Officers' Quarters: Mailbox roundup 4 -- raid leaders

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

10-17-2011 @ 6:43PM

LynMars said...

Why have one assigned raid lead if the main guy can't make it--or you don't have one?

Our raid lead recently got a new job which is making it hard for him to come each night currently. So someone else has stepped in to run those nights. We also have a couple others capable of running the raid, and they have in the past. They have varying styles of leadership and levels of class knowledge (for other than their own), but they know the encounters and how we, as a group, tend to do them and can work with the players. They don't always want to run raid, but as officers, they take on the duty as needed to just get us through that night and on to the next when the RL can be there.

Perhaps a rotating schedule of 2-3 officers would help ease the burden of active nightly leadership, though it comes with its own problems and issues, but those officers should already be working and communicating as a team, anyway. And what sort of things is a large team of officers doing in a raid guild, anyway, if not helping raids run smoothly?

10-17-2011 @ 8:00PM

Monion said...

Sometimes it's hard enough getting that one person to step up to be raid leader in the first place, let alone finding someone else.

I'm one of two primary raid leaders in my guild, we each run our own Firelands 10 raid, and not many other people want to step up, at all. For example, I'm out visitng family next weekend, so the raid is cancelled since I can't be there. It kinda sucks knowing that my external activities are preventing people from running in-game, but really, I'm not because no one else wants to step up (even though I've put out feelers for co-leads in the recent past), but on the other hand I know how much of a chore raid leading can be to someone who's heart is only half in.

Attendance, boss strategies, understanding people's strengths and weaknesses, having a general understanding of specs, as well as gauging the mood, knowing when to push and to relax, and being able to mediate disputes. It's no wonder that many people have no want to take that kind of responsibility on. Ultimately, I find it often rewarding to see my team down new bosses, get loot they're excited about and see new locales, but not everyone can (or wants) to take the extra effort to herd the cats to get there, not to mention that not all officers are created equal. Depending on the officer's role, they may only be raiding as a member, with their duties having little to no overlap with raid leading.

Add your comments

Your comments:

Remember me

E-Mail me when someone replies to this comment

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.