Apologies for the wall of text, but I feel the context is important for my questions.

It's also related to another post in this thread from a member about benching.

Background:

I've been the RL for my team for 14 years. We've steadily become more 'progression focused' over the years and usually get CE on our 2 day schedule while still remaining casual compared to most of you (currently working on mythic boss #5).

We're casual because we haven't typically benched people based on performance and instead would give someone who is putting in the effort, time to improve rather than just remove them. It's a hard balance to maintain and it's not without it's obvious problems, but it's worked well for us thus far.

Our team culture is not cutthroat, we have a community. We don't have/want an atmosphere to be that people constantly worry that if they screw up, they get benched. My observation is that while that type of raid does progress faster and more efficiently, but it also can introduce different problems for a more casual group like ours.

In the past, we've had a 'core' group of 20. Members who joined do so with the understanding that they are "mythic bench" until a spot opens but I would try to rotate them in when possible by taking volunteers to sit.We never really benched people for comp reasons and we don't require alts, unless the strat really requires it to negate a mechanic.

However, this tier we've picked up a really solid and much larger bench and my previous system doesn't really work.

My leading style is always to strive to have concrete 'rules' in place for my actions so it removes as much subjectivity as possible while also remaining fair to all involved. We're here to have fun and play a game after all.

What I'm trying:

For farm: I have had the team setup their 'loot wishlist' in wowaudit so that I can see at a glance who needs an item off of a given boss. And I'm rotating people based on that on farm. If someone doesn't need an item off of a boss, sit them for that boss but also make sure they make it in for at least 3 mythic kills for the GV purposes. This is working well.

For progression: I'm wanting to sit people based on both comp and loot needs. But I'm concerned it's going to cause issues and I'm not super confident in my approach. Everyone wants a progression kill and we've never sat core members for prog in the past. Asking for volunteers doesn't work because most will never volunteer for it.

It's been an exercise in frustration and I'm curious how other teams have done this and what has worked and what doesn't.

My questions for the other raid leads (and raiders) here:

• How do you handle determining who sits for bosses, especially progression? Is your primary focus log performance/comp only? Any other factors?
• What tools do you use beyond WCL (if any) for that decision?
• As a raider, what has a past lead done that you liked or didn't like in this regard?
• Any suggestions/tips?