[Loliiten]

Hi!

A bit of background info:
My name char name is Loliiten, started playing him roughly 8-9months ago.
At the start of 08 I joined a guild as prot that was still having a rough time on the first few bosses in SSC. After a few weeks it really took up the paste and we progressed rather quickly, cleared both SSC and TK, attuning people, entered MH/BT well prepared and started our progress there.
After a few months our status was MH 5/5 BT 8/9. Then the summer holiday hit us like a truck in the face and we decided to just take a break, and the guild more or less disbanded.

Recently I had a chat with some of our old officers about reforming the guild. This was always their intention, however, our warrior CL didn't like the atmosphere in our guild and is not likely coming back
After we had discussed a bit, one of the officers asked if I might want to fill the spot as the future warrior CL when we re-establish the guild. I said I was flattered, but that I really don't feel like the CL type, I don't like bossing people around, making decisions that people might hate me for.
His counter was that no one likes bossing around and that I would eventually grow into the role, and that I had the suited laydback attitude.

Now, if we get the guild going again, it's very uncertain how many old members will rejoin, we might have to recruit a load of new people and there will be a lot of work to be done in order to get the warriors in good shape.

This is why I've posted here.
I have little experience leading people, the experience I have is from giving orders related to being MT.
I don't have a full understanding of my class, Protection is my best field, but don't have solid understanding of fury and MS dps.
I'm not very into theory crafting, which I should be.
I sometimes have problems being a 100% active, due to IRL, still attending studies, trying to take care of my friends and family.

However;
I'm really focused on keeping things fair. Fair treatment of guildies has always been one of my greatest concerns.
I always liked being involved in the guild, helping the officers, planning, evaluating and so on.
I'm a learner, thats also one of the reasons I posted here, I want to be as prepared as I possible can if it comes to me being our new warrior CL.

If there's anyone out there who's been in my position, have experienced some of my issues, or just have good experience being an end-game CL I will be very happy to hear your advices

Tips / links / personal thoughts of why/ why not this will/will not work out is greatly appreciated!

For the record, here is my armory if that's needed: The World of Warcraft Armory

Thanks in advice!

//Loliiten

[minrog]

Welcome to the wonderful world of CL. :P

A small wall of text advice:

-You will probably want a channel (we use /*guildname*tanks) to give out assignments for each fight. I've found it's easier to not give all the tank instructions over vent as it is usually crowded before a pull. I do make any in fight adjustments over vent, however.

-You may want to talk to the future GM and Officers about becoming a "tank lead" as opposed to a "class lead". DPS Warriors of both kinds seem to end up mimicking the Rogues/Enh Shammies and if your position is an in-raid endeavor you're either going to end up fighting with the other tank CL's or having to do a meeting with the other two in order to figure out who goes where. Meetings are a drag.

-You don't need to fully understand Fury/Arms or Arms/Fury right now. :P Read some of the DPS guides on here and play with the two cookie cutter specs for a few days maybe. Any specific question just come to this site and find the answer to; the hardest part of managing DPS is knowing when someone's numbers are too terrible to keep them in a raid spot. (for that just compare them to some SK Gaming or Vis Maior WWS logs, heh heh)

-If the theorycrafting is getting you down, I suggest you look into an application called "Rawr" and maybe maxdps.com for the DPS side of things. I have been using Rawr along with other spreadsheets and it seems to be the most newbie accessible one out there for gear maximization.

-As for your Protection spec there are only 2 or 3 cookie cutter prot builds. If you are the MT I would recommend the 8/5/48 max survivability one. Until you are a master of all that is Prot I would recommend against trying to personalize it too much. When you get to that stage, this site is the best resource I have found for warrior information.

-A Class Leader doesn't need to order people around that much. The Warriors are your crew and you back them up and work with them to find solutions to pulls/gear issues/rotations/responsibilities. The most important thing you need to do is veto any applicant that doesn't make you warm and fuzzy right off the bat. The only thing your guys need to do is what you want them to do and as long as you are working with the GM and RL then everything will be smooth. (don't contradict those two guys publicly unless you are angling for another guild implosion, hehe)

-Don't try to be fair; everyone has their own definition of that and it's totally biased. :P If you go down that road you will end up compromising yourself in order to please everyone. Seek to be honest and straightforward and if the current people don't like it find some different ones. This can take a while but is totally worth it. Especially don't bring in the guy that drives you crazy taunting your tank target while he is already tanking 4 things he took from all the other tanks. heh heh.

-For recruiting you'd have to provide more details about what sort of attendance rates your guys will have. Do the math and try to keep as few players as possible without starving yourself for tanks. If you are light on DPS Warriors your raid isn't going to shed a tear unless you are so light they don't get Blood Frenzy. hehe. If you recruit too many expect to lose the best of the ones who cannot get it into the raids regularly.

-It might help for you to use the DPS slots as buffer for your tanks. If your raid is taking 2 or 3 Warriors (1 prot, 2 dps or some configuration) try to have the backups willing to change specs back and forth. You'll have to put them on less damaging targets but that's what OT's are for. Get them interested in that Prot Warrior DPS thing too, it's kind of fun.

-If you are going to have low attendance you're going to have to designate an alternate to cover for you, but only if the CL position carries through to in raid responsibilities. I can't offer too much advice on a backup except to say it needs to be someone who has a pretty good memory of what role each tank is going to have in that fight. For DPS guys he can just tell them to follow the Rogues and "throw the gimmicky fight specific item / avoid the pain patch on the ground / run away before you explode the raid". :P

-In all the time I have held leadership positions I've never had people hate me. If you don't lie/backstab/spread rumors/treat them like crap and focus on your tasks and the job you need to do it's very unusual. I'm sure people resented me when I told them they messed up or whatever, but hate? yeah I don't think so. One thing to remember is that you and your Warriors are a team. Don't embarrass them on public channels when they mess up (unless it's absolutely critical during a pull) and give them some respect when they do their jobs correctly.

[Loliiten]

Thanks for the nice informative reply =)


- Familiar with having a tanking channel, includes bears and tankadins as well, we also have one at vent which we swap into before fights to discuss and gives advices

- Makes sense. Hopefully we will get our two DPS warriors back, which really don't need much help, and as you said belongs more to the rogue CL.
My job will be mostly tanks in raids, so the druid CL and I will have a lot in common.

- Will do! I rarely bother to off-specc, that's why I never bothered to look that much into it, but as a CL I have to consider dps applicants as well so I'm gonna follow your advice.

- Sounds like some nice guides, will definitely have a look!

- Prot builds are not a problem =) I change them after what role I'll have in the next few raids, usually works out very well.

- Warriors will be my crew, and I want them to listen to my out of respect and because they want to, not because they fear that I might give them minus dkp etc.

- You're probably right, I'll have to work on being a bit more firm. Spoiled guild members are also a disgrace don't want that to happen.

- We've never really used OT's as dps much since we've always had plenty of melee dps begging for spots. Problem is to get tanks dps gear up to par with our main dpsers..
Is this something I can demand? I know our prot pally's have to have decent healing gear.
I mean, it really takes a lot of time and effort and might compromise main specc (use of badges).

Once again, thanks for the well written reply =)

[Minya]

I was in your position about 6months ago, with the same issues.

We did not use a tank-channel but a warrior-channel and it really helped out a bit, also most of the warriors were in there outside the raids.

Like minrog already mentioned, you don't really have to boss around and give orders, you and your warris are a crew, so you have to act like that.

When I became the new CL, I managed a vent-meeting to clarify the most important aspects (who wants to play what specc, who has the best tanking gear [of the dps-warris], who wants this or that item, who is willing to respecc if needed, etcpp).
So most of the problems were solved before the first raid with me as the CL starts.
The only rule I installed was, that if the dps of a single warrior kept unacceptable on one raid, he has to pass the wohle next raid, even if he need some loot or something from that raid.

Individual duties and responsibilities for boss A or B are not that hard to handle, as you already should know
If your warris know their class just a lil' bit and know the strat, most parts are clear.

Then you have to talk to your Raid- / Guildleader to clarify your authorities in terms of new recruits and warrior-recruitment in general.

I had the most work with managing the rotation from boss to boss but we ended up using the alphabetical order. (at first, warrior AA passed, next time, warrior AB passed, then BA, etcpp^^)
If one of us needs some loot of a boss he was supposed to rotate on, he could talk to the warrior that has to rotate on the next boss to make an exchange.

So it was pretty much self-managed and I only had to work in the recruitment and to keep their dps up. So I saw one of them suck at dps, I did not blame them for that but rather asked for the reasons.

edit: hope I did not repeat myself to often, here in germany its late at night and I almost fall asleep right now ^^

[Loliiten]

Yeah. Rotation is another thing I'm wondering about.

We're using raid calendar, so everyone should sign up whether they are coming or not to make it very clear what we have to choose from.
I'm thinking of two different methods.

1. Having all the warriors giving me a list of days they can not be active / wants a day off. From this list I'll create a list of my own showing who's supposed to attend which days. At the start of each raiding week I'll need an update if there's any changes so we can re-arrange it and make it suitable for everyone.

2. Having all the warriors giving me a list with what bosses they need gear from, and I'll give prio based on that. Of course, if one warrior is already done with most of the BT loot he can't pass on all the raids, but hopefully it's possible to reach an agreement. I think it's a waste having guild members being left out when they need loot because other people who just wants dkp gets to join.
An alternative is to switch members between each boss, but that might slowdown the raid if they aren't ready asap, especially when it comes to tanks..

(keep in mind it's uncertain how many tanks we'll have available)

How did you guys handle it?

and thanks for your reply Minya it's the middle of the night here in Norway as well, so pardon any misspells or messy sentences

//Loliiten

[Minya]

we used eqdkp including a raid-callendar, but most people just were to lazy to sign up. that fucked us up sometimes

our warriors had an overall-attendance between 95 and 99%, so it was not that hard to count on them
In fact, I think your idea will work pretty well and it will be worth the amount of time you need to spend on it but you will still need a rotation during one raid base on loot-wishes.

to 2:
we rotated from boss to boss, based on loot-needs. all raid members (even those on the bank) had to be @vent so they could get prepared for the boss they need to jump in in time without causing downtimes. if you've killed illidan a couple of times everybody should have the medaillon so they don't even have to wait in front of the instance

the problem of differen amounts of tanks available sounds very familiar to me, hehe.

so I checked the available warriors, droods and pallys and talked to them during the raid (especially during buff-phases) to specc prot for this or that boss if no "real" tank was available. when you do have a mage and a lock in your setup it will just take 2minutes to let them respecc and port them back into the instance. no big deal

the only thing I got a bit annoyed of was to chat with 3 different people while maintanking a boss and giving orders through vent all at the same time.
when time goes by you get some routine for that so everything will work out pretty fine, I think. (except all of your warriors are stupid greedy bastards, that will make it a bit harder :P )

[theschaq]

I'm sort of in a similar position aswell looking at taking on the position of warrior CL in my guild and was wondering if there are any good mods/addons out there for this sort of thing?