Dude legit please keep this youtube channel going, in the 12 years that I've played world of warcraft, you're literally the first person that can hold my attention for long enough to explain stuff about wow to me, whether it's boss fights, or general tips.. It's like watching a video before doing a boss, and actually remembering a bunch of details from the video when you show up to the boss for the first time
As a mid progression mythic RL this channel has instantly become a must-watch and incredible resource. Love the videos! I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on how to push past certain tiers of progression speed. What mindset can we help foster to move from a guild that's around Council now to one that could be on Generals for instance. The parses are typically there but our rate of learning seems to lag compared to what I feel our team is capable of.
He technically did mention that in this video. A lot of the times your guild will kill a boss when your least aware player figures it out. So as RL, its important to identify who those players are and work with them inside and outside of raid to get them to the level of your other players. Doing this with kindness is also important. Don't just berate them in front of everybody.
I hope you pick this series back up because it's completely changed my outlook on raid leading and significantly improved my leadership skills in general since I naturally am horrible at that sort of thing. I've gotten massive returns out of it irl and in game, and the info you put in here is fucking excellently articulated and very informative. I hit the bell the first week this channel was made for the raid leading videos.
I've watched this over and over and over to really let it manifest. You hit the spot on many of the mistakes I make. Thank you for a great guide, I needed to hear this
Greatly appreciate the videos you've been putting out! As a 6/10m player in a brand new guild where we all have much higher aspirations than US 460th, I can say that our entire guild is learning a ton from your videos. Keep up the amazing work!
Thank you for putting out these videos. My guild is working through Heroic, and a lot of what you've said really resonated with me, and makes me understand why we occasionally wipe on a "progression" boss, as we (as officers) forget that when we were initially progressing through, we were reminding people where to go, markers, etc. Luckily my guild is on the "player, not class" mentality, even though we're missing a couple of raid buffs, but haven't found any of our raiders that want to fully commit to one of those classes (alt nights? sure, but mains, no).
As a long time tank and new raid lead, it is brutal trying to do both. But sometimes there's no alternative, so a video on tips for tanks who have to raid lead would be dope! Keep it up and thank you for all the great info.
I'll echo this sentiment - I've heard you mention a few times "Don't tank and raid lead" but would like to hear more about it. I've always done both because my personality naturally takes me that way.
The part about having to do the boss to understand the mechanics resonates with me so much. I can watch the video guides, read the journal or RL explaining every mechanic for 20 mins and it just does not stick at all, might as well just be talking to a wall. But as soon as I've done a few pulls I start to understand, when I fail something and then I look back at the footage it really starts to come together. Came back from a long break this expansion, a lot of ring rust but it's coming back.. Just pulling the boss to see how things work is so important, and it's no different to my life as a musician, the level of playing you produce after learning a song compared to sight reading it is on another level. You've gotta get it under your fingers and seeping into muscle memory.
I gotta say, you have a great look at social skills and being a trainer. I don't know you at all, and I have probably played about 100 hours of WoW + this is the fourth video I see on your channel. BUT what I do know is, people can learn a lot from a video like this. Not just for the game of WoW, but what the defining traits of a leader looks like. I doubt many will see this comment, but those who do; look at what these tips can do for you with the people around you. These are people skills. They are universal to whatever we put our time into. Whether you're doing your everyday job, playing Counter Strike or hanging out with your friends, you will always have an impact with your actions. Thank your for a great video, regardless of me not playing WoW. This is good food for thought. Subscribed.
Echo fan here, absolutely love your takes. Love how you break with the "meta" of 2/3/9 combs and people trying to catch them all for their guilds. Great work, keep it up!
dude i'm happy i found this video by accident. i was a raid lead from BC through pandaria and so far the only expansions i haven't raided much are BFA and WOD. you hit on so many of the points that i did right and wrong and this expansion i'm right now with a raid leader that absolutely does half of these or more wrong. my biggest pet peeve with him is he will do the boss explanation dissertation on farm content and then end by saying "we're gonna be good though, this boss is on farm" and i'm just like "dude that 101 class you just gave on this boss says otherwise". my other pet peeve is something you didn't list and i understand why because it can be a sore subject either way for some people and that is when the raid lead/guild opts to carry people on purpose for progression. i am not a hardcore person by any means, and i have only done mythic in legion, but holy crap if the boss has a dps requirement of ~2k per person and you're wiping due to low dps and there are 4 people in your 25 man group who are doing 1.2k, they need to be addressed. this actually just came to a head in the last couple of days as we lost one of our best locks and a healer because we could be 10 pulls deep on a heroic boss (not even mythic) and have issues getting it killed before soft or hard enrages (sludgefist and denathrius for examples of hard enrages) and blood council for soft enrage example with the slow stacking dot that gets reset by the dance. the worst part about it is the raid lead's reaction to these two's concerns followed by the reaction to them leaving. the reaction to the concerns are that this is a casual guild. the reaction to leaving is "we've had discussion with them but we can't force them to play better". so on the one hand... it's casual so don't worry about it, but on the other hand you still tried to address it? this same guild has ilevel requirements for raid.... the purpose of ilevel is to help ensure you are capable of doing the job, but if you can't actually do the job it's meaningless
Enjoying the videos you've been putting out a lot and I'd personally enjoy a video on what makes a good raider/ DPS, a lot of people see damage as the be all and end all but what actually makes someone top tier
If they aren't dying to mechanics then it is the highest indicator of skill. Noobs seriously underestimate the importance of damage. Its the nooby playerbase THEMSELVES that value players based off how much damage they do, as soon as u slow down maybe aren't number 1 on the charts and focus uber hard on mechanics they somehow value you less, so players need to make up there minds. Either check logs to review that they are doing mechanics accept they are "good" regardless of their damage or don't even bring it up.
@@ganstaeddie7 I'd take a full roster of dps players who never die to mechanics but only do average dps over a full roster of dps player who pump for 30 seconds and then eat concrete. With the mechanical players you are going to down bosses, you won't with the 30 second pumpers.
@@shadowlife15 Duh, anybody with two brain cells would do that. Because if you die after 30 seconds, you're DEFINITELY the bottom of the DPS. In reality you need DPS that can consistently do mechanics but can also pump damage. This is why logs are so great - you can look at the DPS and then you can click a couple times and see who is failing mechanics. In reality most of the time it's all about taking your dps that can pump but fail mechanics and drilling the mechanics into them or vice versa.
@@danlorett2184 In my experience teaching players to do do mechanics is far more difficult than teaching players to do dps. And unless you are trying to be a top guild, dps really isn't all that important. Besides, most people who parse well don't realize that padding doesn't help kills bosses. I've known raiders like that.
@@shadowlife15 But there aren't really that many opportunities to pad anymore with the way the new logs work. Council would've been a padder's dream, for instance, but now any damage you do to a target that heals to full is ignored. Likewise, on Huntsman, bonus damage against the Shades is ignored, and all attacks are treated as doing 100% damage. You can pad the Details meter still, but nobody cares about that. People who parse well are just... good. Or really, really lucky.
Great series of videos. I've been raid leading a progression team for 5 months now. There's a few really good tips in these videos that I've learned the hard way. Wish I'd have seen this when I first started. Please keep making more!
Not a raid leader but enjoying the content. I appreciate that you just are showing yourself talking without meaningless gameplay in the background. That often fees distracting. Having the soft music keeps it from feeling like a cold lecture but no gameplay helps it stay focused
A topic I would love to see is about tanking. I'm about to get keystone master, and I want to get better and push higher keys, but I struggle knowing how or were to improve. There aren't many youtube channels out there that focus on medium/ high level tanking (that I've found). The perceived role of tank is to just make the mobs hit you, but I feel like its much more than that. I have to know routes, lusts, boss positioning's, skips, affix changes, pulled extra stuff? what can we skip to make up for it. I struggle knowing when something goes wrong was it me, was dps low, or was hps low. I melee dps'd for the longest time and I felt it was so much easier to improve, compare logs to figure out rotation issues, step out of avoidable damage, use defensives on unavoidable dmg. If I did this stuff and still died, then I probably didn't do much 'wrong'
Just a quick compliment, love your videos. They seriously make me enjoy WoW a lot more. Coming from a "Casual Player" watching these videos is GOLDEN! Much Love from The Venture Co.
A lot of big trues in this video. This was the first time I got multiple groups of friends together to form a guild. Our style was entirely what you said and we hated what previous guilds were like. - We brought our best kids, always. Never the class and only brought what we needed (tanks/healers) - Never explained an entire boss fight. The expectation was to know the fight going into the raid, we would give a 20 second run down of what we planned and pulled. We made adjustments/comments between pulls. Everything else you said was SO true generally. Copying the meta and having no clue why or recruiting classes or insanely good players is just crazy and I never understood it.
I love the "explanation of a bossfight" point. In Nya when we got to Carapace (cleared trash after our first Ilgynoth kill) our raidleader just said "pull it". Wiped very fast but it helped immensely to get people to see the start of the fight. I'm raidleading in Nathria now (first time RL a tier) and at the start I was running my mouth before pulling bosses and quickly found out that it just doesn't work. Love the videos, great resource for people like myself who want to up their game. Thank you.
I like the point you make about auditive awareness. I use the same for pvp. Alot of pvpers likes to listen to music when they play e.g, i can't have any external sound on because 30-40% of what I pick up from awareness comes from listening and recognising abilities by their sound and that frees up my other senses.
I appreciate the topic of multi classers. I feel like a lot of people don’t understand the concept but I love learning new classes and what they’re capable of and people always ask me why I don’t stay on one class. It’s because I love to help people and make sure I’m well educated in what class I’ll try to help people with. Also keep up the good content. Stuff like this I believe will ultimately help to less guild break ups and less people bashing eachother and more people trying to help each other.
Love all the content you've put out over this past week. Simply listing to someone as knowledgeable as yourself talk is such an awesome thing to have. Big ups
These videos are brilliant, thanks for all this. I heard you were on the way to becoming a music educator before you found WoW. I think you would've made a fine conductor if life didn't have other plans. Thanks for helping us become better raid leaders!
Super great series so far. It's been crazy informative! I think a video on how to look at logs and analyze them would be helpful for both raid leads and players alike.
Thank you so much for this video even if it's a year old. I'm new to raid leading, and well had some major opportunities fall into my lap over night, and I feel like I'm in over my head. It's good to see that I pretty much get these mistakes and haven't been doing them. I'm glad you mentioned people learn differently, for me it's a mix of knowledge and hands on.
Good stuff. I feel like processing mistakes is a HUGE skill to learn. Doing it poorly saps so much energy from a raid, and can spiral a good progression night in to regression in the blink of an eye.
Loving the Content! Been a GM/RL since 2012 to a group of some of the closest and nicest peeps I've met online, we're only a AotC guild and nothing more but some of the stuff I watch Limit (and Echo) for are these things to help improve our dynamic. Keep it up Max!
Hey Max. I have watched two of your videos and this one made me kinda love you. You have hit a few points that players really needed to hear. I am talking about the ratio thing, the meta thing, and the learning from mistakes. My personal feeling on progress: I have run with guilds where our progression is perfectly linear. It's predictable to see when we will complete the raid. However, I will give an extra week of cushion for last boss because it's always the most mechanically heavy fight and we might not have the gear for it just yet. But man, so many guilds don't see that progress is going great and will manage to lose their minds because of the two sweaty A-holes that just think and expect that the preparation and composition are enough to clear the raid. As long as there is progress, things are going just fine. Its madness. Meta, comp, and ratios are NOT everything. Thank you for making this video and being a great player. I'll watch more videos and subscribe.
they relate to you because we can be the change we want to see. pretty much everything he said in here is accurate but guess what? 99% of the playerbase does the opposite of what he says and will defend it to the grave, we must stand up to these metaslave noobs who know nothing about leading or strategy.
I know this is old, and I don't even really play wow anymore, but these are so applicable to managing people in general. I also think one thing that's hard for some managers is accepting mediocrity, especially for people who are classically good at many of the tasks that are being managed. Obviously as world first raid lead you're going to try and recruit the best, but I think overall, as you were clearly speaking to the "average guild", this is something that's really hard for people, including myself. But I really enjoyed watching this from someone who, as I've seen in your other videos, has taken hard looks at themselves and how to manage and their own management style.
Thank you so much for these videos. I started raid leading and guild leading a group of friends here in SL coming back to the game after years. These videos are a huge source of help and inspiration. Please keep them up. I would like to see a video with tips about approach learning and strategizing for a new progress boss fight, what resources can i use, what type of mechanics should I look for as my "call-out mechanics" (the ones with sound ques you talk about).
Please be a pioneer in breaking this “ratio meta”. You briefly mentioned this but it is becoming ridiculous! I raid lead for my guild. If you can create a video explaining why it doesn’t matter - what actually matters - what you look at as a raid leader in lieu of this ratio that would be helpful . Loving the new videos keep em coming.
coming from a 3/10 mythic RL (below average obviously) you are a legend, talks like this mean alot more to some people then youd know. very good insight
The thing about getting a 2% wipe and then not getting back there b/c it was your super solid players who got the critical mechanic was something that gave me pause. Thank you.
Hey man, absolutely love the content you've been putting out regularly, such a great tool for new raid leaders like myself, if I was to ever make a request it would be to potentially see a video where there are maybe Pro's and Con's for being a raid leader in each role (Tank, Healer, Rdps, Mdps) which will give great insight into how differing perspectives depending on that role can have an impact on how leading is done. :)
As a Guild Lead and Raid Lead of almost 11 years (also on illidan btw) its refreshing to hear a lot of this. Thankfully most of which i already actively think about and has become second nature. Keep up the good work Max! This dude is down to earth.
Only issue I had raid leading was my own damage... I was unable to focus on dealing damage as much as needed whilst also making all the calls and keeping an eye on everything and everyone. Only times I topped DPS was because we had done so many attempts all my calls had become automatisms, and I knew exactly when to use cooldowns. But hey, I was self-critical and didn't take myself too seriously so nobody minded since we were killing bosses, and most of them found my raid leading very relaxing. No BS, no aggressivity, no pointless or mean call outs, always very polite and thanking people for doing things, very patient with everyone, and still letting people have a laugh between bosses, or between pulls if no new strats needed.
Thanks for the vid! My guild is lax and enjoys having all specs, and we do very well! We all have fun and don’t get upset 🤷♂️ it’s a very good environment!
litterally enjoy hearing u talking. So much raiding guilds/leaders thats just off compared to what u pointed out and its really nice to see one of the best point thease small things out :) gj and good luck forward Max
The great part about this video is that it isn't specific to just WoW. I don't even play WoW. I am an FFXIV raider. And everything here, with the exception of talking about the ratios, is true for that as well. Generalized information like this is truly the best for people who are trying to learn to improve themselves and don't know where to start.
Loving these videos. Would love to hear your take on what makes a good raider, from a raid leader's perspective. Basically, how can one contribute the most to a raid outside of a leadership position, and besides just pumping big numbers.
03:55 hit the nail right on the head. I've been in so many guilds where input and criticism of the RL is often times punished, because the RL is unable to accept responsibility for their fuck up. They want to be in a position of authority, but then won't accept the criticisms that come with being in that position of authority. You can't have your cake and eat it.
This to me is the biggest problem plaguing wow as a whole and the community. Officers and GM's of guilds are infallible when in reality they have no qualifications to lead and they will ostracize you if you try to lightly go against what they are saying. They hold it against you like you're not falling in line, this isn't the military wow noobs.
Dude i love your channel, i have watched almost all of your videos so far and i gotta tell you that its not only very informative but very entertaining. Please keep it up brotha!
i actually dont think thats totally useless. It probably is for healers, but for a dps player with off heals, that call might encourage them to toss yourself some self heals
@@Stackondat in fact it's worse than useless. its detrimental. Because anytime it's said I have to stop focussing on my healing to roll my eyes, audibly sigh then say "thanks, hadn't thought of that"
Maybe phrased differently but, it can be used to help players predict big damage spikes. Like letting the healers know we need a CD to top people off or if you're low use a healthstone/personal before the big hit in x seconds.
I understand that for properly organized heal teams, this is an absolutely useless call. For anyone else in the raid it can be somewhat useful though, especially as a dd. I've mostly played with stupidly good healers, that imo probably could easily play on higher levels than me. This has led me to be completely comfortable sitting on 10% hp for an extended period of time and not healing myself, while basically learning how to play the game. It's a hard habit to break. When I hear that call, I know that something isn't going optimally, so I have to change my play. Unless I'm tracking everything for healers alongside my stuff, they are far better equipped to make such a call 10+ seconds before you need to be topped. If I think back to my first guild (Streamer Community Guild, aotc), the heallead was pretty experienced but the rest of the healers was not. That call was absolutely normal to hear, because it was necessary. TL-DR: Different people, different kinds of (micro-)management
I just watched like all of your videos, I really liked all of them. It's just really interesting to hear your thought process with all of your experience. Honestly I'd like to hear anything you'd talk about. Even shit that's like kinda click baity like a tier list of all raid tiers or something would be super interesting to hear, or how you like fights in progression vs farming.
10:56 I still do the whole nine yards when explaining a boss but I also do a TLDR at the end to help with that. The goal being that players remember the TLDR and connect the dots with the longer explanation during the next few pulls
superb video, some of the pug points ive been echoing for years, the ratios, meta classes, wf comps etc. i have a friend's guild that sat their best 3 players because they're melee, then put in a bunch of guys playing meta specs who don't know how to play and struggle on easy bosses because of it
Best explanation i ever got was on Al'akir. went like: Dont die, kill boss. Great videos though, specially this cause i feel like there are so many RL's that are over complicating things, and simply refusing to listen to other ppls ideas. back when i was really active in WoW's raiding scene, i've heard some really good ideas coming from the least expected direction.
I can't say enough about the 10 min boss fight breakdowns. My RL is prone to doing this and it accomplishes nothing but waste time, when we could have been actually attempting the boss. Thanks for saying it for the people in the back!!! xD
Really enjoying your videos Max! Keep it up! I haven't liked watching PVE guide/tuts since Ciderhelm left TankSpot! Quick everyone vote, Best WoW voice 2021!
I have been asked to be the raid leader for the content to come because I have been told I have the knowledge to lead them. Listening to this video helped me a lot in understanding things where to focus.
thanks for doing these raidlead tip videos max. I went down from WR1000 to raid Heroic/Mythic with some friends, now im Leading them. So the timing of your Series couldn't be better for me. Cheers
The explaining the mechanics thing is something which is rly important to me. Whenever i explain mechanics i go "Tanks: Those 3 Thinks are important. Healers: Those 3 Things are important. Damage Dealers: Those 3 Things are important." Don't overload your players with information.
super informative and definitely gave me something to mull over. Small things I can change to make it less of a chore and more of a good experience for all. I do try to be easy going, but I am definitely harder on myself. Thank you again, for quality content.
BRO! THANK YOU! All of what you have said is how I have raid lead since Wrath! I get made fun of because we have a Hpriest instead of a DPriest and a MW Monk instead of Rdruid. The players I have parse orange and are amazing! pushing mythic! Also the [pulls you spoke of me and my group call them "Pulls for Science!" Awesome video!
these are super helpful i just picked up raid leading last month becuase we had a split in our raid group twice. with the help from these videos we've gotten to 9 of 10 normal. i know its not huge to alot of ppl but before our split we were 3 of 10 normal. thanks max your a million :)
Really like these videos! I go through almost all of them with our raid leading squad to keep working at our mistakes. Also, good reminder to subscribe cause I thought I already was since your videos kept popping up in my youtube front page.
These new videos have been amazing. After just a week of watching, I have helped RL my guild to 3/10M. I would love to see a video on the best class you think to RL on inside a raid is though. Currently I'm playing a mage, and have been thinking about transitioning to BM Hunter so I play my character more in my peripherals, and lead better.
These videos are great man. Some of it feels like common sense but I'm sure anyone who's spent time in a pug raid can tell you, it isn't. This is a great series. Would love to see more content like this.
The lucky 2% wipe is sometimes counterproductive as ppl pay little less attention to the following pulls thinking "we got it", wherase it.s more often the mechanics just popping on the right persons on a excepcional sequence. Keep calm and make people really think through how to avoid the mistake they just made. Sometimes it's hard due to frustration, but definitely the right path. Thank you for sharing your thoughts man, a shame there is so few views...
As a person who is currently tanking and the only one in the guild who also want to dig into some raid leading, it would be lovely to get your take on why the combination is a bad idea. Maybe you did go it through somewhere and I missed it, if so then please point me in the right direction. If not, then hopefully it can get some attention in a future video. Thanks for this content, it's amazing.
Nothing but professionalism . Hope every raid leader sees this. You are truly leading the wow raiding community in what it means to have fun while competing. Remembering we are humans and not pixels is probably #1
Hey max. Loving the series. Id love a video from a raider standpoint in knowing when to move on from a guild or when you feel its time/how to know if you're good enough to keep progressing up the guild ladder.
Dude I love these video been playing WoW for only since shadowlands came out... Started a raid group now own a guild. This is really helpful for improving raid leading in a new game. I have raid lead in other mmos but this one gets you really into it... Love the info
I love the content Max and would love a video on how do you and the officer team heandle some common situations Like having a few applies a the same time you want to test. How do you handle underperforming roster member, or other things you run into as a guild. Also the Xy mox guild is a gold mine for me as my guild is starting this boss on Sunday. I would also love a video on your thoughts about how can a RWF like Limit can step up even more. Last big step was 21st man, before that was having weak aura guys / addons preparing everything, and also having the helpers doing heroics. That would be cool to project and see how to improve or revolutionize even more