Category Archives: Guilds

Looking for More

Apotheosis is recruiting!

We are an Alliance 25-man raiding guild on Eldre’thalas.

We are specifically seeking healers and ranged dps:

  • Resto Shaman (seriously, I’d like to keep one for more than 3 weeks)
  • Resto Druid (someone who reads this blog must want to come play with me… please? I’m lacking a resto buddy.)
  • Mistweaver Monk
  • Warlock
  • Plus 1 or 2 other ranged dps, open to pretty much any class

We raid 9 hours a week – Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday, from 9pm ET until midnight. We are currently 1/13 heroic in Throne of Thunder. If you are an awesome healer or ranged dps and want to kill some new bosses with us, come apply

Progress vs. Gear

How much raid time should be dedicated to farming for gear from bosses you’ve already killed and how much should be dedicated to learning and defeating new encounters?

I’m sure that’s a question that has plagued many raid and guild leaders. I’m also sure the answer depends on the type of guild. Blood Legion’s not going to clear through an instance multiple times on normal when they could be working on a new kill. Likewise, a more ‘casual’ guild is going to want, and maybe even need, that extra gear before they progress further in a lot of cases.

My guild falls somewhere in the middle of those two examples. We finished Tier 14 at 8/16H.

In Tier 14 we cleared all normal modes before doing any heroic modes. We did kill Heroic Stone Guard only a couple days after defeating Sha of Fear, but we never took a detour from normal mode content in HoF, for example, to work on MSV heroics. When I asked our raiders for feedback at the end of the tier, one of the most common responses I got was that we had spent too much time farming for gear and not enough time pushing progression. Noted.

In Tier 15 we’re currently sitting at 1/13H. This tier is a bit different than last. While Tier 14 consisted of 3 smaller raids, Tier 15 is one big raid. In Tier 14 if we wanted more time to work on a new hard mode in Heart of Fear we could skip one of the other raids for the week. We can’t do that in Throne of Thunder. With only 9 hours of raiding each week, we need to make some harder decisions about how we’ll be spending our raid time. At this point, it would take us about 1.5 raid nights (raids are 3 hours each) to fully clear on normal. I think we will get more efficient at that, but that’s where we’re at right now. Plus, repeating heroic kills will generally take a bit longer, so we want to give a bit of a time buffer so we can be sure to get all the way through Lei Shen.That only leaves us 3 hours (we can maybe push this to 4) to work on new things. That’s really not a lot of time.

Since so many people had said they wanted to spend more time on progression this tier, the officers tried to make good on that. The week after our first Lei Shen kill we spent half a raid on Heroic Jin’rokh, then went through the rest of the raid on normal to ensure we got a repeat kill of Lei Shen. My idea of just working on H. Jin’rokh until he was dead, even if that meant not full clearing that week, was outvoted. In hindsight, probably a good thing. The next reset we decided that we would keep our raid lockout for 2 weeks so we could spend a good 3-4 raids on progression fights, before wrapping up normal modes at the end of the following week. I thought this was the best idea. Everyone in the raid had a Lei Shen kill and everyone in the raid wanted to progress through this tier faster (I thought).

Apparently not. It seems, to some people, that farming for gear is more important than progress at this point. The officers got a number of complaints about how we were ‘wasting’ our raid lockout.

I think I have a pretty good idea about the capabilities of our raid. Yes, gear always helps, but having the best possible gear is not a requirement for getting down heroic bosses, especially the early ones. If we were failing dps checks, then definitely, we need more gear. But that’s almost never been our problem. More gear doesn’t make people not stand in Rockfall or hit their Crystal Shield at the right time. Practice does. (Also, if I’m going to upgrade my gear, I’d rather upgrade it to heroic gear).

You can’t please all the people all the time. But I try to. At this point I don’t know if anyone, besides the officers, liked the idea of extending the lockout. Because really, no one sends feedback when they’re happy about something, only when they have something to complain about.

So that brings us back to the original question. How do you split your raid time so your raiders get gear, but you can still make progress at a good pace? Where’s that magic point where doing farm content every week is no longer necessary? Do you wait for everyone to have their 4-set before you start extending lockouts or skipping normal mode kills? Until everyone has weapons? Until Lei Shen gives me that trinket I want?

Anatomy of a Raiding Guild: Evaluation

For me, one of the best things about raiding with Apotheosis is the quantity and quality of reviewing and discussion that takes place. We’re not shy about giving feedback.

Applicant Evaluation

We have a public application forum. After an app is posted, everyone in the guild can see it and ask the app questions. We also create a thread that is visible only to members where people are encouraged to comment on the application. I’m not an expert on every class and spec, so I rely a lot on the feedback from other raiders when making a decision on whether to have the applicant move on to a Mumble interview, and whether to accept or decline them after that.

Initiate Evaluation

Applicants we invite to the guild as Initiates are given a 9 raid trial to show us what they can do. During the trial period their role lead sends them written feedback every 3 raids. The feedback addresses the things we’re pleased with, the things they need to improve on and advice on how to improve performance. Each initiate also has an Initiate Review thread, visible only to full members of the guild. Just like with the app review threads, people are encouraged to give feedback on how initiates are doing – not just their performance, also things like how they’re fitting into the guild. The feedback collected here is often incorporated into the weekly reviews.

Once an Initiate has completed their 9 raids, the officers vote on whether to promote them to Raider, decline them, or extend their trial by 3 raids.

Raider Analysis

Raiders get formal, written feedback on their performance from their role lead fairly regularly. We initially intended to do these monthly, though it’s working out to be more like every 2 months for most raiders. Writing reviews for ~10 people in the case of our melee and ranged leads is pretty time-consuming.

For healing reviews, I tend to be pretty specific. I have enough knowledge of each healing class to go into a fair amount of detail. I will usually pick 1 or 2 raid nights and look closely at how each healer did on each fight. Things I look at include:

  • Overall healing output
  • How much they healed the people they were assigned to
  • Spell usage
  • Cooldown use (output cooldowns, mana cooldowns, damage mitigation cooldowns)
  • Any avoidable damage taken or deaths
  • I look at healthstone and potion usage, but it’s not something I put a whole lot of emphasis on

I’ll give each healer a brief synopsis for each fight, like this:

H. Stone Guard
Your overall healing on this fight was great, and you did a good job focusing on the tank you were assigned to. Your use of output cooldowns was good, but you only used Barkskin once in a 5-minute fight. You could definitely be using it more often. You took 5 ticks of Amethyst Pools, that’s not terrible, but it could be better. You did a good job at helping to clear Cobalt Mines when it was safe to do so.

Once I’ve given a mini review for each fight, I try to sum up with some general observations of strengths and weaknesses, like:

Your healing output is very strong, especially on fights with a lot of raid damage. You maximize your use of output cooldowns and use Ironbark often. You’re very good at providing extra utility on certain fights (helping to knockback/control adds, using HotW to help with burst dps while healing requirements are low). You do take a bit more avoidable damage than I’d like to see though – watch out for that. Your use of Barkskin can also be improved.

Each officer has their own style and things they like to focus on, so the reviews for healers, melee, ranged and tanks all look a bit different. If you want to see the kind of feedback our melee gets, Tikari has done a post about it.

In addition to this formal feedback, raiders receive more instant feedback when there’s an issue, whether it’s in a whisper, in their role channel or via PM.

We do have one gap in the review process though – no one reviews the role leads! Three of our officers are healers, so 2 of them do get feedback from me, but I don’t get any feedback myself. We should probably come up with a process to review each other or seek out raiders to give us some feedback on our performance every once in a while.

Raid Reviews

After every raid, the RL posts a raid review thread with a link to the World of Logs report for the evening and some comments on how the raid went. Everyone is encouraged to add their feedback on the raid – things we could do better, suggestions for strategy changes, problems they had – anything they think will increase understanding of the fight or make the raid go more smoothly next time. I should elaborate on that. Everyone is encouraged to add their constructive feedback. Finger-pointing and complaining is definitely not encouraged, or appreciated when it happens. We’ve got a lot of people who are very strategic and give very good suggestions on things we can change to do better. I find these threads very helpful. Not only do we often get suggestions that we incorporate into our strategies, but they also really expand my knowledge of the fight, especially in areas other than healing.

End of Tier Survey

This is something that Kurn did in Cataclysm and I thought it was a really good idea (but not always fully executed). At the end of Tier 14 I put up a survey for all of our raiders so they could share their feedback on the guild. It covers a lot – satisfaction with progression, recruitment process, raid organization, activities outside of raids. People are asked to rate the raid leader, GM, and their role lead. Once I’ve received all the feedback I plan to compile it, share it and address any issues that were brought up. Then we can try to fix the things people are less happy about and hopefully make our T15 experience more enjoyable for everyone.

Anatomy of a Raiding Guild: GM

This post is going to be less about factual information like the last post and more about me airing my neuroses about my role in the guild. Enjoy!

So what does a guild leader do? I think it can change from guild to guild. I’ve only been a GM for 5 months. When Kurn stepped away from Apotheosis, we all knew there would be pretty big shoes to fill. I volunteered for the GM role for a few reasons. First, I thought I was a good choice as a figurehead – I’m fairly visible in the WoW community which is good for recruitment and maintaining a good guild reputation. Second, as Kurn put it, I’m “not controversial”. I can stay neutral and calm in tough situations and I don’t piss people off too often. As far as I know, at least. Third, I’m willing and able to put lots of time and effort into the guild, whether in game or out.

There are a number of big differences between Kurn and I that have been (and still are) a bit difficult to overcome. Kurn basically did everything – GM, raid lead, rosters, strats, raid reviews, healing lead (until she gave that job to me), she did office hours for a few hours every week where people could come chat, she was always posting walls of text on the forums about changes or log dives or something. Her thought was that it’s easier to do everything herself rather than have to chase other people to do them.

As I said, I’m willing to put a lot of time and effort into the guild, but I’m not willing to put all of my time into the guild. Delegation is necessary. I’m also not nearly as vocal as Kurn, which I think can be an issue at times. I’m quiet and shy, in life and in game. I don’t really have that “hey, I’m the leader, I need to talk to fill the empty air and keep people on track” kind of mindset. In raids I’m most comfortable not talking much. I’ll call out healer cooldowns when necessary, occasionally call out other things that I think are helpful, but I mostly leave the talking in raid to the raid leader. I do communicate a lot on the forums though. I’m very opinionated about most guild-related things so I’m not shy about weighing in on review threads, or reminding people about raider responsibilities or be constructive.

To me, one of the best things about the current incarnation of Apotheosis is that responsibilities are clearly divided among the officers rather than 90% of things falling on one person. Each role lead is really responsible for their own people. They give feedback, they send PMs when there’s a problem, and the people in that role go to their lead when they have an issue. I think this is far superior to having one person responsible for communicating with everyone all the time. Anyone can come to me if they need to talk, but in general, having our raiders “split” among officers works out really well.

One thing I have trouble reconciling as GM is the idea of how much work I should be doing. When Kurn was around, or even in my old Horde guild, the GM and Raid Leader were one person. That meant they were omnipresent – always the most visible and vocal person in the guild by far. I really do think that splitting the roles is a good idea – that’s just so much work for one person to do on their own. However, it leaves me feeling a little unsure about my own place in the guild. For me, the raid leader is the most important person in a raiding guild and the person with the hardest job. That, combined with the responsibilities the role leads have taken on sometimes makes me feel a bit superfluous within the guild. Like I could disappear tomorrow and no one would notice anything but the fact that we were down a healer. Then we get 4 new apps in a week, a new boss kill and our RL is too busy to post raid plans and I stop feeling like that.

Here’s the list of things I consider my GM responsibilities (healing lead responsibilities were in the last post):

Dealing with applicants
After Sara has found us applicants, I take over the process.

  • Respond to every applicant and ask them questions
  • Seek feedback from other guild members familiar with the app’s class, weigh all the feedback received to decide how to proceed
  • Schedule interviews with the apps we are interested in
  • Interview potential apps (with other officers/raiders)
  • Extend invites to the applicants we want and turn down those we don’t 
  • Give feedback to declined apps when requested
  • Send welcome messages to all new Initiates and tell them important information (who their role lead is, where they can find important posts on the forums, etc.)

Forums
A lot of administrative-type stuff here.

  • Keep the front page updated with kill shots, progress and our recruitment needs
  • Keep the forums neat, move or delete old threads
  • Make sure everyone has the proper forum permissions
  • Deactivate spammer accounts
  • Keep policy posts up to date and post about any changes or important things happening

Raids

  • Primary lootmaster
  • As I said above, I tend to keep quiet in raids unless I feel there’s something important that needs to be pointed out
  • 3rd string raid leader (in the very rare occurrence that Serrath and Tikari are both absent)
  • Raid goals/plans – in the latter half of this tier I started to get pushier about our raid plans for the week and being more aggressive about killing new content

General guild stuff

  • I’m supposed to be the one who upholds the guild’s behavior/ language rules, though Tikari usually handles those things. I tend to be a bit oblivious to things that are potentially offensive, and he jumps on them first. 
  • Suggest changes to policies, weigh in on changes suggested by others.
  • Communicate with guild members. I’m always open to feedback, comments and complaints from guild members, though I don’t get a whole lot of them. People mainly come to me to let me know about RL issues that will interfere with raiding or to let me know they need to step down from raiding. (Please, someone just start PM’ing me with what you did today or something, all I ever hear is bad news).
  • Fill gbank requests

Officers

  • Make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to anything guild or raid-related
  • Mediate any issues
  • Poke the role leads when it’s time for raider reviews
  • Help out when another officer is too busy – doing things like posting raid plans and strats.

I do tend to work in the background a lot, so I get the feeling some people don’t really see me as the guild leader (or at least not as a strong guild leader). I’m going to try to work on speaking up more, I’m still working on figuring all this GM stuff out.

I’m not the easiest person to get to know, so here are some fun facts about Jasyla, the GM.

I love it when:
- People add constructive feedback to raid, app and initiate review threads
- Other people ask applicants questions
- I don’t have to be the lootmaster
- People are chatty in Mumble during raids and keep the atmosphere fun (at the appropriate times, of course)
- People share good ideas for things to do as a guild outside of raids

I don’t like:
- Snark in the forums, especially review threads. Criticism that is not constructive, or is not at all timely, makes me want to punch things.
- Having to police things people say in guild
- Negative attitudes in raids

I need to get better at:
- Enforcing guild policies directly
- Being more vocal in raids and in general
- Being more approachable so people will talk to me when they have a concern

I wish:
- More people would talk to me when they have concerns or suggestions
- Raiders would stop having babies

There they are! All my secrets about what I do as GM and how I feel about the job. I’d love to hear from other GMs who are not also raid leaders – what do you think about your role in your own guild?

Anatomy of a Raiding Guild: Overview and Officers

Today I’m going to venture into some writing territory that is new for me. I’m going to talk about guild leadership and organization. I think it’s a really interesting topic, and I like hearing about how other guilds operate, so I’m going to share a bit about how Apotheosis does things.

The basics

Apotheosis is primarily a raiding guild. We do lots of other things, but raiding is our focus.

We have a 75% raid attendance requirement and we usually have a raiding roster of about 30-33 people. We strive to have:
- 3 tanks
- 8 healers
- 10-11 melee
- 11-13 ranged

We want a big enough roster that we can still field a full group when vacations and personal absences line up poorly, but we don’t want a roster so big that we have 10 raiders sitting on the bench every fight. We have never had to cancel a raid at the last minute due to a lack of people. We occasionally cancel a raid in advance (like when holidays fall on raid days, or half the raid is going to BlizzCon), but other than that, if a raid is scheduled it’s going to happen.

We have approximately 60 active, non-raiding members of the guild. All of our non-raiding members are either people who raided with us at one point but retired, or friends and family. We only invite potential raiders or people with personal affiliations within the guild.

We raid 25s three nights a week for a total of 9 hours. We are very strict about our 25-man designation – we never drop down to 10s to get new kills in current content.

How successful are we? At the end of Tier 14 we are 8/16H. WoWProgress has us ranked 1105 out of all guilds and 188 out of all 25-man guilds in the US. WP has tracked 15,549 total guilds and 1393 25-man guilds who had killed a boss in the US. Of course, I’m sure not all of those guilds are still active, but taking the numbers at face value puts us in the top 7% of total guilds and the top 13% of 25s. I’d love to have had 1 or 2 more heroic kills, but considering our rather limited 9-hour raid schedule, I think we are doing pretty well.

I think we strike a good balance between having a successful raid and providing a pleasant environment to play in. We have rules around behaviour and language – a few choice words and slurs are verboten and we want people to be respectful of each other. However, we’re not above filling Mumble with discussions about penises and bear butts while we’re clearing trash or buffing up before a boss pull >.> We’re serious about killing bosses, but we also like to keep things light and have fun.

Ranks

We have the following ranks:

  • Guild Leader
  • Bank – There’s only one character in this rank, Apothbank. This is the character used to buy/sell things on the AH to keep the gbank stocked. This character is the only one (aside from the GM) who can withdraw gold from the guild bank.
  • Officer
  • Officer alts – The only reason we have a separate rank for this is so officers can ginvite and access the bank without having to be on their main character.
  • Veteran – People who have raided with us continuously for at least 1 year. Veterans can invite people to the guild. We currently have 9 people in this rank.
  • Raider – This one’s self-explanatory
  • Initiate – People on trial to become raiders
  • Member – People who once raided with us, but have stepped down
  • Friend – Friends of raiders or members of the guild
  • Alts

Officer roles

Apotheosis has 6 officers, each of whom have specific roles in guild and in raids. The main officer roles in guild are: raid leader, recruitment, melee lead, ranged lead, tank lead, healer lead, bank admin, lootmaster, and GM. Since there are so many responsibilities a few people have multiple roles to play.

Here’s what our officers are responsible for:

Serrath
Raid leader

  • Creating and posting raid strategies
  • Posting the raid plans for each week
  • Creating the roster for each raid and determining what swaps will happen
  • Making calls during raids and addressing problems with strategy or execution
  • Posting a raid review thread after every raid
  • Log dives to discover problem areas

Serrinne
Recruitment officer

  • Finding applicants
  • Posting and updating our recruitment blurb on the official forums
  • Posting in the threads of people looking for guilds that suit our requirements
  • Talking to potential apps and answering their questions

Other responsibilities:

  • Filling gbank requests
  • Back-up lootmaster
  • Healthstone reminder service

Tikari
Melee lead – Role leader description below
Bank admin

  • Ensures bank is stocked with consumables and gear enhancements for raiders
  • Coordinates weekly EP drives (chooses the donation items, collects them, updates EP)
  • Sells excess items in bank (patterns, BoEs, etc.) to keep funds up
  • Fills gbank requests

Other responsibilities:

  • Back-up raid leader
  • Mid-raid log dives (for problems that need to be identified and fixed immediately)

Slout
Ranged lead – Role leader description below

Chronis
Tank lead – Role leader description below

Jasyla
Healing lead – Role leader description below

Role lead responsibilities:

  • Is the primary point of contact for any feedback, suggestions and complaints for raiders and initiates in their role group
  • Represents members of their role in strategy discussion
  • Centrally involved in the interview and feedback process for new applicants and initiates in their role
  • Keeps Initiates informed of the status of their trial
  • Provides feedback to people in their role. This includes both formal, written feedback on performance at certain intervals along with more instant feedback on performance (and possibly behavior) when required
  • Gives specific assignments during raids (interrupts, stuns, cooldowns, target switches, etc.)
  • Live calls during raids when required

Things that all officers have input in:

  • Adding new/revising existing guild policies
  • Whether to accept or decline new applicants
  • Promotion of initiates
  • Deciding our recruitment needs
  • Weekly raid plans
  • Suggesting changes to raid strategy or roster

That’s the basic information about what Apotheosis is about and how responsibilities are divided up.

Oh, hey, I haven’t talked at all about what the GM does. That’s a topic for tomorrow!

Who Are You? (who who who who)

I spend a lot of time writing about my guild, my raid, my Druid, my healing habits on this blog. Now, I want to hear more about you! I want to know who is reading and what you’d like to see more of.

I went a bit poll-crazy here (that’s what she said), so please indulge me and let me know more about you and your guild.

Now tell me what you want (what you really, really want).

Thanks everyone! Feel free to tell me more in the comments.

Timing is Everything

Today we got the news that patch 5.2 will be dropping in the last week of February. Usually, I’m not too critical of decisions made by Blizzard. In fact, I usually am on the verge of being a Blizzard apologist. This game has kept me interested and entertained for 7 years, there’s not much else I can say that about. But I have to say, sometimes their timing just sucks.

I think Tier 15 being released after less than 5 months is too soon. Much too soon. I would like some more time to work on T14 heroics, I feel like my raid can progress more before we run into a brick wall and are itching for the new tier to come out. And I don’t think we’re alone.

WoWProgress has tracked the progress of ~39,000 guilds. Of those, 29.5% have completed all normal modes and 1% have completed all heroic modes. This isn’t a lot. I think many guilds out there would benefit from a little more time in the current tier.

I had this exchange on Twitter once I learned about 5.2′s release date:

5.2 release date from Bashiok
Releasing a new raid tier every 5 months is an admirable goal, but all raid tiers are not created equal. The quantity and quality of the content available need to be taken into consideration when deciding when to push out the next tier.

Let’s take Tiers 8 & 9 as an example. They were current content for roughly the same amount of time, but they shouldn’t have been. Ulduar was a beautifully designed, lore-rich raid instance with great boss fights and clever ways of accessing heroic modes. TotC was a single room with no trash mobs and only 5 unique fights. Three and a half months in Ulduar did not feel nearly long enough.  Four months in TotC was enough to make me never want to step foot in that raid again.

Having only 5 months in the particular case of Tier 14 is problematic for three main reasons:

  1. The tier is HUGE! 16 normal + 16 heroic encounters is a lot of bosses to work through, the most bosses we’ve ever had at one time. Five months isn’t enough.
  2. Aside from the raids, players have had a ton of content to work on since the launch of Mists – gearing, rep grinds, dailies, lesser charms, dungeons, scenarios, challenge modes, new BGs, arenas, brawler’s guild, pet battles. Of course I can’t speak for everyone, but I feel like it’s only recently that I’ve had time to take a breath and spend more time doing non-raid related things or working on alts. There’s still a lot I’d like to do before jumping into the gear/valor grind to prepare myself for a new tier of content.
  3. It means we’re going to be subjected to front-loaded raid content for the 3rd expansion in a row.

There has been a very obvious pattern for the release of raid content over the last 3 expansions:

  • The first tier of the expansion features a large number of unique raid bosses, spread out through multiple raid instances.
  • The middle tier(s) feature less raid bosses in less raid instances and are current for a shorter amount of time.
  • The last tier is a single raid instance and is current for a very long time before the next expansion is released.

Unless some major changes in priorities and allocation of resources has taken place in Mists, I’m anticipating these trends will continue and we’ll again be in the final tier for much longer than anybody wants to be.

When thinking about the ideal amount of time to spend in one raid tier before the next is introduced, we really need to consider how many encounters are in that tier. Let’s take a look at the amount of time each tier lasted and compare the length of time to the number of encounters available:

Tier 7  (5 months, 18 encounters – 3.6 encounters/month)
Tier 8  (3.5 months, 23 encounters 6.6 encounters/month)
Tier 9  (4 months, 11 encounters – 2.75 encounters/month)
Tier 10 (1 year, 26 encounters – 2.2 encounters/month) 
Tier 11 (6.5 months, 25 encounters – 3.8 encounters/month)
Tier 12 (5 months, 14 encounters – 2.8 encounters/month)
Tier 13 (10 months, 16 encounters – 1.6 encounters/month)
Tier 14 (4.75 months, 32 encounters – 6.7 encounters/month)

*I’m counting heroic versions of bosses as their own encounters, and have not included world bosses or the bosses in VoA/TB*

I think that everyone can agree that 1 year in ICC and 10 months in Dragon Soul was way too long. By comparison, Tiers 8 and 14 were current for far too short a time. I think a good ratio for boss fights to months spent in a tier is around 4:1, though it also depends on difficulty. The raid tiers that are around this ratio (Tiers 7 and 11) are the ones that made me feel neither rushed, nor like I was sitting around waiting for new content for an inordinate amount of time.

Raid tier release timing could be much better. Just because PTR testing is complete, doesn’t mean you need to release the next raid content patch immediately. You can hold something back. Slow down the release of the first couple tiers (but keep working on the next!) so we don’t have to spend a year in the last one. Just imagine how much more enjoyable raiding in Wrath could have been if the release schedule had been just a little bit different. Spending 6 months in Naxx, 6 months in Ulduar and only 9 months in ICC certainly would have made my raid time in Wrath more fulfilling and resulted in much less burnout at the end.

Putting an end to Tier 14 so soon is a bad idea.