The raid leadership interviews

I’m pleased to present the next in my series of detailed interviews with guild leaders on the management of progression guilds, which will be jointly published on wowraid and pwnwear. I’ll interview guilds you can relate to, in the top 250 worldwide, taking the perspective of a raider with an MBA.

Today I’ve interviewed the guild Numen. You’ll read about:

• how to get past 160 wipes on Freya hard
• the most important quality they look for in a recruit
• the planned hard-mode progression path foiled by Blizzard.

Guild snapshot

• Numen (EU-Silvermoon armory)
• Ranked 23 in EU, 38 in world wowprogress
• Achievements include Heroic Glory of the Ulduar Raider, world 6th Hodir hard and world 11th Steelbreaker hard
• Recruitment status on wowraid.com

I talked with Vyoh, Dragonkimber and Lambi from Numen. Guildmaster Vyoh is a DK tank and dps, was realm first to L80 and has won an arena Frostwyrm. Scarab Lord Kimber is an Officer, and the only priest I know of who has Thunderfury. Lambi is an Officer, holy priest, and handles healing assignments.

This is a fascinating long article. Enjoy!

Winning hard-modes

Wiping one-minute in

We’d talked for a while before Freya hard came up. Vyoh said they had wiped 160 times before she and the trees were defeated. Straight away, the difference between a hardcore guild and a casual one is in my face: they just take the wipes. Casuals are whining after two. Mimiron Firefighter took 60 wipes. So if you’re wiping one-minute in, how do you distinguish whether your strategy is wrong or someone is screwing up?

Kimber starts, “Freya, for three days, we wiped on the first wave, just couldn’t get past it.”

Vyoh elaborates, “Freya I was doubting we were doing it right, with the wipes coming so quickly, and I felt we must be missing something. There was a particular mechanic with the three adds and we just had one-shots on random people. I couldn’t wrap my head around it; a combination of ground tremor and an instant cast from one of the adds. Eventually I thought I’m going to try silencing this mob, just in case it works. I hadn’t seen anyone try. It worked, unexpectedly.

“Stuff like that helps learning; just trying things out. Regardless of how weird it may sound or how dumb it may be. Stunning a boss back in the days of AQ40 for example, no one expected that either.”

Kimber continues, “We had priests putting on a few items of PvP gear, shamans specing elemental warding, everyone eventually needed PvP gear to get the stamina. This goes against the natural strategy of using best gear.

“Turns out, it really was if you didn’t have the HP, when this bit of RNG hits, you were dead and others would follow.

“Firefighter is another as example, until a few days before we beat it, we were using a warlock with nether protection and warrior tank. As tank healing, a major issue was finding the warlock with all the fire in the room. Whereas we should have swapped to just one tank earlier on, so one healer can do single-target  tank healing, the other five can be raid-healing.

“We changed so the Warrior would taunt the head.  In contrast, I know where the warrior is going to be all the time, so just adjusting to his position is much easier.”

Algalon 10

Healers have a Plan B

What else helps you get through such chaotic fights?

Lambi steps in here, “the key behind our healing squad, all of our newer healers from WotLK and on are all very good at communicating. We set up a main heal target and an off-target. Shaman for example: off-tank healing and at the same time on melee. All of the healers have an off duty.

So if one of the healers dies, we always know who is going to cover them.

“That’s so good when you have a vocal team, if a healer says ‘I need help’ the backup healer knows ‘I’m the one who’s supposed to help’ instead of all five healers switching heal targets”, says Lambi. “Thats a key.”

This is such a great example, and reminds me of my early raiding as a healer in 40-man raids. I think that a problem in lower tier guilds is not having a Plan B, not having failure management. Some raiders get overwhelmed and can’t handle that many instructions.

Lambi says, “We have a healing channel. I set up the assignments when we’re doing a boss. At first on a new boss, it will be very sketchy and general. As time goes, we will know where you need the burst healing or the slow healing. We’ll build the healing strategy through that. Everyone in the healing channel is vocal, ‘I can’t handle this alone’ or ‘put some slow HOTs here or there’. We just build it up.

“When it’s on farm like now, I just say ‘I’m on this duty’. Everyone just self-assigns for the rest on farming bosses. Also we have a backup heal leaders.”

In 40-mans, I had a macro written for each boss, but I haven’t been a main healer for years. That reminds me of the addon Surgeon General I’ve read about.  I ask Lambi if he uses an addon like that?

“We have so many different healers. We never use the same healers. We mix it up. A lot of healers have dps off-specs so we get a good rotation going on raiding. From that, most healers have a good content knowledge. So we don’t need those kinds of tools, most people just know where to go or will get a helping hand from one of the more seasoned healers.”

That was a no. I didn’t ask whether it was a noob question or not.

Voices on Vent

I’m always curious how a raid feels and sounds. Is it noisy? Militaristic? Numen have more people talking than I’d expect, but perhaps I’m just realising how different the top 100 guilds are to those I’ve been in.

Kimber answers, “On a near-first Mimiron kill, sometimes there are so many voices it causes problem and we can’t hear instructions. It’s not so much a ‘one voice’ policy but near the end, like Mimiron, our actual first kill, there are 25 people in the raid and about 27 people speaking on Ventrilo. Just as he hit enrage. If it starts getting hectic, it gets stomped.

Lambi adds, “that’s an interesting question though, we used to have a dictator leadership with one person saying everything. We stopped because he went to the army. Now we have a democracy in the council and lot of voices. We have perfected that pretty much. Sure it can be pretty hectic if we’re on 5% on a boss, but when learning no-one’s shy to say important stuff.”

We discuss that the raiders just need to have the professionalism to know when to talk, or when to be quiet, and that everyone’s input is valued when you’re learning a new boss. I wonder if they’ve ever found a solution for so many voices being over the top of each other? Kimber reminds me of priority-talking, which silences everyone else when you talk. I ask if they use that?

Vyoh answers, “I have it bound. We first came up with it on the test realm. I felt that we were getting clobbered on Ventrilo; there was too much noise. Useful information was getting spammed away. I started using that option. But during live, I’ve used it once.

“We don’t have a lot of talking. It’s only when the boss is going wrong and everyone is trying to correct it. Only at those points are too many people talking, which I tone down straight away or yell ’shut up’. After that its fine.

“When learning a boss we don’t usually have more than 5 or 6 people.

“It would be naive for me to say, ‘I can see everything, I can direct the raid’. I don’t think I can. I’d rather have people of different roles helping me. I keep track of melee and possibly the tanks. I like that I have healers doing the same for healers, or ranged for ranged dps. I think it helps our progress a lot.”

Who are the leaders

I wonder about the degree of delegation around raid strategy and other key decisions. Apparently Kimber slaps Vyoh into line if he’s being too stubborn. Who handles healer assignments, how spread out is decision-making?

“Healing assignment done by Lambi most of the time,” says Kimber. “DPS usually assign themselves. On Freya, I did some caster assignments to focus on roots. Zara helps with RL and organises melee,” he grins, “but has a very short temper.”

It’s quite spread out. A good idea, because Numen have recognised the talent in their raiders and allowed them to take responsibility for various elements. Numen have parallels to a organisation of professionals who are independently capable, as opposed to the command-and-control structure you’d find in the military.

Vyoh agrees, “We try to keep this as loose a possible. Everyone should know what they’re supposed to be doing and can help with those assignments, but we have a few more vocal people who end up taking the lead.

“For DPS on Firefighter: a fairly simple example, for melee we put those with multi-target hitting skills on the middle-part of phase 4, that way you can melee the top-part as well (especially blood death knights cleaving). That happened because of one or two people spoke up, saying I think this will work, we should try it.”

You can multiply that effect several times to imagine the richness of their strategy, and how the small tweaks all add up.

Part two of the Numen leadership interview is below. Keep reading to find:

• the most important quality Numen look for in a recruit
• the planned hard-mode progression path foiled by Blizzard.

» continue reading