As the Dust Settles

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume I'm describing a situation that is pretty normal for a guild that's just starting its first Karazhan raiding.

The aftermath of the first run.

With roughly 25 players attuned for kara, including 10 hunters, 5 tanks, 3 healers, and a bunch of other DPS, you're clearly not going to make everyone happy with an invite to join the team. Difficult decisions need to be made that should be centered around some people issues (who are the individuals who will personally fit in well, and who are the people who have done lots to help out the guild) and some performance issues (who's got the gear, skills, ability to use consumables, and just plain old performance in their role on the WWS report).

Long story short, I guess the GM got a ton of players coming to him after that first run saying that they don't agree with the selections, they feel they were shorted, they're threatening to /gquit, etc etc etc. Then come wednesday evening, you've got a handfull of guildies spamming on LFG/LFM or Shatt's general channel, or even Trade (gahhhhh) that they're "LFM kara, only need 8 more".

And the scary part is, I totally understand. I'd have been royally pissed and probably just stealth quit if I wasn't on the team. But then again, I'm a sore loser and a prima dona, so that's consistent with my overall presence :-) But I do my homework and bust my @ss to make sure I've got my position solid, to make the leaders' decisions easier.

So GM approaches me and the other officers with the problem of how to keep everybody happy.

Solution 1: Recruit more healers. We've got some tanks to spare, and lordy knows, DPS players (in title, if not in actual capability, lol) out the kazoo. This is the best solution, but would require a longer timeframe, and therefore might not meet the needs of the current crisis.

Solution 2: Split the team up and form 4 teams, each headed by an officer (all 4 of whom are currently in Team 1). This has the benefit of spreading out the recruiting burden a bit more, as each officer would need to take responsibility for filling out his own team. This has the drawback of encouraging internal competition and poaching of players by the officers. It also suffers from the problem of putting any guild progress to a halt right now, unless you were willing to put the 3 existing healers into one of the teams in which case you put the remaining 3 officers into that jaded pool of potential /gquitters. This would require heavy investment in Solution 1 as well.

Solution 3: Keep Team 1 intact, and forget about overall morale decrease. This has the benefit of continuing guild progress as this core team learns the fights and gets the drops from the bosses we can take down. This has the drawback of strengthening the divide between Team 1 and the other guildies. This would need to be complemented with Solution 1.

Solution 4: Core Team 1, with some rotations. Benefit here is that you hopefully continue progress as there will be a core group of players who is getting geared and learning the fights, and also you get a variety of players in the door, which might quench their thirst for a while. There are a few drawbacks. Firstly, how do you pick the core group and who is rotating out? Plus, how do you choose who is rotating in? How many players? Currently, the 3 healers aren't really an option as there's nobody to rotate in, and at least one of the tanks needs to be in the core group, but probably both, because new tanks learning the fights every week will be pretty rough on the team. Solution 1 should be done in parallel.

So there you have it. Solution 1, clearly is the winner long term. When Solution 2 was presented, I wanted to barf as I just don't do recruiting. I was clear about that when I joined the guild, and I remain clear on it. My niche is in gaining expertise in my role, helping out other hunters learn the role as well, and also in delivering MQoSRDPS, CC, and any of the other lovely goodies I can bring. So I said if we go with #2, I resign my position and I'll run with one of the other officer teams.

Solution 3 is probably too much of a slap in the face to the guild, so I don't really support that one either.

Solution 4 is the right one, but the difficult part is in choosing the members who stay and who goes, and who fills in for them. As I've already said, the healers are not really options for rotation. I would like to view the tanks as non-options also, because there's just too much coordination needed as you learn the fights and learn to work together, but in the sake of fairness to the other tanks, maybe have the off tank position rotate until we have another team running.

Then you've got the 5 DPS slots to play with. This makes sense, as that's where we have the biggest pool of attuned players. I suppose the best way to make this decision is via objective performance analysis via WWS reports, along with more subjective topics like how well somebody performs CC, or other non-damage duties. Naturally, I'm a bit biased towards this as I'm typically top 1 or 2 in the damage department, plus I feel I do a solid job with my other jobs. Looking at the WWS report from our Attumen take down, there's 2 or 3 DPS'ers who, from a purely damage dealing perspective, are pretty replaceable. But from a political and human perspective, it gets much more complex. I do think that we'd need to give any under-performers a grace period within which they have the opportunity to improve their output, but at first, maybe a very cut and dry damage output measure would work for us. Then over time, as Solution 1 plays out, or as the rotations are complete and original people are subbing back in, we can review their numbers again and see if they took control of their fate and improved their DPS.

The decision we came to was basically a non-decision. For thursday's run, keep Team 1 intact. Then we'll meet before tuesday and figure out what to do. There was some political/officer resistance to a performance based rotation policy. There's a part of me that says that we need to keep the higest damage deliverers in there to aid guild progression. But I suppose for the vocal folks who output pretty low DPS, the only real way to show them that their performance is a huge part of why we couldn't handle Morose would be for the top two DPS'ers to sit out for a week, and watch as the team can't even get to Attumen, let alone drop him.

That feels a bit ruthless or manipulative, but might be necessary to show the huddled masses that simply possessing the Master's Key does not mean you are ready.