It’s Friday, and we’ve got five keys to raiding success:
- Raid leaders must remember their raid members are not mind readers.
If you need someone to do something, tell them — in advance of pulling the boss. Yelling at someone for not doing something you didn’t ask them to do, on a boss they’ve not seen, is not cool, and not effective. - Select and confirm your raiding teams a few days in advance.
If you have more people who want to raid than you have slots, this is imperative. It’s no fun to log on, revved up to raid, then get kicked to the curb. Many of your raiders are fitting raiding into already very busy lives. If they aren’t seated for a raid, and know that in advance, that gives them the opportunity to go do something else offline; it’s a lot harder to pull plans together last minute, after not getting in. - Let your raiders know your instance plan for the week.
THis allows them to watch videos the day of working on a new boss, prep their action bars with any macros, or go out and poke around blogs for tips on how to maximize their performance on that boss your team inevitably struggles with. - Make every attempt a serious attempt.
Don’t pull a boss while someone is AFK. Or before everyone is buffed and ready. Ask folks to get their food buff on and be running some sort of flask or elixir. Hand out — and use — healthstones if you are lucky enough to have a warlock on the team. - Keep finger pointing and backseat driving to a minimum during the fight.
Keep Vent clear! The raid doesn’t need to know that the spatially unaware ranged DPS died unless they have a specific task that needs to be assigned to someone else. The know-it-all tank doesn’t actually know that it was the melee’s fault for whatever minor hiccup (that you just recovered from) happened. Mid-fight, when people start in with this stuff, or worse yet, rambling on about things completely non-related to the fight, it distracts the other raiders from doing their jobs, and can cause a wipe. Do your postmortem AFTER the fight, not as a play-by-play while the raid team is still working on it.
As always, YMMV, these opinions are solely mine and do not reflect those of any specific raiding team, and no fluffy animals or raiders were harmed in the making of this Friday Five. What are some of YOUR tips for raiding success?
#5.
omg number five.
Mid-fight I really Don’t Give A Fuck why you died, or why it was so hilarious that you lagged out just now. Mkay?
Kay.
Re: #1:
It’s also good to be specific with people’s names in a non-hurtful way. If you want to direct people to do something, you’re right, they are not mind-readers. But saying “some people need to switch to blood beasts” or “someone needs to move out of the fire” doesn’t help without specific direction to a specific person (via raid chat or a whisper).
Totally agree on #5. “Hey, Moober died, someone else needs to shoot down ice patches” is much better than “Hey, I’m dead. Oooh, I have pizza with pepperoni. Why is my electric bill so high?”
Number 5 is critical. Can’t tell you how many times someone has spoken over a raid leader during a fight and therefore you can’t hear the instruction.
On a side note do you have an email address Anexxia? I have a blogging opportunity that I would love to talk to you about. Please get in contact at mail [at] toprosters [dot] com. Thanks.
^this.
I strongly feel the time and place for assignments and directions is before you pull the boss, not mid-fight.
It drive me crazy when folks do that! Now, if that happens, and I am not clear, I make sure to ask for clarification, on Vent, noting that the RL was talked over and I couldn’t understand them.
Checked out your site last night and will hit you with an email later this week.
I don’t disagree!
I’m talking about after multiple attempts on the same boss where “some people” aren’t doing their assigned task (aka, all the DPS switching to blood beasts on Saurfang). If “some people” aren’t doing it, it needs to be re-iterated with specifics.
I think that “some people” tend to think it won’t get noticed if they don’t do their job, and meter-hump instead, especially in 25s.
It was so ridiculous that we had to resort to the most obnoxious macro ever, and naming people with less than 3% DPS on the beasts to get *some people* to do their jobs. That was maddening! It also showed pretty clearly that not everyone is a team player.
Definitely agree! Super frustrating.