Loading ...The Road to Content: Reputation vs Gear vs Experience
Okay, so you’re tired of where you are. In fact, you’re already tired of where you are and you haven’t even got there yet. You know that the next guild you’re going to is just a stepping stone to the one after that. You’re looking for bigger things and you can already feel the time slipping away. Cataclysm is almost here, after all.
I don’t agree with this mindset, but I know that some of you are going to feel this way. It’s difficult for those of us in established guilds to empathize with those not. I’d be lying if during my journey to where I am that I did everything exactly how I wanted to. I made mistakes. I wasn’t always honest or honourable. I do have regrets.
Raiding can be a dirty business.
Where it all starts
We’re going to assume that you’re either new to the game or new to your tank being your main and that you’re looking at seeing a lot of content as your tank.
Path #1
You join a new guild filled with inexperienced players.
Pros:
A new, inexperienced guild is a great way to get gear and offers the best chance for you to get experience Main tanking. You’ll very likely even have the opportunity to insist upon yourself, the Main tank, getting all the upgrades first. They might even insist on this without you saying it. Gearing the Main tank first is a big mistake that a lot of new guilds make.
Cons:
Upon leaving, your reputation will be destroyed, but the beauty is that the realm community rarely cares about the opinions of new, inexperienced guilds. However, this transition is likely going to land you in a guild as an offtank as you’ll likely still lack the reputation, gear and experience to Main tank for your new guild.
Path #2
You join a new guild filled with experienced players. The leadership of this guild has usually broken off from an established guild due to drama.
Pros:
A new, experienced guild is a great way to gear up fast as well as gain you reputation. They want to do high level content immediately so they’ll go out of their way to gear you up quickly via run-throughs, crafting or buying stuff off the auction house.
Cons:
You probably aren’t going to get any experience as the Main tank and if you under perform, they’ll toss you to the side just as quickly as they geared you up. Even if everything works out, the guild is likely to disband sooner than later. The nice thing about that scenario though is that if you’ve managed to not get on anyone’s “noob” list then you’ve got a big name to use to help you get to the experienced, progressive guild you crave.
Path #3
You join an established, less progressive guild filled with a mixture of inexperience and experience players. Your stereotypical casual guild.
Pros:
An established, casual guild is a great way to gain reputation with the realm community. There’s a good chance you’ll even get to try your hand at Main tanking occasionally.
Cons:
You’re not going to gear up as fast as you would in a new, experienced guild (Path #2). Just like a new, inexperienced guild, there’s always a chance when you leave all geared up that your reputation will get scorched. The issue with this is that unlike a new, inexperienced guild, an established guild even if it’s a casual one can often have influence over whether or not you get into your next guild. Basically, if you don’t know how to leave with some grace, don’t bother with this path.
Path #4
Established, progressive guild with only experienced players.
Pros:
They’re everything you want in a guild.
Cons:
You’re nothing they want in an applicant. Lying can sometimes get your foot in the door if you’ve managed to get a few choice epics that make you look like you know what you’re doing, but high performance will be immediately required. Getting into this guild when you’re new will label you as not only a noob, but also a liar and remove them as a possibility forever. Established guilds have long memories.
The Skinny
Your ultimate goal is to land yourself in Path #4 with the gear and experience acquired from either Path #1, #2 or #3. Your fastest path there is definitely a new, experience guild (Path #2), but that route will require you to be a fast learner, be able to sell yourself effectively and above all, have a thick skin. Your 2nd “best” stepping stone is a new, inexperienced guild (Path #1) as it’ll offer you decent gear with a lot of the experience you need. You’ll probably have to take on some leadership roles and learn some patience yourself in the process though. You may want to consider going from Path #1 to Path #2 before trying to get to your end goal of Path #4. This, of course, will take longer though.
Finally, the slowest route is an established, casual guild. You’ll get some quick, easy gear, but nothing too impressive. You’ll have to walk a fine line of organizing stuff yourself in a guild like this while not disrupting the established systems. Ambition is easy to smell and casual guilds are often wary of it since it’s pretty much the exact opposite of their philosophies. However, if you are patient and play your cards right you should be able to leave this guild with some friends in high places, decent gear and an easy acceptance into Path #2 or Path #4.
Wrap Up
It’s difficult to just place guilds into perfect, little boxes like I’ve done in this article. No matter what path you choose, you’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to be misled from time to time and you’re going to have to make some tough decisions. Reputation, gear and experience all matter. How much they matter is as much luck as it is anything else when it comes to getting into a guild. After all, the same guild could have 2 different recruitment officers with 2 very different recruitment philosophies.
Overall, a good combination of reputation, gear and experience is always the best approach if you’ve really got your sights set on a particular guild. Which means, be patient and respectful of even the lowest and newest of guilds. Do everything in your power to gear up yourself even if you’re getting a lot of free handouts from others. And above all, do a lot of runs. Be they guild events or pugs, 5s, 10s or 25s, everything has something to teach you. The best tanks out there didn’t become the best by being lazy.
The Truth, again.
You are new and inexperienced. In order to quickly find yourself tanking in an established, end-game guild is going to take luck. You’ll need to have just the right kind of recruitment officer looking for a tank for a guild that rarely looks for tanks. The stars are pretty much going to have to align for you.
So, the truth is if you’re rushing to see all the content, you’re on something of a fool’s quest. For every success story a tank might tell you about how they dinged 80 and a month later were doing the hardest content in the game, there’s thousands of tanks that put in their time and are doing the hardest content in the game because they’re so damn good that no one would deny them that content. They’re so good that they’re not being carried to that content, they’re helping carry others to that content.
My point is you’re either carrying someone else or you’re being carried. Consider the former.
October 13th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I think pugging is the best way to get a reputation on a server. If your guild is slow, nothing is stopping you from pugging the last couple of spots in a raid above your current guilds progression to either get experience and reputation on the type of guild you would like to join or even pass down to your guild different strats and techniques.
I think sometimes being in a guild can put you in tunnel vision. For example we had a great healer and one H ToC our healer wanted to bring his alt so we pugged an under geared healer and did our usual run but the healer could not keep up and we wiped a few times, but out of the experience I learned to use my emergency cool downs better and think about the damage incoming. I have also meet some great people on pugs that I would group with again anytime.
I like my casual guild but I would recommend pugging and you can even learn from the bad ones.
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October 13th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
I’m in a weird situation. After taking about 6 months off, I decided I couldn’t stay off the crack, but the rest of my old crew is waiting for Cataclysm. I know a guy on another server who runs a casual guild, so I decided to join up with those guys. Rather then wait for faction transfer to be implemented and pay for everything, I decided I would roll a fresh warrior from scratch.
Here we are 2 month later, and I dinged 76 last night. In the mean time, the guild has gone from about 12 people to over 60, and has implemented DKP. They’re short tanks, at least at the 10 man level, and my RL friend is still in charge, so I’m not worried about at least getting some kind of slot. But the pressure’s gonna be on to impress these people right out of the chute, and while I knew my way around 3.0 pretty well, I’ve never even been in Ulduar, let alone Tourney.
So here’s how I’m going to handle this. First and foremost, gotta know the fights. Nothing is more important to make a good impression, even if you’re just filling a DPS slot tonight. So watch those videos. Second, take any slot. Don’t hesitate to roll on DPS gear if it’s an upgrade. Don’t hold out for a tanking slot unless you’re really sure it’s coming. Third, take command of off-night work. Lead heroics. Lead 10 mans if possible. Take whoever you can and be willing to pug the rest.
You want to get yourself into a position where your guild will want you to take over main-tanking for an existing raid group, but you also want to be the guy they look to for main-tanking the new group. That may mean being the new raid leader, at least for a while, and it may not. Be prepared for anything. Be your officers’ go-to guy for when they need a tank OR a deeps. Maybe in a couple months I’ll be able to let you all know if this strategy works or not.
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Vangogh reply on October 14, 2009 8:50 am:
Just as a quick side note, I was the OT for our guild, then the MT because he left and now I am a dpser. The reason I dps is because I am one of the top dps in the guild, and now I rarely get the chance to tank. So my advice would be, do the things you dont want to do poorly, or you might get stuck doing them all the time.
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Goodmann reply on October 15, 2009 4:55 pm:
I must say that is not a good advise in my eyes…telling ppl to under perform cant lead to anything good in my honest opinion.
I would rather advise u to exel on the things u r good at and teach the other ppl ur over performing how u do it, and then make it clear ur not happy doing that role and u want to go back to tanking.
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Orcstar reply on October 18, 2009 6:33 pm:
Guild need go over personal needs.
We had an excellent druid tank verry skilled, but also excellent as resto.
What he did he did good. But………..at some point we were short on healers, druid healers specifically and not short on tanks.
So, he was asked more and more to heal on his druid. A task he did good but disliked very much.
Fast forward to now: he’s back tanking on his druid. In our alt runs. Since then he go so tired of healing that he saw no other way out then to switch mains. His main is now a hunter and top dps in our raid.
When my brother rolled paladin he wanted to tank. I specifically told him to not try healing because there was a big chance he would become good at it and that would jeopardize his tanking ambitions.
Soooo, if tanking really is what you want………don”t train too much on the other stuff or people might find out.
October 14th, 2009 at 1:04 am
a) Get the skills right, play a lot, pugs is a great option if you’re new to the game, pugging gives you rep and exposes your growing skills to people already in guilds. When pugging, stay positive and be a nice guy, don’t fall into the blame trap where it’s always somebody else’s fault if you fail. Accept that you wont always be strong enough and admit it to break any negative vibes towards you.
b) Make a plan for where to obtain the best possible gear from the content available to you. Tanks are seriously gear dependent both do do the job well and to be perceived as strong tanks (HP mostly which is really half the truth, but some things will never change). Download and learn how to use Rawr in order to plan your gear acquisition and to get your enchants and gemming right.
c) Once you get the above going for you people will start asking you to join their guilds
d) Don’t act too much on impulse when picking a guild. Use Wow-heroes to check out how well people in the available guilds on your server are geared. If they have their gear enchanted and gemmed, if they have or are getting the content you’re striving for under control, if they have enough good healers and dps:ers. Once you know what guilds have their shit together, have a think about how you’ve felt when pugging with people from these guilds. Do they seem respectful and nice or are they whining a lot? You’re going to play a lot with your future guildies, so you better like their style.
e) Make your pick and apply/accept an inivte. Once in the guild don’t hop away immediately if you’re not sure you like what you see. Consider the future opportunity of changing things around, good tanks tend to do that a lot. Stay positive in your approach to guildies, don’t whine. Don’t worry if you don’t get the spot you want immediately, go pug and keep improving, the spot will eventually be yours. Keep developing your skills, gear and relations. As you get stronger, don’t act like you’re a god, never brag, WoW is a team-work thingy. Don’t be a nuisance by harassing people in the guild with questions you can find an answer to on the Internet. If you want an opinion, get as many of the facts straight first.
f) Hopefully your research and analysis paid off and you’re in a good guild where you can grow. If you see flaws or problems in commitment (people not signing up or not showing up for raids), leadership (nobody does anything about it), seriousness (people doesn’t seem to give a flying fuck about progression), fun-level (people act like assholes towards each other) - you may want to reconsider your pick. Just don’t do it straight away and stay respectful to people even if they are a bit on the nasty side. Leave with your back straight and don’t look back.
g) If everything works, stay with the guild as long as progression goes fairly along with your own needs. Understand that the grass isn’t greener on the other side, all guilds have their issues, don’t leave because of mild problems. Things do sometimes change quicker than you can imagine.
h) If you get drunk and /gquit, you know you’re in a good guild if people ask you to come back the day while spamming /g with fun comments about your behavior. ;P
Good luck, it’s a fun game and tanking is one of the best ways to play it!
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October 14th, 2009 at 1:41 am
Good article and well put.
I started off with my Prot Warrior at level 58. I had leveled doing quests up until then. When I hit 58, I decided that to learn what Tanking entailed, I would simply Tank my way to level 70. So, I tanked instances and didn’t run quests unless they gave me tanking loot. Upon reaching level 64, a guild picked me up after noticing my skills at tanking in Regular Mana Tombs. We were all around this level in the guild, leveled up to 70 and began raiding. From there I stayed with the guild all the way through Black Temple and eventually over to Wrath as far as Naxx 25.
The guild had always used free-rolls and was sooo casual that people hardly showed up. So I tried to enact change, and when that didn’t happen, I left. I believe Vene touches on the whole “ambition is bad” deal in very casual guilds. It can lead to trouble.
I joined a progression raiding guild after that, went all the way through Ulduar and Hard Modes and started on Coliseum up to Heroic 25. This guild decided to chop down it’s roster from 50 raiders (2 groups of 25) to 1 group of 25. It was decided I’d be a backup until another tank left for military service. I wasn’t happy being a backup, so I went somewhere else and am very very happy in a guild that is on par with the one I left, but not overly serious.
The point of all this… is that you have to find where you will be happy. If you are fine raiding occasionally and as a backup most of the time, do that. If you want to be the MT of a guild, then seek that out. Lately MT/OT isn’t very defined, so its not a huge deal. Just find a guild where you won’t be riding the bench every week until someone doesn’t show. Skill is recognized, so don’t put a big sign up that says “I am the best tank.” Simply prove it through your actions in raids. I said it before in a prior comment to a different posting: What defines the “MT” of a guild is who steps up when called to do something. Even if that means tanking the Adds that no one wants to tank on a regular basis
Just don’t overstep your bounds within the guild hierarchy.
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October 14th, 2009 at 1:56 am
I believe that the best way to stat if you are new to the game and didn’t tank any raid just some 5 mans is to find a guild that has a large numbers on players and they are farming content on regular bases.Start as ot and when you are sure and think you got more experience try to mt. This way you will get gear and experience, reputation that depends probably not.
When you master this try to find a new guild that is doing new content and they are trying to progress fast to content.Here you can create the reputation you will need to find the established guild.
At least that is what you should try to do, but life has always surprises.
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October 14th, 2009 at 5:36 am
Interesting read, though I suspect Cataclysm is a ways off from what most people believe yet.
Currently I guess I’m at a “Path #3″ situation; in TBC it was “Path #4″, I left my old guild because I took a few months break when WLK launched. So I can see both sides of the coin, kind of.
I’ve found tanks to be in an unique situation in this game; your reputation counts for a lot, more than it counts for other classes I would argue. And if you’re good, you’re in demand, which can be more detrimental than if you were simply average; it may be a larger guild above you in progression interested in you, or a PuG on the LFG, but you’re *always* in demand if you’re known to be good. If you’re not careful it can be draining and lead to burnout, which is what happened to me last year.
Luckily since I started playing I’ve got a good rep I think; I started PuG tanking back in vanilla, came to the attention of a raid guild tanking heroics in TBC, and managed to impress enough to get an invite that saw me get all the way to Illidan. The people who know me know I do a good solid job, and that’s good enough for me.
But I prefer raiding on a smaller scale really; thirteen iLevels of gear disparity means jack to me; I couldn’t care about what another guild or tank is doing, if I’m progressing well enough and further developing my tanking with experience and gear alongisde my friends, then it’s all good (we’re at heroic Anub 10 man right now, for some context)
I guess my current group would be defined as “casual”, though some of us really aren’t; the bone of contention at the moment is whether to farm ToC to death or whether to start on Algalon. I’m for the latter; I don’t think I’m carrying anyone…though at the same time, I don’t understand the drive in some to farm the ToC week after week, alts too, when we could be in Ulduar doing hard modes with our mains. I *want* to tank Algalon; it looks like a tank’s pressure cooker, which is where I get my buzz. Lady Vashj remains my most intense tanking experience to date, something that could match that would be awesome. I think Algalon would, and then some.
Bottom line; I’m old enough to realise this is only a game, and so I play for fun. That’s my only criteria. Server firsts and Ironbound drakes are cool, no denying, but I’m comfortable enough in my own skin, and with the people I raid with, to be happy with what I have, while reaching for the next level *together*
Sorry for the essay. But I hope I made sense.
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October 14th, 2009 at 6:14 am
I feel compelled to comment on this one, as a long-time tank that has sat back, levelled alts, collected dailies, and stared at the raid game for so long wondering what it was like but never having time, comfort with a group, or just plain balls to jump in and try it.
I am a member of a very laid back guild, so I could be considered smack dab in path #3, if there was any momentum. I’m quite comfortable in my group of friends, reluctant to leave on a quest for a hazy epicus maximus experience. The guild is great, but they’re not heavy players given RL stuff, and we (I?) have trouble scheduling and marshalling numbers for basic stuff, let alone the 10-mans. So the only route left, as I get jealous of all the fun stuff I haven’t seen and done yet (I wanna kill an Old God damnit), is PuGing it all.
The ambition comment is too dead on for me. My original guild started as a casual social group, levelling and running dungeons when we could. About half the founding memebers split, went on to more organized raid guilds; the other half decided to “bulk up” the guild into the raid levels by inviting the sort of people other guilds had wisely cast away (to this day I have no idea what a “DPS head” would do as a guild officer position, nor why so many people decided they had been promised such a position). I was left with a dead husk of a guild when all was said and done, which prompted a server and faction switcheroo, and I’ve no desire to repeat the process with a far better group of people.
So I’m hoping that pug-ing my way up might at least get me a little ways in, and hopefully as Grido says, build a little rep for later invites (I’m a decent tank, I think, and if raiding proves otherwise, I learn fast anyway). It’s my only way up at the moment, it wouldn’t be possible without Blizz’s easing of the raid grade curve (thank you Emblems), and apart from trying to sate my curious side, I’m quite happy where I am.
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October 14th, 2009 at 7:31 am
Of course, there’s also option 5. Get together with a group of like minded people and start your own guild, and work your way up.
You might want to get your head examined for any signs of insanity though.
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October 14th, 2009 at 8:21 am
The best part about path #3 is that if you manage to be lucky enough to land in the right guild, as I was, you’ll have no desire to ever leave for an “established progressive guild”.
I’ve been in my guild since just after BC launched, and even though we struggle with pulling together enough decent raiders to get past ToCr25 Reg I couldn’t fathom leaving them for even a bleeding edge progression guild.
I may have aquired the rep, gear, but most importantly I’ve aquired a home.
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October 14th, 2009 at 8:50 am
Path #5
Form a 10 man guild with RL friends. RAID once a week. Have fun. Do WoW LAN parties at least two times a year.
I, sir, am living the good life.
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October 14th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Nice article. I’m on path #5, as well, having left a guild that was so progression-oriented that they lost sight of the game, trying to get near the top of that ranking site. The guild I formed is made up of family and few folks whose alts were getting no play time in the former guild. We’re going to start recruiting seriously in about a week.
For us, tanks are a problem, in that we don’t have anyone on the roster, yet, that has done much tanking (or any). A healer by trade, I rolled a warrior back in TBC to learn how they work, so I could heal them more effectively. But then my previous guild lost all their warrior tanks to Real Life(tm), and I brought my warrior out of storage to fill the gap. Leaving the guild to form my own happened just before I dinged 80. Several ToC runs in 5-man, and a couple Uld-10 runs (all as DPS) allowed me to roll on tanking gear and get an ~OK set together. My tanking experience is seriously limited.
If I were working on getting into a guild right now, or trying to move into tanking in my current one (I don’t have to *try*; I’m GM, and we have so few tanks that the spots are there for the taking), I have to admit I’d be so nervous of screwing up that it’d be a struggle to get any quality time. Pugs are the way to go, of course, but folks are so unforgiving of anyone trying to gain experience that it’s hard to make it happen. Even on my Uld/T8/T9-geared healer, I run into so many groups that want me to prove that the content they want to run is old hat for me, that I have the achievement to prove it. I haven’t had the guts, frankly, to try tanking for strangers, yet.
Anyway, again, good article. I’ll be coming back to this blog for advice for awhile, I’m sure.
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October 14th, 2009 at 10:58 am
It really depends on where you want to be. I am currently the MT of the guild I am in with a bunch of RL friends as well as folks that we recruited to fill out our 25 man roster. We do pretty well only raiding 2 nights a week on 25 man. We have cleared every boss in the game with the exception of Algalon even though our 25 man kills have been the ‘easymodes’ for the most part. We have a group of about 12 or so raiders that are really ‘raiders’ and we use the 10 man hardmodes to get our challenges in (getting close to those rusted drakes)
I was in a guild that was much more hardcore and tops on server however the GM would yell scream and put down people who messed up on a boss even if it was a first attempt. At 31 years old no one really wants to hear that while playing a game for enjoyment or at any age really.
I would rather have my current situation any day even though I wish we could be a little more hardcore and do more 25 man hardmodes/heroic modes but it’s not really in the cards for us.
Again everyone is different and you have to choose your guild accordingly.
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October 14th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Veneretio, you made a point that I think is critical to new tanks, and which I feel ought to be repeated: do a lot of runs. I’ll go you one better: do as many PUGs as possible and, to some extent, the worse the PUG the better. Raiding high level content with a good guild will accomplish little but covering up a new tank’s deficits until, at some inopportune time, they are suddenly and harshly revealed.
A tank can learn theory crafting, he can hoover up the phat loot, and he can study all the fights, but there’s no substitute for experience. Bad PUGs are a geat resource - bearing responsibility for the security of a gang of idiots will develop a tank’s situational awareness, reaction time, eye-hand coordination, and knowledge of his varied skills. Plus, it’s rewarding to know that one’s skill produced a good result from a bad situation. PUG often, PUG badly, that’s my advice.
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Sephirawth reply on October 14, 2009 2:56 pm:
I guess I am in a good spot because I have to bear responsibility for a gang of idiots every day. But I love my idiots!
BTW - the way you phrased that made me LOL irl……
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Graakan reply on October 14, 2009 4:04 pm:
Wow… that is some seriously great advice, and I hadn’t considered the value of several voyages on the Failboat! I think I might just try…
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October 14th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I realize this is just a game but I try to treat everyone with respect when grouping or in guild, /Trade, or /City chat. You join a guild because in doing so it allows you a greater chance to participate in Raids and higher level content other than 5-mans. Its easy if you are in a end game progression guild that routinely farms the hard modes to lay out a plan for those desiring to reach that point. I would never suggest simply joining a guild until you get what you want and then dumping them for greener pastures.
I want to see as much content as possible but if someone wants to join a group to get MT, gear, and experience and have people rely on you, even tho you have a selfish agenda, seems deceptive imo. Especially if you know you aren’t going to be sticking around long.
As an officer for my guild I look everyone’s guild history up and if they seem to be jumpers then I boot them. I would rather have someone tell me up front that they will stick around but don’t plan on staying rather then spend a bunch of time gearing someone up and then having them leave. We are small but through playing together we’ve learned how to be successful and I’m sure a lot of the smaller guilds would rather not admit someone in who is just gonna take what they can and bail without a second thought other than for themselves.
Don’t join the guild unless you have an understanding with the leadership. You can just as easily make a name for yourself by PuG’ing and let your reputation speak for you when you apply for the end game guilds.
I think its irresponsible to condone this “take what you want then leave” mentality and I think it unintentionally gives an impression of only the elite guilds are what are important. I was under the impression that this blog was about how to be a better tank, not how to step on others to get where you want to be. I’m sure this wasn’t the point of the post but it sure came across that way.
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Veneretio reply on October 14, 2009 10:44 pm:
For some people elite guilds are what are important and that was the approach this post was taking. As I said in the post, I don’t agree with this mindset, but I don’t think it hurts to look at things from the “dark-side” on occasion either.
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Cornfedhick reply on October 15, 2009 2:23 pm:
I guess an important thing to remember for people looking to get into elite guilds are not so much what you do, but how you do it.
Grats Vene on a well thought out and philosophical post. My guild and I will be analyzing and wrapping our brains around this idea for a bit.
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October 15th, 2009 at 1:56 am
I run guild that’s 50% #3 and 50% #4 guild.
Our guild went to 50/50 relation due pure endurance of our leadership, we were arround 95% #3 but quick disbanding guilds (#2) yielded quite a nice boost of best players for us. Each #2 disbanding made us in position to pick 2-5 best players of each, however they were bringing 2-5 casuals with them filling our social pool as soon as they got raider rank, that’s what actually brought them to us. We never claimed #4 type but even with 3 raids/week schedule we became No1 guild on server.
What’s the point? Point is that progressing guild with casual approach ain’t loosing too much members. At least it’s not looking that way.
Cataclysm is not here yet. And I would love that everyone realize that. Someone who didn’t experienced Ulduar/ToGC hard modes and sit back and telling story about “we gonna get back for Cataclysm” unfortunately but true - not gonna do much in Cataclysm past leveling aswel. Just will have new food for trolling “Vanilla was much better”. Yes it was, get over it.
Threshold for joining guild now should be ToC5/5+Ony+Heartbreaker/Rare Cashe guilds. That’s places where you are going to learn something.
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October 15th, 2009 at 2:30 am
I like option #5.
That’s what I ended up with, and I love it. Nothing better than logging in, hanging out with 10-12 (we’re running primarily 10 mans in guild) awesome people and having a blast killing some stuff.
And (IMO) best of all, if the group remains together long enough you learn to play so well together. You know practically learn how the other people play!
On the PUG options…. I dunno personally. I hate PUGging… all the waiting, and the “risk” (burnt one too many times by someone leaving mid instance/raid and being unable to finish/progress). BUT, I can see the value. A PUG filled with bad players will force you to play better, but (IMO) so can playing with good players on the hardest content you have access too. IMO, if you aren’t needing to use your CDs and anticipate events then you’re not working on hard enough content. Personally I get bored when we can farm bosses. It’s at that point I try egg everyone on to speed kill everything using minimum resources (one tank, one healer styles).
What I would like to know….
What do people think about playing the other “sides” of the fence? I’ve played DPS, and am now embarking on making a healer, just so I know what the other “sides” face in a fight.
Oh and someone mentioned DPS heads. As Raid Leader I often defer specific task assignments to my “Heads of Department”. Healers and DPS all have a informal HoD who decides specific task assignments. Why? Because they know their skills and roles better than I do. This could be what a DPS head was all about… THen again… maybe it was about how much damage someone’s head could sustain….
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Bhigbhiggrr reply on October 15, 2009 2:32 am:
Oh yeah.
And for an extra kick (and a bit of pratice). Split your normal raid group into lots of 5 and have races through the Daily Heroic. First one back out the front door wins.
It’s a real laugh!
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October 15th, 2009 at 2:47 am
Great post, Vene, as is usual for your good self. I would consider adding what the duel-spec feature can do for you, though. As much as a guild may be looking for a “tank” and that’s it, it’s frequently worthwhile spending a bit of time with your off-spec gear and choices.
Obviously being a paladin or druid is of more help here as they have more options, but it’s worthwhile looking over who is currently in a guild you’re thinking of applying to and seeing what “else” you could provide to the guild. They may be looking for a tank, but being a capable DPS/healer at the same time, with decent gear, certainly won’t hurt your raiding viability.
This is double edged, of course - you may end up raiding in a spec you don’t prefer because that’s what’s needed at the time.
It’s all worth thinking about, though.
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October 15th, 2009 at 5:49 am
Reputation, experience, and gear.
Of those 3, gear is obviously the easiest to acquire; and is often the least important.
Experience can be more difficult, however; even people who have played since Vanilla can be bad, and brand new players can and do out play them. I’ve been playing since Dec. 2004, tanking since ~Mar 2005. Those years of experience garner few advantages vs. someone who started tanking halfway through TBC. Actually the biggest advantage of those extra years is:
Reputation. By far the most important. Those end-game progression guilds are gonna check your history, they are gonna talk to your old Guild Masters, they are gonna ask their members about you. Perception of those recruiting you is key. You can have terrible gear, and little experience; but if those recruiters hear your a good tank, and a cool person your chances are much much higher. Many guilds (yes even top-end ones) won’t bring a douche or a guild hopper in no matter how good they are.
Case in Point. At the release of 3.1 my guild (a #3) imploded due to “Ambition” of myself and about 1/3 of the other raiders. We wanted to raid, and we wanted to raid the hardest stuff available; many of us had been in hardcore guilds and somehow we had all found ourselves in this casual guild.
After the implosion I took a break. I was burnt out. Upon my return about a month and a half before the release of 3.2 I was trolling the official forums one day and I noticed the top horde guild on my server was looking for tanks. The guild many of my former guild mates had traveled to. They asked me apply, knowing I had no experience in current content; terrible gear for Ulduar Hardmodes (G. Vezzax and Yogg 3 lights at the time), but they accepted me and helped me gear up. Why?
Reputation. Those people I had tanked with previously knew I was good, and were willing to take the time and effort to bring me back up to form and help me learn the encounters.
As important as gear and experience is; nothing trumps reputation. They took me over a geared to the teeth server xfer, cause they knew what they were getting. Guilds will often take a good player with crappy gear and little current experience because gear is cheap and project marmot is just a click away.
Do PUGS! Try to play with the people you want to join up with. Reputation, imho; is everything.
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October 15th, 2009 at 6:42 am
Totally agree about the stars having to align. It is to be honest a dream that anyone new (not an Alt of a well established player) could ever make it to tank in a good guild aside from immediately after an expansion when things can be shaken up. There will be the one or two exceptions but my experience is that it is a waste of time trying.
I was MT of a 10 man guild that disbanded earlier in the year due to players moving into 25 man guilds after we had cleared Naxx 10.
The healers and cloth dps classes had no problems finding nice guilds but as a Warrior I was well and truly ruined. Not even half competent guilds were recruiting tanks and my friends who moved to new guilds tried everything but failed to get me in with them. The tank spots were all taken by core members of the guilds and were therefore firmly sewn up. No one wanted to take a chance on a new tank especially as I only had 10 man gear.
There being proportionally less tank spots in 25 man raids obviously doesn’t help and pugs also wouldn’t touch a tank that wasn’t over geared for the encounter.
My Fury offspec allowed me to farm emblems in pugs but it was also a dead end for guild recruitement as plate dps spots are ridiculously over subscribed. I would often make up the numbers as a pug in another guilds 25 man raids but despite being at the top of the meters they would say “you are a great player but we already have to many melee dps sorry”.
So I floated around and ended up in hopeless guilds that couldn’t clear content I had breezed through a few months earlier let alone move to Ulduar.
Sure I had a good reputation and no end of whispers for 5 man HC’s and yet more Naxx 10 runs but I had done those to death months earlier. The guilds doing that content go nowhere because their best dps and healers just use them to gear up and then jump to better guilds rather than bringing the guild up with them.
The solution was to turn the Warrior into an AH/Bank alt and I rolled a Priest. The new emblem system allowed me to gear it up quickly and within a month of reaching 80 I was in one of the best guilds on the server clearing TOC 10/25 having skipped Ulduar altogether.
As it happened some of my friends from my original guild were in the new guild and they put a good word in based on my performance in the past. Without that I may not have made it but 90% of the recruitment in /2 is for healers so I believe I would have ended up in a good guild anyway. Perhaps as a trial but I would have proven my worth. Can’t remember ever seeing an advert for tanks - let alone tanks with average gear and average experience.
So maybe in a fairy tale you could get in some lucky pug groups that don’t fail without downing a single boss and in this fairy tale the gear you require might actually drop and you might actually win a roll or two and get some nice achievements and then you may see the one in a million tank recruitment advert and you may just get accepted.
In the real world though….nah not happening.
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Shadamehr reply on October 16, 2009 4:22 am:
Genuine question: there aren’t any 10 man guilds/groups on your server?
That’s the content I run, occasionally dipping my toe into 25 man raids. On my server there are more than a few 10 man only raid groups. Do you know for a fact there are no 10 man runs happening?
I see Ulduar run with regularity now since Trial of the Champion, even with pugs, for example. I realise every server is different, but surely there’s a 10 man raid out there that could use you?
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Drae reply on October 19, 2009 5:39 am:
I know when we recruit, we NEVER, and I mean NEVER, advertise in chat.
We have a consistently bumped thread with our website, progression, and recruitment info on the realm forums, however even that is simply a “Hey we’re Omen, We need “xxx” come and say Hi if you fit these requirements”. When we ACTIVELY recruit a class / role we tend to advertise on places like tankspot, EJ, and other class ‘centric websites. More often then not our recruits are server transfers or re-rolls of players we already knew.
I don’t think any guild worth their salt advertises in trade chat; you get too many scrubs. We go where we know the good players are; I recommend if you ever find yourself in that position again to scout the guilds on your server and decide on a few you’d like to play for, App even if they aren’t actively recruiting. Many guilds file applications for later use. If that yields no results, you may have to look off server; in which case class ‘centric websites like tankspot are great.
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October 15th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Personally, when we recruit tanks now we do it based solely on reputation. Most of the tanks we recruit are very undergeared for our content, but gearing up someone is trivial nowadays and you can usually get them to an acceptable state in 1-2 weeks. Once gear no longer matters, reputation is everything.
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October 15th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Darn!
I just wrote a lengthy post about how I so do not agree with you. And when I finished, I realized that I completely missed your point.
But here’s the sad thing. I settled down a few years ago, at a time my former ‘hard raiding’ guild split up to become even more hardcore. Years go by, and i think i got too comfortable. I had to stop tanking due to connection issues at times, and finally switched to my shadow alt. (and you might know about the situation there…)
So now i’m the “disco queen”, and although that is not even an issue anymore, a can’t keep up in 25’s, so i’m not even considered for 10hc’s.
And that’s sad, because that’s the content i’d really like do do.
So what now? Settle down knowing you can’t do the hc trials? ‘Applying up’ where you’d still have to prove yourself in 25 (which you know you can’t)? Or just settling further down (and still not doing the things you feel up to).
So settling isn’t to last forever. But it surely isn’t fun not knowing where you really belong.
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October 18th, 2009 at 4:17 am
I run a #3, i.e. a stereotypical casual guild that runs 10 man content (wouldn’t know how to do 25 man the casual way, heh). If you’re ever confronted with someone like me, just try to be honest. Especially when we were still struggling to fill the 10 mans (usually missing one or two) we’d regularly get someone in who was actually quite good. If they’d gone up to me and just told me “look, I’m not interested in staying in your guild long term, but I would like to raid with you for gear/experience” then I’d probably given you the spot.
Just saying, sometimes being honest pays off.
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October 19th, 2009 at 5:28 am
Here is my story, i joined a guild of casual pvpers (as opposed to good pvpers) who were happy twinking and doing an occasional battleground. I told them im all in for raiding and there was like 2 other guys that raided anything besides 5-man heroics (back at BC), a little bit of kara and the likes, nothing serious. I joined like a month before WotLK and only got my char to 70 and did some heroics when the extension hit. So afer we all were 80 (took like 2 weeks, i was pugging untill they were ready) we started to raid Naxx with rogues pulling off 800 dps and the likes.. (our best was a ret pally with like 1.5k dps)… i made them read guides, dragged them through naxx at their ears and kept telling them how to improve their skills at raiding, used a ton of addons to get all the data i needed… of course first we wiped horribly, but improved steadily to the point where we were able to clear naxx in like 2.5 hours on a good run, also did OS+1. I got tired of all the naxx and os runs and took a break for about 6 months and joined back recently… and what do i find my guild of ex-casual-pvp-suckers doing? Clearing pdc, ulduar up to mimiron and malygos and having fun at it! those rogues that used to pull off 800 dps are now at their steady 4.5k and our top dps, the guild enjoys raiding and doesnt do any pvp at all anymore. thats my story, take what you get and make the best out of it
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October 19th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I joined my guild at lvl23, the guild was very casual and unable to clear karazhan let alone organize 25mans effectively (gruul’s lair was a once a week wipe fest).
I took to tanking very well, led by example and learned the other classes and roles (originally to make me a better tank). Then I get called up to the officer channel in vent, I think I screwed up something bad in that pug run last night….no, worse…they made me their new raid leader.
So I buckle down, looked at where we were failing at the raids and came up with a plan to teach these bunch of casuals how to raid effectively one boss at a time. 6 months later, the guild rebranded itself as a progression raiding guild and we maintained a top10 server ranking ever since
tl;dr one1 tank can change the guild to suit his raiding needs.
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October 20th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
My story goes like this:
I leveled up with my friends as a mage and became a guild leader of a casual raiding guild. We got to a point where we were clearing Nax in two nights, but whenever we attempted Malygos it was pretty evident that our tanks just didn’t know what to do - even after looking up videos. So it was then I was like “this doesn’t look so hard” and started leveling up my warrior. I then leveled from 1-80 as prot, never once taking off my shield, and tanking every instance.
By the time I had hit 80 again, my guild had somewhat deteriorated and personally I didn’t want to put up with the drama my irl mates were giving me. So me and my girlfriend left for another guild, we had pugged some people from there in our nax runs. Again it was a casual guild, and it was several weeks when I asked and insisted that I was a tank. It just so happened that the main tank, wanted to use his shaman (being that we didn’t have one). So they slotted me into an offtank roll for a Nax, for several Nax’s, and it became clear to me that I was better than the main tank.
We then progressed onto Malygos, and after several wipes, I asked if I could have a turn at tanking.(I actually asked the healers to come wipe with me the night before as I practiced) I did, and it went perfectly fine we wiped in phase 3 but tanking was fine, for the first time all the sparks were stacked on each other.
Even then though, it wasn’t enough to warrent me main tank status. It wasn’t until we hit Hodir is Ulduar when the current main tank had to take a night off, that I got my chance to shine. Ever since then I’ve been the main tank of my guild. From there we’ve progressed to being on of the most well respected guilds on the server, and we’re now ranked 13th in the US for 10man strict progression. Life is sweet.
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October 26th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Hi everyone !
I think i’ve came trough all of the steps you told in your story-line.
I have played really oftenly since two years now and that putted me on an 1st rank officer designated to manage Tanks and Fools.
Things became easy and nice because i came naturally to this nice position : Main tank with lot of concerns for enjoyment and friendship in the guild (more than other concerns).
Nowaday, due to IRL situations my longest time period in a guild as goes off. I’m applying today in place of experimented guys with a lot of knowledge and desire to be at the top. Even if they are really nice people, it’s very difficult for me to think the game like them as a perpetual challenge as i was really “let’s go ans see !” person.
And here is the point : I’m known as a good Tank, capable and aware. But today i’m the noob, low-response, first to the cemetary off-tank in wich officer wants to believe.
It’s the harder way i’ve never been trough and it’s a lot challenge for such an IRL busy person as me.
I have many things to learn today, it’s scary and pleasant and just reminds me all the time that once you have choose the path of the warrior, there is nothing you should fear to encounter or being lazy for your quest.
For conclusion.
Everytime i’m feeling unhelpfull or uninspred, i’am going back analysing, characters, armory, orientation, stuff, etc. As long i know or just guess the “How” and the “Why” of my own way, (tanks to you and others Tank pioneers) i’m stayin clear and pleasant, able to challenge myself again.
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October 30th, 2009 at 9:42 am
I specc’d both prot and holy and definately spent a fair bit of time in holy. I ended up having to raid with a guild I found on the realm forums to get conistant tank time. I was honest about having no intention of joining them at the time.
It worked out so well they joined my original guild. Since then, one of our tank Druids stepped in to help me with the healing and we haven
t looked back. I tank in 10s and tank and heal in 25s, but not so much healing I get burnt on it. Just goes to show that honesty pays off.
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November 4th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Your article reflects pretty much the way it is out there. I have started playing by accident this game, I was into FPS before, and I fell in love with it. I have been in all kind of guilds and I am now in a raiding/progression guild. If I would have read your article before I decided I wanted to tank, back at lvl 20 something last year I would have prolly enjoyed my “social” experience in WOW much more. Thnkz for sharing all this great information with us (not only this post) but many others, it is really appreciate to see people beeing nice, sharing info and trying to help. BTW I thought that gear is the most important thing, I thought that skill and practice is second but THE most important thing is INFORMATION. It is really difficult to get good accurate info as a tank, especially when you are new to the game like I am and this site surely gives a hand or two.
Cheers!
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November 20th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Im working on getting my second alt to 80 atm. Im going to gear him the same way i did my priest. I had no experience healing. but what of it?
You need gear, experience and reputation right?
Today’s game is nothing like it used to be when 60 was the cap. Gear is everywhere, and you can almost always out gear an instance before attempting it.
Take heroics for example. I didnt start doing them until i had crafted everything i could and gotten blues for the majority of my spots. (which took all of a couple days) I stroll into heroics with adequate gear so the only learning i needed was how to heal and as long as i didnt screw it up to bad, or prefaced it with how new i was, my reputation stays intact.
Farming Heroics can get you to overgearing the lower raids easily, as conquest and triumph both give WAY better gear than anything that drops in them.
Rinse repeat until you are set for the highest content. Pug away, run stuff with guildies, it doesnt matter.
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