Group leading – how not to upset the noobs
So you built your group and are good to go. You enter the instance. And now? Well, uhm, you pull. All of a sudden the healer screams, and the dpser flame, some people run out and woosh – you’re in a group of 3. Does that, or any softer version, sound familiar to you? You might want to read on, then.
You are the tank. You make the rules. Unless you don’t know the instance.
Make this really clear from the very beginning. If you don’t know the instance, tell the group. And assign someone who knows it to help you out. To tell you the bosses abilities and the most important mobs in the trash groups. The patrols, the stealth mobs, the route through the instance and the shortcuts.
If you do know the instance make one thing clear: You have the lead. You mark the targets. There’s only one speed: Your speed (ok, I stole that from Riddick). Don’t let yourself in on an argument. The tank leads the group, that’s just the way 5-mans work. Period.
Time is money
Especially when running instances the first time you’ll be slow because you will want to get a feeling for the groups, for aggro radius and patrols, all that kind of stuff. A first run might take a hell of a lot more time than necessary, so even if you’re pulling slow and need some other time, try to make everything you can affect as fast as possible. Marking targets (see macro tip at the end of this article) can be way faster then the clickery-thingy with the portraits, don’t wait for full mana (but wait for some), 70% for healers and 50% for dps will do (they’ll tell you if you’re moving too fast).
Make decisions and stick to them
If you know the instance and do it a certain way, and somebody is used to another way, stick to yours. You are the tank, so in case of a wipe you’ll be blamed first, usually. You decide. If you wipe and it’s your fault, say “Sorry guys, my fault”. If you wipe and it’s not your fault make clear what the problem was, however don’t flame & blame. Stay neutral. “You pulled aggro, so we wiped” isn’t neutral. “I lost aggro on that mob, please watch out and adjust your damage output” is. “Hm, you seem to gain aggro every once in a while, do you have Omen running?” still is neutral enough.
A little humour goes a long way
Usually on any first wipe I throw in my “[x] quota-wipe :)”. If someone pulls aggro again and again, I’ll get at him with a bad pun, because I’m not spontaneously funny. So not only he gets his mistake, but everyone can put up a smile instead shake their heads with a “Jeeez, what a bad run”. I’ve had runs where we’d need to repair because of the many wipes, yet still had a great time joking around about our foolishness and stupid mistakes. I’ve had clean badge runs in 40 minutes that were a lot less fun. Seriously, if you manage to establish an athmosphere of humour in your group you’ll find yourself enjoying the game more than ever.
Macro Tip
/script SetRaidTarget(”mouseover”,8)
This will assign the skull to your current mouseover mob. I love that macro-set and it’s really easy to mark a group, to switch icons during fight or marking accidentally added mobs.
Recommended Reading
- On Leading a Group @ Of Teeth and Claws
- Instance Grouping Guide @ WowWiki
You may also want to go to your keybindings interface under the menu; all of the symbol’s “Assign [x] to target” actions are mappable there.
My advice would be to bind them to something unintrusive like F8-F12 and with the assist of a little macro you can edit on the fly, announce them at the beginning of the instance.
Said macro would be something like:
/rw [Skull]-1st [Cross]-2nd [Moon]-Sheep [Star]-Sap [Diamond]-Seduce/Fear [Square]-Trap [Circle]-MC
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Talldar Reply:
October 9th, 2008 at 12:36 am
I keep all my macros on the 2nd page of the Actionbar, so with a short spin of the mousewheel I can use 1-5 for the most important marks.
Don’t even have to move any finger anywhere. That’s the place where they worked best for me in stressful situations, like when an extra group added.
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