Logs looking great

If you have not glanced at the logs, take a look! A quick glance tells a story of success and job well done that night. People did a lot better and cleared content a lot quicker than they usually do. Also looks like most of the raid comp was "in house" (extended in house as far as composed by 'regulars'.)

All around good news.

Post-Xfer Update

A quick update to confirm that, due to popular request, we executed the guild transfer on the 25th, ahead of schedule. By the 26th, there were on average 14 members online in the new guild. It is far too early to call it a success already, however the sheer depth of the recruiting pool is already leading us well down the path towards successfully accomplishing the objectives for creating a bridge-linked pair of "sister guilds".

Meanwhile, here at home on Alleria, we have been spreading the word to the members that were not online to hear the messaging and the calming news that all is well and that this is an expansion of our guild, not a replacement.

More to follow as it develops. Expect raiding schedules to stay same and all toons on Alleria should show up for raids as usual.

Upcoming Guild (server) Transfer to Stormrage-US

What

We will be conducting a guild transfer about the May 2nd weekend to another server. 

Why

Simply put, there are not enough players on the Alleria-Connected realm to create a large enough pool from which to recruit from. There are only 3408 players on Alleria-Connected compared to over 21,100 players on Stormrage. Without recruiting, our raid group remains dependent on pugs without a plan to grow out of that situation, and over several years, attrition will impact very negatively our ability to raid at all.

When

On or about the May 2nd weekend. Exact date TBD after discussions this weekend with guildies.

Where

Guild transfer to Stormrage-US.

Who

Anyone who wishes to help us create a footprint on Stormrage.

How

1. Beartooth will purchase from Guild Services a Guild Transfer and a Guild Rename, and will Guild Transfer to Stormrage.
2. In the process of the guild transfer, Beartooth will re-assign the <R O N I N -Alleria> guild leader rank to one of his toons remaining on Alleria (almost all are remaining active on Alleria). Also, a new name will be chosen as there is a "Ronin" on Stormrage and it would be confusing to be named "R o n i n” (we will consider all suggestions received prior to renaming).
3. AFTER the guild has been transferred to Stormrage, any players wishing to move a character to Stormrage will purchase a Character Transfer for that character to Stormrage and the character will automatically arrive in Stormrage in the guild on Stormrage.
4. All characters that raid from Alleria that did not server transfer will continue to raid except as cross-realm to the characters on Stormrage.

Detailed Version:

First, let's reaffirm that we are not closing the guild nor shutting down Alleria operations; in fact, Beartooth is keeping almost all characters on Alleria that are presently there - so is everyone else. We have been on Alleria for nine years and you can rest assured we are not going away. Nor will our guild on Alleria be a ghost town. Expect to see us logging in to the same characters as usual - just that we may have to switch realms to log into them all!

Next, let's cover why we are doing this. For a healthy raid group at risk, it is necessary to have at least enough raiders to fill the required roles to the appropriate counts (e.g. two tanks). Otherwise the group has to wait extended periods beyond raid start time to fill empty spots with unknown pugs and may even cancel raiding that night. Obviously, that cannot be management's plan. Why is that a 'healthy raid group at risk'? Because on any given night, one raider missing puts start time, performance, and even canceling at risk.

To have a truly healthy raid group, it is necessary to have a roster filled beyond at least enough to fill the required roles to the appropriate counts. As an example, if we need at least 2 tanks, 4 healers, and 9 dps, then we should aim to maintain at least 2 additional dps as replacement healers and at least 2 additional dps as replacement tanks. This would actually result in a raid composition of 2 tanks, 5 healers, and 12 dps as a minimum state in order to have the resilience and reserves to be self sufficient without pugs to backfill absences or to offset short-notice attrition.

If we are willing to take a middle ground risk tolerance, we stick with the 2-4-9 comp and should one or more dps have to fill a replacement role on a given night, we backfill their dps role with a pug. Certainly initially, we will be employing this middle ground risk approach to our raid comp. 

Presently, we do not have 2 dps that are ready to act as replacement tanks, nor do we have 2 dps that are ready to act as replacement healers. Nor do we have 2 tanks, nor 4 healers.

In effect, we are woefully behind in recruiting - and we are on a server with a tiny player population. So tiny, even the top guilds struggle to recruit despite their progression. Our progression lagged quickly this xpac making us less desirable to potential recruits.

What we have in our favor is our culture - how players really enjoy running with us and constantly ask to be added as friends to fill in when we have empty spots. The problem is they are not available reliably, nor all of our nights, nor count as guild progression to attract recruits to resolve the lack of raiders in guild.

So we need to recruit and we are on a server that is challenged in the recruiting pool size. However, the Stormrage server has almost 7x as many players as Alleria-Connected. Many of the characters that pug in to our raids are from Stormrage.

We are doing this to add depth to our guild ranks in the raiding persuasion.

Finally, let's talk about what life will be like under this new approach. At first, it will seem odd. We make no bones about it - it will not be like everyone is on the same server -- from a simple detail like not being able to pass a flask cross server, or guild chat not being shared.

However, raids will be filled with people we know and enjoy raiding with. Mumble stays the same, website same, people you know and raid with the same. People will flip servers as they log into alts and mains.

Instead of guild chat being the 'central hub of communication' (which it isn't anyways), Mumble becomes the central hub for communication and socializing. This is also an excellent way for us to stay in touch while we are playing something other than wow. Also, did you know they have phone apps for mumble?

Instead of server whispers, battle tag messages.

The guild level on Alleria gets reset to level one and again levels up as all the toons on Alleria play going forward.

Unless the largest contingent of raiders in the raid group are from the Alleria guild, the raid achievements will likely rack up on the Stormrage guild side. Guild raid achievement mounts being account bound means the Alleria alts will not miss out. If this is important to you, have a main on Stormrage.

Ultimately, this is change and we all should expect by now that no one can fully accurately predict what the new current state will look like until we try it and shape it to suit our needs.

Whether you transfer a character to Stormrage, or level a new character on Stormrage, join us and support this new chapter in our guild's life.

temp focus on N BRF

We have a large influx of newcomers to the group; not all of them are as aware of our strats as we have grown used to. More so on the newer content. Rather than push H BRF performance pressures, let's ease back to N BRF for the next week or two and get everyone on the same page and comfort level. It also buys us the time to focus on gel'ing as a group.

That being said, despite the easier pain from N compared to H, stick to mains and no slacking! If anything, it gives us a chance to push some of the end encounters if we are efficient in clearing to them.

For the initial (this week), all members should be up to speed on all LoS Gaming (YouTube) strats for all bosses except the end encounters in each wing.

All,

By now you will have noticed some changes on the guild calendar that are the result of trying out the waters of raiding with another group blended into ours, a future shift on the specific weekday that we perform the weekday raid, and the focus instance.

Roll with it and lets see what sticks and works.

In an effort to reduce the amount of time we search for specific missing roles on any given night, we are expanding the pool of raiders by blending in another guild. We have several raiders that know them relatively well and feel that they could be a decent mix. There will be an adjustment period, of course. Time will tell if it works and in the meantime, lets all give it the best chance to succeed. Please make them feel as welcome as we can while maintaining a reasonable pace forward.

We have experienced that Tuesday is hard on timely raid starts due to patch days, addon updates, auth server bottle-necks, and all other things related to races to server and world firsts that often complicate Tuesdays. Additionally, we have experienced that better skilled players on their alts are more available later in the week than they are on the first couple of days of the week when they are trying to capitalize on Tuesdays to achieve those server and world firsts. All of which lends positive reinforcement to switch off of Tuesdays as the weekday raid day. We are presently considering Thursdays in lieu of Tuesdays - it appears to be a good fit (mostly) with (most of) the people we have confirmed with. This is not in cement, however is worth a try.

We have completely dropped HM off the raid calendar and will only schedule H Imp for those that are seeking the achieve. In it's place, you will find that all the progression raids on the calendar are for N BRF and H BRF.

We recommend the 2-minute LoS Gaming YouTube guides.
Do stop by the logs from time to time to check in on your own performance or to offer one of your raid colleagues some assistance.

Cheers,

-the officers.

Shifting Focus to BRF

It's time to shift focus from H HM to BRF. This will be the last week that the guild 'officially' schedules N HM or H HM. H Imp will continue on the weekly schedule (see calendar in game fyi) by weekly raid lockout extension - until he is down.

Over the course of the next 4 weeks, N BRF is the mainstay focus followed by H BRF becoming the main focus thereafter. Logically, H Imp will be replaced by N Blackhand, and eventually H Blackhand as the 'filler'.

If we are going to give Mythic a shot in 2015, it will occur during the Summer. Concurrent to that, Summer will also be when we go back and clean up all the raid achvs from MoP, Cata, etc.

Thanks!
- Officers

Improvements have Happened

Cool. Looking at the data, it is clear that improvements have happened. The new slipstream capability is definitely a plus. We are clearing more, and more quickly.

The downsides include waiting time while we find healers available that night, and several 'mainstay' raiders who are first and foremost great friends of ours not in the group.

Please check in with those great friends and see if they have gathered some more gear, worked on their rotation, etc -- let's get them back into the raid scene with us as soon as we can.

We need healers: start recruiting! Like yesterday.

It isn't that we cannot find some amazing healers in the slipstream, it is that we do not want to continue having such a large amount of downtime looking for one in mid-raid.