Tough Decisions

As an officer in a raiding guild, and as a raid leader, you sometimes have to make tough decisions. Specifically related to "who is in and who is out" of any given raid. Blizzard tells us we can only play with 10 or 25 people, and therefore, we are forced to choose.

Living in a casual guild, its not been too bad. We raid 3 nights a week, we have no attendance requirement. Up until recently, we had trouble filling in a 25-person raid. The hardest decisions have been which players to invite from out of guild to fill in missing slots. Sometimes, when faced with 7 Hunters online and wanting to raid, I've had to force myself to say NO and ask a player or two to sit out. That's about it.

But success begets recruits.

There's aparently a large void on our server of guilds progressing through early 25-person raids. And there is a massive demand for players to get in there before Wrath or the pre-Wrath raid-killing patch.

Our recent progression over the past 2 months has brought with it a giant spike in potential new recruits.

And with that, comes the tough decisions.

It starts with who to accept into the guild, and who will not receive an invite. Especially "fun" when a potential excellent fit says that they'll only join if their friends (who, by the by, happen to play Hunter, Hunter, Rogue, and Hunter) are allowed in also. Actually, those guys make the decision easy, but I digress.

We've reached the point that I might actually have to ask several players to sit out for wednesday's Void Reaver fight. We've reached the point that if all our tanks show up, I'll have to ask two or three to sit, depending on what bosses we'll be pushing towards.

Strange feeling.

Then there's Zul'Aman.

The Officers discussed the issue, and there's two things regarding ZA for the guild. The first is that there are many players who have never done ZA and want to get in there, and secondly, those who have been doing ZA for a while (while the other players were still doing Kara) want to try for the Bear Mount.

So the tough decisions.

If a Bear Mount is going to be a reality, we have to form the A Team. We need two sturdy, situationally aware tanks, one who is good single-target and one who is good AoE (think Warrior & Paladin). We need two healers with brass balls, one good at single-target healing and one good at multi-target healing. We need 6 DPS who can lay the smack down. Anybody farting out 500 dps is gonna have to take a seat. Those DPS'ers need to include at least 2 solid AoE, and all need to have good situational awareness.

I go through the list, and I see 14 players in the Guild who I think would fit those requirements. I can only take 10.

Uggy.

Factor in the fact that we want to do ZA on mondays, so now we're down to 13 candidates.

Factor in the fact that one player's cat mistook his computer case for a litter box, and is pretty much out of commission, and we're down to 12.

So now I've got to tell two of my best raiders that they can't play with the A Team. And, we need them to provide their leadership and personal performance to help the other ZA team be a success.

Tough thing to ask.

Add in the fact that we've probably only got 4 or 5 weeks until the pre-Wrath patch comes out and more or less puts the kaibash on raiding.

And the fact that the only time we killed Halazzi was when we had the server's best geared tank visiting with us.

And the fact that we've only accomplished the first two timed events so far.

Tough Decisions. Tough Road Ahead.

The bear mount looks pretty cool though.