I figure I'd make this channel to discuss recruitment in general, in terms of talking about what we need, what we want to be recrutiing etc and our roster in general. Gives it a place to be that's not flooded with the rest of members chat, but also doesn't take over an application thread (I do think bringing recruitment needs up in those threads is fine, but it tends to clutter if discussed too intently there)

It's also going to be a good place for me to dump a bunch of info right now so that we can all discuss it. Try to keep civil :)

To the topic of overrecruiting. Or under-recruiting. Or recruitment in general. Let's talk numbers. I like 25. I actually quite like 24, since during progression our attendance is usually very good and I'm not a fan of bringing people in just to have to standby people 25% of the time. In doing so however, you do run the risk of people leaving, and not wanting to just rush recruitment, then having several people away in a night. It's happened before, it happened tonight and it's going to happen again. I don't want to recruit a bunch at the end of the tier just because people get lax with their desire to show up and farm instead of progress. It also happens that people do have things that come up that keep them away for extended periods, like Summo right now and like Q was at the start of the tier.

I bring that up to piggyback a bit off of Vordies comment in the other channel. I do not disagree that the priest should be taken, but I don't think we are under-recruiting. We were 24, at which point I am not interested in taking another unless it's worth our while, as I don't want to hit 25, get a great guy apply and end up at 26 and needing to SB a lot. When one leaves at this point in the tier, as Tack did recently, I also don't think we should rush into things with so long until the next tier.

To break down what I would have as an ideal roster VS our current:
2/2 Tanks
4/5 Healers
7/7 Melee (3 trial)
10/11 Range
I do believe melee/range balance can fluctuate to 8 and 10, but we've seen fights in the past that punish too many so it would be my preference.

Trials are an interesting topic. I feel we need to address the "No trial on farm". It works well when there's 4 weeks left of farm. It works less well when there's three months left of farm. I do still agree with the reasoning that it was put in place, the guild see's someone with less experience in the environment performing against others and you don't get to see much of how they perform when learning new bosses. Opinions still form though, and they're hard to break, but we certainly can't look at a trial and say "Welcome to Phoenix, see you in three months" so there's not really a way around that.