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Q u o t e:

Which is what the OP is coming from: running a guild + creating raid groups. The two go hand in hand, you can't view them separately. Afterall, the people you recruit will probably end up in the raid.

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I run a small, late night guild exactly like the OP; I don't see the issue here.

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Q u o t e:
We would. Setting aside the fact that we have too many mages as it is, yes, we would expect the druid to bust out at least a healing set if we are short of healers one night if not a tank set. If we had recruited a mage instead we would have to call the raid. Maybe it's appalling for you to get a hybrid to respec for a raid but you should at least be aware that it occurs.

This will not happen to everyone obviously. For large guilds, this situation would never occur because they'd always have enough of ANY role online. You guys are lucky, and good for you. But for the smaller guilds who just manage to fill the 25 spots, it happens a lot

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And would you give the Balance Druid a healing set or would you expect them to go out and get it completely on their own? You see, this is the crux of the issue that no one seems to get nor address - different specs take vastly different gear.

A Druid simply cannot heal effectively in the top end of 25 man content in full Balance gear, I should know because I'm trying it every raid to an extent. Balance gear has virtually no Spirit on it, Balance Druids want as little Spirit as they can fit onto their gear. A Balance Druid also needs high level of Hit. Balance and Restoration gem and enchant differently in almost every single way.

However, what you're essentially arguing from is a 0, 0 position when a guild doesn't function in that manner. As I stated in an earlier post, a small guild would be most balanced and more optimally set up if they had 3 Mages and 4 Druids - 1 Balance, 1 Feral, 2 Restoration. Said small guild should also have a total of 10 healers within their ranks, to get into the situation you are describing at least 5 healers would have to not show up; which is half of the total number. Does this happen? Sure, it's happened in my guild now and again and I've stepped in to heal when it does.

There's also the concept of alts and friends. We've brought in personal, close friends of ours when we're short on players a few times without any issues.

Yes, the benefit of having a Balance Druid over a Mage is that they can respec to heal, the down side to that is they require gear and time investment to get to that point. No all Balance Druids are going to instantly transform into amazing healers at the push of a button, most will be average at best. Like myself, I could farm all the tanking gear in the game, even if I respec Feral I'd be a terrible tank.

Having read this thread I still can't see what the OP and others are complaining about. It seems to me that now compared to pre-WOTLK you have far more choices with how you want to setup and run Guilds and Raids.

You no longer HAVE to stack certain classes and specs to succeed in a raiding environment. You can say that certain raids might be easier with certain comps (Malygos and 25 Raz being 2) but its no longer absolutely necessary. I'm sure there are many many guilds that will complete these encounters without the perfect raid comp.

You have the choice of how you recruit to your guild and how you select you raids, if its not working for you change your choices.

My guild atm has cleared all of 10 man Naxx, and all of 25 man with the exception of Saph and KT. We have cleared Sarth 10 and 25 man (havent done any drakes yet though) and we're starting in on Malygos. Not once in this time have we ever sat someone or pulled a raid because we didnt have a certain class. The only time a raid has been pulled is if we didnt have enough players to form it or not enough of a certain role (and that would normally be tank or healing, DPS is everywhere), and having said that its only happened once I believe.

So if you choose to run a small guild you can. If you choose to raid comp a certain way you can. If you choose to recruit a certain way you can. Nothing is stopping you. But if you choose to do it a certain way its definately not a cause for complaint about class mechanics or balancing.

I don't think there is any reasoning with the op. He is in a ... serious .... guild. The kind of guild that watched the Leeroy vid, and said "What a jerk, there plan was great. I can't believe he screwed it up.". Some people enjoy devoting way too much time thinking about raid stacking, and guild application questions. Question #42. "Are you employed? If yes, please stop now." The game caters to all kinds of players. I have no problem with hardcores. ( I wish they reciprocated). If he thinks he has to have the magic guild compostion, then more power to him. He apparently needs that.

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Q u o t e:
And would you give the Balance Druid a healing set or would you expect them to go out and get it completely on their own? You see, this is the crux of the issue that no one seems to get nor address - different specs take vastly different gear.

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Murmurs, with all due respect you've missed the point.

The druid would at least have the ability to do this. Gear or no gear, in a pinch they could potentially fill the role.

Pures don't even have that opportunity, and it's felt by every single one of us when we're trying to find a group.

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Q u o t e:
The kind of guild that watched the Leeroy vid, and said "What a jerk, there plan was great. I can't believe he screwed it up.".

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Serious guilds watched that video and said "why the hell are they even trying to kill all of the whelps?"

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Q u o t e:
I don't think there is any reasoning with the op. He is in a ... serious .... guild. The kind of guild that watched the Leeroy vid, and said "What a jerk, there plan was great. I can't believe he screwed it up.". Some people enjoy devoting way too much time thinking about raid stacking, and guild application questions. Question #42. "Are you employed? If yes, please stop now." The game caters to all kinds of players. I have no problem with hardcores. ( I wish they reciprocated). If he thinks he has to have the magic guild compostion, then more power to him. He apparently needs that.

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Two things:

1. A lot of people do take the game too seriously, and the OP may be one of them. I don't know him well enough to say.

2. Your post is awful.

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Q u o t e:


Are Innervate, Rebirth and Bloodlust great abilities? Absolutely. Am I happy when I get one in my raid? Yes. Do I sit out the warlock, rogue or mage in order to stack Rebirth? Not really. A good raid is one in which Rebirth gets used zero times.

Players also have a tendency to gloss over that "all other things being equal" part. Very few guilds can make the assumption that everyone in the raid has equal skill and gear, and honestly those guilds don't have invite drama. They know exactly who is coming and why ahead of time.

Should you take a great shaman with Bloodlust over a cruddy rogue? Probably.

Should you take a cruddy shaman with Bloodlust over a great rogue, assuming Bloodlust will make up the dps differnce? Probably a bad move.

Are your shaman and rogue consistently within 5% dps of each other to where the only tie goes to Bloodlust? If so, I would argue you are in some theoretical space and not in the actual game. If your guild is this good then the real answer is it probably doesn't matter and you are going to resolve the invite with a /random or DKP or who is best friends with the GM or something.

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All your assumptions are accurate when it's involves a perfect raid and an already established guild of raiders.

What you are not taking into account is new raiders, who have yet to establish themselves in a guild. If ( to take the very same examples you have given ) you see both a rogue and a shaman asking for the same DPS spot, and you don't know either of them(aka how skilled they are). You will always pick the shaman. Pure DPS relies on more 'skill' to get themselves a spot than a hybrid as the utility comes free with a hybrid, skilled or not.

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Q u o t e:


Are Innervate, Rebirth and Bloodlust great abilities? Absolutely. Am I happy when I get one in my raid? Yes. Do I sit out the warlock, rogue or mage in order to stack Rebirth? Not really. A good raid is one in which Rebirth gets used zero times.

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Not really? wow that's not really convincing. I hope that's a slip of writing GC.

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That's arguably the dumbest thing you have said so far.

Yes, Mr. Balance Druid, we are short a tank. You only have your Balance caster gear, but what the hell, respec Feral and have a go at it because gear or no gear, you can spec feral so you must be able to tank.

Dumb, stupid, retarded ... all are adjectives that are suitable for what you just said.

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I think he meant without GREAT gear... but he's still dumb because you need good gear to tank.

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Not really? wow that's not really convincing. I hope that's a slip of writing GC.

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Could you step out of your victim mentality tunnel vision for long enough to comprehend modern English? People use "not really" to mean "no" all the time.

its probly been pointed out already: "bring the player not the class" doesn't mean what you think it means.

Imagine you're making a raid, and you're down to choosing between a mage and a shaman... it means youre not taking the mage just because he's a mage, if you're taking one of the 2 purely for a dps spot, both can fill the role equally, so you would take the better player.

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Q u o t e:
its probly been pointed out already: "bring the player not the class" doesn't mean what you think it means.

Imagine you're making a raid, and you're down to choosing between a mage and a shaman... it means youre not taking the mage just because he's a mage, if you're taking one of the 2 purely for a dps spot, both can fill the role equally, so you would take the better player.

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pretty sure you'd take the mage, elemental is crap =/

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Q u o t e:


Are Innervate, Rebirth and Bloodlust great abilities? Absolutely. Am I happy when I get one in my raid? Yes. Do I sit out the warlock, rogue or mage in order to stack Rebirth? Not really. A good raid is one in which Rebirth gets used zero times.

Players also have a tendency to gloss over that "all other things being equal" part. Very few guilds can make the assumption that everyone in the raid has equal skill and gear, and honestly those guilds don't have invite drama. They know exactly who is coming and why ahead of time.

Should you take a great shaman with Bloodlust over a cruddy rogue? Probably.

Should you take a cruddy shaman with Bloodlust over a great rogue, assuming Bloodlust will make up the dps differnce? Probably a bad move.

Are your shaman and rogue consistently within 5% dps of each other to where the only tie goes to Bloodlust? If so, I would argue you are in some theoretical space and not in the actual game. If your guild is this good then the real answer is it probably doesn't matter and you are going to resolve the invite with a /random or DKP or who is best friends with the GM or something.

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Ghostcrawler, you mentioned the obvious utility like rebirth but it seems the smaller things are quickly overlooked. In my guild's raid we have our ret paladins cleansing without dropping much if ANY of their dps between casts because the mods take care of the targetting for them automatically.

Because of this, in the case of rets, we have a class that does more AE damage, heals his allies in melee range, cleanse bots and has wipe prevention and recovery.

Rets are just one example, but we could go on to moonkin and how soon abolish poison will be castable in that form, and I'm sure it'll be used by autopilot mods the same way.

These smaller utilities are fit between ability cooldowns. I do so hope they're being taken into account.

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Q u o t e:


Are Innervate, Rebirth and Bloodlust great abilities? Absolutely. Am I happy when I get one in my raid? Yes. Do I sit out the warlock, rogue or mage in order to stack Rebirth? Not really. A good raid is one in which Rebirth gets used zero times.

Players also have a tendency to gloss over that "all other things being equal" part. Very few guilds can make the assumption that everyone in the raid has equal skill and gear, and honestly those guilds don't have invite drama. They know exactly who is coming and why ahead of time.

Should you take a great shaman with Bloodlust over a cruddy rogue? Probably.

Should you take a cruddy shaman with Bloodlust over a great rogue, assuming Bloodlust will make up the dps difference? Probably a bad move.

Are your shaman and rogue consistently within 5% dps of each other to where the only tie goes to Bloodlust? If so, I would argue you are in some theoretical space and not in the actual game. If your guild is this good then the real answer is it probably doesn't matter and you are going to resolve the invite with a /random or DKP or who is best friends with the GM or something.

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Wow, the level to which many posters here are just making things up about things that I've never said anywhere near, is staggering.

I don't have attendance issues. I don't have drama issues. I don't have problems defeating the current easy content or even fielding 25 80's in a workable raid format even though we have 30 total 80's in our guild.

My issue stems mainly from recruiting, and looking forward to Ulduar. To imply that I am some super hardcore that needs things to be uber-complicated to be happy is ludicrous. Some of you people are simply just reading into things what you want to, and it's amazing to watch people push some agenda, whether it be some perceived 'hate' towards their class/spec, or the "OP is just some frazzled hardcore who blah blah blah". Yeah, I raid 3 times a week after midnight with a small roster of laid back adults who are mostly single parents, college students or married people who play when the fam sleeps.

I would link my guild's site and let you see our Apply Here, but I'm sure it would just get trolled by the throngs of trolls showing their faces here.

But GC, I do expect better from you. Look at your quote. There are two problems that I see.

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Q u o t e:
A good raid is one in which Rebirth gets used zero times.

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Right. So assuming you guys make raid encounters challenging again in Ulduar, like Vashj/KT challenging if not M'uru challenging, are you implying that while learning a boss a Rebirth-use would somehow mean a guild is not running a good raid? I'm not concerned with trivial content, or farmed content. Like most guilds who cherish progression nights, I am looking at new challenging content. How can you even imply that a Rebirth is somehow an indicator of a "non-good" raid?

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Q u o t e:
Should you take a great shaman with Bloodlust over a cruddy rogue? Probably.

Should you take a cruddy shaman with Bloodlust over a great rogue, assuming Bloodlust will make up the dps difference? Probably a bad move.

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The flaw here should be obvious. A good raiding guild, your words =P, would not have a cruddy anything! So rephrase that:

Should you take a great shaman with Bloodlust over a great rogue? Probably.

Should you take a great shaman w/ Heroism (Alliance talk in my thread plz!) over a great Rogue, assuming Heroism will make up even more raid DPS difference? Without a doubt.

Why to the first one? Self-res, totems, Heroism, emergency off heals if needed and the flexibility to one day be able to go, "You know what Jathan, we've been short healers due to some RL issues, maybe I should go Resto for a couple weeks to help out," if ever needed.

We are talking GUILD spots, not raid spots. The former provides for the latter, but comes first in the chain.