The tired phrase of “As Mists gets increasingly closer…” is something that I fear I will be using more frequently than I would like so I’m going to try and rephrase it as much as possible.
The impending occasion that has the peoples of Azeroth walking among the ancient Pandas is coming ever closer…That doesn’t work.
As Mists gets increasingly closer raid leaders, or raid coordinators will be starting to take a closer look at the fights and classes to see what they’re raid comp will be.
So do you keep your raid group from Cata and hope that the class/spec combination works or do you rearrange/force people to play a different toon?
If It Aint Broke Don’t Fix It
If you did really well in Cata with your raid composition there should be no real reason to change it. Blizzard has stated many times that you should be bringing the player not the class to a raid so in the vein of thinking you should be fine bringing your Warrior, 2 Paladin, 2 Druid, Priest, 2 Warlock, and Mage right?
Technically yes, though in my opinion the raids in Cata we’re very forgiving to us, and the Mists ones may not be as much, especially with the multitude of class changes.
Begging, Pleading, Bribing, Threatening
This is where a raid leaders job really begins, granted some people don’t have the opportunity to fine tune their raid, but if you have players that have alts and are willing to switch, doing prep work is ideal, that way you can ask them to level which ever character you feel that you’re going to need.
In general people do not like change. I’m not saying that we don’t look forward to new content or new expansions, couldn’t be further from that, but if there is something we like about our character and it gets changed. #EndofTheWorld
Heaven forbid you ask us to stray from the toon that we normally play.
Players can say that it isn’t fair to ask them to switch, but if it is for the greater good(One of us…) then they should be more than happy to do so, and if you give them notice BEFORE the expansion hits it’ll be a lot easier to convince them they need to level (insert alt here) before their old main.
Resources
To help raid leaders with the fun, yet daunting job of coming up with a 10/25 man group(s) here are some resources I like:
For the latest news on classes and the Beta:
For help with raid comp:
WoW-Sammler (MMO’s has not been updated.)
I hope that coming up with your groups is fun and easy, my GL and I have been using a spreadsheet to track who is coming back so we can see IF we need to recruit and what we need to recruit for. Have fun with this guys!
/Cheers
omg I still don’t even know what my main will be for Mists! Eluna is my first choice, but, *gasp* I may take her guardian to suit guild needs. Or I may be a Shaman (resto) or Pally (Holy/Prot). As much as I love playing Eluna as resto, I also want a successful raid hehe! (besides, I would break tradition if I didn’t change mains…so far I’ve went from Hunter to priest (faction reroll during BC), priest to pally (wrath), pally to druid (cata). I’m overdue for a change
Our group is going through changes, and I don’t like it! /foldarms But as GM and the “mom” of the group, I have to suck it up and keep things rolling along. It’s important to have a positive outlook
“Technically yes, though in my opinion the raids in Cata were very forgiving to us, and the Mists ones may not be as much, especially with the multitude of class changes.”
As I remember Heroic Spine required an overload of mages and rogues to even have a chance of defeating the encounter due to the mechanics of burning tendons pre nerfs and pre increased raid damage buff came out. Almost all guilds in top 50 used the tactic of stacking high burst damage classes in order to progress. And seeing logs with dps consisting mostly of mages and rogues were not uncommon. Clearly this was one of those cases where, actually, you’d bring the class and not the player despite what blizzard people were promoting.
Looking at beta hc bosses in mists i can see one potential boss that will require the same sort of attitude.
Blizzard has come up with increased raid damage buff just to allow everyone experience the content, it’s just a question about when you’d like to have that experience – at the start the tier content or after 30% dmg increase buff is out.
I agree with you, there were some instances in Heroics where taking the class over the player was better. I still really hope that Blizz does a better job with making most classes equal.