The Dreaded AFK Beast

Our guild leader got back into town, and I finally had a chance to share with him my experiences from last week's raid, and ask about things I could do better, especially in terms of keeping AFK's to a minimum, and he shared some interesting advice that I thought I should share with you, Internet.

Share Your Raid Plan Early
The first thing he asked me was "Did you tell everyone what order you'd be doing the wings, at the beginning?" Of course I hadn't, I didn't know myself! I'm supposed to have a plan? Of course I am, and I should, because if I had told my raiders "We're doing Spider, then Plague, then Abom, then Deathknight" then they could've planned their AFK's for times that aren't right before bosses.

Take a Scheduled Break
Question number two was a real obvious one: "Did you break halfway through?" Huh, I totally forgot. "It's more efficient for everyone to pee at the same time" he told me, which strikes me as a creepy amount of scheduling, but totally true. Make sure that this break does NOT overlap looting, as you want to make sure everyone gets their smoke break, etc.


Start Planning Your Boss Fights Early
By the time you get to the boss, you should be ready to pull. Waiting to swap groups for Gothik is a raid-killer, because people take pauses as good times to wander off, so if you let those pauses fall just before boss fights, thats when they'll wander off, and you'll be forced to wait for them before pulling. Instead, while you're clearing trash, you should be doing any group rearranging you want to do, assign any roles that are vital (priests for Instructor, etc), so that during the last trash pull you can be giving any last minute instructions, and ready to pull by the time any re-buffs have gone up.

Carry Some Respect
This one isn't from my leader, it's something I've observed about him, and the groups he runs. The people we run with *respect* him, his skill in playing and in leading, and as part of that respect, they listen to him better, and complain less. I think that a couple more weeks of raids, with improvement each week, will get me no where NEAR his level of reputation, but at least start to build myself one of my own.

Good luck all you other newbie raid-leaders out there, it's a bigger job than I imagined, and takes a lot more coordination and patience than I thought.