How do you make/keep your raid focused?

Hadria · 12/30/07, 11:49 AM

Its a rather simple question but I am posting it because I think its one of the main problems for me as raidleader atm.
To explain may "problem" I will just summ up our latest raidprogress:

We have reached Mother S. 3 weeks ago and from that day on we cleared to Illidan in 2 days in both of the next 2 weeks without any real problems. Now we spent 5 full raids (4 hours each) on Illidan and still we struggle to kill him. Not because we have problems with a speccific tactic or do something wrong but because we wipe due to small, stupid mistakes caused by a lack of focus all the time.

For example:

Shear gets through in phase 1/3 = wipe
People overaggro on the flames in phase 2 = raid toasted
People stand to close to the flames in phase 2 and get toasted = not a wipe but still makes it harder
People forget to stop dps between phases 3/4 and get aggro = more toast
Peaple "forget" to get away from Illidan when the demonheadthingys spawn = bad

After 3-4 of these wipes focus seem to completely fade from the raid and we struggle to get any decent tries untill we reach the end of raidtime and I call the last try (which is usually a rather good one).

So how do you make sure that ppl stay awake and focused over a long raid and do you have any suggestions, funny ideas how to avoid the needless wipes? I am really curious about this

DaveA50 · 12/30/07, 12:03 PM

Threaten to /gdisband if he's not dead next raid when you see the focus leave. That is how we got kael and archimonde downed the first times, as we did kill them the next attempts. If you don't wind up killing him with that threat, well, /gdisband.

clavarnway · 12/30/07, 12:07 PM

Originally Posted by DaveA50

Threaten to /gdisband if he's not dead next raid when you see the focus leave. That is how we got kael and archimonde downed the first times, as we did kill them the next attempts. If you don't wind up killing him with that threat, well, /gdisband.

That's a bit harsh! Threats are only effective if you follow through with them if you don't get what you want...I wouldn't have the testicular fortitude.

Amarysse · 12/30/07, 12:16 PM

DKP penalties for slacking and no other bosses done or farmed until they are killed again.

Simple, effective and gets peoples attention. Not only that but the people who arent slacking will get on to the people who are cause they arent gaining anything.

Klasto · 12/30/07, 12:22 PM

DKP penalties and harsh criticism work best if your guild is in the position to do that.

aleyro · 12/30/07, 12:23 PM

Ask yourself- are these "lack of focus" issues new to your guild? The players who are underperforming right now: how did they do with C'thun? 4HM? KZ? Vashj? Vael? Did you wipe those encounters for weeks as well?

If yes, then maybe there are some bigger-picture issues going on here.
If no, then maybe its just that.... people have a hard time staying focused during the holidays. There's a ton of stuff going on, peoples minds are (understandably...) elsewhere.

My guild took a break from raiding for the month of December. We focused on other things: alts, getting our bank in order, PVP/Arena, etc. Our raiding schedule starts up again later this week, and our players can't wait to get back in the mix- I expect a level of enthusiasm that we haven't seen in months.

Krazen · 12/30/07, 1:03 PM

To be honest, I think butting your head against a single fight for 4 hours straight can lead to this. Unfortunately, flask durations don't allow for a more reasonable 2.5-3 hour progress night. I personally would rather raid ~3 hrs a night.

But do you get better performance in the first 2 hours than the second 2 hours?

Pamine · 12/30/07, 1:07 PM

My guild has the same problems but we're no where that far. We're stuck on Kael right now, and our typical attempts go like this:

- p1, 2, 3.. several key people get killed by Thaladred.. reset
- p1, 2, 3, 4.. Kael tank gets exploded on the pyro cause we still have 2 advisors and a weapon up and people didn't pay attention to kael
- p1, 2, 3.. Sanguinar tank dies
- p1, 2, 3.. Sanguinar tank dies.. again
- p1.. warlock tanking capernian dies..
- p1, 2.. axe doesn't get MDed, blows up casters

Thing is this has been going on for days. At this stage in progression we don't exactly get tons of skilled recruits knocking on our door. It's very hard to find people of the right class to recruit. So this makes raiding somewhat frustrating.

Machia · 12/30/07, 1:30 PM

We don't offer DKP as we run a loot council so that isn't an option for us.. not sure about the OP but what I usually do is have a guild meeting every week. I'll outline what I expect to see out of my members, what areas I want to see improvement in and so on. Usually it comes down to a handful of members that just feel they can get through the content by doing the bare minimum now that the game is "won". I try to identify who those people may be and will talk to them privately. It's a disease that can easily spread throughout your guild however, and can soon cause even your more dedicated members to not want to login. One thing I am trying to relay to my members is that even though the game is "won" there are several areas for improvement.. try beating your DPS/Time records of previous kills each week. Try different matrices such as less healers and more dps. Try to keep things interesting and keep people involved. Whatever you do however you need to do it sooner rather than later as it can develop into a serious problem.

Pyros · 12/30/07, 1:35 PM

Well there's a few ways when fighting a boss to keep people focused. First is quite annoying for the leader, but it's pretty much to call everything that's going on. It generates a lot of vent/TS spam, and doesn't leave room for other information you could miss, but if you start calling out names and specific stuff, people should wake up, somewhat.

2nd is the obvious carrot and stick system. Use the stick hard(remove dkp, forbid bidding for a week, pay repairs/farm consumables for the guild before he can raid again), and promise a big tasty carrot(huge dkp boost, free gold from guildbank, a thousand of virgins, whatever floats your boat).

If all else fails, you need to make example and simply kick the underperforming people. The problem comes with recruiting new people, you should start checking cross server applications, or maybe recruit 2casuals for 1kick, people who can only raid 2days a week. If you move up in content, you should be able to get new recruits(like if you down illidan, you'll probably get more crossserver applications, if you kill kael you can probably recruit more too) and replace the casuals.

The last way to keep focus is to reduce downtime to a minimum. Yell at people not running back fast enough or going afk before buffing and stuff. The faster you can get into another try, the less people will get distracted by what's on TV just before the pull. Same goes for trash back in the days, I would always force chain pulls so people wouldn't get the time to get "out" of the playing mood.

Malan · 12/30/07, 1:39 PM

On the other it could be that you've been driving hard and people are having a lack of motivation throwing themselves at what the perceive to be a wall. If you didn't take the holiday time off from raiding you could consider taking a at least a few days down from either the entire raid cycle or at least from pushing at whatever is giving you trouble. Get people back into the groove of kicking ass on farm content and eventually they'll be eager to get back at the new boss with renewed energy.

Grubsnik · 12/30/07, 2:11 PM

The basic premise is that people can't keep their focus for 4 hours straight. That is very understandable. Mistakes will happen, as people get used to other people fucking up, they zone out, just waiting for everyone else to learn from their mistakes, so you can proceed. While zoned out, they fuck up, adding to the list of people making mistakes, zoning out and so forth.

Basically the best way to solve this issue is call a break. Not a "finished for this evening" break, but a "everyone take 10 minutes of fresh air" break. This of course requires everyone to understand that they had bloody well better be back at their keyboards in 10 minutes time. The best way to avoid mistakes is just to say, take a break everyone be back and ready to pull at xx.xx server time. It's important to note that wipe recovery is not "break time" since people have to be in their seat getting back to the boss, buffing up and be ready for the next pull.

Amarysse · 12/30/07, 2:21 PM

Well, generally speaking ill ask in vent if anyone has a problem and why they are doing stupid stuff. If they are tired and the general concensus is that we could do with a break then we will have on. If they persist ill have a go at them. May or may not work but the people in my guild know me very well and can tell in my choice of words and tone of voice that i wasnt happy, never had to raise my voice at all. They also know the raid leaders dont take any crap and will come down on people like a ton of bricks if people are out of line though at the same time its not often that it is needed.

If it still persists then we have a sit down and chat with the slackers and tell them if they dont get their fingers out we will be demoting them to backup raiders and letting someone more reliable take their place.

Again it all depends on the guild, got to try find a solution that works for the way you do your raids.

Buiden · 12/30/07, 5:20 PM

For example:

Shear gets through in phase 1/3 = wipe
People overaggro on the flames in phase 2 = raid toasted
People stand to close to the flames in phase 2 and get toasted = not a wipe but still makes it harder
People forget to stop dps between phases 3/4 and get aggro = more toast
Peaple "forget" to get away from Illidan when the demonheadthingys spawn = bad

1. Your main tank should not need his hand held at all, if he does consider finding somoene who is 100% self sufficient. So regarding shear well, yeah.

2. All the rest of these items are things that as the raid leader it is your RESPONSIBILITY to remind people of. People will fuck up if you do not constantly remind people of the same shit, over and over and over and over. If we went to kill Leotheras today, 8 months after we first killed him, I would still have to remind people to DPS off at the appropriate times or bad things would happen. It isn't because you're littered with bad players, it is that most players simply do not pay that much attention to the nitty gritty important details that make up all these fights, nor care to remember them.

When we do any fight no matter how many times we do it, I always remind people of what is coming so that they can be prepared for it. If you don't you're only shorthanding your raid. It only takes 1 person to forgot something they should be doing to ruin an attempt at a boss so even though 23 people might not need that reminder, it is well worth it if only 1 person did need it.

Also mentioned in other posts, keep progression nights short unless you are making meaningful progress. People need time to absorb strategies so trying to force a kill by staying 1-3 extra hours is not something I'd encourage. The exception is if you are completely confident he could be killed in that window.

Phantasie · 12/30/07, 5:34 PM

Like many have already said......

Use voicecomm!!! Many of those can be fixed (or should be fixed) by simple reminders if they are indeed "forgetting". No matter how many times we kill illidan(or just about any boss), I still annouce all major phase changes and tidbits of important information like watch aggro, don't stand at X spot, move back, demon phase coming shortly, lazer on right/left side, etc etc. I do this so we won't wipe to simply forgetting, because I don't want to waste another 20 minutes. Sometimes I even forget to say something, but theres always someone on vent that notices noone has called 'stop dps for aggro' and they will say it themselves.

Yea I sort of get tired of saying it and im sure some of the raid members get tired of hearing me talk, but it beats the hell out of wasting an hour's time due to forgetful thinking - so I just talk, 1 or 2 shot him, and then we're on our merry way.

I'd say our quietest fight is Illidari Council, we only really say something when a mage needs to counterspell or the rogue gets bop'd after vanish. I think everyone just puts on some music and just gets in the groove.