Behavior in raids – leadership

Becoming a raid leader is not role one can just ‘take’, its a role that first requires you to conform. Just like the players will conform to their roles and their personality type the leader must first find his place in the group to be able to lead.

In a LFR the time needed to ‘hold’ a leading role is short, but for a guild raid group a leader will need time to be able to have the group work together as a team. The difference primarily based on the level of ‘facerolling’ (lack of complexity) that is possible in a LFR where mistakes are much easily ‘forgiven’ and the boss mechanics can be ‘ignored’ by some and have the raid still come out victorious. From the next level and onward such mistakes have much ‘deadlier’ consequences, and when you reach the Heroic level you also face additional mechanics that do not exist in the other levels and where there is no room for ‘mistakes’.

Even if the basic mechanics of an encounter is more or less the same for all, it becomes unique for each combination of players that take it on. And its up to the raid leader to ‘mold’ his team into a team that is ready and able to succeed. Overcoming these challenges is not just a combination of individual efforts, it is just as much how they are able to work as a team and counter any flaws or assist in enhancing positive abilities that each individual player might display during different challenges. Where each player must understand both the game mechanics for the encounter as well as those for their characters role, its the leaders role to puzzle all of this together on both a game and social level and bring the victory home.

So make sure you groom your aspiring leaders – they are a rare breed, and the good ones even more so. At the same time it seems that good leaders always bring with them a set of flaws. So the question becomes this; does the raids successes outweigh the flaws of the leader?