How to manage 10 man raiding?

[Felsen]

Hey all,

I am currently officer in a very small and casual raiding guild.

We started raiding like 4 weeks ago and had a maximum of 2 Kara raids per week.

So far we killed all but Prince, Nether and Nightbane and we will start to work on the "big three" soon.

But for obvious reasons managing the guild runs gets a serious pain as this bloody instance only allows 10 players. We currently got more than 10 people available for a run, but not enough tanks/healers to get a second group going.

So far we agreed on our next raid date in the officers forum and one of the officers created a thread on our guild forums where people had to sign up. First 10 people make it to the raid and the rest is considered backup ( we always made sure to have 2 tanks and 3 healers no matter at what position they signed up).

Now we are running into the problem that non officers started to open threads obviously because they couldnt wait for the next "official" announcement.

In the officer´s eyes this is a no go as we would like to keep some kind of control here.

How do you guys handle this in your guilds?

In addition to that we had already a lot of discussions regarding a second raid group.

Problem will always be that we are very casual so if we got 2 fixed groups I can imagine that it will always end up with one group not beeing able to raid as we dont get 10 people going for both groups.

Second idea was to split people into "progress raids" (best people, best gear available) and normal "farm" runs where everyone can join.

And 3rd idea was to have everyone in the guild note down the 5 top priority loots for them so we can shift people in and out when a certain boss is reached to ensure they got a chance for "their" drop.

So I would like to know how you more experienced people manage your 10 man runs in a way that people are evenly geared, dont feel left out etc.

This is a very frustrating situation for us officers as we dont want to cause any grief and we definitely want to stay casual while still be able to "offer" our people something.

There are several guilds on our server who have exactly the same issue and it usually ends up in people fighting for spots, people feel left out etc...

So looking forward to any comments from you people to improve in our guild management.

Thanks!

Felsen

[Nuberino]

I would suggest doing this:

1. Schedule both 10 man runs on the same night, get people to signup ahead of time so they are somewhat accountable to show up.
2. Split groups evening and pug the 1-2 slots that would fill out both groups.
3. Recruit more "casual" minded folks - grab pugs that are decently skilled, fill in class holes so you have 25ish folks competing for the 20 slots.

This also sets you up when both groups are finishing kara in an evening or doing all non-optional bosses in a single set to move kara to another night and start doing Gruul's lair since everyone is already playing at the same time.

That is how my guild did it. Many of our members play 2 nights a week. We started out doing just Kara 1-2 nights a week, made 2 Karas, then moved karas to off nights and did 1 night of 25 man. When ZA came out we transitioned to 1 kara and 1 za and 1 night of 25 man. Now we run 2 karas, 2 ZAs and 1 25 man. Still with most of us playing just 2 nights a week -- which is pretty casual - while setting it up fro folks that want to do more to fill in group gaps.

[Ripper522]

My guild had the same problem for a while as well so we instituted a policy about it. Group Calendar is a nice mod for scheduling events and it allows members to sign up for event but officers modify those events.

All of our members have to sign up on GC to go, no ifs, ands, or buts. We always bring the same number of healers and tanks so the rest of the DPS spots are open. We try to do first come, first serve but we make arrangements to fix things(X player has done the last 6 raids, Y player hasn't, sub in Y for X this week).

We also have two runs. One is ultra speed, it is usually the one I run and it is for our more geared players. No afks, minimal bio breaks, and more serious. This is the one I usually tank. We also have what we call "Alt Kara" people bring their alts, things are a bit more laid back, progression is slower but the atmosphere is a little lighter.

[madocks]

We are a small raiding guild, every Sunday and Tuesday we team with another guild and progress on 25 man content. We only raid 3 nights a week so our spare night is Thursdays.

On this Thursday we get 2 x kara going. We split the guild in 2 and balance the dps and skill as much as possible. All officers have healer alts, if we are short on numbers it sometimes involves pugging a freind from another guild. (I've been on the server a long time and can pretty much find a few friends with loads of kara experience to help)

These 2 raids clear kara in around 3 hrs depending on grp setup.

Then on Saturdays I run an Alt kara - we clear kara in around 4-5 hours using alts. This will give alts the chance for phat epix!11!!!11!! and also any mains who were out drinking on Thursday have the chance to get their kit on Saturdays.