I converted in the other direction (Hunter->Resto Shaman). While there are situations where I have to rely on my raiders to provide me with some reactive information due to a particularly involved healing assignment, most of the time I can observe just as well (or even better) than I could when I was DPS.

As a raid leader employing a new strategy, you are only concerned with a couple things when stuff breaks down: How did it happen? and how can we make sure that never happens again?. Sometimes it is strategy related, but a lot of times it's "if you guys don't stop dieing to X" or "if that mob isn't killed faster" we are going to have problems. Breaking down the strat into fundamentals and then having people repeat them is all that really needs to be done, and I find it's best to let a fight play out and then tweak the strat to add more control as needed rather than over-think it right off the bat.

Your idea intrigues me. How far would you allow communication to go? Take 4h for example - I think you'd have to allow some form of communication to simply assign which tanks are on which horseman and which healers are healing those tanks (this would go for any fight) but other than that, keep communication to an absolutely minimum (at least raid related). General banter is of course welcome =)

You could probably do it by thinking ahead and doing any assignments for execution fights like 4H before the raid starts. I've noticed in my 10 man that due to the roster being relatively consistent (1 or 2 shifting spots, max, and typically just DPS), people start splitting off into their respective initial positions on Thaddius, Gothik, and 4H before the raid leader assigns spots. That might get a little less straightforward with 25 people, though.

For general banter, you could probably have people talk in guild chat, and tell them to stick to saying things that someone sitting out/playing an alt/whatever would feel just as involved in as those in the raid. You could still say "Inoko's mirror images smell like moldy cheese - discuss", but not "Rhaegal needs to stop getting hit by Lava Waves." Same with vent, if you choose to use it--make it not a requirement for the raid that night, but invite anyone in the guild (in the raid or not) to come on and BS.

You could do 4H without talking. By then, everyone knows it's a "BK" run, and is playing accordingly. You enter the room, and two that know they can handle the back, decide to go back. If more go in, one drops back - it evens out. Same in front; the tanks just naturally split up, and so do the healers. One DPS sticks to the Thane tank (assuming you run it that way). Then one person pulls, and off you go.

Same goes for any fight that takes coordination. Worst case has a couple of people who seem to keep changing sides because they see the other one do it; that won't last more than a couple of seconds.

We did a lot of mostly silent ZA bear runs in my guild, because even after everyone learned they respective roles, they still needed to concentrate quite hard on performing well, thus bantering was at a minimum. Some orders had to be given of course, like running in at the eagle boss or aoe at the dragonhawk, but mainly it was just everyone knowing what to do and complementing each other to ensure success (and 10k gold if it was a sell run ).

However, I can't see this being really viable in 25s, especially if you want to promote communication within the raid, which I found to be a good idea. If you want to delegate any tasks, like e.g. announcing timers/abilities, you sometimes have to "force" your officers to speak on ventrilo. Anything going in the opposite direction can throw you back a lot. And believe me, it can get really tiring, if you are the only one talking during boss fights.

On raid leading while at the same time doing your job: I've found that from easiest to hardest was: off-tanking (e.g. adds at KJ, elementals at Sartharion), ranged DPS (I have a mage and an elmental shaman), healer (even with CoH spam), main tank (too many buttons to push), melee DPS (getting in the top 10 is a reasonable goal).

Calling: "handle it" and then recovering a wipe is really uplifting, but you also have keep an eye on people who try to "handle" things on their own, causing a wipe. A good example is when the MT healer sees a lack in raid healing and tries to help. It's surprising how skilled and experienced players can do something this stupid, instead of telling the raid healers to do their job.

Also there's a danger in going into too much detail and not enough while outlining boss strategy/tactics. Too much, and people will not be able to focus on their respective roles well enough. Too little, and they might run in the wrong direction trying to avoid "the fire" or not prioritising something because they do not understand how important it is from a more objective view.

I think that it's better to err toward the latter than the former. Telling someone to do one more thing on top of what they're already doing is fairly simple and easy for someone to adjust to. Trying to get someone to do six or seven things they aren't familiar with often prevents learning any of the mechanics properly.

It's a basic principle of game design; don't throw your game mechanics at the player all at once, but in pieces so they can assimilate them more easily. Even if it means your players will not be fully aware of something that's going to be thrown at them, it's better to make sure they have everything else learned first, and wipe, than it is to try and make sure they know absolutely everything beforehand.

Exactly how much one withholds is going to depend on what your raiders already know and their aptitude for raiding, but even with expert players I've found this principle holds.

A raid leader that speaks to his players individually doesn't neccesarily give them more slack than one who doesn't. In your example I would have often asked individual players what went wrong. If they failed to adjust after being personally addressed, they would still lose their raid spot.

Archimonde however, has the luxery of sending players jumping off a cliff to prevent tears failing. Let them train on doing it 10 times in a row without failing once, and you have a perfect cliffjumper. Avoiding the fires however, that is where people show their real skills in not standing in the fire.

You have much to learn, young padawan.

Jokes aside, you're describing problems that should be more than sorted by the time the Buster Keaton run makes sense. That's about as sensible as trying to hop on one foot when you can't even walk straight.

I agree that it's not necessarily communication, but rather what is being communicated. If you're trying to "teach" your raider to not be retarded then you may be fighting an unwinnable battle. The first step is determining what can be fixed with practice or with education and what simply can't be changed. The speed of someone's reflexes, the speed that they learn, and they're ability to think and adapt on the fly are generally fixed values.

The people who "stand in fire" are the same people who's keybindings never worked on Gorefiend, and who didn't know to turn Bloodboil away from the raid when they had Fel Rage, or to run away from peolpe when they got parasites on Illidan until told to over ventrilo, Archimonde is an obvious one too. It's not that they don't try their hardest, but simply cannot pay attention to doing their primary job on par with the rest of the raid, and monitor their surroundings and debuffs. For these "bad" players, if they pay attention to fire, their primary job will suffer heavily (dps less than tank, heal mostly themselves, horrible threat generation, etc).

The ranking of the guilds on any website like wowprogress, is a linear graph going from 0 players who are "bad", increasing upward as you move away from the top guilds.

Simply put - the longer you want your progression to take, the more of these players you'll have and the longer you'll tolerate them in your raid and make excuses for them such as "they're a good friend", or "their attendance is great". It all comes back to that blog entry by Kyth about the purpose of your guilds. You either play to make efficient raiding progress, or to play with your friends even if they suck. You cannot have both, and as a raid leader, it's your job to eliminate the people who continually fail at simple game mechanics, if you want your raid to grow stronger and progress farther at a quicker pace.

This truly is what it comes down to at the end of the day. I do recognize that there are recruiting concerns and guilds that aren't at the top of the pile don't have their pick of recruits. This complicates things and makes the beefing up process a lot slower. But what I have seen is that this often isn't even the main problem in nearly all the guilds I've observed. It's the constant making of excuses, or unwillingness to bench/sit people, or whatever. Guilds want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to be the nice guy and let all the wonderful people they love comes to raids, but then they get frustrated when they fail to make progress and their guild sucks.

A common thing I've noticed in these types of situations is that the raid leaders take a very passive-aggressive and/or indirect tone when it comes to addressing failure. Instead of calling out individuals for their mistakes, they say very general things to the entire raid like "you guys need to stop failing at x", "everyone needs to pick it up and pay attention, "all/everyone whatever". This allows them to vent their frustration at the lack of success without actually dealing with the confrontation of calling out the individuals responsible for the failure. If you hear (or are the one saying!) these indirect/passive aggressive castigations then you're very likely dealing with a leadership that is trying to have it's cake and eat it too with regards to progression and roster management.

In nearly all cases it's only a handful of individuals (often the SAME ones) who are doing most of the failing. Calling out the entire raid for the failure of a few is a good way to put people on the defensive who aren't doing anything wrong and is a good way to sow drama and a lack of respect for the leadership. The leadership needs to CHOOSE and get away from the indirect route. Either you're going to accept that you're raid has bad players in it who are holding everyone else back (and you get to be the nice guy who doesn't yell at people or kick them) or you're going to choose progression and you need to directly confront the people who are failing and ultimately bench/kick them if they fail to improve in a given time frame.

I can see an extra benefit to ten man raids. Someone keeps failing at the heigan dance or never makes the Thaddius jump costing you a kill, or a wasted reset if you're looking for achievements? Take him to the smaller version, maybe even PUG the whole thing, or bring your alts for a bit of slack, and keep an eye on him. It's a lot easier to see what goes wrong when there's only 9 people rather than 25. And, on the plus side, usually there's also the bonus of a somewhat more forgiving tuning of the encounters.

Few days ago in 25 naxx, we had 3 consecutive wipes on four horsemen even if we cleared naxx 4 times before. At the 4th fight, our guild leader was so pissed that the offtank died that he left in the middle of the fight. But even with 2 people less including our best healer(leader), we manage to kill it.

I think this kinds of shows the point discussed in page 2, sometimes long instructions and explanations are useless. You just gotta say "handle it, I don't care why we're failing or who's the noob, just kill the boss" That's what our guild leader indirectly said by leaving in the middle of the fight.

I think the reason why it worked, it's because it puts responsability on raiders. Suddenly, you don't care about the loot you'll get or topping the damage meter. If you don't kill this boss, it's over, raid is done. I think it can make a few people in the raid realize that it's really important that they don't screw up.

On the other hand, the "handle it" approach can fail horribly if your raiders cannot think a bit by themselves.




On the discussion about good raiders vs friends, I think it's like that in real life too. Do you think Bill Gates became the richest man in the world by giving endless tries and chances to people who just couldn't do the job? He fired them, maybe losing some friends in the process but at the end of the day, who's earning the big salary?

The good thing in WoW is you can boot friend from the guild if they fail, but they'll still be your friends, after all it's just a game. One of my best friend is in a better guild than me, and he don't want to ask the guild leader to invite me if I don't get better gear because he knows it would harm the guild to have me raiding with my current gear. I don't take it personnally, I can still PVP or do some heroics with him alot.

Emphasis mine.

It isn't this simple. There are people who, like you, won't take offense to being booted or told they aren't good enough. There are people who, unlike you, will. It's a matter of perspective, situation, and communication. If booting/disciplining friends were so simple as you imply a lot of guild drama wouldn't exist.

But it kind of is.

If you let what your perceived reaction a person may have to a situation dictate how you handle it then you aren't a good leader. Leaders make the tough choices. If someone throws a tantrum about it after the fact that isn't their problem. If the leader made the right call, the group will understand it, and mob rules will apply. People want to follow someone else who is in control and command of the situation. Not someone who is afraid to make a tough decision because they could hurt someones feelings. That is exactly the point he's trying to get across.

I would say it's a balance. You can't just do things without regard for the consequences. On the other hand, you do need to be decisive and take action when action needs to be taken. The key to this is building respect amongst your members so when you do have to take extreme action like sitting or kicking your decision won't be questioned or naysayed. Being a politician is important in sensitive situations. If you know benching/kicking someone may cause other individuals to react negatively, be proactive and actually go talk to those people. Broach the subject lightly, ask what their thoughts on it are, and try to explain your motivation. A lot of times you can preempt drama before it even happens with clear communication and making sure people know you actually care. I think the leadership of most guilds that have the balls to actually make decisions (and this itself is rare!) don't go the extra mile of trying to communicate effectively and act the part of the politician to minimize drama fallout.

I disagree. Understanding a person's reaction is pivotal in how you handle a situation. What it should not change is handling it. You don't avoid the situation because resolving it will make someone mad, but you do dictate your approach to doing so on the affected person(s) and their likely response.

There are many situations where doing so can hurt your friendships even though "it's only a game". What I was primarily addressing was the sharp implication of that dismissive phrase. It ignores the emotional investment many people have, insisting that anyone and everyone will be entirely pragmatic and objective. This is simply not true, otherwise this thread would have no reason to exist.

I'm not arguing that one should or shouldn't boot friends from a guild. That decision is going to be made entirely based on what kind of guild and friends you have. I'm simply objecting to a dangerous ignorance of the human condition, knowledge of which is crucial to effective leadership in raids and guilds of all types.

There is however, one thing that makes it possible to shift some (!) players out of the "stand in the fire" group.

Some players actually are not aware of how important not taking preventable damage is (whether lethal or not). Sure, they may intellectually understand that but deep down they hate moving and always hope for "someone else needs to move, so I won't suck". As a result, they don't get into the mode of "I WILL learn to watch my surroundings" and thus they will fail anyway.

If you are able to break that, the player can fully move the other group. I've seen this happening several times, and it may be worth the effort if the player has other assets to bring (like being reliable) - as long as the raid is reasonably casual and does not push for a spot in the worldwide Top 100.

What are people's thoughts on publicizing failures in order to force improvement?

I recently ran 10 man OS the other day, and after we wiped on Sarth, the RL posted in /ra a list from DBM of who'd gotten hit by the lava wave. Later, he posted the damage meters. Both of these really bothered me, because I feel that puts an uneccessary amount of public shame on people, making them feel embaressed and singled out in front of the raid. Certainly if someone's having a problem it needs to be addressed, but I always felt a friendly but serious whisper works so much better.

Of course then again I don't have a huge amount of RL experience (I'm leading my first raid tonight) and it might be totally necessary. What are your thoughts/opinions?

Public criticism helps morale because it is obvious to everyone that you are aware of a problem and are trying to fix it. Whether or not is is appropriate depends entirely upon your guild's culture and overall goals.

Phrasing and word choice matter. In my experience, something like "I don't understand why you keep getting hit by Flame Waves" is usually more effective than "Stop sucking and stay out of the Flame Waves". This is because at least some of the time you will be mistaken about why somebody made a mistake, and other times you will simply be flat-out wrong. It also encourages people to analyze what's going on and how to improve it, instead of just focusing on venting or feelings of frustration.

As a raid leader, it is also very important that you be up-front about your mistakes, even if it is very embarassing. ("That was my fault, guys. No excuses, I just fucked it up.") Own up to it in Vent/TS/raid chat and take responsibility for doing better. Nobody is perfect, and we all screw things up. People can accept your mistakes as long as they see you being accountable for it.

It also helps people to accept your criticism when they see you being openly critical of yourself, and encourages them to step up and be accountable for their own mistakes without you having to call them on it. Leadership by example goes a long way here.

Amen. I'm not currently leading raids but I am the WWS-master for my guild - after our first Sarth+2 kill last night (yeah we're not exactly world-beaters) I posted extra links to the incoming damage breakdown from lava waves and void zones, basically saying "if you're near the top of this list, you gotta sort your shit out if we ever want to beat Sarth+3". And I was near the top of the lava wave list myself, so I made sure to fess up to that.

I also made sure to say that people needed to think about WHY they were getting hit (rather than just saying "stop doing it!"), and explain why I thought I'd been screwing it up (too much focus on health bars, but also that I was positioning myself based on the position of Sarth, which is obviously not 100% reliable, rather than on known good spots on the ground), in the hope that it would lead people to do their own analysis of their play.

How are people going to improve if they never know what they did wrong? It's important for raiders to be able to take criticism, as well as react to and improve from their own failures. If their name appears on the "got hit by a firewave" list, they should react and take steps not to be on the list next time. For the same reason, WWS/Damage meters are a way to show people who needs to improve.

A lot of it comes in the way that the person is presenting the information to the public. If the guild leader posts it and then makes an asinine comment then people are likely to get a bit ticked off. If it's presented in a more "hey you need to improve" manner then it is very beneficial.