I think you're taking yourself a little seriously here. Obviously there's a time and place for shenanigans, and progress runs aren't one of them, but the 700th time you're clearing ZG definitely is.
There's a few exceptions I think. Remember C'thun before the portal to Twin Emps room? We would have gone insane had we not done stupid stuff during that long run back. We had rewards from the guild bank for the first person to get back after a wipe (condition that they weren't a ghost before the last person died.)
Make sure you always start in time. Nothing turns down people more as showing up at 19:00 and then waiting for 15-30 minutes for someone going respeccing or buying reagents and the like.
Know when your too stressed to lead a raid - usually theres other people in your guild who can do a good job as well, dont be afraid to lean on them.
Never scream on TS/Vent, even when someone moved on Flame Wreath.
Do 5 minute breaks every now and then. Example: after Curator its usually a good time for everyone to stand up and walk around getting new drinks / food / snacks etc. Raid Breaks reduce the single afkage that goes on by alot, announce them before that people know their coming.
Class Channels are cool - its also a place where people can blow steam off a bit as well, also class specific problems are easier solved here then on /raid .
Don't dabble with stuff you have no clue of - if you never played a Hunter don't advice them on DPS cycles just because you read it on some Theorycrafting forum. Leave that to people who do have the knowledge > Delegate.
Always remain a positive outlook. Raid moral stands and falls with how the RL presents himself.
Playing music, especially "fun" music, on vent is a very good way to get yourself muted by me.
What some people (not directed at you, just a general observation) fail to realise is that some people will NOT think their "fun" and witty comments on vent are funny, or their silly /yell macros. We just want to raid and not listen to idiots. Everyone should be there to raid (if not then you have a bigger problem), so let us raid and remove as much of the clutter as possible. If they want to joke around there are other ways and times than delaying or disturbing the rest.
I agree completely with this. Not being a raid leader in my previous guild, music on vent was never under control. Someone would play something in ZG followed shortly by people not paying attention, causing a wipe (in our 150th ZG clear or so). From here it's only a matter of time before some douche in the raid starts blasting metal or industrial at max volume through everyone's headphones.
'Music/ZG' night made me damn near want to quit raiding, they always ended up as some of the more frustrating and repair-bill-intensive nights in all of my raiding experience.
A large number of our first kills were prefaced by a 3 minute collective VT silence while someone played "Is it 'cause I'm cool" over vent, a song that was immortalized (to us) by our first Ragnaros kill video back in spring 2005.
Music can obviously be bad, but if done properly can improve morale after a stressful night or during a boring raid.
With regards to class channels, we have a tank (druid, paladin, warrior), dps, and healer channel. In general raid leads are members in all 3 as well. BC is a lot more about roles and filling them for a particular encounter.
I should be taking advice from this thread more than giving, but I'll give my experience as a new guild officer and raid leader:
Our old guild (from which the majority of our players came from) used a somewhat traditional GM + 5 elected officers + 2 class leaders per class framework. Worked terribly.
We've tried to streamline the system a bit in TBC in the following ways:
1) Fewer officers, no elections. Basically the guild came about with a few people pushing the idea of forming our own thing. The GM agreed to have 3 people as officers and he makes a lot of the final decisions, but the officers handle the day-to-day junk, like recruiting, handling arguments, helping lead raids, posting strats, telling people to bring pots, etc. It's more of a "let the officers be the taskmasters and let the GM do the high-level decision-making." No elections is obvious.
2) No class leaders, but "role" organizers. Why would we even have class leaders now, when there are usually 3 to 5 people per class? What we use instead are 2-3 pre-designated people who are in charge of assigning roles. One paladin assigns all the healing in the healer channel, and one tank assigns all the tanking in the tank channel. Class-specific issues (who mages AB, which warlocks banish, etc.) are handled in their own channels.
It's worked out pretty well for us. Our GM is a pretty hilarious guy when he wants to be, with a dry sense of humor, but he's the antithesis of a bad cop. I've found myself having to be more of the "bad cop taskmaster" to balance out his leadership sometimes, but that simple technique works wonders. When we wipe, we ask "what went wrong, and how can we fix it?" That, instead of "wtf why did we wipe /yell /yell /yell" is probably the best thing we changed going from pre-TBC to TBC.
I want to thank you all for the responses it help me a great deal.
I just want to share the run down on our first Gruul attempts:
1) I assigned raiders to stick look and know what group they are in and wich group mates they have.
2) Explained Gruul's ability and what to do to counter them.
3) Gave a quadrant of the room to each room to spread out in.
4) Told everyone to not use consumables as its our first pull.
5) Told the DPS to not bother maxing and focusing too much on their dps but instead, to be aware of Cave-ins / shatter and to learn where they can use the objects and to avoid each other.
And so we pulled and wipe at 80% But everyone knew what to expect with shatter. So we kept the same approach on pull#2. And we a lot less ppl died to shatter. Things improved and giving people 1 thing to focus on was a good thing.
So we kept moving the focus from "survive" to "kill gruul seriously" more and more each pull.
Pull 5 (last for our raid, we had a few prob before downing maulgar), we got him down to 28% at growth 14. No consumable used, no flask even on tanks. We are going back monday and with Flask / pots, he's going down.
Good things: Quick explanation on vent and healers / tanks just buying us time for the raid to learn the encounter at first really paid off. No consumable wasted yet, everyone knew that it's gonna buy us the last 28% of gruul's HP. Everyone left the raid happy with a feeling of having progressed and are eager to get back at him monday, because we all know he's going down.
There are many good points in this thread already. One that has been touched on but not elaborated on is the good ole Good Cop/Bad Cop routine. You can also think of it as the Carrot/Stick approach. A raid leader should praise good players, solicit constructive feedback, and chide people who are slacking. If one raid leader can do this, great. If not, many guilds have a second raid leader and each one assumes one of the roles.
Here are comments Good Cop (GC) and Bad Cop (BC) might make:
GC: Let's make sure we're assisting X on those spawns.
BC: You need to enchant those boots. Get stam, or better yet, Boar's Speed on them. X has the recipe.
GC: So healers, how was your mana at the end of that attempt?
BC: You died 5 seconds after the pull due to Hurtful Strike. Walk AROUND GRUUL.
Different raiders are motivated by different approaches. What's ironic is that your more hardcore/skilled raiders might end up liking Bad Cop more.
Honest question, is it inadvisable to be both? I frequently find myself alternating between carrot and stick depending on who I'm cajoling/criticizing and the situation at hand.
Honest question, is it inadvisable to be both? I frequently find myself alternating between carrot and stick depending on who I'm cajoling/criticizing and the situation at hand.
I don't think many people can be both and be able to be taken seriously. It's a fine line to walk and it's one that can separate good raid leaders from great ones. I think most people would be better served trying to play one role exclusively while allowing another officer to be their opposite.
One thing that I always found that works great in leading a raid is to make sure to spend that extra 20 seconds to briefly go over class responsibilities. People tend to tune out strategies when they don't apply to them. How much attention do healers pay when you are going over dps strategy? So if you take the time to call out a class or role and let them know "dps make sure you stay behind him so he doesn't dodge," or "healers make sure you save mana for phase 2 when you need bigger heals," etc... they tend to snap to attention and remain focused for an attempt.
Another thing I found was that if someone is screwing up, they know who they are, but likely won't like being called out. But if you take the first warning as a general, inclusive one, such as "We are really sucking tonight, let's not screw this up anymore and die to stupid mistakes." Those individuals who are screwing up will know you are talking to them, but save face a bit and not be distracted by anger or shame in subsequent attempts. Obviously, if they keep screwing up, it's time for the public flogging.
I find myself employing the whole "bad cop" routine more often to try and humor the raid, which is sometimes needed in a night full of wipes. Taking the negative comments to ridiculous proportions always squeeks out a giggle after the 5th or 6th <10% wipe. But this takes a bit of comedic timing and skill or else you might be mistakingly taken seriously (which I have had happen on a number of occassions). Do it right though and you generate a lot of positive energy and respect.
And I'm pretty sure it was stolen from here, but, recognize when another wipe tonight is just another wipe tonight, magical things don't happen just because you went for the 100th time instead of just 99.
I disagree.
Sometimes bashing your face into an encounter until everything just seems to click does work (ala Four Horsemen or Patchwerk). The moment you get that one amazing attempt, even if it isn't a kill, will always galvanize the raid from tired and pissed to alert and happy to be there. Kills almost always follow suit.
As far as vent music goes, http://leekspin.com/ is an amazing way to end raids early. I used to do it when I was tired, or just didn't want to do certain fights. I suggest any raid leaders or respective leaders play this on vent whenever things are going poorly. At the very least you end the night with a giggle, instead of just quietly disbanding the raid (which is, in my mind at least, what starts leading to a guilds downfall).
I've always been a big proponent of being positive to all your raid members. I've been lucky to have a very nice set of raid leaders in guild, and usually if we're sucking they'll just tell us to take 5 and try again. We always can't be at 100% (as much as we'd like to) and there are nights when people just aren't at their best. Telling your members that they suck and that they're useless is not any way to lead a raid... Above all, raiding should be fun, and being a dickwad to your raiders just because they aren't doing that well is not a way to run a raid.
being a dickwad to your raiders just because they aren't doing that well is not a way to run a raid.
Unless it's a player that's just not paying attention or repeatedly incompetent, which is a detriment to the raid and dampening the fun of the rest of the raid. Chew em up or kick em out. Otherwise the rest of your raid doubts your leadership in that you're allowing someone to affect the rest of the raid. They need to know you're tough but fair, that you'll have the stones to recognize a major issue and be willing to replace someone if they're causing a serious problem.
I try to mix in seriousness, humor, sternness, friendliness, props, and criticism as needed into my raids. It depends on the situation, the players, the content, etc. It's all very dynamic.
I don't know how well I pull it off, but I still remember leading an Aran raid a while back. We didn't have a particularly good raid composition or gear setup, so we just wiped over and over (20 times maybe) before calling the raid. Yet afterwards I had a couple people actually tell me afterwards that it was one of the most best/fun raids they'd been on despite the failure to take the boss down simply because I kept a cool head and tried to keep the raid focused and motivated with some levity to break up the gloom.
That tells me I ain't doing such a bad job.
JUICE! Aww I'm sorry. Did... did anyone want some juice?
Being a raid leader of a "more successful" guild than the mainstream, i have a slightly different view of this than most other here.
Raidleading starts with guild management. Creating a stable raid environment (inlcuding enough showing up) is the single most important part about all of it.
Balancing having roughly the same people but always enough for raids is one of the most important parts that can assure the progress or lead to the breaking of a guild. Its also insanely complicated, maybe now even more than with 40 people in raids.
Make sure people know what they sign up for and tell applicants and new recruits how things are run in your guild, theres no need for bad surprises.
Deligate only up to a point, relying on too many is ineffective and creates an image of being overorganized or plain chaotic. How many you need for it is purely based on the organizational skills and the focus of the people who do it. Being prepared before a raid helps aswell (like having a signup system and creating a template setup before raids, not while everyone is online and ready).
Make sure everyone has fun, that means not only the single persons you take care of, but the large amount of other raiders who find it rather frustrating that somone has a bad day or simply lacks the focus for the night. Replace those if you can and move on.
Have specialists for special jobs. We had to rework our complete healing setup for 4H back in the days, because it was not possible to have enough dodging voids (yes they all were invisible!). Know what some are capable off and what not. Putting players on jobs they cannot do properly is frustrating not only for those.
With theorycrafting during raids you have to be very careful, it should not take longer than ressing and buffing up the raid. Only if its really important have them standing there ready to go while you still discuss stuff, otherwise alot will loose focus.
Addressing problems and fuckups only in tells is insanely ineffective. People who cant stand the criticism of a couple others are maybe not up for raiding (calling it public is completely wrong imho, bec it is in fact only 24 ppl who read/hear/speak about it). You will not teach all nerds to not vent frustration with the blame game. Do not participate and do not encourage it ofcourse. But rather make sure people take bullshit as it is (just bullshit) than to shutup everyonel all the time.
Take the input of all who want to contribute on the problems and then make a reasonable decision. Having some raidmembers in the background who always say "i knew that would happen" is not only frustrating for raid members (and leaders) but again also not very effective.
Tell the guild what goal you want to achieve and why you do things. Plan ahead and organize to prevent problems rather than to solve em later. Continuous good management keeps it together and forms a team that can beat the encounters in a reasonable amount of time.
I hope i was able to give a slightly different view of how things can be run rather than to have 5 phrases people just /sign bec its roughly true.
This might not be the most friendly or the most funny way to lead a raid, but if all sign up for fast and stable achievements, it has proven to be working for our guild.
Last edited by Benita : 04/28/07 at 5:20 PM.
Reason: Too many "ppl".
I think everyone has their own style when it comes to raid leading.
When I first started leading MC raids, way back in the mists of time, the number of things to keep track was pretty overwhelming at first. My solution was to delegate as many tasks as possible: someone else would pick up loot off the bodies and sort out DKP for boss kills; someone else would handle invites when we needed to add or replace players during raids and so on. I reduced my role to explaining strategy, and essentially setting the pace as we cleared the trash.
On the other hand, one of our other raid leaders liked to do absolutely everything himself.
As a raid leader you set the pace of the raid, and I think its worth making the effort to speed things up from the very first time you enter the zone. Trash is essentially the stuff preventing you from getting to the boss and their phat lewts, and most of your raid will be grateful to get through it as fast as possible. Deaths slow the raid down (from time to taken to rez and rebuff people) so step one is keeping deaths to a minimum. Then start reducing the time between kills. During the Attumen clears for instance, I would mark up the next pack while the rest of the raid was finishing off the previous pack (or instruct one of the hunters to do it).
Once your raid knows the basic strategy of what they should be doing for each trash mob, I like to keep the pulls coming at rate slightly faster than the raid is comfortable with - to get through it faster, and to help people stay alert and focussed.
When learning new encounters, the raid leader has to find the balance between discussing the fight and how to improve attempts and Just Doing It. The raid leader can't be afraid to say "Enough talk. We're just going to try again and see if we can do better." On the other hand, valuable suggestions can come out of the collective brain trust of the raid. Example on Shade of Aran: "What killed you?". "The Blizzard - I couldn't tell where it was going to land." "Okay - head into the middle of the room and stand on top of Aran until you work it where it is".
When it comes to dealing with wipes, I don't wait the raid to dwell on the last attempt - I want them looking ahead to the next attempt, and thinking about what they might be able to improve. Wipes are inevitable - the trick is keeping the raid motivated and focused even when things aren't going well.
When you're wiping on a raid, recognizing when to call the raid is also important. Some times trash respawns are the indicator that its time to quit for the night; other times its purely the raid leaders call. You can be positive even in failure by focusing on progress that has been made, and the learning accomplished ("Ok, we got Aran to 40% a couple of times, and no one was dying to Flame Wreath"), and sometimes the guild needs a week to bat ideas back and forth on the forums.
I've found that it's usually better to tell someone specific to do something rather than saying "Somebody do X". If you tell "someone" to do something and there's more than one person that can do that, they'll all sit around waiting for someone else to do it, or you'll get two or three people all trying to do it.
To be honest, I was rather curious how on earth the apparent topic could stretch to all of 3 pages so far. "Raid Leading Chestnuts" might be a more appropriate thread title perhaps.
But, back on topic, some nice nuggets of advice in here, although I find myself wondering more over player motivation to actually raid lead.Especially if a player already has several compelling "real life" responsibilities to contend with. Got to be grateful for those that are up for challenge of raid-leading daily.
Having general channels (Tank/DPS/Healer) is good for discussing strats.
But when the Mages want to blow off steam about the Elemental Shammys getting cloth gear, it's good to have an outlet for that.
As a general question do you grant "immunity" for what is said in class-specific channels? We've had a few um, moments, most recently when a mage got pissed at a tank, criticized them in the mage channel, and this immediately propagated to /o -- not a pretty scene, the MT/officer went ballistic, calling for the mage's head immediately, etc. Granted the mage in question tends to pull aggro more than others, but he has among the best gear, and plays his class to the max, sometimes it just happens.
I was trying to convince some others that having a place to vent frustrations was good, but I got yelled at for this point of view. Our warrior channel was usually a place to blow off steam in the old 40-mans, until everyone and his brother started to join our channel....
If you don't let people complain in chat channels, they're going to do it in tells. As long as the class channel is fairly small, it's a great place to vent. It's much easier to get useful feedback if people know there's places where they can complain without getting smacked down. I dislike talking about people behind thier back, but it's better than the talking happening behind my back as well -- if I'm aware of the complaints, at least I can bring them up if the complainer won't.
As a general question do you grant "immunity" for what is said in class-specific channels? We've had a few um, moments, most recently when a mage got pissed at a tank, criticized them in the mage channel, and this immediately propagated to /o -- not a pretty scene, the MT/officer went ballistic, calling for the mage's head immediately, etc. Granted the mage in question tends to pull aggro more than others, but he has among the best gear, and plays his class to the max, sometimes it just happens.
I was trying to convince some others that having a place to vent frustrations was good, but I got yelled at for this point of view. Our warrior channel was usually a place to blow off steam in the old 40-mans, until everyone and his brother started to join our channel....
I would have come down on whoever propogated it to /o TBH. Venting is one thing. Intentional stirring is another. If mage X vents against warrior A in the mage channel, no harm done unless he's talking about intentionally pulling aggro or not decursing him or something that actually hurts the raid. If mage Y then tells the raid "hey, mage X thinks warrior A is a bad tank, what do you think of that A?", he's causing trouble for the raid and he's the one I want to shut up or leave.
People need to be aware of their audience for venting, though. If you vent against warrior A in party channel with warrior A's girlfriend present, of course it's going to get back to him and of course it's going to be trouble, and then it is your fault for being bloody stupid.
You don't want a blanket "immunity" policy for anywhere, because that will probably just encourage increased bitching with the additional problem that people will abuse the immunity rule to be nasty to people they don't like without risk of retaliation.
Obviously the above won't happen if everyone likes each other, but if everyone likes each other there wouldn't be angry bitching in the first place.
04/27/07, 11:29 AM
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