Thinking of Raid leading Flex

[sjaeger172004 0]

Well started raiding in Cata and found a really supporting guild and I am maybe thinking of learning to Raid Lead as they have too many people wanting to raid then Raid leaders and want to give back to the guild.

 

I was wondering if anyone had any tips?

 

Thank you

Edited November 17, 2013 by sjaeger172004

[Berbevans 0]

Hi,

 

I was in a similar position during DS when I stepped up to be a raid leader for our second team.

 

It is generally a thankless task but is is not as scary as it seems and my tips are as follows (sorry, this turned into a wall of text):

 

It is not important to have played every class to know what their strength and weakness are. Don't get me wrong, it will help but it is not a necessity and you will pick this information up as you go as well.  You're team members will generally let you know what their strengths and weakness are (on a personal and class level) so you can use that to give certain tasks to people if needed.  This was my biggest fear when I stepped up so I thought I would get it out first.  

 

In their simplest forms, all fights are the same:  

 * The boss must die to finish the fight and move on and DPS has to be high enough to do that before the enrage timer.

 * Even if your group is excellent at movement and avoid all avoidable damage, there will be periods of unavoidable damage which is usually quite high / burst like.  As such have a healing CD rotation worked out in advance so healers are not blowing them all at the same time leaving nothing for the next wave of damage.  Don't forget other classes have raid CD's to reduce damage as well which can be used as well.

 

There might be some kind of fight mechanic which involves someone giving up their normal role to focus on that.  E.g. Kicking turtles in ToT.  You are best to get 2 if not 3 people trained on how to do it properly as there may be a time when the main person can make the raid which means someone has to start from scratch on learning the mechanic which can really get the mood of the raid down when the boss is considered a farm boss but you get stuck there all night because someone is failing at the main mechanic.

 

Offspecs should be encouraged.  Solo tank fights are rare but do crop up, so it helps if at least one of your tanks has an offspec, even if it is healing and a healer can to DPS.  Likewise fights such as the Shamans in SoO can be trivialised with a 3rd tank.  Maybe ask people to swap roles every now and again so that time when you do need an extra DPS or healer, people are not so rusty that it was a waste of time asking them to swap in the first place.

 

Consider 2 healing (in 10 man), especially when bosses are on farm.  The extra DPS means the boss goes down quicker so less damage goes out and the extra healing your healers will need to do will be great training for when things get tough in progression fights.  It will also teach your DPS / Tanks to move / use their CD's properly as there wont be a 3rd healer to bail them out and cover their mistakes.

 

Don't treat metre addons as all knowing.  Some classes / specs will shine in a given fight where others will not.  Likewise, someone who is constantly topping DPS but is regularly dying due to not following mechanics is not much good to your raid.  It is better to hit the enrage a few times to show that you have the mechanics down before asking people to pick up their DPS.

 

With that said, if one of the mechanics is to dispel, feel free to name and shame anyone who is not dispelling when they could. It is not the sole responsibility of the healers to dispel, other roles can do it as well, especially now there is an 8 second CD on dispelling.

 

Continuing with addons, there are a few addons out there.  Apart from the standard raid addons like BigWigs / DBM.  I highly recommend "Raid Buff Status" as this will tell you who is missing which buff and who can give it, who has eaten and so on.  I would also recommend WiM (Wow Instant Messenger) as this will put your whisper conversations into separate windows making them easier to follow and to see as you might miss a whisper in the standard window with everything else going on and you will get whispers as raid leader.  I don't personally use them, but you may also want to look into addons to track loot rolls as again, rolls can get missed with everything else happing in your chat windows.

 

The final things that I recommend is that as you will now be seen as a leader, you need to make sure you follow / enforce any guild rules as you are setting the example.  e.g.  make sure you are not late for your own raids, if you cant make it, give notice well in advance so someone else can step up or the raid can be cancelled.  Make sure loot is distributed fairly and drama in raid is kept to a minimum.  You don't need to be super tough, but make sure you don't be seen to let people get away with murder or show favouritism as that will prompt other people to play up.

 

Oh, one other tip that I was told but have never had to use.  If you have a player who feels they can play another class better than someone else who is in the raid as well and so likes to tell them how to play their class and this is annoying the other player, tell the offending player that if they are sure they know how to play the class better, to write a guide for that class and put it on the guild website.  In most cases the offending player wont do anything but will stop telling everyone how to play in which case you win.  If they do follow it up and write the guide, the guild wins.

 

Now, on a personal note.  You will find your self speaking on Vent / TS a lot more.  If you use a push to talk button, you may want to set up your key binds to your major abilities so they also work in combination with your push to talk button as I have often found some of my abilities are not used when I press the ability because I am also talking on vent at the same time and CRTL + Q is not bound to any thing where as just Q is.

 

Raid leading is fun, especially when you kill a boss the first time as a group so enjoy it and I wish you the best of luck.

 

 

[Peelyon 416]

Great advice there! Not much more I can add other than that for a while your own personal performance my dip a bit. As you start to watch the whole fight rather than your own needs you will be concentrating a lot more on different things and the first thing that suffers is your DPS or healing etc.

Obviously this doesnt matter much in the grand scheme of things.

How you raid lead will all be down to your own personality. I was ways very chilled and never shouted etc.

As you are running flex it should be a little easier on the mechanics and numbers so you can relax a bit more so just promote the fun if you can.

Also numbers of players shouldn't cause too much head ache with flex eithet. A lot of my 'problems' were selection as we had such a rolling roster due to the fact we didn't have a minimum attendance.

Make sure you enjoy yourself. It is really really rewarding when you complete a new boss as a raid leader as well as a player.

Good luck!