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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast Topic: What makes a great raid leader?
by Aiden James Kosciesza 
Feb 20th 2011 at 8:00AM
Raids are a tricky thing. You have to have good tanking, healing, and DPS in the right proportions, people who listen and prepare and pay attention. You have to get those people online and motivated at the same time, and you have to be able to learn from your mistakes and change your strategy for the better. Most important of all, I think, you need a great raid leader.
When I first joined a raiding guild in BC, I was thrilled with the raid leader. He was Australian, so it was great listening to his accent over Ventrilo. I remember him as being very cool-headed and completely on top of what was going on each pull. If we wiped, he'd tell us what had gone wrong and what we were going to do to fix it, and he led us to many victories. He played a tank, a tiny gnome warrior with a shield nearly as big as he was, but he had alts of almost every class and he knew all their abilities perfectly. When he eventually decided to leave WoW due to real-life issues just at the start of Ulduar, the guild tried to go on without him, but it just wasn't the same. I eventually left and went through a few guilds with mediocre raid leaders before finally founding my own. Now I'm once again lucky enough to have a great raid leader, a paladin tank who studies the fights, analyzes the data, keeps his cool and quarterbacks our raids to victory.
What are the qualities that you look for in a great raid leader? Do you need someone calm and relaxed, or does a fiery raid leader push your performance to the next level? Is raid role (tank, healer, DPS) a factor in a leader's quality?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 4)
Lucas Feb 21st 2011 7:29AM
I've been guildmaster in WoW for the past 6 years, and I've seen them all.
- The "nazi" officer only there for the loot.
- The "The fun hammer" officer who made jokes, didn't take stuff to personal, but hammered people for mistakes.
- The "Drunken" Irishman, who made it a lot more fun to raid, but was bombed out a lot of the time.
- The Militaristic Romanian (The ogre) who had everything laid out, knew people in theraids abilities and such...
- And my self.... which I'll comment in another thread.. :)
I actually think the language barrier have been the toughest obstacle in our guilds history, it was easier when we where a mono-lauguage guild, being a multi-cultural guild tend to make people "sense" different prononcations differently and a "get out of the fire" I'm sure must mean "stay" in some languages... !... or?.
From all the above experience, I have learned that a few qualities makes a raidleaders work.
Basicly, there are a few ways to lead the raid that makes up for some qualities
- Don't be a hot head- keep your rage attacks offline.
- DONT start arguments or dissagreements DOING the raid take it after.
- Give CLEAR goals to achieve _EACH_ day/time you raid.
- Tell people of what YOU exspect to happen
- Give Short Commands to people, WRITE them in /RAID to make sure it's "on paper".
- Use Tools (eg. Raidmarks) to demostrate where to stand and how to procede, tell people 1-2 phases at the time.
- Have both a Raid Leader, and a Raid Coodinator in big raids helps a lot.
- Be realistic with a hint of optimstic all the time.
- Make good breaks, but be sure people are back, slack means unfocused people for 10-15mins.
- Fun is a release vent, but forget when there is raiding.
- Most people need CLEAR commands from _one_ person only. But you can 'have ability Spotters on some fights, who helps the Raid Leader focus on the more important things.
- Best overview for Raid leaders, IMHO, comes from Tanks, > Ranged DPS > mDPS > Healers. Healers are good at watching the status of the raid, but since healers are the one class type which needs to make choices in fights, making choices for others tend to be a raid wipe. (not always there are raidleaders who can both)
Anyway, I've been raidleading myself for the last 3½ year now... 2-5 times a week, and Personally it's a takless job, made only difficult by the fact that people still do what ever they want to, and you can't kick them physically in the arse when they mess up! ;) I've stopped being a raid leader on hardcore raids, I personally didn't want to be the Raid Leader, but that's how it ended up, I'm by far not perfect raid leader, I could do a lot of things differently, but I've always believe that people excel a lot better if driven by a carrot, than by a stick, and I've heard that I'm doing it well, with a hint of sarcasm at time, which I guess Is a Danish Trait I won't be able to loose! ;)
//TAllens'outa