Is there any point these days to class leaders?

These days I see role leaders, Melee DPS, Tanking, Caster, Healing.

Those leaders do things like plan and brainstorm for that role in the raid, assign tasks - dps focus on various phases, healing priorities etc. I no longer see a leader per class like back in the 40 man days.

This also seems to form the nexus of a loot council if you're going with that loot system.

I say there is no reason to have it in this day and age. The reason is that it inflates the ratio of officers to raiders far more than it needs to be. There are 10 classes, a guild master, a raid leader, a DKP officer, maybe a tanking officer, healing officer, dps officer, a recruitment officer, etc. In a lot of guilds these are mashed together, but you're talking about at least 10 officers in a raid of 25 people. That's simply uneccessary.

I think even in the most political of guilds, the most you'd want is something like a Guild Master, Raid Leader, Healing Officer, Melee Officer, Tanking Officer, Caster Officer, DKP Officer. That's even 7/25 members of your raid being officers. I think this even goes too far.

In 40 man guilds it was very important to have this type of organization because you took roughly 5 of every class to raids. It was important to keep things orderly in those classes. In 25 mans, it just isn't as necessary when you take 1-3 of a class.

I personally feel that having fewer officers is key to having less drama. Drama kills guilds. More officers creates more us vs them feelings, more accusations of bias, more places for people to sense and despise incompetence. Soon you start hearing "well if they get an officer, we deserve an officer."

That being said, it's still useful to have someone in each class designated as a go to person for knowledge about that class. Just make sure it doesn't confer any unique privilege as that can create feelings of jealousy and bias. But it's useful when elder or more experienced members take the others in their class that might not be performing as well under their wing.

Class leaders were necessary back in the 40 man raid days. Now guilds are often lean and mean with the raiding core.

I can see the pro's of having class leaders however, more often you can still get what you need without having to have a title. I feel guilds need to keep leadership/officers to a minimum. Just get enough to be able to accomplish the administrative duties your guild requires.

Raid attendance, dkp-loot tracking, guild bank, raid leading-scheduling, recruitment, web services, ect ect should be split up amongst 5 or so folks so that nobody is overwhelmed and can still enjoy the game.

Below the officers can be class leads. Honestly there is some competition amongst the classes and while part of that is good.... if you clearly select someone as "best" you might lose good folks or create a negative environment in raiding. This hopefully is a worst case scenario however I have seen worse. I think you could accomplish more by having the competitiveness spread throughout your raiding core instead of targeting specific classes. And besides, once you choose class leader you then have to deal with demotions or replacements down the road.

This is all subjective and different for every case. Personally I dont think you need 9-10 sub officers or "leaders". If someone is taking the initiative to be a leader then let them run with it. Be sure to be non patronizing and supportive. In game we need more folks willing to bring everyone to a higher level of gameplay. This encourages others to meet a higher standard as well and can snowball into success. (I think all of us have seen the snowball of failure at one time or another.)

If you do indeed select class leaders make sure they are truly a master of their class. I have been in guilds in the past that just made anyone a class leader. Meaning that they were just the ones who showed up and often would underperform, spec wrong and become the joke amongst others.

You want to build on a solid foundation and keep it simple but structured. With raids now being 25man/10 man I feel the class leader role is not needed as it was in traditional 40man raid wow.

Leaders are always welcomed, just make sure you have enough indians to do the job. Leaders stepping over each other or undermining success is something that should be avoided. This game is highly social and a social structure needs to be in place.

Agreeing with the other posters, official class "leaders" are outdated and can actually do your guild more harm than good. If you're running one 10- or 25-man raid group, there's clearly no need for 3 layers of middle management.

It is very helpful to have an expert or class adviser from each class/role/spec available to help scrutinize your performance and help you maximize stats, clean up your rotation, etc. One person could provide this role on many different classes or specs like all tanks, or a very small category like unholy dk dps.

More and more, with tools to help measure your performance like WowWebStats, WorldOfLogs, the armory, simulators, and even straight up video capture, your class adviser can just be on some forum somewhere, reviewing help requests and giving out advice. Maybe somebody should make a website that does that... (patent pending)

I wouldn't really call the "Class leader" guild position that important now, especially since they homogenized a lot of class buffs/roles. Just recruit players who can L2P, not appoint a class leader to train each one to do a specific role in a raid (because that is no longer expected.)

E.g. Back in vanilla WoW, Warriors were pretty much THE tanking class, Paladins could only heal, Druids were at times a viable tank, and each class provided their own buffs to the raid (its not like one class buff can be provided by another's class buff like it is now.)

Even if we went all the way back to 40 man raiding, we wouldn't really need them. Any class can DPS, four classes can tank and four classes can heal. Its not like we're reliant on getting every single class buff now like we used to be.

The "class leaders" in my raiding group are there as a resource for the players of their class, for advice and guidance. They don't really have any duties during a raid necessarily (sure, the pally leader might coordinate their buffs still, I guess).

I never raided in the 40-man days so I can't speak to how that used to work, but I see value in having that one guy that just knows the nuts and bolts of Hunters... a general DPS leaders just wouldn't have the intricate knowledge of talents and details that I'd want, personally.

I really don't think the 'Class Officers' are necessary any more. The classes are all starting to resemble each other, within their certain role. Plus, no guild needs to have 10+ officers. Ideally, a guild would have a Guild Leader (normally a role officers too. We'll say he's the tanking officer in this case), a Raid Leader who also tracks the DKP, and then a healing and a DPS officer. That'll give an officer 4 officers. If you really feel you need more officers, you could have a recruitment officer or break the DPS officer down into melee & ranged officer.

Now, this is also making the assumption that the officers are going to be active and attend most raids. There are plenty of guilds out there with 8-14 officers, and I find that those guilds tend to suffer from the 'too many chiefs, not enough indians' syndrome. If you have too many leaders, you end up having long arguements in the raid and the guild doesn't function smoothly. Trying to keep the amount of officers as low as possible, while still making the guild run smoothly is what almost all guilds should be aiming for.

I would say that regardless of the "type" of officers a guild has, it should try to minimize them. I've been in many guilds over the years, and one thing that officers always have in common is that they are much closer as friends than the rest of the guild.

Now, having said that, that's obviously not a bad thing, but it can easily make it difficult for the rest of the guild to feel a part of the "family", so to speak.

For instance, in the guilds that have had many officers, that were close together, a big problem was that most guild-managed instance-runs always consisted of almost all the officers that wanted to come, and then filled up with the rest of the members.

Now that WoW has gotten many 10-man instances that are viable options for guilds, having 10+ officers could make it a lot more difficult for members of the guild to feel that they participate in such runs.

Of course, nobody expects the guild to run my instance-progression on automatic, but if a member always has to go random runs for his/her instance-progression runs, it doesn't feel like he/she's a part of the guild, when the guild sets up runs each week to these places.

So in my opinion, having only the officers you need is the way to go, and class leader officers should be a thing of the past.

I agree with the other answers here that mention things like healing-officer, tanking-officer, etc.

The class leaders in my guild are not so much officers but are there mainly for Mentoring and Recruitment.

This relieves the primary officers of having to deal with class specific specialties which they may not be sure about.

This works well for us and i'm sure would work well for other guilds out there.

What we have in our raids are three tiers of officers.

First tier is raid leader and raid leader assist - these control the general flow of things, where to go that day, do we attempt hard modes or not, dkp and loot distribution.

Then, the second tier - tank leader, healer leader, melee leader, ranged leader. They take care of role-specific details: taunt rotation, portal distribution at yogg-saron, healing assignments, etc.

And at the third tier there are class leaders. Their work is outside the raids - the first go-to person if you want to know some details about your class, optimal talent choices and gear questions, and in general anything class-specific. They also review new applications to the raid group.

Yes, a lot of positions. But positions overlap - our melee leader is rogue leader too, for example. And officers do not get any loot priority over other raiders.