Raid Leaders

I'm beginning to think that Raid Leaders should pick up some form of Healing Addon.

I often get into raids where the RL is unaware of how many people are in the raid, whether anybody has D/C'd, what class mix is already in the raid, etc.

Something like Grid makes all of this very easily seen while not taking up too much space.

Just a suggestion.

raid leaders usually do have raid frames up... at least I always have when I lead

Raid leading is complex and difficult. The raid leader must keep track of about a billion things per second. Most players who have never raid lead consistently just don't realize how many whispers they have incoming at all times, how many different chat threads they have to track, and all of the mini-crises that are constantly sprouting up. Especially when trying to form a random pug. It's all quite difficult to keep track of. Would be nice to have an addon that does some of that for them, any suggestions? My solution is just to divide up responsibilities with a few others so I don't get so swamped with things that I have to keep track of while everyone else is goofing off and enjoying a good time.

I've done a bit of raid leading and have found that there aren't much for addons necessary as it's a mixture of just keeping aware of the entire situation and "herding the cats"

For mods I like to use:
-Grid: to keep track of who's alive and dead as well as in range and such. Grid can also be used to track fight specific debuffs like KT's frost blast for example that appear very large on the grid box.
-Raid buff status: I'm guessing this is something like the Big Brother mod you mentioned on your show as it tracks people's buffs and makes sure they are all well fed, flasked, etc.
-Some sort of dkp tracker if you are using dkp for loot
-Recount: This can be useful for tracking people's dps/healing/damage taken for specific fights and can be useful for at a glance help in finding something that may have gone wrong. Beware though that people also use this quite a bit to meter whore and push their dps numbers to the detriment of the fight strategy.
-/combatlog: Although not a mod, posting your raid nights up on WWS, WMO, etc. is a great way for members and officer alike to go back and take a look at what they did well and hopefully see areas where they can improve on.

Raid leading tips in general:
-+-Have a Tank channel and a Healing Channnel in game. My guild Rabble for instance has a channel for each, Rabblehealing and RabbleTank. They are easily set up in game and allow people with their specific jobs to talk about the strat/setup for each encounter.
-+-Assign someone to be the leaders of the Healing and Tank channels. Before each fight I make a macro describing every healer's job, raid healing, tank healing, specific group assignments, etc. and then spam it a few times until I'm 100% sure that every healer knows their job.
-+-Clear Vent except for 1-2 people once the fight has begun. Too many hands in the kitchen ruins the soup.
-Explain the fight thoughorly before your first attempt each time you have ANY new people joining you. Even if it's the same group of people as the weeks prior, make sure to explain nuanced aspects of the fight. A good example I have from just this week is making sure people move during the Hodir fight. We didn't think we had to mention this as everybody had done the fight multiple times, but lo and behold it was actually our tank that took some 40k tics of the debuff before he died and had us healers scratching our heads as to why he died. Luckily that was found with recount to see that he wasn't moving at all.
-+-Set the Raid Mark symbols to your 0-9 numberpad. Quickly marking trash or adds in general is a useful way to help your dps focus. Everybody loves attacking the skull!
-+-Don't go pointing fingers for mistakes on Vent unless it is in good humor. Whispers I've found to be very effective and people are much more open to criticism when they aren't being publicly embarassed at the same time.
-+-Have a plan, if you're going into a new encounter make sure that at least the raid leader has read up on the abilities and watched a movie or two showing how to kill the boss. In a day and age when World Firsts happen in a matter of days of content being released you can be sure that there are strategy videos floating around on how to kill every encounter in the game.

Most of all raid leading just takes time and practice. Especially in your situation where you're heavy into recruiting and just starting out, it's going to take a while to find a rhythm but it will come. Hope some of these suggestions can be of use to you guys and happy raiding!

Done a fair bit of RLing myself, use all the same addons as the above poster,including Grid for watching over the raid, it's compact, colour coded, doesn't grab my clients memory by the balls. From the looks of it some fella's on tankspot (Ciderhelm included) have been using it for the very same reason...As a tank I need a clear screen, not with huge raid frames or billions of info. RBS for example can be set so it disappears while in combat, you can also set it to warn you when people dc/aren't in the current zone etc.

Maybe you've just met some new RL's?