I'm not a vastly experienced raider - a fair chunk of Kara, some ZA and one trip to Gruuls is my BC experience - and I'm not fond of leading raids; I'll organize them and serve as loot master, but generally I don't serve as the leader. Last night I did on a ZA run (though as usual the tanks did the marking and organized the pulls) and for a while it went swimmingly. We beat the eagle and bear bosses to a bloody pulp and moved onto the dragonhawk.
Mid-way through that encounter our druid healer suffered a PC failure and we wiped (twice as it happened, as we made another valiant but doomed attempt to 9-man it and kill him within the timer). Ressing and rebuffing, we regrouped at the Eagle boss platform to see what the situation was with out erstwhile colleague, hoping to get him back so we could sort the loot (we'd completed two timed encounters) before progressing. My efforts on the phone failed (I suspect I have an old mobile number) and after 20-odd minutes (and news via another member of the raid regarding the computer failure) I decided we had to swap people around (one of the DPS swapping for one of their healer characters, and a new person into the empty slot) which meant sorting the loot. We promptly did that and set about rejigging the people.
Then our original disconnectee managed to get back in using his laptop, which I should've anticipated.
Mid-way through that encounter our druid healer suffered a PC failure and we wiped (twice as it happened, as we made another valiant but doomed attempt to 9-man it and kill him within the timer). Ressing and rebuffing, we regrouped at the Eagle boss platform to see what the situation was with out erstwhile colleague, hoping to get him back so we could sort the loot (we'd completed two timed encounters) before progressing. My efforts on the phone failed (I suspect I have an old mobile number) and after 20-odd minutes (and news via another member of the raid regarding the computer failure) I decided we had to swap people around (one of the DPS swapping for one of their healer characters, and a new person into the empty slot) which meant sorting the loot. We promptly did that and set about rejigging the people.
Then our original disconnectee managed to get back in using his laptop, which I should've anticipated.
He was understandably peeved, particularly as one of the loot items had been a leather item he could've used and which'd been assigned to a pally healer as a last resort. To my mind the Loot issue is secondary - it may be resolvable via a GM appeal - but what is at stake is the ability to make good judgement calls and to maintain the trust of the players. I can fully understand why my friend was agrieved, but to my mind it was a choice between siting still for a long period on the off chance he was able to recover, or trying to move on. I opted for the latter, but can't help wondering if I could've been more patient, waiting another 10-15 minutes and resolving the matter without upsetting anyone.
In short, I made a really bad call and upset a friend (as well as messing others about as we had to keep swapping people around) which is going to haunt me for a while.
In short, I made a really bad call and upset a friend (as well as messing others about as we had to keep swapping people around) which is going to haunt me for a while.
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I actually disagree that you made a bad call. You made a call that turned out bad; but in essence the call was the right one. We had no reason to believe that waiting another 15 minutes would make any difference. We needed to swap some people out, and so needed to make sure that the loot was dealt with, and there was general agreement in the raid that it was the right thing to do. In hindsight, we should have left it til the end, swapped the remaining players back to their original toons, and then looted the chests. But that's hindsight. And wisdom often comes after the fact.For me, your ability to lead a raid is in no way diminished by the events of that night. Raid leading is hard, and involves hard decisions on occasion. That a decision that you made turned out to be bad one, was impossible for you to tell at the time, and could only really have been mitigated by experience. You now have that experience and would make a different call on a similar situation next time. That's just learning. We are all learning how to raid, as a guild. We've been doing what we can for just over a year now, and have had a number of different raid leaders. I happen to think that you are one of the better ones. Learn from last week's ZA. Let the experience inform your raid leading decisions in future. But don't beat yourself up too much over a decision that you took that turned out badly. and certainly don't let it stop you raid leading in future, please.I feel for Leafy, very much. But, at the end of the day, these things do happen, and will continue to happen. The calamity would be if the situation robbed you of your confidence and robbed the guild of a fine raid leader.