I'm the RL for our guild and we've downed Vashj a couple of times now and we're working on Kael right now. Progress is very difficult to measure on Vashj as you mostly just wipe on P2 over and over and then finally...it just clicks and you're swimming in the green goo of P3. This needs to be explained to the team as it can get discouraging to be seemingly stuck in one spot when really everyone is learning their roles and you'll get to that pull where it all works.

Kael is much cleaner in terms of seeing real progression from pull to pull so you get past one phase into the next, it's easy to be positive even though it's another long night of wipes, no loot and large repair bills all around. We've been working on it the past two weeks and fully expect to see a kill this week or next at the latest as we're working on P4 now and are past the toughest phases. Everyone is upbeat because we've made steady progress every night.

It's sometimes difficult to keep things private when discussing someone's performance. If it's an overall issue with someone's inability to play the class properly, by all means take it offline and in private. But if someone misses a Tainted on Vashj, I have to call them out in raid because I have to know what happened so I can make an appropriate in-raid response. I try not to ridicule the person, but they have to be accountable, too.

KISS is definitely the way to go in these epic encounters. Only explain one phase at a time. I didn't bother to explain Kael P3 to the raid and how I wanted to approach it until I was satisfied that the weapons were mostly dead in P2. I didn't explain anything about P4 or Kael's abilities until we were downing the advisors consistently in P3 and it was clear we were ready to move on. There's only so much information you can convey to the group before their eyes just glaze over, they stop listening and people start to /sleep on you.

Pulling the plug is usually a good idea if you can sense the fatigue in the group. We try to keep our raids to about three hours. Anything more and people just start getting slaphappy and sloppy. We've called it early when it was apparent for whatever reason that we were hopeless that night. If you're really struggling with Kael, maybe go farm some SSC for a night or two and give him a rest.

As far as feedback goes, I'll allow in-raid feedback on specific tactics, but I do not allow it in-raid on overall strategy. This is an important point for me. For example, we use the AoE strat for the weapons on Kael. When the first few pulls don't go so well, I get five different tells from people telling me how their brother's guild did it and how we should change everything and do it this way or that. We'd waste enourmous amounts of time if I entertained all these suggestions. If you want to challenge the strategy you do that offline in the official forums where I'm happy to debate it. Having my authority challenged in game and giving in to complete overhauls of strategy usually leads to long frustrating nights where nothing gets done and we just spin our wheels trying different things. Only after I've digested a night or two of work (and WWS reports) will I consider changing overall strategy.

As a RL you need to come prepared with the best strategy you can for YOUR guild. And I can tell you right now, if you're just reading Bosskillers for tips on Vashj and Kael, you're not doing your homework. That may work for other fights, but not these. The beauty of these fights is there are many different ways you can do it sucessfully and it really has to be tailored to the strengths of your gulid. We run pretty caster heavy so AoE is natural. When a couple people start saying we should single target I politely decline and continue on with my methods. I'll keep on with the same strategy that I've researched exhaustively (a lot of reading of +1500 response threads on EJ) until I know the strategy itself if flawed and it's not just the execution. Changing strategy mid-stream means everyone has to learn different roles all over again and it can really set you back.

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