How to Prepare a Raiding Guild for Mists of Pandaria: Steps 1 & 2

With Apotheosis at 8/8 HM in Dragon Soul and most of our roster having obtained our Glory of the Dragon Soul Raider achievements, it’s time for me to start looking ahead to Mists of Pandaria. Even if my own future is somewhat murky, since I’m really not sure what my plans are for Mists, I’m the guild master of Apotheosis and I will make sure there is a viable raiding roster available… assuming there’s enough interest from the guild, that is. If everyone decides to call it after Cataclysm, I won’t rebuild a guild again from scratch.

So I’ve decided to try to share this preparation work with you all.

Step One: Determine What You Already Have

We can do this easily by examining our current roster. Obviously, this is based on a 25-man raiding guild, but you can still take stock of who you currently have on your roster if you’re doing 10s. Here’s what I’m starting with:

28 Raider-ranked people (includes 5 officers)
4 Initiate-ranked people
= 32 people on the raiding roster

Role breakdown:
– 8 healers (2 of each class, 1 holy and 1 disc)
– 2 main spec tanks (1 paladin, 1 DK & 3 OS tanks, 1 DK, 1 druid, 1 warrior)
– 12 ranged DPS (3 mages, 2 shadow priests, 1 moonkin, 3 hunters, 2 elemental shaman, 1 warlock)
– 10 melee DPS (2 frost DKs, 1 combat rogue, 1 mut rogue, 1 feral druid, 2 ret pallies, 1 enhancement shaman, 1 Arms warrior, 1 Fury warrior)

I also have a large community in my guild, many friends of Raiders, many retired Raiders and such, some of whom may be interested in joining us come Mists.

So I have ~32 people to start with.

Step Two: Figure Out What People Want

The next step is to see if people are willing to continue raiding with us and, if they are, what class and spec they’d like to play.

To that end, here’s what I’ve already done:

– ~2 weeks ago, I posted on the forums asking people to start thinking about what they wanted to do in Mists, with a list of questions they should start mulling over.
– ~1 week ago, I posted on the forums reminding people to start thinking about what they wanted to do in Mists.

Today, I posted on the forums asking every raiding member of Apotheosis to send me a PM with regards to their intentions and also invited any non-raiding member of the guild to let me know of their interest in raiding for Mists.

I did so by asking them to answer these questions (previously posted ~2 weeks ago):

ALL RAIDERS OR HIGHER (not Initiates yet) should now start sending in responses to me via Private Message (PM) on the forum.

1) Would you like to continue raiding as a member of Apotheosis in Mists of Pandaria?
2) If so, would you like to remain your current class and spec or would you like to reroll?
3) If you want to raid and would reroll, what would you reroll to (class and spec)?
4) Would you be able to continue to raid during the current days/times on a 75% attendance basis? (Tues/Thurs/Sun, from 9pm ET until 12am ET, invites at 8:45pm ET) If not, what days/times might work better for you?

If you’re not SURE, please let me know and give me what you’re leaning towards, both if you want to raid at all or class/spec stuff.

If you are NOT a current raiding member of Apotheosis, but you might like to start in Mists, please answer the following questions in a Private Message (PM) to me on the forum.

1) Would you like to raid with Apotheosis in Mists of Pandaria?
2) If so, what class and spec would you likely be playing?
3) Are you able to make the current days/times on a 75% attendance basis? (Tues/Thurs/Sun, from 9pm ET until 12am ET, invites at 8:45pm ET) If not, what days/times might work better for you?

If you’re not SURE, please let me know and give me what you’re leaning towards, both if you want to raid at all or class/spec stuff.

You have approximately one week to get this info to me. (Initiates will be asked for this information if they pass their trials.) I’ll start sending out nastygrams to people as of 12:01am ET on Monday, June 11th. ;)

So that’s what I’m starting with and that’s how I’m proceeding.

I’ll be storing their answers in a spreadsheet. Down the left side in the first column is the player name, in alphabetical order.

Column B: Current Class
Column C: Current Spec
Column D: Raiding in Mists of Pandaria? (Y/N)
Column E: MoP Class
Column F: MoP Spec
Column G: Times?

Once I have responses from all the raiders, I’ll have a much better idea of where we’re at for Mists of Pandaria and what I’ll need to start recruiting for. As an example, let’s say that both my tanks want to do something else, like Mhoe wants to heal (hahaha) and Chronis wants to go back to his hunter. Let’s further say that a DPS, like Majik, wants to be a Brewmaster Monk, but no one else wants to be a main spec tank. I would then recruit for 1-2 more tanks for Mists of Pandaria and would not seek out another Brewmaster Monk unless the expansion was around the corner and I was screwed with no tanks.

Similarly, say all my healers want to keep playing exactly as they are. I would want to go out in search of one more healer and would seek a Monk, specifically, since I believe in a balanced roster.

Next week, we’ll start in on Step 3 where we look at the results of my guild’s answers, compile the results and see where to go from there. And remember, it’s never too early to start planning ahead for the next expansion!

10 Replies to “How to Prepare a Raiding Guild for Mists of Pandaria: Steps 1 & 2”

  1. A lot to chew on Kurn but it looks like you got it handled. I think I’ll share this post with my GM so that he can start really prepping raiders for MoP. Nice post Kurn, good stuff.

  2. Mega – Thanks! One thing that astonished me as we headed out of Wrath and into Cataclysm is how unprepared everyone was. My methods might be a little extreme, but it served us really well in early Cata.

  3. Excellent post. Got here via a link on WoW Insider. Kind of makes me want to look into your guild and see about transferring. Haha, actuallly I love my guild, many of ushave been playing together for years but just seeing how a more serious guild handles business makes me wonder if I wouldn’t get more enjoyment out of the game if I was in a guild that was run in this manner. Ours is definitely not even close to being run in such an orginizational manner. Props to you!!

  4. This is very good, and I’m going to consider using this for our raid team for MoP. Looking forward to seeing the next steps!

  5. We’re going through something similar at this point as well. It’s the perfect time for alts, Monks, and role swapping to enter the main raid.

  6. Mike – Well, thank you. :) It’s taken a lot of time for me (and my guild) to evolve to being this organized, and I may be a bit of a control freak, but HEY, it saves headaches in the end. :)

    Randompants – Thank you, hope it’s helpful to you. Boy, do I have a story or two for the next segment. :)

    Joe Ego – we’re not quite at the point of letting alts into the raid, but that’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard and may well be worth doing in our group if attendance starts to fall by the wayside.

    Gregory – I would take another! I only have the one! :)

  7. Have you set an expectation of when players should be raid-ready? I’m very curious how much time guilds will be allowing for leveling and gearing up. Do you think you will have any issues related to the time it will take your raiders to level?

  8. Daffnae – Since we’re not sure when MoP will launch, that’s a great question. I’ll answer this more in depth in the next segment or two of this series, but we gave raiders 4 weeks from Cataclysm’s launch until we started raids, but that included holidays such as Christmas and New Year’s. We actually started “exploratory” 10-man raids for people after two weeks. If people weren’t ready after four weeks, I gave them another two weeks to be ready and if they couldn’t do that, I had to cut them from the starting roster.

    But like I said, more on this in future segments. :)

  9. Kurn, good to see things are going strong! My guild we wrapped up Cata a few months ago, and my raiding bug is getting to me lol. I miss it…

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