Faelgalad

Discipline

The key to every strategy is execution of this strategy with 24 people.
The fundament of executioning is discipline.
If you not enforce discipline, you will not kill any Epics.


So you have make sure.
- Everyone is quite during fights, only say short and precise what has to be said.

- Everybody is willing to ask questions, if they don't understand the strategy. Punish those, that laugh about people questioning. No question is silly, noone has to be asshamed of not knowing.

- Write the strategys for mobs as Guides into your raidcom forum. So everybody can read it before, and everybody can participate.

- Declare "Trainer", people with experience, that help those inexpierenced with equipment. My raidcom has 40 people, with me as the raidleader, two tanks, one tactician for strategy research and adaption, one healer trainer, one mage trainer and one melee trainer.

- Start controlling "useables" sometimes, like cure potions, tactician potions...
Write down an "standart" supplement of useables. In my raid, everyone has to take 4x stacks of curepotions from every variant with them.

- Write down "Raid Basics" into your forum. So everybody knows tactics like "pet pull" and "joust".

- Let your players understand, that in a raid situation, there is no autopilot. Everybody has to use his brain, has to be concentrated.
Layziness is the death of an raidcom.

- Adjust your raiders to open, constructive and non-aggrssive critique. Also, if someone does a very good job, give him positive feedback.

- Never yell in TS! Many raidleaders yell. That is shortsigted. After some time, they get used to it. If I get loud, all my raiders freeze. As it is so rare. Only two times in two years I have yelled loud in TS. And I had instand attention ^^


Knowledge of classes:
Esspecially to understand the healers and their special abilities is fundamental. I know all 24 classes, and I know them very well.
Play yourself different classes, so you get a feel for them.
I have played for example Paladin (80) raidtanked T5 with him anno long ago, Troubadour (80) my raidchar, Inquisitor, Wizard, Swashbuckler, Illusionist, Ranger, Mystic, Necro, Bruiser player in level ranges from 20-80. You get the fundamentels with level 30.
Read the T6, T7 and T8 "special" skills careful and know them.
Read the Achivement Endskills of all your raiders.
So you can apply them tactical.


Reading Scripts:
I use some paper, and write down what the mob does, discuss it with my raid. Reading log files, when did the epic what.
Starting test pulls, planning situations.
Like "this pull, no pets, no dot spells".
Like "only ranged fight this pull".
So we test one thing after the other, looking for the reactions.
Making screenshots from those spell descrptions of the Epic during fights is quite nice.

kanolth

FAEL!!!!!

Lol, thats quite the post you made. Its important to get a jist of the mindsets of some of the raid leaders out there.

Gemlin

Make sure your Players have decent resists to survive AoE's.
Let everyone use their brain and act independently.

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Immortal on Innovation
Gemlin Templar

firamas

Lots of good points from everyone here. Let me just add my own spin.

--Researching the encounters and using ACT/AE timers properly is critical. If you go in there blind and don't have the tools or the skills to learn the fights, you will struggle immensely.

--Recruit those who are dedicated to raiding. Being in a faction guild on a PvP server presents some problems there. I recommend having a "raiding member" rank and a "PvP" rank, with different attendance requirements, raid slot priorities, and DKP/bidding priviledges for both. Do not let conflicts between those ranks (due to policies) get out of hand. To work your way through raid progression you need to be able to gear out a core of 28-32 players, and rely on them to be able to attend a reasonably high percentage of raids. They have to be there to loot that shiny fabled gear, and they have to be there to get experience on the fights. It builds cohesion.

--Be prepared to make the hard decisions. If someone does not have the ability to pay attention on raids, cannot understand the mechanics of raid encounters, or does not fully understand their class, they are not an asset to you as a raid leader. The fact that they may happen to be a nice, friendly person in the guild is irrelevant. They need to be instructed, helped along, and if that fails (in the long term), politely replace their raid slot with someone who can do the job. Nothing will cause more frustration within a new raiding guild than finger-pointing and continuous wipes that could be prevented. Don't be a dick about it, but realize that you will never succeed with mediocre players.

--Keep Ventrilo clean. The raid leader has priority at all times. AE calls cannot be obscured. Know what should be called out publicly in vent and what should be sent in a macro/tell bind. (Also make use of alternate binds in Ventrilo -- the healers should all be able to talk to eachother, and only eachother, using a separate push-to-talk group-bind.)

__________________
"Selling Mythicals on Nagafen is the EQ2 equivalent of selling Nuclear Weapons to North Korea. You just don't understand the differences." -LFG, eq2flames site administrator, newly discovered as an elite foreign policy expert

Cheddar

BINGO.

If your in a raiding guild this is easy to do, but if your not in a radi guild then good luck to you. Trying to do the casual raiding thing whilst being nice to people is VERY difficult.

Firza

Its not difficult, but requires honesty, and time.

First step by step you need to implement raiding rules.
Second is step by step implementation of requirements. (for exemple who rezzes, what dps should be strived for etc. etc.)
At some point you will need to even implement optimum raid set up for some encounters etc etc.

Anyone who thinks that a family guild can be really succesfull at raiding w/o rules to create this succes is sleeping. Also, anyone who thinks that this can not be done w/o causing a guild to fall apart is incorrect.
To those afraid to hurt feelings it might be a good idea to remember that no one likes to wipe on encounters for months without progression, also not those who might have to sit out. (this is not a matter of integrity, but a matter of accomplishing goals.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Firza this one sucked.....next pls

Cheddar

I disagree, if your start creating rules which I agree are needed included attendance/ability etc then you are basically playing with a guild within a guild scenario.

When I talk about casual raiding I am talking about having to rely on players who want to raid because they enjoy it and get loot etc but honestly dont care about their toons that much or dont really understand even some of the basic mechanics of the game.

Casual raiding from my experience involves having around 2groups maybe 2.5 groups of people who know their classes and can follow instructions.

These people are generally the people who like raiding but for one reason or another cant do the hardcore thing.

Of course the other groups are made up of people of various ability. From people who have no idea what AA lines to go down, people who cant grasp simple game concepts and even people who cannot even find the zones you have planned.

Throw in then some people who cant raid to a schedule or who are simply unreliable and show up when they choose and you have a recipe for a severe headache.

Maybe I am being harsh when I say its impossible but I believe its VERY rare to see it done with success. It's like herding cats in my opinion, it just gets SO frustrating.

Your all set for the weekend to raid, planned everything out, and then its:

Dirge (your only dirge) - cant raid today I have band practice

Assasin (You bought all his adept3's and dragged him through all the quests for AA's and got his epic etc) - yeah my mom says I need to go out and she cancelled my account sorry guys.

Templar - I can raid but I need to go AFK for 45mins after we start ok.

Coercer - Are we raiding today?
Me - Yes we are, cant you make sure you have thoughtsnap spec'd
Coercer - I only have 48 AA's (At lvl 80!!!!!!!!!)
Me - Ok (Oh ffs)

Swashy - Can I bring my alt, she's only 72 but I love playing her (Main toon is nowhere fucking near maxed out in gear or AAs or spells!)
Me - No we need your swashy
Swashy - Can I switch mains
Me - yeah after the raid (Gun loaded)

Wizard - Cant wait to use my new stuff I got brand new adornments, check out my +dps necklace.
Me - Why do you need a dps mod if your a wizzy?
Wizard - What do you mean, i'm going to own the parse, 2k here I come!
Me - Can you just get to the zone pls (crying at this point)

Firza

attendence does not neccessarily have to be one of your rules. Quality > 100% attendence.

So to make rules they have to be aimed at improving the quality of your raiders.
The benefit of family guilds is that they don't have to have only 1 dirge, but can recruit 7-8...if thats whats needed. (not that recruitment is easy atm, but it is still possible.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Firza this one sucked.....next pls

firamas

Yes, that's correct. You have 1 guild leader, a small handful of senior officers, maybe 1-2 people in a minor officer (banker or extra raid leader) role, and then 25-32 people filling the Raid Member rank. Everyone else is a normal Member, recruit, etc. It's pretty likely that if you're a large casual guild then you don't even have strongly defined recruit policies.

Raid Member rank carries certain requirements, such as an XX% raid attendance (rolling 60-day or whatever you want), and those ranks are chosen based on a certain number of slots for each class that the officers feel is necessary to successfully raid. For a PvP faction guild this is actually easier, because there are 16 classes vice 24 and you can have a bit more padding within each specific requirement (i.e. 2-3 total rogues instead of 1 brig and 1 swash) and not deal with the "well damn, no one of this class is available to raid tonight.." issue.

Before the guild begins raiding this rank and its requirements MUST be clearly defined. People have to understand that success in raiding cannot happen with a truly casual approach and DOES carry certain requirements, and if they feel that they only should have to show up 30% of the time and still expect a raid slot and loot, they need an officer to politely explain why that won't work in the long term (from a raid leader's point of view).

And once all of that infrastructure is defined, everyone else who can't (or won't) meet those requirements can remain in the normal Member status, with the understanding that they will be given first choice for a raid slot in the future if one opens up.

__________________
"Selling Mythicals on Nagafen is the EQ2 equivalent of selling Nuclear Weapons to North Korea. You just don't understand the differences." -LFG, eq2flames site administrator, newly discovered as an elite foreign policy expert

Zaiden

To me, to /win raids up to VS/OK... jousting AE, as in, let the raid know 10 seconds before they land and then get to the approriate range... and curing.

If you can do those 2 things, your dps will stay alive and you will get the win.

People carrying potions helps until healers learn2cure.

I deal with a semi casual raid force myself... just wait till you get to VS