how-to-recruit-for-40-man-raids

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title: How to Recruit for 40-Man Raids description: Roster maths, where the good players actually are, and how to run recruitment like a pipeline instead of a panic. date: 2026-09-08 readingTime: 8 min

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Forty people. Three nights a week. Every week. A 40-man roster is a small organisation, and recruiting for it is closer to hiring than to shouting in a capital city. Guilds that treat it that way keep their rosters. Guilds that do not spend every Tuesday at 19:55 whispering strangers.

Do the roster maths first

You do not need forty raiders. You need enough raiders that forty show up. With realistic attendance that means a roster of roughly 48 to 52 for a three-night guild, and closer to 55 for a two-night guild where each night matters more.

Break that down by role before you post a single advert. A typical 40-man composition needs:

• 4 tanks, with at least one who can main-tank without supervision
• 10 healers, ideally mixed across classes for buffs and coverage
• 12 melee DPS
• 14 ranged DPS

Now count who you actually have and, crucially, how reliably they attend. A healer who makes one night in three counts as a third of a healer. The roster health panel on your guild dashboard does this for you, but the principle matters more than the tool: recruit for the gaps in reliable attendance, not for the gaps in the member list.

Write needs, not wishes

"Recruiting all classes" attracts nobody in particular. "Critical: Holy Priest, need two. High: Protection Warrior, need one, prior 40-man tanking required" attracts exactly the people you need, and it tells everyone else not to waste their time or yours.

Set a priority for each open position and be honest about it. Players on Guilds Forever see your needs directly in their match score; a critical need for their class is one of the strongest signals in the engine. Reconfirm your needs at least every two weeks. Stale needs stop being shown as urgent, and a guild that has not touched its listing in a month looks dead even when it is not.

Recruit from where the good players are

The best candidates are rarely spamming trade chat. They are:

• Already in a guild that is failing. Watch the Tavern for merger posts and "our guild disbanded" threads. A group of four friends who raid together is worth more than four strangers.
• On the player board with a completed profile. Sort by match to your guild. Anyone above 85% with an active status is worth a message today.
• Referred by your own raiders. Ask, every tier, "who do you know who is looking?" Then follow up yourself rather than hoping the raider does.

Set a rule for officers: every recruiter contacts three high-match candidates a week, personally, with a message that mentions something specific from the candidate's profile. Templates get ignored.

Run a pipeline

Recruitment without a pipeline looks like this: someone applies, an officer means to reply, the applicant joins another guild on Thursday. The fix is boring and it works.

1. New applications are acknowledged within 48 hours. Assign a recruiter to each one; unassigned applications rot.
2. Review means someone has actually read the answers and left a note for the other officers.
3. Interview is a fifteen-minute voice chat. Ask about schedule, about why they left their last guild, and about what they would do if they were benched. Listen more than you talk.
4. Trial is three raids, no more. Give feedback after each one. Tell them exactly what you are watching for.
5. Accept or decline with a reason. A polite, specific decline costs you nothing and builds a reputation that brings later applicants.

Every one of these steps has a place on your guild dashboard. Use the notes; the officer who was not at the interview needs to know what was said.

Sell the boring things

Players choose guilds for reasons that never make it into the description: whether raids start on time, whether the loot system is explained before the first drop, whether officers argue in raid chat. Put those things in your listing.

"We pull at 20:00, not 20:20." "Loot council decisions are posted with reasons after every raid." "We have never cancelled a raid for low attendance." These sentences recruit better than any amount of flavour text, because they are the things people left their last guild over.

Keep recruiting after you are full

A full roster in week one is a half-full roster by month three. Keep one recruiter active at all times, keep your needs list honest even when every slot is filled ("Low: ranged DPS, building bench depth" is a legitimate need), and keep talking to people. Recruitment is not a phase. It is maintenance.

The metric that matters

Track one number: how many raiders who joined in a given month are still raiding three months later. If it is under 60%, the problem is not recruitment. It is retention, and no amount of new applicants fixes a leaky roster. Fix the leak first, then recruit.