There are only two differences between Core and Reserve raiders. The first is that Core Raiders have a preferred raid invite over Reserve Raiders. And secondly, Core raiders get precedence on “Priority” loot over Reserve raiders - more details regarding the specifics of that can be found on our DKP System info page.

If you joined us as a social member and are now interested in becoming a Reserve raider, your first step is to reach out to one of the Officers. There is no explicit “checklist” one can simply cross out to become a Reserve raider. Instead, your promotion is going to be based on a combination of the following criteria:

• Can you consistently make raid times (it’s OK to miss a raid here or there)
• Can you commit to being online and ready for raid on raid nights even if you know you might not get in?
• Do you have a good attitude?
• Do you put in effort?
• Do you know your rotation and play your class at a high level?
• Do you put in the time to farm your pre-raid BiS?
• Do you have enchants on your gear?
• Even though consumables aren’t required on our raids, do you bring them anyway?
• Have you been trying to PuG?
• Are you active?
• How long have you been with the guild?
• How many Reserve raiders of your class do we currently have?

While we don’t have a specific hard cap on the number of Reserve raiders we will maintain of any given class, we don’t wish to promote every player in our guild to Reserve. The title of “Reserve Raider” in our guild carries weight. Reserve Raiders are the first players invited if our Core 40 aren’t online, and our Loot System is designed such that Reserve raiders can still contend with Core raiders for Lottery loot. Ideally, we don’t want to designate more than 2-3 Reserve Raiders for any one class. If you demonstrate a majority of the desired traits above and your class doesn’t currently have 2 or more Reserve raiders, then we’d have no reason to not promote you to Reserve.

However, if you demonstrate a majority of the desired traits above and your class does have 2-3 Reserve raiders already, then the Officers will need to evaluate whether or not one of the current Reserve raiders should be demoted in favor of you, whether to carve out an exception and bring you in as Reserve anyway even though there are already 2-3 Reserve raiders for your class, or whether we simply can’t take any more of your class as Reserve at the present time. Either way, this case will require a decision from the Officers.

In a similar vein to the above explanation regarding Reserve raiders, there is no explicit “checklist” for being promoted from Reserve to Core. We call ourselves a semi-hardcore guild, which means that while we want to field a very strong raid to clear all content without issue, we’re still open to a raid comp that isn’t set in stone. Just know that it's by no means a rule that when a player of “Class A” leaves then a Reserve raider of “Class A” will be promoted in their place.

So given the above example what, then, will be the determining factors when deciding whether or not it's time for a Reserve Raider to be promoted to Core? Simply put: it will be a combination of all of the criteria listed in the section describing Reserve Raiders above, plus a little more time.

Yes. You can be brought in straight to Core as long as we’ve already been able to evaluate you on a majority of the same criteria outlined in the Reserve Raiders section above. Typically, this could happen if you’ve met some of our members either in Dungeons or in PvP who then tell us about how you’re super chill, super good, and are expressing an interest in joining. As long as we don’t have any reason to doubt this evaluation, we could go ahead and invite you directly into our Core roster.

Yes. This can occur for any number of reasons, but it will usually be a gradual process. It’s best illustrated with an example. Let’s say you are a Core raider for a given class and you aren’t really active in the guild outside of raid nights, you haven’t bothered getting that +9 Strength enchant to your bracers or the +4 Stats to chest, and you also don’t typically bother bringing consumables to our raids. Now, let’s say we have a promising Reserve raider of your same class/role waiting for their chance to join the raid team who is regularly active (helping out) in the guild outside of raid nights, who has farmed all of their pre-raid BiS (is raring to go), and who has also enchanted it fully. Let’s say I’m your class leader/officer. Seeing this objectively, it seems clear to me that this up-and-coming Reserve raider just wants to be a part of our raid team (and guild, for that matter) more than you do. They are on more, they are helping out the guild, and they are putting in the effort to maximize their performance for the benefit of the raid team.

At this point, I won’t straight up demote you from your Core position, but I will reach out to you either in-game or via Discord. I will make sure that you understand that the title of “Core Raider” in our guild carries certain expectations, and I will direct you to this webpage. I will make you aware that I am reaching out to you because I noticed that there is a player on our Reserve roster who appears to want to be on our raid team more than you do, and that additionally all of the other players of your class on our raid team exhibit similar enthusiasm/effort for raiding with us and being a part of our guild, but that your actions aren’t indicating that you share those same sentiments. I’d explain to you that, objectively, at the present time it seems unfair that this player should have to remain on the bench in favor of yourself on the Core team. I’d tell you that unless something changes with your own effort and/or activity, I can’t justify anything other than to demote you in favor of this Reserve raider. I would close by ensuring you that your spot on the Core team is sound as long as you make it clear to me that this other player doesn’t, in fact, deserve this spot more than you via your actions.

It’s important to note that in this example you (the Core Raider) didn’t get reached out to simply because you didn’t enchant +4 stats instead of +3, or that you didn’t bring consumables to raid, or that you only log in for raids. It was due to a combination of these things together with the fact that the other Core raiders of your class/role are all putting in full effort that caused me to identify you as a potential candidate for demotion. We’re not saying that “three or more violations”, specifically, is cause for concern, we’re more just trying to illustrate the point that it’s OK for our Core members to not have their gear fully enchanted if they still bring their baseline consumes on raid nights (which hardly cost anything), and it’s OK if our Core members have their gear fully enchanted and had been bringing consumables before but they simply stopped bringing them because they aren’t “needed” now that the content is on farm. It’s even OK (though not desired) if our Core members are typically busy on most nights outside of raid but show up to every single raid on-time and ready to go with full enchants and consumes. It’s only cause for concern for the Officers when a profile of several of these traits starts to form.

Legendary recipients are determined via Loot Council decisions by the Officer core. Even though the decision is left to the Officers, we can still share some of the criteria we use when deciding recipients. We consider first and foremost “guild benefit”, where we prioritize PvE benefit before PvP benefit. These types of decisions are clearer when it comes to Thunderfury and Sulfuras. However, with Atiesh, it will likely come down to more of the broad criteria outlined in the section describing Reserve Raiders above - and focused more on an overall involvement with the guild.

One important thing to note is that the guild bank will not be providing all materials necessary for crafting legendaries. Our general stance is that we will try to help where we can via the guild bank (such as Elementium, Cores, etc), but that the recipients of legendaries are expected to do the vast majority of the farming themselves.

Any of our members can request items from the Guild Bank at any time via our #guild-bank Discord channel. If they need enchanting materials for an item they just received, we’ll offer whatever materials we have for free. If they want to purchase a leftover BoE for an alt, or purchase some of our raid materials, we’ll sell them at a 50% discount.

We strive for as much transparency as possible, and so we’ve written a custom AddOn for reporting the inventory, and developed a web page for displaying it. To see the contents of the Guild Bank, simply visit our Guild Bank page. The Guild Bank page typically gets updated once a week.

No, with a few exceptions. We always want our players to perform, but as long as all content is on easy farm we are never going to require our raiders to come with full consumables. With that said, there will be specific nights (identified well in advance) where we will require full consumables (including flasks and world buffs) from our raiders. Some examples would be nights where we are coordinating a “speed run”, or during the first week of new raid content (such as BWL, AQ40, or Naxx opening week). Do note, however, that “effort” is one of the criteria we consider when handling Reserve to Core promotions, and consumable preparedness is one way we can identify that a player is putting in considerable effort.

Our Officer core is extremely approachable. If you ever have any questions or concerns regarding any of the policies listed here (or policies not listed here) please don’t hesitate to reach out to any of us. Every opinion is valid, and even if we don’t end up changing our policy as a result of your concern we will at least thoroughly explain to you our thinking behind our decision.