How to Raid Lead?

[Silentrogue]

Hello,
This thread is just for info and to see how raid leaders lead and how do they control their team .

Just what I said up above any pointers, guides will be much appreciated and will be beneficial to anyone who is up to take lead in raids or to even making a raiding guild and how to recruit raiders…

Regarding raiders performance is there any add-ons that can be helpful to see what and who is failing? Logs?

Any info/tips will be helpful …thanks in advance

[Justignoreme]

Recount is a useful tool for more than just dps. I used it to analyse whether we had too many healers or too few if a fight wasn't going well, see if interrupters were doing their duty, see who nuked the raid with which debuff they were supposed to run out of the raid to drop, etc. That just takes experience, really.
As far as recruitment, trial runs were always necessary, with LFR out, LFR is a perfect place to gauge their individual performance at least. As far as keeping people content, disciplining raiders who don't show up for their commitments, and trying to be fair with loot distribution etc, that is basic management, and you have to realise early on you can never make *everyone* happy.

[Silentrogue]

Recount is a useful tool for more than just dps. I used it to analyse whether we had too many healers or too few if a fight wasn't going well, see if interrupters were doing their duty, see who nuked the raid with which debuff they were supposed to run out of the raid to drop, etc. That just takes experience, really.
As far as recruitment, trial runs were always necessary, with LFR out, LFR is a perfect place to gauge their individual performance at least. As far as keeping people content, disciplining raiders who don't show up for their commitments, and trying to be fair with loot distribution etc, that is basic management, and you have to realise early on you can never make *everyone* happy.

Thank you very much for your feed back...its really helpful.

Would like to hear from the rest of WOW community or anyone who would like to participate.

[Vargur]

Addons are obviously a given, stuff like Recount/ORa3/World of Logs/PhoenixStyle, see who did great/who failed and act accordingly.
A great read is also this, for your uninitiated new raiders. I never fully ready it myself, but it's basic stuff in there that everyone should know.

Most important is the actual leadership, don't just stand idle and wait for stuff to work, it never does. Take matters in your own hands, be the voice everyone listens to, be it good/bad. People need a leader.

[Silentrogue]

Addons are obviously a given, stuff like Recount/ORa3/World of Logs/PhoenixStyle, see who did great/who failed and act accordingly.
A great read is also this, for your uninitiated new raiders. I never fully ready it myself, but it's basic stuff in there that everyone should know.

Most important is the actual leadership, don't just stand idle and wait for stuff to work, it never does. Take matters in your own hands, be the voice everyone listens to, be it good/bad. People need a leader.

nice...thx a lot for the manly reply...i cant check "this" as it is blocked on my pc @ work but will def check it when i get home...thanks a lot m8

[Kevyne-Shandris]

Important to get an addon that tells who is using what buff/flasks/food as well. Be surprised how many don't even flask up, despite it helps.

Found this one handy: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/raidbuffstatus

WoL is the best WoW has in studying the progress of a team (other games like EQ2 and RIFT use ACT which has detailed breakdowns [it's like a personal WoL]. Something WoW needs, especially since ACT allows export to a database and/or saving files to your desktop including graphs. Neither Recount or Skada has such feaures).

[Silentrogue]

Important to get an addon that tells who is using what buff/flasks/food as well. Be surprised how many don't even flask up, despite it helps.

Found this one handy: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/raidbuffstatus

WoL is the best WoW has in studying the progress of a team (other games like EQ2 and RIFT use ACT which has detailed breakdowns [it's like a personal WoL]. Something WoW needs, especially since ACT allows export to a database and/or saving files to your desktop including graphs. Neither Recount or Skada has such feaures).

yeah was wondering what was this addon i saw it once but didnt ask what was it...^^

thanks for replying...ill get on WoL and observe stuff there

Thanks again

[Vampyren]

My advice would be to use some addons, but focus mainly on making sure everyone knows tacs in-and-out, and be sure to have a good mood in the guild at all time. My old guild i led used too do this, we all helped around in Heroics, LFR quests, farms etc. Since we did this mostly everyday, the average on the guild went up really fast, gear advanced much faster and we used an easy principle, "Help me, help you". Due to this, we have some good progress now and epic progress back in Vanilla, TBC, Wrath and Cata ^^

[Vargur]

Yeah forgot about RBS, I don't lead our raids but I'm using it extensively. Still needs some tiny updates for MoP.

[Terridon]

Moshic mentioned most of the addons.
Fatality is a great addon too. It simply tells who died from what, in the chat.
If people care the least, they get rather annoyed with themself, from seeing them being listed as the one that died in the easy to avoid-AOE, 2 times in row, and try to avoid it in the future.

A good thing is if you have the time to look around and see what happens during any encounter. Sometimes people are simply hit by rng.

Best thing. Be nice to people :P

[Deleted]

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.

[Aceshigh]

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.

Many good things can be echoed in this thread already, but this is one I wanted to touch on because it's almost NEVER brought up when people discuss this. People talk about how you should treat other people and how you should call out mistakes, etc. but you REALLY need to be on your game and know your shit. Your performance will decrease as a raid leader, I don't care how good you are, it will decrease by some degree. You're watching other people more closely, you're watching timers, you're calling things out, you're adjusting strats mid fight and adapting to what goes on around you, etc. What Dutch said is extremely important, it's hard for people to take you seriously when you're last dps ever time/always dead/missing huge parts of the fight because you're playing "catch up" while calling. You will lose your raiders respect/attention fast if you're the one fucking up attempt after attempt and wiping the raid and without that respect/attention it is impossible to lead. People don't wanna listen to "the guy they're carrying".

Now I'll just add some of the other things that I feel are important.
- Being able to quickly understand an encounter and all of the mechanics in it, within just a couple of pulls, and then understanding what to do with them. In your first couple of pulls check combat logs/world of logs/recounts/skadas/etc and see exactly what is happening to you and formulate a way to deal with it. If you're not progressing stuff the week it is released, go check out videos and guides. 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.
- Make sure that people know you're the raid leader. It's great to have raiders who can chime in and say "hey I noticed in phase 2 that we can just use hand of sac on the tank and let him take a second hit if we need to" or "We can 2 heal this fight if people use personals on Force and Verve", etc. Those kind of people are amazing to have in your raid so you don't have to hand hold every single person every step of the way. What you don't want are people who just straight up try and change your strat after you've been progressing on a boss because they feel like it. You can't have 4 or 5 leaders calling the fight/doing strats whenever, it confuses people.
- Understand other people's classes as well. Understand the cooldowns you have at your disposal, understand what classes can and can't do well (Ret having amazing burst, rogues having incredible cleave, Hunters being great at kiting, HOW your tanks avoid damage and which will be better for certain encounters *prot pally MT on heroic stone guard 250k DPS and 80k HPS lol*). Know their classes and how they'll benefit your raid.
- Understand you if you only have the exact amount of raiders (10 or 25), shit will suck sometimes. Real life happens, people miss raids, people do absolutely terrible on bosses and hold everyone back, etc. Having some people who don't mind subbing in when others can't make it or whatever is a huge boost to your raid. Can get tricky to manage bench players, specifically in a 10 man guild, but understand you won't get 100% attendance from everyone it's just not realistic.
- All those things are important, but remember you're managing people. A lot of times the trouble comes outside of the instance and are things that will only be brought up to you in private or things you will only bring up to others in private. Know how to manage people.
- Understand that the people in your raid are actually human beings and treat them as such.

[Vargur]

Moshic mentioned most of the addons.
Fatality is a great addon too. It simply tells who died from what, in the chat.
If people care the least, they get rather annoyed with themself, from seeing them being listed as the one that died in the easy to avoid-AOE, 2 times in row, and try to avoid it in the future.

A good thing is if you have the time to look around and see what happens during any encounter. Sometimes people are simply hit by rng.

Best thing. Be nice to people :P

PhoenixStyle includes so much more than a simple death reporter. It can even export to bbcode format for colourful and insightful forum usage. Auto-marker, auto /w on missing rebuffs, /w for invites/disband, various boss addons checker and their versions, raidachievements..

[Silentrogue]

Moshic, Aceshigh, Dutchmagoz really really appreciate your help it is extremely helpful...thanks for putting your time into this, it means a lot...and once again thanks to all...

if anyone has anything to add please feel free...

[xindralol]

regarding who's 'failing' as you call it, just pay attention to the fight and what other people do (usually easiest as a tank since that's the easiest job in a raid) if someone say, is idle in between casts as a mage you notice that he's bad (or a clicker), or if someone moves *out of the fire* after 1-2 seconds of jujst chilling in there you knnow he's terrible ... you don't need logs to figure that out

[DannathGR]

This is basically the topic I want my podcast(Regression on YouTube) to cover mostly.

It's really important that people know why they died and if it was their fault, that they don't let it happen again. I used to use the add on acheron for this but I don't think it's working anymore.

There's a couple of mindsets in raiders that are just not compatible with a sustainable guild... most people think that they are the best player in the raid, obviously that can't be true. It's a RARE thing for people to actually be self-critical, those make the best raiders.

[Pascal]

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.

[Deleted]

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.

[Deleted]

Shout more dots every 30 seconds and cus a lot

[Silentrogue]

Shout more dots every 30 seconds and cus a lot

Loled ...yeah that probably would leave me alone in the guild