Valor points are actually less of my concern than practice for some of the people in their desired role. I have a few people musing over going healing. They have all 346 ilevel gear for healing or better but haven't run a random of any kind as a healer – guild group or no.

I completely agree that capping Valor points is not for everyone. Heck, it's not for me every week. And I'm insanely glad they put in the 7 runs per week rather than one per day. I never could run one every single day… too much else going on.

How we tell if someone is raid ready varies. We've discovered a lot of talent in our retro runs. Sometimes we're short one person and we'll pull in an unknown and see how they do.

The negative attitudes are actually quite few… but the few… ugh.

Hence, my confusion about how not VP capping led to people who don't make any effort whatsoever. It seems I've got your back up a bit, but I was honestly trying to clarify whether you really felt that this one activity gave you a good indicator as to the raid-worthiness of your raid members.

I have people who want to raid who refuse to gear themselves, refuse to practice or learn how to play, refuse to even read the fights and yet show up and expect to raid doing 5k dps. Those are the ones who "expect to be handed epics". If you're reread my first post, I in no way make a direct [or any intentional] association between capping VP and "expecting to be handed epics"

There are plenty of players who don't cap who are doing appropriate dps/tanking/healing with what they have.

In fact my expectation as laid out in my first post was that "I DO expect those who raid or with illusions of raiding to run an instance or two a week at least". An instance or two is nowhere near capping. Perhaps I should have added "or make some effort in some way".

I expect people to put forth an effort. Whether that effort is grinding VPs and gear, or helping others do so, helping gem/enchant gear, making epics for others, making cauldrons for a raid, cooking food, or a very minimum of reading the basics of the fight(s) we're going to do, I still expect to see some effort.

Showing up, ungemmed, unenchanted, with some easily replaceable greens/gear not appropriate to spec, not having read the fights and with a bad attitude is just inconsiderate and rude. That kind of entitlement is what I said annoys me and what I see becoming more and more common.

I honestly don't appreciate the attitude I'm perceiving here that expecting my people to make some kind of effort is unreasonable. In my opinion, not making an effort is really and truly "doing it wrong". Not capping Valor as a raider? Unless you have a sorry attitude [ie: the one I state in the previous paragraph], you're probably actually doing it right.

I'm not encouraging people to piss all over their guild's expectations, I'm simply sayin' skill > gear and raiding with the right folks > raiding with the folks with a lot of time on their hands.