New to ToT normal and raid leading in general, could use some help.

[Tadkins]

Frankly, I have no idea what I'm doing. I've been a raider since Vanilla but in the soldier/follower capacity. Recently I've been given the opportunity to lead the second raid group of our guild and thought I could give it a try, but over the last couple of days I've felt very overwhelmed.

To begin, I never imagined it would be this tough to actually get a raid going. While it seemed like I had formed a core roster throughout the previous week, when it came time to actually go in I would have people bomb out on me at the start and throughout the raid. On the first day I had to hearth and find replacements a total of four times during the course of a 3 hour raid period. This is just one of many things hindering my attempts to build a cohesive core group. How do you do it? How do you attract good raid members and keep them there?

When I was talking to people and confirming their availability to our raid times it seemed like things were going smoothly. However, I'd find out subtle problems right off the bat from other more experienced people; so and so's gemming and reforging is all wrong, they should have a lot more of this stat, etc etc. It made me realize that a raid leader needs to not only know their own class but everyone else's. Needless to say that this made things a lot more daunting, as I've only ever really played a death knight, and I have enough work cut out for me learning just the nuances of that class, let alone dozens of other class specs. I can't tell right off the bat how another class would work. I just looked at the character audit on the armory and made sure they were fully gemmed/enchanted.

At the same time I also learned about World of Logs, and how to log a raid from a senior raider in the guild. I learned how to upload a log, which I did successfully today. Yet, when I look at this log, I feel like I might as well be trying to read a Chinese novel for as much as I can make sense of all this.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/mb6smyppcus4wy95/

This is a log featuring 7 wipes of 10man normal Horridon we did last night.

I don't want to give up, I want to keep trying to raid lead and create a good one. My long term goal is to build a good group that sticks together, that builds a sense of teamwork and can take on newer raids as soon as they come out. The only time I ever did that was back when Ulduar opened, and I would love to be on that cutting edge again. Yet, raid leading seems very tough, and I could really use some advice on it. I figured, what better place to seek out some good information than a forum full of fellow raiders? Any help you guys could give me would be appreciated.

[Deleted]

I don't personally raid lead, I'm "only" an officer in my guild, so I don't have a good answer to most of this. The one thing I do notice is that we have a relatively strict approach to people who drop out halfway through the raid or don't show up at all - We make sure the raid team signs up for the event on the calendar, check on them when they don't, and require that people leave a message on the forums at least a day in advance if they won't show up to a Team 1 raid. If someone proves to be consistently unreliable we simply stop taking them in at all, which isn't always easy cause we have a very dead realm, but it shows that we're very serious about who we are taking.

I sometimes check logs, but I must say I don't know too much about them either, I usually find things I need to know *eventually*, but it takes a long time to get used to using it.

[Deleted]

Well since the rest doesn't have an awnser as you just need to learn to deal with making the raid roster I can only give an awnser to the log issues.

- World of Logs is useless for classes or bosses you don't understand...you need need to pinpoint where you think the problem comes from and filter the rest. If you don't know what you are looking for that it is a chinese novel just look you said. Learn how to analyse your own preformance, so that you have less problems when going into a class you don't play. (I think buff/debuff uptimes is a good way to learn how to analyse if you can do better or not)

- Don't look to much into details of every person unless you are looking for something specific. Let's say the tank keeps dieing, don't go looking at every healer how much they healed the tank instantly, go check the tank...look what damage he received and check if he was keeping all his buffs and such up.

- You learn to more each week in WoL because every week brings new people, gear, wipes and problems in general. So each week you get to slowly build up your knowledge of finding stuff faster.

- If a dps is doing low for a certain fight, ask yourself why he would be doing lower. Giving a lame example: Tortos...a player who isn't used to kicking might be focussing more in the kick then on his dps, which is good. A player first needs to get the mechanics right, over time dps should go up as it becomes routine...if it doesn't go up then you need to look where he might be having issues.

- Same goes for healers...don't compare raw numbers in terms of healing. Each healer can have a specific job hence some will skyrocket on healing.

There are other tips but I these were the things I had most problems with when I started WoL so I'm just sharing my own expirience.

[Summer]

Well, I started raid leading 3,5 years ago with a group of newbies - none of us knew what we were doing. Now my guild is wiping on hc Lei Shen so there's some background so you'll know where I'm coming from.

Anyways. When you're starting out the first thing to do is, as you've found out, finding a solid roster. Ideally 12-13 people but since you're having problems with people turning up I'd say overrecruit with a heavy hand. A lot of people will lose interest in a few weeks and you'll need replacements.

Now, the most important thing is to let people know what is expected of them. Yours is the second raid team in the guild which may make this harder but yeah - if you have a guild website, write down some common rules for people to follow.
* First among them should be that if they say they will come for a raid, they also will do that unless a real emergency or something comes up. A lot of (casual) raiders don't realize how they're leaving their team / RL in trouble if they decide to watch football instead; this needs to be made clear. and this is where you have to be a bit hard: anyone who keeps letting the team down needs to be booted. It's not possible to run a raid team otherwise, you'll lose your hair from frustration :P
* Another important point is that gem / enchant stuff. *You* don't need to know every class - just point people at askmrrbot.com and tell them if they want to raid with you they need to do what it recommends. If you have more experienced players who want to adjust the stat weights there or whatever, great!, but for any newbies this is the way to go. while at it you might need to decide if you require expensive weapon enchants or not etc.
* Any other rules you want to establish. Check a few guild websites to see what people do and write your own ones. For an example, take a look at ours: http://nan.enjin.com/memberinfo

Once you have these rules - stick to them. I don't mean kick out people at first offense but if someone is not following them talk to them about it, try to help them, and only if things don't get better replace them.

--

As for the actual raid leading I strongly recommend letting people know ahead of time what you plan to do and how they should prepare, e.g. "go read horridon tactics on icy veins". Once you get to know your team better you will see who are the strong players and who the weak links; make sure that when a raid has "special jobs" you hand them to your stronger players. Equally when choosing tactics play to your strengths. Got excellent healers but weak dps - try 2 healing, and so on.

Something you may not be mentally preapred for but what will happen is that people will complain to you. A lot. On the other hand, after the start you will almost never hear "good job" :P From time to time you will have drama and either have to step between two people having a go at each other, or someone will target you and go a bit nuts. Don't be too shocked when this happens, all kinds of people play the game and stressfu IRL situation have a way of making people act up online.

--

Moving on to a little "how to" WoL :P

When you're wiping, you want to know *why*. The first thing to check may be output: here is damage done on your best (longest) try:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/m...?s=2506&e=2916

and healing for the same:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/m...?s=2506&e=2916

See if someone is much lower than others. However, overall damage on a boss like horridon doesn't say much; more important is if people were on the right targets. For example, damage done to dinomancers:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/m...?s=2506&e=2916

or venom priests:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/m...?s=2506&e=2916

click the "damage by actor" tab and look at "damage taken from" to see that you warlock was ignoring at least these priority targets. Clicking on his name reveals

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/m...?s=2506&e=2916

go to the same tab and check "damage done on" - he was mostly on horridon. This is fine if this is your tactic; depends on what you told him to do

As important as dps/healing output is the damage people are taking. Let's look at the survivability on all attempts:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/m...survivability/

-red number means someone died early in the fight, mouseover to find a death log. You have a lot of deaths to blazing sunlight which either means healers slacking with dispels or people stacking unnecessarily close to each other. You can check the dispels and interrupts on the dashboard btw, just scroll down.

On the dashboard there's also a neat little "Damage taken by source" box. Go click on Sandtrap, Living Poison and Frozen Bolt to see who are standing in poop:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/m.../spell/136573/
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/m.../spell/136723/
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/m.../spell/136646/

That's some of the basic stuff you can do with WoL; the log browser is also an excellent tool. Many guides exist and I won't go into more detail, the best thing to do is try out stuff there on your own :P

In addition to WoL you can use comparebot: http://raidbots.com/comparebot/
copypaste your WoL link into the "full raid summary" box, wait a few and admire the results:
http://raidbots.com/comparebot/51a89...27#classskills
http://raidbots.com/comparebot/51a89...000127#potions
This is sadly a bit out of date these days but it's still great for quickly checking if people are using their defensive cd's
--

Finally, I suggest you read this: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...erious-Raiding and tell your raiders to read it too. It's named a guide for "serious" raiding and the early bits sure are for that but but the last part about teamwork is pure gold and there's other good stuff too.

Good luck and a lot of patience with your new role, it may be tough but personally I find the puzzle-solving aspect of RL makes it worth all the extra work and stress, not to mention you get things to go *your* way 90 % of the time

[Eadoin]

Forgive me if some of my phrasing or grammar is silly, I noticed this thread right before I went to bed so I'm tried

First off, don't worry about that feeling of being overwhelmed, like any new job it always seems overwhelming at first, but you eventually get the hang of it.

The first problem you mentioned is also, by and far, the hardest part of it. Finding dedicated members who to follow you into battle (so to speak) requires dedication to look, but this is why you're in a guild, recruitment for a guild, or even a raid group should not be a one man show. It's something you just have to work at and hold people accountable to their word. If someone says they'll be there for three hours, then hold them to it (or stop bringing them). Again though, something like group formation/recruitment is not strictly the same thing as raid leading, as it's more the organization aspect of the group, and thus requires a very different skillset.

Your 2nd issue, which is about making sure your raiders are properly gemmed/enchanted, it definitely helps to know the basis of most classes, however again this is something that isn't just your job. For example, I only have a very vague idea how a windwalker monk works, however I raid with two exceptional ones, and I know if for some reason we ever had a third, they would be able to tell me what the player is doing right/wrong, and then I can discuss it with the player (the key is to get them excited about being better players, don't just tell them they're doing something wrong, phrase it like "You're doing ok, but can improve by doing X."

The third simply takes time, your comparison to reading a foreign book is accurate, you need to learn this language, and honestly once you do, you'll be able to figure out your 2nd problem much easier. Again, using the monk example, say I didn't raid with two other windwalkers, I can still gauge a player's capability by looking at their parses (specifically their ability usage) and compare it to other members of their spec to determine if they're performing at a reasonable level or not. Honestly though, learning to read parses will make a lot of things you can do as a raid leader easier.

As for just overall general raid leading advice:
- Be patient, with both your raid and yourself, you won't be a great raid leader overnight, but you'll learn pretty fast.
- Don't assume that being the raid leader means you have to do everything yourself, have others help you when you feel overwhelmed
- If you're not strong at something, work at it, turn it into a strength
- Be ok with making a mistake, it happens.

And finally, it's ok to feel overwhelmed, but when you do just know that the more you work on it/though it, the better off you'll be. A large part of being a raid leader is simply experience, and that's something you can't study up on.

[Deleted]

I barely slept tonight and have a slight fever, so prepare for a bunch of barely coherent rambling, but it might have some use regardless. Ask if you'd like me to clarify something.

Frankly, I have no idea what I'm doing. I've been a raider since Vanilla but in the soldier/follower capacity. Recently I've been given the opportunity to lead the second raid group of our guild and thought I could give it a try, but over the last couple of days I've felt very overwhelmed.

Being a good raidleader is a shitload of work. The bare minimum is to know every spec in your raids strengths/weaknesses and what raid utility they bring, every aspect of every fight, willingness to put in a lot of effort thinking about and tailoring/adjusting strategies and analysing world of logs (this however is all a raidleader needs/should do, any responsibilites beyond these are things you can let other people handle). If you don't feel like you can/want to put in this kind of effort, just pass on this job, a raidleader who doesn't put in the effort isn't going to have fun nor make the raid happy.

To begin, I never imagined it would be this tough to actually get a raid going. While it seemed like I had formed a core roster throughout the previous week, when it came time to actually go in I would have people bomb out on me at the start and throughout the raid. On the first day I had to hearth and find replacements a total of four times during the course of a 3 hour raid period. This is just one of many things hindering my attempts to build a cohesive core group. How do you do it? How do you attract good raid members and keep them there?

First of all, this isn't raidleading. Finding members for the guild isn't necessarily your job, but it's true that it quite often is the same person doing both things. I'd like to say that I've been in my fair share of guilds where we've had issues finding members, I mostly dump this job on someone else, but there are some things you can do. Try to keep a large roster, if your guild has two raidgroups (10 each) I'd expect a roster of at the very least 25 people unless you're extremely hardcore, probably over 30 if you're more casual. You will have at least a few people sitting most raids, but assuming that everyone can't maintain 100% attendance that's something they'll have to live with.

Apart from that, to attract members, make yourself desirable. I've now and then had issues finding solid recruits while being ojne of the top guilds on a mid-high server, I can't even imagine how hard it is if you aren't. Either way, there's people looking for all kinds of guilds so as long as you aren't just outright horrible (raiding 3+ times a week yet just stuck in normal ToT) there should be some potential recurits. To attract them, make yourself known, post in trade (yes, fucking annoying but we've all been there), realm forums, wow forums, gaming forums, talk to pugs, people you know, etc. For the forums/trade, try to write a post that seems both interesting and professional, highlighting positive and necessary things about your guild (not typing out the progress is just an obvious sign that you are trying to hide it) and what you want in a member.

Keeping the members is honestly a bigger challenge, but also something you can help a lot more with in your role as a raidleader. Make sure that you maintain a professional attitude, raidleaders who start yelling at people scare away far more members than you can imagine, while also making sure that there's no drama between raid members (people not liking each other is generally something you have to live with, but stress that it's not something that should be noticable during raids). Try to keep the chatter and talking at an acceptable level, let people talk and have fun during farm/trash but make sure that the talk is about the fight only during progress, if only because there's always a few people in each raidgrp who find it insanely annoying/get their focus distrupted otherwise.

Make sure to listen your members opinions into account, both regarding loot and strategies. You shouldn't necessarily follow whatever they say, but don't let them feel like you don't give a fuck about their opinion (even if you don't:P). Regarding loot make sure to have a system that the raid finds fair, to distribute loot for the raids maximum potential I'd argue that a good lootcouncil always is superior, but if that can't be kept drama free feel free to go with something like suicide kings, some dkp system or even roll instead. It isn't optimal, but if the raid falls apart over loot that's even worse.

Something that's just as important as the things above is progress and the goal of the raid, that's generally what most players look for in a guild, at the same time some can't really put up with wiping two nights in a row (personally I fail to see the point in raiding then, but each to his own). Find out what level of dedication/progress most members in your raid want and try to adjust to their wishes. If the majority of the raid just wants to give a new boss 10 attempts before clearing it on normal, so be it, the people who want more should look elsewhere. That being said, if your raid does aim for a goal above this and don't reach the progress they expect/desire things can turn real bad real quick. Try to determine what your raid is capable of and make sure that their goals are realistic, it's far better if they feel like they are surprising you with their leet skillz than the other way around.

When I was talking to people and confirming their availability to our raid times it seemed like things were going smoothly. However, I'd find out subtle problems right off the bat from other more experienced people; so and so's gemming and reforging is all wrong, they should have a lot more of this stat, etc etc. It made me realize that a raid leader needs to not only know their own class but everyone else's. Needless to say that this made things a lot more daunting, as I've only ever really played a death knight, and I have enough work cut out for me learning just the nuances of that class, let alone dozens of other class specs. I can't tell right off the bat how another class would work. I just looked at the character audit on the armory and made sure they were fully gemmed/enchanted.

I mentioned this a fair bit above, but yes it's a shitload of work. If you have experienced people in the raid who you can trust, use their help, but in the end you will have to learn it if you are going to be a capable raidleader. Making sure that people are enchanted/gemmed/talented properly and such isn't really raidleading, but it is something that relates to and affects the raidleaders job way too much to ignore.

At the same time I also learned about World of Logs, and how to log a raid from a senior raider in the guild. I learned how to upload a log, which I did successfully today. Yet, when I look at this log, I feel like I might as well be trying to read a Chinese novel for as much as I can make sense of all this.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/mb6smyppcus4wy95/

This is a log featuring 7 wipes of 10man normal Horridon we did last night.

There are plenty of guides where you can learn to read WoL far better/in-depth than I can explain it here. You can generally get other people to analyze your logs if you get stuck somewhere, but being part of the fight means that you get a far better perspective on things if you learn to do it yourself. I'm not saying that you need to browse through every log as a raidleader, but during progression you'll generally want to spend some time with it after each evening of wipes.

I don't want to give up, I want to keep trying to raid lead and create a good one. My long term goal is to build a good group that sticks together, that builds a sense of teamwork and can take on newer raids as soon as they come out. The only time I ever did that was back when Ulduar opened, and I would love to be on that cutting edge again. Yet, raid leading seems very tough, and I could really use some advice on it. I figured, what better place to seek out some good information than a forum full of fellow raiders? Any help you guys could give me would be appreciated.

Great that you think that way. I'd just like to echo that raidleading is a lot of responsibility and effort, but can be very rewarding (I wouldn't enjoy raiding or wow nearly as much as I do otherwise). That being said, since you are new at the job, try to get as much help from your raiders as possible. If you have someone who can take care of the recruiting/looking for people, let them, if there's someone who has a large amount of knowledge about some classes, let him help out the people who are lagging behind, if you have someone who likes to browse WoL let them help you look through them. Raidleading doesn't mean that you have to do everything, even in a 10 man guild, it just turns out that way a lot of the time.

[braeldiil]

You build attendence by pulling off raids. Once you get a few in the books, the solid raiders will realize they can count on them and show up every week, and the flakes will out themselves and you can look for replacements. So it'll get easier as you go.

There's a delusion that skill is what matters in raiding - really, it's not. You need a baseline level of skill to be useful, but it's a pretty low bar (like heroic dungeon low) and once you clear it you're fine. The things that matter are 1) you show up and 2) you follow the plan. Give me players who will do those two things, and I'll make a decent raid team out of them. The guy who flakes out once per week is useless, even if he used to be in Paragon.

I would mostly stay out of micromanaging your raiders, and I'd definitely tell the busybodies to butt out. If they ask for help do everything you can, but until then you'll probably run them off rather than make them better.

Which leads to the key point for normal raiding - you raid with the raiders you have, not the raiders you wish you had. Every one of them, including you, is going to have some weaknesses. Your job is to figure out how to minimize the weaknesses and maximize the strengths you have. So if a guy can't dps while moving, you have to figure out how to keep him stationary, not yell at him to pick it up. If he's slow at target switching, figure out how to maximize his time on a single target, and have someone else flipping around.

True example - my raid team was struggling on Warlord Blackhorn at the start of DS. Our mages was arcane, and didn't switch targets very well. Not to mention that movement was death on his DPS. So he had poor dps, and was feeling really down about his performance. So I did some calculations, and gave him a challenge. His only job was to sit on one side of the boat and hammer the dragons on that side. He needed to kill 2 of them, solo, on the first spear. Now we've minimized his weaknesses (moving & target switching) and maximized his strength (crazy burst dps). He had a key role that was a little bit of a stretch that no one else could do, and he started pulling in off flawlessly. The night we made that change we got our first kill, and never looked back.

You also need to identify what I call the "special projects team". Lots of fights have an oddball tricky bit that someone needs to do, sort of off on their own. Think Tortos turtle kicking or Ji'kun nests. Not everyone will be good at those things, so figure out which of your players want those challenges, and turn them loose.

[Tadkins]

Thanks everyone, for your responses. A lot of good advice here that I plan to take into account.

@SanderZammy
That's what I did. Had two paladins who left at the last minute of our first raid (one had a tornado warning and one apparently had RL drama), and a DK tank who "mysteriously" disappeared before last night's raid (later learned that she transferred to Rexxar without even a word). Of course after that I am giving them a lower priority, but it was still irritating to have to find replacements.

@Sarac
Sounds very similar to my first experiences with WoL as well, but you've helped me with a good base in which to start. Thanks a bunch.

@Summer
I will point each of my raiders to askmrrobot as well as the guide you posted at the end, thanks for the links. I figure that if we can fix character issues then we can move onto the technique and execution of every fight.

Your advice on WoL was also extremely helpful. I took a good look at the logs after you showed me how to read them. Embarassingly enough I seemed to have stood in a lot of stuff too, so it looks like I have things to work on as well. xD

@Eadoin
You're right, this might just seem tough because it's a whole new ballpark. I am counting on it getting a little easier. When I first got into it I pictured myself as more of a raid leader instead of a babysitter, trusting everyone else to know what to do, how to work their characters and have some idea of the fights. I've now learned that there's a lot more responsibility than that.

@Cookie
One of the dilemmas I've had was trying to somehow make our raid group desirable to other people. A raid group that was relatively new to normal as well as a raid leader who was new to raid leading. When talking to people in Trade I went the straight-up honest route and told them that I don't know how far we were going to get. One hunter I talked to (from a rather arrogant and elitist guild on the server) flat-out ignored me. I didn't want to lie to people and tell them we were gonna hit a quick 12/12, especially when we were having enough trouble with Horridon.

I mean, good raid groups take time to build up, right? Even the best guys started at the bottom. It's kind of irritating that a lot of potential "raiders" are just looking for free carries, and are not willing to put in some effort to help a raid group go.

I do have a bit of support from a lot of people though, namely you guys, my raid group, and the rest of my guild. I'm going to hang in there.

@braeldiil
I was actually giving this a bit of thought last night as well. Namely, we happen to have a lot of cleave DPS (elemental shaman, DW frost DK, frost mage, demo warlock). One way I was thinking to put this to our advantage is to have us all clump together on the third door. This way the ice trolls aren't running around in every direction and making it harder for the tank to pick up, and that we can have an easier time just cleaving them all down.

[hatchetman240]

Braeldiils post is awesome, because it's like reading something I would have posted when I was in the first month or two of raid leading, but as time goes by my optimism has been replaced in some part by pragmatism.

There's a delusion that skill is what matters in raiding - really, it's not. You need a baseline level of skill to be useful, but it's a pretty low bar (like heroic dungeon low) and once you clear it you're fine. The things that matter are 1) you show up and 2) you follow the plan. Give me players who will do those two things, and I'll make a decent raid team out of them. The guy who flakes out once per week is useless, even if he used to be in Paragon.

I tend to agree, but the standards are always evolving because the meters are always changing. On my raid team what you described was exactly right for us at first. I only needed people who would attend. Later on I realized that people who would attend but would not learn the basic mechanics of their class or the game were holding the other members back. I will say that as you progress your core of players in the group will tend to improve, and the standards for your group will grow taller. Now when I ask for someone to step in for a week I demand more than a "Show up and follow the plan", but at first it was completely enough. Now I expect players who show up, follow the plan, know their class and can properly use their class while moving. They also need to have teamspeak.

I would mostly stay out of micromanaging your raiders, and I'd definitely tell the busybodies to butt out. If they ask for help do everything you can, but until then you'll probably run them off rather than make them better.

Not me. As the raid lead *I* am on the forums asking why we suck so much. I don't see those guys out here asking. I bring feedback back to the group and remind everyone to read the forums every week to seek pointers. I ask people not to make me the guy that knows their class mechanics before they do. It's a little bit of pre-shaming, but to me every single person on the raid team is an equal, so why should I know anything before they do? We're all adults, we all have mutual respect for each other and each others time investment in this team. Part of that respect is bringing the other 9 guys the best performance you can every single week.

Which leads to the key point for normal raiding - you raid with the raiders you have, not the raiders you wish you had. Every one of them, including you, is going to have some weaknesses. Your job is to figure out how to minimize the weaknesses and maximize the strengths you have. So if a guy can't dps while moving, you have to figure out how to keep him stationary, not yell at him to pick it up. If he's slow at target switching, figure out how to maximize his time on a single target, and have someone else flipping around.

This is precisely my threshold for fixing or removing a team member. Once the maximum amount of cooperation from the 9 other members has been extended to prop up for the weakness of the 10th, and that still doesn't get you past the encounter, it's time for change. That change can come from the player, but if the player himself isn't willing or able to change then you've got to act for the good of the other 9 people. It's important this is done out in the open, so everyone is involved in trying to help the 10th guy.

You also need to identify what I call the "special projects team". Lots of fights have an oddball tricky bit that someone needs to do, sort of off on their own. Think Tortos turtle kicking or Ji'kun nests. Not everyone will be good at those things, so figure out which of your players want those challenges, and turn them loose.

Agreed here, but this often just falls on the shoulders of your best players, the ones you can completely count on, it's the same core of folks over and over it seems. Often times this is going to cost you your highest DPS, or HPS while they sort out that mechanic, but who cares? It's saving the encounter for everyone. You can coax the others out over time, once they're more comfortable with the fight. You can also ask that people practice things like kicking shells each week in LFR so you can grow your knowledge pool. I want to assign those roles to myself normally, but I need to try to assign those roles to the person who gives the group the best chance of success, and sometimes it's someone else.

[Ninotchka]

One thing I haven't noticed is your delegation policy.

You're the leader, but you wouldn't have started a team without enthusiastic support from at least a few other people, right? You're feeling overwhelmed. The solution to that is to find out what is not essential and delegate that stuff to someone else.

How much of everything are you handling? Do you have a healer lead? Do you have a dps lead? Do you have a strategist? Do you have a recruitment officer? Do you have someone with an army of professions alts and a ton of cash to be your quartermaster?

Once you've got those four positions in order, then it gets easier. You have someone complaining about gemming/enchanting, send them to the healing lead or dps lead and have them come up with a gearing plan for the quartermaster, you just have to deal with yourself and the other tank. Having issues getting commitments and figuring out the schedule, talk to the recruitment officer. Have your strategist look up the fights online and give you a selection of resources, you make the choices based on his strategies and what you know about your team.

Leading a raid doesn't mean that you have to carry the whole thing on your own shoulders. There are other people involved who want to succeed as much as you do. Give them the power to do something to help and the whole job gets much easier.

[clevin]

Wait... you're leading a raid team for your guild but you also post "When talking to people in Trade I went the straight-up honest route and told them that I don't know how far we were going to get..."

Is this a guild run with interested people or pug? If you're having to pug, why? I think it's a mistake to start a raid team in a guild if you don't have 10-15 interested guild people. PUGs will drop if you're struggling - that's just life.

Also, be realistic. You can't punish the guy who had to leave because of a tornado. If you do, you'll be seen as an idiot and a dick because, come on, no one is going to risk their life to play a video game. My point here is that while it's not OK for people to no show or drop you DO have to consider the reason. Now, some people will claim a RL emergency and this will happen time and again. Sorry, but I don't usually fall for that... almost no one really has RL emergencies that often, esp. ones that just happen to fall on raid nights. But I can't fault someone for having to head to shelter when a tornado is approaching.

Finally, this is generally a tough time to start a raid. Summer sees people go on vacation, go outside, get away for the weekend, etc. Be aware of that and ask people to post on your forums if they know they'll be out.