ICC25 Alts and Attendance -- Wall of Text

[Inori]

I can't believe it's gotten to this point, but it looks like I now have to deal with alts and the guild 25 man ICC raid.

I won't go over the history of why this policy post is necessary. I wasn't there when various things went down. I don't know what the stories are. I don't care what the stories are. I have been running this raid from a utilitarian standpoint and will continue to do so.

1) The DKP was architected as single pool so that alts could be used in the raid.
2) The DKP was architected as single pool so that people could change characters.
3) Just because the DKP system supports it doesn't mean that changing your character is an arbitrary action.
4) Just because the DKP system supports it doesn't mean that an alt will be used in the raid.

The goal of the ICC25 raid is to see defeat the Lich King using the Forged Alliance guild pool of raiders. That goal requires gearing up players using loot from boss encounters to beat more boss encounters the last of which is the Lich King.

5) In the past, people have been permitted to change their main characters due to lack of interest in their existing main character. From a utilitarian standpoint, if I burn out a player because they hate playing, I lose a person for the ICC25 raid which doesn't help the raid's goal of defeating the Lich King.
6) I have discouraged people from changing their characters because it upsets the other 24 players (note that it's the entire raiding base, but it's easier to make a point by using a solid number like 24). A person changing their main character now means that the gear investment that those 24 people made into gearing 1 player is lost.
7) The amount of distaste incurred is tempered by several factors. If the character change is to a niche class that the raid would benefit from, the other 24 people can support it. If the character being changed is already appropriately geared (e.g., ICC10), the other 24 people can support it.
8) Alts have been swapped into the raid at times to fill raid synergy gaps. Similar to bullet 7, if the alt was well-geared or significantly improved raid viability, the other 24 people would support it.

With all of the above said.

9) I will always balance the desire for a single player to change their character against the risk of losing the commitment of the 24 other people in the raid. If three or more of those 24 people think that I am no longer taking the goal of the ICC25 raid seriously and am wasting their time, I will now lose 3 players in exchange for the 1 player who was allowed to bring an alt or change their character.
10) Blizzard's progressive raid buff in ICC25 gives me the option to simply underman the raid. I'm better off telling 24 people that we'll cut the raid short (kill easy bosses) until the buff jumps another 5% instead of upsetting them by taking players they don't like and finding that 24 number dwindling down to 21 the following week.

I don't hold 25 man raiding as a sacred cow. If you want to treat the other 24 players in that raid as second class by changing your character arbitrarily or bringing your alt just to gear it, then just say so. I am more than prepared to run this raid into the ground.

Week 1: Tell people no alts. Underman with mains until Marrowgar (or some later boss) puts our face into the floor.
Week 2: Give up and tell people, "bring whoever you want". Use mains+alts and watch Marrowgar still put our face into the floor.
Week 3: Ten of the people in the raid who always bring their mains decide that I'm not serious and am just wasting their time. They decide it's no longer worth their evening. Severely underman Marrowgar with some mains+alts.
Week 4: I don't have to run a 25 man raid anymore.

I'm not the judge of whether your character change or alt is worthwhile for progressing in ICC25 and achieving our goal of beating the Lich King as Forged Alliance. State your case to the other 24 people in the raid and see if it holds water. Those 24 people understand the concept of burnout; they understand the concept of raid synergy. If you really aren't wasting their time, then character change approved, end of story. If you are wasting their time, then I guess King Varian Wrynn will have to take your place for now.

-HP

[Inori]

All right, the above post was written when I was hungry. Now that I've eaten something and thinking more clearly, here's the second part.

http://www.forgedalliance.org/faapps/eq ... senchanted

Dustin is a smart guy and he's been tracking what's been disenchanted in the raid. Only seven items have been disenchanted in ICC25 (What? You swore there were more? Unless you've been keeping your own record or have been recording your own DKP strings, I'm going with the official record.).

From a utilitarian standpoint, perhaps I should have been allowing alts into the first wing to soak up all seven disenchanted items. I'm willing to put this to the test.

Two weeks from now (not next week), I will allow alts to the Tuesday raid for the first wing only. After Deathbringer Saurfang is down, a summoning stone shall go down, and people will go back to their mains. Use your own judgment. The only help you will get from me is that if we're short a tank, I will bring my paladin to fill one tank spot at the expense of one healer spot. I am not going to make the officers do anything -- they are part of the 24 others as defined above. I am not going to make your fellow raiders do anything. If you are a person who only raids on your main and you think that this exercise is a waste of your time, then log on, join the raid, look at the raid composition, state so, and then leave the raid. I want your voice to be heard, but be careful. From a utilitarian standpoint, if it takes a compromise such as this to get five people to fill a raid with their mains for progression content (e.g., Blood Prince Council, Valithra Dreamwallker), it may be worth stomaching. Don't just say, "heck no, F* alts" arbitrarily.

Remember, an alt does not get to make main spec bids on items. Similarly, if everyone passes on an item for main spec and proceeds to offspec bid the item, alts are equivalent to off spec. If you want some shiny tool (e.g., Nibelung) for your alt, then bid some obscene amount of DKP to get it (heck, I bid 25 DKP for Nibelung for my offspec). Spending all of your DKP and sending yourself to zero DKP to gear out your fancy alt does not hurt raid progression. Why? Because when we're back on progression content and useful loot for your main drops, mains get first crack at the loot. Having zero or negative DKP just means that your main will be the last main in line to get your main spec loot, but DKP amounts to round robin anyway, so that means the system is working perfectly.

Wait HP, I thought in the DKP post, you said you architected main spec bidding so that you wouldn't have to track main specs, off specs, and alts? Does this mean you're going back on what you said?

Absolutely. In my mind, I thought that all the wishy washy people would be item happy, have super negative DKP, and never bother me with loot. If they raided enough with their new character to bring their DKP positive again, that should be enough 'proving time' to the other 24 people in the raid that their new main was raidworthy. If someone the 24 people don't like got loot, but it only happened because those 24 people passed on it for main spec priority, then I don't care. I foolishly did not plan on people having DKP in the bank prior to their character change/alt invite, but I am a utilitarian. If I let a new character sweep through and pick up five items, upset 3 of my 24 raiders and end up with 21 raiders the following week, then I'm gonna be heavy handed and not allow it to happen.

What about offspecs? Isn't it better to give offspecs priority to gear over alts?

I'm going to make a fictitious example using Jim's DK. In an ideal world, Jim's DK is DPS. If we're facing the Lich King, in his mind, his DK is probably DPS. His main spec is DPS; he invokes main spec priority on DPS loot. A lot of times, we have him fill a tank role. If he liked tanking just as much, I'd let him invoke main spec priority on tanking loot too; it'll set him back a little on priority for his DPS gear, but it will be no worse than round robin acquisition of DPS items (he'll just get that shiny new DPS weapon later than the other DPS, but he'll get it eventually). Jim's a smart guy -- if a main spec tank wanted the best tanking trinket, he'd pass on it because he knows that the main spec tank is going to be the guy tanking the Lich King, not himself. The DKP system was architected this way to allow this scenario to happen. Now, let's say Jim is a little DKP saavy and wants to get tanking loot for the minimum offspec bid of 3 DKP -- that's absolutely fine. What if someone's alt wants to outbid him on that tanking loot? That's absolutely fine. I'm a utilitarian -- if Jim's DK has to tank for us every once in a while in ICC10 gear instead of ICC25 gear because I gave all the offspec ICC25 tanking gear to some alt willing to bid more than 3 DKP, I'm willing to live with that. I have no desire to run a loot council and decide who gets what loot; I'm one of the 24 other raiders and I'm going to lose myself if I have to micromanage a raid that much. Even if some other officer decides that they'd take on the headache, I'm pretty sure at least 3 of the 24 other raiders would decide we're wasting their time with a loot council.

So, back to the plan. If the alt raid works out and we actually beat Saurfang, then we'll let the policy stand. Alts will be allowed until Saurfang, then switch back to mains for progression content. Festergut and Rotface are included as 'progression content' because we don't one shot them every week. When the raid buff gets higher, they may eventually become a cakewalk and I'll let the alts slide further (I envision at 30% raid buff, 1st wing, Fester, Rot, BPC, and Dreamwalker will be alt capable; Putricide, Blood Queen, Sindragosa, and LK will require mains). My goal is to throw down a summoning stone exactly once mid-raid on Tuesday. No summoning stone will be thrown down on Thursday -- I want to deal with the alt funny business only once per week.

If the alt raid doesn't work out, then the experiment shows that bringing alts to the first wing for the sake of not disenchanting loot won't work. We're better off bringing our mains and letting loot get disenchanted. Maybe when the raid buff is at 30%, we can go back and allow alts into the easier bosses.

-HP

[WarmApplePie]

Bravo bravo, standing ovation from the peanut gallery.

Everything here looks good except in your fictitious example I actually sometimes tank in TOC10 gear not ICC10 gear because people keep bringing their 3rd alts or offspecs to the 10mans and rolling need on tanking shit. There is now probably 7-8 characters that could tank better than Wapow so I have no idea why I'm still the 2nd/3rd/4th option.

[thandrenn]

There is now probably 7-8 characters that could tank better than Wapow so I have no idea why I'm still the 2nd/3rd/4th option.

Because you've successfully done it before and are willing to. Skill > Gear.

Regarding Alt Night, I'll say this once and only once, but I'm opposed to this policy. I think appeasing selfish people who'd rather make Guildies underman or raid with Non-Guildmates because they can't get their way is the wrong path. And given current difficulties with loot distribution as it is, having to keep track of who is an "alt" and who is not is going to make my job more of a headache. We'll see.

[kurumi]

A great thread, well spoken Inori. I'm in the underman before alts camp. I gear my main and farm/buy crap to help with the raid progression. I bring my alt to pugs. Although , if we do an occasional alt allow raid, that may be fun as a holiday, once or twice before cataclysm might be fun.

[Inori]

To clarify, no one will be coercing anyone to change characters for the sake of raid viability. If I end up with 3 healers, we are going to try Marrowgar with 3 healers. I will not tolerate people arguing in the raid that "so and so should go back on their main" to make this raid viable. You can play chicken with your fellow alt-bearing raiders to determine who goes back to which character before we pull the first trash mobs to make the raid viable -- I won't be making that decision for you. If we start wiping on Marrowgar, I'm going to call the night early and we will redo the first wing using mains on Thursday night; we will not try to reshuffle the raid with more main/alt swapping on Tuesday night.

Also remember that I'm going to be watching closely just how upsetting this will be to the 24 other people. Even if the raid is "successful", if I get in-game tells/mail from three or more people saying that they were upset that they had to carry people, I won't do this again the following week.

1) Alt tanks - this is easy to evaluate. If the tank starts dying, your only recourse is to blame the healers which won't earn you any points with the 24 other people.
2) Alt healers - a little tricky to evaluate. For the past couple of weeks, only Marrowgar involves actual healing assignments. If we have to start coordinating healing beyond that for other bosses/trash, then we're probably dragging someone along.
3) Alt DPS - I'm pretty sure I don't have to tell you that the 24 other people will be looking at the meters for incriminating evidence that someone is being carried.

Remember, by bringing your alt, you are asserting that:
You know what you're doing on that particular class/spec and can make a meaningful contribution to the raid. You may be the most awesome ranged DPS for Marrowgar, but if you decide to bring your alt healer and have no idea what to do, you're wasting the time of 24 other people. I know that there are people who do bring their alts to ICC10 and should be able to handle ICC25 just fine which is why I'm entertaining this whole experiment in the first place.

-HP

[Inori]

A great thread, well spoken Inori. I'm in the underman before alts camp. I gear my main and farm/buy crap to help with the raid progression. I bring my alt to pugs. Although , if we do an occasional alt allow raid, that may be fun as a holiday, once or twice before cataclysm might be fun.

I'm pretty sure that there will be several months with the raid buff sitting at 30% for us to be gearing our alts in ICC25. I'm only doing this experiment because it is remotely possible that the first wing is trivially easy now. Perhaps bringing alts will have no impact to clearing in a timely manner so that we can get practice attempts in on bosses that we're still learning. Before I make that policy, the raid has to prove it to me first.

-HP

[WarmApplePie]

3) Alt DPS - I'm pretty sure I don't have to tell you that the 24 other people will be looking at the meters for incriminating evidence that someone is being carried.
-HP

Honestly, the top 3 carry the bottom 5+ every week already. alts affecting dps is only going happen if Jason, I or one of the other top dps'ers brings an alt. You can tell by our WMO's, there are 2-5 doing good dps, 5-7 doing decent dps, 5-8 doing horrible dps.

[draven]

i would also like to take a moment to express my distaste for selfish gear whores who seem to have no interest in what is best for the guild or helping out their guildies. for the most part, gearing alts doesn't really help us out in the long run.
/rant