Essentials for Raid Leading Without Vent

[Xelaeno]

Title says it all. I'm a really casual player so I do most of my raids with pugs. I don't feel very comfortable talking to random strangers on vent (really shy person irl hehe). So I'm looking for an alternative way to lead a successful raid. Is there anything in particular that I should know? What mods are available to shorten the amount of messages I have to type up during encounters? I'm thinking of doing a full set of raid warning macros for fast responds. Any tip is much appreciated. Thanks.

[Spots]

Required for vent-less raids:

1 - Players with following addons:

-DBM/Bigwigs
-Omen
-Decursive (depending on class/raid content)

2 - Players with following Knowledge:

-Class knowledge (not only specc related)
-Encounter knowledge (not really needed in current content, but still)
-Fire is bad
-Common sense
-Knowledge of personal functioning within a raid

And thats it. Nothing more is needed.

[Amgyn]

what class are you?

[morechezzez]

Required for vent-less raids:

1 - Players with following addons:

-DBM/Bigwigs
-Omen
-Decursive (depending on class/raid content)

2 - Players with following Knowledge:

-Class knowledge (not only specc related)
-Encounter knowledge (not really needed in current content, but still)
-Fire is bad
-Common sense
-Knowledge of personal functioning within a raid

And thats it. Nothing more is needed.

this (win btw)

[zox]

Fire is baaad... mm'kay?

[Deleted]

The most difficult part will be asking whomever details on what he did at a certain point, pointing out what went wrong, and getting possible strategy changes through.
Not much to do there appart from being able to type fast.

[Nezoia]

- Really good knowledge of how to utilize oRA2 (a addon), this will do magic in performance.
- Have control over buffs, debuffs, and who's doing what (such as debuffing, or Mind Controlling).
- Macro some simple strategy notes for certain encounters (Thaddius comes into my mind).

In general, there's no reason to shout out commands DURING a fight. People should know their job, and usually telling them what to do midfight confuses them.

Ofcource, calling out Bloodlust/Heroism, and combat resurrects is important, so get some macros for that, and use the oRA2 cooldown monitor to see who got what spells on cooldown for faster response to actions.

Keybinding marking, so you can quickly remake, or change marks in combat, and learn how to use {star} {circle} etc, instead of just writing the (often very different) name for the symbol.

And most important, as a raid leader your job is not only to lead, but also to encourage! So write "this is going great" etc. stuff during the fight, tell people who's doing certain hard tasks that they did good (in public).

Encourage the raid to do their best, and they will.

And if you wish to put a little extra in it, bring some feasts :-)

Usefull addons for the raid leader:

- oRA2 (a must).
- BigWigs/DBM (Set to Broadcast, in case the others don't have it - also a must).
- Failboat (from wowace) - announces fails on fissures, jumps, lava walls etc.
- Keybinding raid marks.

[miekkagoon]

im just wondering....why people dont use In game voice chat instead.... done in my guild whit success..

And to Op:

Required for vent-less raids:

1 - Players with following addons:

-DBM/Bigwigs
-Omen
-Decursive (depending on class/raid content)

2 - Players with following Knowledge:

-Class knowledge (not only specc related)
-Encounter knowledge (not really needed in current content, but still)
-Fire is bad
-Common sense
-Knowledge of personal functioning within a raid

And thats it. Nothing more is needed.

it is all needed

[Nezoia]

it is all needed

While I agree it's all that's needed for the individual player, it's not all that's needed as a leader.

No matter how good the people of a team are, they won't work optimal without a leader.

[cubby]

I do most of my raids with pugs. I don't feel very comfortable talking to random strangers on vent (really shy person irl hehe).

A good friend of mine feels the exactly the same about chatting with random strangers. One thing though - vent is almost a requirement for running raids nowadays - especially pugs. But I'm not criticizing you - I actually wanted to ask you a question: Do you have any problem with listening to strangers on vent? When my friend told me that he really, really hates talking to people on vent, I told him to stay on vent, but claim a "broken mic" and be "unable to talk". For him, problem solved - he can hear all the calls - he macros what he needs to call out - and all is good.

Just a thought for you.

[Nezoia]

Pfft... I got a social disorder, and I think it's easier to talk to randoms on the internet than in real life. Because, you could simply log off, if people were annoying.

[Elementium]

I'm the same way.. really bad Social Anxiety Disorder. for like a year i acted like i had no mic. lol. What i do is pretty much listen these days and speak when spoken too. and giggle.. there's always one guy on vent that sounds like a total nerd.

[Mandible]

Depends alot on the learning curve (or however its spelled ) of your raid. In basis you can have your people watch a movie of the fight, explain the details in raidchat (with silence to all others obviously not using said raidchat). After that its just macros - fx. if it was malygos where the spark was coming from.

Not using vent will obviously force people to know the encounter better as well so they don't act like lemmings having to be told everything.

[Communion]

And don't be main healer or maintank as RL...dps is a good role

This is ridiculous advice. I tank for my guild and raid lead. Both of our alternate raid leaders are tanks, too. Raid leading comes naturally to tanks, as you are "leading the charge" throughout the content. Nothing bothers me more as a tank than sitting back and waiting for some DPS player to mark up targets for me. Slows the instance to a crawl.

And anyway, the best raid leader I ever had was a holy priest.

To the actual question: we regularly run "silent raids" where I mute everyone in vent (including myself). This is to cut down on people yelling for other people to move out of deadly fire stuff, spam vent with personal stories, etc. We found it actually *increases* concentration, and people tend to play better.

To do it, I set up marks for things ahead of time (we always use skull & x as kill order targets, which I have macroed and bound to one of my mouse buttons to indicate which of the next targets is to be focus fired as I am tanking it). Say, Square and Diamond assigned to the two mages, and moon and star for mind control targets, etc. I bound all the raid target icons to my number keypad for quick marking.

Put a mark on the tanks' heads, so on gauntlet type events (i.e. trash before and after Heigan) and just moving through trash in general people can immediately see where the tanks are and where they shouldn't be moving past. I use triangle and circle for this.

At the beginning of each wing, I type out in /RW which tanks will be tanking which bosses, and what roles the off-tanks on each boss will have. Then I have a healing coordinator make assignments ahead of time. This avoids unnecessary delays while staring at a boss trying to sort this out, as the healers can organize each other during the easy trash pulls.

Hope that helps.

[zsuper]

If you can't type 140 words per minute, start practicing so you can type out a raid warning during casts.

[Xelaeno]

what class are you?

holy priest, raid aoe healer

[Xelaeno]

bump ;D

[SFJake]

I'd say the essentials for raid leading without vent is smart people... so no kids.. no pugs... yes, bad advice, I know.

The game wasn't designed with the need for voice chat, so I don't know what the discussion really is about... you can do without any of this. I for one refuse to ever use vent or any kind of voice chat to talk OR hear people, because this is a god damn MMO and not a kid chatting room. I even refuse with my guild.

My point is, you shouldn't really have a problem without it. The only problem is the dumb people, and I wouldn't believe people to be suddenly smarter because you're talking in a mic. Macroing things isn't even necessary, just makes it less annoying.

[Lysah]

If you can't type 140 words per minute, start practicing so you can type out a raid warning during casts.

This. I routinely send out PMs during boss fights and what not between 1.7 second arcane blast casts or moving around.

Also, everyone sounds the same on vent. I've been to at least a dozen guilds' vent servers and I swear I'm hearing the same four or five people talk over and over. Why be shy about talking when you know you sound just like every other guy and/or chick.

[PBitt]

This is ridiculous advice. I tank for my guild and raid lead. Both of our alternate raid leaders are tanks, too. Raid leading comes naturally to tanks, as you are "leading the charge" throughout the content. Nothing bothers me more as a tank than sitting back and waiting for some DPS player to mark up targets for me. Slows the instance to a crawl.

And anyway, the best raid leader I ever had was a holy priest.

To the actual question: we regularly run "silent raids" where I mute everyone in vent (including myself). This is to cut down on people yelling for other people to move out of deadly fire stuff, spam vent with personal stories, etc. We found it actually *increases* concentration, and people tend to play better.

To do it, I set up marks for things ahead of time (we always use skull & x as kill order targets, which I have macroed and bound to one of my mouse buttons to indicate which of the next targets is to be focus fired as I am tanking it). Say, Square and Diamond assigned to the two mages, and moon and star for mind control targets, etc. I bound all the raid target icons to my number keypad for quick marking.

Put a mark on the tanks' heads, so on gauntlet type events (i.e. trash before and after Heigan) and just moving through trash in general people can immediately see where the tanks are and where they shouldn't be moving past. I use triangle and circle for this.

At the beginning of each wing, I type out in /RW which tanks will be tanking which bosses, and what roles the off-tanks on each boss will have. Then I have a healing coordinator make assignments ahead of time. This avoids unnecessary delays while staring at a boss trying to sort this out, as the healers can organize each other during the easy trash pulls.

Hope that helps.

Why go on vent then if you are muting everyone, even the raid leader?

Anyhow, communication is key to any successful raid. It makes your life a hell of a lot easier to be able to speak especially when introducing new fights. Sure you CAN raid w/out vent but I seriously think you need to get a mic and talk its not that hard (though I guess if you are male and havnt hit puberty yet it can be ). I'm not much of a talker myself IRL, I probably speak the same amount in one evening of wow as I do for an entire month doing other RL things. As someone else said the current content is mostly pretty straightforward, and there are very few cases outside of Maly and Sarth hard mode where you really need to talk once the fight starts...helps on grob I guess to call out who has the disease on them but otherwise things are pretty simple. Its doable but talking is a great help and believe me you will get used to it and you won't want to go back to typing.