So last night I was doing a little toon maintinance and got a Tell... "Care to do a Reaver Raid?" or something to that extent....

He was polite so I figured, what the heck..... I switched to a cleric (I was on my melee FvS and assumed he wanted a healer) and Joined the group.

It was filling slowly so I said I could solo cleric it no problem.. we wound up filling anyway rather quickly so no big deal.

I looked around the group... WF Wiz From Erebus..... Fighter from Inferus Sus.... COuple old friends who just returned to the game from Umber Hulks... and the rest were unknown to me....

Not terible I thought, should go ok.

The leader had asked a couple times if this was anyones "First run" and of course go no response.. Typical... People dont admit that too often. and really, in a Reaver, its not that critical with a few necessary instructions.

We step in and buff, I guess the leader was gonna tank, but didnt make that clear to anyone, as we were about to start, he said something about Lag and rebooting his router.... SOmeone trggered the start and off we went....

I quickly realized we had at least 3 people beating on the reaver... ANd the person who was drawing aggro was pulling the reaver into a corner and holding him there facing the corner... Nearly Immpossible to get charges liek that...
I asked him to pull the reaver out of the corner a couple times He did once, but soon ended up back in the corner... The Raid leader made a couple short comments agreeing with me I think, but never took control of anything. I was not about to since it wasnt my Raid.

ANyway, after a few minutes, I ran out of Spell Points, Couldnt heal fast enough, and got killed. Party wipe ensued.

"Wow, didnt expect that would happen" I thought to myself.... The Leader of the group makes a comment about "Just another Pug Raid Failure"

After everyone recalls out, Most of the group decides to try again... We kept 11 of the 12... Pretty impressive for a misreble failure if ya ask me.... as we are getting ready to reform,. the leader asks again "Is this anyones first time"?

At that Point, I had to speak up...

"Ya know, you still have to actually lead the raid and provide instructions for folks. DOesnt matter if you have 12 peple that know what to do in here, if they all start doing the same thing, the raids gonna fail again"

"Fine, You lead it then" Ding. Alandael has the star. He then said something about being Drunk.....

"OK" I reply.

we break and I reform the group, pop up an lfm and grab an extra Cleric to replace the 1 person we lost to help heal and we go back in.... After a few entertaining tells from friends in the group, and one from the former leader asking me if I was realy gonna lead the raid this time... Obviously, he had no idea who I was... we stepped back in.....


I provided my standard Reaver Raid instructions.

Designated the Tank (Inferus Sus dude) Provided an outline of where the firewalls should be, and made sure I was clear on who was responsible for what. If your not the tank, you are on Ele duty. Pretty simple. But necessary in a Pug.

Not sure what was up, but this was a pretty strange Instance... The tank did Great, we quickly got our buff and all was going smooth. The second cleric I got got killed somehow... Oh well.... then it got weird... I went in for a new Charge.. saw the reaver throwing the charges, Saw the annimation.. but it didnt register on me...
It didnt register on anyone... We hit some lag spikes.... I got incapped somehow.... Things were starting to go Pear shapped..... we lost nearly half the group in an instant.....

I got a Heal of some sort and got back on my feat.. whew.... I quickly reassess the situation. Lost the Tank.... but the rest of my friends were still good to go.... I assigned a new tank and we went back to work. The instance setled down and I was able to get a new charge, the new Tank got Fly... and took off for the lever... He made it, but was unsure as to how it worked. He pulled it, but when I asked if the lever was pulled, I got no response.
He was the only melee left.... and now he was up in the ceiling not doing anything.... Did he not pull the lever?

All the while the Erebus WF Wiz was desperately trying to get a new charge, the other sorc was laying down a firewall here and there.... Our only hope was send someone else to the lever..... SO I went... The wiz got his charge and I told him I was going to the lever, as I got to the lever, I found our melee standing there wondering why the barrier didnt go down.... The one that doesnt go down until the raid is over.... WIth the lever locked down and pulled....

Oh well, Had to check.... Back to the floor.. Storm reaver finaly succumbs to the Firewalls.... and we move on to the puzzle....

It seemed like an Eternity.... No way would we have enough TIme to do the puzzle... But surprisingly, we had plenty of time left... So much in fact that I wonder if the Timer was altered at some point. We had almost half the timer left.....

THe puzzle is done in 5 moves, (Yes, I used a Solver for this run because It was late and we already had one fail... Just didnt want to take the chance)

Congrats get thrown around.. Some raid loot dropped... and everyone is happy.....

Overall, It was a prety Fun run considering......


Cool Story Bro! eh?

SUre, but my point is this....

Most pug raids dont fail "Because they are Pugs" They fail because they dont know what to do. Someone who takes it upon themselves to lead a raid needs to step up and Lead the raid. Asking if anyone is new is not sufficient. Its rather pointless in fact. In a Reaver raid, you could have 20 completions and still not have a good idea as to what is actually happening and what needs to be done...


As a Raid Leader,

Know the raid yourself. You dont have to be an expert. But you should be able to provide direction to the party.

Provide Clear instructions on how you want things to be done. If you dont know, ask for help or suggestions. Figure out who you can Rely on. Figure out who's expendable.

Step up and Take control of the situation when things start to get out of hand.


When things go wrong, they will NOT correct themselves. it will continue to get worse until the party wipes or until someone can get things back on track.

Oh, and this didnt happen last light, but seriously.... Yelling at folks and calling them noobs and saying they suck cause the raid is about to fail is not a good way to rally the troops around you to get a raid (Or any quest) back on track. AS a matter of fact, thats when I stop caring about a completion.



So anyway, Welcome back to the game Anne and Sig.

Thanks for doing a great job Tanking NickF

and to the WF Wiz who's name escapes me right now, You reaffirmed my faith in Erebus. You folks are top notch.

To the folks who wound up in the Penalty Box.... Sorry about that... Nothing I could of done differently..... but Hopefully you learned something about the raid at least.....