Laying down the law

[Metwell]

Hi People,

first of all - if this post is in the wrong forum - sorry. Please direct me to the right place and I will move on.

My guild has had a functioning Kara team for a while now. Clearing Kara is down to a one night operation and we are quite happy with our progress. We have started to set up a Kara B team and now we are having some problems. It SEEMS that some of the newer players have joined the guild to raid Kara but aren't ready for it (KaraB is a mix of people who have been raiding with KaraA for a while and new people). They either don't seem geared sufficiently or don't play well enough. We currently dont have any firm requirements stat or gear wise in order to raid because it was never an issue with our A team (we had about 16-18 who rotated through).

So people - can I get some help coming up with some clear and fair guild rules?

Does your guild have any cookie cutter requirements stat/spec/gear wise that could help me out? eg min requirements for new players to join your guild/raid with your guild.. that sort of thing. Basically how can you tell if someone is ready gear wise. I am looking for all classes/functions so Tank, off tank, melee dps, main heal, off heal, range dps (caster or hunter).

And apart from clear requirements - what raiding rules do you implement during a run? eg no talking on the vent channel during boss fight/loot allocation, what do you do about someone who AFKs all the time, or disconnects a lot (this is a problem with two of our players), being on time... Basically your guild rules/laws/expectations.

Anything you have that could help me to lay down the law would be appreciated. Once I have an idea how the players measure up in this way we can address playstyles :)

Thanks for your help.

[Lobothomy]

We have a trial period for our recrutes in which the class officer looks at spec, gear and cycles during combat. We give them 2 weeks to prove themselves / adapt their playstyle and if they aren't ready for it after 2 weeks we let them go.

Might be a good idea to split this job over you officer's (if you have them) they usually have the best idea on what the performance of their class should be and how to improve someone.

[Metwell]

So no specific requirements to get a trial? You will take em in green OL gear and let em try?

[phylogen]

I don't think most progression-minded guilds would accept people in mostly green Outlands gear. Blue gear is easy enough to get from instances and group quests. If a player hasn't taken the initiative to get themselves geared up by doing group quests and instances (and even BGs), it is unlikely that they will be an asset in Kara.

[Baboon]

If you get group B a good geared tank (from group A), it will be a lot easier for them. If they still make a mess of it, they are just bad :)

My guild does Kara runs with alts, but we always bring a good tank (one of those that can't be critted/crushed), or it will be a long evening.

[Lobothomy]

So no specific requirements to get a trial? You will take em in green OL gear and let em try?

Well, our guild is progressing in MH and we have T5 on farm. so what we do is require minimum T4 gear. They can pick up their role in the T5 content without too much trouble and we don't have to go back in content to gear them up. Once we dorp T5 and focus solely on T6 we will on recrute T5 geared people etc.

This obivously doesn't count for your situation and I might have missed the point in my previous post but we have the officers decide on min gea requirements. I personally didn't care if they were in green, blue, purple or orange gear. What I did care for were some specific stats. I am the rogue class leader so I checked on min AP, hit and crit.

I can look it up for you but I think i had 1400 AP, 20% crit, 150 hit as a min requirement. Pretty harsh requirements mind you.

[dwarfenhelm]

if you want to progress then id saylook at gear of every player who applies and see if they have any wrong spec gear for a start. hunters in spell dam gear or mages with melee crit gems is always a good indicator the player doesnt understand the class they play.
the gear needs to be on par with the instance/raid you are tryig to clear. dont bother with people dressed in greens for t4 raids and if your going for t5 raids then make sure the players are in t4 or similar gear.
then check the gems they use. are they vender gems ? (dont bother recruiting) are they cheap green qual gems ? (give trial and ask them to sort out)
and what enchants do they have ?. the players with no enchants as a rule dont care about getting better. and are the enchants suitable for the class. ie. hunters with mongoose shouldnt be touched with a barge pole
its so easy now to gear up for raids. the market economy on most realms is oozing with boe epics or blues on par with t4 gear and 5 man dungeons are so easy as well as having easy to do heroics and god badge reward gear. a lot of players should be able to gear up for kara and gruuls in only a few weeks of playing after hitting 70

[Aerath]

Gear is a nice clear indication of what people are like.

Crap gear, crap gems ? Crap player.

Okay gems, okay gear ? Might be worth a shot.

Good gear, good gems, good enchants, good application, good trial ? Huzzah - new guild mate.

You got trials for a reason - use 'em. Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because you took someone in for a trial, he's automatically in the guild. Kick them out if they're ignoramuses. Or just bad at their job. Or have an atrocious attitude.

A trial means just that, not an auto-accept, welcome in guild jobbie.

[rubberdubbie]

In our guild, we don't allow people who have more that 2 greens run Kara. We tell them to run 5 mans until they have only 2 greens.

[XCompanion]

For Kara these are pretty good minimums for classes i know:

I would say across the board 8k hps and 7k mana for non tanks.

For caster dps 800 +spell dmg. For those with crit builds crit 17% minimum (incl talents).

For healers 1100 +heal and 200 mp/5 for those it applies to.

These can all be hit in top end instance blues. If people can't put together these stats at minimum they just don't care and aren't going to be the raider you're looking for.

More than gear though, player familiarity and attention makes or breaks boss fights. Vent is the a big thing here. It sets the tone of the raid. If it's fun and loose people don't take it as seriously which is great if you all know what you're doing and have no trouble with the bosses. But like a football team after losing - the bus should be quiet if you're getting spanked. People will focus more. It can be hard to rein it in if you say "only on bosses". Make sure you have someone explaining the fights and taking questions before hand. Designate someone to call out phases and important events (like stopping shade's casting).

[clevins]

Use gear as a check on 2 things - attitude and understanding. If they don't care enought to get good gear by finding out what's out there and doing what needs to be done to get it, that's poor attitude. If they don't know what good gear is or what enchants and gems to use, that's poor understanding.

If they have green gems or no enchants, ask why. For example, green gems are perfectly fine IF the reason they don't have blue quality gems is that they're cloth dps who are spending gold on the Primal Mights for their Spellstrike gear.

In general good blue gear will be fine in Kara. There are some classes/specs where greens in certain slots are better than blues. And if there are easy craftables people should have or be working on those.

Stats - if you do the above stats will sort themselves out. And, frankly, if you have 16-18 people who do well in kara, they can give you minimums for their classes. Be reasonable - don't ask people to hit the stats of the A team that's been farming Kara for weeks.

Regarding AFKers, DCs etc... it comes down to attitude again. The constant AFKer has a poor attitude or a life situation that takes them away a lot. If it's life (little kids, etc) talk to them privately and explain that the other nine people are being inconvenienced and ask what they can do about it. If it's attitude tell them (again privately) that you can't take them if they keep afking a lot, esp without saying anything.

DCs... if it's a consistent thing, tell the person that they can raid once they figure out the issue, but it's not fair to the others to have someone who DCs a lot.

When I led Karas I also did a few things that were well-received:

1) Explanation of a boss fight when there were people who'd not seen it ending with a readycheck. Didn't understand something? Click No and ask, no dumb questions (it's faster to clarify than wipe and run back).

2) quick afks after each boss kill. 5 mins after each boss won't kill you and is a nice way to let people grab a drink, hit the bathroom, check on kids, etc.

3) Quick looting. Loot rules vary, but set them, make sure people know them and if they want something, they roll. If people need to compare an item to an existing one tell them to say something in vent ("hey, looking at that to see if it's better than X." Have a master looter who can loot things not wanted to a enchanter for DEing and put the shards in the guild bank so that they're available for use by people who need enchants.

[Cerberus]

Most things are covered here really. Great post by Clevins, sums it up really.

Just wanted to stress one thing. Attitude. 90% of all problems in a guild are related to this. A poorly geared player that listens to advice, stays focused, doesn't cause drama and agree upon the goals of the guild (usually meaning good of the guild>self) will last you so much longer than your average godly geared dps-dispenser asshole and will make the guild a better place to be in as well as raid with.

[Baboon]

Really agree on checking their gear to see if they understand their class. Before TBC I've picked really undergeared priest, but they happened to have every item that was known as good starter stuff, including the crafted purple robe. I prefer that over epiced out priests with Intellect enchants on their staff :/

[DrOsmius]

Just to add to the brainstorming....Expectations. I think it is very common for A team to have taken learning/wiping in stride when they were virgins there, but then progress in experience & gear to an expectation of 1-shots and 3hr clears. That is fine.

But when a B team is started, you have a conflict of expectations. The A's are very prone to being very intolerant of mistakes or glitches, even the same one's they made weeks ago. And the new B's don't expect to have to climb the same learning-hurdles that the original A's did.

So if anything happens, the mood sours, and then things turn worse. Grumbling raiders don't execute as well, its that simple. So it is possible you have this going on....it isn't so much that you are being insufficiently successful...just insufficiently successful relative to inflated expectations.

[Metwell]

Thanks for these responses guys. Very constructive.

We actually don't have a rogue in the A team so that role is a bit of a mystery to us. we had one who went on one run with A before we started B. He seemed ok that run but then when he ran with B he had respecced and wasn't doing as much damage and suddenly seemed not to be playing as well. Given we dont have a more experienced rogue we don't really have much advice for him. I will check out the rogue forums and see what I can learn there. Although I really am more inclined to send him there...

I think you may be right about expecttions playing a part. But only a part. We have been very clear that we expect B (with only the MT and me - lock dps - from the A team) to not do complete clear. But A DID at least get past Curator on first attempt. I recall reading that Curator is the first real test of the raid - finish him and you should be good for the next few encounters. BTW our MT is awesome. He was MT for A and was awesome then, but he is being killed badly by B. And his repair bills after attempts make my eyes water.

Alright - my plan is now clear. I am going to armory profile my guildies and check out the quality of their gear, is it blues or greens, appropriate to their class (afaik) and what gems have they put in. TBH I am not so concerned that they are 100% geared and ready - I agree that attitude and playstyle counts. I am still not hitcapped but routinely battle to lead dmg charts in boss and trash for A. I know what I can and can't do, how to maximise my output without drawing agro etc, And that seems to mitigate my lack of +hit. If I could rely on everyone else to do same then all would be well.

[XCompanion]

I had a rogue coming fairly closely to me in dps for a while, then suddenly he dropped. I asked him why and he said he had respecced from a sword/combat spec, to a dagger/subtlety spec. That could be your problem there.

[clevins]

My main is a raiding rogue so lemme comment a bit.
A Kara ready rogue should have stats close to the following WHEN THEY START.

AP: 1350 or so.
Crit: 20%. 25% if Combat Daggers (15/41/5)
HP: about 6.5k.
Hit: 150+. Hit is huge for a combat rogue.
72dps weapons at least, though unless they HATE PvP the S1 weapons are far the thing to get and give you a pair of 91dps weapons.

This basically means all blues - that's not hard to do. Search my posts i've posted a complete list a few times. Several blue pieces can be bought off the AH or crafted. The Fel Leather set (gloves, legs, boots) and Chestguard of the Dark Stalker should be about 100g total off the AH.

ENCHANT THE GEAR. NO EXCUSES. The bracer and glove AP enchants alone will give 50AP for insignificant cost. Gem everything. Low on gold? use green quality gems - something is better than nothing. This goes for every single member of your raid. Sockets should have SOMETHING appropriate in the, gear should have some level of an appropriate enchant.

SPEC
Combat Spec. 19/42/0, 20/41/0, 17/44/0 or, for daggers, 15/41/5. People will argue and tell you Mutilate can be viable. It can, but only if your gear supports it. Some rogues will tell you Subtlety can be raid viable. They're wrong. My gear lets me top DPS in SSC but i struggle to do more than 725dps or so as Sub. Insist they spec Combat.

On Curator if the tank is going down it's a healing issue. For new to raiding healers it's the first fight where they really need to learn mana efficiency. Pot early shadowfiend early (so the cooldowns are up later) downrank heals, etc. You may want to take 3 healers. The other thing on Curator is to have enough DPS to kill the flares fast enough so that you never have more than one up. Melee dps can struggle on this, dagger rogues esp as it's hard to attack from the back of a flare (where's the back of those things??). Elixirs have changed since I learned the fight and used them, but there used to be an arcane resist elixir... if dps is dying to the flare damage, see if it still exists and have the pop some. That also relieves strain on healers.

Finally, everyone should walk in with healing pots, mana pots and you might want to have folks buff up with foods, Wizard Oil, etc.

[XCompanion]

Low on gold? use green quality gems - something is better than nothing.


Personally I don't think this is acceptable. Most blue gems are 30-50g depending on the gem and economy. You need, at most, 15 of these. Even if every gem you buy is 50g thats only 750g. If you farm for 1 hour a day, you'll have that in week (if not lots lots more. I make 200g an hour farming). This goes back to attitude. If you can't put in an hour a day to farm, lets say even 3 days a week (you'd have it done in 2 weeks in that case), you don't really give a rip about how well the raid does. That said, putting green gems in while you're working on this is perfectly fine.


The other thing on Curator is to have enough DPS to kill the flares fast enough so that you never have more than one up. Melee dps can struggle on this, dagger rogues esp as it's hard to attack from the back of a flare (where's the back of those things??).

Almost all problems on curator are a result of not killing the flares fast enough, assuming everyone knows how to play their class.
Healer running OOM? He's having to heal too much aoe flare dmg because they're up too long.
Healer can't keep up and people are dying? You're not killing flares fast enough and you probably have 2 running loose.
Not getting enough DPS on Curator during evocate? You're taking too long to mop up the flares still hanging around when it begins.

[clevins]

That said, putting green gems in while you're working on this is perfectly fine.
Exactly. For blue gear that you're replacing fairly soon the difference is minimal. And I'd rather see the 750 go to Mongoose x 2 on S1 weapons.

You can't do everything all at once - my point (which I think we agree on) is that if you are low on gold, AT LEAST put green gems in. You might have another use for the gold that will make a bigger impact than the gems - do those things first, then circle around and gem things. Or, if you have all blue gear and get Mongoose etc... gem the stuff as you replace it. But don't leave a socket open just because you can't afford blue level gems.

Oh and... remember.. for some people playtime is limited. YOU might farm 750g fast... but someone who lays 2 hours a day might not. Most green gems are 1-5g so 15 of them is a few dailies which CAN be done even if playtime is short.



Almost all problems on curator are a result of not killing the flares fast enough, assuming everyone knows how to play their class.
Healer running OOM? He's having to heal too much aoe flare dmg because they're up too long.
Healer can't keep up and people are dying? You're not killing flares fast enough and you probably have 2 running loose.
Not getting enough DPS on Curator during evocate? You're taking too long to mop up the flares still hanging around when it begins.

hehe... good summary.

[XCompanion]

Exactly. For blue gear that you're replacing fairly soon the difference is minimal. And I'd rather see the 750 go to Mongoose x 2 on S1 weapons.

But don't leave a socket open just because you can't afford blue level gems.


Yes, we do agree here.


Oh and... remember.. for some people playtime is limited. YOU might farm 750g fast... but someone who lays 2 hours a day might not. Most green gems are 1-5g so 15 of them is a few dailies which CAN be done even if playtime is short.

If someone is raiding they are either already or getting ready to devote 4 hours in 1 night at least once a week, but more likely 2 or 3 times. Asking them to put 3 hours a week into farming to be ready isn't a lot. Any 70 can put together 750g in two weeks with minimal effort.

Even in your example. If you only play 2 hours a day, and lets say its only 5 days a week. Taking 3 of those hours to go and farm would make them at minimum 600g in 2 weeks just doing dailies.

I guess this is a bit of a sore point for me because my time IS limited and I put together enough money to step into Kara wearing 8 epics and doing 25% of the raid dps while my friends just complained they were broke and waited for epics to drop.

That said, green gems aren't the end of the world and are fine for filler (empty sockets make me cry). It's the attitude and reluctance to go do something that will benefit everyone in the raid that irks me.

[clevins]

Yes, we do agree here.

It's the attitude and reluctance to go do something that will benefit everyone in the raid that irks me.

Oh, me too. I stepped into Kara in blues and crafted an epic set on my rogue. My shadow priest has full FSW/SS/GoR. On the other hand, you don't NEED epics to start Kara. And for some classes, like a rogue, you'll replace gear pretty fast - there are a lot of good drops for a rogue in there - so if that's the case I understand the reluctance to spend lots of gold gemming up stuff that will be gone fast.

My rule is: blue gear gets enchanted, green gems, blue if you have them and there's nothing else that would give more benefit (you're not saving for mats for crafted epics, Mongoose, etc). Epic gear? Blue gems + enchants.

[Cerberus]

I have to admit this A and B team I know a lot of people are running with really confuses me. Imo you should make the best out of both groups so both have a chance of clearing it. This will probably mean mixing them together. Having 25 people that haven't actually played together when you move on to 25 raids does not sound good to me. Gear and the speed of gearing up is also an issue ofc.

People from A complaining about slower clears when grouped with B would be my cue to kick them tbh.

[clevins]

Mixing brings its own issues though (and they are mixing a bit, see above). If you mix too much you now have the more advanced folks suddenly struggling on Curator or Shade when they used to do full clears in one night. They might think 'um... i just did all of this myself. Why can't these folks learn it on their own too?' and that's not a bad question.

It's a balance issue - you want some 'A' people in there leading the raid so that the others have the benefit of their experience... if you put too many in there you hold everyone back and the folks who know they could have been downing Prince for the last month are frustrated. If you put too few the B team is not getting the benefit of the A team's experience and better gear.

[XCompanion]

It also slows down progression. The guys who spent the last 2 months wiping their way up through prince have all the gear from the first 7 bosses. If they have to spend another month wiping through those same encounters while the others learn, they aren't getting the gear they should be for further progression.

[DrOsmius]

Yar...but unless you want to do nothing but Kara & ZA, it doesn't benefit the A team to have the B team lagging so far behind...they can't pull their weight in 25mans and the whole thing falls apart.

What you will have if you keep them separate is the A team leaving in one's, two's and five's for another guild where they can do the 25man, as they are tired of waiting for the B's to catch up.

The solution is to catch them up...if shouldn't take that long.

[rgirty]

I made it pretty easy back when I was recruiting for this level of play.

2 greens = no good.

1 green or less, with lvl 70 blues and 2 factions at least to revered was waht I required.

If you have someone who applies in 4-5 greens and isn't even honored with their scryer/aldor rep odds are they aren't someone you want in a raiding guild.

[clevins]

Yar...but unless you want to do nothing but Kara & ZA, it doesn't benefit the A team to have the B team lagging so far behind...they can't pull their weight in 25mans and the whole thing falls apart.

What you will have if you keep them separate is the A team leaving in one's, two's and five's for another guild where they can do the 25man, as they are tired of waiting for the B's to catch up.

The solution is to catch them up...if shouldn't take that long.
I think we're all roughly in the same place. Mixing the teams so that the Bs get some of the experience of the As is good. Mixing too many of the As means that the Bs are being carried through or that you aren't progressing enough of them.

Like I said, we took 2 experienced people and led a 'B' team. That team was fairly consistent in its makeup which helped, but we went from struggling on Curator to downing Prince in 6 weeks or so. As long as the B team is made up of people with credible gear and decent skill anyone can do the same. If six weeks is toolong for the A team to wait... well... they need to grow up a bit.

Running A and B teams is a bad way to prep for 25 mans anyway - you set yourself up to have 1 group far ahead of the other. It's hard enough making the jump since even 2 A teams leaves you 5 people short - having a significant experience gap makes it harder.

If it's taking longer you have a problem and need to figure it out. If it's gear, that's relatively easy to remedy. If it's skill, it's harder but if they're motivated to get better, still easy. Attitude is the killer. People afking, knowing they have crap gear but not doing much to get it better... those people you simply have a stern talk with and don't take if they won't change.