In pursuit of my perfect guild I'd like to brainstorm another idea
The premise of this guild is that healing is a chore
From this simple premise comes a guild concept
If healing is a chore and we want to be fair then everyone has to heal. That means that every member of the guild must be a paladin, druid, priest or shaman. (there is actually another possibility but we'll not address the dps main/healing alt idea yet)
OK, so first off is this viable to raid with?
Tanks - Druids, Paladins - that seems fine
DPS - all 4 classes with dps specs and gear and mutual buffs, should be fine
Healers - fine
So I think the answer is yes, it is viable
A 25 man raid would look something like this:
Group 1 (Tank group) 2 bears, 2 prot pallies, priest (for Prayer of healing)
Group 2 (melee dps) 2 shammies, 2 cats, retri pally
Group 3 (ranged dps) 2 shadow priest, moonkin, 2 elemental shammies
Group 4 (healing) 2 holy priests, resto shammy, holy pally, tree druid
Group 5 (flexible role) whoever's left with some tanking healing and dps gear, ready to be given different tasks as we need more tanks, more healers or more dps
For loot distribution I'd like to emphasise individual choice. I can see the merits of a Loot Council in a guild where you want to strictly optimise, to min/max everything. However I'm on a server where there are no truly hardcore raid guilds. I've been in two of the top horde guilds and I know the others reasonably well and there are no guilds who don't tolerate cold blood/prep rogues, fury main tanks, people who never herb or contribute, people who pvp whenever they're not in a raid. Which is fine, it's a perfectly acceptable way to play but my point is if you're not min/maxing in most respects why remove individual choice over loot in the name of min/maxing?
So what i'm thinking is this: dkp system with the following priorities:
plate - paladins
mail - shammies
leather - druids
cloth - priests
Further, priority may only be claimed if you have enough dkp to pay for it. So a Priest with -50 dkp to her name could lose out on a cloth +80 spell dps chest to an elemental shammy with more dkp if only those 2 wanted it
The point here is to very strongly protect the dkp economy by avoiding arbitrary priorities. If you have 200 dkp more than the next guy you deserve the item you have chosen to bid for more than he does. We have enough respect for our players to believe that if a Priest bids on an item for its high armour or a Pally wants something for its spell damage they have a very clear plan as to how they will use the item to extend their characters' capabilities. In those examples the Priest may want to survive being focussed in arena pvp, the pally might want to improve her ability as the guild's primary aoe-er.
DKP is deliberately slightly inflationary. I'd like runs to pay out approximately 20% more than the amount spent. I think moderate inflation keeps people spending better than zero sum, it's a real barrier for some people to go negative
Everyone in the guild is expected to gear up for multiple roles. The notion that someone doesn't need an item because they are a healer is ridiculous in our guild - all of us are much much more than just a healbot. Even if you're concentrating your dkp expenditure on tank gear you will still be expected to get the best possible healing and dps gear from non-lockout instances
We want everyone to rotate. Healing is mandatory and there is a healing rota. The longer you go without healing duty the more rota points you gain, when we assign healers we pick those with most rota points. Simple enough. We may also use rota points as a disciplinary measure ie stop talking back to the raid leader or you'll be on healing duty next month. Healing duty or any other raid role lasts a month and is then reviewed. If we are short of willing tanks then we'll have to implement a tank rota too. For that matter if we have more people wanting to tank than we need we would also implement a rota
So for example at the beginning of a month we look at people's preferences. We want 10 people on healing duty out of our 40 raiding members. 3 people have asked to be on healing duty so that is our first 3 healers. 3 have 3 rota points so they also get the duty. 10 people have 2 rota points each so we random 4 of them. We have our 10 healers. All 10 get told to respec before they next raid and their rota points are reset to zero. All other raiders gain a rota point
It should be noted that respeccing will be a much more trivial thing. Since the costs to respec aren't going to change but the amount of money in the economy is going to soar effectively it's going to become extremely cheap to respec. So what if it costs you 60g to respec if you grind 200g per hour?
AOE could be a problem but I think we're probably ok. Consecrate is our primary AOE with the silver lining that our aoe-ers are less fragile than those in most other guilds. Backing that up we have Hurricane, fire totems and holy nova. From raid AoE situations that I have seen personally i haven't yet seen a situation where 6 pallies spamming Consecrate with every other raider healing them would simply be too weak in terms of firepower. Remember that our aoe-ers gain mana from being healed (new Spiritual Attunement) allowing them to aoe longer. Retribution aura, Sanctity aura and Thorns too. Am I being too optimistic here?
OK so what are the strengths and weaknesses of the guild
Strengths
- healers can fully explore all facets of their character, gaining access to loot and raid roles they would never get in a normal raid guild
- every guild member is reasonably capable of killing in pvp and solo pve grinding most of the time. You might dip during your Resto month but otherwise you'll be pretty capable
- pre mades from this guild are going to be really scary. A team even slightly poorer than us won't get a single kill
- joint runs with other guilds are easy to arrange
- if we have enough people for a raid we will never have to cancel because we're short of a particular class. Half the guild can tank, all can dps, all can heal
- we have extraordinary versatility. All sorts of people can pitch in with emergency heals and we have more innervates and combat resses than a standard guild
- we recover from wipes very fast. 75% of the guild can do out of combat ressing and each buffing class has twice as many members compared to a standard guild
- we should be able to manage very high member retention. Our members' only raiding options if they leave are go elsewhere and be a healbot in return for progress or convince some standard raid guild to let you have a specialised tank/dps niche role. If, as I believe, the server is going to be very short of level 70 healers, exacerbated by our creating this guild and "nicking" a load of healers, there will be very few guilds with good progress willing to take on feral druids and shadow priests. Hopefully people will stay for positive reasons of course but if they do consider their options it doesn't hurt that it will be hard to fulfil all the aspects of their character elsewhere
Weaknesses
- everyone bids (rolls) on "your" loot
- we aren't mainstream so a lot of people (including some raiding healers) won't even consider us. It may take time to get to the stage where we can field 25 level 70 players to raid with
- we are slightly sub-optimal for raiding. We have approx 95% of the tanking, 85% of the dps and 100% of the healing of an equivalent guild built from the pick of all 9 classes. (Arguably).
- we lack some useful class skills. Disarm trap, Banish, Arcane Brilliance, Healthstones, Misdirection etc etc
There are two issues I'm particularly unsure about
- 1) should we power-gear a main tank? It kind of goes against the ethos of the guild which is to excel in fairness. My experience with a guild that went from Venoxis to Broodlord then imploded was that too much progress too soon hurts a guild as it becomes unacceptable to stall. We also, in that guild, suffered very high main tank attrition. I'm thinking that having a handful of us spending all our dkp on tank gear should be enough for reasonable progress
I'm also thinking if we power ahead to content we can only beat if our Main Tank turns up then whenever he's not available we're screwed. If he leaves the guild we're screwed. If we have several tanks gearing up simultaneously with several more only a little behind then we can always do what we had planned. The guild might be happier for not achieving too much too fast. What you never had you never miss
2) how do we handle crafters? Let me first tell you why I don't find the usual system of nominating one person as main crafter in each speciality satisfactory. First we can lose them. Second I've seen things grow very heated over the employment of their skills. One guild wanted to charge another guild for the services of our expensively geared up Exalted Thorium Brotherhood smith. However our smith wanted a fat payday from the deal. Instead of a compromise this became a flamefest
So let's say that in TBC there is a path similar to grinding up a smith with stacks and stacks of cores from MC. Should we charge him dkp for grinding him to Exalted and afterwards consider his skills as his property, not a guild asset per se? I think the guild should still expect combines for guildies to be without charge but the crafter is at liberty to make a fortune off the open market.
I do think that things like Enchant - Spell Power should require expenditure of dkp. I've generally seen those just given out to some long-standing member and they're an absolute goldmine
The premise of this guild is that healing is a chore
From this simple premise comes a guild concept
If healing is a chore and we want to be fair then everyone has to heal. That means that every member of the guild must be a paladin, druid, priest or shaman. (there is actually another possibility but we'll not address the dps main/healing alt idea yet)
OK, so first off is this viable to raid with?
Tanks - Druids, Paladins - that seems fine
DPS - all 4 classes with dps specs and gear and mutual buffs, should be fine
Healers - fine
So I think the answer is yes, it is viable
A 25 man raid would look something like this:
Group 1 (Tank group) 2 bears, 2 prot pallies, priest (for Prayer of healing)
Group 2 (melee dps) 2 shammies, 2 cats, retri pally
Group 3 (ranged dps) 2 shadow priest, moonkin, 2 elemental shammies
Group 4 (healing) 2 holy priests, resto shammy, holy pally, tree druid
Group 5 (flexible role) whoever's left with some tanking healing and dps gear, ready to be given different tasks as we need more tanks, more healers or more dps
For loot distribution I'd like to emphasise individual choice. I can see the merits of a Loot Council in a guild where you want to strictly optimise, to min/max everything. However I'm on a server where there are no truly hardcore raid guilds. I've been in two of the top horde guilds and I know the others reasonably well and there are no guilds who don't tolerate cold blood/prep rogues, fury main tanks, people who never herb or contribute, people who pvp whenever they're not in a raid. Which is fine, it's a perfectly acceptable way to play but my point is if you're not min/maxing in most respects why remove individual choice over loot in the name of min/maxing?
So what i'm thinking is this: dkp system with the following priorities:
plate - paladins
mail - shammies
leather - druids
cloth - priests
Further, priority may only be claimed if you have enough dkp to pay for it. So a Priest with -50 dkp to her name could lose out on a cloth +80 spell dps chest to an elemental shammy with more dkp if only those 2 wanted it
The point here is to very strongly protect the dkp economy by avoiding arbitrary priorities. If you have 200 dkp more than the next guy you deserve the item you have chosen to bid for more than he does. We have enough respect for our players to believe that if a Priest bids on an item for its high armour or a Pally wants something for its spell damage they have a very clear plan as to how they will use the item to extend their characters' capabilities. In those examples the Priest may want to survive being focussed in arena pvp, the pally might want to improve her ability as the guild's primary aoe-er.
DKP is deliberately slightly inflationary. I'd like runs to pay out approximately 20% more than the amount spent. I think moderate inflation keeps people spending better than zero sum, it's a real barrier for some people to go negative
Everyone in the guild is expected to gear up for multiple roles. The notion that someone doesn't need an item because they are a healer is ridiculous in our guild - all of us are much much more than just a healbot. Even if you're concentrating your dkp expenditure on tank gear you will still be expected to get the best possible healing and dps gear from non-lockout instances
We want everyone to rotate. Healing is mandatory and there is a healing rota. The longer you go without healing duty the more rota points you gain, when we assign healers we pick those with most rota points. Simple enough. We may also use rota points as a disciplinary measure ie stop talking back to the raid leader or you'll be on healing duty next month. Healing duty or any other raid role lasts a month and is then reviewed. If we are short of willing tanks then we'll have to implement a tank rota too. For that matter if we have more people wanting to tank than we need we would also implement a rota
So for example at the beginning of a month we look at people's preferences. We want 10 people on healing duty out of our 40 raiding members. 3 people have asked to be on healing duty so that is our first 3 healers. 3 have 3 rota points so they also get the duty. 10 people have 2 rota points each so we random 4 of them. We have our 10 healers. All 10 get told to respec before they next raid and their rota points are reset to zero. All other raiders gain a rota point
It should be noted that respeccing will be a much more trivial thing. Since the costs to respec aren't going to change but the amount of money in the economy is going to soar effectively it's going to become extremely cheap to respec. So what if it costs you 60g to respec if you grind 200g per hour?
AOE could be a problem but I think we're probably ok. Consecrate is our primary AOE with the silver lining that our aoe-ers are less fragile than those in most other guilds. Backing that up we have Hurricane, fire totems and holy nova. From raid AoE situations that I have seen personally i haven't yet seen a situation where 6 pallies spamming Consecrate with every other raider healing them would simply be too weak in terms of firepower. Remember that our aoe-ers gain mana from being healed (new Spiritual Attunement) allowing them to aoe longer. Retribution aura, Sanctity aura and Thorns too. Am I being too optimistic here?
OK so what are the strengths and weaknesses of the guild
Strengths
- healers can fully explore all facets of their character, gaining access to loot and raid roles they would never get in a normal raid guild
- every guild member is reasonably capable of killing in pvp and solo pve grinding most of the time. You might dip during your Resto month but otherwise you'll be pretty capable
- pre mades from this guild are going to be really scary. A team even slightly poorer than us won't get a single kill
- joint runs with other guilds are easy to arrange
- if we have enough people for a raid we will never have to cancel because we're short of a particular class. Half the guild can tank, all can dps, all can heal
- we have extraordinary versatility. All sorts of people can pitch in with emergency heals and we have more innervates and combat resses than a standard guild
- we recover from wipes very fast. 75% of the guild can do out of combat ressing and each buffing class has twice as many members compared to a standard guild
- we should be able to manage very high member retention. Our members' only raiding options if they leave are go elsewhere and be a healbot in return for progress or convince some standard raid guild to let you have a specialised tank/dps niche role. If, as I believe, the server is going to be very short of level 70 healers, exacerbated by our creating this guild and "nicking" a load of healers, there will be very few guilds with good progress willing to take on feral druids and shadow priests. Hopefully people will stay for positive reasons of course but if they do consider their options it doesn't hurt that it will be hard to fulfil all the aspects of their character elsewhere
Weaknesses
- everyone bids (rolls) on "your" loot
- we aren't mainstream so a lot of people (including some raiding healers) won't even consider us. It may take time to get to the stage where we can field 25 level 70 players to raid with
- we are slightly sub-optimal for raiding. We have approx 95% of the tanking, 85% of the dps and 100% of the healing of an equivalent guild built from the pick of all 9 classes. (Arguably).
- we lack some useful class skills. Disarm trap, Banish, Arcane Brilliance, Healthstones, Misdirection etc etc
There are two issues I'm particularly unsure about
- 1) should we power-gear a main tank? It kind of goes against the ethos of the guild which is to excel in fairness. My experience with a guild that went from Venoxis to Broodlord then imploded was that too much progress too soon hurts a guild as it becomes unacceptable to stall. We also, in that guild, suffered very high main tank attrition. I'm thinking that having a handful of us spending all our dkp on tank gear should be enough for reasonable progress
I'm also thinking if we power ahead to content we can only beat if our Main Tank turns up then whenever he's not available we're screwed. If he leaves the guild we're screwed. If we have several tanks gearing up simultaneously with several more only a little behind then we can always do what we had planned. The guild might be happier for not achieving too much too fast. What you never had you never miss
2) how do we handle crafters? Let me first tell you why I don't find the usual system of nominating one person as main crafter in each speciality satisfactory. First we can lose them. Second I've seen things grow very heated over the employment of their skills. One guild wanted to charge another guild for the services of our expensively geared up Exalted Thorium Brotherhood smith. However our smith wanted a fat payday from the deal. Instead of a compromise this became a flamefest
So let's say that in TBC there is a path similar to grinding up a smith with stacks and stacks of cores from MC. Should we charge him dkp for grinding him to Exalted and afterwards consider his skills as his property, not a guild asset per se? I think the guild should still expect combines for guildies to be without charge but the crafter is at liberty to make a fortune off the open market.
I do think that things like Enchant - Spell Power should require expenditure of dkp. I've generally seen those just given out to some long-standing member and they're an absolute goldmine