Raid leading Ulduar 25

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A few nights ago I led my first 25m Ulduar, and it was certainly a challenge. Raid leaders have always had my respect, and as a participant I tend to follow the instructions from the leaders even if they make little sense. You never know when somebody has a method or tweak that will change the encounters. That said – its a prick of a job.

It is a strange sensation to lead a raid rather than just do my job. Kind of like thinking in two spaces at once, the first is my normal role of melee dps killing the mobs, and the second is watching what else is going on, seeing and correcting the actions of others.

Raid leading seems like a good role to keep the game interesting. I’ve always been an advocate for knowing the roles of other classes, and understanding what powers, strategies, and potential the Tank, DPS and Healer roles use. And now I get why often raid leaders have several alts, in each of the three roles in the game.

My concerns were:

  • Trying to give brief instructions to the players who had not seen the content, without covering everything and boring the experienced players to tears.
  • Moving at a pace that let us not feel to slow. Now to my mind, the last run was really slow, especially in the first prep. I aim to speed this up significantly.
  • Giving advice without being a prick, or sounding too harsh. I hate saying the same thing 3 times, and if a set of players are just not doing what they’re told that irks me. (eg. melee dps need to switch to the XT002 trash if it is getting too close to the boss)
  • Being ok, or not being ok when instructions are not followed.

I find in the heat of battle people stick to what they know rather than what they’re told to do in advance. That means that moving them mid fight will help, but also saying it afterward will help too. Post-wipe looks to me to be a good time to outline what we might have to do better. I think it willstick more in everyone’s heads after a small beating.

What went well:

  • Considering it was the first time that a lot of the raid had seen Ulduar 25, and first Ulduar run for a few players we did ok.
  • Killed Flame and XT, but had a frustrating time with Razorscale.
  • Morale was good, they’re happy to be seeing 25m stuff.
  • Overall everyone did what they had to in a really efficient way.

What I’ll do next time:

  • We tried Suicide Kings for the first time in the run too, and I think there was a lot of confusion. I am definitely going to re-cover the loot rules at the beginning.
  • Quick in, and expect players to know the fights. Get in, play, wipe if we need to, then cover next steps. Better to start playing that spend 20 minutes talking about it. Setup and go in 5-10 max for a new group.
  • Next run will be Flame, XT, then Kolo. Razor can be killed when we’re all a little better geared and more coordinated.

3 thoughts on “Raid leading Ulduar 25”

  1. Hey congrats on leading your first raid! You’ve got more cajones that I have, not something I would want to do.

    Some things we do that might be helpful for you:
    – Post links to boss fight strats and vids in forums before your initial attempts and strongly encourage people to read them prior to the raid. We still have many people who don’t do this but the more that do the better the chance of success

    – Create a cheat sheet doc for yourself of the main points of a fight to help you quickly communicate (I must agree there is nothing more boring than hearing a fight explained for the 50 millionth time – well unless it is having several people arguing about how to best approach a new fight pre first pull heh)

    – Create a macro with loot info that you can spam. I think players can also send a tell to the SK loot master to get an auto reply with the loot rules. We also broadcast the current list at the beginning of the raid

    I so agree with just getting in there and wiping as a learning tool too. Fights always gel better for me once I’ve seen it in action regardless of how many kill vids I watch.

    I hope this raid become a regular established one for you and if it does I highly recommend setting up some task delegation to trusted regulars šŸ™‚ Back in TBC we had one person basically handling everything but now we have a raid leader, a recruiter, loot master and Performance Authority (we like to say performance asshole) who takes underperformers in hand. In some cases we have 2 people in the role so if one of them can’t make it we’re not screwed.

  2. It was a blast, and again alst night too. We were a little better when we were actually fighting, but getting people to show on time last night was a pain.

    I am thinking of rewarding those who turn up on time in some manner. Not sure what without becoming a Nazi-Raid-Leader. I get the feeling that we need to have on time starts, otherwise the reliable people feel they are waiting half their night waiting for late comers.

  3. Welcome to the wonderful wold of the Raid Leader.
    As for punishing people who show up late – are you having people sign up? What’s the nature of the guild – casual/community based or is it raid focused?
    This has to factor into any decision you make as to whether or not to penalise people for no shows.

    I think it would be better to reward the people who have shown up on time rather than penalise the people who are late (and you can only be late if you actually signed up to be there).

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