Making The Leap

Greetings! I am a new poster on Tankspot, though I have been following it very closely since I saw the first videos posted by Ciderhelm for Naxxramas. I am also an experienced guild leader, having helped to create several guilds in vanilla that are now the "last stop on the raid train" on my old servers.

However, all of this was done before the 10-man 25-man raids. As a guild leader of a quickly growing, and quickly progressing, 10-man raiding guild, how do I make the jump from 10-mans to 25s? I understand that getting a second 10-man group going is the key, which I am currently working on with the help of my officers, but I want to know how to make that 10-man group work efficiently, without having to remove the core team from my current 10-man entirely.

Do you have any advice in making the leap?
Should I break up my current 10-man and recreate both of them to be balanced in power?
The only problem I have with the above is that the majority of my current 10-man has been raiding together for over a year now, and we are all very used to playing with one another.

What do I need to recruit to make the jump? I currently have 4 tanks, 2 tank healers, 2 raid healers, and about 10-11 dedicated DPS players.

Is it worth making the leap? Most people say that 10-man progression isn't taken seriously, and while I can understand why, it's much more difficult to get 25 people of all roughly the same skill level together on my server, considering Horde-side is basically dead.

Will my raiders who are recruited in the in-between period get frustrated with a lack of raiding options for them? The reason I ask this is because I understand what it's like to be a part of the "second 10-man" that is still being made. And sometimes you feel a bit left out because you didn't make it to the guild first Insanity run, or something of that sort.

What do I do if there are some loose end members who aren't cutting it when it comes to DPS? I will elaborate on this. I have a certain DPS player, a warlock, who is an older gentleman and plays WoW for fun. He has been raiding with us since the beginning and is a good friend of one of my core members, whose numbers are amazing. Having played a warlock in the past I figured I would give him some advice, considering the fact that his numbers weren't past the tank. In the time we've been together he has been reading up on specs, rotations, and all of that. He downloaded DBM and Ventrilo to raid with us, but his DPS is still ungodly low. I know I can't drag him around forever, because with Icecrown you need only the best, but I don't know if I have it in me to tell him that he's going to have to be benched. And I don't think that I can sit down and tell him that he's doing it ENTIRELY wrong either. What do I do?

I understand I just bombarded you all with a wall of text, and I don't blame anyone for looking at this post, seeing the length, and then pressing the back button as quickly as possible. But if I could get a few words of advice from fellow players, I would be very appreciative. Thank you!

As far as "the leap" goes, it can be a very difficult transition. I had to do it once with a kara/za guild. The only thing I can say is try to do a mass recruit (don't use trade chat though, trade chat will 90% of the time get you bad raiders) and try to rotate people into the current 10 man setup until you can do 2 10s or 25 mans.

As far as the underperforming warlock. The only thing you can really do is give him advice. Honestly warlock isn't that hard to play, the easiest spec is probably destro. I'd say have him try it out and try to walk through things with him. My guess is he's probably not hit capped, but that's just random speculation. You don't need the best for ICC, but you do need DPS to be higher than the tanks. Frankly if you're on a low pop server with not very many quality players, you're going to have to teach a lot of people how to play.

Another thing I did when I was in this transition was I made another raider rank that was like a "special" raider, and setup separate and objective benchmarks for those players that include exceptional performance (things like for DPS doing at least 5 or 6k dps or something like that, raising the bar as gear becomes more accessible), exceptional attendance, and doing everything they can to min/max their character (all epic gems for example, using the right spec/rotations, always having food and flask, etc.). This special rank also only had a few spots at first to try and engender competition and had perks such as more access to guild bank items and repair money, and were guaranteed raid spots, access to new loot first in some cases, etc. It's not for everyone and it's hard to balance, and a lot of people over focus on it, when really I eventually had to tell people that the special rank was really just a ruse to try and increase overall raid performance. It's just a thought, some people probably might not like it, it worked well for our purposes, and our casual 3 day a week guild ended up clearing all content before WotLK came out back in BC.

I would say having 2 10man raids with backups to both groups would be your best path. Lack of raiding does take a faster toll.

As for splitting your imba 10man group, i'd say you'll have to end up doing it. Otherwise the 2nd group will always feel insecure & second fiddle and will never put in the effort you expect them to. I'm guessing you have some more officers inside that 10man group. It falls mostly on them to make the sacrifice to switch over to the 2nd group. Oh and one important thing: Never cannibalize the other group to fill your 1st 10man. If people are missing for a particular run, recruit backups, dont mess up the other group.

2x10 = 20 which is less than 25. Eventually, as you recruit for 25, you're going to end up with more players than there are spots and most of them will be dps. While you can use geared alts to form a 3rd group, i would strongly suggest employing a well-defined rotation system so everyone gets to raid and everyone can see it's fair.

If you have 4 tanks, 4 healers, and 10-12 dps that are geared for 25 man raids, you should be doing 25 man raids and pugging what you need to field the remainder of the raid.

I have had really bad luck with trying to get two 10 man’s going and then merging the 10 man’s +5 to get a 25. Like another poster stated, it gets really messy with “I wanna be in this or that group” and “how come they get all the good players?”

The only thing we ever used 10 man’s for was to get familiar with the mechanics of the encounters. Our 10 best raiders worked on the 10 mans while we continued to raid the previous patch content. So for instance when ICC went live we did on 10 man late after we knocked out Onyxia, VoA, and ToC on 25.

This kept everyone raiding and gearing all while we were getting familiar with the new dungeon.

Additionally, in our guild, we used pugging to recruit. And while we have a 25 man team there are always those nights when we’re short. So instead of just calling off the raid, we turn that into an opportunity to recruit.

We also slant the loot rules in favor of the guild. Now, while that may sound like something that would be a turn off for your guild, it actually encouraged people to apply to the guild and we’ve been able to round out our 25 man team.

My experience has been that if you have 15+ who are geared to do 25 man content, those raids should be your staple, pug if you need to, and recruit from your pugging.

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Originally Posted by Bodisapha

If you have 4 tanks, 4 healers, and 10-12 dps that are geared for 25 man raids, you should be doing 25 man raids and pugging what you need to field the remainder of the raid.

I have had really bad luck with trying to get two 10 man’s going and then merging the 10 man’s +5 to get a 25. Like another poster stated, it gets really messy with “I wanna be in this or that group” and “how come they get all the good players?”

The only thing we ever used 10 man’s for was to get familiar with the mechanics of the encounters. Our 10 best raiders worked on the 10 mans while we continued to raid the previous patch content. So for instance when ICC went live we did on 10 man late after we knocked out Onyxia, VoA, and ToC on 25.

This kept everyone raiding and gearing all while we were getting familiar with the new dungeon.

Additionally, in our guild, we used pugging to recruit. And while we have a 25 man team there are always those nights when we’re short. So instead of just calling off the raid, we turn that into an opportunity to recruit.

We also slant the loot rules in favor of the guild. Now, while that may sound like something that would be a turn off for your guild, it actually encouraged people to apply to the guild and we’ve been able to round out our 25 man team.

My experience has been that if you have 15+ who are geared to do 25 man content, those raids should be your staple, pug if you need to, and recruit from your pugging.

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I agree with Bod. There is a lot more to gain (in terms of recruitment and guild growth) by filling up a few raid slots with pugs and running 25mans than trying to orchestrate the circus of two 10man squads (who are almost certain to get at eachother's throats when one does slightly better than the other).

My guild made this transition a long time ago, but ever since that time 10mans have been something we ask guildies to organize on their own. The potential drama involved with guild-enforced 10man divisions turned out to be too much of a problem. Friends wanted to run with friends, and the really motivated didn't want to carry someone who was only mildly interested in the "small-beans" content (not my choice of words, taken from an apathetic former-guildie). Letting them sort it out for themselves made my life a hell of a lot simpler, and pushing 25man content something we could focus more readily on as a cohesive group.

Pugging 25 mans works the best, use your ten man success and parlay it into hosting an announced PUG. My guild was formed from a 10 man core that all left our old guilds for multiple reasons, we had surpassed all but the top few 25 man guilds on our server in 10 man content in two raid night.(this was maybe 3 weeks into ulduar) and used that via a post on the forums what we have accomplished in 10 man content. We were very open about why we were hosting this pug and that it was for recruitment purposes. We went into it with 15 members and grew to 21 from it, we didn't shy away from allowing alts as long as they knew this was a recruitment run. The following tuesday we were running 25 mans.
This also works great to spike recruitment we did the same thing just before the holidays and gave a handful of people the night off for toc 25, pugged 10 recruited 5 and didn't have such a rough go of raiding during the holidays. Running two ten mans is a nightmare, host pugs be clear about your intent, define loot rules (I.e. All orbs and patterns were for the guild as well as 2 trophies) and run 25s, it will be much easier for you.
And before anyone says anything about toc being puggable yes it is but the promise of a quick full clear being hosted by a guild attracted many despite the loot restrictions we used, from the feedback I received most would rather do that feeling there is less of a chance for any ninja looting, and knowing the run will be much smoother.

I just thought I'd add that splitting up your 10 man along with a potential shuffling of 10 man rosters every few months can be really good for guild chemistry. The last thing you want is for your current 10 man group to be looked at as a clique. I have a couple friends in a guild currently where the original 10 man group is thought of as a clique who always raids together and has raided their 10 man for so long that they have huge amounts of dkp horded so they always get first crack at every new item in 25 mans even over other long time members of the guild who show for every raid. It can breed some nasty feelings that you don't want.

Shuffling 10man teams is also a good way to make friends in the same 10man hate you in a hurry. I've always had the policy of "hands-off" the 10-man teams for our leadership. We encourage raiders to form them, run them, and lead them by their own volition, but only on the 25man paradigm can we ensure that nobody is left out or put on a team they feel is inferior(even if that is not the case).

Hey folks! This is my 1st post on TS though I've been reading the site since long time ago. Only recently I've reactivated my account and am switching to tank instead of healer so the site is a huge source of valuable information.

This is the 1st topic I can add my $0.02 to, and I try to do so by saying: be careful about establishing a fixed raid group(s). My experience as officer and RL from the times of BC shows that stable teams tend to create isolated sub-groups within the guild. More often than not you'll hear things like "We're a team and we're in sync with eachother, we don't want any newbie to come and destroy our trained routine". That's a sure sign something is terribly wrong.

It means that those people got used to playing together and are stuck in their routine. They might perform great as a team but they're unable to cope with unexpected changes. Eventually, they'll begin to look down on other raid setups, and that's a beginning of an end.

My advice is to rotate the members, keep things flowing naturally and never ever establish a permanent raid group. Only appoint two people per group - raid leader and his vice - who'll lead the groups, but have the setups change. That should prevent unwanted elitism and isolationist tendencies.

I have to agree with Shadowsil. I've been in a few guilds that have had their "cliqs" and it really ruins the overall "good mood" feel and such. There's nothing wrong with having a stable group, but you also don't want to have a constant change of people either since it can disrupt.

That said, those that do participate in the raid groups should be doing so at their maximum.

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Originally Posted by Djtk

I have to agree with Shadowsil. I've been in a few guilds that have had their "cliqs" and it really ruins the overall "good mood" feel and such. There's nothing wrong with having a stable group, but you also don't want to have a constant change of people either since it can disrupt.

That said, those that do participate in the raid groups should be doing so at their maximum.

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Oh, definitely. I should've stress out the "let it go naturally" more. Didn't intend to vouch for forced rotations of people.

I've never found rotating people into 10man teams by anything other than what the various teams seek for themselves to be a good idea. Like i said before, "hands-off" has proven much safer in the long run for me. Meddling in the affairs on 10mans in a guild that regularly runs 25man content is a recepie for disaster.

You can ask people to perform at their best regardless of who they're matched with, but the bottom line is that people play better with their friends and who they are familiar with. Raid synergy is easily broken in a 10man (say you have a melee stack raid and you insert an ele shaman and a mage, you just dropped the raid dps significantly and you're going to see comparatively "poor" performance out of the casters).

I wouldn't blatantly deny or discourage raiders if they WANT to be ear-marked and rotated into guild-endorsed 10man raids, but my experience tells me this is rarely the case. Usually, the raiders clamoring for a state-sponsored 10man:

a) They don't have a 10man because they're new or just too lazy to talk with their guildies about getting into one.
b) They don't perform well or don't have a good attendance track-record for 10mans.
c) They don't get along well with a few members of other 10mans and don't want to ask an enemy for a raid spot.
d) They have just lost their spot in a 10man due to one or more of these reasons.

Not to be overly critical of raiders in general, but most of the time a motivated guildie will find a 10man on his or her own terms. Those who both try very hard and don't have a 10man group are very much the exception and not the rule.

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Originally Posted by Proletaria

I've never found rotating people into 10man teams by anything other than what the various teams seek for themselves to be a good idea. Like i said before, "hands-off" has proven much safer in the long run for me. Meddling in the affairs on 10mans in a guild that regularly runs 25man content is a recepie for disaster.

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This is probably a matter of personal experience, I'd say. We both come from different backgrounds and I'd say our situation is, and was, very different. My former guild was already a quite closed group of folks - a national guild. Because of this fact, it was difficult to find a great amount of really good players.

I'd like to explain how I came to this which, unfortunately, will require of me to delve into the facts a bit deeper.. so this is going to take a few extra lines of text.

The math is simple - if there's 10,000 players on that particular server, there's most likely a 100 of great players among them (counting just the top 1%). One might build an awesome guild out of those. However, let's say only 1,000 players out of the 10,000 are a particular nationality. That gives you only 10 great players (again, I average that to the 1%). The rest are casuals (50%), whiners (30%), and facerollers (19%).

What I mean by "great players"? I mean people who know how to play their class, don't whine, don't go emo after wiping for the gazillionth time that night, and are wise enough to take well-intended criticism.. and never, ever, think they're "above" everyone else.

My former guild counted about 300 people - that means, in the language of statistics, we only had 3 great players.

My experience is that once your common player gets decent gear, downs some of the more difficult bosses and becomes a "raider" (whatever that means), he becomes an unbearable posh. This can still be quite often seen in the fact that common people accept the infamous GearScore as the Holy Grail of one's skill - and judge everything by how high your GS is. Quite often I've heard things like "we're the ones with the Skill, why should we carry a noob through [any dungeon/raid]?".

Though the answer was sometimes simple: "Because he's eager to learn, he's going for a tank, he needs your experience and somewhat better gear to be able to tank.", the "skillz0rz" refused to accept any reasonable argument, further separating themselves from the rest of the guild.

That is why I advise a preemptive attack against this kind of foolish elitism, why I prefer fluid setups before stable 10man groups. As I said earlier, you probably have very different experience, so the difference in our advices is understandable.

Here's my 2cents, first you need to make sure that your officers and you and some of your raiders are on "the same page" in terms of wanting to change to 25mans, along the way you're going to lose people so you need to make sure you're not burning your bridges. If you're going to aim to be a 25man guild make sure that communication channels are open during the transition, try and set yourself some sort of time limit which your guildies know of, say a month of running 2 10mans, and while doing that make sure to raid a 25man once a week, even if it's Sarth/Maly/Ulduar/Naxx with 20ish you want to make sure that people are looking forward to 25man raiding not to making "Wednesday's 10man better than Thursdays". The time limit ensures that people will be active about looking for recruits, not get demoralised by re-running old raids and at the end of the time limit you can reassess if you're making progress.

Stepping down a raid or two also allows you to pug the empty slots, potentially finding new recruits in the process. Recruiting on low population servers can be a nightmare, one thing to do is ask guildies first if they know of friends who might be interested you'll need 30-35 raiders, depending on average attendance.

oops duplicate post

Hello Miisery, I currently lead a top 5 raiding guild on my server. So, you have some credentials to go by.

Do you have any advice in making the leap?
Sure. The number one issue in these situations is trust in the guild/raid leader. You are going to be asking 25+ individuals to place their free time in your hands, and to provide a rewarding a fun experience. These people will come from all walks, all have different priorities and RL responsibilities, and they are counting on you to figure it all out and deliver. They need to have absolute trust.

I started out my raid leader career by organizing ulduar 10 hard modes. My guild had fallen apart over the summer, but I slowly but surely bred confidence in a few people at a time by getting achievements one by one, until it snowballed into a full 10 man guild raid, and eventual drake and starcaller titles. By that point, I had ~15 people that trusted me fully, and it was only a matter of time before we reached the 25 man level again.

Should I break up my current 10-man and recreate both of them to be balanced in power?
No. If you have a fully functioning 10 man group, you need to push it as far as it can go, and use it to breed confidence. However, 10 mans should not be your focus.

What do I need to recruit to make the jump?
You need 25 warm bodies. Seriously, get a full raid and get in there. Begin creating your guild culture and atmosphere, as well as the social connections and confidence in the future that you will need to get you through to greener pastures.

Is it worth making the leap?
This is up to the individual. I find downing 25 man content much more rewarding, as it takes a *lot* more effort on the raid leader. I suggest you try it and find out.

Will my raiders who are recruited in the in-between period get frustrated with a lack of raiding options for them?
Depends on how quick you recruit and the kind of leader you are. As long as you are getting into a 25 man raid with your guild once a week, that should suffice until you are able to really start rolling. Again, if they trust you, you will succeed.

What do I do if there are some loose end members who aren't cutting it when it comes to DPS?
This depends on the goal of your guild, which is such a huge deal that I can't believe it took me this long to get to it.

Your guild/raid needs a goal, set it out in stone. Sort of like a lame ass mission statement that corporations and schools use. Once you have this goal, and the rest of your raiders are in agreement and behind this goal, then all you have to do is follow it.

-Does this player help or hinder the achievement of the goal? If he hinders it, tell him so, and make it clear he must be part of the solution and not a hurdle on the way to the other 24 players achieving their goal.

Cheers, and Happy raiding,
Sanctos of Archimonde