I don't have a regular raid team. I successfully raid every week with randoms and I have some advice on how to make the communication more effective (or less annoying) for those of you who recruit or join up with randoms. Note- this is all in good fun and in the spirit of improving your raiding experience =] [b]Stop Calling Yourself "I"[/b] "I have unstable light" and "guys, I'm torn." Unless you're Bobcat Goldthwait or Sean Connery, your team mates might not be able to pick your voice out from the crowd, let alone match the cadence of your voice to your gamertag. It's great that you're torn or you have unstable light, but I don't know who "I" is. Team mates need information, calmly give it to them in the most useful way such as "Shadow Artiste is torn, I need platform two covered" or "Shadow Artiste has unstable light, I'm moving to the far right." [b]Announcing Your Arrival in the Shade Bubble[/b] Telling your team that "I'm in" (assuming they know who "I" is) has zero tactical value to the team. We all know people are going to be systematically teleported in and there's pretty much no reason we need to know when it happens. It's just the shade, it's not some harrowing gauntlet, if you get teleported in then simply start doing your job without the superfluous chatter. [b]"Wait for everyone to be here before you open the chest, it gives you a higher chance of an exotic"[/b] No. [b]We Don't Need a Detailed Rundown of Your Loot[/b] Or lack thereof. I like hearing what people got and telling people about my drops. Sure, celebrating a particularly good drop or lamenting another week of missing out on that ghost shell is one thing, but try to keep the analysis under 5 minutes lol. I don't need to hear you list every detail about each one of your drops down to listing of all perks and stat rolls and how they compare to your current weapon/armour. And no one wants to spend 5 minutes listening to how this is the 9th straight raid where you haven't received a drop from the Warpriest and the inevitable statistical likelihood and the fact that you have the worst luck etc etc. We get it, but it gets old listening to the same story over and over again. [b]Stop the Audio Commentary[/b] We don't need to hear about every little thing that you're doing and every little thing that's happening to you. "There's an acolyte near me ... I took care of it ... sweet a blue engram ..." There's definitely important stuff to communicate and on top of that I love a good chat and cracking jokes during the raid and it's hard to do this when someone is telling the group about every single ammo drop they pick up. Have I missed anything? Can I add anymore gaffs to the list? ******** [i]Edit: since my post seems to have come across a bit salty to some people here is an official list of things I'm not trying to say: 1. People shouldn't talk during raids 2. Raids shouldn't be a fun, chill atmosphere 3. I don't enjoy raiding with randoms 4. People shouldn't discuss loot drops [u]at all[/u] 5. All of the above points make me angry 6. I am an overbearing raider who forces these opinions on every group with which I play[/i] [i]Edit: in response to all of the "you're a buzz-kill" replies I just wanna say that apart from encouraging people to refer to themselves by their gamertag, I never voice any of these opinions during raids. I love helping lower levels and sherping/teaching (I have a dozen KF Sherpa runs and 100+ CE Sherpa runs) and aim to have fun on every raid - I've made many good friendships and my Aussie accent sparks a lot of good conversations and I love a good chat. This thread is just venting some of the peeves I have after solely running LFG/PUG. This thread is all in good fun.[/i]