I'm trying really hard to suppress my desire to say, "Screw that."

I understand that people leave guilds for various reasons and not all of them are bad or malicious. What I do have a problem with, however-- and the reason behind my "screw that" kneejerk-- is the sense of entitlement of the returning members. If I'm the only one perceiving that (which I feel like is the case when the OP brings up the legendary staff), please call me out on it. When someone leaves on raiding reasons and then suddenly comes back, I tend to think it reeks of 1) the other guild/team didn't have a desirable spot for them; and/or 2) the other guild/team presented competition the original guild/team didn't have... e.g. the other caster class capable of using the legendary or gear competition. And so they turn hide and run back, thinking that they will and should be welcomed back with open arms, guaranteed a raid spot, etc etc. mostly because they think you need them.

In addition to the advice under "A Second and Final Chance," I'd suggest keeping them on non-raid status and see how much effort they're willing to put into the guild and community for a little bit. Even if the guild is a raid- and progress-oriented guild, the feasts and cauldrons, for example, don't magically appear out of nothing: it requires a bit of work to make them possible even after the achievements. The effort could even be on a personal level of making sure they're doing the Molten Front dailies to unlock vendors and obtain gear that way... After all, a raider who cares enough about optimizing and updating their gear outside of raids is still a plus to the team as a whole.

My guild once had a prodigal raider in our midst: he would disappear inexplicably for months and suddenly reappear when the guild had worked through all of the kinks and strategies for raids so that we were pretty much on farm for the bosses aside from the very last boss in an instance. And, on top of all that, he'd be late for raids and go afk often. He pretty much took his raid spot and the raid team for granted, especially since we had difficulties filling the 10th spot as it was, let alone filling the spot with a dps'er who could crank out numbers like he could.

It wasn't until the GM/RL sat him down and said, "Shape up or get out," and he realized we were progressing and farming bosses just fine *without* him that he really turned things around. He even went as far as helping fish for the 10k fish achievement for the feast!

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