Raid Leading SSC

I raid led tonight. It was pretty bad, at least personally.

Very briefly, I raid led a guild from the very first pull of Molten Core to the very last pull of Naxxramas, personally completing every single encounter in pre-TBC WoW. By the end, I had invested so much that the release of TBC, especially when I was struggling with school, and stressed myself out so much that it prompted me to quit the game altogether.

Don't get me wrong, I loved it, and I am very happy looking back on the accomplishment. It's a once in a lifetime experience, even if it's a video game. I've always had good memories.


But tonight, when the guild finished Illidan, Paumedie passed leadership to me and we went through an applicant run of Serpentshrine Cavern in the hopes of completing part of the attunement process. Given the number of applicants we had and given when we started, it was a virtually impossible task (that turned out to be impossible, Vashj was not killed).

The truth is, I didn't know much about Serpentshrine. I've been through it plenty, but I did so as an applicant watching strategies I didn't help create and wasn't around for learning. I only knew how things were supposed to go when they went right. I didn't remember all of the fine details, like what needs to be called out when on certain bosses and which trash needs to be dealt with how.

It also didn't help that I was tired. My sleep schedule, perpetually doomed thanks to a rocky website that tends to go down in the middle of the night when Europeans first get into their workplaces and check the website.

And I didn't know the people. I know them, but I don't know them. More importantly, they don't know me.


So I wound up steering a ship instead of leading a raid. At no point did I make a single move that was genuinely beneficial to the raid. This was more like leading one of my early UBRS pug runs -- even before Molten Core -- than it was like the days of Naxxramas.

I marked targets. We pulled, eventually, once the Hunter had full mana and decided to pull. We went through with no particular speed or efficiency and no particular care to detail (three of our trash pulls were proximity aggro from someone running in early).

The raid went fine. There weren't any bad moments, the raiders were generally respectful (and sympathetic) to the position I was in. The applicants were actually the difficult part of the raid, which is strange, because normally applicants are on their best behavior and raiders slack off a bit because it's an easy zone.

But there was no desire to bring speed and efficiency to the raid, and it was completely out of my control to do so. I realized this after Lurker below -- I asked to keep the raid together as a group and buff people who had ressed, get mana back, and get all of our buffs in one location before we began trash pulling. That was fine. Until a Hunter started swimming off before buffs went up. Then a Shaman. Then two more players. Whether it was a matter of them not listening or a matter of them not caring -- both of which would make sense -- it was clear that pushing to do any better than mediocre wasn't going to work. In other words, making any good attempt at Vashj would not happen.

I steered, understanding the futility of performing the actual job of a leader. I waited for mana. I waited ungodly amounts of time for buffs to go up, stalling on nearly every important pull for the quick call in vent that someone forgot buffs. In my mind I'm thinking, "why on earth didn't they say something when we were handling these buffs?" But out loud, nothing, because pissing people off wouldn't save the run and wouldn't benefit anyone.

Steering the ship in an instance you don't know the ins and outs of is a pretty pissy job. The tense nature of my voice carried over to the raid, and by and large I just acted as a speaking boss mod. Not many people are too excited about SSC in a guild clearing Hyjal and Black Temple weekly.

Yet, some desire for performance -- especially from the applicants -- would have gone a long way towards completing the zone tonight. If they knew me, they'd share that desire, even on these zones. Maybe they will, in time.

We'll see.