As mentioned by one of the other commenters, breaks are vital. Not just when you start to wipe badly, but in general. In my current guild we take a 5 minute break every hour (when most people’s flasks run out), and this seems to work really well as people can go and recharge, or gem their new gear and get back to focusing on the boss at hand. Previous guilds only took one break each night – which may have been 10 minutes in the middle of a 4 or 3.5 hour raid. This is pretty common but in my opinion wasn’t ideal, as people were always begging for a break or to end the raid early. If you think about it, it is pretty weird for a human being to sit still at a computer for over an hour – even when I’m at work (I’m a programmer) I step away from my computer more frequently than that.

To the question of yelling though…

I’ve experienced various raid leadership styles, all for 8 months or more each, and I honestly believe that yelling is not necessary to be a good leader. You can yell and be a good leader, or you can never yell and be a good leader, but to be a great leader what you really need is passion.

What a leader displays is what the followers will be infected with and will mirror – this is the same in any leadership role, wow related or not. If the leader is enthusiastic and passionate then the team will be the same, and this results in the best performance. Hours of wiping can dull the enthusiasm of anyone, so I can certainly understand why some leaders get frustrated and resort to yelling, and if that’s the best they can muster at the time it’s certainly better than being blasé and not appearing to care at all, because you don’t want your team to not care. At least yelling displays some form of passion. But if the raid leader can manage to maintain their own enthusiasm and others can hear that in their voice, that will have the best outcome.

I’m currently in a guild that is led this way, and it’s the best guild I’ve ever been in, in terms of enjoyment. The leaders are constantly enthusiastic and the raiders are infected with the same enthusiasm. The atmosphere on vent is friendly and lively no matter how many hours we wipe on the same boss. It leads you to enjoy the game more and to like the officers and the guild more and want to do your best – you’re motivated.

So I got annoyed. I feel like most raids and through wipes I tend to keep calm. I might sound annoyed, but I do keep calm. For me to say “Ok, get a grip, sort interrupts and focus the healing.” Is a common way of just letting everyone know what went wrong on the last pull. This time however I realised we needed to get our focus back. So I called a break.

We used to call them “Dance-breaks” before, as our holy priest liked to dance a bit to bring her focus back, and I think that is a brilliant way to shake of the bad wipes.

A 5-10 min break can be VERY effective. If the entire raid actually steps away from the computer. No alt tabbing, no jumping around or chatting in whispers. Step away from the screen, stand, move around, dance, get a drink, hug your cat, play the piano. Just do something other than staring at the screen. It completely resets the focus, brings back energy and the will to actually down the boss.

Now we didn’t manage a kill, but we did get to 18% on the next try;)

I should have been more clear in that I already realised that if people were sticking around and raiding with you week in and week out, that whatever your stance on the occasional yell, you’re doing enough right and people like you well enough to stick around.

I figured it sort of went without saying, but looking back at my first comment in particular I can certainly see why it might put your (or anyones) back up.

I still stand by the original stance I put forward on the matter of yelling and I don’t think it’s either effective or appropriate (although as I also said, appropriateness is also built by expectation of the guild ‘type’ and for a more heavily progress orientated guild, might not only be considered alright but expected) but…! For all that, I don’t think you’re doing a bad job all around, as much as it is possible for me to have an opinion on that not being a raider under you.

I would also agree that you have to figure out what works best for your team – which is probably why people make a fortune on the topic of motivation! If only we could bottle it and sell it, right?!

So I think I will probably refrain from responding much past this: we have an entire forum dedicated to analyzing each raid where performance is broken down and analyzed. We also build our guild on a foundation of believing that everyone should be given the chance and opportunity to improve and learn – and that is pretty important to us.

I generally bitch at people in my usual griping manner and take solace in the gloomy but steadfast words of our officer-rogue. After he talks, I feel better and it seems others do too.