Help Wanted - Part Time Raid Leader

pzschrek

I should also say that it really can be the most fun ever too when things are firing. I think the highs are higher and the lows are lower. And I got good enough eventually that people would whisper me when I wasn't around asking me to come lead. But it did sort of ruin the game for me for a time when I just got effing tired of it.

God bless those few people left who pug wrangle.

Yeah and from the peon group member side of things, I really love group work a lot, but I'd much rather play by myself then under a bad raid lead. I can see how switching back and forth throughout the evening would be a good way to mitigate that.

Ixtyr

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Ixtyr wrote: »

Lexxypwns wrote: »

Ixtyr wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

Ixtyr wrote: »

pzschrek wrote: »

The learning curve is incredible.

It's depressing as a new lead when the main lean passes crown over and you watch your 20 man group dwindle to 10 within 2 minutes. Or your 100 person guild and like 8 people show up. Or everyone decided not to follow your calls or push with you, and you wonder if you lost because you made a bad call, because your group is either not skilled enough to pull off what you tried or has the wrong composition, or if you failed simply because most of the group didn't listen. Good luck!

It takes a very hardy soul to get through that and come out the other side.

I did some raid leading in the past. Put me in the "I'm an adult and want to relax, not stress too much." I stopped leading raids because more often than not I ended the night and went to bed disgruntled and irritated instead of refreshed. I'd probably only consider ever doing it again if I knew I had a good group that stayed on crown and obeyed.

Most of the people in here offering services are pretty known and competent.

There's a lot of truth to this. What it really boils down to is your current raid leaders setting your new trainees up for success.

Communicate with the guild that you are being trained, and that their participation or lack thereof in raid will be noted and may affect their standing in the guild. If you're a Core player who bails every time the new guy comes in, you're hurting their ability to grow and learn how to call if they'd normally be depending on you to fill your role. You're not behaving like a Core member at that point. Do that enough, as a GM, I'd just flat out demote you, or just not let you come to raid anymore.

Also, as a raid lead - don't just give the new guy the reins for the entire night. One of the best ways VE trained raid leads (myself included) was for Bulb or Steve to lead us into a challenging situation, get the entire group firing on all cylinders, and then mid-fight pass lead to me, or Zheg, or whoever was being trained to lead. You make those calls for 5-10 minutes, then pass back to the main raid lead for a while, then they do it again. Let your main leaders set up your fights, and then the new guy calls it. Doesn't give people enough time to bail, and you're still having enough good fights to keep everyone happy under the normal leads, but it also gives the new guy good experience and when you start winning those couple of engagements, it gives you and your group members confidence that "new guy" is capable. And then you build from there.

I liked that method. It puts less pressure on the new raid lead. It's one thing if I drop you into a fight with a top-tier raid and you lose. I put you there, it's whatever. It feels different to seek out a fight with that same guild as a new raid lead and lose, a lot more crushing. You get all the pressure of command but none of the guilt for putting the raid into that situation in the first place.

Mhm, mhm. You also get more empathy, generally, from your raid members, cuz they look at it like "well dang, this is a terrible situation Steve just dropped him in, glad it's not me" - and it also often leads your members to play tighter and more coordinated than usual because they want you to succeed despite the odds that Dear Leader thrust upon you.

Somebody should be recording all fights with a new raid lead so that specific deficiencies can be pointed out by the veteran leaders as well. This requires the new lead to have 0 ego and be willing to have his every move dissected and analyzed. However, in the kite-burst group meta we’re in it can be very hard to learn in such a punishing real time environment, just getting exploded for being out of position doesn’t help you learn unless you can go back and see what you did and what you should have done. I would strongly advise you to record comms as well

Agreed, another thing we used to do was record fights and go back and watch them. That wasn't just a new lead thing though, every lead did that - see what went wrong, what worked, find patterns and discover new ways to counter specific situations. We'd also provide immediate feedback after each fight via PMs or separate voice channels while it's fresh in mind as well. The immediate feedback really helps, since you're already in that space and in the moment, it's fresh in mind and a good time to learn.

Agreed, the most important thing here is that there’s 0 egos involved in this critical step.

Egos in general should be a concern regardless of the role in the guild, in my opinion. If you have an ego, put it aside before you get into my raid, or any raid in my guild. There's nothing that pisses me off (or most of my members off) as much as someone back-seat raid leading, or making snide comments about a call they disagreed with or complaining about how a fight went. And that only becomes worse when most of the time, the ones complaining are the ones with the least right to complain - they're the inconsistent ones who miss their Ultimates or get caught in bad situations or potato off from the group the most. It was rare for us in VE to have one of the better players having an ego problem that was actually disruptive - it was always one of the worse ones, and they generally didn't last very long with us.

If you honestly think you can lead better than our raid leaders can, then go do it. I can pretty much guarantee you won't, because you can't, so shut up and do your job.

pzschrek wrote: »

Yeah and from the peon group member side of things, I really love group work a lot, but I'd much rather play by myself then under a bad raid lead. I can see how switching back and forth throughout the evening would be a good way to mitigate that.

Yeah, I definitely understand being frustrated with a new lead. You don't want to waste your time or get embarrassed. Splitting times up off and on throughout the night really helps keep everyone happy, even if it can take a bit longer to get the new lead up to speed.

But honestly, I really don't mind it too much if I know our group is good. In VE we'd almost always have a great comp with experienced veteran players - they shouldn't need that much direction to be able to succeed in most situations.

Something we used to preach (and still do in my new guild) was that, if you're in the build you're expected to be in, and you do what you're told - any mistake or death or wipe should always be 100% the raid leader's fault. Period. If you don't listen to a call, or miss your combo, or don't throw your Negate where you should, or get killed because you ran the wrong way - that is your fault. Don't let our wipe be your fault. It's better that way. Let me as the raid leader carry that burden. You do your job, I'll make the right call. And even if I make the wrong call, if you're listening and follow and do your job, we're probably still going to be able to make up for my lapse in judgement. The only thing that's guaranteed is that if you choose not to do your job, and we stop playing as a unit, then we have no hope of winning the fight.

Play together, do your job, and if you have a good group, you'll still find a way to win together. And the more you do that, the better your raid leader will become because they'll be able to learn and grow and test the limits of what sorts of calls they can make. Give your new lead enough good reps and they'll figure it out.

---

That said, I do realize that that's often a lot to ask of newer guilds or groups that aren't used to playing at a higher level. Recently-converted pug herders aren't going to have the solid core to rely on, and it's a lot harder to build an elite group that starts with 10% Core and 90% Carry than it is to start from 90% Core 10% Carry. I really feel for people who are going through that - I've gone through it several times before I was a part of VE, and they all generally ended up failing. It's tough.

Satiar

Ixtyr wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

Ixtyr wrote: »

pzschrek wrote: »

The learning curve is incredible.

It's depressing as a new lead when the main lean passes crown over and you watch your 20 man group dwindle to 10 within 2 minutes. Or your 100 person guild and like 8 people show up. Or everyone decided not to follow your calls or push with you, and you wonder if you lost because you made a bad call, because your group is either not skilled enough to pull off what you tried or has the wrong composition, or if you failed simply because most of the group didn't listen. Good luck!

It takes a very hardy soul to get through that and come out the other side.

I did some raid leading in the past. Put me in the "I'm an adult and want to relax, not stress too much." I stopped leading raids because more often than not I ended the night and went to bed disgruntled and irritated instead of refreshed. I'd probably only consider ever doing it again if I knew I had a good group that stayed on crown and obeyed.

Most of the people in here offering services are pretty known and competent.

There's a lot of truth to this. What it really boils down to is your current raid leaders setting your new trainees up for success.

Communicate with the guild that you are being trained, and that their participation or lack thereof in raid will be noted and may affect their standing in the guild. If you're a Core player who bails every time the new guy comes in, you're hurting their ability to grow and learn how to call if they'd normally be depending on you to fill your role. You're not behaving like a Core member at that point. Do that enough, as a GM, I'd just flat out demote you, or just not let you come to raid anymore.

Also, as a raid lead - don't just give the new guy the reins for the entire night. One of the best ways VE trained raid leads (myself included) was for Bulb or Steve to lead us into a challenging situation, get the entire group firing on all cylinders, and then mid-fight pass lead to me, or Zheg, or whoever was being trained to lead. You make those calls for 5-10 minutes, then pass back to the main raid lead for a while, then they do it again. Let your main leaders set up your fights, and then the new guy calls it. Doesn't give people enough time to bail, and you're still having enough good fights to keep everyone happy under the normal leads, but it also gives the new guy good experience and when you start winning those couple of engagements, it gives you and your group members confidence that "new guy" is capable. And then you build from there.

I liked that method. It puts less pressure on the new raid lead. It's one thing if I drop you into a fight with a top-tier raid and you lose. I put you there, it's whatever. It feels different to seek out a fight with that same guild as a new raid lead and lose, a lot more crushing. You get all the pressure of command but none of the guilt for putting the raid into that situation in the first place.

Mhm, mhm. You also get more empathy, generally, from your raid members, cuz they look at it like "well dang, this is a terrible situation Steve just dropped him in, glad it's not me" - and it also often leads your members to play tighter and more coordinated than usual because they want you to succeed despite the odds that Dear Leader thrust upon you.

I did feel sorry for you a few times. Bulb deliberately put you into no-win situations before passing it over, gave you the old kobayashi maru

Ixtyr

Satiar wrote: »

Ixtyr wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

Ixtyr wrote: »

pzschrek wrote: »

The learning curve is incredible.

It's depressing as a new lead when the main lean passes crown over and you watch your 20 man group dwindle to 10 within 2 minutes. Or your 100 person guild and like 8 people show up. Or everyone decided not to follow your calls or push with you, and you wonder if you lost because you made a bad call, because your group is either not skilled enough to pull off what you tried or has the wrong composition, or if you failed simply because most of the group didn't listen. Good luck!

It takes a very hardy soul to get through that and come out the other side.

I did some raid leading in the past. Put me in the "I'm an adult and want to relax, not stress too much." I stopped leading raids because more often than not I ended the night and went to bed disgruntled and irritated instead of refreshed. I'd probably only consider ever doing it again if I knew I had a good group that stayed on crown and obeyed.

Most of the people in here offering services are pretty known and competent.

There's a lot of truth to this. What it really boils down to is your current raid leaders setting your new trainees up for success.

Communicate with the guild that you are being trained, and that their participation or lack thereof in raid will be noted and may affect their standing in the guild. If you're a Core player who bails every time the new guy comes in, you're hurting their ability to grow and learn how to call if they'd normally be depending on you to fill your role. You're not behaving like a Core member at that point. Do that enough, as a GM, I'd just flat out demote you, or just not let you come to raid anymore.

Also, as a raid lead - don't just give the new guy the reins for the entire night. One of the best ways VE trained raid leads (myself included) was for Bulb or Steve to lead us into a challenging situation, get the entire group firing on all cylinders, and then mid-fight pass lead to me, or Zheg, or whoever was being trained to lead. You make those calls for 5-10 minutes, then pass back to the main raid lead for a while, then they do it again. Let your main leaders set up your fights, and then the new guy calls it. Doesn't give people enough time to bail, and you're still having enough good fights to keep everyone happy under the normal leads, but it also gives the new guy good experience and when you start winning those couple of engagements, it gives you and your group members confidence that "new guy" is capable. And then you build from there.

I liked that method. It puts less pressure on the new raid lead. It's one thing if I drop you into a fight with a top-tier raid and you lose. I put you there, it's whatever. It feels different to seek out a fight with that same guild as a new raid lead and lose, a lot more crushing. You get all the pressure of command but none of the guilt for putting the raid into that situation in the first place.

Mhm, mhm. You also get more empathy, generally, from your raid members, cuz they look at it like "well dang, this is a terrible situation Steve just dropped him in, glad it's not me" - and it also often leads your members to play tighter and more coordinated than usual because they want you to succeed despite the odds that Dear Leader thrust upon you.

I did feel sorry for you a few times. Bulb deliberately put you into no-win situations before passing it over, gave you the old kobayashi maru

"Alright Ixy, we're outnumbered 3:1, all of our Ultimates are down, we're trapped in a corner and we're being sieged from above. Have fun!"

*cries*

Kilandros

Ixtyr wrote: »

Also, as a raid lead - don't just give the new guy the reins for the entire night. One of the best ways VE trained raid leads (myself included) was for Bulb or Steve to lead us into a challenging situation, get the entire group firing on all cylinders, and then mid-fight pass lead to me, or Zheg, or whoever was being trained to lead. You make those calls for 5-10 minutes, then pass back to the main raid lead for a while, then they do it again. Let your main leaders set up your fights, and then the new guy calls it. Doesn't give people enough time to bail, and you're still having enough good fights to keep everyone happy under the normal leads, but it also gives the new guy good experience and when you start winning those couple of engagements, it gives you and your group members confidence that "new guy" is capable. And then you build from there.

That's some great advice actually. So much of being an effective raid lead is getting used to trusting your own instincts to make quick calls (even if those calls later turn out to have been bad calls). Once you have confidence in yourself to make calls, the group will have confidence in you to make them too. But building that confidence is a fairly slow slog so setting up a raid lead to succeed by putting him into a challenging fight for 5-10 min while the group has good focus is really great advice.