Raid-leading guide for Lemming officers

This is a condensed Lemming-version of my Raid-leading guide for guilds starting with raiding.
Updated February 5th, 2009, for Naxxramas

Table of contents:
- Addons
- Task division
- Raid targetting
- Types of tanks
- Invite time
- Before you start: a checklist
- Raid commands
- Problems

Add-ons that are very useful to have

Addons with a * are what I think 'mandatory' because people will miss it and ask you for it otherwise

* Raid report Headcount enables you to make a nifty log for on our website. Make sure output is PhP/BB so you can post it in our forums with the right layout.
* Raid management: Ora2 (Ace2) (shows your raidgroup who the main tank and offtank have targetted)
* Raid-event announce/bosshelp ingame: DeadlyBossMods (must-have)
* Threatmeter: Omen (Ace2)
- Masterlooting: LootHog (keeps track of all the rolls made, and sorts them so you can see who won) and Classloot (tells you who has priority for the drop). You're expected to ask someone else to masterloot, but having loothog helps you keep an eye on rolls all the same.
- Raid frames replacements: Sraidframes, AG_unitframes, X-perl (to have a better view on the raid, people's healthpoints and manabars)
- Damage meter: Recount (Ace2), SWstats
- Crowd control: CCbreaker (who broke those shackles??)

Task division

Leading a raid can be a stressful endeavour, especially if you hog all the important roles (marking, motivating, managing) yourself. Now, every raid leader has their own style and it depends on yours, of how you're going to divide these roles.

A possible setup that is a nice way of delegating:
- The MT:marking of raid targets
- The most experienced healer (assigned by you): assigns healing (on our lemmings channel, type /join lemmings ingame to join it)
- An officer/trusted guildie: masterlooter
- You: Answer questions in private, set the pace, announce bio-breaks and tactics

Of course, you can also decide to do the raid marking yourself, or other jobs. You should really seperate raid leadership and masterlooting unless you have no other choice; if you disconnect from the group when you're both, it can cripple the group and prevent them from continuing without you. (Unless that is what you want ). If you insist on doing both, make someone else the raid leader rank, but still lead the raid yourself.

Note: You can also be the kind of raid leader that delegates *everything*, except making everything running smoothly. It's totally up to you. The easier time you have raid leading, the better your mood will be, and the happier the group. It really is noticeable if you're busy or annoyed, so it is important that you look out for yourself. In Lemmings, we'd rather have an unsuccesful raid with happy people, than a super raid with unhappy people.

Raid targetting:

These are suggestions for raid targetting. I have also summed up what class can crowd-control what type of mob. Very useful to know by heart But depending on your style you can choose to sort things out and ask the group for input (i.e. "any idea how we can tackle this group?").

- Skull: first to be killed target (offtank's target)
- X: second to be killed target (maintank's target)
- Other: for other crowd-control (same icons for the same jobs during that raid)
--- Shackles (of undead): priests
--- Banish (of demons and elementals): warlocks
--- Enslave (of demons): warlocks
--- Trapping (of everything): hunters
--- Sleeping (of beasts): druids
--- Polymorph (of humanoids): mages
--- Turn Undead (of undead, and after 2.4 has been implemented demons): paladins
--- Fear (of everything): Priests, warriors
--- Mind Control (of humanoids): priests
--- Fear (of everything except undead): warlocks
--- Seduce (of humanoids): warlocks

"Seduce only works on humanoids, and can be quite hazardous to use, as it is channeled by the Succubus, and it uses the succubus' mana. So if Succubus has no mana = no seduce, and if no Succubus = no seduce, and the hoot is: Succubus easily dies." ~ Fortunos

Types of tanks:

All tank-types currently in the game bring their own qualities to a fight. It works in your favor to know which is best for what situation:

- Warriors: Rage-based aggro, excellent for main tanking
- Druids: Rage-based aggro, best switch to healing or dps with fights where just one tank is needed
- Paladins: Great with AOE and against undead, vulnerable to silence, best switch to healing with fights where just one tank is needed.
- Deathknights Do a lot of damage, great with AoE.

Myste_UK of livejournal community WoW_Ladies: "I think you need to include a point here about the fact that some fights are better suited to different class main tanks than others, although this is best judged by looking up a guide to individual bosses on sites such as Bosskillers."

In some fights you only need one tank on the boss. Try to make the most of what you have; if you have a warrior/druid combination, you can select one of the two to join in with DPS. If you have a druid/paladin combination, you can ask the paladin to assist with healing. I think most Lemming tanks will have an alternate set to this end We expect people to be open to improvisation.

Invite time

Using ORA, you can set up a key word that people can whisper you for an automated invite. Then you have a few extra moments to catch your breath and have a bio or a drink while everything sorts itself.

When you have invited a few people you can start reminding people in raid chat to come on teamspeak, have their bio's, get their reagents and repairs.. and if you see 2 people are already at the raid location, you can tell people summons are available.

When you've already started and need to summon someone over as a midway replacement, it's always easiest to assign two people to do it. This, so a) not everyone runs outside, and b) not everyone stays inside. Of course it is always preferable to have people tell you in advance if they need to be replaced, and have the replacements make their own way to the instance so they don't hold up the raid. You can invite people to the raid in advance; there can only be 10 people in the instance at any given time, so the person leaving has to hearth before the new person can zone in.

Once the raid group is full and summoned over (I always check the world map and click on Outland/Old World to see at a glance if anyone is still 'elsewhere') you can tell people to zone in.

If someone hasn't shown up for the raid in time (the raid starts at 21.15, and they're not there yet), look on the website and invite the first backup to come. We expect people to be online when invites start (21.00 with most of our runs), and if they haven't said anything beforehand to ask you to wait, it's your right to start the group.

Before you start: a checklist:

- Have you set the timezones correctly in Headcount?
- Have you set CTraid/Ora (MT target, OT target)?
- Have the groups been formed correctly? You can ask in raid chat if people are happy.
- In Deadly Boss Mods, is the announce enabled for the encounters you're going to do
- Is looting set to master looting, and loot on blue/rare?
- Are the other officers/your assistants raid assistants (so they can use /rw and set icons)?

- Is everyone on teamspeak?
- Does everyone know what their CC icon is
- Have the healers got their healing sorted?
- If you have a warlock: Is soulstone up?
- Ask everyone for buffs!
- Tell people to type /combatlog to make a combatlog

Commands
/rw = raid warning. Anything prefixed with /rw will be ANNOUNCED IN PEOPLES FACES with a very annoying sound
/radur = raid durability. Did anyone forget to repair?
/invite *name* = the invite command
/readycheck = will pop up a question to your raidgroup: "Are you ready" yes/no.

Problems
If you run into an issue with another guildie, and you're not an officer (who knows and can take full responsibility about enforcing our rules), it can be a bit daunting to get everything back into order. If an officer or if the guildleader is on, whisper them! And ask for guidance. We'll be happy to give it.
If someone disconnects, a nice trick to keep things going is to combine the wait for the person with a bio break. If, after a reasonable period, the person isn't back yet, you can remove them from the group and invite someone else.