I’m in the unfortunate position of attempting to balance out our raiding roster. Overall I try and keep things balanced as best I can. Not too many people signing up, and not too few. This is a difficult thing (at best) to do in a guild that doesn’t have a strict attendance requirement. It’s also not easy to make sure you have enough of the correct classes and specs you need to try and fill raids correctly. Thankfully my guild doesn’t have a lot of turnover these days, but occasionally we still have to recruit, and that means turning people down on occasion.
Turning someone down for the guild who has a terrible application is easy. Turning down someone who has a terrible (and deserved) reputation on the server is also a piece of cake. Hell even kicking someone from the guild who is obviously deserving it isn’t a problem for me.
When we’re full and not recruiting though, it never fails, we ALWAYS get good people applying when we don’t have room in our raiding roster. When we’re recruiting and we’re short people for raids? Terrible players apply, that are obviously not at all what we were looking for, known guild-hoppers, people only after whatever gear the guild can get them, etc. It seems like we never get the people we want when we want them.
Telling good people “No” when they want to join the guild is perhaps my least favorite thing to do in WoW. The term “good” can mean several things. Nice people, great raiders, helpful, friendly…a combination of all of those things to varying degrees. Since the guild I’m in is a raiding guild, but not a complete hardcore one, I don’t strictly look at just gear or achievements, but I try and get an overall feel if someone will fit in with us.
Recently all of this became somewhat of an issue. Pre-patch 3.3 we were definitely running short on raid sign-ups. We canceled a couple of 25 man raids, but for the most part we hung in there and ran them (on normal) while missing people. One week we even did Vault + ToC with 17-21 people, only going over 20 on A’Nub…and for most of that going with 4 healers, one off-spec to boot.
As short as we were running, I knew if I started recruiting as soon as the patch dropped we’d be overfilling and there would be issues. No one that’s been in a stable guild for a long period of time wants to see themselves sitting out of raids because new people joined and “took their spot” (We don’t have assigned spots, but I know how it’s perceived).
Anyway, right before the patch we had a couple of friends of a long time member apply, and they are very nice people. I dreaded explaining the situation to them but when I did I tried my best to explain to them WHY I could take them into the guild but couldn’t have them sign up for raids. Not only was there the problem of us overfilling after the patch, but they just so happened to be the exact classes/specs that we have a metric ton of already. (If they were applicants from out of the blue I could have said no easily, but as friends of a member I want to try and be accommodating if I can.)
Whenever I try and do something like this, I just try and be honest and upfront about it, but I still end up feeling like an asshole. I know I’m just “doing my job”, but I hate the thought of coming off sounding like an elitist prick who could care less about anything except how his guild’s raids run. I’ve been on the other side of conversations like the ones I have with people, and it’s no fun.
At least if I’m up front about what we can offer, though I might sound like a jerk I am not making promises that I can’t keep. Besides that, if I were to say “yes” and just allow raid sign-ups to overfill, I’m creating an ever larger problem for the rest of the guild, who may then decide to come find me with torches and pitchforks and string me up or burn me at the stake.
Blizzard should make a non-combat pet that is guild leader only, and title it “The Lesser of Two Evils”. You don’t get to choose when to summon it, it just randomly rears it’s ugly head.
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(Yay, another late comment, but you write great posts!)
My guild was just formed November 30th, 2009, and we run 10 mans. The problem is, we have paladins and druids out the butt. Any given night, we can expect to have 4-5 paladins or 3-4 druids in a raid. In a 25 man, that’s completely acceptable. In a 10 man? We lack alot of the variety and – well – buffs that the other classes bring to the table.
At one point our raiding team was 2 DKs (1 tank, 1 dps), 4 paladins (1 tank, 2 heals, 1 dps), 3 druids (1 kitty, 1 boomy, 1 tree), and a mage. While all of these players are exceptionally skilled, we suffered on fights like Faction Champs where alot of variety made life so much easier.
As guild leader and raid leader, I find it hard to say no to people sometimes, but it’s important to keep in mind that you want the raid to succeed, and the guild members should as well. One of my officers has taken over raid leading, and he’s much better at keeping our raids balanced than I am.
As I said, great show, awesome posts – peace
THANK YOU for the kind words!
It is EXCRUCIATINGLY hard for me to tell people no when they are good people.
I have been lucky for the most part with the classes and specs we’ve gotten, but I’ve been in the same boat – we just have to many of X. I’ve had to tell people “we’ll take you in guild since you are so-and-so’s friends, but you can’t sign up for raids”. It sucks royally to do that, but I explain as best I can that “It’s the best I can do, and I understand if it’s not good enough and you want to look elsewhere”. I also make sure to make no promises about them getting in raids EVER, because we don’t lose many people.
I feel like I’m kind of repeating my post so I’ll stop….but thanks again for your comments, at least I know I’m not alone out there with stuff like this!
Very welcome!
The main thing is, I think, is making sure these good people understand that it is simply because you /can’t/ accommodate them, not because you don’t /want/ to. My guild hasn’t received too many outstanding applications – we do 99% of our recruiting in Trade – but the good people we get, we hang on to. One thing about us, we try to fit whatever toon/spec that guildmates what to play. Most of my officers have 2-3 or more 80s that they want to take to raids – and we have a hunter or two that raids BM. How we set it up, is if you can pull the required amount of dps needed for the raid to succeed, you can take whatever toon on whatever spec.
Of course, this is just for raids. We raid 10 mans and are LUCKY if we get 4-6 people signed up. Our raiding schedule seems hectic (6 nights a week) but I prefer to think of it as flexible (we just started ICC Thursdays and Fridays when most people are online, and non-progression raids the rest of the days).
We also have a few people from outside the guild coming to 100% of our raids – and telling a guildie they can’t come because a non-guildie already has a spot can cause some tension, but we manage because there is almost never the same people on the next night and we have room.
… my guild is too small.