The making of a great raid leader

Organizer

Researcher

Communicator

Commander

Arbiter

Disciplinarian

Mentor

Loot Master

Analyst

Which of the above roles are included in a raid leader’s job description?

Yeah, you guessed it. All of them* (many raids are run by a few people, who together, possess the skills above.) There’s a reason great raid leaders are few and far between. It’s a job that takes quite a few skills to pull off. Can you be a raid leader who’s only skill is Disciplining the baddies in the raid? Sure… You won’t be very successful but you can go in there and scream a bit and see some results.

In this article I’m going to assume a few things:

1. You know what raiding is.
2. That it’s a team  sport.
3. You will have to manage different personalities, skills, and expectations.

You need ALL of these skills to be a successful raid leader. I’ll go into each skill and how they pertain to being successful in the world of ragecraft.

    Organizer: You need to set up the dates, times, and goals for the night. Making sure everyone on the team knows when trash clearing starts and what their goals are for the night is an important piece of pre-raid leading.

    Researcher: Depending on the skill and goals of your team you may be the only one doing the research or you may be just a cog in the research machine. Either way you need to the encounters frontwards and backwards. This doesn’t mean watching a tankspot video and hoping for the best. It means watching many videos, reading forums, and doing your own investigation per class for the encounter.

    Communicator: Managing employees, students, or raiders all share the same need for a good communicator. As leader you have to make sure everyone is on the same page. If you don’t be a funnel for information it leads to misconceptions and inevitably drama. Share info that will benefit the team at all times. Keep the info that is unnecessary and may just butt-hurt someone. Your job is to know when to hold them and when to fold them. Thank you Kenny Rogers.

    Commander: A good raid leader is a great mid-fight communicator or commander. This doesn’t mean you have to be the audio version of DBM though. It means you’re making decisions on the fly based on a number of dynamic variables. If two people die at the same time who are you battle rezzing? Should they do it now, or wait for the X raid wide damage to occur? There are too many raid leaders who just do their class’s role instead of keeping a birds eye view on the changing situation. I’ve seen this kind of leader make or break progression attempts. You need to be the one who’s got an eye on it all and calling out the “audibles.” (for you sports geeks)

    Arbiter: ”A person who settles a dispute or has ultimate authority in a matter.” Yeah, that’s us too. We need to take all the ideas flowing in and decide on which one we will execute while making all the other idea makers feel good about the decision. The worst thing you can do in your arbiter roll is to shut people down. The best ideas come from collaboration. Let everyone who wants to say something speak then it’s up to you to make the final call. If you hold tight to the mantra “I do what’s best for the team” then the drama level should remain at tolerable levels.

    Disciplinarian: Someone shows up late; Someone personally insults someone else instead of their performance; Someone rages over loot. You can see where I’m going with this. You’re the one that maintain the order in the group. Make sure you don’t have one hot head hijacking the raid’s good-time.

    Mentor: You’re the raid leader. There’s most likely a reason for this. You know the most about the game, the mechanics, or you’re just a gluten for punishment.  Part of your off-raid duties is to mentor those players who may need be as wise as you in the ways of the pew pew digimonster raiding. Helping a great person with a needed DPS boost is much easier than teaching some pewpew god some social skills. Do your best to be the teacher/mentor/educator to your players They’ll thank you for it when they feel like a full fledged rock start dps, tank, healer etc.

    Loot Master: This one can be easily delegated depending on the system you’ve chosen to use. Your real roll here is to ensure it’s always done fairly and you squash any QQ asap. It can ruin a damn fun time to hear some little bitch complain up and down about a piece that doesn’t drop or he didn’t win. Don’t allow that crap and just push forward. Your other team members will thank you for it.

    Analyst: I’d put this right up there in #1 or #2 roles that can impact success. You need to be looking at the logs after the raids. If you’re not uploading logs to WorldofLogs.com you need to be and looking at tutorials on how to properly analyze them.

An important note from user Zevulon

If you are a new RL that has found your way here for a few ideas on what to do then don’t be dicouraged if you feel that you aren’t great at all these roles. Quite a few things can be delegated and all of them can be learnt. Just knowing what areas you might be lacking in can go a long way to improveing your RLing by allowing you to concentrate your efforts where they will do the most good.

I think that a guilds leadership typically need to include three things; a RL, a administrator and a social spider. All three roles can be performed by the same person or they can be split up.

As a RL you can let the administrator help you out with posting raids, managing your DKP-system (if you use one, my guild don’t) and he can also perform the role of loot master, especially if your system is based on some form of DKP. With regards to organizing raids then make sure to have input on or control over any drafts that are made or raid goals that are set. The social spider can be of great help with keeping morale up and helping to solve conflicts without ending up with two ppl who’ve put each other on /ignore. Any sort of ruling or decision of the type “you’re right and you’re wrong” during raids should still be made by the RL or possibly the the guild master or you risk undermining your authority. For the roles researcher, mentor and analyst you can find some great help from all of your raiding team. If there is someone who combs thru strategy forums and watches hundreds of vidoes then take advantage of that ask him help you find good information. Similarily you’ll find people who are great at playing different classes that can help those who are struggling and there are people who love to go thru WoL reports that can help you analyse what went wrong.