Survey any raider on the worst offenses one of their fellow raiders can commit, and you will generally find they fall under one of the following four categories. While no raider is perfect, a good player will always be aware of how their behaviour affects their teammates and will make good effort to make sure these sins do not occur.

Making People Wait On You

Time rules a raider’s schedule. Whether it’s getting that one last attempt in before calling it for the night or plowing through trash to get to the boss, everything is balanced around the amount of time a raid gets together each lockout period. Time is the most precious commodity a raider can have and nothing makes people angrier than those who waste it for everyone.

Sins:
• Showing up late
• Taking excessive AFKs
• Waiting until immediately before start time to buy flasks or gems, set up addons, or get enchants.
• Failure to travel to instance in advance and expecting a summons

Being Unrealiable

Raiding, like many sports, is all about teamwork. Raiders rely and count on each other, and the mark of a good raid is making your strengths work together and balancing out each other’s weaknesses. Unreliable people erode the framework of cooperation at the foundation. If a player can’t count on his teammate, the raid’s performance stunted and resentment festers between members.

Sins:
• Having a poor internet connection
• Failure to respond to the calendar invites
• Habit of not showing up when promised
• Being distracted during raid time

Showing An Obvious Lack of Effort For Your Role

Although being a good raider means being able to work well with your raiding peers, every player has an individual responsibility to prepare him to contribute to the group as best they can. This means doing research on the class you play, the instance you’ll be visiting and your roles and duties within. A good player will be proactive about reading guides and strategies, monitoring patch notes for changes and keeping up with relevant theorycrafting and always showing up for a raid prepared.

Sins:
• Failure to keep gear gemmed and enchanted
• Ignorance about class playstyle
• Lack of research on boss strategies or guides
• Showing up in the wrong spec or gear
• Didn’t bring proper consumables or reagents

Bad Attitude

By sheer virtue of being an activity that involves working closely with other people for many hours of the week, raiding is a highly social activity. While knowledge and skill may rule a raid’s success, the attitude of a raid controls how happy the players are with that group. People who harm the social dynamics of a raid are like a poison, causing disharmony, hurt feelings, a tense atmosphere and making raiding feel more like work than a hobby.

Sins:
• Blaming other people constantly
• Excessively offering unsolicited advice and critiques
• Being mean, rude, or belittling teammates
• Whoring loot at the expense of others
• Dominating voice chat constantly
• Inability communicate issues in a constructive fashion.

An hour ‘til. Check:

• Put the kids to bed, send your girlfriend home, tell Aunt Lucille that you’ll call her back tomorrow, let the dog out, take your smoke break.
• Have you spec’d back to a raiding spec and spoken with the trainer?
• Got all your glyphs?
• Fill any empty gem sockets and make sure your new stuff enchanted.
• Dump stuff you don’t need in the bank to make room for PhatLootz™.
• Have you read the weekly post and the strategy guide?
• Make sure all your add-ons updated, set-up and working.
• Bring your dinner of cheesepuffs & Dr. Pepper to your desk. If necessary, bring enough additional puffs to cover snacks and dessert. Make sure you have enough napkins to wipe down the keyboard when you spill so you don’t need to get up in the middle of a boss fight.

Invites are begining. Check:

• Be on the appropriate character and join your raiding channels.
• Do you have enough flasks or elixirs appropriate to your class/spec?
• Make sure you have enough potions of all the types you’ll need.
• Refill your personal stock of buffing food in case no one has prepared any feasts.
• Check your bags for that resist gear or off-set spec.
• How is your supply of bandages? If low, have you prepared a bribe for a healer?
• Confirm that you have an adequate supply of drinking water, in case of no mage.
• Are you carrying enough reagents, be they purchased or fashioned from souls?
• Are you on Ventrilo and in the right channel?
• Get on the bird to the dungeon entrance.

Five minutes ‘til pull. Check:

• Are you in the instance, next to your buddies, in front of the night’s first target?
• Eat your buffing food, take your elixirs, apply your self buffs.
• Quick gear re-check to make sure you aren’t still wielding Last Month’s Mutton.
• Have you buffed people, dropped a table or soulwell, or offered to help summon the remaining stragglers?
• Get in position, prepare for the pull, be awesome.