This is funny -- I do this as well out of habit, even when it's not really needed. I probably do talk more than needed on anything but the most trivial trash, but if it does, in fact, keep people even slightly more engaged, or something I say does remind someone of something they've forgotten, then I suppose that's helpful.

Two things I'll throw out there, though there's a lot to say on this subject:
1) Vent discipline is really important. The raid does not need to know that "fuck, I'm dead" or have ten people calling out where that Giant Eye just spawned, and four of them getting it wrong because they can't tell east from west. One thing people who raid with other guilds frequently tell me is that they can't believe how comparatively quiet our vent channel is. Obviously there's plenty of time to chat during downtime and random trash pulls. But if you beat it into people's heads that when something important is happening, Vent is only to be used for communicating crucial pieces of information, you'll all be better off for it in the end.

2) Pay as much attention to what the raid is doing as you are to your own job, and if you can't (you're MTing Heigan or something and need to really focus) then make sure you have a couple of people acting as your eyes. "God dammit, stop sucking!" is not constructive criticism and if you can't offer any insight into how or why your raid wiped after a wipe happens, people are going to get frustrated quickly.

I'd pay good money for an mp3 of Gurg leading a raid.

It's also probably a good idea to keep people from telling others what to do taht aren't raid leaders: IE. DPS telling healers to heal the tank, DPSers telling people to remove debuffs(usually incorrectly: PRIESTS REMOVE THE CURSE or DRUIDS REMOVE THE DISEASE, that kinda stuff). Leave that to class leaders and the raid leader.

One amusing thing that an old guild of mine did was to /rand 40 and have the chosen one explain the fight. This was for farm content of course but it actually brought a little accountability to recruits and at least made some people be a bit aware of what was going on. Sure it can slow things up a little but if your guild has a reasonably high turnover rate then it on occasion was worthwhile I think.

I'll echo one of Tuco's points though (never thought I'd say that!) and stress that praise is public and condemnation needs to be private. Nothing brings a raid to a halt faster than a couple of healers sulking because someone pointed out in vent that the tank had zero heals for twenty seconds. In the end of course a real raidforce needs to have mutual respect and trust though. I certainly have my emo moments when I feel like some people/classes are slacking or being idiots but hopefully that is transitional. Once I feel comfortable in relying on others to support my own role, I can do what I do so much more easily. Having solid officers in charge of tanking, healing, dps and so on goes miles towards achieving that.

I do this as well. There's a long list of things I always say, in a sort of even and robotic way, no matter how many times we've done the content. Not only does constant talking keep people attentive, and occasionally prevent them from forgetting about something, but it puts them in a familiar setting.

By the way, have any raid leaders contemplated recording themselves and just sticking it right into your guild's boss mods?

I'd love to listen to Gurg leading a raid as well. Both because it would be useful for me as a raid leader to improve how I run things and well because I'm a fan. :p

I started using short breaks every now and then and it's working wonders. No more constant " tank x is on a a quick smoke" waiting before critical bosses.

Announce beforehand that when and how long breaks you are going to keep, and ppl know that they'll all go for the smoke simultaneously and fetch their foods / coke's / beer's etc, so no more constant waiting for the 1 missing person. Having 10-15min breaks every now and then has actually helped us to clear bwl faster and generally our AQ's are less painless also.

Not to mention that my own raiding experience is much better now. General ppl can usually mind their own business, but raidleaders generally are really on their toes all the time and this constant need to be aware of everything going on is exhausting. It also helps a alot if you can divide task. For instance let dkp-officer take care of bidding to let your own brains take a short break after every boss kill. If it's raidleaders task to set up groups optimally, have a healing officer tell healers who heals who and how etc...

Yeah I would appreciate the same thing if it could be done. :) PM, email, on this thread, whatever works.

I used to think "I shouldn't need to tell people all this trivial stuff" mainly because we'd done the encounters so often - until the one day I forgot to equip my onyxia cloak on Ebonroc and died tanking him on the first breath.

If you realize there is a *ton* of stuff to remember, and people can have a blonde moment and forget something trivial. Multiply the failure rate over 40 people and suddenly the chance of someone forgetting something obvious at some point during your whole raid becomes almost 100%. If having people say "melee put on your onyxia cloaks", or "tanks click off salvation" for the n-th time saves someone crucial forgetting it once it's worth it. We assign someone to call out 'hide' on chromaggus breaths, or call out people's names for plague for the same reasons - it's a little touch and it's not necessary, but it does cut down on those lapse of concentration errors.

I've now gotten into the habit you mention - I tend to overtalk, but I think it helps. Our TS channel is fairly clear too. I dislike using the high-bandwidth communication channel (TS/Vent) for trivialities - people have learned to use /s or /g for joking around - even during light trash.

I've recently started leading raids and I was amazed at how often you have to repeat seemingly trivial things. You need to remember to say them in a positive way too. For example on the very first mob in AQ40, we let all our hunters and mages run dry on mana. I noticed insanely better results by saying "You can waste your mana harder than this" instead of "come on, waste your freaking mana already".

We have to tell people how to move on thaddius before every single attempt, just done 10 tries? they still need telling!

But yeah, the major difference between a good raid leader and a poorer one is often willingness to endlessly repeat the most obvious and trivial crap just so that the guys who are drunk/drugged up and watching tv/masturbating during farm content have a clue as to whats going on.

Its also important (imo) for a raid leader to know pretty much every ability of every class and how they affect the fight you are at. A quick whisper to someone to do whatever it is they should be, instead of what they are doing can be quite useful (yet completely useless if you end up shouting at a priest to decurse more :P).