Behavior in raids – play your role

At the absolute most basic level raids operate with three roles; the tanks, the healers and the DPS (damage pr. second; the damage dealers). In a game like WoW the balance between these roles is critical for a raids success, but how a raid chooses to balance between them can be different depending on play style and level of progress and/or skill of the individual players.

One of the famous psychological experiments concerning the adoption of roles in the Stanford Prison Experiment which took the conformation the participants to the roles they had been given to the extreme. Interestingly you find the similar effects when it comes to players conforming to their raid roles, and this includes both their player role as well as their perceived social role. Tanks are leaders, damage dealers are superstars and the healers are the caretakers. Of course these are my own personal generalizations and when we come down to specific experiences its rarely this simple. You will find that any role can lead, the superstar is all about how ego a player boasts and anyone with a kind word and encouraging attitude can become the social glue a good raid group needs.

When you take the step deeper into the actual game play roles in a raid you will discover additional nuances; there are different tanking styles, damage dealers will be able to excel on different raid challenges and healers will differ in how they use their abilities. For a good group you need the right diversity where all the roles come together and creating a ‘well oiled machinery’. A good raid leader will be able to identify how his teams individual players perform and create tactics that match their play style.

Moving from the game to the social relations between the players you will find similar behaviors as you would in most groups. There are a multitude of descriptions of such personality types, but as an example these 7 personality types might be a place to start if you want to check how your own raid is made up; the leader, the team player, the researcher, the expert, the planner, the creative and the communicator. Optimally most of your raiders will take on more than one role, but the key to success here is to find a good balance covering several such personality types.