Taking your raiding guild to the next level

[Porcini]

My wife and I run a stable, friendly raiding guild. We have very little turnover, and on the rare occasion when people do leave, often we find them wanting to come back a month or two later. All in all, I think we're happy with the state of the guild generally.

What we would like to improve is our guild's performance in raids.

To give you some background, our guild is a mixed casual and raiding guild. There is a clear distinction between casuals and raiders, and we very rarely take casuals on raids. Our attendance is fine usually, and we use EP bonuses (EPGP is our loot system) to reward our raiders for attendance, wipe nights etc. We expect everyone to come to the raids with appropriate enchants, gemming, and consumables.

In Wrath, we've decided to log all of our raids, and scrutinise our WWS parses closely.

We have some exceptional players in the guild, and others that are good to mediocre.

I know the easy answer to improving raid performance is to replace those mediocre players with exceptional players, but to anyone that has a run a guild that is sometimes easier said than done. It's also much easier to evaluate the quality of dps and tanks over healers.

What do you do to attract exceptional players? As GMs are there any tips you're willing to share on improving your guilds performance? Has anyone successfully moved their guild forward from being a good raiding guild to a really exceptional raiding guild?

Your thoughts and comments would be appreciated :)

[lorelye]

Our guild is similar.
The short answer is, you need enough members that you can sit people on standby, who still need to work on performance.

There is absolutely no need to boot them, and you can provide support for them if you or others have the time. But don't go overboard on giving your own time. Ultimately it is their responsibility, so don't risk burning out your guild's GL. THe effort will pay off in maybe 1/10 cases, if you're lucky.

Start with recruiting enough people that you have no one truly hopeless in your raid. If, for example, they simply cannot learn Thaddius, you're talking about a probably hopeless case -- a member who you can only put in farm content. Eliminate these ones from your progression content. It's not what you want to do, but you must, for the sake of all the others. Your goal must be to maintain a fair environment for the raid group. Putting people in the raid who simply don't care... Well it's just not right, and, while you may agonize over your empathy for the individual, your choices as GL must be for setting a fair standard that applies to all.

Then talk to each individual. If done nicely, your members may respond to constructive criticism. Like a recent case of mine... One caster in the raid cast 500 more spells than another caster on the same night's worth of bosses. I asked the lower DPS member to try playing more aggressively next week. He's a reasonable guy, so he took it well, and we'll see how it goes.

As for evaluating the healers, I do this nightly. It's my opinion at this time, that if they all use Grid and Clique mods, and spam their fastest heals and their smart heals, the numbers should come out about even for trees and priests, with the trees having a slight edge. The paladin healer gets assigned to the MT and OT, and is judged only by whether the tank dies, which he mostly doesn't. :) Resto shammy presents a bit of confusion still, and I'm working on understanding it better. I don't really know, I just always assign him to the melee. We use 3 trees, 3 priests, 1 holydin and 1 shammy. It's working well - any combo of 6-7 from this group can heal a raid.

To attract exceptional players, you have to be able to promise them you are fair and impartial. And have it be true. Which means you have to solve the aforementioned issues for yourself first. <grin>

Oh and PS - In your EPGP, make sure you have minEP and baseGP set up (this is extremely important!) I also recommend bonuses for signing up and showing up on time, with an equal penalty for no-shows. We also use a weekly bonus for anyone with 100% attendance in 25 mans. Our weekly bonus is roughly equal to one night's raiding points extra for any week in which someone is 100%.

[Eeeeeeeeeekz]

My friend mentioned something to me the other day in what his guild does. That is when raiding, /off spec rolls/ must pay a crystal. He said it helps because you don't have people holding back the guild looting all the off spec items. To that he then replied that those crystals are used for enchanting the new items. So it all ends up evening out.

I understand this may not be what your asking for but i thought i would share what some guilds are doing to continuously progress.

I hope this helps.