Leading raids as a DPS?

[Pua]

This is exactly a reason why the tank shouldn't be the raid leader. The tank needs to act while the raid leader can yell at the druid to combat ress/ask for healing cooldowns on the tank etc.

During the encounter the basics mechanics can be called out by anyone, the raid leader only speaks when things go wrong.

I disagree. The reason I brought it up is because the raid leader would have to waste time making a decision, THEN telling the tank what he wants him to do. The raid leading tank just does it, then sorts out the aftermath.

But like I said, this is a very personal discussion in many ways – I don’t think what you’re saying is wrong or invalid, I just don’t agree with your conclusion.

[aevitas]

Old school tanks could typically see their character's arse and little else as most fights had you backed up against a wall for all the cheesy knockbacks...

Made me giggle.. My old vanilla guild also had our MT raidlead, and I believe it was in BWL where he was tanking one of the bosses but he faced his camera towards the boss ass so he could see what was happening.

All went fine until he accidently pressed his right mouse button or so and it was him who faced the wall, needless to say it was a "kablam, dead" moment.

Happened at 9% of the bosses health aswell, good moments ;D

[Peng]

Best role to lead a raid is ranged dps.
Your performance will suffer a bit in any role when you lead a raid. It´s just hard to measure as a tank.

[Deleted]

Best position for a raid leader is ranged dps. Sure, the poor guy dps will take a hit, say something like 20%, but it's wastly over-compensated with the avantages of that position:
- compared to a healer where a 20% dip in performance means dead people
- compared to a melee (tank or dps) where the point of view used up, at least partially, by the boss and the bunsh of usual pet/elemental/skill graphics crap

I would rand tank as the second "easiest" position to RL, but I'm probably partial due to the fact that i personnaly find tanking easier than dps or healing.

[Deleted]

I disagree. The reason I brought it up is because the raid leader would have to waste time making a decision, THEN telling the tank what he wants him to do. The raid leading tank just does it, then sorts out the aftermath.

If the tank doesn't know what to do for himself at that time, then he is a bad tank. The raid leader is there to make everyone else aware of what went wrong and what to do to solve it.

[Deleted]

Never played ele, but i just cant RL on tanks or healers.
any dps is a cakewalk for me, not sure why you would be able todo it as tank and not dps :s (raid on 4 chars, 2 of them 8/8 hc)

[Greywardenn]

Best position for a raid leader is ranged dps. Sure, the poor guy dps will take a hit, say something like 20%, but it's wastly over-compensated with the avantages of that position:
- compared to a healer where a 20% dip in performance means dead people
- compared to a melee (tank or dps) where the point of view used up, at least partially, by the boss and the bunsh of usual pet/elemental/skill graphics crap

I would rand tank as the second "easiest" position to RL, but I'm probably partial due to the fact that i personnaly find tanking easier than dps or healing.

I raid lead as a shadowpriest and get on wol constantly,....lol def not gimping myself by 20%. It all depends how good you are at your class and how good your raiders are. If you have to call out every little thing then I can def see that your dps can take a slight hit.

[Donthealme]

Best position for a raid leader is ranged dps. Sure, the poor guy dps will take a hit, say something like 20%, but it's wastly over-compensated with the avantages of that position:
- compared to a healer where a 20% dip in performance means dead people
- compared to a melee (tank or dps) where the point of view used up, at least partially, by the boss and the bunsh of usual pet/elemental/skill graphics crap

I would rand tank as the second "easiest" position to RL, but I'm probably partial due to the fact that i personnaly find tanking easier than dps or healing.

If a ranged dps is losing 20% of their dps as a raid leader there is a MAJOR issue. I raid led as a tank for the majority of Wotlk and Cata, in DS I main changed to a shadow priest....Progression or not I push damn close to the numbers that I sim out at and have many world top 200 parses on 25 heroic. Raid leading is raid leading is raid leading...you can either do it and play without losing much if any performance or you can't.

That being said I do find it easier to do as a ranged dps, I can see a lot more of what's going on without having a giant bosses crotch covering half my camera...in addition I don't have to do the vanilla model of an inverted camera. Does being a tank and raid leading have the benefits of pulling off some stupid shit at times that shouldn't work? Yes, but overall being with the majority of the raid is much better because you can see a lot more mistakes and isolate in real time.

[Daerth]

From a pragmatic point of view ranged DPS is the best to RL from. I'm a DK and a RL myself and I can tell you that leading things like Baelroc or Rag when the boss covers up 50% of your screen even if you zoom out to max is sub optimal compared to the flexible POV of a ranged class.

In terms of performance, you just need to get used to it as people mentioned before. As everything with DPS, at first you focus mainly on your rotation and little else if you want to do good, but with time that rotation will come to you naturally and you won't have to think about it as much giving you more time to RL properly. Time and practice makes perfect.


In regards to tanks making best RL: I disagree, your tanks should be competent enough to make split second decissions and save people because _it's their job_ not because they're the RL. If all your tanks can do is stand there and take damage then I suggest you find new tanks :P.
Then again with the current tanking model 90% of the fights that's all that tanking requires you to do so most of the time tanks have plenty of spare time to see what's going on in the raid - provided they aren't inspecting the bosses digestive track backwards with their camera.

[Ticktock]

I led raids as a hunter for 5 years. In my current guild the raid leader is a Warlock. I've also been RL as a healer and a tank. I found it much harder to keep focus when healing or tanking. You get used to it over time. You can just become your raids DBM and guiding hand while in automated dps mode.

[Fenixdown]

My guild is led by a ret pally. Actually, it's the second guild I've been in led by a ret pally. Both leaders were quite capable.

[damz2969]

I raid lead as a dps and I've raid lead as a healer a lot too (probably more than as a DPS). I don't think there is too much difference as to what is best, but if I had to choose I'd say I prefer to raid lead as a DPS. I think it is easier to coordinate the majority of the raid being a DPS yourself, as healers and tanks often have their own role specific teamwork and synergy to work with (which they should be able to best handle themselves), while not being too related to the others.

With that said however, I also think swapping roles in a raid in general can be challenging, especially when raid leading, so it'll just take some practice to get used to. If you are comfortable with your role and a good raid leader in general, I think you can raid lead with any role, and the best coming down to personal preference.

[Sakic]

As an Affliction Warlock, GM and Raid Leader the one thing you need to do is

Learn to delegate.
one person calling out healing shit like Battle Res targets and who does it.
one person calling out Certain boss mechanics.
one Person handling loot.
Etc.
then you can concern yourself with major moments of the encounter, such as hero, phase changes, Keeping moral high, making changes to tactics etc.

This is excellent advice. It not only relieves some of the pressure on the raid leader but it encourages teamwork and communication which is such a key point in raiding. Once, I had a raider who would always be in mumble but not always have his mic activated so he could speak and occasionally it would become a problem...so, to ensure that he was always in I began assigning him tasks that required him to speak (like monitoring mana void health on Yor'saj) which worked out perfectly.

In regards to the OP, you can certainly dps and raid lead but it will just take some time to get confident with your rotations that you can do it without thinking. Healing is definitely the hardest job as a RL...that split second where someone needs a big heal or dispel can be right at the same time you are communicating a major event and being late on a heal can often lead to a wipe where as messing up part of your dps rotation simply means less dps.

[Ryme]

I've found it relatively easy on all roles, with dps being the toughest (depending on spec and class). Honestly though, it comes down to how much you can put yourself on auto-pilot and any addons that can help with this should be used in my opinion.

For example, raid leading on my ret pally with clcinfo was breeze, ridiculously easy, however trying to do it on my sub rogue was substantially more challenging.

[Deja Thoris]

I lead raids in all 3 roles. I struggle most with healing (I find it hard to find where an alt group is derping on spine when I'm spam healing) If I tank or dps the same fight I have much more time to look at things and make adjustments.

I guess the end answer is that if you are comfortable with your class you can RL as anything. At the end of the day you should be guiding people with small tweaks, not micromanaging 10 people. For instance, when we progress on a new fight (eg Yor HC) then I'd simply tell the healers that the German phase is the hard one for healing and that they need to sort out CD's as they see best fit. They know their classes and abilities better than me so I leave that in their hands.

[Mctriple]

I lead 25-man raids as a shadow priest. I also do quite a bit of healing in my offspec, so I keep grid around and essentially have a healer's UI visible at all times. I can play shadow blindfolded, as my UI is also set up to easily track all of the timers that I need, so being at ranged gives me a great view of the fight whether I'm healing or dpsing. I lead our 10-man alt group as a rogue, and I find little difficulty doing that from a melee perspective either, except when I'm playing subtlety, as I don't have as much practice at that. The only role I don't regularly play while leading a raid is tanking, but I'd imagine that you would be plenty free to pay attention to things while tanking most encounters. Kiting hm spine adds might be tough, but aside from that it should be easy.

[Deleted]

The best practice for you is definitely the Raid Finder. It works out great for new specs, rerolling, newly leveled classes, etc. Thats probably my best advice.

[ThatInternet]

I RL as a tank atm, and for viewing what other people are doing it's much easier than when I played my dps. I do have trouble calling the shots on fights like znozz though(can't see shit captain), which I allow my second/third in command to lead.

Once you find people capable of leading a team to support you, your team can get very strong, and it helps on progression when all three of those entities agree with one another.

RL's are usually tanks because they want to group to get going, and it's really hard to replace a good tank if they have to leave. That is the reason I am the MT in my group, after having 3-4 leave over the course of 4 months in Firelands. For the most part(in my opinion) it is the least challenging role for 6/8 DS fights(not to say not challenging at all, but once used to it you go into automode) So people tend to get bored. For me, adding a RL element to the role greatly increased the enjoyment for me.

My DPS officer does lose dps when he calls the shots for a fight, but since he's a rogue with legendaries, he's always on top. I don't see much of a change in performance when the healer leads though.

[Deleted]

Leading raids as anything really depends on how good you are at multi-tasking because that's basically what you're doing.

[Jinto]

Lol maybe you read what I said:

I didn't say good healers couldn't do this, and I didn't say that you can't have a healing raid leader that does better than dps / tanks - some of the top end guilds have a healing raid leader (Halby from Scrubbusters springs to mind).

What I did say was that healers has a harder time focusing on everything else and calling stuff out, as they at the same time have to be focused on the 25 jumping bars on their grid. They will know if something goes wrong, but not from seeing a mob run towards an overeager dps, but because their healthbar-icon flares up because (s)he has aggro, and takes unnessecary damage so they have to heal that person. They can't do what they're trying to do well without looking, or by having noises shouting at you when you get a specific proc so you know now is the time to use CD number XYZ^2 to gain max DPS. They have to constantly focus on people and who takes dmg in order to heal them up.

You just described like every mediocre healer out there.

p.s. You are correct though considering that applies to the vast majority of raiders.