Guide to Pug raidleading

[soto]

I am making this guide because of the increased amount of posts from posters who say they cannot possibly find an raid run because either the raidleaders asks for insane stats which can only (Ironically) be achieved from the instance your going to, or they are asking for the achievement which you don't have because again you havn't seen the instance yet on this character but have done it on a friend/alt/main or whatever.
If the person im describing is you, or if you just cannot find a guild to go to naxx with, then this guide is made for you.

I will be going step by step on how to get an raid group going as a skilled yet unachieved and moderatly geared player by starting one yourself.
This is basicly a list of tips you can use while leading a raid.
1. Getting the group
a. Recruiting trough LFG tool
Getting a group is easier then many seem to think, most people assume that you need an entire legion of friends or guildies who are all in full t8 in order to attract decent pugs, this isn't true.
You start of by the way you would start a heroic group, by looking into the LookingForGroup tool and seeing what is in there.
You whisper most of those players either with a short ''stats/achief?'' or make a macro with ''I am starting a naxx25 run, if you want to come please whisper me your stats/achievement''
Having this macro makes recruiting people in the LFG way easier, since people like looking at long messages and think you care to get them into your group, so they will more likely link their stats and achievements to you and get invited.

b. The Lookginforgroup and Trade Channel
Once you have all decently geared people from the naxx25 LFG, you can start spamming LookingforGroup and Trade, again use a macro for a long and well-looking message.
My personal macro looks something like this:
/2 LFM Naxx25, aiming full clear, whisper me stats+achievements for invite
/4 LFM Naxx25, aiming full clear, whisper me stats+achievements for invite

c. Which people to take
You will find people streaming into your pug by just doing this macro every ~30 or so seconds.
Under no circumstances spam this macro, because if you spam it trough the trade people will dislike you and hardly ever join your groups.
If a person whispers you with ''4000 AP 30% Crit and hit capped, <insert achievement here> just invite them, don't bother about their stats if they are perfect or not, if a person has taken the effort to look up his stats for you and not just say ''inv me'' he usually knows what hes doing.
For naxx25 the stats I usually aim for are
Casters: ~1500 SP, hit capped
Healers: ~1600 SP, 20k+ mana as pala/sham, ~16 as priest/druid
Melee: 3k+ AP, hit cap 30% crit
Tanks: 29K+unbuffed def capped

c. More LFG tool uses
If you donot have a full group from getting the people out of your naxx heroic LFG and spamming trade for a while, consider looking into the other tabs of the raid LFG tool, and just randomly whisper people of the class/spec you still need and see if they wanna come, chances are that people are looking for more raids then the one they are in atm.

d. Other Pugs
Never ever ever start a group when you know there is another pug recruiting aswell, this will make players much more picky, and if they donot like you, your gear, the amount of players you currently have or someone currently in your group, they are more likely to leave.

2. Group composition
1. There are a couple of things you need to think about when making groups for naxx25 (as example).
In naxx25 this is the most commonly used group setup:
5-6 Healers
3-4 Tanks
15-17 DPS
It really helps to have a few players with good dualspecs who can do both, for instance you only need 2 tanks for 90% of the bosses while having 4 tanks on 4H is heavily recommended, same for healers really.
You can usually promise those people who actually do have 2 well-equiped dualspecs and willing to use them the privilege of being able to get ''mainspec'' items for both specs
2. For some fights special gimmics are needed, in the case of naxx25 thats the requirement for 2 priests for MCing Instructor
3. Never invite someone of your own spec, unless your really desperate, but don't prohibit to many players either because of your own greed.
Don't be to greedy though, because if you refuse to many players people will start noticing it and you don't want them to leave you because your a loot!#*%#.
As a Holy paladin I usually try not to invite any other holy paladins nor resto shamans.

3 Getting Started
a. When your raid is full, always go as first to the meeting stone and go assist in summoning, just summon everyone and if people decline their summons ask them howcome, never ever await a summon as a raidleader because that comes across as lazyness, which might cause people to leave you
b. Buffing really doesn't require that much effort, just ask every class to do their respective buffs, the only buffs that require some management are the paladin buffs, so check which paladin got which buff improved, ask them to buff that specific buff (Retris got imp might, holys imp wisdom and prots got sanc), make a macro somewhere along the lines of
/rw XX is buffing YY
/rw XX is buffing YY
whisper paladin if your missing said buff
It will save you alot of hassle, just hit this macro before and after every boss.
c. Choosing the wing is the thing you and then only you should do, ignore the people who whisp you or say ''Plx do XX wing 1st'' because that usually means they are only interested in said wing and will leave you once your done in there.
d. The wings you usually start with are either arachnid or construct, if you feel like you have a good group you must do construct first because patchwerk is the hardest of the 4 1st bosses, if you want to lock people first to earn their loyalty go do arachnid for some easy loot.

4. How to look like you know what your doing
Eventually someone is gonna inspect you, but 90% of those people don't know whats good or whats bad gear if you have epics with a label of level 80 attached to them or even a couple of rares, what people do know is enchants/gems, so if you have good (rare) gems and not incredibly cheap enchants on each of your armor, people will most likely think you have good gear, so always make sure your enchants/gems are fine.

5. During the Run

a. Bossloots, the way bossloots are distributed in my pug is basicly the following:
I link an item in chat and say:''<Insert Item here> roll please
and then count to 5 and then go
<Insert Item here> going to <Insert player here> in 5
4
3
2
1
Loot item, rinse&repeat
If nobody needs an item (which is rare in naxx25 pugs) do the same but the ''offspecs roll please'' and if noone really needs it go DE (Have seen that happen once in 2 raids) the Item and emediatly raidroll the shard.
For BoP epics I use Mainspec>Offspec>De+RR shard
For BoE epics I use Mainspec>RR Item
If you give someone a BoE epic for his mainspec, always make sure to check if he is using it, otherwise kick him.

b. Replacing noobs
Even though you try to filter carefully there is always a big chance you will have 1-2 noobs in your group, if someone calls them out and says ''XX has blue gear'' or even says ''noob with blue gear here wtf'' ask the player who said that who he means and then check his gear and if its subpar whisper him if he thinks he can handle the instance, if he says he can do it, monitor him during the first boss and if he indeed is as good keep him, otherwise kick.
Donot under any circumstances go play the internet toughguy and shout at them trough raid chat, always keep this in whispers.
If you want to replace some horrible performing player, please kick him after the boss, because 90% of the people slack on trash yet do great damage on bosses.

c. Disputes amongst players
If there is, for whatever reason, an argument between players, try to sort it trough whispers, don't go arguing in /raid because again people won't like this.
If there is really an impossible to solve problem between 2 players try to fish out who backs who and if they are willing to leave for their friend, side with the biggest group and replace the people who leave after you kicked the leader of the smallest group, only use this as a last resort though

d. Elitist superstars
If you know how to make your group attractive as has been described in earlier topics, you are bound to have some uldu geared people who are in naxx25 for 1-2 small upgrades and absolutely steamroll the dps meters with ~5k+ dps on patchwerk.
Always make sure you are nice to them, make a chat with them and try to make them get their (hopefully equally geared) guildies in so they can carry you.
Always make sure you keep those as friends and kick them really if they isolate themselves and are acting like complete retards

e. Keeping Items to yourself
Usually you want to be rewarded for your efforts of creating and leading the raid, so you would like to ''reserve'' some Items to yourself.
If you do this remember 3 things:
1. don't reserve highly sought items (therefore reserving TTT is a really bad Idea since about 30% of the raid is gonna want it and hate you for doing it)
2. don't reserve to much, usually people don't mind you taking 1-2 items spread out over the entire run for your effort, but if to much is reserved they cba comming anymore


Well this was It for my guide, hope you enjoyed reading my wallotext and that you learn something from it, here are some short random tips:
-Friend good players who come with your pug to ask them for next time
-Make your pugs every week on the same time so you become a well known factor
-NEVER EVER EVER start recruiting if theres another pug for the same instance around
-This guide is quite Ideally for stormscale where there are loads of good puggers avaible, but is also applicable for other realms

[smiley.kambing]

Thanks for the guide. +Rep

[Bunster]

Nice guide, must have taken some times nice to see people take thier time on ehre hehe.

[nachonut]

A nice addition to this would be to get an addon called WIM. It opens windows like aim for chat conversations. One of the options on the side shows the location/spec of the toon. Also if you right click it, it gives a link to their armory profile for easy lookup. I use it all the time for this reason exactly.

[B ALLEN]

Ah a guide of use. Finally. I know how to raid lead however this certainly helps.

[fearedtoast]

Nice guide, must have taken some times nice to see people take thier time on ehre hehe.

The copy part was easy, but pasting is alot of work.

http://www.************.com/index.ph...;topic=54943.0

[rockyerwerld]

very nice for the people who need it

[Parog]

The copy part was easy, but pasting is alot of work.

Don't avoid the filter, it'll only get you banned.

Thing is, more than 75% of the stuff posted here is original, and all of it gets copy pasted to other websites ( big ones and smaller ones ) without giving us any credits for it. Why the hell should we?

How the hell do you think MMOwned started? Copy pasting!

[Sapphiron]

Seems kind of common sense to me. Also you don't need 29k hp unbuffed to tank Naxx25. The first time I tanked it I had 24k unbuffed. Also 1600sp for healers is a little low, that is more around the heroic or 10man level. I would go for 1800+. I haven't a clue what you need for dps. I only tank and heal. But there are a lot of fail pugs out there so this may help them.

[soto]

Actually, I posted it both on mmo and on mmowned, because there are no sensitive bugs/tricks in it

[Loengstoenken]

Thank you for this guide, what I thought what impossibe for me to do just got a so much simpler, thank you! rep+