Who should decide what boss strategies to use in PUGs?

Imagine if you will, a raid group in WoW, composed mostly of players from the same guild, that has been working on the same raid for weeks. A boss has been giving them trouble, a roadblock in their progression. One week they are short on players, so they go to the Looking for Group tool and pull a couple of players. One player from there who has seen several groups says, “One group I ran with did it this way.” And the strategy works. Is the advice from this stranger welcomed? Probably, and if they hadn’t said anything, the whole group would have been stuck the whole night. Sometimes the advice of a stranger is a great thing to have in an established group.

But often times, a group of friends have their ways. Strategies that aren’t ideal but work for them. Maybe the boss is supposed to be in this corner, but week after week they leave him in the middle, and week after week they manage to defeat him. And then players who have joined for the first time, who know the common strategy, see them “doing it wrong,” and speak up. This person knows the group will have an easier time if they do it like everyone else. This group knows how to do it this way. This can lead to one player being miserable, or having to relearn everything. It can lead to them dropping, and the raid having to find another person all over again.

Does this mean the player picked up from LFG should have to say nothing? Try, and if not heard just go with it? Or everyone should have an equal voice?

It is easy to pass this off as the majority rule. But PUG means Pick Up Group, and often times, raids are composed of smaller groups needing each other. One group that is half of a raid lists in LFG, and another group joins that is also half. The listed group will have a player with the Raid Leader authority and permissions, but each group feels like they are helping the other. They couldn’t raid without this group joining them. And each group will have a way they handle the bosses.

Who listens to whom? Is the side that listed the group always the one in charge? How have you managed these kinds of interactions when raiding?