How to make a raiding alliance work

I have done this a couple of times now, and raiding alliances are something that can save your guild if you are suffering hard times.

Generally people are in your guild for an overriding reason: levelling, PvP, social, and/or raiding.  Take away the ability to raid and I really hope that the other aspects of your guild culture can carry you through.  For most raiding guilds and guild leaders, this isn't the case and people start leaving often leaving the guild leaders devastated and struggling to cope.  There are 2 ways to deal with this situation - gdisband or... a raiding alliance.

So, what is a raiding alliance?
A raiding alliance is when 2 guilds in a similar situation and similar progression come together and share a RaidID in order for them both to continue raiding.  This is good when both guilds are at about 2/3 strength.  It allows both guilds breathing room to recruit and regroup while keeping the people in their guild active and happy (and hopefully progressing) and more importantly, staying in each respective guild for the longer haul.

How do you start a raiding alliance?
First and foremost you need to identify quickly that you are in a dying situation.  Exams, Pre-Patch boredom, Faction Transfers, RL... all these things can contribute to a guild going from a roster of 35 people quickly to a roster of 20.  You should watch your realm forums and trade, see which guilds are recruiting and how much and of what, try to identfy a guild that you think you can plug the gaps for and check them out on one of the progression websites to see if you think they are about equal to your achievements.  Also, ensure that their raiding times are compatible with yours.  Stick with one guild at a time.

Next, approach the person doing the advertising (usually an officer if not the GL themselves) and ask for a chat.  Broach the idea of a raiding alliance initially, perhaps warm up with some conversation about raiding and their recruitment status.  Give them time to think about it.  Generally you will have some idea of their reaction very quickly.

Assuming you have a positive reaction to your approach, get all your officers together on VoIP for a chat and planning session and set the first date.

Things to make planning and organising easier:

• Create and advertise in guild some joint channels for cross guild talk
• Create a joint officers channel for ease of communication
• talk on VoIP to each other
• give each other access to restricted sections of each others' guild forums
• promote the idea within guild
• encourage pugging from within the guilds

OK, I have an alliance, how to I run the raids?

First of all make sure you have an even balance from both sides.  12/13 people it has to be an even split.  If one of their team drops out, they replace them from their StandBys, if one of yours drops, you replace from your own.  It is really important to keep the numbers as even as possible.

Sort out your loot rules with the officers early.  I recommend /roll but whatever you decide, keep the rules clear and consistent.

Ensure your officers communicate often and early about each raids team so you have the best possible chance to progress.

Have an RL/strategist from both sides talking and settling strat early.  Make sure there is one RL per raid, and it is a good idea to rotate this person raid to raid.  The RLs must be on the same page, running the same strat.

If someone needs talking to for buggering things up repeatedly, have the RL from that guild talk to the person, not the RL from the opposing guild.  Make sure that this communication about nub ups is communicated in the officer channel and that the right officer deals with the situation and reports back.  Do not step on the other guild's toes when it comes to discipline.

Praise liberally, and thank the other guild for the run after each and every raid.  Be grateful for their help, because without them, you currently wouldn't be raiding - even if they are in the same situation.

Try and build up a parallel heroic 10 man at the same time as your alliance raid.  At some point you will have enough people to do this, and then you will have enough people for the alliance, a 10man and some on SB.  That is the end goal, to get everyone raiding at the specified raid time!  Rotate officers into this 10man to run it and support guildies and make sure they understand how important the 10man is to the overall goal of getting back to guild only 25s.

What shouldn't you do?

Never complain about the other guild to your guildmates, and stomp out any negative thoughts in public.

Do not force anyone to attend a raid they dont want to.  Not everyone in your guild is going to be comfortable running with another guild. Get your officers (or you) to approach everyone and see if they are happy with the runs.  If at any stage someone says they are not happy, let them know that is ok and they dont have to attend. Keep communication up about the entire process.

Never ever under any circumstance poach from the guild you are allying with.  I don't think I can emphasis this enough.

We have enough people to run our own raids now

When you hit critical mass, make sure you test the waters first.  You will probably have a bunch of new people that have not run in a 25 with you yet.  Go back to the previous tier's heroic/hardmode content and test out their raid awareness.  When you are happy with the team, it is time to talk to the other guild and propose that the alliance ends.  Give them at least a weeks warning, and let them know that if they are still struggling the alliance can return for a short period of time on a negotiation basis.

But, we really like running together, we don't want to stop!

This is also a great outcome.  If you really enjoy each others company, you could consider merging your guilds together.  But that is a whole other post (and yes, I will put one up about it in the near future, having done it successfully).

TL;DR

• Suss out the other guild properly - do your homework
• Don't force people to do anything they dont want to
• Get the Loot Rules straight early, and be fair
• Keep attendance to the alliance raids even as possible
• Make joint chat channels
• Give ample warning of the cessation of the alliance/merger

Tweaking strat is made of win

Also, awesome strat is awesome.  The Heroic Twins strat below is absolutely rock solid!  I can say that with impunity now, given we used it last night and missed the first kick and still defeated them before the enrage timer.  I need to send out huge awesomeness to our badger-elite Hairy who RLed and tweaked and problem solved like a champion.

"What? There were 6 balls to the face of the raid?  Where from?  Ok soaker, you go here, other soaker move to here"

The soakers then did exactly as they were told and BAM twins down.

There is much to be said for changing things on the fly, looking at points of failure and figuring out why people died.  This isn't a finger pointing exercise (ok, sometimes it is, but that's generally when people don't learn from mistakes and improve) but a quick precis of what went wrong, who made a mistake and why.  This can mean a very subtle adjustment to a strat and all of a sudden you are progressing again.   Last night, it was a subtle tweak to the soaker region to protect the raid from Balls from the Walls and suddenly the healing was easier, people died less, the soakers were alive and the raid was stacking and moving better.

Also saying things like "Do what Hairy says, when he says it.  Even if he's wrong, it doesn't matter, because if ONE of you is in the wrong foot aura you WILL wipe the raid" seemed to work on raid behaviour.

Also, I found that we should trust ourselves to not need certain classes.  We had no mage for faction champions, and most officers were fairly convinced that we needed one.  I was pretty gung ho that we didn't for varying reasons that included guild politics.  Eventually, we got the numbers and we headed in.

Now, given that we had a "non standard" raid makeup, and I was ret (yowser) we found that we were much more careful about strat, and who was doing what.  I ended up being dispel bitch again *sigh* but that worked really well, freeing up healers to ... heal.  So, my DPS was horrible, but I kept light up on the current DPS target (doing more actual healing than the disc priest, not counting bubbles), and SoJ was a nice proc to randomly stun the target.  The odd flash on someone nearly dead, and using my stun on every CD made the current target go down reasonably fast and safe.

The people controlling the other adds and healers were very careful and were excellent at keeping the group spread out - very important in this fight were aggro is based on proximity and your current health percentage.

Random guild status update

So, our alliance ended this week at the request of our ally.  I was surprised but happy to face the challenge.  We were prepped and ready and after EIGHT attempts, 42 attempts left, are up to heroic twins on our own.

BOOYA!
We are back, baby, and it feeeeels goooooood.

Heroic Twin Val'kyrs

OK this is a bit of a weird one.  I refuse to tell you about the door strat - I think it is cheating and if you ever want to do tribute runs, it requires reliance on RNG far too much.  This strat will give you a one shot kill every time once you get it right.

Twins is a total noob check.

Please have a look in the comments by clicking through to the article for some role specific information - links to DK information, and comments from the below badger about RLing and feral tanking the twins together.

Shopping list:

1 Hairy Badger MT

3 "soakers" in Shadow resist gear

6 healers

DPS to taste

So what do we do?
The gist of this fight is pretty simple, everyone DPSs one target, then changes foot aura as soon as they know they need to change targets.  The entire raid then moves when they are safe to do so to the opposite portal.  There are soakers on the outside of the raid protecting them from the wrong colour orbs.

Main Raid Movement
Start the event up but do not pull it yet.

I am going to start with the raid in white feet, but this is a completely symmetrical fight, you can start however you like.  So, get your MT and the raid in white feet, soakers also in WHITE (edit, I stuffed this up).  Now, everyone needs to go stack near but not on the black portal.  And you need to stack as tightly as possible (MT included).  Basically you need to position yourself so you can clearly click the donut shamed click area without anyone being in the way, or having to move at all.  Practise this before you pull if you need to, make sure everyone knows where to stand.  Soakers should read the special soaker section below for your positioning.

Now, RL calls out on vent to colour change (this will mean a target change) and make sure everyone is capable of clicking the darn portal within a split second.  One person screwing this up can cause a wipe.

Next, RL calls out that the raid is moving to the opposite colour portal.  Everyone needs to move together in a bunch to the white portal.  Make sure everyone knows which two portals you will be alternating between.  Again, like you are a mirror of yourselves, stack up near but not on the black portal.

Go through the motions again, clicking the portal, moving as a group to the white portal again.  Rinse repeat until everyone in the raid knows what they are doing without thinking too much, and that they get used to the calls.   This is vitally important to success.  I cannot stress how good it is to practise this in a dry run.

Make sure that your raid only changes aura when you tell them to.  This is really important because the boss mods will probably tell raid members otherwise.  Please make sure your raid knows to never do anything with auras that the RL does not tell them to.  If they get a debuff, the healers will heal them through it.

The last really important thing is you do not start moving until the ability is over.  It will completely screw you up if you move the raid and the ability comes up half way between 2 portals.  Bad Bad Bad (trust me, we did this, the results were wipetastic!)

Once you are confident of your raid's movement, you can start the fight.

The Pull
MD both the twins to the tank and start smashing the crap out of your current target.  Your current target is always the opposite colour to your feet.  DPS be very careful that you don't pull aggro on the opposite colour target with AoE abilities.  If that means waiting 10s before starting DPS then you wait 10s.  You can't DPS dead.  MD/tricks on the tanks as often as possible.

Soakers
You guys sit with white feet the entire time because you will have a full Shadow Resist set on.  You are immune to EVERYTHING!  Ok, not immune, 10 balls to the face might kill you, but you can confidently take many and stay alive.  Pop tanky CDs if you need to or if you get trapped.

The soakers need to make sure none of the wrong colour orbs get to the raid.  If that means you need to take 4 balls to the face, then you do it.  The healers will keep you alive.  So spread out around the raid, and make sure 360 degrees are covered and you are not within AoE.

And listen hard to the calls - you need to be on the ball with clearing up the right colour.  Try and let as many of the right colour hit the raid as possible (because the power up is necessary to get the twins down in time), but its better to let fewer through than too many.  As you get better at it, you will make better choices.  Don't expect to be perfect every time, the healers can probably heal through a ball or two in the raid if you warn them.

Abilities
The abilities are the same as in normal, but are basically wipe mechanics in Heroic.
2 shields, 2 vortexes, one of each colour.

Here is what you do with each one:
If the shield is on your current target, or the vortex is for your current foot aura, stay on target and DPS the crap out of it!  You are lucky!
If the vortex is the opposite colour, change feet and tagets and keep going, moving to the opposite portal after the event is finished.
If the shield is the opposite colour to your current target, pop BL/hero, change feet auras and DPS hard!  This is where quick changeovers are really important.  As you are still trying to get the hang of this fight those precious seconds of target changing and clicking the portal might mean the difference between a 50% heal and a kill.  Again, move to the opposite portal when the event is finished.

RLs it is possible to know what is coming up if you keep careful track of what abilities have been used.  As soon as you can determine that the next event requires an aura change, call it.  Getting everyone on the correct target with the correct feet as soon as possible is the best way to get this done.  DPS with ramp up times will love you (especially if you know the next ability is the opposite coloured shield).

Healing
The raid should not be taking lots of damage.  If everyone is doing their job there should be time to drop spare heals on the MT.  Make sure you get healers allocated to just the soakers.  If they die you are quite likely to wipe.  The other thing to watch for is the debuff - these guys are marked with symbols, pay them extra attention until the debuff wears off.  If you need, allocate a healer or two to do it.  Keep your camera panned out and watch for stray balls to the raid of the wrong colour.

Moving from side to side is the most dangerous time.  Be prepared to GS the MT or a soaker, drop a tranquility or a divine hymn to ease the pain.  Pallies with aura mastery help as well - fire and shadow, and pop AM when you are likely to take damage from the opposite colour (ie shadow AM when moving with white feet and fire AM when black)

Ok we are doing all that, why are we wiping?
Is everyone switching feet in a timely manner?
Is everyone DPSing the correct target at the correct time with the right foot aura up?
Are the soakers doing their job efficiently?
Are there not enough "correct" colour balls getting through to the raid to boost DPS?
Are the healers struggling at all?
Are there too many "wrong" colour balls getting through to the raid?
Are you getting onto the shields as fast as possible?
Is anyone having FPS/Lag issues?
Is everyone moving in a group to the opposite portal?
Is the RL making clear decisive calls?
Is anyone else making calls apart from the RL (if so tell them to shut up)?
Is everyone 100% clear on how the movement works?

That's it!
When you break it down, it really isn't a difficult strat.  I think the worst part of it is going and farming BT/MH for the shadow resist gear if you sharded it (like I did!).

Heroic Faction Champions

OK so I am biting the bullet and attempting to write up the Heroic Faction Chapions fight.

Like normal, faction champions is a bunch of guidelines.  There are a couple of concrete changes though:

Shopping list:
As few tanks as possible (hopefully they have DPS off specs, if not, then they need to be good at some kind of CC - DKs are great)
6 healers
CCing DPS in PvP spec (ie hunters, mages as frost, locks, rogues in mace spec if necessary etc)
DPS to hit stuff gooood

They have PvP trinkets
Yeah.  Painful huh?  One way to deal with this is get them all to blow them straightup.  Generally, pulling with some kind of fear bomb (and then bopping the lock that did it) is a good way to start.  After that, you just gotta keep those trinkets on CD.

They hit like freight trains
We make sure the heavy hitters' targets are called out in vent.  If you are targetted, you move, your job is to kite that mob.  Basically, if you are like me, a holy pally standing in the middle of the room desperately trying to heal anything that is getting hit, you need to keep an eye out for any mob near you and move away.  They have aoe, interrupts, silences all kinds of things that stuff you around if you stand too close.  So, the only way to avoid is it stay mobile and stay away.  Anything less than plate, and the damage will probably 1-2 shot you.  If that damage is a whirlwind, you are screwed.

They like to use bloodlust/heroism
MASS DISPELL!!

The kill order
Again, this is a guideline, and you are going to have to change your strat each and every time you do this fight. But the idea is similar to normal, with one important change: Take out the damage dealers first.  This is due to the fact that in Heroic, you cant heal through their damage anymore.  You just cant.   So, you need to identify the mobs that cause your team the most grief, that can't be CCed and kill them straight up.

Our kill order is something along these lines:
Rogue/Spriest/hunter (CC everything else)
Pick the next most annoying target (sometimes a healer, sometimes a melee DPSer)
Healers
The ones 100% under control with CC/kiting

What CC can you use?
Not alot on the rogue, SPriest and hunter.  Which is one of the reasons they need to die first.
Healers can be interrupted, and trees can be chain feared, slept, cycloned or stunlocked.
The DK/warrior/enh shamans can be slowed (by DKs and hunters and mages) and kited.  Call out their target on vent and make sure people know to move.
Mages and locks can be chain CCed.

Killing them
Blowing a fear bomb straight up will disperse the enemy and make them blow their trinkets.  This means that CC can hopefully get their mobs away from the main section and away from any kiting melee.  Make sure you dont allocate everyone to be CCing, you still need do burst down that first mob as soon as possible.  Blow BL/Hero as soon as your DPS are ramped up.  50% of the fight is getting that first mob down as soona s you can.

The most crucial job is making sure that the healers are locked down.  They cannot get a heal off (within reason).

Don't be a hero: Do your job and ignore what everyone else is doing.

Not Dying
Make sure you don't stand near any mobs except the one you are allocated to be currently targetting.  If you are interrupting heals, use your judgement on whether to move away from a kited melee.  Perhaps call out on vent for extra heals.

This is an arena match - if you have never done arena before, I recommend you go do a few 3v3 or 5v5 skirmishes to get the idea.  Everyone moves.  Everyone kites.  Everyone has to watch their screen to see what is around them, and behind them.  I recommend a topish down view with
/console CameraDistanceMaxFactor 4
as this lets your see behind you as well as in front of you.  Find an angle that suits you and allows you the most visibility of everything going on.

Healers need to stay on top of dispels, as DoTs are killers.  Also, keeping your team un-cced is vital.  Fast heals are the key.  Healers need to watch who is getting targetted by the heavy hitters and keep them alive.  Also, try to allocate a healer to just keeping the healer CC alive (as soon as one of the healers becomes free that is an almost guaranteed wipe).  Keep the raid topped up, keep moving, keep each other alive.  That is the best strategy there is.  Having a disc priest bubble everyone is extremely helpful in this fight.  I highly recommend it.

Don't forget you can bop, Freedom, GS, all those good PvP things to do to keep people up and mobile.

What is going on if I am wiping?
Are you controlling the healers?
Are the heavy hitters oneshotting clothies?
Are you mass dispelling their BL/Hero?
Is that damn warlock pet interrupting/silencing healers?
Do you have enough DPS on the DPS target?
Are the dispels on your team being removed in a timely manner?
Are people not moving and kiting when targetted?
Are healers forgetting to heal themselves (it happens)?
Have I got the right people on the right job? (don't be afraid to change your strat and people's jobs)

This is the most collaborative fight out there in the game right now.  You have to communicate to your team, and you have to watch and identify your strengths and weaknesses.  Vent and good communication and leadership is vital to the success of this fight.

NER's Guide to Fitting In

When you join a new guild, the one thing you want to do is fit in.  You are walking into an established set of friednships and relationships, the you don't want to do is rock the boat so hard you fall out.  So here are a set of handy hints for you to settle into your new home, make friends, and become a valuable guildie!

1. Shut up and watch.  Don't go into a guild swinging.  You are the new guy, you don't know them, they don't know you.  Keep your opinions to yourself until you get to know who everyone is, and why they are saying what they say.

2. Do your job.  You were recruited to raid, so make it really clear that you are good at and interested in it.

3. Read the guild forums top to toe.  Read everything you can on the guild forums - learn who everyone is, where they sit in the pecking order.  Who is in charge? Who can you talk to? Who is a larrikin? Loot whores... etc  Get to know your guildies as well as you can in the forums.

4. Don't say anything offensive.  And I mean don't use swear words, sexually discriminating adjectives, dont cuss, don't be negative and don't complain.

5. Be awesome.  Be yourself, despite all the above and make sure you are who you say you are.

6. Join in.  If a guildie is looking for more on a heroic, tag along!  You might hate the heroic, but look at it as a chance to get to know your guildies more.

7. Get in Vent/TS and hang out.  Don't talk too much to start off with, test the waters.  But get on vent and have conversations with your new friends!

8. Don't talk about loot.  Just forget it.  Work out your plan for upgrades and work on it on your own.  Never complain about rolls, and never mention your gear.

9. Don't complain.  Do not criticise the guild or the officers.  Do not complain outside of the guild about the guild, they WILL find out and they wont like it.

10. RELAX!  Don't try so hard!  Chill out and have fun!  Especially if you are on a trial period.  WoW is about fun, if you are not having fun you are doing it wrong.

This post brought to you by people who didn't do this and made my life very difficult in the last week.

Officer Structure

So most of you (hopefully) will have read the issues my guild has seen in the last few weeks by reading the post a couple down from here.

The TL;DR version is that I lost 17(ish) main raiders from a team of about 35 within 3 weeks, effectively neutering any progression dreams for HToC. There were 2 parts to the solution to this issue; one was finding a guild to raid with (which we did, and will be a post or several unto itself) the other was a complete overhaul of processes and structure within the guild. I will look at the latter in this post.

What was the issue, NER?

I had let the guild ideal slide a little when my partners in crime retired over 6 months ago. I initially had 2 other people I ran the guild with - so there were 3 people at the top making decisions. If one of us went away (for example I went on a holiday to the US for 4 weeks last year) I simply handed GL over to one of my trusted group and there were no issues with guild maintenance.

So, I was running the guild on my own. All the officers had no redundancy and were dealing with their jobs on their own. I made the mistake of assuming that was an ok situation and people were fine with it. They weren't, but they all just suffered in silence. One exploded and emoquit. One went horde one weekend with "no warning" (I had expected that one however, and had a backup plan in place already) and 2 retired. Myself and Hairy were left pretty much solo (although the 2 retirees were holding off to handover properly to the new guys, which was nice).

What steps did you take to fix it?

I sat back, and the first thing I did was take stock of how we got to the situation we were in. Doing that means you can identify the issues and take steps to mitigate them in the future. The issues were briefly as follows:

1) no redundancy in any position

2) burnout

3) cynicism due to burn out

4) literal lack of bodies in the guild raiding team

5) lack of loyalty

So, how do you address these issues in a volunteer organisation? It isn't like you have wages to hold people over a barrel with, you have... um... yeah. That. You know what I mean. That thing. mmmm. Oh, Je ne sais quoi!

I think point 3 was the most damaging, I'd do a flow chart, but it isn't Friday. As people were burning out (officers were the main culprits for this) they cared less for going above and beyond and settled back into a routine of doing the minimum they had to to get by. This left a lot of the work on my shoulders. I didn't mind, I love doing it, but it wore me down and I got caught up in the problems of burnout and cynicism being projected by the dying leadership team.

I know I am like a mirror. If the people around me are up, I am bouyed by the attitude and reflect it x10. If people are down, I am down too. Admittedly, that is just human nature, but in a micro world of an MMORPG this becomes focussed and amplified. It pays to keep that in mind when dealing with people (it also explains why people emoquit or nerdrage and examining the idea of it probably has an entire PhD or two in psychology!).

So, people left... the officers stepped down.  What I needed was replacement officers, and the type I needed were new, fresh faces with enthusiasm and loyalty.  Apparently, I manage to attract people who are pretty damn awesome to surround myself with.  Within a week I had people volunteering to do whatever it takes to get us running again.  This was so gratifying it was crazy.  My plan for restructure was as follows:

2 Raid Leaders/strategists
2 Healer team leads
2 Ranged team leads
2 Melee/tank leads
1 10man officer
1 Webmaster (Wow account inactive, but honorary officer position)

You might think that is a lot of officers - and for a smallish guild, it is.  But take into account the extra work you have to put in if you are doing things solo.  Previously I had one in each of those positions (in fact, I was doing GL and Healer lead for some time) and the Ranged lead was also in charge of loot.  The melee lead was the MT, and the RL was writing all the strats.  That is just too much extra work for people who are supposed to be relaxing and having fun.

We are also not a smallish guild.  We have over 130 active accounts in the guild (not toons, accounts) that need managing, so having more in the leadership team eases the strain on everyone, and more people can enjoy themselves!

So, that is the officer structure.  The officers all have jobs - they are responsible for managing their team, working with each other to create the best group of people they can for each raid night.  They help plan our guild direction, they help organise guild functions and are generally expected to lead by example.

In another post, I will talk about the importance of a good website and a good front page blog for building community and communication within the guild going.

I also recently reinstated a group of people I treat like the board of directors.  These are my redundancy.  In fact, the 2 officers that "retired" are the two people I chose to help me run the guild.  Don't get me wrong, these are the people that didn't leave me in the lurch, they were just burned out.  They love our guild probably as much as I do and will do whatever it takes to keep it going.  These two people will be the ones I turn to when I don't know how to answer a question, or what to do when an officer throws me a curly one, or who the GUILD can go to in my stead - ie I'm not there, or I am the issue.

So we now have a process flow and up and down flows of communication for most if not all guild members.
GLs (direction, goals, long term planning)
Officers (enactment of GL goals, slap GLs when they make dumb decisions, speak to and for the guild members)
Members (duh, bread and butter of the guild. No members, no guild!)

And yeah, that's how I restructured everything.  Thus far, it seems to be working.  There is one issue that needs ironing out (we have too many healer officers, stupid awesome healer team) but I think that we will come to a solid solution there.