Ask any guild leader or raid leader how hard it can be to keep a twenty five man raid core full, to factor in enough leeway to allow real life to occur, yet keep the raid moving. It’s a daunting job. Currently progression content (ICC) is full of situations where max DPS has to be achieved, lots of fight mechanics (which Blizzard loves to reuse in new and twisted environments), and less healers gave to perform to higher levels. Having a limited number of raid slots on your raiding roster is the only way to accommodate such a goal, but it brings in other factors as well.
How many raid slots is enough? That’s really a hard question to answer, and dependent on each guild’s attendance policy. It also doesn’t factor in how fast a guild can usually fill the opening or if you have members that tend to have real life occur more often than others. For this guild, we put a cap on our raiding core of thirty five raid slots. This means we will not exceed that number of slots. At one point, we had a cap of thirty raid slots, but due to the number of couples we have in this guild and a few rotating schedules, the cap is set at thirty five core slots.
In any given twenty five man raid instance, you generally have no more than two to three tanks, six to seven healers, with the remaining slots a myriad of ranged and melee DPS. For ICC, this has usually been one Main Tank, two Off Tanks with DPS Dual Specs, six healers –with one having a DPS Off Spec, leaving sixteen raid slots for DPS Main Specs. With a ratio of 12% tanks, 24% healers, with the remaining 64% being raid DPS, it stands to reason the bench is going to be smaller for the healers and tanks. If you take the percentages and apply them to our thirty five core slots, you end up with a max of four tanks/off tanks, eight healers, and twenty-two DPS members leaving one slot open to float.
With these percentages, it stands to reason that DPS will sit more often than a healer or tank. But it also stands to reason, these things happen too. The only resolution we can offer is track attendance, and track the bench – in an attempt to keep rotation as fair as possible. Each guild has to handle their bench in a way their guild leadership sees fit. For us, we rotate. Occasionally volunteers happen, but composition has to come first – as it is detrimental to raid success, offering buffs and specific strengths needed for the fights ahead. Occasionally, poor performance that needs to be improved may cause rotation or the person to sit. The issue is brought up to the individual on a personal level, with officers present, and will either be addressed and corrected, or the person will move to a casual rank until improvement can be made.
Some guilds do not rotate. They will try a new person out, and make their core compete for raid slots. Some guilds aren’t organized at all. They just expect people to show up, and they often have a slow start time. It’s not the way this guild operates. No one is above the rules, but what you have to keep in mind, is that you cannot raid with twenty-two DPS slots filled, and all tanks/healers sitting – composition is always paramount, and it is why the EPGP system continues to grow with the guild and be amended to accomplish the right objectives.
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