Raid Direction

Hey guys,

I know the idea that most folks are running with is to get a second 10-man team
going and ultimately move into 25 man raiding. I've been through this a few times
and I can tell you that that generally doesn't work too well.

One of two things will happen:

1. One group will be the "power" group and have some successes, but the second
group will flounder and good players there will start to get bored and look elsewhere.

2. The two groups will split the good players. Neither group will be successful in
progression for a while and so regular players will have to run the same content
over and over for other people. This would probably work the best, but in my
experience the regular players lose interest.

My suggestion is to consider pulling all of our best players together in some 25-man
stuff and pug if you have to to fill up the group. Our loot system would work very
well with it and it would bring everyone in Defenders together as a team.

You would also keep track of puggers you like and invite them back. This especially
works if our 25-man raids were on the same nights most weeks. There are a lot of
good players who's guilds are hitting a slow spot right now or are not doing certain
25-mans.

We could at least try this with Ony (small comitment, easy to break up if the group
isn't solid).

Side note: Stiyle is heaps good raid dps and needs to get into some Defender's
action when we can! He gets bored waiting and falls asleep....

it is a good point

I think based on our saturdays run, we still have a long way to go in terms of fielding a team of 25 guildies, let alone a team that we are confident can clear content. We are still short a number of main spec healers and tanks which makes it difficult to form any kind of "core group" for the 25 man content. I was wondering if our aim is to develop the currect set of guildies to a stage where they are proficiant in whatever roles they choose? Or perhaps to recruit geared and exprianced players who know their characters into the guild. This also has bearing on the 2nd 10 man group as they will also require specialised heals/tanks to succeed and progress.

Wow these are some rather good comments reguarding raiding....


I think we need to make decisions as a guild about them as no one person can decide! I completely understand ur point Niki about the two group this generally doesnt work because one flounders and the other forges ahead. Similarly that if players are split between then some get bored etc. Yes 25mans can pull everyone together as a team but it is not enough as there are to many lacking in raid experience neccessary & gear in a number of circumstances. (tho there are also many who do have experience and gear). Our 1st 25man was a huge fail but i think that we made huge progess for last saturday nights one!! If we continue to improve at that rate then there shouldnt be a real issue, however it does require a level of patience and commitment from experienced raiders. We REALLY need all the experienced players there to perpetuate success!!!![/b]

I have now conceeded that we need to get the 2nd group up and running purely because we have numerous people now wanting to raid but cant because of only having one group. We cant expect them to wait around too much longer and i believe unfair also.

Perhaps as a suggestion might be to have the two groups on a rotation where by one week the groups are mixed then the next we have a group going for certain progressions and hard modes. realistically it should only take a month or so of raiding to have both groups sufficiently geared and experienced for both to b working on achievements.

[b]
Any suggestions on how to make this all work are welcomed!!!!!![b] It would be wonderful for DOS to achieve this success and awesome for all the members!!!!!



RE side note niki: Yes styile is a good raid DPS but so are Veth/feo, pedi, deathhunter(up and coming) Box's alt and many more. The main issue i believe to b for starting up the 2nd group is tanks and heals not to mention who will raid lead...

Oh, hey Key, had to think about your name for a bit!

Well, firstly, I’d like to thank you and Itash for pulling together the 25-mans…
that can be very hard, and occasionally painful, to do.

I don’t think either of the Saturday runs was a failure at all. Remember,
25-mans take more time, and pugging them can be really difficult. It takes
a lot of patience. You can ease the problems considerably by finding another
10-man guild and forming an alliance with them for 25-man content.
Combining the forces, there would likely be few spots to actually pug.

Also, remember pugging Ulda, since it is older content and really takes
more work then ToC, is actually harder than getting a good ToC group
together. I will post this separately, but Stiyle has been running a pick up
25-man ToC run, on a weekly basis, with Armed Forces. They do a full
clear and Armed Forces contributes only about half of the members. Only
one of the three tanks was a member.

We probably should be looking to run 25-man Onys, ToCs or even Vault
runs. Ulda is a good challenge for the players, but much of the gear that
drops is outdated now and the badges can be earned in heroics.

As to players wanting to join the raids, firstly, I would suggest that people
encourage them to come on the forums and post so that everyone knows
who they are. Communication like that can be critical when you are trying
to grow a guild. Secondly, I would say, in all honesty, that they better have
gotten at least the tier 8 (I think) chest and hat from running heroics and
one or two pieces of Triumph badge gear or they aren’t really trying that
hard and aren’t likely to make good raiders.

For 10-man purposes, we can run it however folks want, but for the guild
to progress at all, we need to keep doing full 10-man ToC clears. I would
also suggest keeping at least one…and preferably two nights for 25-man
stuff. The other 3 nights could be filled up with anything that people want,
including efforts to gear up guildees that are willing to put in the effort to get
their equipment up to raiding quality.

If you want to get a second team going, a dedicated night for doing ToC10 and
Ony with them would be very valid. Ulda is a tempting but difficult distraction
that gives lesser rewards and will create more frustration.

I think the focus should be on building the guild we want to be when the next
expansion comes out. Do we want to be a good 10-man guild, or do we actually
want to have a run at being a 25 man guild by that point (remember, there are
many more challenges in 25-man content…are people really up for that? It can
be frustrating)?

Finally, I’ve noticed people getting really short lately and seen a bit of burning
out behavior. Folks should try not get so frustrated. It is just a game….and you
don’t always win, or take down a brand new boss every time you play. Take
a night off, if you need to, but keep the game fun.

Thats a really great response niki!! With some very valid points.. dont have long to chat right now but..

RE:- 25man,

we r starting with ULD not so much for gear but for raid experience and players can b less geared and i believe that there are a few drops people r after from there, however we will be aiming to move onto 25 TOC content. also we initially tried to set up colaborative runs with other guild so there would b minimal need to pug but it jus didnt happen repeatedly.. It would b awesome if we could set it up and plz put forward any guild that would like to help. But simply put we want to have a 25man hence its current structure.

RE:- 2nd raid group times.. we would want the 2 to be running concurrently or work out times suited to them and assume that they will be doing TOC, ULD and ONY.. ULD has simply been mentioned so that it maximises range of available players gear wise initially. Tho as ASAP move to raiding afore mentioned raids.


Site promo... IDK what else to do we do ask for people to post and check out website.. mayb i'll throw it into guild welcome again.


Okies plz feel free to chat to me more about it in vent if u would like. PLZ keep the ideas coming tho :-D

“we r starting with ULD not so much for gear but for raid experience and players can b less geared and i believe that there are a few drops people r after from there, however we will be aiming to move onto 25 TOC content. also we initially tried to set up colaborative runs with other guild so there would b minimal need to pug but it jus didnt happen repeatedly.. It would b awesome if we could set it up and plz put forward any guild that would like to help. But simply put we want to have a 25man hence its current structure.”

Sure, I am thinking that with the release of 3.3 and Icecrown Citidel,
we should go one of two ways:

1. Hammer it very hard with our pretty well-equiped 10-man crew.
2. Grow our main raiding crew to 25-man and change that to the
guild dynamic for the new instance.

Whichever way we go, we should have an idea when the release hits what our
direction is and maybe plan our raiding now to correspond. If you want to go
for guild progression, you probably should consider dropping all other raids
except ToC heroic when ICC is released.

Oh, and 25-man pug groups would be much easier with the new cross-realm queueing.

If I do run across a 10-man group to combine with for 25-mans, I will see what I can do.
One thing we could do is pick a couple nights and advertise it on the realm forum.

BTW, we could also have our guys log on on a given raid night and look to join up
with another guild’s 25-man run (whether Ony, Ulda, Arch). Whether we go full 25-man
or stay 10-man for ICC, that experience, and potential gear, will only help us.


“RE:- 2nd raid group times.. we would want the 2 to be running concurrently or work out times suited to them and assume that they will be doing TOC, ULD and ONY.. ULD has simply been mentioned so that it maximises range of available players gear wise initially. Tho as ASAP move to raiding afore mentioned raids.”

Understandable. I do hope it works. The problem I see is a shortage of tanks/healers,
limited group distribution, and a lack of a willing raid leader. Those issues are easier to
address when we are all in one group.


“Site promo... IDK what else to do we do ask for people to post and check out website.. mayb i'll throw it into guild welcome again.”

Sure…..and just using it a bit, as we are now, encourages others! Also, if people
express a desire to get more involved in raiding, maybe encourage them to introduce
themselves on the forums so folks know who they are. Also, it helps if the officers post
their thoughts about guild direction and such.

2 corrections on my previous ramplings:

1. Cross-realm queueing will be available for heroics, but not raids
in 3.3, so no luck there. (I will be running groups every day....hope the
random thing doesn't come up Occulus ).

2. For gearing purposes, Triumph badges will be available in all the
raid instances including Naxx....so we should go there on off-days
and destroy the place if we have some undergeared folks at that time.

Nikita wrote:

2. For gearing purposes, Triumph badges will be available in all the
raid instances including Naxx....so we should go there on off-days
and destroy the place if we have some undergeared folks at that time.

also, i read on wowinsider that sapphiron/KT will be unlocked with patch 3.3 (you won't have to do all the prior bosses). that means there will probably be lots of people/pugs just doing a Sapph/KT run.

another thing is that i thought i read that blizz is implementing weekly/daily quests for raids. so you can get emblems of frost by doing a repeatable quest for either a specific raid or any raid (it wasn't clear). it will probably work like the WG repeatable quests and reset once a week (when all the raids reset). this will give incentive to do all the older raid instances like OS which are kind of dead these days since they don't give Emblems of Triumph (except for the occasional 3d zerg pug).

Sorry nikki wrote a whole big long essay response to ur last post but somhow it got lost :-( waaah.
If u want talk to me in wow and i can give the the overview of what it said.

I also outlined who the heals tanks etc seem to look like being for our new raiding group