The Daily Quest: The art and science of raid leading
by Dan O'Halloran 
Jan 30th 2011 at 5:00PM
WoW Insider's on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.
All hail the raid leader! Those super-organized (wo)men who exemplify the paragon of planning, execution and post-fight analytical skills necessary to lead a group of confused, inexperienced and possibly inebriated players into the jaws of hell and return with purples for all. How do they get it done? How do you train for such a gig? The Daily Quest has you covered.
All hail the raid leader! Those super-organized (wo)men who exemplify the paragon of planning, execution and post-fight analytical skills necessary to lead a group of confused, inexperienced and possibly inebriated players into the jaws of hell and return with purples for all. How do they get it done? How do you train for such a gig? The Daily Quest has you covered.
- World of Matticus has started a series of Raid Leading 101 articles. They are covering different aspects of the job (yes, it's a job) including motivation, communication and the pros and cons of 10- vs. 25-man raiding.
- Ferocious Inspiration has also started a Raid Building 101 feature series. They talk about what it takes to get started building a raid group, mixing and matching playstyles and analyzing your guild and recruiting.
- Gray Matter recommends the CompareBot addon for parsing DPS from raid fights to improve your performance.
Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment, and you may see it here tomorrow! Be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW-related sites. Filed under: The Daily Quest
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
jake Jan 30th 2011 5:47PM
I'd say knowledge of class capabilities and recognizing where things go wrong during fights. The second people feel you are not as knowledgeable they lose respect, and you start losing their attention.
One of the best raid leaders i've ever had (he's since moved on from WoW), knew each class so well he can see when you did things wrong, and spoke with you to correct it. This lead to very fast understanding of new fights and less wipes. He easily the the best of his class on the server.
The second thing was being able to spread out your role as raid leader and guild leader. He did a great job of finding co-leaders that can pick up if he's not there, so we always had a rotation of raid leaders of about 2-3. He would go on vacation, come back and everything is fine, and not worry. This also allow the guild to survive so long, since the goal was to always have multiple leaders so when one steps out or down, another can take his place.
Aigarius Feb 1st 2011 11:19AM
Both are made easier by proper use of delegation. If you have a healer lead a ranged dps lead and melee dps lead you can ask questions like 'ok, who else has an interrupt that's unassigned yet?' or 'are healers clear on what you are doing?' and depend on the corresponding leads to know their fields.
CDave Jan 30th 2011 8:10PM
I'm so glad you mentioned inebriated people :) I've introduced many a drinking game to my guild for raiding that makes farm bosses exciting again. Also random PUGs go from excrutiating to hilarious. Maybe I should get help? Agreed; where's that bottle of Dr.'s...
Estrogen Jan 30th 2011 10:15PM
Not sure that drinking would fix anything at this stage in the game, at least not in the era of healers being tight on mana and the dependence on having enough DPS to finish an encounter before the said healers are completely out of tricks.
That said, a year from now, I'm sure we'll be back to our old dranky ways (at least in the content we currently face).
Roidrage Jan 31st 2011 4:20AM
I had a ureka moment after the raid last night. We were discussing how to get new people raid ready and how best to ensure they understood raid tactics when it hit me.
Why not have raid spectators. I think the idea came from reading about Bliz developers who actually watch the boss fights to identify bugs and fixes they need to make. I imagine there don’t actually have a character in the raid but have a camera viewpoint where they can follow the raid.
Now imaging that you could sign up for a raid as a spectator. You cant interact with the raid at all and your character doesn’t actually appear but you can view from a top down camera. This way you learn the specific way your guild does the fight.
Firestyle Jan 31st 2011 7:53AM
I'm not sure how you even begin to teach raid leading and/or all the skills required to raid lead. It's a lost are of wow and I respect anyone who tries their hand at it. They certainly have much more going for them than the sea of QQ posters on the forums these days.
Aigarius Feb 1st 2011 2:38PM
Raid leadership is at its core leadership. You have to be a great leader, a manager. That is not easy in raids, just like in companies. It is a good training for managers, really.