Cheeseus brought it to my attention one morning, linking me to one of
our World of Logs reports.“This is where he does his best. Notice anything suspicious about it?”
I glanced at the logs, scanning down the list of healers’
performances.“It’s subtle”, he added.
Cheeseus was pointing me to the trash pre-Mimiron, a festive group of
mechanical spider-like miniature tanks called Arachnopods which
sprayed us with napalm while we struggled to mitigate the burning
damage. Arachnopods had a clever gimmick: As they reached low health,
they ejected their pilot allow us to jump in and control the Tank
ourselves, turning the tables on the clockwork gnomes. I wasn’t seeing
it. This is why I didn’t lead raids, but delegated the responsibility
to people who could read between the World of Logs lines.“Something more closely related to deaths”, Cheeseus continued with
his clues.
Aether!!! I should drive the siege engine!
I added it to my mental to-do list – a list Cheeseus had become quite
adept at piling things on to.
Is there a way to format this better? Not to nitpick (although we all know I’m here to do that), but the three hyphens in close proximity feels awkward.
Other fluctuations in the lineup continued to remind me of the Elite
problem.
Look at this sentence in the blog… I don’t know what it’s doing, but it feels as though you hit Enter between Elite and problem
Divineseal was casting Beacon of Light on the Main Tank and spamming
heals on the person driving the Destroyer, catapulting his healing
done in an attempt to not look like the worst healer on the team.
Other healers did this as a joke to see what they could inflate their
numbers to.
Catapulting his overall healing done?
inflate their numbers too
No real relevant edits, just the nitpicks. Looks good, Shawn. Also, thanks for not mentioning that you did indeed guess what was happening before I misread it and started to feed you clues. I would look like a fool to others if that were to happen 
I’ll review this. I had to re-arrange that paragraph a bit, so that the exits were grouped together, and that the proposal to promote Turtleman stood alone. Perhaps I re-work the first three paragraphs.[quote=“Cheeseus, post:3, topic:86”]
inflate their numbers too
[/quote]
Wrong! Read the sentence again. But A+ for effort. 
oops. mah bad!
Seriously, shorten the char limit. i dont need 20 chars to say i acknowledge that i fucked up -.-
Hanzo, I actually have a pretty simple, time-honored system to help you in your endeavors with regard to the Elite status:
Initiate an “on call” system.
Call is something that is very familiar to anyone working within the medical profession. Often times, it can suck the big one when you’re a “man on an island” working in a hospital with 12 ICU trauma patients, more on the way, and shit starts hitting the fan.
On the other hand, you can also have it work the other way like with pre-planned time-off. For example, you had 5 Elites, but didn’t want to lock up the 6th spot. For simplicity, let’s say you filled that spot and label them Elites A-F. Week one, Elites A and B are “on call”. They get a freebie night/week away from raiding, and you get to take in two consistent Raiders/up-and-comers. The following week, Elites C and D are “On Call”, A and B return, and you still get to bring in two, consistent Raiders. It’s a pretty simple tactic, and it’s fair because everyone can plan accordingly and you set the expectation early that there is a rotation for when someone has to “bite the bullet” and not raid one particular week.
The issue you’d then run into is how to adjust it when you expand your “on call” pool. In my residency program, there are three orthopaedic surgery residents per year. As a result, the “on-call” pool consists of 3 people. Each of us take call every third night as a result. As you acquire more residents in your program and expand the pool, you extend the interval on the call schedule. So, for instance, with 5 residents, you’re now expected to take call every 5th night instead of third.
Your issue will be what happens when the call pool is too large such that Elites now are required multiple weeks off in a row before they can be placed back in raid status. I’m sure there is a remedy, I just haven’t thought of it 
It’s now 10 characters. Next time I see you, remind me to wipe your ass and blow your nose for you as well.
This is actually what I suggested to Shawn… a lot 
My old SWP guild ran like this:
You need 80%+ attendance. Everyone earns DKP/hour. If you’re not invited to raid you can do whatever you like, but if you’re called in to sub someone out, you have 5-10 min to make it inside, raid ready, or you forfeit your DKP for the night.
Obviously a little different than how we ran things here, but the principles were what I wanted to adopt: Elites were expected to sign up for every single raid, and then it would be at Shawn (and my) discretion to determine what we needed for the night. I felt that was fair for the benefits of the rank.
Maybe, and this is a maybe, they still earned DKP outside of raid. But it never made it that far, anyways.
I think it would be fair to award those “on call” with DKP for the night if they are expected to be present in a moment’s notice. This is akin to “home call” for us residents. That’s a little different from what I was suggesting, which is more of “scheduled night off” from which you don’t get a reward. The night off and freedom from responsibility is your reward. In that scenario, you’d just be “off” and not “on call”.
On the other hand, if you CHOOSE to come in when needed despite being off, then you’d be rewarded with DKP, or perhaps extra DKP
I haven’t read the post yet but speaking from an IT standpoint usually an “On Call” is setup for shit people don’t want to do. If you didn’t want to be raiding, no one was forcing you.
I’m probably missing the application in this case so I’ll read the post and then come back and make an edit.
Ah ok. I barely remember the overabundance of elite melee toons but I think the opposition to this was the argument that having the elites out in place of other raiders was due to a few things: Elites not being able to progress by missing drops, inflating DKP by awarding more than 25 per week with DKP and harming progression by having lesser geared/experience folks in on the run (although I expect by this point in the timeline this was less of an issue).
Right off the bat everyone missed this: allowing
my need for an balanced ratio
an = a
having put so much energy into Warlock
into a Warlock, into his Warlock?
but Turtleman had red flagged me on numerous occasions
Turtle wasn’t flagging you. I get what you are trying to say but how about “…but Turtleman had thrown a red flag on numerous occasions”
This was a behavior he’d be warned about
he’d been or is this a “taking liberties he would contraction” if you are going for future tense?
I have it admit
it = to
vicious cycle of ignorance that protects oneself from his one’s own ignorance
remove his
Epic number of catches. Thanks for these.
I understand those concerns, but it’s one of the only systems that can fairly distribute the “burden” of not participating. Raiders deserve a shot too, and you can’t neglect them because you need that “reserve” should someone fall out. Raiders have their own disadvantages, primarily insecurity in their position. They may be present one week, but passed over another in order to gear up other interested members. Their position is one of inconsistency.
As an Elite, you’re afforded more face-time in raid, but we’re still a guild, and guildies bite the bullet for one-another in order to improve as a group. We’re all adults (it’s even in the darn guild rules), and while some are more “mature” than others, we all have certain elements in common within our personalities that I believe Hanzo realizes quite well: we’re team-mates.
That’s how Residency works. I’m an intern… If I fuck up, it’s my ass, but more importantly, my senior resident’s ass even more. It’s his job to teach me and supervise me. I’ll never be able to acquire the skills necessary if I don’t have him as a model. They still get to do all the cool, big operations, get the better treatment (i.e. get to leave early, don’t have to round), but they still help out the juniors.
You can’t have it both ways, is what I’m getting at, and this system at least informs people ahead of time what the expectations are while providing them freedom to at least make “swaps” (i.e. let’s say that you’re scheduled off on an evening where you’ll be tackling a boss that drops an item you want–you switch with someone).
As for the inflation, it shouldn’t be much of an issue. How often are you expecting somone on stand-by to come in? Perhaps you only award them a smaller amount of DKP for their troubles of being nearby. Perhaps you simply give them the night off free of responsibilities, and if they come in that’s their business. There are ways to get around that if you use your nogginfogger.
Dolling out DKP as an incentive to do the things you’re expected to do was such dangerous territory to be in; I did everything in my power to resist any urge to use it as some kind of reward mechanism. It was there only to serve one purpose: to show who is next in line for loot. Handling it like some kind of currency had far-reaching implications that players never understood – and even against all odds, I still found myself doing it from time to time.
“On Call” was better set up for the Raiders, esp. the new ones, who wanted to get their foot in the door. That’s what kept them chomping at the bit and is what kept our prog team running when we had … incidents.
As many of you guys know, I moved on to another server and am in a little bit more serious 25-man guild at this time. There is a bit of going back and forth about our old system here, but I’m going to take the time to inject a little bit of how some other guilds do it and see what that adds to the discussion.
My current guild does not guarantee raid spots to anybody. The only real priority is Raider > Trial for progression bosses and we also do a lot of swapping on the fly. Somehow they’ve made it pretty efficient to clear through trash while shifting the group and swapping people in/out. Anyway, the decision of who gets to come for what rests solely on officers for each role on a somewhat subjective level. For progression nights, it largely comes down to skill, performance, and attendance on who gets to go. For farm bosses, putting in trials, who needs what loot, and DKP are also factors for the line-up and any swaps that are made after that.
Most of us log in to raid each week and simply expect to go. Since my time in this guild (going on a couple months), I believe I’ve only sat out 2-3 boss kills total so far – none of which were progression fights. However, we do keep a bench and reward DKP through attendance points based on being on stand-by. If you are on the bench for a particular boss or start the raid on the bench, you are added to the DKP pool and will probably be swapped in for content you need if the officers can swing it. From my experience, that happens pretty often. If anybody on the bench should be on stand-by and doesn’t log over or get in the raid within a reasonable amount of time, they forfeit that attendance DKP they earned from being on the bench.
So we run our raids with a pretty fluid bench. It grows and shrinks throughout the raid night and people swap in/out pretty frequently when it’s appropriate (usually when there is farm content involved or somebody needs to be replaced). Our total roster is somewhere between 30-35 players, probably leaning towards the lower end at the end of the patch. That said, the bench also serves us with respect to replacing poor performers. Those who wipe the raid or are seriously not pulling their wait are typically warned and then eventually replaced by someone on the bench. The guild is honestly not that hardcore either, it’s a 3-night a week guild that raids approximately 10 hours per week give or take (~3:15-3:30 per night) with an emphasis on efficiency. Oddly enough, similar to how we got work done in DoD on a short schedule. I would definitely say there is less lenience towards poor performers and the roster depends more on the officers than an existing system.
With respect to attendance, there isn’t a strict % attendance number that is enforced, but people of Raider status are generally expected to be there every week. We have attendance threads to post in if somebody has to miss a night and the officers are generally happy to not have you as long as a post is made. I’ve seen repeat no-shows with no communication lose their Raider rank but really it’s a small courtesy to make a post if you value everybody else’s time (pending any serious emergencies of course).
That said, this guild works just fine without keeping a pool of casual raiders. Anybody who applies to the guild is trying to make it in full time and anybody we accept has a reasonable opportunity to achieve that full-time position. If somebody applies saying they can only make 2 days a week every other week, they are simply going to be turned down. The playing field is pretty level in that regard because there is no casual/full-time raider disparity. Everybody is either a Raider or not a Raider (trial, alt/friend, member). I guess that’s what it takes when you are diving a little deeper into the heroic side of raiding. You need the full team consisting of the same type of players willing to make the same investment and that includes anybody on the bench on a given night.
Perhaps DoD tried a little bit to be both identifies (both casual and progression-minded) and that’s what made us unique. Maybe not as strong in each respective area, though. The casual raiders sometimes couldn’t keep up with those progression pushes in terms of performance while the more hardcore players perhaps looked down on those casual raiders who made more mistakes and carried a little more slack. The folks in my current guild seem to know what they are and know what they want. They find players that match that and that’s it. If the schedule or something else doesn’t fit with the person, there are always more to be had. Honestly, it’s been pretty smooth sailing like this as well. Again, it’s not really a hardcore guild but definitely something different than what I experienced over the years here. It’s been a pretty interesting experience.
On another note, DKP as an incentive was also mentioned here. We’ve done a little bit of that but mostly for specific raid-relevant things such as:
1.) Performance posts. Raiders are encouraged to self-analyze each week when they look over their logs and post their own criticisms publicly in a specific forum thread for that week. You can go over the good and the bad as well as suggest what you/the group can improve on as a whole to do better. Bonus DKP isn’t always rewarded for this but it is occasionally to encourage more people to put time into bettering themselves.
2.) More recently, we are gearing up for the next patch so the guild has instituted a few optional PTR nights to test Flex difficulty and learn some boss mechanics early. They just announced that participating will result in a small set amount of bonus DKP after the -75% DKP decay they are planning for the patch. Smaller decays typically happen across the board every 2 weeks to try and keep a level playing field.
Anyway, we have a lot of hindsight/DoD-specific discussion going on so I thought I would add a newer perspective for comparison.