Do you remember my post VON6 wipe, posted April 1st, 2012? Seems like a lot has happened since then, and I have gotten a lot more experience as a raids healer. Now, since I’ve not too long ago started leading raids as opposed to only running them, I can see that the VON leader made some mistakes concerning me. Accepting an unknown, lvl 16 cleric as the solo healer of an elite VON, might not be such a good idea. At the time I had not done many raids, and I was not used to throwing mass cures/ heals, but was only solo targeting, which was the reason we failed.
What makes the difference between a good raid run and a bad one hangs a lot on the party leader, but also on the party. The party leader has the responsibility to decide what kind of group he wants, and also he should know the raid well enough to make decisions on tactics. The only raid I’m currently leading one to a few times a week, is Shroud. I was pretty intimidated at first, and I didn’t feel too comfortable in the role. After a total of 23 Shrouds; 19 on my healer, 3 on my monk and 1 on my sorc – I think that’s 7 elite, 10 hard and 6 normal, I actually prefer to lead it. Yes, 23 is a pretty small number compared to some, and yes, I did start leading it after less than 10 runs.
What’s fun about leading a raid, is that you look at it from a different angle. You make the run and you pick your team mates. As a raid leader I try to pay attention to what’s going on, and make sure everyone’s doing their part. In Shroud, in phase 2 I keep an eye out on the red names – make sure they’re all south west, and all prepped before we kill them. You will often hear me over voice “don’t kill them too soon”. Why? Because it has happened more than once that one of the reds drop too soon and you have to start over. In phase 3 I will run around helping with puzzles, as long as someone can help me open doors. In phase 4 I try to get people to save a devil per round until the blades are gone – which sometimes fails. Then I keep an eye out for the circling blades and call out when they are getting close to the melees. This is much easier to do on my cleric than on my monk, as I can’t see the blades when I’m meleing. In phase 5 I ask people to gather around the same water hole, if everyone’s buffed and then make sure the melees have surrounded Harry and are not fighting on the stairs.
Some runs require less leading, others more, but I have noticed that that runs often are smoother when the leader is actually leading. It also gives the party better confidence in success. I have joined raid parties where the leader wasn’t talking at all (or writing in chat), and those have usually been difficult runs. Either no one was leading and things were just messy, or someone else had to step up and lead.
For shroud, in my experience, the best party build is one where we have 2-3 healers (3 on elite, 2 on normal and hard), 1-2 arcane casters, 1 arti, at the most 1-2 archers and the rest melee. I like parties with a lot of high dps melee, because it usually means we can take out Harry pretty quickly – and that means less resources spent. I have mostly been running on my cleric, and I some time ago started DoT’ing besides healing, even on elite. It’s a lot more fun to DoT and heal than to just heal – and watching dp hit for 800+ is pretty sweet. My sorc’s DoT doesn’t hit for that much. 🙂
I feel confident leading Shroud and ADQ, I could lead Reaver’s Fate if someone did the puzzle. Chrono I stopped running months ago, and I don’t even know if anyone’s running it anymore? Titan I’ve run twice and do not really have an interest in it, the same with Tempest’s Spine. Abbot, VoD and HoX I’d like to run elite for favor. Abbot I don’t particularly like, though, since I’ve never had a smooth run of it – and I don’t know the puzzles. I’ve run MA once on normal, and like to run it again on a higher difficulty. I’ve yet to run LoB and ToD. Not flagged for the MoTU raid yet, and it will still be some time before I get there. Oh, and VON I’m only doing epic.
That’s all for now. Ty for reading and happy raiding.
Peace out.
P.S. I’m currently making 3 gs – one each for my monk and sorc and a melee weapon for my cleric.
P.P.S I need to start running ToD. I’m flagged and have to boots.
Micki's Delirium 
Good, fair but firm leadership is the way to successful completion of an raid,quest or chall in the game.
Im no good at taking charge or leading, prefer following orders and doing my best as a team member 🙂
🙂 I do prefer others to lead, but when u are leader u have more responsibility, and u can make the run ur own. I’ve come to like running Shroud in my way. 🙂
Cool post. I really like Shorud too. I feel rather nervous about leading regular quests, so raids make me even more nervous. I’m with Legend: prefer to follow orders 🙂
Raids have always been a contentious point for me. I’ve haven’t done one yet in DDO, but took part in many in Everquest 2. I got to the point where I just hated them. They often involved waiting around for a long time and having to have someone who has done it a thousand times before or go to a wiki to read how everything should go. I’m interested in finding out what they are like here but hesitant. Maybe, after a few months I’ll check out raiding in DDO.
I hear that if you zoom your camera way out and tilt it so you’re looking down, you can get a pretty good idea on the blades when meleeing in Part 4.
Love Shroud, love ToD, could probably lead either of them, but I never will ’cause I refuse to use voice. And it’s hard enough to get people to listen to voice let alone read the chat…
@Skeletom 🙂 I’ve not played any other mmo, so I don’t know how they compare, but in ddo it’s very much different every time. Even the most popular raid shroud – sometimes you just can’t get the party to fill. The raids don’t change, though, so most ppl know them at least somewhat after a few runs.
Tempest’s spine is the only f2p raid in ddo, so usually u’ll find some f2p player who knows it really well.
@LrdSlvrhnd (Can I call u something else, since I’m having problems with ur nickname, lol) 🙂 ty for the advice on the camera, although, I don’t think I’d like to run with the camera like that. 🙂 And why not use voice?
But, y, sometimes, no matter how u try, someone just doesn’t respond to what ur saying – especially in phase 2 and 4. But most of the time ppl listen, even if u have to tell them multiple times.