pugging you can get geared to the teeth. Which is probably why we never get apps anymore unless it's from friends of guildies. I think our best bet is to find people that are geared already, but looking for a home for when Ulduar hits.

Drumble · Post by **Drumble** » March 8th, 2009, 6:34 pm

LOL <3 I had finally gotten out of the habit of checking these forums! Glad someone pointed me back ... I did have a question though, usually there's a line forming behind the active guy with Paul's mom, have we done away with that? Back on subject -- I'm not one to pontificate on things ...

Okay, now that we've all had our laugh. It seems to me that you're not so much looking for "dedicated" players as much as "reliable" players. That's really the distinction between a hard-core guild and a casual guild - "level of enthusiasm to raiding". (BOTH require reliable players or no raid obviously...) Apologies to those who have heard me relate this before, but I remember reading a forum somewhere that told a story of a guild leader that was looking for help on what to do with a problem guildee, he made all the raids early - had all his consumables - never complained, but had piss-poor DPS. The response was, essentially, embrace this guy with both arms and never let go. Late, unprepared, whiny "mighty" DPS are a dime-a-dozen.

At the end of the day ... there is NO perfect number, virtually every raid someone sits or someones FOAF comes. One might say a casual guild flourishes in this environment, whereas a hard-core guild gets frustrated and people leave and you recruit and the dynamic changes and management issue after management issue. Anyways, probably less important spending time trying to define yourselves, and more important to figure out what it is that you want to do. Do you want to have a consistant weekly raid that might not progress as far? Or do you want to struggle for a few months getting the perfect raid together that goes further? Both have merits.

Nagashi · Post by **Nagashi** » March 9th, 2009, 6:46 pm

Chuunks wrote Do you want to have a consistant weekly raid that might not progress as far? Or do you want to struggle for a few months getting the perfect raid together that goes further? Both have merits.

At this point FA is neither of those raiding has come to a complete stand still, therein lies the problem it's either recruit (get more ppl that are dedicated/consistent) or level alts, do dailies and pug content... .

Ofie · Post by **Ofie** » March 11th, 2009, 4:47 pm

Recrutiing the way a lot of the people want to recruit would just lead to disaster. Not only would we not progress further than we are right now, but there would be drama involved. I think the main thing that needs to happen now is to find out why exactly there's poor attendance, and what would need to be done to be able to change night. Maybe the nights aren't working out for a lot of people? Regardless, recruiting random unknowns is not going to help anything here. Getting our buddies from GG is going to help a lot, and hopefully working out whatever issues some people have for showing up would solve the other.

Ofie · Post by **Ofie** » March 11th, 2009, 4:49 pm

Nagashi wrote Chuunks wrote Do you want to have a consistant weekly raid that might not progress as far? Or do you want to struggle for a few months getting the perfect raid together that goes further? Both have merits. At this point FA is neither of those raiding has come to a complete stand still, therein lies the problem it's either recruit (get more ppl that are dedicated/consistent) or level alts, do dailies and pug content... .

Also, raiding isn't so much at a standstill as it is we're kind of just done. We don't currently have the coordination we'd need to do Maly25, but we can clear Naxx25 with no problem. There's not a ton of content to declare anything a standstill.