Raid leading and combat roles

[Deleted]

It's going to entirely depend on your raid leading style. If you're trying to do ALL the things, then certainly you may struggle in a melee position. If you're delegating and have an officer team to support you then it shouldn't really matter what role you're taking yourself. Having a good team behind you to see the things you miss and give proper feedback during progression is invaluable.
It's also going to come down to just how much hand holding your raid needs. If a simple 'this is how we're gonna do it' before the pull is enough then, again, it won't matter what you're doing. If your raid needs you to act like a boss mod and call EVERYTHING then... gl

[Tibeus]

I RL as a tank and it can be difficult on a few fights but for the most part its not that bad I think the most important part of raid leading is just knowing whats going on and having expirience

[Simulacrum]

...

'BOB STOP TAKING DAMAGE, EVERYONE USE CDS, STEVE YOU'RE IN FIRE FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK'

...

Man, it's like I can hear the voice of my healing officer in my head right now, from when he raid leads.

[Callypso]

TL;DR: Healers > Tanks >= Ranged dps > Melee dps

Healers have the same benefits as ranged dps (overview) with the additional perk of having a constant eye on who has what debuffs and what the amount of incoming damage to the raid is, who needs a combat ress, etc. While that is stuff you can track as any role, it would come in addition to what you're already doing: For healers, it's by default incorporated. This makes it easier to call out for resses and raid cooldowns, and you'll be slightly faster in calling for assignment swaps in case someone gets himself killed or targeted by an inconvenient boss ability.

I'd rank tanks as equally suited to lead as ranged dps or maybe a little higher. Tanks sometimes lack a bit of overview (mostly depending on the room/boss), but tanking in general is far less intensive as dps or healing (inb4 all tanks disagreeing with me). Assuming you're not raiding at the bleeding edge of progression, as as tank your dps doesn't matter as much and survival boils down to using your active mitigation once every X seconds when the boss using <hardhittingattackhere>. Oh, and the usual 'taunt at X stacks' of course. This gives you plenty of time to keep track of what is happening in the raid.

Ranged dps have the same overview as healers, which is a nice perk. Moreover, the pace of a ranged rotation is generally slightly (but only slightly) less 'intensive' as that of f.e. a windwalker monk with a 1s-gcd locked rotation.

While you *can* lead as melee dps (been there, done that) it is definitly the least convenient. It's likely your personal performance will suffer the most in this role, and in most cases you'll be starting up the ass of a boss which tends to block your view at least partially. Let's put it like this: I can't think of any bosses where melee have a better overview than ranged. On top of that, melee don't have the benefit of cast times and there are several haste-oriented melee classes which have a gcd locked rotation, some even at at 1s gcd instead of the normal 1.5s. Lower frequency of ability use = more time to watch out for other stuff. There's some other minor things as well (e.g. target switching for ranged usually means tabbing once, for melee it also requires moving your butt there and chasing the target if it's moving, re-positioning after it's dead... etc).

[Valored]

Depending on the setting, it may make a difference.

We have two raid leaders, which may sound weird, but it works out. I play a monk healer so I spend a lot of time in melee, which allows me to watch ability timers and make call-outs for when to move, what is coming, etc.

The other is our GM who plays a hunter and has amazing raid vision. He calls out individuals, makes on the fly adjustments, and is really like a chess-master, seeing what'll happen before it occurs.

So when we're both at the top of our game, being vocal, playing well, and when we sync up well, the raid does very well and we really excel.