How to Shotcall: A Practical Guide for Raid and PvP Leaders

To shotcall, you watch the fight, decide what the group does next and say it in as few words as possible, early enough that everyone acts together. Most of good shotcalling happens around the fight: a comp and channel layout set before the event, a small fixed set of callouts, one voice making decisions in combat and an honest review afterwards.

This guide covers each of those for raids, ZvZ, sieges and alliance PvP. If you want the background on the term first, read what a shotcaller is and how the role compares to raid leaders, commanders and IGLs.

Before the fight: prepare the comp, channels and roles

Fights are often decided before the first engage. A caller who spends the first minute sorting out parties and arguing about roles starts every fight behind.

Build the comp around the plan

Decide what the night's content needs first, then build parties to match. A siege where you hold a gate needs different parties from an open-field ZvZ where you dive the enemy backline. Give every party a job you can name in one phrase, such as "main ball", "backline peel" or "flank and objective", so you can address it on comms by that job.

Keep the party structure the same from week to week when you can. People learn their party leader's voice and their party's role, and you stop re-explaining the basics every event.

Set up voice channels before people arrive

Have the Discord layout ready an hour before start time. A typical layout for a large group:

Voice Channels
├── Lobby / Staging
├── Command (caller and officers)
├── Party 1
├── Party 2
├── Party 3
├── Party 4
├── Scouts
└── AFK

Number the party channels to match the in-game parties. "Party 3" in Discord should be the same people as party 3 in game, so a call to party 3 reaches the right players without anyone having to think. For more detail on permissions, roles and push-to-talk settings, see our Discord voice coordination guide for guild leaders.

Assign comms roles in writing

Before the event, post who does what in a Discord text channel:

• Primary caller: makes every engage, target and retreat call.
• Secondary caller: takes over if the primary dies, disconnects or loses track of the fight.
• Party leaders: run their party inside the main call and report back what they see.
• Scouts: watch approaches the main force can't see and report movement.
• Heal lead, if your content needs one: calls healing and defensive cooldowns for the healers.

If people are figuring out who calls while the fight is starting, you've already lost time you won't get back.

Brief the plan in two minutes

Gather everyone in the lobby and cover the objective, the first target or position, the regroup point and anything unusual about tonight. Then stop. Long briefings get tuned out, and anything people need mid-fight should be a callout anyway.

Callout discipline: short, directional, timed

The best callouts are short, point in a direction everyone understands and say exactly when. Every extra word costs your group a moment of attention in the middle of a fight.

Keep it short

Put the action first. "Back, regroup at bridge" works even if half the group only hears the first word. "Okay so I think we should probably pull back towards the bridge" doesn't.

Make directions unambiguous

"Left" and "right" depend on which way each player's camera faces. Use compass directions or named landmarks that everyone can see on the map: "north gate", "the bridge", "their tower". Agree on landmark names in the briefing if the map doesn't name them for you.

Say when

Countdowns turn individual reactions into one action. "Bomb on three. Three, two, one, go." Say "go" once, clearly, and don't follow it with commentary for a few seconds so the call stands out.

Give instructions along with information

Information alone leaves each player to make their own decision. "They're flanking east" invites ten different reactions. "Party 3, turn east and hold the ramp" gets one.

One voice during combat

Set a rule and enforce it: during an active fight, only the caller talks on the main call. Party leaders speak inside their party channel, and anything the caller needs comes up as a one-line report. Save post-fight discussion for after the fight.

Target calling

Target calls win PvP fights because focused damage kills players and spread damage gets healed through.

• Call one target at a time. Two names at once means half the group picks each.
• Describe the target so everyone can find it fast, by class, position or in-game marker if your game has them: "Focus the healer behind their tank line."
• Call swaps explicitly. "Swap" is its own call, followed by the new target.
• Confirm kills. "Dead, next: the staff on the left wall" keeps damage moving without a gap.
• Prefer targets your group can actually reach. A perfect target behind the whole enemy force is a worse call than an exposed one in front of you.

In large-scale fights, you can also call targets by group instead of by player: "Bomb their backline" or "Collapse on the group at the gate." Either way, everyone commits to the same thing at the same time.

Calling retreats

The retreat is the hardest call to make on time, because nobody wants to leave a fight they think they might win. A late retreat often costs more players than a bad engage.

Pick the regroup point before the fight starts and tell everyone in the briefing, so "back" always means somewhere specific. Then:

1. Call it early. If you're asking yourself whether to retreat, the answer is usually yes.
2. Give the direction and the destination in one line: "Back south, regroup at the bridge."
3. Name who covers the retreat: "Party 2, peel for healers."
4. Once the group is reset, say one sentence of status, such as "We lost four, they lost six, we go again in thirty." That keeps people focused on the next fight.

A clean retreat that saves most of your group is a win, even if it doesn't feel like one. Tell your group that, so they stop treating every "back" as a loss.

Managing multiple party leaders

In a big fight you can't watch every party, so your party leaders handle the details. You call where the force goes. They decide who in their party peels, who cleanses and who covers the healer.

Give each party a job by name ("Party 1 main ball, Party 4 objective") so you can redirect a whole party with one call. Expect party leaders to adapt your calls to their party in their own channel, and don't micromanage their players over the main call.

You also need to hear from them. Party leaders often see a flank, a dead healer or a missing party before you do. On Discord, the simplest way is talk-back: party leaders hold Discord's Push to Talk (Priority) key to send a short report up to the command channel while normal push-to-talk stays inside their party. Setup takes a couple of minutes, and our two-way voice relay guide for squad leaders walks through the permissions and keybinds.

Ask party leaders to keep reports to one line with numbers and a direction: "Fifteen flanking east." "Our healer's down, need peel." "Party 3 is out of position." A report the caller has to decode is worse than none.

Agree in advance on what happens when you go down. ShotCaller supports primary and secondary caller roles: the secondary's voice reaches the parties when the primary is silent, so your backup can take over without anyone switching channels.

Delegating scouting

You can't watch the map and the fight at the same time, so hand the map to scouts. A scout's job is to report what's coming, how many, from where and how soon: "Twenty from the west road, thirty seconds out."

Scouts give information. The caller decides what to do with it. If a scout starts calling moves for the whole group, you end up with two callers and a split group.

Give scouts a fast path to you. That might be their own Discord channel with a relay into command, or Priority Speaker so they can talk back like party leaders do. In games with large maps and contested objectives, such as Aion 2 artifact sieges or Black Desert node wars, scouts often see the fight that decides the night before the main force does.

Handling tilt

Comms follow the caller's mood. If you sound frustrated after a wipe, the group gets frustrated with you.

After a lost fight, say one short thing about what happened, give one change for the next fight and move on: "They had the high ground. Next time we hold at the gate until they come down." Leave blame out of voice entirely. If someone keeps making the same mistake, deal with it privately after the event.

Watch the group's tilt too. Arguing on comms, people breaking from the group and stray voices during fights are early signs. A short reset in the lobby, a few seconds of quiet and a clear next objective usually help more than a speech.

If you're tilted yourself, hand calls to your secondary caller for a fight or two. Calling while angry produces late, emotional calls, and your group will hear the difference.

Reviewing VODs and recordings

Most callers improve fastest by watching their own fights. Record your screen during the event, and if you can, ask a party leader to record their view as well. Let your group know if you also record voice comms.

When you review, don't try to watch everything. Find the moment the fight was won or lost and look at three things: what you said at that moment, whether you said it in time and whether the group followed it. Then check what you saw on screen before the call. Late calls usually start with information you had but didn't act on.

Compare your view with a party leader's. Calls that sounded clear in the command channel can arrive late or garbled on the ground. Write down one or two changes per week and work on those. Ten changes at once rarely stick.

Voice setup on Discord for raid leaders

How you set up Discord depends on group size.

For small groups, one voice channel works. Have everyone use push-to-talk (Discord's input mode guide) and give the caller Priority Speaker, which lowers other people's volume while they talk.

Once you split into party channels, you hit Discord's main limit for raid leaders: you can only be in one voice channel at a time. Repeating calls through party leaders adds delay and drops calls. A voice relay fixes this. The ShotCaller Discord bot relays your voice from the command channel into every party channel simultaneously, with latency under 100ms. Members stay in their own channels and don't install anything, and party leaders can talk back with their priority key.

For alliances, the Alliance plan relays one caller into 24 speaker channels across two Discord servers, so allied guilds follow your calls from their own servers. See cross-server Discord voice for how that works.

Plans start at $5/month for 4 channels, then 8 channels for $8/month, 12 for $15/month and Alliance for $25/month. Every plan includes a 7-day free trial, so you can try it on a real event first. See pricing.

Two small settings help every caller. Raise Discord's Push to Talk Release Delay slightly off the minimum so the last word of a call isn't clipped, and bind push-to-talk to a mouse side button so you never have to take a hand off your abilities to talk.

Shotcalling in specific games

The fundamentals carry over, but each game has its own rhythm:

• Albion Online: ZvZ comes down to engage timing and coordinated bombs, so countdown calls carry a lot of weight.
• Throne and Liberty: castle sieges and boonstone fights run across several parties with different objectives at once.
• Guild Wars 2: WvW commanders lead with their tag, and squads stack on it, so movement calls are constant.
• EVE Online: fleet commanders call primaries and warps, and fleets expect strict comms discipline.
• New World: shotcallers manage point captures and army groups across the map.
• Elder Scrolls Online: Cyrodiil groups follow the crown through keep sieges and open-field fights.
• Where Winds Meet: guild wars split players across lanes and objectives, so party leaders carry more of the load.
• Black Desert and Aion 2: node wars and artifact sieges reward strong scouting and parties that each know their job.

Pre-fight checklist

1. Comp and parties set, with each party's job named.
2. Discord channels ready and numbered to match in-game parties.
3. Primary caller, secondary caller, party leaders and scouts posted in text.
4. Party leaders have Priority Speaker and a priority keybind for talk-back.
5. Relay running if you're using party channels.
6. Two-minute briefing done: objective, first target, regroup point.
7. Comms rule repeated: only the caller talks during fights.
8. Recording started for the review.

FAQ

How do you shotcall in PvP?

Watch the fight, decide what your group does next and announce it in a few words with a clear direction and timing, such as "Push north gate on three." Call one target at a time, call retreats early to a regroup point everyone knows, and keep the main comms clear so your calls are heard.

How do I become a good shotcaller?

Start with small groups and simple content. Keep callouts short and decisive, use landmarks instead of left and right, and stay calm after wipes. Review recordings of your fights to find the moments where a call was late or missing. Most callers improve by fixing one or two habits at a time.

How do you lead a raid as a new raid leader?

Plan the comp and parties before the raid, post roles in Discord, give a short briefing and set a rule that only callers talk during pulls. Hand live calls to someone more experienced if you need to while you learn, and focus on organization and clear briefings first.

What are the most important shotcalling tips for ZvZ?

Keep party structures stable, give each party a named job, use countdowns for engages and bombs, and retreat early to a pre-agreed regroup point. Rely on party leaders for details within their party, and give them a quick way to report back to you, such as Discord's priority push-to-talk.

What should a shotcaller say during a fight?

Only what the group needs to act on: engage, hold, retreat, targets, movement and timing. Lead with the action, add a direction or landmark and finish with when. Leave commentary and analysis until after the fight.

How do I stop people talking over the shotcaller?

Make a clear rule that only the caller speaks on the main call during fights, and enforce it every time. Give party chatter its own place, either party channels or typed chat. With a voice relay, parties talk freely in their own channels and still hear every call.

How should a raid leader set up Discord?

For small groups, use one voice channel with push-to-talk and give the caller Priority Speaker. For larger groups, put each party in its own channel and use a voice relay bot like ShotCaller to carry the caller's voice into every party channel at the same time. The setup guide covers configuration.

How can party leaders talk to the shotcaller without leaving their channel?

With ShotCaller's talk-back, party leaders who have Discord's Priority Speaker permission hold their Push to Talk (Priority) key to speak to the command channel. Their normal push-to-talk stays inside their party. The talk-back guide shows the setup.

Should the guild leader be the shotcaller?

Only if they're the best caller you have. Organizing a guild and calling fights are different skills. Many strong guilds have the guild leader handle recruitment and planning while a dedicated shotcaller runs the fights.

Start calling

Shotcalling gets easier with repetition. Prepare the parties and channels, keep calls short and timed, trust your party leaders and review your fights. When your group outgrows a single voice channel, set up the ShotCaller Discord bot so every party hears your calls live, and use the 7-day free trial on your next raid night. New to the term? Read what a shotcaller is.