Coffee-Named Hunters Get Answers
“Dear BRK, do you have any advice on my predicament? Our guild on the Silvermoon server was semi-regularly running Kara a few months ago and we typically had more people than actually needed, all of varying degrees of capability. There was an attempt to get two groups running however not enough for a second group to get in.
“Long story short, someone voiced an opinion of having Group 1 be the ready to go, capable and “geared” group ,and Group 2 the “not so capable and geared group”. A huge spat broke out as it was interpreted that these people - two people actually - didn’t want to play with anyone still learning Kara and didn’t want to wipe due to someone’s lack of experience or proper gear, actually, lots of people felt they were perceived as inferior players.
“Our Guild Leader went on hiatus; if he wasn’t on, no one ran instances so this was his way of culling the herd, IMHO. Well, no one wants to run Kara at all anymore, my guess lots of bad blood out there now.
“I don’t see our guild being as ambitious as it was before this happened. I’d like to expand my skill set, get myself out there as a recently respecced BM level 70 Hunter and run Kara regularly but I feel out guild now has self-imposed limitations. I don’t think I am a compelling enough figure in the guild to help get us back on track and become a more cohesive guild but I’m leery of leaving the guild for new horizons. Any suggestions? Macciatto and Catsmeow”
For a guild to survive the transition to 10-man instances, it will require three things:
- A diverse guild population in terms of classes and specs.
- A small, smart, and talented guild leadership council.
- A tremendous lack of idiots.
Let’s say your guild has 20 people who are newly-keyed and ready to play Karazhan. Are you going to be able to form two groups? Probably not. Your guild population isn’t going to be diverse enough.
A 5-man party one needs a tank, healer, and three DPS/CC classes. Logically extrapolating this to a 10-man party, one would think one would need two tanks, two healers, and six DPS/CC classes.
Wrong-O.
Each fight in Karazhan requires different raid makeups to compensate for low-DPS. Attumen can be done with 2/2/6, but for guilds new to Kara, they’re going to specifically want two priests for Moroes and at least three tanks. Not two healers, two priests. Can Moroes be done without priests? Of course. Is the guild just entering Kara going to want to try it without them? No way; Shackle is the key to defeating Moroes with a low-DPS raid.
Your 20-man guild is going to want to run one group and stack that raid for each encounter. Bring extra priests to Moroes, extra cleansers to Maiden, extra DPS to Curator, etc. For many weeks your guild should focus on perfecting their strategies for these fights and getting as many people experienced and geared off the easy bosses.
Eventually your guild will grow and you can take your core group and split it into two groups, putting five or so experienced people in with Kara-noobs and getting them the gear they need. You’re going to keep running the same bosses to get them hooked up.
They key is to not let the experienced raiders get bored at the expense of helping the new people. One week out of three let the core guys go explore further into Kara. Explain to the guild that progression for these people is progression for all.
This is where having a lack of idiots in your guild will help. If people get jealous and out-of-whack because they’re not the best-geared in the guild, they’re going to cause problems. While the exploratory raid presses on, the rest of the guild should be getting their heroic keys, Badges of Justice, and more phat loot from 5-mans.
The goal, of course, is to have two groups doing the Moroes-Prince run every week. Tier 4 gloves are nice, Tier 4 helms are much nicer.
As for our friend Macciatto, she’s in a pickle as her guild has already crumbled. It is very difficult to resurrect a broken guild. It is just as hard to start a guild with a small core of friends and built it into a casual or not-so-casual raiding guild. We’re going to recommend that she take her core group of best friends, /gquit and head off for greener pastures.
So let’s say Macciatto has four friends that all want to go try to find a Kara-raiding guild. How do you find a guild that has just enough people to get into Kara but can’t get very far because their guild just isn’t big enough?
This web site is rockin’ in that it will tell you which guilds are progressing into content beyond your wildest dreams, and which guilds are strong enough to get into Karazhan but need your help to go further. BRK did similar research before he found Aetherial Circle.
Find your server and look for the guilds who have started Kara but haven’t progressed too far in. Contract their officers, check out their web site, see if their personalities are stable and they’re interested in absorbing your little group.
To run a single 10-man raid consistently every week, a guild needs 15-20 diverse and non-nutty raiders. To run two 10-man raids, the guild needs 35-40. Personal schedules, non-diverse guild classes and spec, and just plain old absenteeism require a large pool of talent from which to draw to make two Kara raids. These guilds just starting Kara are learning this lesson and want to expand, but don’t want to blindly invite any chucklehead that applies. They want smart, talented players with an interest in working together to take down this instance.
They want Macciatto and her friends.
Interview these guilds and find out if your friends will perhaps find a new, exciting home in a guild learning the strategies and taking down bosses in Karazhan. There is little in this game more that we enjoy more than beating a boss for the first time.
The one big exception? The friends we’ve made in Aetherial Circle.
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23 Responses to “Coffee-Named Hunters Get Answers”
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/shakes fist at evil computer filter at work!
/sigh. Can’t access that site at work.
/goes back to slackin’ off.
I am in a similar situation but I am still pressing hard toward 70. My first guild on QD was mostly alts and sort of a feeder to one of the more advanced guilds on the server. Unfortunately, they splintered that guild and we mostly lost our “feeder” status (hard to be a feeder when the big guys aren’t playing their alts to figure out the good players with lower characters eh?)
A couple of my buddies and I jumped to a guild where they had a great mix of classes and levels and began getting settled. Then the guild leader had a meltdown in guild chat and posted a MOTD that they were leaving the guild. So the asst. guild leader and a few of us starting making plans. 24 hours later the guild leader is back and still acting odd. The Asst. guild leader is gone, tired of the crud.
I feel more sad for my level 70 friends as they are stuck for the time being, than for me, I still have a few levels to get done before I can say I am ready to look for end game stuff. (okay 10 levels to outland but well you know)
Add in our server being so new, guilds are still shaking down and settling in.
Feel the same way about my guild, Corpus Vile (Rexxar).
Thank you for putting this into perspective.
“They want smart, talented players with an interest in working together to take down this instance.”
This statement tells me a lot to look for. I’d like to say we worked well together however I hesitate to say the hunters in our guild tend to get told what to do by players who’ve never played a hunter. Perhaps that was a red flag I ignored..
Again, thanks for taking the time to read my long winded email and keep up the phenomenal work!
~Macc and Catsmeow
I find the 70 guild search to be a most painful thorn in my side. I was in a guild that was moving into kara about 4 weeks after BC. We were doing well. We had a nice group of 70s. IMO we were making progress. Each failed attempt at Moroes yielded us at the least rep / loot from the trash and Attuneman.
That is when the crap started. People started showing up real late for raids. They would not be In Swamp of Sorrows (Horde side, pvp server) waiting for guild invites. They would complain about having to now, “run” out there just to get nailed by Moroes. The guild crumbled, and most of us either abandoned ship, or sunk with her.
I was so “burned out” on having to depend on others for progress that I took the summer off. I am now back, I have transfered to a pve server (less stress ftw) and I am slowing trying to get back into the swing of things…
Looking for a guild is tough, I will take your WoWJutsu advice in hand and see what I can come up with.
I feel good that my guild, even though it is just a casual raiding guild, is ranked 56 on my server. We have 2 regular Kara teams and now have started to run Gruul. We have Maulgar pretty much on farm, even though occasionally he will surprise us, but Gruul is still giving us trouble.
I too have encountered this dilemma along w/ Macc. as we are in the same guild and have shared in the struggles the rest of you have as well. I too share the pains of the crumbling guild. I do feelt hat we are not lost thoough I think that we can bounce back as we have so many times in the past. We need a council of officers to bring some cohesion back to the guild members and get back on that warmount and ride again into the cosmic sunset. Thanks for the incite and suggestions. I hope we can apply the basis of good raiding principles to the core members and have that trickle down to the up and coming.
We have a good guild structure with a CM for each class plus officers, all mature players.Even then there are problems and times when the guild way isnt your own.TBH I find the social life of the guild makes this tolerable.Also as a hunter I think there are so many prejudices that impair our play,playing with friends is what gives the most satisfaction.I can swap my spec around as I wish and the guys round me know Im trying to improve my play.Good Luck
Dezrath EU Hellscream
[q] 3. A tremendous lack of idiots.[/q]
Sometimes the hardest part to overcome… lol
What about someone like me who’s in a very small guild and I’m the highest level? Do I move to a larger guild? With my lack of experience and gear how can I expect to be picked up by another guild?
Karazhan almost destroyed my guild while I was away in a smaller guild with some friends. We used to be able to fill 40 mans with an excess of healing and tanks… 10 prot warriors!
TBC came out and the competition for Kara slots intensified. Some people left for larger, more successful guilds. Some went to smaller guilds with friends. Some quit the game altogether.
The image of the “Elite Squad” was established and people felt left out.
It was ugly. 10 mans are guild breakers in the expansion. We can do 2 sometimes 3 runs now into Kara, but only after repairing a lot of damage and heavy recruiting.
We are NOT looking forward to Zul’Aman!
I wouldn’t be so sure that the 10-member format is what was so hard for guilds. I don’t know how we’d have fared if 20-member raids were the first we had to tackle again.
Anyway, my guild was taking on Gruul once in a while, but now we have not been able to go for the last few scheduled runs because there just weren’t enough people around. I don’t know what’s going on.
I could use a little advice on this topic. I spent my first year on the alliance side mostly soloing but finally joining a group working through MC. My account was hacked and my lvl 60 deleted. While waiting for him to be restored I started a horde hunter. Got tired of MC and went back to horde hunter. Decided to “twink” him at 19 and ended up meeting a bunch of fun people and forming a pvp only guild. I continued creating characters and maximizing their gear/chants for certain lvls. After BC came out a few of us lvled our 60’s up and have been doing arena matches for some time now. We barely have enough 70’s to fill out a 5v5 team but probably at least a dozen 60+ headed up to 70. It’s likely they won’t be geared all that well when they do ding so that could be many more weeks. Back to the meat of the topic……3 of us have gotten our Kara keys and 2 of my co workers are near 70 and interested in Kara too. Even if we were to get all the 70’s in guild intersted we would have a hard time filling out a balanced 10 man. Leaving the guild is not an option I’ve considered as I love the people and really enjoy pvp but I’d really like to see Kara. The epic loot wouldn’t hurt either. I’m not sure about how to approach a guild and ask if they are willing to partner with 3-5 of my guild for Kara runs and share loot. I’m guessing that most guilds will poo-poo this idea. But I see this as about the only way w/o leaving the guild. Any suggestions or thoughts?
Scheduling is a huge problem for the non-”hardcore” guilds, i.e. most of them, especially when you’re trying to build two Kara groups out of a guild of that really only has 30-35 active, unique 70s. We’ve been able to get off two groups three of the last four weeks, but this week, it’s just not working. Part of it is having to change the mindset, and get people to let us know when they’re available upwards of a week in advance; part of it is adapting to the fact that shit happens, people don’t always know what’s going on (I can only schedule myself up to Saturday), and emergency plans have to be made with raid IDs in mind. Fortunately, there are very few idiots in our guild (they tend to weed themselves out sooner or later), so people are generally pretty understanding about being able to get in or not on a given day/week.
As for the split of groups, you definitely want a mix of vets and newbs on your teams, or you create an obvious segregation within the guild, and that’s just a terrible idea all around. In fact, our groups aren’t even numbered (1/2, Alpha/Beta, A/B, whatever). They’re Green Team (led by the GL) and Gold Team (led by another MT). There’s a friendly rivalry between “teams,” but the fact that the teams are fairly fluid from week to week means that there’s no real drama over group competitiveness, and the non-hierarchical designations mean that no one gets their undies in a knot over not being on the supposed “leet team”. (For we all know that Fuschia is the true leet team.)
I find the Kara topic interesting - as a basis: Our guild is very old (1 month after initial release) and one of the largest possible (hovers just under the member cap). However, we are very NON-raid orriented (its base and binding tie is that all must be Christians, there is usually more sociallizing than instancing). As such, it is much harder than you would think to even get a 10 man together. Through much cajoaling, I (BM Hunter) managed to get 1 together last April, which, up until recently had been able to get to Prince every week. (side point - we ran with 3 hunters “THREE” who all ended up leading any type of damage meters someone printed out *grin*). Over the summer, with our help 2 other Kara grps formed. Then at the beginning of September, all (ALL!!!) of our 3 groups tanks quit fo different reasons within a 2 week time frame (none due to being mad). That is 6 tanks in decent gear. So we are all starting pretty much over, and it is leading to a lot of “alt” nights, while these tanks get geared up. The point is, roll with what you can get sometimes, and make sure you are having fun. Above all, don’t take it too seriously.
Is there anyone out there with a guild on Staghelm that I could possibly move to? The way things are I’m never gonna see Kara and beyond unless I move.
Hey, this is Tuan, I was playing on Doom and Jerkface’s mage with you guys last week. Jerkface pointed me to this blogspot and told me it was an interesting read (and it is).
First of all I would like to say that after raiding with you guys, Aetherial Circle is a great group of people, and you guys have the potential to go far. Good leadership, talented raiders, positive attitude.
It was a pleasure to get to raid with you guys, and I’ll be around if you guys are ever in need of extra players to fill in raid spots.
Tuan did some serious DPS in Gruul’s with a undergeared mage. We’d hate to see what he could do with something pretty.
Thanks for the compliments, but they really belong to Fio and Cay.
It occurs to me that pugging Kara with 3+ players who know one another would be reasonable. Sure there will be occasional pain, but you’ll also run into players you get along with who are capable, and possibly looking for a guild. Even if they’re not looking for a guild, theirs may not allow them to run that often, so your group still grows organically.
As the MT in my guild said when I linked this article on my guild website, “That article is full of truthiness.”
My reply… “The BRK tells no lies.”
BRK tells no lies, but he cannot spell and frequently cannot count.
But thank you for the compliment.
(novella incoming…sorry
)
i joined into my guild 2 weeks after i got started playing wow, at about level 15…the key factor in me joining was that they were an “off-hours” guild…the most activitiy in the guild is late night hours..i even went so far as to get on a server(Doomhammer) that was behind my time so I could be more “in synch” with the population of the server, to work with my schedule(which, by the way, i work graveyard shift on the weekends, and go to night class during the week)…
i’ve been active in the guild, and supportive of everything, and lend my hand where i can be of assistance…
even went so far as to sacrifice my own personal time(non-gaming time) working my ass off to get my kara key in time for our first raid…
once we started raiding kara 3 or 4 weeks ago, we’ve taken down attumen, the beast boss, and moroes…but like any learning guild, we’re inconsistent…one day we’ll blow through everything, the next we’ll get raided by the big nasty elites….
no big deal right?
well, with my schedule, i get in on about 1 raid a week, since the majority of raiding is done on friday/sunday nights….
when i’m on that raid, i’m always #2 on the DPS list(behind our sicko rogue who is just ruthless on damage)…i’m always on point with trapping and CC…i’m on time, stocked with supplies, repaired…everything a good raider should do….
why?…i love raiding…to me that’s what an MMO is for…a large group of people working towards a similar goal….and i hate not being able to contribute to that goal…
now the rub….
after last week’s raid(which was a one-night “we’re going to do attumen, and call it a night”…which we blew through, btw), myself and a new mage in the raid were asked to leave the raiding vent channel, since we could only raid on a limited schedule…
i didn’t think much of it at the time, until one of the healers came looking for me a day or two later…
i should note at this point, that there seems to be a schism growing in our guild(which is probably inevitable with any guild), of certain people always grouping with certain people, and if you’re not in the know, you’re excluded….
well…i get word from one of our healers that i won’t be asked to go along on our raids anymore, because of my schedule…they want the same group of 10 people going through at all times, and they’re only going to raid once a week….
in addition….when they’re not raiding, those 10 people are going to split into 2 groups and run instances….
to add salt into the wound…i get the following…
“i’m sure, though, that if someone can’t make it, you’ll be on the top of the list as an alternate”…
how insulting is that?
….brk, does AC need another diligent “i’m learning here!” hunter? lol
–j
i find that it takes a lot of maturity and understanding in big guilds…
myself, i prefer to leave the ‘competing’ out of my plate till i find a group of friends like BRK did…
@Macciatto: if you we’re allied, i could point you to a group of people i just met who seems meet some of the criterias of a good raid guild… i’m not in it…
i decided to stick with IRL friends and be offered an available slot whenever they need a healer/priest (something which i doubt would happen when they get their ranks filled)