Personally, I’m not up high enough to be doing Karazhan, but the Guild Relations Forum on the official World of Warcraft forums has some great discussions about it periodically and I thought to share.

Healing Beyond 5-man Dungeons

These days, as level 70s working together with their guildmates to progress through tough content such as Karazhan, Gruul’s Lair and beyond, there’s a lot of learning that every class needs to do in order to perform well enough to allow the whole team to succeed.

As healers in The Burning Crusade expansion, one of the biggest challenges is in learning how to work in conjunction with other healers in the raid so effective and efficient healing tactics are used, resulting in less overhealing and less wipes that come from two healers healing the same member while another one dies.

The Burning Crusade’s Sizable Challenge

One of the biggest challenges that a lot of guilds are facing with regards to healers learning to work together is the simple fact that a lot of the level 70s that are raiding the “End Game” content right now weren’t around for the “old End Game” and it is acknowledged by many that the challenge jump from Heroic 5-man content to Karazhan is way bigger than the jump from, say, Blackrock Depths (BRD) to a 10-man Lower Blackrock Spire (LBRS) run was back before the expansion came out.

Sure, in the old days there were 20 and 40-man raid dungeons such as Zul’Gurub and Molten Core and Naxxaramus, but it’s widely agreed that the challenge progression and learning curve of the pre-expansion End Game was more friendly to the process of gearing and training up inexperienced recruits.

Healing Strategies and Styles Change Between 5 and 10 man

A secondary challenge that exists for healers new to the raiding game is that the strategies used when one is the only dedicated healer in the party are quite different from those used when there’s two healers dedicated to the party.

For some great advice from folks with actual experience, check out this discussion thread on the Official World of Warcraft forums:

Raid Member Holding Back Raid

A common question that is asked on the Guild Relations forum on the World of Warcraft official forums site is about the topic of Absent Guildmasters and how to get Guildmaster control in order to facilitate the continuation of the guild without having to disband and reform.

After One Month Of Inactivity, Petition a Game Master

Taking over a guild and being the one selected as new Guildmaster requires a few things:

1) One month or more of inactivity by the Guildmaster
2) Yourself to be one of the highest ranking members within the guild as it stands (by Rank not popularity)
3) A petition to Game Masters

The petition can be as simple as “The Guildmaster for XYZ guild has been absent for over 30 days and we wish to have one of our active members promoted to Guildmaster so we may continue building our guild”.

There is no need to go into a big long story in your petition, for the reason described in the next section…

No Guarantees

Unfortunately, because there’s no way to allow a guild membership to “vote” on a new leader, the one who submits the petition may not be the one promoted to Guildmaster.

An active player will be promoted, and from there you’ll need to go through the regular procedures for changing the Guildmaster if the “wrong” person gets the reigns.

Don’t Ninja The Guild

As a final comment about this process, I’d like to remind folks that while you may be promoted to the Guildmaster rank due to your Guildmaster’s absence, if it is done without the knowledge and consent of the rest of the guild, you will likely face backlash from the membership.

Be smart - if the Guildmaster is away for a length of time that slows forward motion of your guild, you may wish to /gquit and find or start a new guild with some of your current guildmates. If, however, you are the new “de facto leader” and most of the membership turns to you as they did the Guildmaster, you may wish to bring up the topic of having the GM reigns handed over to you to see what the response is.

At any rate, it’s possible to keep a guild going after the GM disappears, and since the Guildmaster does have different functions for maintaining the guild than even the highest level and highest permission Officer does, it’s important to have an active GM

Good luck!