I would like to present several issues which seem common to many raiding guilds. This list comes from mistakes I’ve made myself, common complaints I’ve heard from fellow leaders in the game, threads from various forums, and articles I’ve read in the past. Back when I was a young student of leadership and management, we were taught to “know yourself and seek self improvement.” I hope this post helps you along your own path.
1 – Not allowing a trial member’s alts into the guild
2 – Just Wipe More
3 – Raid Leads need to yell
4 – It’s ‘JUST’ trash
5 – Teaching the whole fight at once
6 – The Raid Leader is a Genius
7 – There’s only one way
8 – You have to take the jerks to get good players
9 – Choosing officers by the meters
10- Meters are all that matter
1 – Not allowing a trial member’s alts into the guild
It’s important your current and prospective members get to know each other. It’s hard to figure out how well a member fits in and if he has any symptoms of a drama llama if he’s not part of the guild and not part of your daily activities. Having their alts in guild chat, running 5 mans, leveling, and chatting with the other active members of the guild will tell you far more about how they will fit in eventually than having them in a separate guild and just seeing the new guy in raid. For a lot of raiding guilds, time spent playing out raid is helpful to build relationships and share in those fun times that hold you together when you need to spend time on a really nasty raid boss.
2 – Just Wipe More
Time spent actively working a boss is definitely very important: it allows folks to practice the encounter (some people learn by trial and error). People need to work toward muscle memory to react to particular triggers. However, it’s necessary to give your mind time to absorb what you’ve been practicing. Sometimes taking a break or heading into the logs will provide more benefit that pulling again immediately. You can’t do that while running back.
Tons of strategy work happens offline — often your best strategy work. It’s really tough to make massive strat changes mid fight. There’s a lot of things being actively managed by the raid leadership. Serious strat changes take time and trying to do that while 9 or 24 other people are sitting there is painful. It’s important to spend time with your team outside of the instance planning out what you are going to do. These planning sessions don’t have to include everyone and they don’t have to be super structured, but they need to happen.
3 – Great Raid Leads yell a lot
The Super Guilds progress faster than most. To do that, the raiders must be near flawless. So the leadership yells a lot, right?
There’s no doubt some do but that’s definitely not true across the board. The best leaders know when to bark, when to stay quiet, when to correct publicly, and when to handle things after the raid.
Years ago I had the privilege to serve in a rather select group and there were two of us that really got at each other and all sorts of words were slung back and forth. When the dust settled, our commander told us that we were in risk of being removed because of the outburst. We were supposed to be professionals and if things had gotten to the point we had to yell at each other, one or both of us had no business being there. Mature and skilled people simply don’t need to resort to those methods of conflict resolution.
4 – It’s ‘JUST’ trash
Most of the time spent in a successful raid is spent either working through trash or running back from a wipe. I want to address the first of these two. Players have a tendency to go afk or just go through the motions when doing trash. Trash provides the raid a great opportunity to get settled and get their muscles and brain into “raid mode.”
Trash can also be the catalyst for a terrible raid night. If people start skipping out, it takes longer, there’s unnecessary wipes, and people start getting pissy. Raiders thinking they are too good for trash sow the seeds of “Us vs Them” fights in the guild and rarely does anything positive come from that.
As a raid leader, officer, or just guy that people listen to; keep the raid focused on trash. You wouldn’t let your players check out on a boss, don’t let it happen on trash, either.
5 – Teaching the whole fight at once
My favorite fights include Archimonde, RoS, Firefighter, Heroic Lich King, and Heroic Ragnaros. Four of the five share one major thing in common: there’s a hell of a lot going on spread through several phases. If you try to explain any of these fights, with the detail needed for a progression fight, from start to finish you’ll put even the hardened raider to sleep. I love these fights, and I’d leave to go get another drink before you are half way through.
I much prefer to discuss and work a fight phase by phase. We’ll talk about phase one, then work that until we hit P2 a couple of times. At that point, we talk about P2 then work those two phases (while keeping mostly quiet about P1) until we hit P3. You see where I’m going with this? Spending 20 minutes explaining the entire fight is like asking your raiders to drink from a firehose, swallow it all, and then be able to tell you exactly how much they just drank. It’s just too much info to process. This is another case where you need to let the brain soak things up in smaller bits.
6 – The Raid Leader is a Genius
This one hit close to home for me as it’s a situation I’ve caused in my own guild and am still working to correct. While I’ve established Strat threads on our forums, and a couple people post vids and basic boss info; I’ve recently stopped taking the time to capture the discussions we have and give folks a chance to read and prepare for the way WE will be doing the fight. So if you miss the strat chats you don’t get the plan until you are in raid. While some people don’t mind this, it’s a disservice to my raid to not give them the opportunity to be fully prepared for raid. This issue isn’t as immediately noticeable in 10 man, but it still hurts. We do a great job at the aural part of the situation, but if you miss a night then there’s little way for you to catch up on the things we’ve learned/altered.
Even when the RL makes the final strat choice, it’s best when it follows an open and receptive discussion, including all the public feedback and discussion. The Raid Leader should just have to sort through the options, and decide what the group plan will be for the next night.
7 – There’s only one way
I’ve had a chance to chat up some really amazing players over the years, and some of them tell crazy stories about how bad some part of their raid was so they would have to make some really odd strat choice to accommodate this player/players who needed an easier job.
Every guild has it’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, I have had healers that I swear have a cheat code to the game. They’ve saved the raid from really crazy shit like it’s as simple as breathing. I also had a hunter that can handle all sorts of add situations. A lot of time I just point him at adds and he takes care of them. I can’t just tell other guilds to “throw your hunter on it” as I know this guy pulls off some stuff that others have a really hard time doing. It’s more important to find a player that can find ways to use his whole kit than to recruit “the perfect class.”
Regardless your exact situation, it’s most likely different than the top guilds in the world or the guild who makes the hot new guide video. I felt this situation recently when Heroic Baleroc was the cool fight. A fellow 10 man guild gave a strat revolving around have two Spriests, the perfect raid cooldowns, and certain tank classes. Their vid was amazing and probably about perfect if you were a 10 man guild with two raid geared shadow priests, a couple paladins, and a druid. Elune help you if you used their numbers and didn’t have that team. I can imagine the raid groups who floundered trying to do it their way with a different comp.
It’s infinitely better to understand your own groups strengths and weaknesses and how they can be leveraged against the current fight. Use those guides, vids, etc and then learn how to adjust it to specialize it for your guild. Think about “do I have a guy that can do X” instead of do I have two shadow priests.
In addition to that there’s the problem of just shoving your Raid Leading responsibilities onto some video. Don’t just send your raiders to watch a vid then pull a boss. Even on farm content, take a couple minutes to remind people of the major mechanics and who has what specific things to do in the fight. I do expect my raiders to have watched several vids, mostly to be familiar with what things look like and to help ease the shock of a new fight. I want them to preview a fight so that when we talk about it, they know what the terms I’m using mean.
Videos aren’t the savior to a bad raid group or the magic lamp to a well progressed team. Some people can’t learn from a video and watching a fight in which you have no idea what is happening isn’t helpful either. Videos must be part of the answer, not the only piece in the puzzle.
I prefer that my raiders have a broad understanding of the fight and the ability to react to new things. IF we all understand the fight, then we can all adjust roles until we find the right fit for folks.
8 – You have to take the jerks to get good players
Yes, there are guilds that want asshole players. There are very specific reasons for this but these guilds who do it intentionally are very rare and will quickly self destruct if not managed correctly. If that’s the style of guild you really want, you wouldn’t be reading my blog anyway.
I’ve seen a ton of “zerg guilds” over the years and they follow very specific stages. First, they recruit raiders from around the server who are a little upset they aren’t more progressed. Next, they make amazingly quick progression though most of the zone and might even clear. Certainly they’ve done this faster than the guilds they came from. Shortly, the taunting and /trade chest beating starts making sure everyone knows how amazing the new guild is. Next downside begins when the guild either hits a wall or it’s time to farm. The lack of planning for personality usually leads to growing hatred, players who don’t interact outside of raid, and a quick demise. The only thing faster than their progression is how fast the players turn on each other.
In the end, the decent players are left guildless and few guilds on the server will recruit them because they watched them bail on their previous guilds and join one with a bad reputation. So now the players either quit the game or have to server transfer.
I’m not suggesting you stay in a guild which doesn’t match your progression preferences, but be wary that you don’t throw the baby out with the bath.
My current guild has the mantra along the lines of ‘progression focused raiding with people you actually want to play with.’ So far we’ve been successful in that. This philosophy isn’t always peaches and cream. Sometimes people get upset when a player “with good numbers” gets removed over attitude. At the end of the day this is a form of entertainment and a hobby for all of us. We each made a commitment to the other raiders and the style and flavor of the guild. It not right to keep someone who doesn’t uphold their end of the social contract (sorry for that term, John) just because the pump out “big numbers.” Before long all you will have left is that one guy who puts out big numbers.
You’ve got to be able to kill the dragon without killing each other.
9 – Choosing officers by the meters
Kyth from Fusion fame once wrote that “If you took three world-class officers/leaders from the top guild and plunked them into a mid-range guild, they could turn it around (wouldn’t even need to ditch all the players) very quickly. But if you took three terrible officers and gave them, say, the members of Premonition, the guild would be a wasteland within a few months.”
I agree with her assessment. Great leaders can do amazing things with a willing group. A poor leader will destroy the best of groups. In WoW it’s tempting to promote people simply based on the meters. Bill does the most DPS so he should be the DPS officer, right? No! While a leader must be able to perform the tasks of their group it’s not necessarily the most important. They must also be skilled in management, analysis, motivation, be committed, respected, etc.
The traits of a good officer can’t be measured by Recount.
I know first hand what happens if you select the wrong officers. The 25man guild I lead in Wrath closed its doors after two rounds of bad officer choices. These were amazing players and I still chat with some of them, but they weren’t the right leaders for the guild at the time. In addition to selecting the right officers, it’s important to keep the right officers. There will come a time in every organization when a once great leader no longer fills the needs of the group. It doesn’t mean that the officer is “bad” but simply that he is no longer a match for the team. At this point, changes need to occur. Either the leader needs to adapt and change or he needs to be replaced.
Every guild has potential drama. But if these situations begin to affect the entire group, odds are there has been some leadership failure – either real or perceived. It’s important to have mature leaders who can address these situations and act in the best interest of the guild/raid team as a whole.
I’ve got a lot more to say about officers, but I think that’s best for another post.
10- Meters are all that matter
Like so many other parts of raiding, Meters and the things they measure aren’t the end all be all. They are part of the situation and must be looked at in context and in relation to many other factors. I’ve had the honor to work with several guilds just starting to raid or trying to step up to a new level of raiding. One of the common pitfalls I’ve seen which hold a guild back is the blind worship of meters.
Most all of us who have pugged 5 mans have run across that guy who the second the boss dies asks “Anyone have recount?” While we shake our heads at this guy, complain about (make fun of) him in guild chat, or link him ‘Damage Taken’ instead of what he wants; we know that he’s missed the point. For some reason we lose sight of the frivolity of meter worship and bring it with us to raiding. This style of game play more than any other is really hampered by a narrow view of a dps meter.
Sure, most bosses need to be dealt damage to die but damaging the wrong target or an irrelevant target doesn’t actually help the raid group (even if it temporarily inflates one’s epeen).
As leaders, we need to focus on the proper use of meters as indicators and then take the next step to understand what the meter is actually telling us. When someone comes to me (or I notice) “someone is low on DPS,” I try to ask:
a) how does the person compare to others of his class/spec with the same level of gear? It doesn’t do anyone any good to expect your Moonkin just stepping into the tier to compete with someone who has been farming heroic bosess for 6 months.
b) is the player getting the needed buffs and/or the same buffs as others? If one of the players is getting Tricks, Power Infusion, Dark Intent, and Focus Magic and the other isn’t…do you really expect them to do the same DPS?
c) how does this person compare with others who are doing the same job? The guy who gets to sit on the boss the whole fight should do more dmg than a player who has to run around the room clicking orbs or switching targets every few seconds.
Asking a player to manage adds, or deal with some fight gimmick, may have huge negative impact on their personal dps but at the same time the player is directly responsible for the most critical part of the fight. Make sure you are comparing apples to apples.
Summary:
At the end of the day, the most important of this list is the one your guild is currently dealing with. Some of these topics certainly warrant more attention and maybe I’ll write more on them soon. I welcome any questions or critiques you may have on these topics and I would love to hear your own experiences and how your guild worked through them. Before we go, I have to give a lot of credit to Kyth from Fusion. She wrote a similar list back in the days of Stratfu wouldn’t be the Raid Leader I am without having read it.
