I am having issues raid leading IRL Friends

[Alphabrain]

We raided tonight. She killed several melee with Flamebender's Molten Torrent being placed incorrectly on some attempts and only did 1.7m to Wolves (compared to 3m-6m compared to others). She got the hang of it as we wiped over and over again, though. Did very well on our kill but was still the person who stood in the most fire (13 ticks of lava slash, 7 hits from armaments, 8 hits of blazing radiance due to positioning).

On our kill, she did 18,375 DPS which at her 673 ilvl was 7th percentile. That is up from her DPS on Normal Flamebender earlier this week which was 16,766. It's a very small improvement but an improvement nonetheless. We had another discussion with her and she's going to continue practicing in LFR.

The tank is out of town for the week so we had pug tanks.

Isn't The Butcher like 19k for Heroic?

Anyways, I find that watching other players play the same class you do helps you.
I think Naguura from Method has "How to Boomkin" videos on her YouTube page.

[corebit]

We raided tonight. She killed several melee with Flamebender's Molten Torrent being placed incorrectly on some attempts and only did 1.7m to Wolves (compared to 3m-6m compared to others). She got the hang of it as we wiped over and over again, though. Did very well on our kill but was still the person who stood in the most fire (13 ticks of lava slash, 7 hits from armaments, 8 hits of blazing radiance due to positioning).

On our kill, she did 18,375 DPS which at her 673 ilvl was 7th percentile. That is up from her DPS on Normal Flamebender earlier this week which was 16,766. It's a very small improvement but an improvement nonetheless. We had another discussion with her and she's going to continue practicing in LFR.

The tank is out of town for the week so we had pug tanks.

I assume then that she IS getting better at raiding, albeit very slowly?

I would advise that you be patient with her, and most importantly adopt a more positive form of raid leading, as in don't criticize too much her failures and point out her successes as a form of encouragement. Some people respond to positive feedback much better. Patience as I have learned over the years is a much more important trait in a good raid leader than anything else.

[Deleted]

What corebit says. Remember you are now very much focused on everything she does wrong. And pointing it out to her every time is certainly not helping her in getting confidence. If as you say she's making progress, tell her that and encourage it.

I find lack of confidence in a specific fight always makes me perform worse than i normally would. (In my case it was dodging the stupid lightning storms on HC Jin'rokh, the last one i can remember sucking at. And the worst part is, i was completely fine on that all the way to our first kill. Only after we killed it 2-3 times i started failing horribly. First i guess due to overconfidence, later on for just trying to hard )

[Zenotetsuken]

Little backstory for me- My guild in WotLK was in a similar situation. At the time we had a GM that was one of the worst raiders, the main tank, and the RL. After failing to content for months, I finally convinced him that he was better off just being the GM and Tank, and I took over as RL. Eventually he couldn't handle being the GM anymore, and I wouldn't let him tank for us anymore. He stepped down as GM, and quit WoW, I took over as GM and continued to RL. -Back Story over.

What worked for me after taking over the roles of GM/RL/IRL friend to a few, was to get the entire raid together in vent like 45 mins before raid one night. I just told them straight up,
"We as a raid cannot be successful if I treat any raider differently than I treat any other raider.
From the time we walk through that portal, to the time that we call it a night, I am not your friend, I am your raid leader.
If you can't accept my word as law when you walk into my raid, then you aren't welcome in my raid.
I care about each of you guys, and you deserve to be successful. If I need to be the bad guy for a few hours a week for us to be successful, then I accept the burden and hope that you guys can accept that my dual role will force me to make hard decisions that are for the betterment of the raid."

That night I had to boot my best friend of 20 years from the raid for failing to mechanics and pulling low DPS.

TL;DR
Just let them know that sometimes for the good of the raid you will need to be the bad guy, but it doesn't mean you care about them any less.

[ZakAtack]

I don't like going as far as saying raiding is like a job, kind of takes the fun out of it. I just think of it as a challenging activity that requires teamwork and communication. The reward feels pretty good for everyone when a boss dies. Without the challenge, it would be LFR.

I've come to realize the biggest challenge to most raids is getting everyone together on the same page in terms of expectations. If half the group wants to push progression in Mythic and the other half are fine wiping on Normal mode, it's going to cause everyone stress. It's a group of people working at a common goal. If that goal isn't the same, or people are held to different expectations, friction happens. It has to be addressed or the raiding has to stop.

Glad to hear things are improving, even if slowly. As a teacher, I've had it beaten into my head that you need to praise people for even the smallest of accomplishments.

[Tankitbetter]

I assume then that she IS getting better at raiding, albeit very slowly?

I would advise that you be patient with her, and most importantly adopt a more positive form of raid leading, as in don't criticize too much her failures and point out her successes as a form of encouragement. Some people respond to positive feedback much better. Patience as I have learned over the years is a much more important trait in a good raid leader than anything else.

Yes. One of our raid officers is going to run LFR with just the two of them on teamspeak and go over boss strategies with her and talk about her rotation with her.

[Kelsierx]

Sorry to say, nothing you do is going to help that druid. When you get hit by 9 pins, and don't want to use GTFO because it screams at her, that person is hopeless. Either they don't care, or are really that bad. Both situations are going to help none.

You have 2 choices with the druid:

1. Accept her as she is and carry on with her poor performance.
2. Remove yourself from the situation.

I would have a chat with the casual friend (tank) and ask him to go DPS and find a better, more consistent tank. That situation is much easier to fix.

Good luck, when raiding with IRL friends, it can be very difficult.

Edit > read your late posts. Good to see she is improving. I would take an approach of not singling her out publicly in raid. Perhaps privately would be more appropriate, if anything with someone who can't take criticism.

[nightfalls]

You can't have your cake and eat it too, some people just aren't good at the game or have no desire to improve.

You can try to express to the person that they need to improve in as civil a manner as possible, and try to give them the tools to improve. and if / when that doesn't work you have to make the decision people keep talking about in this thread.

Ya either want progression, or you want to play with your friends / family.

This basically sums it up, and is why while I know a few people IRL who play, I generally don't raid in the same guild as them. As a side benefit, without causing additional trouble we can rant about how shitty our guilds are doing to each other.

[Halicia]

This basically sums it up, and is why while I know a few people IRL who play, I generally don't raid in the same guild as them. As a side benefit, without causing additional trouble we can rant about how shitty our guilds are doing to each other.

You can do both. Separate Casual night from Progression night first...

Then welcome EVERYONE with open arms on Casual night so the *friends* are allowed to interact with people if they so desire, but NOT mandatory. This allows your progression raiders to hop in on whatever character(s) they like without burning them out by forcing them to attend old content if their heart isnt in it.

For your progression group, make it clear *what* standards are expected of them, and apply them without bias. If WoW is datenight, then simply accept that the weak link eliminates both. A real friend will understand.

Don't try to force people to improve. If they want to, they will... but you'll have more fun with RL friends if you don't try to make them enjoy the game the same way you do.

[Deleted]

This is why you generally should only raid in guilds that are on the same skill level with you and share similar goals. You have to pick if you want to do serious raiding or casual/fun with friends type of raiding. If you decide to change the guild into a more serious one you could still always run alt/casual raids on the side if you want.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Don't raid with IRL friends that can't take constructive criticism.

If they aren't IRL friends but can't take constructive criticism, you can kick them from the raid with no worries.

If they are RL friends but can take constructive criticism well, then no problem.

[Tankitbetter]

Well, my friend broke up with the druid. So I guess that's solved?

[Overlord Fordragon]

Well, my friend broke up with the druid. So I guess that's solved?

Not nessecarily, if he broke up with her, she could stay out of spite... I mean 3 years, why did they break up?

[Spekkiothebrave]

You can do both. Separate Casual night from Progression night first...

Then welcome EVERYONE with open arms on Casual night so the *friends* are allowed to interact with people if they so desire, but NOT mandatory. This allows your progression raiders to hop in on whatever character(s) they like without burning them out by forcing them to attend old content if their heart isnt in it.

For your progression group, make it clear *what* standards are expected of them, and apply them without bias. If WoW is datenight, then simply accept that the weak link eliminates both. A real friend will understand.

Don't try to force people to improve. If they want to, they will... but you'll have more fun with RL friends if you don't try to make them enjoy the game the same way you do.

This is a great solution. I recently came into a very similar problem to yours, actually our situations match up so well it's scary. I stopped playing for a while and came back at the behest of some friends. I had lead progression raids back in tbc and wotlk so some irl friends asked me if I would help get their guild on track. First thing I did was separate out raiding into two groups: Progression and casual/alt night. Progression came to be known as gryffindor and casual hufflepuff, but that's a whole other thing... It met with some resistance first, but once we got people into the idea that they could work their way into progression if they performed well during casual night things started to get better. We even started to see a lot of people improve and "graduate" into the main group which was really cool. Some people really prefer the casual group as well, it's just their style and that's alright.

What I liked about it is that we didn't have to have a ton of uncomfortable conversations, so that was nice.

[Fabinas]

Well, my friend broke up with the druid. So I guess that's solved?

From your post it seems your problem was how to not make your friend's life miserable (with whatever stance you kept towards his GF) and not the druid herself. If so, ditch her.