Raid Leading 101

I thought I’d skip the introduction about myself and jump right into providing some (hopefully) useful content for the readers this site should have soon

This guide will be an attempt to help out new raid leaders get into their groove of leading 25 man raids (5/10 mans dont really count for much in my book), and will hopefully be kept updated with things I pick up over time.

If you care to know a little about me, I’ve been playing the game since the middle of BC, but it was only till March of 2009 where I decided it was time to become a guild and raid leader.  While I’ve only been leading raids for a little less than half a year, I hope I can help out

Background

Raid leading is not for everyone.  Controlling and monitoring the actions of 24 other players is not a simple task, and among other skills it requires, the major one is patience and assertiveness.  Some successful raid leaders are total dicks, others are so nice it makes people want to perform well, and others are complete nerds who will explain every detail of every fight (no offense if you are like that ).

What usually separates the good raid leaders from the poor ones is a simple knowledge of the game, or the raid leaders that are misinformed.  If you are trying to lead a raid, you had better know beforehand what you are leading.  Being misinformed on boss strategies or on class mechanics will detract from your authoritative position as a leader, and may cause problems for your raid or even further down the road.

Class Synergy

If there is anything that irks me the most about a given raid it is class synergy.  Raids with 10 DPS DKs, or 5 rogues, or 4 druid healers all annoy me.  While Blizzard has been seemingly trying to push their WTPNTC (Bring the Player, Not the Class) concept, there is still a line you cannot cross when building a raid, regardless of the circumstances.

If you are unsure what class/spec brings which buff, I strongly recommend using MMO-Champion’s RaidComp tool.  With it, you can see if your ideal raid comp is actually covering the myriad of buffs currently available in-game, or if you are lacking any buff that may noticeably increase the DPS of your raid.  For example, my raids are usually melee-heavy simply because we are still recruiting ranged DPS.  We noticed we were in dire need of a feral druid, so we went and picked some up, receiving a noticeable increase in the DPS of our melee DPS.  It’s as simple as that.

I won’t go into specifics as to how you should fill your raid or with what classes, but always keep in mind how classes work with each other.  If you have a caster-heavy raid group, you should probably have an elemental shaman and boomkin in your raid group for some really nice increased DPS.  This applies to tanks as well, as different classes of tanks are better for different situations and different boss mechanics.

Micromanagement

Unless you are running with an experienced group of raiders who have raided together, there is a certain level of micromanaging that a raid leader must do to avoid wipes.  Things like assigning what tank is tanking what target, what each healer should primarily be healing, and monitoring interrupts, kicks, disarming, etc, are among the list of things you should be prepared to manage.

Recount, or another DPS tracker, in addition to running WWS parsing for future analysis is absolutely required.  It let’s you analyze where your DPS is, who are your stronger and weaker players, and helps you if you need to split your DPS evenly for a boss fight.

You should be assertive if people are underperforming by either calling them out on Vent (yes, I do believe that a polite but firm “call out” of someone underperforming in a raid can help), removing them from the raid, or asking them to flask.  I can’t count how many times I’ve removed people from raids for simply having incredibly low DPS or dying consistently; there is no reason to be carrying people through raids.

Trash Marking & Crowd Control (CC)

I know.  I know.  With the joke that was Naxx, it seems that everyone forgot how to mark and cc mobs.  We were all seemingly used to simply “just AOE that group”, that the skills we learned in T5 and T6 content had to be relearned.

The only instance currently available that needs CC if your raid is even half-way decent is Ulduar.  Ulduar has certain pulls with 7+ trash mobs, which require a lot of your DPSers to keep things CC’ed.  You should always make use of the best type of CC you have, which included, but is not limited to:

• Warlocks – Enslave demons, Banish elementals/demons
• Druids – Hibernate dragonkin, Entangling Roots melee mobs
• Rogues – Sap humanoids
• Priests – Shackle undead
• Mages – Polymorph humanoids
• etc, etc, etc.

Marking is important because it helps get stuff killed, and it is way more efficient (and less confusing) to say, “Kill Skull”, rather than say “Kill the Faceless Horror”.  Remember, many of the people in your raid group may not take the raid as seriously as you, and may be listening to music while raiding, not listening in vent, tabbed out during explanations, and things of that nature, so marking targets for CC and specifying a kill order can help out significantly.

Ventrilo

One key thing every raid needs is Ventrilo.  If a PUG raid I join isn’t using Ventrilo, I usually immediately leave unless I know the people in the group.  Regardless of how competent people may be, Ventrilo can often be the discerning difference between a fail and wiping raid group versus a successful group.  Ventrilo is used to communicate important information, who is doing what, and how the fight is going to work out.  It can be used to let healers know who is tanking, who has x debuff and needs extra heals (or that people should move away from that person), and can even save a wipe after the MT dies.

You need to make sure your raiders use Vent seriously during raid times, and keep it clear of useless chatter (off-topic conversions, asking for buffs, etc), so that it can be used to successfully down bosses.

Leading Pick-Up Groups (PUGs)

This is pretty much an entirely different topic altogether, I won’t even get into this on this post.

Boss Fight Explanations

I personally believe that a lot of raid leaders over-explain boss fights.  You, as a raid leader or guild leader, probably know your players and their average age, but, for the most part, WoW players are probably somewhere between the ages of 16-24 (completely made up stat, but that’s my guess).  At any rate, the average attention span for WoW general demographic isn’t that large.

If you are leading your raid through a fight most of your raiders have never experienced, the best thing to do is explain quickly and put in some reps on the boss.  If you do feel inclined to explain every single aspect of the fight to your raid, then at best, you should definitely summarize the fight mechanics, and piece together everything you said.  To think that 24 people will sit through a 10 minute explanation is completely naive, between checking your buffs, chatting in /1 or in guild chat or in whispers, and other things in game, people are generally very distracted.

I’ve often found it helpful to simply explain the first phase of a new fight, and only worry about the next phases till we have the first phase done perfectly.  That way, you are not bogging people’s minds down with information about 2 phases they won’t see for another hour, and most of the people will have forgotten what’s going on during those phases anyways.

Remember - there is nothing more important than you knowing the boss strategy 100% beforehand.  I cannot stress enough how awful it makes the raid leader know if you don’t know a fight, and will ultimately be what wipes are attributed to, even if its not the case.

Evaluating Boss Encounters

Another thing I don’t see enough raid leaders do after a wipe is analyze what went wrong.  Too many leaders just want to get back into the encounter, without even seeing if something in the strategy or raid is flawed, if someone STILL doesn’t understand the encounter, or if someone simply isn’t pulling their weight.

After any wipe, you should always ask yourself what the problem was.  What went wrong, who didn’t do what, and how it could have been avoided.  Fixing the problems in a previous wipe and learning more about the boss fight is what I usually refer to as progression.

Recommended Addons

• Recount, or other damage meter, primarily to monitor DPS and damage taken.
• Omen – shows threat for all players on your target, which is helpful if some of your DPSers don’t already have this addon.
• X-Perl, or other UnitFrames, can be very helpful in seeing how raid healing is doing, who is taking damage, or easily see who is dying when they shouldn’t be.
• Failbot, let’s you know who is consistently failing to things easily avoidable and even calls them out in raid for you.
• Raid Assistant Assistant – I like RAA simply because it automatically promotes people to Assistant that I tell it to.
• Big Brother – shows you everyone’s buffs, flasks, food buff, pally buffs, etc, so you can easily address who needs what.
• Deadly Boss Mods – Your raiders should have this too, but as a RL, I strongly advise you call out those particularly important boss timers or shift-click them into raid chat.

Conclusion

Raid leading is not easy.  There are a lot of moving parts, but in the end, it can be a very rewarding experience.  Always remember the ultimate reason why you are raiding – whether it be for casual fun, hardcore progression, or somewhere in between, you are there to down bosses, and get loot.  It is your responsiblity as a raid leader to do everything in your power to make sure this happens, and in a timely fashion.

Macbook

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