How to Raid Lead?

[MasterHamster]

It's pretty much narrowed down to this;

Making sure that
people are properly buffed, as mentioned by others.
members aren't screwing up vital interrupts
and
Knowing how to teach each boss to each role, if it's progression

[Silentrogue]

Oh one small thing I forgot to add! When calling out for someone to do something specific in a fight (midcombat), call out their NAME before WHAT to do.

Saying "quickly move to the next platform randomhealername!" will go more unnoticed than "randomhealername move to next platform!" because saying someone's name will instantly catch their specific attention, whereas calling it out last will catch their specific attention after you already said what they have to do, and will often result in a "huh, sorry what?" from that person.

Yeah it happens a lot...thanks for mentioning m8 appreciate ur feedback

[Rhiziana]

there is no real guides. You should develop how you raid lead, as a copy of yourself. Because it will affect how you will be later on, if you start being like Riggnaros (No offence to him, i respect him and the way he raid leads, i just prefer another way), you will in the end be like riggnaros in real life. if you act to people like you do in real life, but still can be ruthless in certain situations, because noone wants a raid leader who is lik:

"Okay bobby, you keep going into the fire, why do you do that? is it because you dont like the raid, and want to ruin it? how do you feel when you are in the raid? how do the others make you feel? how did eating your breakfast feel?" if you know where i come from.

[Silentrogue]

Basically, what you have in here so far is good. Remember to use resources to analyze what went wrong or right. Be able to communicate adequately with people who perform incorrectly. This is a big one. A lot of WoW players think that they're amazing and will contest and argue with anything you said they did wrong. You have to be able to evaluate the circumstances and be clear and concise about what your raiders need to change about their performance.

You have to be able to evaluate and discuss mistakes and wipes. Winning doesn't just come from general statements and a "we'll get it if we just practice enough over and over again," mentality. You'll find people making the exact same mistakes over and over.

Another big thing is being able to communicate and interpret the fights as they are occurring. My old raider leaders were very capable of knowing exactly what was going on and calling important things out, as well as being able to recognize players in the midst of combat who were doing something in particular, or at the very least their class/race. Seeing that someone is doing something wrong in a fight isn't as helpful if you just see a figure and can't recognize who it is in order to rectify the situation. One of the fastest ways to get people thinking you have no idea what you're doing and have them stop listening to you is to make bad calls or blame the wrong person, or demonstrate a lack of your ability to interpret the situation occurring.

One of the worst raid leaders I ever had was easily mute-able. I could ignore her completely and be able to complete the encounter correctly and accurately, because everything she was saying was useless. It was something DBM was already telling me, or she would yell at someone without a single indication of who it was. "Stop moving!" "Move!" "Run the other way!" These are good examples of things that are completely pointless to shout into your mic.

The second worst raid leader I've ever had would actually interpret situations incorrectly and call things out wrong. He would call for BL while sated was still active, he would call out the wrong person being afflicted with this or that mechanic. DBM states them right on your screen and he would call out the wrong names. He would announce abilities or phase swaps when they weren't happening, or forget to call DPS stops or starts, or call them unnecessarily. He was unable to adapt to us getting better or getting more gear and would still call out things that didn't need to be called out.

So, basically, not being specific and being inaccurate are the two biggest mistakes to avoid. It's important to do things correctly or else you won't be respected and people will think they know better and do things their own way, or worse, mute you.

hehehe that was funny and really helpful...yeah just keep the chat open and address people and shizzle properly...thank a lot for your feedback will keep it mind m8...this will come in handy

[Ater]

Good communication with some of you're guilds officers is a good advice, here is a few examples from my guild:
Our GM/RL have given some of the officers special responsibilities as for an example one is responsible for healers, one for melee dps, one for range dps and so on. So while it's RLs responsibility to go through tactics the officer in charges for healers sorts out who is healing what and things like that.

Also officers use the /o to discus different tactics and ideas when we are stuck on a boss. And when it comes to planning raid, tactics, setups, discussing peoples performance and how to improve and things like that GM/RL/Officers have a privet part on the guilds forum.

And just for the lols, Methods GM and one of their officers in an "discussion" during progress raiding:
http://youtu.be/7FAfLvCGvV8

[Ciddy]

You need to decide the general direction/attitude you want to have for your raid group and make sure everyone knows it. Do you want to be more laid back and casual where it's ok for people to miss raids occasionally, or do you want to be more hardcore where being 5 minutes late costs you a raid spot? Pick a direction and go with it.

One of the biggest problems my guild had was that we decided to change our attitude and move away from being casual. We'd always been kind of laid back when it came to raiding. We weren't exactly server first, but we got stuff done and had a good time. One day, all of a sudden, some of the officers convinced the GM that we should start replacing people for doing less than X amount of DPS (even if those people were friends who'd been raiding regularly since day 1). We started recruiting as a "hardcore guild going for server firsts" and ended up with a mix of elitist douchebags (people who considered themselves a whole lot better than they actually were) and some of our good players who'd been around since day 1 and were frustrated with the changes. We still never really pulled off being the "super hardcore server first" guild either. That decision really tore the raid group apart in a lot of ways.

My guild used to have different officers in charge of different raid roles. We had a tank officer, melee DPS officer, ranged DPS officer, and healing officer. The raid leader always had good communication with those officers, told them what we needed to recruit, this next boss was better for ranged so we needed to drop a melee, etc, and it was a pretty good system. We actually had quick officer meetings on vent a few minutes before each raid to make sure we were all on the same page. Lots of communication between the raid leader and officers is a good thing.

Also Recount is your friend. Damage meters can be useful, but Recount does a lot more than just show damage meters. You can see how people died (ie standing in fire), who did or didn't do interrupts, who took unnecessary amounts of healing, etc.

[Tziva]

If it hasn't been mentioned yet, I find that taking logs to upload to World of Logs is a valuable resource for troubleshooting.

[Hoky]

I always did this, Check your recount after a wipe on damage taken for entire raid. The person who got hit by the killing ability. No Loot for you! Second if you did down a boss and you have something like Marrowgar bone spikes. You check the DPS meters and check what targets they attacked. If someone did not attack spikes.. No loot for you! Say this at the start of a raid and suddenly you see people doing their best, Especially after they find out you mean it. It is how I got pug people to heroic 7/11 in ICC times as they got their own fate in their hands.

[Hanto]

In my previous guild during DS, I kinda slipped into the RL position because I was strategizing stuff for our 10-man comp, calling stuff out, explaining fights and so on when our GM was not. It started at the end of FL and I took hold of the reigns full-time when DS kicked off. Some major things I did:

Know the fights.I cannot stress this enough. I watched several videos, read about abilities, and read strategies on IcyVeins. I even wrote my own guides in MS Word (and emailed them to the guild) so people could have some literature on what would be going on; I also organized the sections of the guide in a way so that people would only have to read what they would be doing as it pertains to their role (tank/heal/dps) so they wouldn't have to read through two pages of information to get what they needed to know. You knowing the fights will allow you to call shots easier, organize your raid according to certain mechanics and so on.

Know your raid.Another important factor. Know what your raid is capable of and know what your raid is aiming for. If you're a laid back guild and don't care much about progression beyond normal modes, then you don't have to worry much about performance. If you wanna get through the content as smoothly as possible, you need to make sure your raiders know their class, are reforging/gemming correctly and be able to spot if they're fucking up. Don't be afraid to call someone out and ask them to try a bit harder. Constructive criticism is your friend.

Be on top of things.Consumables, addons, raid time changes, posting logs if your guild is detail-oriented, etc. You're going to be the most vocal person when you lead, and you need to be able to communicate with your guildies effectively inside and outside of the raid is a must.

That's all I can think of atm. :3

[Shaley]

I came here to say a lot, but this guy covered it pretty well.

As a raidleader, especially on more difficult content, you need to be able to play your own character completely flawlessly and on instinct. If you need to ever think about your own rotation or job, you will have issues raidleading. When raidleading, you contiously have to pay attention to what other people are doing, their positioning, their timing, ALL boss mechanics, from healer cooldowns, to dps cooldowns, to tank cooldowns, boss timers, combat resses, judgement calls, and outside of combat, check the logs, see who performs well enough, point out who aren't, etc.

If you're not completely comfortable on your own class/role yet, you really shouldn't bother raidleading. Your own performance will drop quite a lot, depending on how good you are. And it's hard for people to take you serious when you're on the bottom of the meters or dead half the time.

Anyway, a bit more OT:
-Be confident in your decisions, especially mid combat. Don't stutter or change your mind three times before making a decision to combat ress someone, or tell the group to stop DPS or not. Be firm and stick to it. Don't risk having half the raid go with your first opinion, and the other half with your second. Not only will a split raidgroup on a midcombat decision wipe you, it will also cause them to not listen to you in the future.
-Be completely prepared for a bossfight. Know EVERY boss ability, know EVERY role on the fight, and how they need to do this most efficiently, know the DPS/HPS expectations/requirements.
-Don't be afraid to call someone out. If you choose to be a raidleader, especially in a higher end (any heroic) guild, you will have to call out when people are underperforming or making too many mistakes. If people apply to such guilds, they need to expect critism, and it's your job to deal it. Be ready for excuses, there will be thrown lots at you. "Lagg", "my class just has low dps", "I need more gear", etc. You should stick to your own opinion most of the times (if you know you're right, obviously) and not take these excuses too serious. Make sure when you call something out it's CONSTRUCTIVE though, going on the offense will just make them instantly feel attacked and go defensive, or shut down completely depending on their age. (~14-17 year olds tend to shut down from being pointed out on their mistakes. "fine i'll just won't bother dpsing then so I won't die" or something similiarilly stupid)
-Have a thick skin. Every raider will complain to you about being sat out, about other people's performance, about loot (if lootcouncil or similiar is used), about any decision you make, about going normal vs heroic, about going heroic vs normal, etc.
-Understand people! Everyone is different, you will have to treat everyone differently. The entire "job" of raidleading is to deal with people, and it's extremely important to know how to deal with them. In some guilds, yelling at your raiders will help make them play better, in other guilds, constantly giving compliments on any kind of decent act will make them play better, (it will be somewhere in the middle for most guilds) just adapt to the people you raid with. Just one basic thing: Don't compliment things that are completely expected, compliment things that go beyond the average/expected. And don't call them out on a mistake if it's their first mistake in two full nights of raiding. (don't have to completely ignore it either, but in most cases, this person will know they made the mistake, and it won't happen again anyway) In my personal experience, truly yelling never helped, nor did sugarcoating everything. You have to be strict but fair, and being too optimistic won't cause people to play better either, but nor will being pessimistic. Be realistic, fair, but strict.

If you've played with a group for a long time, you can "push the envelope" in some ways. I've played with my group for 5 years now, so I can get away with saying / doing things that I wouldn't dare try or say with a new group. Brutally honest, I guess is a way to coin it.

If it's a new group, unfortunately, you'll likely need to save feelings and find a way to correct issues without making the person feel bad. The game is full of a lot of thin skins as of late.

The hardest part about raid leading, in my opinion, is knowing how to play all 11 classes, and all 34 specs. Admittedly, there are a few that I'm clueless on. Cat Druid and Mistweaver monk are the two I haven't had any experience with.

If someone is under performing, it is a great benefit to the raid group to understand how to help someone put out bigger numbers (HPS or DPS), if that is the issue. You can't "play" the class for them, but if you see they have a crappy uptime on DoTs, then you can talk them through a better rotation perhaps.

The downside to this is some people get annoyed with you telling them "how to play their class". If the person truly cares about the raid and progressing, they will take this information in stride and always seek to be better. Sometimes they may take their ball and go home, whining the entire way. Hopefully you're playing with a group that you've known for a long time, and this shouldn't be an issue.


Do not be afraid to take suggestions. Some strategies you see on Youtube may not work for your raid. Use the personnel you have to your advantage. A prime example with current content is Garalon. Some groups 2 heal it, some 3 heal it. Some use two tanks, some one, some none! You'll have guilds that tell you "2 tanks 5 DPS 3 Heals is how we did it" , and someone may immediately respond with "nope, the best way to do it is 1 tank, 7 DPS, 2 Heals." Understand your group, and maximize their play style and strengths.

An example with myself was back in Blackwing Descent on Atramedes. I saw a few videos of people going as a group, moving around the boss to avoid sound. So, I had our raid stack up and move together, counterclockwise, around him, whenever a sound came out. This was when the boss first came out and there weren't any more than 3-4 videos on youtube of him. This tactic did not work for us. Someone suggested we all spread out around the boss, and everyone is individually accountable for their Sound Disc. This work flawlessly for us, and we downed him within 3 pulls (with 20+ wipes due to my bad strategy).


Your raid should expect constructive criticism, and you should as well! If I think of anything else I'll edit my post, Goodluck OP.

Edit:

You might be saying "well obviously" but I'm always SHOCKED when I decide I wanna PUG on my alt and I get into a "guild run" 8 weeks after content is released ad their raid leader doesn't know what some mechanics exist. "Well I never tanked this so I didn't know what happened" shit like that can't happen. You need to, at the very least, know that mechanics exist lol.

Oh my god, THIS ^

The #1 most annoying thing in my guild is that some people just simply don't "know" the encounter. They know their job, and that's it. I can log on a TPS, HPS, or DPS, and do the fight the way its supposed to be done, because I understand the -Encounter-, not my "job".

I'll have a HPS have to go DPS Offspec for a fight if it , say, uses 2 healers instead of 3. My feelings are absolutely hurt whenever someone says, "So, what do I do for DPS on this fight? do I just kill the adds or what?"

How can you effectively, remotely, call yourself a healer, when you don't even understand where the damage output is coming from?

"I just heal colors" is a cop out.

Surround yourself with like-minded people to raid with. The best raid will be 10 people who could be raid leaders in their own right. That situation is far too rare, however.

[Nairb4]

http://ihazlead.com/lead/

Excellent site that's all about leading raids and is being updated often.

[Silentrogue]

You need to decide the general direction/attitude you want to have for your raid group and make sure everyone knows it. Do you want to be more laid back and casual where it's ok for people to miss raids occasionally, or do you want to be more hardcore where being 5 minutes late costs you a raid spot? Pick a direction and go with it.

One of the biggest problems my guild had was that we decided to change our attitude and move away from being casual. We'd always been kind of laid back when it came to raiding. We weren't exactly server first, but we got stuff done and had a good time. One day, all of a sudden, some of the officers convinced the GM that we should start replacing people for doing less than X amount of DPS (even if those people were friends who'd been raiding regularly since day 1). We started recruiting as a "hardcore guild going for server firsts" and ended up with a mix of elitist douchebags (people who considered themselves a whole lot better than they actually were) and some of our good players who'd been around since day 1 and were frustrated with the changes. We still never really pulled off being the "super hardcore server first" guild either. That decision really tore the raid group apart in a lot of ways.

My guild used to have different officers in charge of different raid roles. We had a tank officer, melee DPS officer, ranged DPS officer, and healing officer. The raid leader always had good communication with those officers, told them what we needed to recruit, this next boss was better for ranged so we needed to drop a melee, etc, and it was a pretty good system. We actually had quick officer meetings on vent a few minutes before each raid to make sure we were all on the same page. Lots of communication between the raid leader and officers is a good thing.

Also Recount is your friend. Damage meters can be useful, but Recount does a lot more than just show damage meters. You can see how people died (ie standing in fire), who did or didn't do interrupts, who took unnecessary amounts of healing, etc.

Thanks a lot for your feedback m8...and yeah you are 100% team communication is the way to progress... thanks a lot for your time...

---------- Post added 2012-11-20 at 12:28 PM ----------

If it hasn't been mentioned yet, I find that taking logs to upload to World of Logs is a valuable resource for troubleshooting.

it was mentioned ...but thanks again

---------- Post added 2012-11-20 at 12:30 PM ----------

In my previous guild during DS, I kinda slipped into the RL position because I was strategizing stuff for our 10-man comp, calling stuff out, explaining fights and so on when our GM was not. It started at the end of FL and I took hold of the reigns full-time when DS kicked off. Some major things I did:

Know the fights.I cannot stress this enough. I watched several videos, read about abilities, and read strategies on IcyVeins. I even wrote my own guides in MS Word (and emailed them to the guild) so people could have some literature on what would be going on; I also organized the sections of the guide in a way so that people would only have to read what they would be doing as it pertains to their role (tank/heal/dps) so they wouldn't have to read through two pages of information to get what they needed to know. You knowing the fights will allow you to call shots easier, organize your raid according to certain mechanics and so on.

Know your raid.Another important factor. Know what your raid is capable of and know what your raid is aiming for. If you're a laid back guild and don't care much about progression beyond normal modes, then you don't have to worry much about performance. If you wanna get through the content as smoothly as possible, you need to make sure your raiders know their class, are reforging/gemming correctly and be able to spot if they're fucking up. Don't be afraid to call someone out and ask them to try a bit harder. Constructive criticism is your friend.

Be on top of things.Consumables, addons, raid time changes, posting logs if your guild is detail-oriented, etc. You're going to be the most vocal person when you lead, and you need to be able to communicate with your guildies effectively inside and outside of the raid is a must.

That's all I can think of atm. :3

WOW...you must be a hardcore...u did your homework and solved the bonus question right there...thanks a lot for your pointers...and yeah agree with you all the way...keep it up bro...^^ thx

---------- Post added 2012-11-20 at 12:35 PM ----------

I came here to say a lot, but this guy covered it pretty well.



If you've played with a group for a long time, you can "push the envelope" in some ways. I've played with my group for 5 years now, so I can get away with saying / doing things that I wouldn't dare try or say with a new group. Brutally honest, I guess is a way to coin it.

If it's a new group, unfortunately, you'll likely need to save feelings and find a way to correct issues without making the person feel bad. The game is full of a lot of thin skins as of late.

The hardest part about raid leading, in my opinion, is knowing how to play all 11 classes, and all 34 specs. Admittedly, there are a few that I'm clueless on. Cat Druid and Mistweaver monk are the two I haven't had any experience with.

If someone is under performing, it is a great benefit to the raid group to understand how to help someone put out bigger numbers (HPS or DPS), if that is the issue. You can't "play" the class for them, but if you see they have a crappy uptime on DoTs, then you can talk them through a better rotation perhaps.

The downside to this is some people get annoyed with you telling them "how to play their class". If the person truly cares about the raid and progressing, they will take this information in stride and always seek to be better. Sometimes they may take their ball and go home, whining the entire way. Hopefully you're playing with a group that you've known for a long time, and this shouldn't be an issue.


Do not be afraid to take suggestions. Some strategies you see on Youtube may not work for your raid. Use the personnel you have to your advantage. A prime example with current content is Garalon. Some groups 2 heal it, some 3 heal it. Some use two tanks, some one, some none! You'll have guilds that tell you "2 tanks 5 DPS 3 Heals is how we did it" , and someone may immediately respond with "nope, the best way to do it is 1 tank, 7 DPS, 2 Heals." Understand your group, and maximize their play style and strengths.

An example with myself was back in Blackwing Descent on Atramedes. I saw a few videos of people going as a group, moving around the boss to avoid sound. So, I had our raid stack up and move together, counterclockwise, around him, whenever a sound came out. This was when the boss first came out and there weren't any more than 3-4 videos on youtube of him. This tactic did not work for us. Someone suggested we all spread out around the boss, and everyone is individually accountable for their Sound Disc. This work flawlessly for us, and we downed him within 3 pulls (with 20+ wipes due to my bad strategy).


Your raid should expect constructive criticism, and you should as well! If I think of anything else I'll edit my post, Goodluck OP.

Edit:


Oh my god, THIS ^

The #1 most annoying thing in my guild is that some people just simply don't "know" the encounter. They know their job, and that's it. I can log on a TPS, HPS, or DPS, and do the fight the way its supposed to be done, because I understand the -Encounter-, not my "job".

I'll have a HPS have to go DPS Offspec for a fight if it , say, uses 2 healers instead of 3. My feelings are absolutely hurt whenever someone says, "So, what do I do for DPS on this fight? do I just kill the adds or what?"

How can you effectively, remotely, call yourself a healer, when you don't even understand where the damage output is coming from?

"I just heal colors" is a cop out.

Surround yourself with like-minded people to raid with. The best raid will be 10 people who could be raid leaders in their own right. That situation is far too rare, however.

Pretty much your post + the ones quoted cover every bit on what should be done...much appreciated...i will take everything said above into consideration and implement it will leave a feedback ....thanks a lot once again...

---------- Post added 2012-11-20 at 12:39 PM ----------

http://ihazlead.com/lead/

Excellent site that's all about leading raids and is being updated often.

damn where was this site hiding lol...its a really really good checkup list to be ultra ready for any raid...thanks for sharing...more people should know abt this ....thanks for your golden coin