Laid reading is a spoonerism...

If you don't understand the title, i'll explain at the end of the post. ;)

Anyway. So last week in my guild, "Stands in Bad", I did my first bit of what I would consider to be "real" raid leading. I put that in quotation marks because I was never officially assigned the raid leading spot, and there WAS an officer or two in the raid with me. I do, however, feel like I kind of took control of teaching the couple new people in the raid. We had a boomkin who had never one -any- of the fights (to my knowledge), and the off-tank was a Kingslayer... on his hunter and mage. He had to be taught how to tank the fights in ICC, which admittedly is MUCH easier to learn when you now the fights as a DPSer. So, I sort of took control of that raid... and, as far as i'm concerned, it was a lot of fun.

I have to admit though... The rest of the guild made that job easy on me. The boomkin who'd never been in there had watched the videos of the fights, so they had a basic concept of what they were doing. The guy who tanked with me was -very- quick on the pickup (which, to me, tanking ICC is easier than DPSing it). We one-shot all the bosses up to Sindragosa, which took several tries because.. man.. The learning curve on that fight is steep. We didn't get the Lich King down last week, but not for lack of trying. We made some solid progress on him, even making it to p3 once or twice. (for the people who haven't got their KS title yet... they'll get it this week!)

Now then.. Why am I writing this post? Well, it is a sort of rebuttal to a fellow blogger, and a man I respect very much. If you've ever listened to the Inside Azeroth podcast (which, unfortunately, is no more) you may know him as the wandering ranter. That's right.. Just yesterday, mister Zephon T'Sol posted a somewhat downtrodden look from a raid leader's perspective here. Now, while I can understand Zeph's point, I do feel the need to make a point here. If you're taking up the mantle of raid leader for recognition, thanks, and a pat on the back you're doing it wrong. You volunteer to be a raid leader because you know what you're doing, you can explain it to the others, and you are (generally) capable of getting people to focus for 10 minutes at a time. While I understand, and can completely sympathize with, wanting to feel like people appreciate what you've done... If it's going to ruin your day because a raid isn't going the way you want it to, then perhaps you need to step back for a minute an examine why you do it.

Now, Zeph, if you're reading this, don't misunderstand me. I know everyone has bad days and such, and blogging is the *perfect* way to get shit off your chest with relative anonymity... But at the same time, you really can't let your raid get you down so much. If you get frustrated with the raid, then they take those cues from you and will get frustrated in return. When the whole raid is frustrated, that's when people make mistakes that they normally wouldn't, in turn leading to more frustration.... it's a nasty little catch-22. Here's my advice... If you feel yourself, and the raid, getting overly irritable, just call for a 5-10 minute break so everyone can step back and gather themselves. If that doesn't work, then you may need to consider simply calling the raid for the night so everyone can back off. Tempers can run high sometimes, and that's not the sort of way you want a raid night to end.

By the way... in case you hadn't figured it out, a spoonerism is a term for getting the first letters or sounds of words mixed up.. Laid reading = raid leading... spoonerism. There's your random trivia fact for the day.