Raid Leading 101

In the last post, I left you with the question of “What did I learn?  And what makes a good raid leader?”  Let’s start with what I believe to be qualities of a good raid leader.

I think it takes a lot of preparation.  One of the most difficult things I ran into was the actual marking of targets.  You need to understand basically what every mob is capable of doing, and how you can deal with them.  And of course, this all changes according to your raid make-up.  Thankfully, I had enough experience with the place that I could mark most of the targets from memory.  But when you’re going into progression content, you need to do your homework.  Something that I didn’t do with the Black Temple raid I failed at.  One thing that I wish I would have done better while leading the last raid was just being more authoritative.  I kind of asked people what assignments they wanted rather than just giving them out.

But a topic of recent debate has been over what class is the best raid leader.  Veneretio, our guild’s raid leader, claims that tanks make the better raid leaders in his article here.  While many of his readers have claimed that people other than tanks are more suited for raid leading because they can get a broader perspective on the fight at hand.  Well, I’ve been fortunate enough to lead 25 man raids as both a tank and as a ranged DPSer.  And honestly, I felt much more comfortable doing it…as a tank.

I feel that actual tanking requires less attention than DPS’ing does.  As a warlock, I am constantly watching dot timers, threat meters, if I need to move, and then trying to watch the rest of the raid on top of that.  As a tank, there aren’t too many fights where I need to be incredibly aware of my surroundings in case I need to move or do anything special.  You don’t worry about threat, that’s the job of your DPSers.  And with only a little bit of experience tanking, you can keep all shouts, debuffs, and abilities going without even looking at cooldowns.  So basically, the only thing you have to do sometimes is just watch what the rest of the raid is doing.

So it may seem like it’d be easier leading a raid while standing 40 yards from any danger, but I’d much rather do it while helplessly slashing at the ankles of some out of proportion monster