Today we are promoting a set of 10 individuals who we have observed over the last 4-6 weeks as standout players who we feel strongly fit into our expectations of a BWL raider. The purpose of promoting now with BWL more than 3 months away is to give us the transparency and loot focus we need to properly prepare for the coming content run. We will be making sure rare and valuable items are slotted on players that ultimately will be within the progression raid on launch day.
Raider Expectations
Internally we have a datasheet we manage that has all the current players within our raids. Each player has a rating of 1-10 attached within a set of categories. From that list we’re able to get a top-down view of the general impression of each player within our raid. This strips down each guild member into core categories that we are able to sort and help focus our perspective on each player, with heavy input from each class leader. There is still work to be done on the formulas and general input processes, but once it is locked down we will make the data public either globally, or at a class level. Historically we ran a system called PRS (Player Rating System) and this very much is a stripped down, much more concise version of that. We have 100 players to manage and want to keep the roster healthy, so we are building every tool we can to make sure we’re looking under the right rocks and addressing the right deficits in addition to rewarding great accomplishments where needed.
We’re going to be promoting the raider core of 35-38 players in four phases. That includes Class Leads and Officers. If you are Raider or higher, you have a 100% guaranteed raid position when BWL launches. The goal is to stay below 40 players combined for those ranks in order to be confident within each raid position.
If you are made raider rank, you are at that moment in time being held to a higher standard within the guild. What got you the the promotion was enough, it’s on you to maintain or improve. If you begin to slip we will let you know, especially if there are other potential prospects nipping at your heels. Should that day come, handling criticism properly is a major key trait of a raider. Nothing is personal with our progression raids. The standard for a progression raider is a position we are not taking lightly, so keep that in mind if you start hearing from us more in regards to potential improvements and theory. If a new recruit is brought on that holds our vision of raider better than a current player with a raider rank, we will treat the situation sensitively and let anyone’s spot who may be up for consideration know in advance. Progression CTC is much less forgiving, but it is how we ultimately get shit done.
BWL will initiate the start of a new stage within the guild, where we will be building our progression raid to make a name for the guild across the server. There will be a stacked BWL group and a continued Molten Core/Onyxia raid being filled out with non-raiders, alts and recruits. Weeks after BWL is on farm for the primary raid, we will begin to spread out players similarly to how we did it in Molten Core and begin running two BWLs. Plans and strategies are being theorized as to best handle this, but it will entirely depend on how difficult BWL is to raid with our additional raid group. As we begin entering Ahn’Qiraj and Naxxramas, the shifting of players between the raids will decrease. Naturally the additional raid will become a supplementary one. Still farming BWL and taking jabs at later content when sensible. We have enough talent here where it should not be an issue, but it is something I want to vocalize right now.
Promotions
The list of players being brought up today below. It should be noted that it was difficult to narrow this down to a modest first run for a couple classes. The largest eliminator when core factors were roughly equal, was length at 60 / raiding within the guild. We have a lot of great players!
Phase 2 Raiders
Fatschultz (Hunter)
Beclem (Mage)
Litebrite (Priest)
Cantaloupe (Rogue)
Caliosidhe (Shaman)
Baneful (Shaman)
Soth (Warlock)
Apu (Warlock)
Knaught (Warrior)
Mattj (Warrior)
Phase 1 Raiders
Class Leads / Officers
Phase 3 Raiders (December~ 2019)
Phase 4 Raiders (January~ 2020)
PRS (Player-Rating-System)
The key categories we are used for consideration of the role are:
- Execution – Ability to play class, parses, general mechanic capability
- Reliability – Consistency of combined playstyle, following directions and attendance (Note: Veterans are given some love here due to a decade+ of raid history)
- Knowledge – Class knowledge, participation with theory within class channels
- Preparation – Pre-bis preparation & consumables
- Attitude – Guild assimilation, personality, competitive, flexible and understanding
In order to achieve a 10 in any category, of which many were handed out, the leadership needed to be able to specifically say why. If a 10 was given on preparation for example:
“Quick set of full pre-bis, always maintains consumables during raids.”
There is not a single player that was given a 10 for execution, as everyone has room to improve. It is our goal to provide positive feedback to everyone who is not performing at the standard we are looking for and give everyone a chance to make a play for a progression raid spot, given they are looking for that increased level of play.
The ratings are based around our best possible raider within our conditions.
Without revealing exact names or classes, here’s a rough breakdown as to how the current Officer and Class Leaders view our total raiding pool. The formula (likely to change to reward and punish outliers) is calculated with the following weight in mind:
Execution (35%) – Reliability (20%) – Knowledge (10%) – Preparation (10%) – Attitude (25%)
Itemization
As I said earlier, we are looking to make sure all key items are being slotted to raiders first in order to guarantee an items participation within the progression BWL raid. In order to be transparent here, we have curated a list of all of this tier’s drops and classified with two rankings, S and A.
S Tier items are considered rare and powerful. They are key items with huge performance gains that must be within BWL on launch.
A Tier items are good items that are less rare, but we will be looking towards known BWL seats to drop items to before others.
http://items.cuethecredits.net
Once we get closer to BWL, the list will be updated with BWL items.
Additionally, I have finished a tool that leans on multiple data-sets we’ve created over the last few weeks. It’s a birds-eye view of all loot that has dropped for us in both raids, filtered by class, archetype, and raid. That data is then sorted by our rating sheet mentioned above. This allows us to rapidly see where the loot needs to go based on the obvious. (Last item received, impact of upgrade, raid status.)
After each raid, Tyler and I are updating a master loot table from RC Loot Council that has all dropped items listed within it. If any changes need to be made, there is an adjustment tab that requires strict public input to publish modifications to the raw data. From there it creates a final master sheet that is then indexed against a long query to filter in items for a requested criteria. Detailed below.
Overall at this current state of the guild, the leadership is quite empowered with the vision and tools we need to guide us towards the correct decisions in regards to loot and ranks. My goal is to eventually provide both the modern PRS and loot history tables for everyone to view and use for their own self improvement. Currently it’s built on a very dirty google sheet framework so properly setting permissions is messy. Once I’ve designed a proper production environment with authentication we’ll push the data out for all to see.
Thanks for reading, and congratulations to those who were brought up!