Epic Raid "Fail" Leadership

So, I "fell" into a 25-man raid with another guild last Saturday.  As a raid leader, it's hard not to back-seat raid lead.   I tried my best to not be "that guy" giving instructions.  You know "that guy" that is always making commentary on the voice server while everyone else is silent or chatting away in "raid" chat.

The problem we had, however, was that the raid leader didn't raid lead.  Essentially, he just gathered people into a group and said, "go".  Unfortunately, it's hard to spot this early on because people have farmed the early part of ICC so much now it's second-hand, so you wouldn't expect instruction until Marrowgar, minimally.   This is barely functional at best unless you have a group that is blowing through the content without effort as ToC-10/25 is becoming.

So, here I was, up to Marrowgar and the raid leader was essentially silent, didn't say anything, didn't give any instructions.  The most we got was, "everybody knows the fight?".  That's like the old joke about foreplay where they guy considers saying "brace yourself", as enough.

Marrowgar doesn't present too much difficulty since it is almost the same as 10-man.  However, Lady Deathwhisperer is not the same.  Obviously, wipes ensue.  But with most PuGs it doesn't take many until finger-pointing and bailing occur.   PuG-25's are a crap shoot like this.

This points directly at one of the tips I mentioned about raid leading.   Raid leaders, please, stay on top.  Even if you don't know the boss fight be clear and honest.  TALK!

"I don't know this fight, but here is how I want to set it up and try it because that is what I read.  I will take comments for 3-5 minutes before we proceed if anyone here has more experience."

The last thing to do is be silent, not give instructions.  AND, during the battles, it is YOUR JOB to keep people on target.  I know when I DPS my mind wanders.  Give instructions and presume that there are people out there not on the same page of the script as you are thinking.

In this raid, I saw it coming.  He was going to just say, "have at it" on Deathwhisperer until I spoke up.  YES, I ended up being "that guy" after all.  I said, "whoa, wait! we can't just say go on this fight."  Then, I proceeded to explain at least how I have been in raids that did it and how.   It didn't help, but at least it wasn't total chaos.

Sadly, it devolved into finger pointing and crap and the raid leader didn't nip it!  He let people bitch and then HE bailed.   Please don't be that guy.   If you raid-lead a 25-man, please LEAD.

/end rant.