https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSoBlMg3dUc

Now to those that would rather read than watch:

First of all let me start out by saying that there’s different ways of raid leading and that different things work for different people. You should also know that raid groups tend to be far more unstable than let’s say guilds and you should prepare for drama, fall outs and other things that follow leading a raid. That’s not to say that successful raid groups don’t survive long. They do. It’s just that raid groups are far more unstable than anything else I have observed. This advice is based on my experiences and beliefs alone, which are not necessarily true. I welcome different opinions in the comments, or any further advice that other raid leaders can give to people.

Having said that, let us start. Advice on raid leading from Mirta’s perspective in no particular order of importance.

1. When making a raid group, do not go for “we have no raid leader, we’re all leading!” approach. Such approach makes it far harder to put the team back together when fall out happens, tends to lack that person that can enforce order, give advice, or call out mechanics. Sure, you can give those parts of raid leading to different members, but ultimately it will be a rather unstable atmosphere. With nobody enforcing the rules, the rules will always be determined by the majority. So if enough people decide that it’s rude to remind tanks that they should pull in tank stance, that is the new rule of your group, no matter how retarded it is.

2. Do not guild AND raid lead. If you are guild and raid leading, I’m amazed at your ability to do both. Just re-recruiting for raids after a fall out, counting peoples misses, watching rotations, planning strategies will take up most of your week.

3. When starting a static and writing an ad for the static be VERY specific. “We’re a casual static!” tells me very little. Is raid food necessary in your static? What would happen if team member shows up drunk? What are the expectations for people gearing up outside the static? How many bad performance days is a person allowed before they get kicked?
Don’t be afraid to write down the negatives as well. “If you will be forgetting the core parts of your class I will yell at you quite loudly” is a good point to ad for example. Some people can’t handle that. If your tanks are forgetting tank stance, or your ninjas are going in without applying their poisons and you do snap with “what the heck are you doing?” some people can take it very negatively and quit right there. That’s why describing the attitude (both the positives and negatives on your own and what is expected from the team) is very important.

4. Emphasize communication. If your DPS are trying different rotations in hopes of increasing their DPS, it would be good to announce said thing to the party. It’s even more important that healers and tanks communicate together. If a healer will try to switch up and DPS more at a specific part, the tank should know, if the tank will try to save a cooldown here and use it somewhere else, the healer should know. Don’t assume that your static has been communicating outside of raid time. If there’s many silent pulls with no change, assume that you’re attempting the same thing over and over again. Which is not a way to clear content.
Another good practice is to stop the group in between pulls and ask what happened. “I did not do this mechanic properly” or “I messed up my cooldowns” is a valid response. However without asking such a question there may be that some of your members don’t fully understand the fight and without you knowing this you won’t be able to correct them.

5. Think twice about raiding with friends. Will them being your friends impact how you react to their mistakes and underperformance? And if you reprimand them, will that affect your relationship? Think about this long and hard.

6. Prepare for it being very personal when it comes to letting go people. Raiding is never separate from the rest of your MMO life. The way that you interact with these people, or if you interact with them ever again, changes considerably. Upon the fallout of the first raid group that I was in, we all blacklisted each other. Not that we hated each other as people, nor was the interaction outside of raid times very unpleasant, it just that the raiding falling apart did affect us all very strongly and we did not want to have to speak to one another again. My second raid falling apart was even more awkward because people that were in the raid group were my friends, my officers and people that I hung out with daily and still do. The way that I see them and interact with them has changed considerably. Hence my point number 5 – be careful when raiding with friends.

7. Raid atmosphere. There will be a point where your raid group (unless of course you’re the best of the best) will get stuck on a certain boss, or a certain turn, or a certain wing, depending on the game that you’re playing. When you do hit that point, do anything in your power to not allow the general determination of people to slip. After a long time with no progress people become agitated, snappy and even worse come into the raid just prepared to die for hours. When nobody expects a clear anymore the performance falls to such a level that a clear is no longer possible. If you see the danger signs of this happening, pull your group back. Maybe you all need a day of just talking rather than a day of raiding. Perhaps you need to prepare A, B, C and D plans and then try them out the next day. Perhaps it’s time to look into who is performing the worst and catch said player up, instead of banging your head against a wall. Or perhaps it’s time for some content change. Do speeches. Do talks. Do breaks. But DO NOT let your raid hit a point where they’re no longer even trying to clear. In raids people first and foremost have to be focused. If said focus is no longer possible, trying to raid further as is, will not help.

8. If you’re stuck, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Reddit, forums, or any other form of popular communication among those that play the same MMO as you works. Write down your problem in depth and don’t be afraid to be scrutinized from outside. Having that outside perspective and getting suggestions about using tactics that you might have never thought about in my experience was a great help.

9. Duties of the raid leader. Here I can give you a list of what is a good idea to do while in raid.
a) record your raid time, somehow. No matter it’s through a parse, or a game footage recording software. It helps to have that footage to revisit what went wrong and what can be changed.
b) call out mechanics. Might seem a little silly, because people should learn them themselves, however if you can fool proof your raid by going “turn around” or “stay away from the middle” or “run away from the boss” do it!
c) don’t be afraid to go and talk to the people holding your raid back. Underperformance does not necessarily lead to throwing them out of the raid. Ask what is happening, what they’re doing, what they’re finding difficult and set time aside to help these people practice.

if you want to be hardcore, or simplify your life a lot, knowing EVERY class in the game really helps. It’s hard to figure out what your team is doing wrong when you don’t know the skills of other classes or what they’re doing. If you did level all the classes and can play all of them well, it will be very easy to see what is going wrong, as opposed to sitting there and comparing your group videos to videos of other groups.

That is all from me. I’m sure that there are other people that can give you further advice, but this is what I gathered from where my groups have gone wrong, or right, in my time spent raiding. Besides all of that, the only other thing that I can tell you is DO NOT GIVE UP, no matter how bad it gets! And don’t burn yourself out. Raiding next to competitive PvP is probably one of the most stressful environment possible in a video game, so don’t let it get to you.