Raidleading without getting angry - Need tips on how to do it

[ThrashMetalFtw]

It's pretty obvious that your guild just isn't as good as you expect them to be. I had the exact same issue. We had like 10 players who did everything correct and could easily have gone straight into the 6/7 and 7/7 guilds on the server, 10 players that were good enough, but woulnd't be on top of their class, and made some mistakes here and there, and then the 10 guys that had to be carried.

I had VERY HIGH expectations when it came to my own performance, and raid leading in a grp like this, I expected everybody to perform like I did myself, and when ppl didn't, I got frustrated, VERY frustrated. Although I took out the frustration by spamming Officer chat with shit like " asdtsauidjfsijdfushjdifjslij" alsdalsfjkhsrafijgjf"m øpadksfgkslrlhtlzsjht" and "HOW CAN YOU BE SO FUCKING BAD", and after that talking to them in a relaxed voice again. When shit really hit the fan, the GM took over and raged like hell on Mumble (was basically me and him running the guild, while the 4 other Officers basically just had minor assignment and co-ordination roles in raids).

We started building the guild from scratch in mid t11. Got 8/13 HC last tier, and 2/7 HC in Firelands (guild died 4 weeks ago when I had to quit raiding). Moral of the story = If you don't have 22-23 GOOD players, you will frankly get stuck faaaar below your expectations. How you managed to get 6/7 with what sounds like a guild that is similair to my old one, is beyond me.

Raid leading in a nice manner and never raging is deffo not the answer. I tried it. It did NOT work.

[mini98]

Hey guys! First of all, some background on the situation;

I'm in a 25man guild, and we are currently 5/7 HC (fingers crossed for 6/7 HC on Sunday), and I am the ranged DPS officer in my guild. I assist with raidleading and I am the general "handholder" in raids. What I mean with this is that I call things out on mumble, like things that are coming up in the encounter (2 seconds till meteors spawn!), or things that need to be dealt with quickly (Need help on spiderlings on left side!) and things like that. The out of combat raidleading is mostly done by our GM (the replacing of people, setting up the raid, making sure the tactics are set, etc). General decisions during raids, such as what boss to go for, loot disputes etc, are mostly dealt with in /o by myself, the GM and the other 2 officers in the guild.

Now, whenever we raid and things don't go as smoothly, I have over the past few months become quite aggressive in the way I react and in the way I speak/sound over mumble. I don't yell, but I whine. A lot. During this time, on more than two occasions, I have even gone as far as to alt+F4 and stay logged out for 10 minutes in order to prevent me from saying/doing things I know I would regret. I know this is because of some personal events that has been going on during the past half year or so that cause me to not handle pressure and stress very well (which I will not go into here, because that is a totally different subject), but I feel that I want to continue to raid and raidlead, because that is something I love doing and it helps me keep my mind of real-life things that I cannot do anything about anyway.

It is bad for the moral of the raid to for me to keep whining, and I don't want to spoil the evening of 24 other people. What I am hoping some of you might be able to help with is a way - or ways - to be able to raidlead without getting worked up when things go well. Perhaps some new way of looking at things, a new way to deal with situations, or just something as simple as having a glass of wine. Anything you do / would do to ease stress and pressure of raidleading would be greatly appreciated.

I raidleaded for half of wrath, and tbh, there just isnt. It's all about control, I could get pissed as hell and you wouldnt notice unless I didnt give a s*** if you noticed. Also, you NEED to get pissed at them if there making stupid mistakes over and over, it singles that guy out and make him either think fuck this I'm gonna /gquit (which he wouldnt do unless he hated you guys), or he might actually step up his game.

We had a couple of guys who insisted that they were awesome, (two retri pallies in wrath), left and joined some of the best guilds on the server, and we found out he died on LK on the first phase and got carried through it. Some people just need to be told there bad lol.

[Citykid]

sorry if this has been said, didnt have the time to read all 4 pages.

Tip:

Eat! if u raid for a few hours or more it is important to eat right, if your bloodsugar drops u will get frustrated and angry.

also make sure u eat the right things. it might sound elitistic but raiding for several hours means u have to be focused for a long time and if u dont fuel the body and mind, u will loose it.

look at any elit athlethic, they know exactly what i mean, u have to fuel the body even if u dont run for 90 minutes.


try it, eat before the raid, and also make sure u have something u can eat halfway through or when u feel u are getting whiny.

If u wanna do a atest, eat cottonchees for a week, that will turn u in to a monster. ask my wife

[Deleted]

Hello everyone! Op here! I appreciate all the feedback you've given me. I've got a raid later today in about 5 hours, and I've decided to try out a few of the things suggested here.

Someone suggested exercise, and whilst I don't have a membership at a gym, nor any way of exercising at home, I'll make sure to take the time to take a nice long walk before the raid. Moving about outside in the fresh air is surely better than nothing, even though it won't produce the same chemicals in the brain after a nice workout.

Something I've been told by my girlfriend, is that I tend to get annoyed and cranky when hungry (I'm confident I'm not alone in this), and someone suggested to make sure to eat before and during the raid. I'll make sure to prepare and cook dinner once I get back from my walk, and eat when I do invites to the raid. I'll also prepare some sandwiches that I'll keep in the fridge, that I'll take out with a warm cup of tea during our break after half of the raid. Hopefully this will keep me full and being hungry won't effect my mood.

I'm going to do my very best to take a deep breath before pressing my push to talk after wipes, and I'll try to not have too high expectations from our raid, as some suggested that this might be cause for further frustration.

I realize that I cannot change my behavior over the course of one raid, but Rome wasn't built in a day! I'll keep working on this, because I don't want to quit raiding or quit leading, as it's one of the few things in my life that I really love doing at the moment. I'll keep posting and reading the replies here, because you guys have been really good at giving advice!

Keep the ideas coming! You've been a great help to me (and perhaps others in the same situation) so far!

[Deleted]

I'm in a similiar situation with one exception, I basically never lose my cool or get too worked up. Sure I may get angry but I try to not let it show (at least to the raid, officer chat tends to be a different case though our other officers try and keep me in line there as well :P), as it's just detrimental to the whole raid. The role of the raid leader is to keep his cool and make sure you keep pushing forward even if things seem grim, and think of ways to make that happen.

The way I see it, even if I start raging/whining about people failing on simple stuff, they won't suddenly start performing better because of that. Actually it's most likely going to be quite the opposite. Try putting yourself in their shoes for a bit, try thinking about why they fail and how you can make that not happen (other than just whining about it ofc.)

Just to give you an example, a raid some weeks back we were supposed to farm 6/7hc like so many weeks before and then get to work on heroic Rag, now everything went smooth at first, one shotted Beth, one shotted Shannox, trash died extremely quick, we had some fun banter on TS and so on, then we reached Alysrazor. We wiped once, we wiped twice, we wiped again and again, simply due to people suddenly standing in the fire and whatnot. At first I got semi pissed off about it, how could we suddenly fail like this? We should be able to do better etc etc. I tried to just talk through it and make sure people focus on avoiding the fire etc. Yet it didn't seem to have any effect. Then it occurred to me that maybe we just need a change of pace, so we went to Rhyolith, one shotted him, came back to Alysrazor with improved morale and one-shotted her as well. Rest of the raid went very smoothly.

Basically you need to become part-psychologist while leading, never mind the fact that your raid is failing, you need to focus on what you can do to make them NOT fail, even if it means doing something that seems silly or redundant, sometimes people just have bad days and will lose focus and it seems nothing you do has an effect, however there's almost always something you can do to turn things around and succeed, you just have to find what that thing is for your raid. Also, don't be too afraid to voice your concerns/call for help from your fellow officers, even if it's just something as simple as someone else doing the invites instead of you or someone else calling out x-ability, it's work off of your shoulders and will help you relax for a bit.

Of course though, I'm not saying criticism shouldn't be directed at the people who fail, or that you should never get angry, all of these have a place, but the correct place is probably not when your raid is already struggling. If person x stands in the fire and wipes the raid, he probably knows he failed and feels like shit, he probably knows he shouldn't do it again, the officers piling up on him and making him feel even more shit is generally not the most fun thing to happen during a night where things are already not going smoothly.

Lastly, keep in mind every guild is different, in world top 100 guilds you WILL be called out on every single mistake you do no matter how minor it is, the mind-set in those guilds however is generally very much different from the not so hardcore progression oriented ones, and you shouldn't blindly try to follow their example in my opinion.

[Benea]

Thank you to everyone who responded so far! I'm reading and taking into concideration everything that you right. (and you never know, there might be others in the same situation as myself who get use out of this post as well)

Regarding the post that said not to do raidleading anymore;
It's gotten to the point that if I don't hold peoples hands in raids, people tend to slip up due to being used to having someone help them incase they forget. Really focusing on healing the tank and missing that the big bad boss is going to start throwing fire on beneath you in a second can easily happen, and maybe we've spoiled the raiders with them not having to be punished for tunnelvisioning (aka, me reminding them so that they dont fail). We would need someone else to hold the raiders hands in that case, and I just can't see anyone stepping up at the moment.

Same thing about being an officer. This can be really stressfull too sometimes, and it is no doubt a factor to why I start whining during raids. But I've tried stepping down from being an officer before, and all that happened was me saying "talk to the GM" whenever someone would whisper me during raids. I just couldn't push all the responsibility off being an officer on the rest of the officer group. I ended up doing all the officer tasks anyway.

As to the getting angry easily part. I do have days where I can get angry really easy in real life, but those are the days when people in general suck, and life is a living hell, and I'd rather not do anything but spend time away from people. I have those days, but after a bit of playing some games it all fades and passes. I don't usually get angry when the DK forgets to interupt in stonecore, or when we wipe in BH on alts. I do get angry when we mess up on our alt run in firelands (partly why I don't go to them anymore - don't want to ruin alt-night too).

Any more suggestions would be lovely - although you've already helped me a more than enough!

I was reluctantly helping raid leading from wrath to mid t12 content (I have since changed raids and I'm very happily just a normal peon =p). I felt rather like you did, if I didn't call out every little thing, we'd fail. Guess what, raiders get used to that. The other person leading the raids commented on this and we decided to just call out the really important stuff. Lo and behold, people manned up and paid attention. It was a *lot* better after that.

Don't spoil them. Stop calling out most stuff, mute your mic if you have to. See what happens. Tell them they are responsible for keeping an eye on timers, you require them to use boss mods for a reason.