There is no A team.
Insights from Dragon to +1 Drake
I'm not going to get into the fact that the jump from Sartharion alone to Sartharion with a drake is a tremendous difference in the 10-man and that any guild that's done it with all 3 drakes should truly be commended and respected... I'm not going to talk about that.
The beauty of going from something easy to something hard is observing what happens to people. Seeing how they respond to their expectations changing.
The game is Easy
Sartharion10 with 0 drakes died in 3 shots to a team of people that ranged from 80 for 3 days to 80 for 2 hours. He died in 1 shot to a half-epiced team of folk that'd never seen it minus a single rogue.
He didn't die in 1 shot, 3 shots or at all with 1 more drake. Everyone expected him to. I expected him to as much as I warned everyone not to take it too lightly.
The danger of Expectations and Momentum
They say that the most dangerous lead in Hockey is 2-0 because all it takes is a single goal and the momentum slips. A single more and the momentum's gone. It's shifted.
"Is it still worth 1 more epic?"
...said after only a few wipes. From years of Raid Leading, I know right away that I've lost that guy. It's game over for him. I'm basically 9 manning this boss now.
"It's not about the epics."
...said in response to the "1 more epic" comment, but I know I've lost this guy too. The first one doesn't believe we can do it or at least doesn't believe it's worth it. The 2nd doesn't believe in that guy. So, now we're 8 manning it.
Tensions, Rushing, Brute Force
It's around this time that you can hear the anxiousness it people's voices. You can feel them wanting to Rush. They want to essentially Brute Force the encounter. Learn by Quantity not Quality.
There's nothing wrong with going the Quantity approach to learning encounters... when people are ready for the Quantity approach. We were not ready.
Hit the Breaks
10-mans have a unique advantage over 25-mans. You can actually talk to every single person and if you're lucky, not unfocus the entire raid by the end of the chain.
Single Out Everyone
I should have stopped and asked every single person to go over what they were going to do, but the problem with momentum is we all get swept up in it. Especially when we're not used to being swept up in it. Especially when we succeed despite being swept up in it.
I'm Beyond this Game
That's the danger with easy content. We start to let ourselves believe that we've somehow transcended the difficulty of this game. That we've simply learned sooo much about the game that we're just better than the game itself now. There's nothing that they can throw at us that we can't simply respond to on the fly.
Wrong.
So, we blame each other
The aftermath once we'd went back and killed the single drake and easily finished off Sartharion10 with 0 drakes was a smaller section of the raid reflecting on how they'd lead raids.
It's always interesting to hear other's take on "How to lead" because they seem to always believe it stems from "How you invite". That somehow certain people just aren't good enough.
People are good enough
Yes, it's true that some people give up sooner than others, but guess what... that's where the raid leaders comes in. The funny thing is that Raider 2 that's "not about the epics" that's given up because Raider 1 doesn't think "it's worth 1 more epic" somehow believes that if we can get rid of all the Raider 1s, we'd succeed.
Everyone is Raider 1
Everyone is Raider 2
...at some point in time, we all are. It's called being Human. Trying to invite only people that aren't Raider 1 is impossible.
There is no A team
...and anyone that believes that they can somehow invite "The A team" is kidding themselves. They're showing their inexperience in spades. Raid Leading is not a Sprint, it's a Marathon and it's true you could make an "A team" for a week or two, but what about a month from now? 3 months? A year?
Everyone has Issues
You've gotta learn to compensate for each other. You've gotta learn to trust each other. You've gotta learn that a team isn't the 25 people in the raid, it's the people outside the raid, it's the people not interested in raiding yet, it's the people not even in the guild yet.
That's a team.
Trust
The hardest boss that I tanked in TBC was Archimonde because as a Raid Leader, Main Tank... I was used to being able to worry about others while tanking. I was used to playing unfocused. You just can't do that on a boss that's constantly putting fire at your feet, fearing you in seconds, hitting you hard enough that you've gotta be ready to use any of 5 or more cooldowns immediately or you're dead. You've actually gotta focus and boy did I struggle with that. Sure, I'd never had issues avoiding fears on Nightbane or similar fights, but this guy had a whole lot more than 1 spell cast. You can't just instinctively stance dance on Archimonde the second you see a cast bar because he's got a whole lot more than 1 spell that he casts. Even though it didn't take me more than a few attempts to get the hang of focusing and blocking everything else out, I learned very quickly that this was my weakness. Over the course of TBC, I fell into that trap occasionally, but I broke out of it faster each time.
Don't get caught up with Blaming Others
Yes, some people screw up, but a true Raid Leader knows that:
1. It is your fault. Not there's.
2. Sometimes, there's nothing you can do, but it's still your fault.
We're often faced with numerous spur of the moment decisions and even though we all learn to follow a template, that doesn't change that every now and then, we're wrong. Even when we've done everything the way that it's "always" worked, we still fail. It's important to understand that, it is your fault. Just b/c the answer wasn't obvious doesn't change that it was your fault.
You are the leader.
Quit trying to invite the A team and instead take what you've got and make the A team. After all, that's the only way you'll keep an A team.
I'm not going to get into the fact that the jump from Sartharion alone to Sartharion with a drake is a tremendous difference in the 10-man and that any guild that's done it with all 3 drakes should truly be commended and respected... I'm not going to talk about that.
The beauty of going from something easy to something hard is observing what happens to people. Seeing how they respond to their expectations changing.
The game is Easy
Sartharion10 with 0 drakes died in 3 shots to a team of people that ranged from 80 for 3 days to 80 for 2 hours. He died in 1 shot to a half-epiced team of folk that'd never seen it minus a single rogue.
He didn't die in 1 shot, 3 shots or at all with 1 more drake. Everyone expected him to. I expected him to as much as I warned everyone not to take it too lightly.
The danger of Expectations and Momentum
They say that the most dangerous lead in Hockey is 2-0 because all it takes is a single goal and the momentum slips. A single more and the momentum's gone. It's shifted.
"Is it still worth 1 more epic?"
...said after only a few wipes. From years of Raid Leading, I know right away that I've lost that guy. It's game over for him. I'm basically 9 manning this boss now.
"It's not about the epics."
...said in response to the "1 more epic" comment, but I know I've lost this guy too. The first one doesn't believe we can do it or at least doesn't believe it's worth it. The 2nd doesn't believe in that guy. So, now we're 8 manning it.
Tensions, Rushing, Brute Force
It's around this time that you can hear the anxiousness it people's voices. You can feel them wanting to Rush. They want to essentially Brute Force the encounter. Learn by Quantity not Quality.
There's nothing wrong with going the Quantity approach to learning encounters... when people are ready for the Quantity approach. We were not ready.
Hit the Breaks
10-mans have a unique advantage over 25-mans. You can actually talk to every single person and if you're lucky, not unfocus the entire raid by the end of the chain.
Single Out Everyone
I should have stopped and asked every single person to go over what they were going to do, but the problem with momentum is we all get swept up in it. Especially when we're not used to being swept up in it. Especially when we succeed despite being swept up in it.
I'm Beyond this Game
That's the danger with easy content. We start to let ourselves believe that we've somehow transcended the difficulty of this game. That we've simply learned sooo much about the game that we're just better than the game itself now. There's nothing that they can throw at us that we can't simply respond to on the fly.
Wrong.
So, we blame each other
The aftermath once we'd went back and killed the single drake and easily finished off Sartharion10 with 0 drakes was a smaller section of the raid reflecting on how they'd lead raids.
It's always interesting to hear other's take on "How to lead" because they seem to always believe it stems from "How you invite". That somehow certain people just aren't good enough.
People are good enough
Yes, it's true that some people give up sooner than others, but guess what... that's where the raid leaders comes in. The funny thing is that Raider 2 that's "not about the epics" that's given up because Raider 1 doesn't think "it's worth 1 more epic" somehow believes that if we can get rid of all the Raider 1s, we'd succeed.
Everyone is Raider 1
Everyone is Raider 2
...at some point in time, we all are. It's called being Human. Trying to invite only people that aren't Raider 1 is impossible.
There is no A team
...and anyone that believes that they can somehow invite "The A team" is kidding themselves. They're showing their inexperience in spades. Raid Leading is not a Sprint, it's a Marathon and it's true you could make an "A team" for a week or two, but what about a month from now? 3 months? A year?
Everyone has Issues
You've gotta learn to compensate for each other. You've gotta learn to trust each other. You've gotta learn that a team isn't the 25 people in the raid, it's the people outside the raid, it's the people not interested in raiding yet, it's the people not even in the guild yet.
That's a team.
Trust
The hardest boss that I tanked in TBC was Archimonde because as a Raid Leader, Main Tank... I was used to being able to worry about others while tanking. I was used to playing unfocused. You just can't do that on a boss that's constantly putting fire at your feet, fearing you in seconds, hitting you hard enough that you've gotta be ready to use any of 5 or more cooldowns immediately or you're dead. You've actually gotta focus and boy did I struggle with that. Sure, I'd never had issues avoiding fears on Nightbane or similar fights, but this guy had a whole lot more than 1 spell cast. You can't just instinctively stance dance on Archimonde the second you see a cast bar because he's got a whole lot more than 1 spell that he casts. Even though it didn't take me more than a few attempts to get the hang of focusing and blocking everything else out, I learned very quickly that this was my weakness. Over the course of TBC, I fell into that trap occasionally, but I broke out of it faster each time.
Don't get caught up with Blaming Others
Yes, some people screw up, but a true Raid Leader knows that:
1. It is your fault. Not there's.
2. Sometimes, there's nothing you can do, but it's still your fault.
We're often faced with numerous spur of the moment decisions and even though we all learn to follow a template, that doesn't change that every now and then, we're wrong. Even when we've done everything the way that it's "always" worked, we still fail. It's important to understand that, it is your fault. Just b/c the answer wasn't obvious doesn't change that it was your fault.
You are the leader.
Quit trying to invite the A team and instead take what you've got and make the A team. After all, that's the only way you'll keep an A team.
Total Comments 12
Comments
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I'm Mr. T, and I endorse this message, fool.Posted 12-11-2008 at 11:31 AM by Petninja
- Great post man.Posted 12-11-2008 at 11:36 AM by Moloch
- We tried OS25 with a drake up, and it started off the same. A couple wipes were just messy. Adds were loose, people (including me
) dieing to the flame walls.
And the discussions started. Maybe we're not ready for this. What does the wording of the achievement mean. How many purples do we get for what.
The reality is, while one drake is more complex, it isn't that much more complex. But adding those extra couple elements rattled a bunch of us more than it really should have. Our third attempt (and successful kill) started off pretty ugly, but over the course of the fight, we were able to fix what we were doing wrong, and clean it up. I got the healers to stand on the add tank, so there wouldn't be adds agro'd all over the room with a frantic tank running around. Standard stuff that we've been doing on those encounters for years. We were just sloppy. People started to actually hit the gaps in the fire, like they had in the easier versions of the fight.
We changed a couple of things with the strat that just weren't working for us, and all of a sudden the chaos of the earlier attempts turned into 18 people casually in complete control of the encounter.
The biggest thing was reminding everyone that even though we've easily beaten everything WotlK has thrown at us thus far, we're still the same guild that could slug it out for weeks on Kael'Thas or through Sunwell, learning after each wipe.
A wipe doesn't indicate failure. It shows us where our weaknesses are, and gives us the opportunity to improve ourselves. The trick is to getting your team to buy back into that after expecting to steamroll everything.Posted 12-11-2008 at 12:00 PM by Kavtor -
<3 Venie and his words of wisdom.
KezaPosted 12-11-2008 at 12:57 PM by Keza - pace yourself that's all I'll say. Sometimes there's a rush to get a heroic achievement when it's not that necessary. Last night our palies and shammies secretly decided not to use FR aura on sapp heroic to get the achievement. 3 wipes later we barely got it and it was such a waste of time.
The guy who says is it worth one epic is a clear indication your grp isn't ready for it
Posted 12-11-2008 at 02:21 PM by bludwork -
Awesome post I have to say. Shed some new light on my own raid and my own stance as the co-raid leader, so thank you for that.Posted 12-11-2008 at 05:09 PM by Caulle 
-
Very good post. Another element worth mentioning:
Managing Expectations
We're working on Sarth25 with drake(s) up. We (raid leaders) know we would be just beating our heads on the wall with 3 drakes up right now, so we make the decision to work on two drakes max. I address it to the guild like this:
Okay gang, we're going to try Sarth with two drakes up. 5 tries. (5 tries later) Great stuff. Collect your thoughts, post them up in the Sartharion thread in the raids forum. Let's go kill a drake now... Okay, now 5 tries with one drake up. (5 tries later) Damn close. Again, post up your thoughts on that for next week. Let's go kill that drake then collect epix.
Managing expectations is an important skill to master - in pretty much every aspect of life. If people know what to expect, and know that is what will be delivered, they'll generally put forth full effort. If they are just being led around by the nose with little or no explanation or management, effort will fall off and frustration will rise. You'll end up in damage control mode and nothing productive will get done. In the Sartharion case, there's also the split between the people who would bang heads on 2 or 3 drakes all night long happily, and the ones who eventually ask what the point is. By managing expectations up front, you temper the gung ho, and give those less so a concrete point to look to. Either way you still generally get a better quality effort - whether it's because "we only get 5 shots so they'd better be good" or "only 4 more to go, let's give it the old college try". And who knows, that extra bit of motivation may well be all you needed.
And, your managed expectations propagate. People know that we'll do the 5/5/dead thing next week if needed. They'll look forward to seeing how much better we do, and soon they really start to push because they want to see it done. Win and win.Posted 12-11-2008 at 05:28 PM by Satrina - Very good post, Ven. Personally, I find myself falling into a trap as a raid leader, and it's always the same thing. In the first few seconds after a wipe, especially an avoidable one, my frustration comes out over vent. About 5 seconds later, I realize that the responsiblity is on me.
Regardless of which player blew up the raid on Grob, it's my fault because I didn't make things clear enough before hand. It's gotten to the point that I've told my raid to ignore me the first few seconds after a wipe, because what I say there is meaningless compared to what I say 10 seconds later.
In the long run I think this is a bad solution, but it has helped in the short term. I just need to keep working on it, and hopefully my raiders will have the patience to deal with me until I get my frustration under control.Posted 12-11-2008 at 05:38 PM by Kaganda -
Great post, Vene. I am going to link this page to my raid's forums. So much of the success of this game is about attitude, the motivation to work on all the fine points of the encounter or situation and the raid leader's demeanor in pushing the correct buttons.
I failed miserably last Friday taking an unprepared team into 10 man Naxx but after all the analysis of DPS and healing assignments and why people died, it comes down to me and reading this post helped me realized it.
There is no shame not killing boss X but in failing to learn from mistakes and getting better. You get into a rut and, for me at least, worry that with every wipe, you are in fact losing people.
The bottom line is that everyone in the raid sees every situation through their own, unique vantage point. The key is to both be able to see theirs and to lead them to see things as you do.....getting on the same page and executing. that's the process between preparation and execution, the most critical stage of the game for a raid leader to master.Posted 12-12-2008 at 07:17 AM by Horacio - I was ready to quit the Safety Dance fight after 6 wipes. Our raid leader had already spoken of moving on after we had some early trouble with maexxna (whom we 3 shotted)
so after 6 wipes, I started looking at him like "what? you arent as worried when its a boss that drops something you want?"
But the difference between the examples Vene used and myself is, you dont lose me. I do my damndest every fight, every pull. You may start to lose me physically after a while (I work early) but when the pull starts, I'm all out, no matter what.Posted 12-12-2008 at 07:34 AM by Rev13 - And every now and then you stumble across a little goldmine when you read blogs - thank youPosted 12-16-2008 at 12:27 AM by Aethelas
- I don't have more to add except that I don't read blog posts very much and happened along yours about a month later... very well written, insightful and inspiring. ThanksPosted 01-12-2009 at 03:15 PM by Whisperawr
