An Introduction to Raid Leadership

Anias

Primer: Raid Leadership : An Introduction to Raid Leadership

Any leadership position requires a great deal of patience. There are, of course, other skills that will serve you well as a Raid Leader. This Index, along with some associated Articles, should provide a set of resources for the new, and sometimes old, raid leader seeking to improve their understanding of those skills. Patience, on the other hand, will require a different search.

If you find yourself a Raid Leader, and you are desperately seeking information on what that entails, welcome.

Primer: Raid Leadership - Contents

1An Introduction to Raid Leadership
2

[top]Organization

[top]Methods

[top]Focusing the Raid

Maintaining Raid Focus

[top]Identifying Mistakes

Identifying Mistakes in Raiding

[top]Time Management

Time Efficient Raiding

[top]Utilities

[top]Addons

Debuff Monitoring
Death Investigations

[top]Macros

Macros for Raid Leaders

[top]Website Tools

Getting More From Wow Web Stats

[top]Strategy Considerations

[top]Tanking

Tanking, Class Advantages

[top]Healing

Healing, Class Advantages

[top]Damage

Damage, Class Advantages

[top]Encounter Specific

Encounter Analysis, Index of Existing Encounters

• Slake · 10/16/07, 4:30 PM

I've found the following to be useful, you can include them if you'd like.

List raid members below 9500 HP
Note that this includes offline/ungrouped players; you can change 40 to 25 if you only use the first 5 groups. Obviously you can change the 9500 to whatever hp value you want to check.

/script
for i = 1, 40 do
    local u="raid"..i;
    local hp=UnitHealthMax(u);
    if hp < 9500 then
        ChatFrame1:AddMessage(UnitName(u)..": "..hp.." HP");
    end
end

Print the raid id of the targeted player
Admittedly this is more useful for macro-building than direct raid leading, but it can be useful if you want to make a macro to assign raid targets to specific people by using the "raidN" identifier.

/script
for i=1,40 do
    if UnitName("target") == UnitName("raid"..i) then
        ChatFrame1:AddMessage(UnitName("target")..": raid"..i);
    end
end

◊ Anias · 11/04/07, 1:27 PM

Red articles are stubs, if you feel qualified to author that article, feel free to join our growing community of authors. More information is available from Elitist Jerks - Article Creation and Submission

Perakles · 01/03/08, 7:19 PM

I'm not sure how much input you're looking for here, but I'll go ahead and toss out my observations from my time as a raid leader and if they're unwanted, feel free to shitheap the post.

Leadership

Raid leadership is largely a thankless job. In many respects, you're paying $15/month for a high-stress management job. Additional time spent researching, managing drama, evaluating players, recruiting, and discussing with other officers for very little reward. The primary benefit is "making it happen" - a good raid leader is a facilitator who helps 24+ other people to succeed at tasks which would be impossible without organization, strategy, and commitment. The seven virtues of a good raid leader are (in my opinion) Patience, Humor, Discipline, Fairness, Humility, Reliability, and Endurance.

Focusing the Raid

A) Morale
* Morale is the most powerful raid buff in the game. Do not allow your raid to lose this buff if you can possibly avoid it. Once it is lost, it is difficult to regain. Bad Morale is a stacking debuff that makes your raid suck 1% more with each application. At 5 applications, you will begin to see flaky players and "OMG, cat on fire, BRB, *disconnect*" sorts of excuses.

* Some raid leaders successfully motivate through well-placed negativity (see : Sebudai), but as a general rule, players won't respond well to this from the raid leader or anyone else. Be aware of those who point fingers or snap at other players - even if it's warranted, that negativity can hurt the performance of your raid more than a player who's playing badly. If someone is being negative in raid chat/voice chat, privately ask them to refrain from commenting and talk to you after the raid. This will give the player the chance to voice their opinions to you and control the impact their comments have on the other 24 players in the raid group.

* Humor, well-timed breaks, and "cheerleader" players can all have a tremendous effect on raid morale. Don't be afraid to take a ten-fifteen minute break if it will save you an hour of wipes. If you're not Johnny Carson, don't be afraid to send a discreet whisper to a player in your raid who is good at making people laugh and asking them if they think there's anything they can do to lighten the mood.

* Wipes happen - pick back up and go without making a fuss over it. If someone did something genuinely stupid, odds are they feel bad about it already, don't call them out in front of their friends and peers. If it's a recurring problem, ask them privately why it's happening and direct them to someone of their class or role who's doing it right for advice.

B) Pacing
* If you find yourself standing around for more than 30 seconds, or if you are in furious conversation in the officer channel, consider the question "Why aren't we pulling yet?" If there's a good reason, fine, but continue to ask yourself that question. It's much easier to keep a raid going and keep everyone focused when you are constantly moving from challenge to challenge. Keep downtime to the absolute minimum, standing around waiting is a focus-killer.

* Limit downtime by improving your wipe-recovery processes - make sure your ressers are doing what they can to pick up the raid as efficiently as possible (ressing ressers/buffers/mana users first, warning people who are getting resses in dodgy locations.) Identify people who can't be ressed and get them started on the run back ASAP.

* Discourage frequent AFK / long AFK - RL takes precedence, and it's just a game, but at the same time, there are 24 other people waiting on the guy who just took a 15 minute AFK to go grab a snack at 7-11. Try to have a waiting list of players who can step in if someone needs to leave suddenly or for an extended period of time.

Strategy

A) Research/Synopsis
* Odds are that unless you're in the top 20 guilds on WowJutsu, there's some information out there on the progression fights you'll be attempting. Research those fights, read about successful strategies other guilds use to counter boss abilities. EJ is a great source for this, but check every source of information you can find. Watch videos, read strategies, even kill screenshots can be useful in formulating a strategy.

* Most players, however skilled they may be, will not take the time to do the research. Come up with a quick synopsis of the threats your raid will be facing and what your players will be doing to counter those threats. Have your officers/role leaders read up on strategy beforehand so they can educate people as to their specific roles in the fight. A player is much more likely to react correctly if they have some idea what's going on in the fight. Where necessary, make macros for assignments/rotations.

* Try to keep your explanation of the fights short and sweet, to the bare minimum possible. For extremely complex/phased fights, just explain the next phase or two you'll be attempting on this pull. Your raid group will not one-shot Kael'thas on the first encounter, don't bother going through the full details of the fight on voice chat and sending your raiders into a coma before your first pull.

B) Developing a Strategy
* Don't be afraid to modify your strategy to suit your raid group and the skills and abilities of your players. A bear tank may work for <Elite Guild X>, but it may not work for you. On the other hand, don't be afraid to stick with a known-good strategy just because you're having some execution problems. Changing strategies every other pull can be worse for progress than just beating the fight in the plain wrong way through bloody-minded stubbornness.

* Be open to suggestions from your players, some of them will do just as much or more research than you have, will have a friend in <Elite Guild X> who has given them the skinny on the fight, or may just have a good insight into what might work. On the other hand, don't let yourself fall into the trap of strategy by committee.

* Be on the lookout for places you can refine your strategy - just because you can hammer in that nail with a crescent wrench and have done so in the past doesn't mean it's the best tool for the job.

Just a few thoughts/insights.

Sheepy · 04/08/08, 9:12 AM

I am not really sure this part is essential as a raid leader :

Strategy

A) Research/Synopsis

or more exactly, I am not sure that what is explained here cover what any raid leader would have to do. It may seem stupid but I do think that I am not the only one that LOVES to discover things by MYSELF. Indeed it would be simpler and probably faster to just check the abilities of the boss on any website and apply a pre-digested strategy mindlessly, but really, I just hate getting spoiled (and it was such a lot of fun to be 1-shotted by Kael'thas pyro after all the work to get rid of the adds and weapons in a timely fashion that I nearly pee myself :P)

kronchev · 04/08/08, 10:33 AM

Originally Posted by Sheepy

I am not really sure this part is essential as a raid leader :

or more exactly, I am not sure that what is explained here cover what any raid leader would have to do. It may seem stupid but I do think that I am not the only one that LOVES to discover things by MYSELF. Indeed it would be simpler and probably faster to just check the abilities of the boss on any website and apply a pre-digested strategy mindlessly, but really, I just hate getting spoiled (and it was such a lot of fun to be 1-shotted by Kael'thas pyro after all the work to get rid of the adds and weapons in a timely fashion that I nearly pee myself :P)

Honestly if you're going to do that, you should be paying for the raid's repairs as well. If you're not a guild striking out and clearing new content before other people, you already have the marks against you to a "try and see" approach. There are many resources out there because trying to discover strats and making it up as you go along is not a lot of fun unless you are overgearing the instance and/or you are a full 25 people who live for that kind of thing.

Just because the raid leader has more fun wiping and learning, doesn't mean that the other 24 though. It's the leader's responsibility to make the run as successful as possible, even barring his own enjoyment to an extent.

Ceroth · 04/14/08, 11:15 AM

Another useful tool that may seem almost too simple to mention but that might be useful for people new to the position is to develop as much consistency as possible. Examples below:

1) Use a predetermined raid icon marking system, so everyone knows what order to kill in every night. Get people used to one system and stick with it, it will reduce down-time and it's one less thing for people to try to "figure out". Take this to the point of assigning Crowd Control to specific icons and specific people to those icons. You will have some turnover in positions, but the fewer changes you have on a nightly basis, the more comfortable your team will get and the less immediate prompting you'll have to do.

1a) Find someone responsible on the team; raid promote them and have them assigned the task of marking targets for each pull (preferably someone like a rogue, or hunter who has no buffing or other responsibilities in-between pulls). It will help reduce the number of things you have to do each pull and let you focus on watching and leading as opposed to what is really an "administrative" task.

2) To the best of your ability put the same people in the same groups night by night. If G5 is the healing group, keep it the healing group every night, if G3 is melee DPS, keep it so, etc etc. People will get "used" to what abilities and buffs they'll have on a nightly basis and be more comfortable with their own threat generation, DPS, consumables needs, healing needs etc etc if this can be as consistent as possible. Naturally you'll have to swap things up for particular fights, but the more people can be comfortable with their raid role, the more they can focus on maximizing their performance as opposed to trying to figure out on any given night what the abilities in their group will do to their Threat generation or healing needs.

Rendwahar · 04/16/08, 11:39 AM

Another thing I have found, is that when someone who normally plays role A is asked to play role B, cater to them, do not throw them into the lime light (unless absolutely needed). Also, see if there is a way you can compensate them for the respec if it was necessary. The benevolent people in your guild will usually do this role change willingly, and it needs to be known that they are appreciated.

The strongest raid is the raid where everyone is playing the role they wish to play. It will make wipes less painful, and make progression raiding more enjoyable.

Ashkinassi · 01/16/09, 3:10 PM

When explaining strategies for an encounter to a raid or raid members that are new to it, it is very important to be clear in your use of language.

Use absolute terms for positioning ("Northwest of Thaddius is the negative side") rather then vague descriptions or terms relative to positioning ("The right side of Thaddius is the negative side"), unless that is what the encounter calls for ("No matter where he is at, stay to the side or behind Maylgos"). No one wants to feel dumb because they were standing the wrong spot, and you have to do the best you can to not put them in that position, figuratively and literally.

Describe and explain all the sources of damage in an encounter. Make sure people know why they have to be spread out during Sapphiron's Air Phase before they collapse behind an iceblock ("The frostbolt that iceblocks a person also does AoE damage when it hits"). Make sure they know sources of passive damage ("Sapphiron has an aura that inflicts constant frost damage") and direct damage ("Sapph cleaves"). If people know all the ways that they can die, and why, it will be much easier for them to stay alive with a minimum of attempts on a boss.

Know the names of the abilities that the bosses use. If people have to watch for a bosses' cast bar for a specific ability, it is best that there is no confusion as to the name of the ability that they have to react to.

Some people have a hard time with abstracts and all that you can do as a raid leader is be as clear and concise as possible about the challenges that people face. When people understand the mechanics of the fight, they can be surprisingly innovative in coming up with tactical modifications to the strategy that suit their strengths. This serves two purposes. By incorporating individual tactics to the strategy you make the raid members feel that they are important and since they can do it 'their way' they have more fun. Morale goes up, and your raid defeats the encounters. However, you aren't clear about the encounter, the mechanics, or the strategy, then they won't be able to communicate to you or each other what they need to succeed.

Tifi · 02/06/09, 7:22 AM

I'm sorry, but what exactly is the point of this article? Apparently noone's interested in authoring any of the sub-sections, which renders the entire article useless. It's not even a stub, it's just a collection of mostly dead links. It's been up here quite some time now (Created by Anias, 10/11/07), and nothing happened.
I propose that this article gets removed until someone is willing to author a real article.