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Lead Raider: Tips, tools and thoughts on Raid Leading

Welcome to the first ever instalment of

Lead Raider

Simply named because not only should a Raid Leader be taking control and running the raid but they also need to be leading the way in many areas and setting a good example. There will be weekly posts on this subject, most likely on a Friday after our usual Thursday night raid although sometimes this might run into a Monday after our Sunday night raid. Topics will be wide and varied but they will all relate to raid leading and any lessons learnt, I’m not going to make it all warm and fuzzy, sometimes there are going to be big mistakes made by people, including me and there will be times I should have done something different. There are also times when my three years experience as a RL will kick in and I will know how to handle the situation to get my desired outcome, I have made my own mistakes and learnt valuable lessons from them in the past. I’d like to share the ongoing journey with anyone who will read.

New Guild, New Raiders, New Team

So here’s the low down, myself and my brother have recently started a new guild, it’s only small, it consists of real life friends, family, long standing in game friends and a few people that we like that have been picked up along the way. We don’t raid five times a week, and we don’t intend to. We run 2 raids per week with some adhoc ones happening depending on numbers and the desire to go more often. We are not that well advanced as a guild, individually we all posses some skill, I’m not saying we are ever going to crack world firsts but we are good enough to complete the content as it stands. Now with any guild there tends to be a few people who drive the raiding forward. One of those people is me, I raid lead, I lead raid.

So here we are about 3 weeks old as a guild, I have run about 3 raids so far, with a few people that I’m not familiar with coming along so I can make my own assessment of who can do what and now we are scheduling regular raids on Thursday and Sundays, the forums are up and loads of things are happening right down to a guild lottery. Now it’s time to focus on the raiding and getting people to the places they want to see/be.

Not making the same mistakes again

So here’s the crack, I’ve been a raid leader in a guild before, with varying degrees of success, but there are a number of harsh lessons learnt from the way I did things, that I’m trying to make sure I put into practice, in short here are a few key thoughts that I don’t want to lose along the way and make the same mistakes again while also building on the successes.

One bad apple can ruin the barrel

Exactly what it says on the tin, one bad, lazy person with a bad attitude can ruin the whole thing for a lot of people, don’t be afraid to put your foot down and curb any bad habits or attitudes from the start. There are a bunch of people that are relying on you to keep things running smoothly so keeping the majority of your team happy and running is your priority. The needs of the many over the needs or wants of the few. Most people that I run with are a touch older than your general World of Warcraft raider, the reason behind this is purely logistics and attitudes. We don’t like children in our guild chat, it does get a bit rude and is full of banter that I wouldn’t want young children to be part of. The other reason we are mostly an older guild is that we raid later than a lot of guilds and we only run twice a week. Why? Well because a lot of us have families, jobs and real life, we take our commitments outside the game as important and as adults we are able to prioritise and organise our life to accomplish our game time versus life balance. That means that when we do get together to raid twice a week the time is very valuable, and as such people need to be organised, on time and focussed on the same outcome. Already I have removed a member from the guild for a bad attitude, not following the duty I asked him to perform in raid, he chose a different vehicle and refused to be a gunner in Flame Leviathan in Ulduar, which although didn’t effect the outcome and we still downed the boss (as you would expect from and encounter this easy) it was only our first raid and I was identifying who would and who wouldn’t be an asset to the team. Repeatedly ignoring my whispers so as to avoid confrontation in the raid chat and giving me a “whatever” attitude as if to say he will do whatever he wants. This went on for about a week and a couple of warnings were given, the problem was simply bad attitude, he was a good resto shammy but obviously felt like that meant he was above giving other people respect and doing what he was asked. Three warnings is all that I give and sometimes not even that many, I decided that he was not the correct type of person we wanted in the guild and removed him and his alts. That leads me to the final point about this, it’s the people and the attitudes as well as the skill that make a raid team, let no mistake be made gear is easy to get these days, essentially you can gear a character up in around a week to full epic so choose your people wisely and don’t be afraid to get rid of those with an attitude problem. I was thanked by more than one member for dealing with this situation in the appropriate way, members who I didn’t realise were being effected by it, just goes to show that one bad apple can ruin the whole barrel if you don’t remove it as soon as you can.

Rules, rules, rules…. Or Common sense?

One mistake that I felt I made the last time I was in an Officer and Raid Leader position was the making of too many rules that are just plain common sense. It’s a fair guess that if you have to write everything down for your members that you think is common sense then you probably need to get new members or at least jump on ventrilo with them and have a bit of a chat. There are some common sense areas that go without saying. Be prepared for the raid (I do have my own raid preparation list that I share but its not exactly a set of rules), be on time, don’t go afk all the time, all these kinds of things are general knowledge and just form part of respecting your team mates. If someone cant follow these without constantly being reminded then it’s likely they need to re-evaluate their ability to commit to a raid team.

So what are the rules/expectations that I have set? Quite simply they are as follows.

• Be prepared, I mean flasks, foods, potions, full enchants and proper gems.
• Be punctual, if your not there when invites are being done you will just miss a spot, don’t moan about it afterwards it’s not my fault either.
• Do your job, if I ask you to do something, I expect it done, otherwise we run a million versions of strategy and nothing works.
• If you have a suggestion on how to improve, say it, but not during the middle of the encounter, I am open to ideas but please whisper me.
• Stay the whole raid or tell me way in advance at the start of the night that I may need to replace you.
• Don’t go afk all the time, I do give breaks, but if you must go afk at least warn me otherwise you might just find yourself dead.
• Keep your temper to yourself, mine is bigger and a lot worse so lets not let them flare up shall we.

While these may sound a little harsh it’s actually very fair, everyone knows where they stand and constantly breaking the rules/expectations and letting people down lead to the issue of a “Strike” three of these and your out of raiding for at least a month and during that month you have to turn up to every raid and sit on the bench hoping for a spot until you can prove your reliable again, if your not willing to do that then you can leave or be kicked, quite simple. This all sounds mighty harsh so I need to make the point that we have a lot of fun on vent, people sing and laugh and joke, and it’s not at all nasty and serious, but everyone knows the line and where it is crossed I come down hard. Bosses are focussed events and as such get the concentration they deserve.

That’s it for this post, I’ve got some stuff to catch up on so there will be another post before next Friday but this one is quite long enough I think!

As ever, comments and suggestions, thoughts or just plain ramblings are welcome, just no rage rants or bad language else they get deleted!

Cheers,

Crusader.

Last Updated on Saturday, 10 July 2010 23:49 Written by Cybac Thursday, 24 September 2009 13:35