?Raid Prep vis a vis Faction Rep?

[Valshenna]

Fact: Each level of end-game content requires increasing levels of gear requirements.

Fact: Pretty much any end-game 5-man instance is associated with at least one faction. Specifically, you've got Honor Hold/Thrallmar, Cenarion Expedition, Lower City, the Sha'Tar, and Keepers of Time (the Big5).

Fact: In addition to items from drops while increasing faction rep, the factions themselves generally have a few very high quality rare and epic items.

Question: Has anyone used average rep levels with the Big5 as an objective standard for guild recruitment or to approximate raid preparation?

For instance, suppose you wanted to give your guildmembers an objective standard they need to meet before being allowed to raid in Karazhan or something. Certainly it is possible for a fresh lvl70 to quickly get keyed for KZ and still be in mostly greens, but without significant upgrades such a character would be woefully prepared to actually contribute to a KZ raid.

But what if there was a standard that in order to raid you have to have, say, Honored reputation with all of the Big5, Revered Reputation with at least 3/5, and Exalted reputation with at least 1/5? How likely would it be that a character with those reputation levels would have also acquired enough gear to be good to go for Karazhan? And how would the levels change for things like Gruul's or Magtheridon's lair, or even Serpentshrine Cavern?

I just pulled those numbers out of the air, but what do you all think would be a good objective and reasonable standard that would indicate that someone has put in the necessary time to prepare for raids? After all, Karazhan has shown that players can no longer freeload like the could in the old 40-man raids :wink:

[Regrets]

Although alot of ppl dis kara , becuz of the 10man epic instance that mostly benefit the original 10man who kicked off with it & @ many times disallow new member to join in because they might slow their initial clearing process & pve progression.

But I would say Kara is a gd kick off by Blizz to be more prepared for the first few 25man instance (Gruul & Mag) . It allow more ppl to be better geared than just lvl70 normal instance .

Imo, If I will to start kara all over again, with a brand new 9man members. My basic requirement is (read up the guides for the bosses, for e.g. If this week I'm aiming for Maiden, I expect them to read up & really understand the boss fight for Attumen , Moroes & Maiden). To assure this I usually open a thread with the guide link in it & ask the members to sign it after reading in the thread. Other than that, I would require them to prepare basic raid pots like Elixir of major agi, etc for the approriate classes. & a bonus will be if they actually run alot of 70 instance for blue gears.

Yes I know it sounds abit tedious but no choice, theres no way I'm letting anyone leech the gear, if they want it , they gotta put in effort & work for it, its not call Epic for fun.

For reputation, I dont think setting any requirement is necessary though there are some decent pve gears if u get exalted with some, e.g. Shatar Epic shield/Healing mace. But they can easily be compared with other 5man instance mace/shield, better than nothing & less time-straint. But if I will to put on a reptuation requirement like what u intend to do. I would say, get revered with those rept that give u head enchant/shoulder enchant . Like Keepers of time , Cenarion Rept, Aldor/Scryer.

[Justinledwards]

I joined a raiding guild at level 49 on my shammy... recommendations and my intent to level and raid got me in.

Like the story moopy told somewhere in the forums - recruit people you like playing with and take your time about it.

If you recruit someone and say - must have all keys, be attuned etc, they are going to expect you to put that attunement to good use. Or they will move on quickly. So you can't recruit at a standard much higher than where your guild is at

My recruitment style is based on recommendations, and spending a bit of time with people - that's in real life. Run an instance with them, invest some time in the recruitment. It's not a simple checklist - although what they have achieved may tell you a lot about the sort of player they are.

end-ramble.

[Schift]

Valshenna, I think that is an interesting idea, using rep as a guide to help see a player's dedication and overall game progress. It is true that they would probably have aquired a decent amount of good gear and be better prepared. I would just make sure that one would use it as a recomendation and not a requirement.

[Twoflower]

we only take new people which have ALL heroic keys.

that should take care of the rep ^^

[Telmar]

Yep, we only recruit ppl with their TK trials done, meaning that have to have at least the important heroic keys, and know the instances well.

[Oatmealsmurf]

Our guild is in the same place ... we don't require all heroic keys hard and fast but you need to be very close to obtaining them and absolutely have to have your Resevoir key for SSC attunement.

[DraedynLei]

My current guild asked me about keys before I joined but at the time all I had was my kara attunement. My overall gear and promise to continue rep grinding even as I raided got me the rest of the way. Even now, I still need my lower city key. But considering that after raiding, I only have a couple of days to farm heroics. You don't need all four keys for that.

[Valshenna]

The good thing about bright-line standards is that they leave no ambiguity--everyone knows exactly what is expected of them. The drawback is that they are often poor surrogates for what is really sought. In this case, the goal is a bright-line standard in lieu of inspecting every players' gearset(s) to determine whether they have the stats needed to contribute to successful raids. However, there's lots of great gear to be gained from Crafting and PvP in addition to instance grinding, and there's certainly some players that perform well with sub-par gear and other players that perform poorly with superb gear!

What I'm thinking of doing is creating a new guild on my server that will serve as the springboard for a larger raiding organization. In order to be considered for raids in the bigger group, the bright-line standards must be met, but the overall purpose of the parent guild will be to assist people in meeting those standards. Or something like that.

Certainly for something like Serpentshrine Cavern, being keyed for it would be mandatory, and that pretty much requires (as far as I know) being heroic keyed for everything. I doubt the group I'm thinking about forming would start out anywhere near that level. My server was created Post-BC as a transfer server, and our progress as a server has been a bit slower than some of the older more established servers. I think the first Maulgar kill on the server happened just last week!

Thanks for the comments though--it's always interesting to see all the different ways people use to get things done :thumbsup:

[moopy]

My recruitment style is based on recommendations, and spending a bit of time with people - that's in real life. Run an instance with them, invest some time in the recruitment. It's not a simple checklist - although what they have achieved may tell you a lot about the sort of player they are.

Our application template asks questions about why people want to raid, what they hope to get out of it, as well as past experience. It also asks questions like "if you hear the raid leader give bad information, or suggest a bad strategy, how would you deal with it?". Coupled with questions about why people chose their current spec and gear, and what it does for them, it's pretty revealing. The way that people answer all of this also speaks volumes- whether they can actually communicate clearly, and indeed follow instructions. Someone who fills in the template and answers all the questions coherently will do a lot better than someone who merely spams a wall of txtspk talking about all the ZOMFGepixx that they want to own.

[Oatmealsmurf]

SSC just requires that you have your resevoir key so you can get to the quest NPC who is in heroic slave pens. You might be thinking about the Eye where you have to complete the trials which is heroic in all the level 70 instances.

[Valshenna]

moopy--totally agree with you on that one! I've always felt that forum applications should be a mandatory part of recruitment. If someone is too lazy to take the time to visit a website and fill out a thoughtful application, what does that say about their committment to raiding or ability to follow instructions!

Oh, and yeah, SSC does only require heroic reservior key--I had confused that with the Eye--doh!

[DraedynLei]

Coupled with questions about why people chose their current spec and gear, and what it does for them, it's pretty revealing. The way that people answer all of this also speaks volumes- whether they can actually communicate clearly, and indeed follow instructions. Someone who fills in the template and answers all the questions coherently will do a lot better than someone who merely spams a wall of txtspk talking about all the ZOMFGepixx that they want to own.

This I totally agree with. Though in some cases, you just don't know how truly annoying certain people are until you raid with them. But in my case, having recently applied and been accepted in my guild, the class leaders basically went back and forth with me on the forums after my application asking specifics about gear, tactics, and preferences. Those kinds of things do tell a lot about a player. But ultimately I had to run an instance with at least two guildies who would vouch for me. Nothing like a little try out to show off what you can bring to the guild.

[Herald of Doom]

Application with:

Your gear (and why)
Your build (and why)
Your professions (and why.. Tip: anything less than maxed First Aid = no thank you)
Your reasons for joining THIS raidgroup and not other raidgroup a, b or c.

If those all work out, you get two trialruns with raidmembers (preferably classleaders). By work out I mean that the general impressions should be good. We used to work with gearrequirements but we dropped those.

That's more or less still the old procedure of recruiting from back in the MC/BWL/aq40 days and we kept it,works pretty good.

HoD