Mechanics like this test the spacial awareness of your entire raid. The reason these are such strong factors to go by is that for other mechanics (fire and similar effects), is that if your person isn’t paying attention and doesn’t move out of the way, a healer can usually save them if they are going above and beyond their call of duty. When JoeWarlock decides to stand in the fire on Razorscale, FurryMcDruid can save him by diverting a good chunk of his attention away long enough for him to realize he’s burning alive, however in Mimiron if you don’t move for a Rocket Strike, you’re dead.

This is especially important in a 10 man raid environment. In a 25 man raid, if one player dies, that is a loss of 4% to your raid size. In 10 man its a 10% loss overall, but could be one third of your healer team or 50% of your tank team. Losses like this are hard to tolerate in a small raid and are the cause of a fair amount of wipes. For progression content its absolutely necessary to bring your first string raiders. In situations like this its better to bring your more competent raiders (with awareness and fight knowledge) than your uber DPS that can’t seem to stay alive.

Whether it’s a short-term absence or a new spot to fill, ten man groups struggle with roster problems much more than larger raid teams. One healer out can make or break a night, same with any person really. Keeping a tight roster with minimal sidelining is always preferred, as it keeps the maximum percentage of your guild in the raid and comfortable with each other. However things aren’t always perfect.

Overcoming the slow nights can be handled in a few ways. Keeping a surplus on your roster, dual speccing, or revisting content.

Keeping extra seats on your raid roster is going to give you the flexibilty to take people that are the best for the job, however keeping those people around is going to mean benching someone when the time comes that everyone shows up (frequently). Depending on your looting system, a “standby” reward is an excellent way to keep the people on the bench happy while they BG, farm, or whatever occupies them on these nights.

With 3.1 bringing dual spec’ing, it’s much easier to fill holes in your roster in the event that you’ve got a person out. This is going to ease the amount of “extras” you need to recruit. Instead of having to recruit an extra tank, two dps, and two healers, you can say that on any given night you might have two people out. With actual roster composition aside, this could mean that you need to keep 3 people on the bench, tank/dps, tank/heal, heal/dps for an ideal coverage.

The last “option” for overcoming roster shortages involves running old content. As with any farm content, it usually takes less heals and/or tanks to cover the instance and since these are the most common roles to have shortages taking a night off and mowing over some easy bosses can be a way to keep people active. This also provides you with time to get some alts and newer raiders into the action and get them some gear to catch up to your core raiding team.