Raiding advice for small guilds raid leaders.

This post was written on february 28th 2011. Even if the raids have changed, the following still holds true I feel.

So it’s pretty official now. I’m raid leading again. I’ve done it in Vanilla, BC, Wotlk and now Cataclysm. I know I promised myself never to do it again last year, but the awesome people in Walk the Plank made me believe in raiding again and the awesompeople in Eff the Ineffable allow me to do things my way wich helps me not go crazy. Overall, its been an enjoyable experience.

So I’m writing this today with the hope it will help some of you out there in small guilds who want to raid but are not quite sure what to expect. We started out in Eff believing it would work a bit like Wotlk and well… we got a surprise. I hope some of our experience can help you out as you start raiding.

1. The gear jump is brutal

The first thing that jump to my mind is that the gear jump between heroics and raids is nasty. Thought the jump between normals and heroics was hard? This is way worse.  And to make it worse there’s no gearing bosses this time around. In the previous expansions there was always three or four easy bosses at the beginning to help gear people out but not this time.

Well… there is the Told Barad boss but if you count solely on him to gear you up you’re going to be waiting a very long time.

This means in effect that you need to be on top of gear when you get in there. You should have 346 items in all your slots and crafted/valor/reputation epics where you can. Going in with someone in mostly 333 gear is asking for trouble… You need to have those reps farmed and those epics crafted.

2. Your healers need to be epic players

It used to be that the tanks would take the brunt of the damage and raid damage could be largely avoided if people didn’t stand in bad. Raid wide, heavy AoE damage was rare and only happened for short periods.

Not anymore! This time around everyone takes damage all the time and to make sure it’s fun, you cannot always be clumped up. Healing a whole raid that is spread out while keeping the tanks up is not an easy task. But it is one your healers need to be able to handle.

3. You raiders need to be patient

Remember when I said there’s no easy bosses to farm? This means that you get right  into the thick of things and you can’t expect fast progress right off the bat.  Halfus, Magmaw, Omnomtron are all bosses that require practice, raid awareness and good execution to down and you can’t afford to be sloppy.

This means wipes, and lots of it without a real feeling of progression.

4. Raiding demands to be dedicated to raiding

This is the big change I believe. BC started off with offering Karazhan as a place where small casual guild could go enjoy raiding. A lot of them never went past Karazhan and they were fine with that. Wotlk took this further and made raiding accessible to everyone.

Cataclysm goes back to an older model. If you want to progess here you need to take raiding seriously. You cannot just head into BWD and expect to down a few bosses for fun. Sometime down the road that may happen but right now, if you want to be raiding the new content you need to be serious about your raiding.

This is my most important advice to small guilds. If you’re interested in “once in-a-while-for-fun” raiding wait out until the content gets easier. Don’t burn yourself wiping.

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Damn you gear!

First things first. Sorry for the lack of meaningful posts in the recent days/week. I said it before but I am overloaded right now. It’s crunch time at work and will be for the following weeks (up into April from what I heard) and this monkey time is becoming increasingly rare and precious. What little time I have I’d rather spend it actually playing a game rather than blog about it.

So… sorry for the lack of frequent updates and I’ll try to do my best in the upcoming weeks.

Now to the main topic. Last weekend saw Eff the Ineffable have its first real wipe-a-thon. We went in and wiped straight for two nights.  The good news? We got great execution, people get their classes and they don’t panic the second something goes wrong.

What went wrong? Gear… that’s what went wrong. As a guild, Eff the Ineffable is at the tipping point in raiding gear. We’re geared from heroics apart from 1 or 2 pieces, our stuff is gemmed and enchanted but we don’t really have raid level gear aside from a few crafted epics.

The end result? We can kill bosses… if everything goes perfect and RNG doesn’t screw with us. For example Magmaw decided to target one of our hunters over and over during an attempt, another time it was timing on Halfus. With gear so close there’s no room for any mistake from anybody and when you have 10 people during a 7 minutes fight, one mistake is bound to happen at some point. If the penalty for a tiny mistake is a wipe… it’s a harsh penalty.

I’ve been in that position before in Karazhan and the answer back then is the same as today, gear. We’re so close to the tipping point that I can almost touch it. And I know that once we’re past it things will fall into place rapidly. We got execution, we got skill, all that’s missing is gear and I can’t wait.

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Raiding soundtrack

I don’t know about you but whenever I raid I tend to put some music in the background. Not too loud and never for the whole duration of the raid but over the years I’ve sort of always made some sort of playlist for the various raids I’ve been in and most of the time each raid would have its theme song that I would have to play at least once.

Now the reasons for inclusion in this very exclusive list are varied. Sometimes its just because the theme fitted and other times there’s more obscure reasons like a comment someone made, an inside joke or simply because I got the song stuck in my head. Here’s my list of theme songs for the past few expansions and I’d be curious to hear about yours too.

Molten Core: Ring of Fire / Johny Cash
BlackwingLair: The roof is on fire / Bloodhound gang
Ahn’Qiraj (both 20/40) : Creeping Death / Metallica
Zul’Gurub :Welcome to the Jungle / Guns n Roses

Karazhan: Skullcrusher mountain / Jonathan Coulton
Gruul’s Lair: The lumberjack’s song / Monty Python

Naxxramas: Safety Dance / Men without hats
Ulduar: The frayed ends of sanity / Metallica
Icecrown citadel: Hardware store / Weird Al Yankovic

Twilight Bastion: Rime of the ancient Mariner / Iron Maiden*
*it’s a bit early to say if this one will stick but I had that playing last friday and I would just replace the part “Water, water, everywhere!” with “Fire, Fire, everywhere!”. Seemed fitting.

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Five raid leader pitfalls

The topic of raid leading came up on my guild board today and I started writing a huge block of text that was turning into a rant and I ran out of space. I wanted to expand on my own experiences as a raid leader and I figured this could make a great topic for today’s post.

I’ve been a raid leader in every expansion of WoW except Catalcysm of course. I’ve leaded for casuals, casual raiders and hardcore players, most of the time with good success and one time it ended in a spectacular failure that saw the guild disband and nearly made me swear off WoW forever. With retrospect I now know that the issue wasn’t entirely raid related but rather raiding became the focal point of the tensions that existed.

You can find a lot of guides out there to help out potential raid leaders with how to prepare a raid, how to check performance, how to recruit for raiding, etc… What I find often missing is tips relating directly to the position of raid leader and what the title carries.

1. Thinking you’re only responsible for your own performance

As a raid leader,  people make you accountable for the overall performance of the raid. At the end of the night, it’s not the individual wipes that are remembered but rather the success of the raid as a whole.

Raid leaders are expected to handle the raid to assure success. There’s some truth in that too. By accepting to lead the raid, you are responsible for invites, discipline, removing bad raiders and doing everything to make the raid succeed. If a raider performs badly all night long, it’s your job to handle said raider.

The pitfall here is that you need to understand the added expectations out of you. Not only are you expected to be a top raider, but you are also expected to make the raids succeed.In many cases this will extend to the overall guild as many guild are as healthy as their raids are.

All of this to say that when things go badly… you are the first person expected to fix them and you are also the first blamed.

2. Trying to do it alone

Long lived raid leaders have all learned to delegate responsibilities around the raid. Someone might be in charge of spreadsheets, another one invites, someone to make certain calls on vent and someone to handle loot for example. The raid leader then acts as an overseer to it all and get directly involved on critical points and to make small adjustments.

Not only does this keep the added work to a manageable level but by spreading responsibilities around it helps also making everyone directly involved in the success or failure of the raid. Raid leaders who go at it alone usually crumble under the responsibilities and the expectations of their guildies.

3. Not knowing what your raiders expect of raiding and you

What? Raid leaders should lead raids you say? They make the raids succeed and work toward that goal? What else could they expect?

WRONG! I made that mistake in Wrath and it led to the destruction of the guild, the worst moment of my WoW gaming and lots of resentment and bad feelings. It’s easy as a raid leader to get trapped in a sort of tunnel vision where your first and only concern is beating a raid. You want to improve performance and are always searching for ways to do so.

Worst, when I asked the guild leader and raiders back then if they wanted to progress the same as me they all said yes and most changes I proposed where met with approval… so what exactly went wrong?

I was expecting a commitment to raiding that they were not prepared to  give. Where I wanted to do invites based on performance, class balance and gearing promising recruits, they wanted to raid with their friends first. They were not prepared to split long-standing raiding groups even if some of the raiders prevented us from moving forward.

Progression was not their first concerns even if they said otherwise. Or better put, it was not on same priority level as it was for me.

So, you should raid lead in accordance to your raiders expectations. If your idea of how a raid should work does not fit your raider simply step down or move somewhere else. It’s pointless to try to change a raiding group expectations of what raiding should be like.

4. Being a super officer

Raid leading is big enough job all by itself that you don’t need the added responsibilities of being an officer and handling day-to-day activities. Many guilds saddle their raid leader with bank duty, recruitment and a slew of other things to do because they could somehow affect raiding.

Don’t fall into this trap. Again, long-lived raid leaders are those who focus on the raid and what happens in it and leave the rest to others. The day-to-day officer jobs of a guild are better leaved to other. Simply focus on what you have available and don’t fret over controlling everything.

5. Not trusting others

A final piece of advice so often ignored. Many raid leaders work on the principle that someone has to prove themselves first. They assume that if a raider makes a mistake it’s because they suck or haven’t prepared themselves or whatever else reason.

In short, they don’t trust their raiders to know how to raid by themselves.

Don’t do that. Not only is it incredibly stressful for you to try to assume the worst all the time, it’s also incredibly stressful on your raiders. Start by assuming the better in others and work you way down. It’s a lot easier for everyone.

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3 days, 1 raid

So I got to try out to beat the Lich King last friday. The one and only Arthas. It’s a fun fight in itself but we didn’t get to down him. Long story short, some people didn’t get the concept of moving out of the Defiles. So that was my friday night, three hours of straight wipes to learn Lich King with my new guild. Yeah, you read right, I joined a guild to get to see more raiding. I went for a bit more advanced guild this time around with the firm intention of downing the LK while he was current content. A nice looking bunch overall, fun, well-adjusted people and they raid quite a lot. I was really hopeful that I had found a good bunch.

See, my RL friends have a running joke with me since Vanilla WoW. They bet on the time it will take before any new guild I join makes me an officer or raid leader. I’ll give you a hint, it’s in the title. Yup, after only 3 days and a single raid I was asked to raid lead the second ICC group and get them to down Arthas. Under a week… a new record for me. Why does this happen everytime I join a guild I have no idea. It has happened to me in every expansion and in a variety of roles (dps, heals, tank)  and even when I was dead silent. I don’t know what kind of aura I have but it gets guild leader to ask me to raid lead.

I said yes at first, I didn’t really want to do it but I figured it would be good to get some reputation so when I came back to Walk the Plank come Cataclysm recruiting would be easier. But then as I went to bed I started thinking about all the implications. I would have to raid lead 2 days, raid 25 mans 2 more days and give one more day for Ruby Sanctum… 5 days a week…. Plus I would have the privilege of teaching the people not good enough to raid with group 1, how to raid. As in many guilds, group 2 was made up of people in training (to remain polite) and some who couldn’t make the main group days.

No thank you! I had founded Walk the Plank so I would avoid that kind of scenario and I could see myself getting dragged right back into it… I have seen Arthas and I’ve gotten it out my system. Downing LK is not worth all that trouble and I’d rather do it with people like Kaozz. Heck, I’d rather do it with anyone who’s not an ass and willing to put in some effort. So the very next day I left the guild and went back to the comfort of a small, but fun guild even if we don’t get to see one another often.

In the meanwhile, I’ve been giving STO another go. More tomorrow on that!

3 days, 1 raid… I don’t know how I’ll beat that.

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