Take your raid game to the next level with Over Raided.

[Carpone]

Over Raided is the premiere raiding guild of Orien and we're looking for two people who are passionate about raiding. Over Raided is raid-focused, drama-free and close-knit (only 15 active accounts). Many of us have been playing together for more than a year and have been responsible for most of the notable "firsts" on the server.

Ask yourself these four questions:

1. Do you value your time? We start raids at 9pm eastern every night and end by 11:30pm at the latest. We've all got jobs. We've all got at least one character in the middle of a TR, or epics we're farming every day for elusive loot. So we're efficient with the time we allocate to raiding. You won't find 50-minute VoN5 completions here. You won't stand around for an hour waiting for a raid to start. You won't stand around for 35 minutes determining who gets loot. We've done 13-minute completions of Tower of Despair. We've done 3-minute completions of epic Zawabi's Revenge.

2. Are you looking for a challenge? It's typical for us to run eight characters for epic raids. We don't invite pugs to fill up the group. With our current rotation, we typically run ToD (frequently elite with Suulomades), elite Abbot, epic VoN and epic DQ twice every three days. Occasionally we mix it up with other raids.

3. Are you tired of dead weight in your raids? Every single character we bring to raids contributes to their fullest. We don't carry anyone through a raid. We would rather raid with one less person than to bring an unfit character. Our typical raid composition is 1 arcane, 2 divine and the rest melee. You won't find DEX monks/rogues, bow-focused or 200 HP characters in our raids. You will find melee focused on high DPS.

4. Are you tired of the "loot what you pull" mentality? We loot council raid items. The officers are extremely transparent about who should get what item, and for what reason. Discussion always includes feedback solicited from members, and takes many factors into account including # of raids completed, # of TRs completed, how many non-tradeable parts you already have to complete an epic item, and applicability to your current build. You won't find us giving Tharne's Goggles to favored soul evokers over melee, Bracers of the Glacier to monks over casters, or Torc of Rayium-de II to bards over arcanes (all of which we've witnessed in pug raids on Orien). You will see us award +4 CON tomes to tanks over non-tanks and +4 DEX tomes to TWF melee over other archetypes. You will see us pool all our FRDS and epic scrolls, and award them to the people who need them to complete epic items.

The three fundamental things we're looking for from interested players:

1. You always have at least two level-20 raid-caliber characters available to raid. We're more interested in the viability of a build for raids and epic quests than gear. However, your current gear should demonstrate to us that you know how to gear a character with what's available to you.

Everyone: You should be able to cast Raise Dead at least once. Tier-2 Shroud items are very cheap to make.

Melee: You must have DR-breaking weapons. If you have evasion, you must have high enough to-hit and close to 35 reflex save to solo melee epic VON6 fire base. You have enough HP and healing amp not to die in elite Shroud part 4+5.

Tanks: You must have enough Incite and HP to get the job done, and enough Healing Amplification to avoid needlessly draining healer manapools. Our top-geared melee DPS have 20% Incite from the epic Claw set. You need enough Incite to match that and overcome the DPS gap between them and you. 45% Incite is trivial to acquire from Dragontouched and Brute Fighting now works while raged. We frown upon sword and board tanks. More DPS is always the right answer.

Sorcerers/Wizards/Favored Souls/Clerics: You should have enough cold absorb to kite shadows in elite ToD part2.

Sorcerers/Wizards: You should have enough spell pen and high enough DC to solo Orthons in elite ToD part3.

2. You play almost every day. We reap the rewards from having a small guild, so everyone has to be extremely active. Also, most of us have been playing together for a year (or more). You need to be around enough to get to know us, both in and out of raids.

3. You don't induce drama. Over Raided is a drama free zone. Regardless of our respective ages, we're all adults. We're here to have fun.

If you read this and thought "this is the guild I've been looking for", then send me a PM with DDO links to your characters to get started.

[Keybreaker]

All this stuff still applies, including the link to our guild page.

http://my.ddo.com/guild-orien-over_raided/

Over Raided is the premiere endgame guild of the Orien server. Most of the Orien's firsts were accomplished by our members, including the first normal, elite, and epic completions of almost all of the raids. We continue to seek and conquer new group and solo challenges.

RECRUITMENT

We are a very small guild (about 18 members) each trying to extract maximum value from DDO. Most players only see a small fraction of the game and its challenges. We want to see everything and do everything in this game and push the envelope. If you're happy paying more for less, we are not the guild for you. If you revel in mediocrity, we are not the guild for you. If you need a handout or your hand held, we are not the guild for you.

But, if you want to be the best and play with the best, we are the only guild for you.

MINIMUM APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS

You must have at least two capped toons that are:
(1) Flagged for Abbot, DQ, Reavers, Shroud, ToD, and VoN.
(2) Competent enough to excel in Epic Quests and Raids.

If you are an experienced player and/or a fast learner that exceeds the application requirements, then contact Carpone by PM on the forums or Ying by in-game mail. Carpone/Ying is our ONLY recruitment officer.

Questions about our guild and how to join it are welcome. Please do not derail this thread with your personal issues. If you have an editorial comment about our guild, you are welcome to start your own thread about us somewhere else. Thank you for keeping this thread drama free.

[Vanshilar]

I was actually originally going to post about this as its own thread but this is as good a place as any to put it, to talk about OR a bit and shed some light on how the guild works. I'm sure different members will have different takes but this is my take on the guild.

1. Do you value your time? We start raids at 9pm eastern every night and end by 11:30pm at the latest. We've all got jobs. We've all got at least one character in the middle of a TR, or epics we're farming every day for elusive loot. So we're efficient with the time we allocate to raiding. You won't find 50-minute VoN5 completions here. You won't stand around for an hour waiting for a raid to start. You won't stand around for 35 minutes determining who gets loot. We've done 13-minute completions of Tower of Despair. We've done 3-minute completions of epic Zawabi's Revenge.

Most of the people in the guild are college-age or older. As such, most members have a limited amount of time to play, and want to maximize the rewards received during that time. It's largely a US-based guild, so "prime-time" when the most people are online are in the evenings US time. Thus although things are pretty free-form during the day and after raid time (you can work on whatever you want), guildies are expected to come together and raid at night.

It's largely about efficiency; spending the least amount of time to get through the most raids. Note that this does not necessarily mean speedruns, which usually take up a lot of resources before and after the raid in order to minimize the time spent inside the raid. For example, speedrun Shrouds tend to mean that everyone waits outside the door until the last person shows up, so that everyone goes in together to minimize waiting time inside the raid, and skipping the chests until after the altar is clicked in part 5, and then going back for the chests. The total time spent on the raid, i.e. time spent waiting around for the last person to buff and show up, time spent inside the raid, and then time to go through and loot the chests, is likely more than if it were a normal run. In OR runs, if you're among the last ones to join the party, there's a fair chance that the raid has already started and you should skip ship buffs etc. and just get inside before the door closes. Waiting five minutes for the last person to show up effectively means that that person has wasted 55 minutes of everyone else's time for a full raid group.

Similarly, although not everyone knows each raid inside and out, the main time for learning raids is outside of raiding time, with the raids themselves to practice what you should already know. If someone doesn't know the raid, there's little need for 11 other people to teach him; one is sufficient, and there's even less need for the rest of the group to be waiting around while he gets caught up on how the raid works. So during raiding time, although there will usually be reminders for things like ToD boots, the majority of the prep time is spent on assigning roles and tasks, not on the fundamental mechanics of the raid. With everyone on limited time schedules, the priority is on getting through the raids quickly. Raid groups that prioritize teaching raids are perfectly fine but have implicitly made the decision that the time of people who already know the raid are okay to waste compared with the time of people who don't yet know the raid. In OR time spent learning the raid is minimized during the critical peak hours so that everyone can get in, get out as quickly as possible.

2. Are you looking for a challenge? It's typical for us to run eight characters for epic raids. We don't invite pugs to fill up the group. With our current rotation, we typically run ToD (frequently elite with Suulomades), elite Abbot, epic VoN and epic DQ twice every three days. Occasionally we mix it up with other raids.

As mentioned above, we look to get everyone through raids as quickly as possible. While we'll PUG quite often outside of peak raiding times, we want to minimize the chance of "that PUG" that keeps killing the mini-bosses in Shroud part 2 or decides that the best way to farm for Chrono scrolls is to run all over the marketplace and bring all the mobs back to the group on red alert. So the non-guildies that are taken on the main raids are people that run with OR often, that guildies are familiar enough with and can trust won't do those things.

3. Are you tired of dead weight in your raids? Every single character we bring to raids contributes to their fullest. We don't carry anyone through a raid. We would rather raid with one less person than to bring an unfit character. Our typical raid composition is 1 arcane, 2 divine and the rest melee.

OR is raid-focused. While soloing builds have their place, they tend to be specialized for soloing, and usually are poor contributors to a raid. We want to make sure that everyone who raids will contribute well. This doesn't mean that OR only has raid builds; far from it, what this means is that soloing builds that OR members make can also contribute to raids. Saying "well this melee is made for soloing so having low DPS is fine" is not an acceptable excuse. Each member is expected to carry their weight rather than rely on others to pull them through.

You won't find DEX monks/rogues, bow-focused or 200 HP characters in our raids. You will find melee focused on high DPS.

FIFY.

4. Are you tired of the "loot what you pull" mentality? We loot council raid items.

In OR loot councils, the most significant question to answer is "on which character will this item benefit future raids the most?" In other words, where should the item go that will do the most to ensure success in future raids. Unlike many guilds, this quite often means that the items do not end up on the guild leader's or officers' characters; not only do officers make a vow of poverty upon receiving officership (it used to be that they must also make a vow of chastity until the case of Hiromo was brought up) and recuse themselves from loot councils where their character is a potential recipient, but officers and raid leaders tend to be coordinating actions as each raid develops, and oftentimes it's best for the loot to be going on those characters that are actually carrying out raid-critical roles, rather than to raid leaders that are too busy looking at how the raid is progressing to worry about keeping their target healed when killing the bases in epic VoN runs.

So bound loot in OR tends to be highly decentralized; the mentality is that it is best if everyone has some loot rather than for all the loot to the concentrated on several (usually, guild leader/officer) characters. However, non-bound loot tends to be highly centralized; each character having 5-15 red dragon scales does no good so all the scales are pooled and then given out each time there's 20 of them. Similarly, shavarath war trophies, though bound, are passed to those that need it most, usually whoever is crafting next, although nowadays most guildies have enough so it doesn't matter as much anymore.

You won't find us giving Tharne's Goggles to favored soul evokers over melee, Bracers of the Glacier to monks over casters, or Torc of Rayium-de II to bards over arcanes (all of which we've witnessed in pug raids on Orien). You will see us award +4 CON tomes to tanks over non-tanks and +4 DEX tomes to TWF melee over other archetypes. You will see us pool all our FRDS and epic scrolls, and award them to the people who need them to complete epic items.

To continue on this point, it doesn't mean that favored souls don't benefit from Tharne's Goggles. Rather, it's on which character will the Tharne's Goggles benefit future raids the most, and for this particular item, it's hard to argue that any other use will have a greater benefit to the raid than the amount of extra sneak attack DPS it will provide.

Note that all this about loot councils above has not specified guildie or non-guildie. With few exceptions, there's no particular priority of guildies over non-guildies, so non-guildies generally have equal chance at loot. Case in point, back before I joined OR, as a PUG in an OR ToD run, the encrusted ring dropped. The ring benefits barbarians the most (I don't get why barbarians would go for the ravager ring over the encrusted ring when you consider the all-around benefits) so barbarians get priority on it, and the two barbarians in the group were mine and the guild leader's (Sparticus). So it was one of the few loot councils that probably did take 35 minutes, with Sparticus emphasizing that I would benefit more from it proportionally since I didn't have much raid gear while he already had some, while I was saying I don't raid all that much and Sparticus is going to be using it a lot more in raids especially on harder content where every little bit helps. Eventually Bril (I think) just said "oh come on guys you guys have made a sufficient case for the other one getting the ring, just roll on it" as the loot council decision and I ended up winning the roll.

The three fundamental things we're looking for from interested players:

1. You always have at least two level-20 raid-caliber characters available to raid. We're more interested in the viability of a build for raids and epic quests than gear. However, your current gear should demonstrate to us that you know how to gear a character with what's available to you.

Obviously we know that until you have an opportunity to do heavy raiding, you won't be decked out yet. But the choices you make in laying out your build and what gear you've gotten will give us indications about how well you'll be able to fit in and understand how raiding works. Saying your 6-con elf cleric is spec'ced for Horoth tanking? Probably not going to fly.

Everyone: You should be able to cast Raise Dead at least once. Tier-2 Shroud items are very cheap to make.

Whenever the lag monster hits, who it chooses to take down is more or less random, as far as we can tell. Therefore, the more people that can raise dead at any given time, the higher chance of a raid pulling through despite lag.

Melee: You must have DR-breaking weapons. If you have evasion, you must have high enough to-hit and close to 35 reflex save to solo melee epic VON6 fire base. You have enough HP and healing amp not to die in elite Shroud part 4+5.

With the relative ease of getting DR-breaking weapons nowadays, not bothering to get them for the significant DPS increase is a sign that you don't bother to put in the effort to maximize your contribution to raids and expect others to do the heavy lifting. The rest are along a similar vein.

Tanks: You must have enough Incite and HP to get the job done, and enough Healing Amplification to avoid needlessly draining healer manapools. Our top-geared melee DPS have 20% Incite from the epic Claw set. You need enough Incite to match that and overcome the DPS gap between them and you. 45% Incite is trivial to acquire from Dragontouched and Brute Fighting now works while raged. We frown upon sword and board tanks. More DPS is always the right answer.

Again, if you have a tank you should be expected to fit with the group rather than expecting them to fit around you. This means an emphasis on DPS + threat, and healing amp + hp. Barbarians are a natural fit for this (and they also have DR which serves to help healing amp), which is why OR has so many barbarians. If you are the tank, you should be able to maintain aggro even when the rest of the party is doing all-out DPS.

Sorcerers/Wizards/Favored Souls/Clerics: You should have enough cold absorb to kite shadows in elite ToD part2.

Sorcerers/Wizards: You should have enough spell pen and high enough DC to solo Orthons in elite ToD part3.

We will often expect the arcane to solo his role. This means being adequately prepared for being the only person performing a raid-critical task. If you aren't up to this, you should do what I do and stick with melees. Whoops, I probably wasn't supposed to say that.

2. You play almost every day. We reap the rewards from having a small guild, so everyone has to be extremely active. Also, most of us have been playing together for a year (or more). You need to be around enough to get to know us, both in and out of raids.

Although guildies will occasionally be busy with real-life issues and that's fine, it is expected that you make yourself available for most of the raids. The way the renown system penalizes small guilds over large guilds for activeness means that it is important that everyone is contributing. Popping in just to say hi every so often may be acceptable in large guilds where you don't influence the rest of guild's gain, but is unacceptable in a small guild where doing so is actively detrimental to everyone else's efforts. Although we don't expect you to make it a full-time job, we do expect people to show up often to raid.

3. You don't induce drama. Over Raided is a drama free zone. Regardless of our respective ages, we're all adults. We're here to have fun.

This is probably the most important. We're not looking for prima donna types, who think the guild is all about them or that the guild should work around them. Regardless of your personal differences or moods or illegal states of mind, you're expected to do your part in raids and leave that stuff behind.

If you read this and thought "this is the guild I've been looking for", then send me a PM with DDO links to your characters to get started.

Although the above are requirements, you should also consider whether the guild's character is a good fit for you. OR I think is fundamentally an exploratory guild, that is, the members are interested in figuring things out and looking into things. The primary activity in an abstract sense is knowledge generation, in coming up with new strategies, figuring out each quest or game mechanic deeply, etc., as opposed to knowledge distribution, in just hearing through the grapevine what other guilds have been doing and trying to replicate them. OR does not shy away from making heavy investments to gain that knowledge; if I remember right, the predecessor guild (Epic) spent in the neighborhood of a million plat's worth of mana pots last year to be the first to complete epics on the server, back when a million plat actually meant something (the server was around half a year old at that point). Much of the knowledge gained in those initial runs eventually percolated through the server as they were taught to OR's friends and then spread out. Although some guilds are proud of the knowledge they freely share because to them it was freely gotten, as if burning a DVD were just as notable as producing the content on it, most of OR's strategies are developed and tested in-house, and bearing the costs associated with generating that knowledge. I think this is something that tends to set OR apart from other guilds, the amount of curiosity about the game from its members. Obviously I specialize in the game mechanics; but others will go through and look for every little subtlety of quests, or how different classes interact in coming up with builds, and so forth.

Part of the reason why OR sets most of the notable "firsts" is due to the factors that I gave above, that the loot goes toward those who benefits future raids the most as opposed to being centralized on a few people (and thus the guild as a whole will be well-equipped more quickly), that members are expected to carry their weight, and the willingness to explore and experiment with many different ideas (and thus coming up with many new solutions to complete raids and epics). Beyond the requirements, if you think this fits well with your personality and style of play, then you should talk to Carpone, as mentioned above.

[Carpone]

Lots of interest but we're still looking.

I can't stress enough that applicants must be able to raid during 9-11pm ET, and must have at least two level 20 raid-ready characters. Everything else we can be flexible on or teach you.

[ChadB123]

Forgot about this thread until I was reminded (thanks Faulken). We have quite a few applicants atm, but I like a wide variety . If you interested PM me or contact epicsoul in game!