So starting in a couple of weeks, I'm going to be leading some guild HM progression raids, starting with TFB. I'm just looking for some advice on how I can be an effective leader, aside from reading and watching as many guides as I can. How should I set loot rules? I'll take any advice I can get, I want these raids to go as smooth as possible.

As far as loot rules go, here is how my guild does it:

 

You can only roll Need if it is an upgrade for your CURRENT character AND you have not won a piece of gear yet. This applies to head/chest/etc. Implants and earpieces don't count, you can Need those all you want.

 

You can only Need a second piece of loot that falls under the previous rule if no one else needs it for their current character, and you must ask first.

 

For the last boss's loot (I suppose this is usually the best), the raid leader controls the loot distribution, and each person interested in a piece of loot manually /rolls for it, and the raid leader checks to make sure it's a valid choice.

Usually for loot it's need for your toon first, then if no one else in the raid needs it the leader will call out a need roll for alts.

 

Know the fights, know the fights, know the fights. Make sure you explain them well. Keep the group cohesive, try and keep everyone focused. Everyone should have fun but working hard during the boss pulls. Nothing too crazy. May even want to do SM runs together first to practice the mechanics you will need for HM.

Know the fights, know the fights, know the fights. Make sure you explain them well.

 

Caveat: do not go into every single minute detail, spending 15 minutes explaining a fight (especially one with three or more phases). Many players will tune you out, and are probably "active learners" (actually doing the fight makes stuff sink in better). Detail the first phase, go over the second, gloss over anything more than that. If you have one or two new participants explain the fight in terms of what they need to know based on their role (i.e. DPS and heals do not need to know the intimate details of tank swapping)

Give a brief overall explanation of the boss fights without spending too much time for it (so as not to get people bored by too long monologues) and then let the group try out the fight and when they wipe, analyze what went wrong and explain that part of the fight in more detail. Of course even when you succeed keep looking for ways to still improve.

 

A good raid leader should also know everything worth knowing about everything that in any ways relates to your raiding. This is not just limited to knowing the boss specific tactics for every operation boss out there, but also knowing everything there is to know about every spec of every class that you might have in your group. Ideally it helps if a raid leader does have at least some experience of playing all different roles with as many different classes as possible, but a good raid leader needs to also have detailed knowledge of what kind of abilities those classes he has never played have.

For example if a boss has multiple adds that have casts that need to be interrupted at the same time, you need to know exactly how each one of your team members can interrupt like this class has 6 second cooldown on his interrupt and therefore can solo interrupt every cast on the add he is on, but this other class has 12 second cooldown and can only get all casts interupted if I assign two people on the same add. One should know these details even about classes they never play.

Also a it is good to be able to recognize when a team member is not playing their class in the most effective way and know how to advice them to improve, no matter what class that is.

 

but you don't really need to be all knowing or have perfect knowledge of everything.

 

More important than knowledge are situational awareness and communication skills.

Practice your communication skills. The raid leader is the one who is expected to do more talking than anyone else, sometimes even more than all others combined, but it is also important to be able to listen when needed. You cant be a raid leader at all if you cant talk, but you cant be a good leader either if you cant also listen.

Also situational awareness relates to communication. A good raid leader is the first to notice when something that needs the attention of the rest of the group and the first to shout it out in whatever voice communication software you use.

 

Above all, a good raid leader is someone who rather offers guidance instead of just giving orders.

 

Also spend time getting to know your group and their strengths and weaknesses and recognize what each one of them is good at.

 

As for loot rules, you need to adjust them to the needs and the situation and the composition of your group and to always be ready to discuss such things with your group to make sure nobody feels cheated out of things they are trying to get.

There are many alternatives, but one needs to find a way to balance the needs of the group in a way that to some part takes into account what benefits the group as a whole the most, but at the same time also tries to be as fair as possible to all members, but also allowing those who put the most effort to get geared to get something out of it. This is a complex issue which I have discussed and debated a lot, but will say more about it some other time.

One unassembled piece rule, every member can only need win once an unassembled piece, you can adjust the rule according the current situation of the gear level of your group, like exclude bracers belts out of this limit. And ofc you can only need for the character you are using

I agree with everything everyone else has said, and will also add: If you're in charge, you're responsible for keeping everyone on track and for breaking up petty squabbles that always happen in progression raiding. (People trying their best and failing a lot tends to put people on edge.) Have fun but optimise your raid time and keep pointless chatter out of it when it matters, like in explanations and before a pull.

 

And re-emphasising the need to listen to your raid team. Unless you can come up with a logical reason not to try something a few times, even if it's different to the strategy you may have studied.

 

When you're not raiding/ have finished for the week/ are on alts, have a think about pugging some HM raids. Yes, it sometimes ends badly but I would say (without meaning to be offensive) that there should be a lot of players capable of doing HM TfB and S&V in a pug. It's a good opportunity to see other strats or at least get more practise in.

 

I wish your group good luck.

Only intended on reading this thread but after thinking about what I would say I figured I would go ahead and toss around my thoughts on the matter.

 

1.) Don't pretend to know it all. You'll paint yourself into a corner and end up looking like a fool. You have 7 or 15 other members who are just as smart and capable as you are (hopefully), so take advantage of them! Ask them for thoughts, feedback, advice, etc. You may end up learning something knew, and making your fellow raid members feel important in the process.

 

2.) Lead by example. If you want something to be done, don't make laws and rules about it, just do it yourself and watch the change cascade around you. Want people to start passing on minor upgrades? Do it yourself first. Want people to come prepared with consumables and such? Make damn sure you are doing it first.

 

3.) Don't ever get comfortable, and be okay with the periods of chaos that can ensue in a group. This game is notoriously bad at holding players for long periods of time. You will have people not show up to raids, you will have people quit guild to join another guild, and you will have people quit the game entirely. You have to accept the fact that a raid group is a dynamic beast, and never get overwhelmed with the fact that a perfect group will eventually crumble. Whether you have the patience and determination to rebuild will determine how long your group will last.

I think there's a lot of good advice in the above comments, but I'm going to throw in my $0.02 from experience: tailor your raiding to what your group wants.

 

I guess you could say I'm nominally raid leader (or co-leader) of my (tiny) Guild's progression raid team. What our members wants spans the spectrum from "just along for the ride to have fun" to "dedicated". Attendance, gear rolls, etc. haven't been our problem because we're all friends and rather casual (despite the fact that we're working on HMs now), but personality clashes have. As someone said: the petty squabbles that break out. When tensions seem to be getting too high, we take breaks and do something fun some weeks (like raiding bases or doing naked HEROIC runs).

 

Because we're all friends and a dedicated group, our gear rules are pretty simple: first Need priority is for your current toon in its current role, second is Needing for offspec or an alt if no one else wants it, Greed on all mats and other gear. Sometimes, someone might get more than one set piece in a run, but since we run the same toons every week over multiple weeks, it evens out over time (and we joke that whoever is the best geared will have to carry the rest of the raid ). In general, myself and my co-tank tend to let the DPS and Healers get first crack at gear upgrades before us, for the sake of the team, since it has a bigger impact on their efficacy.

 

The one exception we've made to that rule was when we started working on HM S&V and got to Styrak. He's got such a tight Enrage timer and is a DPS check that the next couple weeks at it, we decided that only our DPS could Need on the set pieces to upgrade their stuff. And it helped, too--once all our DPS were in UW from the S&V drops and better, we cleared it.

Edited December 30, 2013 by AlixMV