The Daily Quest : raid

I hate second guessing myself

matticus — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 00:33:11 GMT

The Carnage strike team raided on Tuesday. This run wasn't as smooth. Unfortunately, we couldn't shut out the first five bosses in SSC and we did not have enough time for a Leo kill. I just need to assuage myself.

So here's the situation.

We killed Fathomlord and two Defender tokens drop (Pants for Priests, Warriors, and Druids). Most of the other Priests had theirs. One of the Healing Priests took it, and then the option fell on me since I had the next highest amount of DKP among the three classes.

If I were to take it, it would render my Star-Soul Breeches obsolete from Solarian. I would have wasted past DKP. Obviously the Breeches of the Avatar would have been an upgrade but it would have been a slight upgrade.

If I pass, then the option would pass onto one of our main feral tanks. I know he would exercise his option and take it as they would upgrade his pants and make our raids marginally easier.

One of the hardest things to do in this game is to pass on loot when it comes to your turn. All of us players are human. Humans are inherently greedy. Passing on those pants, from a logical stand point, would be the right thing to do. But there's that inner demon inside me that screams "I WANT IT AND I WANT IT NOW" (the Id even). Then I internally punched it in the face and said pass. If I took it, I would've been a hypocrite. At least now I'm practicing what I preach.

Who knows when it's going to drop again? Knowing my luck, never. I'm not going to spend points on it until all the other Warriors, Priests, and Druids have theirs.

Karazhan and Zul'Aman - A Fixed Mistake?

Indelible — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 00:22:04 GMT

When Karazhan was first introduced at the start of TBC, WoW fans and fan sites immediatly began questioning Blizzards approach in implementing this instance as a tiered instance. Making up the first 1/3rd of the tier 4 instances, Karazhan was supposed to provide an easy step up to 25-man by allowing casual guilds access to tiered instances without having to worry about the logistical implications of 40-man. However, it didn't quite go so smoothly and despite Blizzard saying that they were intending to implement another 10-man instance, players began to question the decision.

Previously on World of Warcraft...

Back in the olden days when UBRS and LBRS were still used to gear up players for MC, it was cut and dry mechanics from a logistical stand point. 4 groups ran UBRS and LBRS to get gear and then those 4 groups merged to form one 40-man raid to attend to MC. When Blizzard implemented Zul'Gurub, it became even more cut and dry as the gear was better and it was specifically tuned to help in Molten Core so the majority of players only visited UBRS for their BWL attunement quest. Again, cut and dry means that 2 seperate groups could attend to ZG and then merge to form one 40-man group to take on MC. This made ZG not only a fun instance suitable for guilds that weren't in a position logistically to raid MC but also a viable and easy way of gearing up for MC and the fact that this raid dungeon wasn't tiered meant that nobody felt compelled to pay it a visit if they didn't want to - it was considered a complimentary instance with bonuses but not an all important one. Everyone loved it and everyone thanked Blizzard for such an instance and when 10-mans and 25-mans were announced for TBC, initially people began to rejoice at the lower logistical requirements and at the casual nature of the 10-mans. The complications came when Kara was placed in the tier 4 league...

Now, The Conclusion...

So what we had was raid numbers that fit with the maps. UBRS = 10-man x2 - ZG = 20-man x2 - MC = 40-man and so on and so forth. Now however we seem to be at a wierd place in World of Warcraft logistics. Granted, the logistical requirements of end game raiding have gone down, thus making it easier to create a raid group but at the same time, things have become a little more complex.

Karazhan is a 10-man dungeon designed as an entry level instance to train basic coordination and introduce newer players to raiding without subjecting them to hardcore situations. It's a relatively easy instance that provides average challenges on later bosses. It was designed as a ZG for level 70 (sort of) and whilst that is all well and good, a clear mistake was made with the instance - it was tiered. Players had to visit it to attain pieces of the tier 4 set and thus, greater importance was placed on it than ZG. Now, this immediatly seperates it from ZG and either the player base were mistaken and it was never intended to be a ZG for 70 or Blizzard got something else wrong. Even if Kara was not intended to take the place as the ZG of 70 (as the addition of ZA would suggest) and more the place of the UBRS and LBRS of 70, there is still an issue that a lot of players are concerned about and that is in the logistical area of the game.

Every instance past Karazhan (excluding Zul'Aman) requires 25 players. This is two and a half kara teams. Therefore, you either run 3 kara teams and have 5 players that are cycled in depending on their performance, you run 5 kara teams and have two 25-man teams running or you don't run karazhan and gear your raid group up in heroic dungeons. The latter is a little ridiculous as you need kara to attain pieces of the tier 4 set. The 5 kara teams idea is a logistical nightmare, as 40 mans were. The only actual option is to run kara with 3 groups in order to gear up enough players to see 25-man and as such, you always have 5 players left out. This is ok if you want benches that take raid spots based on who is and who is not available for certain runs but if you are intending on have a closed guild that only has 25 players that run as a closed group, you still have a logisitcal nightmare.

In short, it is harder to step from kara to 25-mans than it was to step from UBRS/ZG to 40-mans and the hardcore raids are penalised by what is a lengthy reset timer (7 days) which, in my opinion, should be lowered.

The Late Addition

Zul'Aman would suggest that Blizzard did not intend Kara to be the ZG of 70 and as such, presents a few concepts that could work out for the better. For a start, the casual guilds who do not want to run 25-mans now have a form of progression to make from kara to ZA and as such, have something to keep them occupied until WotLK comes out. Another is that the gear in ZA is none-tiered whihc means it can be used as a complimentary instance like heroics to gear up for G25-mans without feeling compelled to pay it a visit, like you are with Kara.

A Solution?

There is no solution to this issue. Blizzard have said they intend to stick with this format and Naxxaramas is being retuned as a 25-man dungeon for the first tier of WotLK and they have no plans to change this.

What about 25-mans then? Surely they could change the logisitcs so that 25-mans became 20-mans or 30-man and this would make the complexities of progress from the 10-man entry level dungeons up to the full on end game dungeons far easier on the numbers and far more cut and dry... like the old system?

Maximize Your Raid’s Potential with Special Teams

matticus — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 00:02:55 GMT

WOW! What a way to end Thanksgiving Weekend (Canadian remember). I managed the catch the Cowboys vs Bills game on TSN. I have a whole newfound respect for the sport. I'm amazed at all the plays by both teams. Five interceptions? I figure that's a lot. That's the best game of football I've seen since Remember the Titans. A wiseass would then remark "Well what football games have you seen since Remember the Titans?". To which I would respond "None!". But the literally down-to-the-wire win by Dallas is an attitude that should be adopted by everyone. Two seconds can be all it takes to from a humiliating wipe to a resounding boss kill (along with special teams play which we'll get to in a moment).

Today's piece is about organizing your raid. You've got your 25 members ready to go. You're excited for Gruul's because it's the first time you've ever done a 25 man. You're pumped and and the adrenaline rush hits you as you take down the first Ogre showing him whose the man: You. Then you come up against the High King and his goons and now you're left gaping in awe because you're not sure how to set up your groups, right? Face it. With the many different races and classes available, there are multiple auras and passive racials to take into account.

Enter Special Teams

Your raid consists of five separate parties. Special teams are important in Hockey and other sports. You want the Power Play units to generate and capitalize on scoring chances. You want your Penalty Killers to fend off the opposing team out numbered. I'm sure Football has numerous cases of special teams but I don't know the names of them yet (That's my goal for the end of the year). How you set up your parties in your raid can make the difference between a 1% wipe and a Guild first down.

What follows is a unit-by-unit break down of a hypothetical raid. This will be your standard, generic, default, 1st unit raid set up against trash and some bosses which assumes the following:

You're using four tanks (Two Druids and Two Warriors)
7 healers (3 Paladins, 3 Priests, a Resto. Shaman)
14 DPS (3 mages, 3 warlocks, 2 hunters, 2 rogues, 1 warrior, 1 enhancement shaman, and 2 shadow priests)

Unit 1: Tanking Unit

This is the group your Main Tank (Henceforth known as MT) is in. What you are concerned here with isn't damage dealing, nor mana regenerating, or the like. The main objective of this unit is to survive as best as possible which means loading up with Stamina, Armor, and whatever else the MT needs to do to stay alive.

Warrior (Prot)
Druid (Feral Tank)
Paladin (For Devotion Aura)
Warlock (Imp Health Increase)

Seems simple enough, right? Your MT here is bolstered by Devo. Aura (for the little armor it provides), the second warrior that has Commanding Shout (for temporary health increase), the Warlock's Imp (health increase), and the Druid's Leader of the Pack (What they hey, this bear's tanking and should benefit from all this stuff too, plus he adds extra crit percent).

Unit 2: Secondary Tanking Unit

This is your second Tanking unit. It'll mainly be deployed against trash pulls of 3+ or against certain bosses that have multiple parts (Fathom-Lord, High King are good examples).

Paladin
Druid (Feral)
Paladin (Holy)
Warlock (Imp Buff)
Hunter (Trueshot Aura)

At first glance, this unit seems like a mish-mash of left overs combined together (which it is). It's the same principle as above except this unit has one feral druid tanking. The Imp buff provided by the warlock is a staple, and the Hunter's TSA here is a waste but is still a benefit for the druid. Two Paladins means two different auras (Retribution Aura and Devo. Aura). In a nutshell, this is a mishmash of left over classes combined together. As you read on about the final three units, you'll find out why.

Unit 3: Healing and Mana Regeneration Unit

Shaman (Restoration)
Priest (Shadow)
Priest (Holy)
Priest (Holy)
Priest (Holy)

This unit is your next important group to set up. You want to maximize the return on mana to your healers so they can sustain the rest of the raid. With that objective in mind, we task the Restoration Shaman here (His spell crit racial is a plus along with mana spring AND mana tide on emergency). We'll use one of our Shadow Priests here for the mana and health returns from VE/VT. The rest of the group is rounded out with 3 Holy Priests. Note that we still have a Paladin kicking around. I would throw him in this group, but Paladins hardly ever run out of gas anyway so he doesn't need the mana regeneration.

Unit 4: Close Quarters Combat Unit

Enhancement Shaman (Windfury is a no brainer)
Warrior (Hybrid, capable of tanking and dishing out punishment)
Rogue
Rogue (Kind of a given)
Hunter (TSA 2 unless there's another buff I forgot)

This unit contains the Melee DPS of the group. The Enhancement shaman will rocket this unit's DPS sky high with Windfury alone. In addition to WF, the Shaman should drop Strength of Earth and Healing Stream totems. Your Warrior is the last tank available in the event there's an extra trash mob running around. At the very least, he's a good OH $#%@ tank who can slap on a sword and a shield and taunt. Two rogues are in here, enough said. Our second Hunter is in here as well. I don't know a lot about Hunters but I think the norm is BM hunters now? I'm not quite sure since I've been noticing more Hunter pets in raids.

Unit 5: Caster Sustained Siege Unit

Priest (Shadow)
Mage
Mage
Mage
Warlock

This is your nuking group. The extra Shadow Priest again is for the VE/VT combination to fuel the firepower of the Mage and the Warlocks. Extra mana return helps to further extend the length of time that your casters can use. Shadow Vulnerability from the Shadow Priest helps the Warlock add a bit more extra punch.

I know this hypothetical raid group did not cover all possible classes or races (Sorry Horde players, I don't know what kind of benefits your racials get). Obviously moonkin druids get no love at all (Carnage does not utilize any). There's multiple ways to establish your Special Teams and they will consist of a variety of players and skill sets. You as the Raid leader needs to decide what is best overall for your raid Group. It's a never ending game of balancing the pros and cons of races and classes with one another. Today's piece was just a minor example of how to pull it off. Different bosses will yield different looking Special Teams. Bosses like Hydross will scatter your Paladins in different groups for Frost Resistance aura. Sometimes there is a particularly hard 5 pull that has all of your warriors and druids tanking and you'll need to substitute players from your Close Quarters Unit with your Secondary Tanking Unit. Just remember to always use your discretion. Your Guild and raid makeup will obviously be far different then the one used in my Guild. Use this guide as just that: a guide.

Matticus just finished completely redesigning and overhauling his blog. He's also eating nothing but turkey sandwiches for lunch for the rest of the week. Read more over at http://www.worldofmatticus.com.

Setting your raid schedule

matticus — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 02:49:56 GMT

I'm going to pass on the message from Kirk and Kestrel and try to set an example for everyone else: If you have a blog, use it to comment. It helps drive traffic in both directions.

Props to Lilsheshe, the GM of Sinful Intent, for tipping me for today's piece. In my past Guilds, we would set a day or four to raid. We would raid on those nights of the week until we accomplished our goal or until it was no longer practical to do so. I don't know about you, but raiding with no end in sight does seem a bit demoralizing until you get a boss down.

By the way, if you're looking for a casual raiding Guild, look up Sinful Intent. I believe they're short on healers (Priests, Druids, Resto Shamans, etc). They're also based in Ner'Zhul. Right now, they have two groups running Karazhan and are on the threshold of breaking into Gruul. They recently suffered a loss of several players impairing their ability to raid in the 25 mans. Bless her ability to hold the group together. That right there is a real Guild Leader. You'd be hard pressed to find other individuals like her and her leadership for not throwing in the towel.

My Guild raids from 6PM - 9 PM flat. It doesn't matter if we're one shotting bosses or if we're wiping like no tomorrow. It's three hours in duration no matter what we do. With that in mind, it's absolutely important for us to maximize our time in the raid instances. Some of you may set your raid times to end at 10 PM or 11 PM. But all too often, I've noticed on several pug raids that I've taken part in is that there are set start times, but end times are insanely flexible.

So consider setting a final, non-negotiable end time that everyone can look forward to. Why?

1) It gives you and your raiding team a set time to look forward to. Would you prefer a 9-5 job or a job where you would clock out whenever your boss says so? You might be wiping on trash or boss attempts, but at least you will know HOW MUCH LONGER it's going to go on for. If you stare at the clock and notice that you have 30 minutes of raiding left, all of a sudden, you realize that you can actually endure one more wipe if necessary.

2) Everybody bullshits to get out of a raid. My dog ate my mouse. My in laws are in town. What's more, people give these excuses in the middle of the raid because they don't want to raid anymore. They're looking for an easy way out. It's all human psychology. They come up with a BS excuse that may or may not be right with the intent of getting out of the raid so they can do something else. By setting an end time, your raid mates can plan their life around it.

For example, knowing my raid ended at 9 PM allowed me to delay construction of my 1500 word essay on criticizing Lysistrata until after the raid. It allowed me to calculate that I could watch the NHL season openers on Wednesday AND finish the paper which would have been due this morning.

Clearly this is a poor example of time management, but if I had not known when our raid would end, I would have missed out on watching the NHL season openers. That would have been deeply tragic.

Next, tailor your raid days that will maximize your attendance. If everyone can raid Tuesday, it should be a no brainer to schedule your raids on that day. That should be a straight forward concept.

Lastly, the amount of days spent raiding will also have a huge impact. Whether you're aware of it or not, raiding three days a week versus two days a week can be far more draining. You might think to yourself 'Oh its just an extra day', but to some people it's a lot more time for them to invest in. It's also dependent on your raid's ability to solve certain encounters. If you have no problem clearing to Shade of Aran, but have the toughest time cracking him below 80%, then chances are your raid isn't ready to take him down yet. There is no sense in scheduling another day of four hour consecutive 80% Aran wipes. It demoralizes your team, it adds unneeded expenses, and your team won't try hard at all because they know they can't do it yet. It's best to try the boss a few times, gauge the probability of success with your team, and then call it and come back when the week resets.

In the end, you know your raid team best. If they're willing to jump back in there and continue running into the brick wall, then do it. God knows I haven't had my share of attrition night, Guild first kills (Mag). Perseverance has helped a lot. For the past two weeks, we've been getting Leotheras down to phase 3 where he is below 10% every attempt before our Guild wipes. If that's the same with you, then maybe coming back another night would be the right answer. Having a refreshed raid is far more effective then a fatigued raid.

I've managed to derive a mathematical formula for raid performance. Basically, you assume that your Guild operates at peak efficiency when you go into an encounter. Guild performance is inversely proportional to time spent in encounter. In other words, as time goes on in the raid, skill decreases.

Know your Guild and what they're capable of doing. Push them to the limit, but don't tip them over the edge.

Matticus is pumped for the Canucks season opener which thankfully isn't on a raid day. You can read more over at http://www.worldofmatticus.com.

For cryin' out loud, BUFF ALREADY!

matticus — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 00:07:45 GMT

I need to de-stress myself. I just found out that this summary for a 27 page journal page article which had to be finished within 4 hours is actually due on Thursday. I had this one sitting on the backburner for a while, and it's a great raiding topic to touch on especially for us Priests.

The short version: If that group isn't your assigned buff group, buff them anyway.

The long version: Us raiders spent a lot of time buffing our groups. We do it so we can maximize the performance of everyone involved. Allow me to post an actual live transcript:

Raid leader: Everyone buffed? Good! Pulling in 3... 2.... 1...- Random mage: WAIT! I DON'T HAVE FORT OR SPIRIT! Raid leader: What the hell, why not? Random mage: Sorry I zoned in late because I was repairing at a time when I shouldn't have because you called for us to repair earlier and I didn't because I was hungry and I auto-followed someone in.

Now the raid stalls for a priest to give him Fortitude and Spirit among other things. Then the buffers need to replenish their mana. By the time this happens, Paladin Blessings will have worn off (At least, last patch it would have).

Priest 1: Hey, he's in your group, buff him. Priest 2: I don't have any candles. Besides, you were assigned to buff that player anyway. Matticus: *sighs and gives the poor mage a 30 minute Fortitude and Spirit*

So is there a point I'm trying to make here? Yes, as a matter of fact there is. Follow whatever buff assignments your leaders tell you to do when you're about to pull a boss, recovering from a wipe, or some other situation where everyone needs to be buffed again. If you have a few stragglers coming up behind you who didn't get the group buff, just throw thm a 30 minute buff anyway even if he's not in your assigned group. You can save a lot of time and minor heartache this way. Really, there are other significant things to argue about then whose responsibility it is to buff who. So save your efforts for that. What's the most it will cost you? It will set you back one Conjured Glacier Water. And you got that for free!

Now I'm not a mage, so I can't say this with absolute authority. But I enjoy the refreshing refreshments that these anklebiters throw out (assuming their Gnomish). To last a whole raid, I will need over one stack of water but never more than two. So Netherlord, I'm looking right at you. Hook me up with TWO stacks of water, NOT one otherwise I'll have to open trade with you again at an inconvenient time for some much needed juice.

This reminds me of something else: Asking for water openly or just opening trade with a random mage in the raid. I am personally in favour of the latter approach as it makes it really convenient for a mage to just drag and drop water into the trade slots. Asking for water openly is like asking for a volunteer to do something. You shouldn't bank on that. Push the issue and pop trade open with them. It also applies to buffs as well. Don't openly ask for "Fort please" in raid. Either you'll get overloaded with three fort buffs or none at all because the Priests assume someone else will do it. Whisper any Priest in the raid and ask them for a Fort.

Lastly, regarding rebuffing. Here's another transcript:

Random Hunter: Fort please! Random Priest: Looks like you already have it. Random Hunter: It's going to come off in five minutes. Random Priest: *sighs, buffs*

It's not a big deal, but again it saves on the minor stressors in WoW. If you have a buff which expires in another 10 minutes or even 15 minutes, right click it off. Chances are, the classes that can buff you will notice that it is off and reapply it again before you even ask. During every pull, as a healer, I constantly scan every member in the raid anyway so I know if there is a Fortitude or Spirit buff missing. But again, just click it off to save the questions.

I'm guilty of getting worked up over minor issues like this. I try to make raiding as easy on other people as much as possible by handing things out like that before they even realize it's gone. It helps the raid transition and move much more fluidly. It helps to reduce any friction among member.

Busy schedule, 1% wipes not fun

matticus — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 01:11:12 GMT

We took on Leo yesterday and got him down to about 12% on the first try. Five straight attempts saw Leo float around during phase 3 between 15% and 1%. The last one of the night had him at 1% with two of our priests doing everything they can to kill him. Sadly, Smite rendered ineffective. Must make a note to Blizzard to buff Smite.

I have a sinking feeling that we could've killed the boss had I gone to repair when the raid leader called for it. But the only that was broken was my enchanted, gemmed T5 shoulders! SURELY it would not have made a difference between 1% and death! ...Right? :O

I was drafted on Friday to compete in a CS: Source tournament at the VS Gaming Arena down here on Broadway. It was a great tournament and it's an excellent LAN center which boasts 18 of the fastest computers I've seen ever. They also have an X-Box 360 and a Wii for players who want to have some fun on the console (Halo 3 anyone?). They're one of the first LAN centers in Vancouver that I've heard of to have acquired a copy of Team Fortress 2. Anyway, after some last minute strategical work, we placed 3rd (Don't be amazed, only five teams showed up). If I wasn't play WoW and if I had a better computer, I would be doing this more often. Vancouver has a huge untapped LAN scene and hopefully VS Gaming will evolve into something big in the future.

My Raiding Interface

matticus — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 00:02:32 GMT

There has been a flurry of Raiding interface posts (courtesy of Kirk and Galadria). I'm going to show a screen shot of mine in a moment and label all the present addons in the screen. But first, I want to show you an addon that will blow your mind away as a healer and make you drool. Check out the following shots:

Now that I've caught your attention, you will most likely be asking yourself "OMG WTF IS THAT?". This, my friends, is a raid user interface called http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/7738/" Pitbull]. You can find a copy from Curse Gaming.

As you've seen from the shots above, it has a special feature which functions like bullet tracers. It graphically generates a line from you and your raidmates to the players they are healing so you can visually see on your screen who is healing who, with what heal, and when it hits in real time. Is that not mindblowingly awesome? It's like little lasers! Now healers can really pew pew. I believe the numbers you see on their names are the estimated heal amount.

But there is a problem.

With all the graphic generation, heal calculation, and so on and so forth, you will need a nuclear reactor to power your computer. As much as I want to run this, I know my computer would buckle especially in a raiding environment. So to you healers who have kickass machines, give this a shot. It's got a ton of more features as well, but that part caught my eye the most.

Here's the interface that I use. Make a note of the numbers that I photoshopped in there:

1: This is singlehandedly the most important addon you will ever use in your WoW Raiding career. You can skimp out on the heal addons, and the threat addons, and the pretty addons. But get Deadly Boss Mods. It highlights important knowledge and phases during your encounters. It is an absolute must.

2: X-Perl Unit Frames is my primary UI of choice when interacting with my party and my raid. It boasts a whole slew of options and is compatible with CT Raid, oRA2 and a few others. It's able to show me the target of my target's target (four windows). It can show all MT targets. It shows who's targeting you. It shows who's also assisting you. It also shows players with buffs that you can provide. It's an easy way to spot if a player is missing Fortitude or DS. It's also got a built in range finder, spell cooldown (you can see how long before you need to refresh renew), if the raid is down it shows who has soulstones or Shaman's self res active, and most importantly, your screen flashes if you pull aggro.

3: I use Bongos 2 to manage my extensive array of options and choices for my bars. If you look really carefully, you can even see the way I bind my keys. It allows me to flexibly move my map, my bars, my FPS and castbars all around. Note that I don't have my menu's or my bags on screen (I rely on Esc. and Shift + B for that respectively). I cannot emphasize the use of shortcut keys enough.

4: I like my map square so I can see more surface area. Thank you Squeenix. It doesn't really affect raiding at all, but alas.

5: I didn't like the way Blizzard organized my buffs, so I turned to CT_Buffmod. I do believe you need to download the core, however...

6: KLH Threatmeter (or KTM)]. It's a way to graphically view your own aggro and threat generation. Normally I disable the view but keep the transmission enabled to free up more real estate on the screen. A lot of my colleagues have suggested Omen due to its ability to track multiple aggro tables. Personally, it isn't a factor for me because all I want to do is transmit my own threat. I spend more time viewing health bars then I do threat levels.

7: Finally the last one I use is Natur EnemyCastBar so that I can see at a glance what is being cast by my target. It's an excellent tactical addon to download to help you prepare for any incoming spells or attacks. Allows you to deliver an appropriate and timely response.

There ya go! That's how my setup is at currently and it's served me well. It delivers a lot of information that I need so I can calculate my next move.

Matticus forgot to turn off autojoin for Alterac Valley while healing for Gruul and wiped the raid. You can read more over at http://www.worldofmatticus.com

Calling the Wipe

matticus — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 22:15:08 GMT

This is one of the toughest calls for any raid leader to make. But it's one of the best ways to optimize your raiding time and not waste any more effort or consumables trying to prolong a fight that's already lost. I know some of you may think "Never! No surrender!" but really, it is a futile effort if your MT dies or over 50% of your healers are dead, or some other crap hits the fan. I want to give an example of a wipe procedure since not many young Guilds have such a concept in mind. Many inexperienced Guilds will continue to engage to the bitter end.

Wipe Preparation

What, you thought Warlocks were only good for Healthstones and DPS? No, they have Soulstones which when applied to any player allows them to resurrect themselves whenever they like. If that player falls in combat when the entire raid is still alive, it's best to blow it. When you are engaging raid bosses, operate as if you are not going to wipe unless it is painfully obvious. So again, blow the stone. If you're the last man standing, don't blow the stone.

Wipe Calling

I sympathize with the Raid Leader when it's called. It's not a very decision to make and a false call will involve a waste of over hundreds of gold in repair bills and consumables. The correct call will save time and allow for more attempts. Typically, your Raid Leader will announce a wipe. When that happens, the following should happen: Ranged DPS would run to a location where they can be easily picked up (Such as the Gate when engaging Gruul). Try to get a Priest, Shaman, or Paladin in that same position and have a Paladin use their Divine Intervention to render that player immune. Shaman's have the ability to self resurrect themselves, but that is an ability which should be used if the other two options are available. If you want to be really crafty, get a Druid outside in a clear position from where he can Battle Res a healer. Generally that is not recommended since it can be put to better use during combat. But if you're in a raid instance and mobs start to respawn in ten minutes, you may not have the time or energy to reclear it all. Make sure that healer doesn't accept it until after the encounter is reset. The moment wipe protection is utilized, make sure it's called in vent so that players know. If there isn't one, the last thing to do is the walk of shame back from the graveyard.

So to summarize in the following order:

Soulstone
DI
Shammy Res
Fancy Druid maneuver

Post Wipe and Analysis

Your Stoned healer picks himself up and starts ressing other healers OR Your DI'd player clicks off the buff (debuff?) and starts ressing other healers OR Your Shaman activates his self res and starts ressing other healers OR your Battle Res'd Healer wakes up and starts ressing other healers.

See a pattern here? Let your tanks and melee run back since most of the time you won't be able to pick them up without drawing Aggro. If you can get a player, call it out in vent so they don't zone in and be forced to run the gauntlet.

As players are being ressed, buffed, and positioned for the next attempt, go over the encounter and figure out what happened. What is a badly timed misheal? A crit from a mage which pulled aggro? The tank not eat his Wheaties that morning? Figure out what the problem is and remedy it, or else it will happen again. Raid Leaders should not be afraid to reassign healers to different assignments. Some healers are better tailored for certain jobs then others. Maybe you want your veteran healers to focus more a bit on the clothies during some phase where they take damage (Mage tank in Gruul's lair). Sometimes you need to mix and match. But more importantly, analyze what your mistakes were so that they don't happen again. If the fault was the result of a player, don't call it out in raid but allow them to speak up and take responsibility. It shows signs of maturity and trust. If no one admits fault but you know who it is, send them a light whisper letting them know that they forgot an assignment or made a mistake because some players just aren't aware that did anything wrong.

Sometimes, I wish Blizzard would implement an Instant Replay function with speed up and slow down functions so certain phases can be analyzed.

Raid Member Selection, a Rant

matticus — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 02:20:00 GMT

BC raids mostly consist of 25 players. Gone our the days when one or two guys could sit in MC afk and accumulate DKP by wanding and not doing anything (Alterac Valley is a shadow of what it was like then). Most Guilds either have under 25 players and struggle to fill raid spots, or have over 30 players and are placed in an unfortunate situation where they need to choose.

Hockey teams are no different. The NHL season is starting up soon and training camps are underway. The point of the camps is to determine who gets to suit up for the big leagues and who gets to sit in the press box watching or play in the minor leagues. Players who are too lazy on the backcheck get released from camp.

As a Guild, you want to bring the very best possible players to your raid. How do you determine that? You could base it on gear, skill, talent, personality, and so on. But consider another point: consistency.

Players should be fighting over raid spots. I’ve seen lack of dedication and consistency mean the difference between a guild invite and a guild boot. What, I ask, is the point of being in a raiding guild if you don’t raid? Bloggers blog, runners run, beer drinkers drink, analysts analyze. You obviously applied for a raiding Guild with one purpose in mind: to raid. Would you want these kinds of players in your 25 man raid?

The Druid tank who decides to show up 30 minutes late and hold up the whole raid to finish up a non-heroic Merchanar.

The Priest who decides not to raid one day for some stupid reason and comes back the next day whining why he’s not allowed to raid.

The Paladin who refuses to raid with a “weak” Kara team because they can’t clear it in 3 hours.

The Rogue who is frequently AFK for a ready check because he’s too busy occupied watching Naruto reruns.

Seriously, who the hell are you people and why are you here? A better question is what do they all have in common? What one trait do they all share? They want better loot without having to work for it.

Thankfully, life does not operate that way otherwise Communism would have succeeded a long time ago. You need to earn the right to play. You have to compete to win. I’m very glad Blizzard trimmed the raid instances from 40 to 25 because it truly separated the men from the boys.

There are 25 raid spots that are open. Most guilds have 30 active players. Do the math. Some players will get the call up, some players will get benched. It astounds me how people expect a free ride. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch as my dad always told me. WoW is no different. I find it hilarious when players don’t want to do something when a Guild leader asks them to do it, and then begin to whine about not getting a raid spot. Well no kidding, moron. The boss doesn’t have a reason to. You were asked to be more responsible and you turned it down. You are aware of when the raid time is yet you make a choice not to show up. Do not be surprised if the next time you show up, you don’t get the invite. If you can’t handle something so minor why in Zeus’ name should you be given more responsibility that you clearly are unable to handle?

Performance and attendance is the key here, people. If you want to raid, the first step is to show up. You can’t clear Kara with 3 players (yet). I don’t care how geared you are. I don’t care how good you think you are. I don’t care how much you pay me. If you don’t show up once, you don’t get another chance. No I’m not referring to excuses with medical emergencies or academic reasons or what have you. Those are understandable. Sometimes life deals you a pair of Aces and you get beat with a Flush. These things happen. The important part is that you’re not afraid to buy in and ante up. It’s one of my biggest pet peeves.

Alain Vignault is the coach of the Vancouver Canucks. Last year he turned a struggling Canucks team at Christmas break into a Playoff contender. Why? Because he would start players that would perform and bring their A game. His philosophy is this: It doesn’t matter what name is on the back of your sweater, if you are there, you will see significant ice time. During games, he gave more ice time to players who he thought was performing. You see, he doesn’t play favourites. He plays whoever shows up.

Jeff Cowan, a 4th line grinder, got to play on the top line because he was contributed energy and his presence was felt.

Coach Vignault also won the Jack Adams award. That means he was widely considered as the Coach of the Year.

The next time you start your raid invite, pause for a sec and think to yourself if the names you want on your list are really the ones you want. If you’re a person whose sitting there scratching your head wondering why your Guild pulled someone outside into the raid of inviting you, it’s because you’ve proven to him that would not be useful in anyway.

Healing a Raid: A Priestly Perspective

matticus — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 22:20:18 GMT

To end off the week, I will help all of you budding raiding priests who have never joined any groups larger then 10 (AV an exception). Yeah, you the one who has never once set foot inside MC or BWL or Naxx or Zul’Gurub or any of those old fun instances that we used to do before. By the end of this column, my hope is that you will be able to excel and surpass the expectations of your raid leader.

I wont touch on the spells specifically and what they can do. You leveled from 1 to 70 on your own. If you don’t know the capabilities of the tools at your disposal, then you have no business playing a Priest. But I will guide you on when you should use them.

Your raid makeup could consist of a variety of different healer classes. More often then not, you as a priest would make up several of those slots. Let’s now for the sake of argument pretend that you’ve been assigned the dreaded task of maintaining te health of your raid as opposed to healing a single person. It’s such a daunting task healing 4 other players in a party. Now you’re responsible for 24 others. What do I do?

Let’s check out the toolkit. There’s a reason why Blizzard gave us to much stuff to work with.

Renew: Cast this on targets that have taken hits but are not expected to take damage again. Examples would include mages, hunters, or other ranged DPS (maybe rogues). It’s a relatively cheap heal over time spell where you don’t need to tie up your 1.5s cast time or our 2.5s cast time. But don’t forget to stack these up with Renews from other priests. Our main tank sometimes has up to Renews on him at any given time.

Flash Heal: I tend to downrank my heals a little bit here for two reasons: 1) Reduces mana cost 2) Less overhealing done. I’ll use a flash heal between ranks 4 – 6 depending on the situation at hand. In some cases, I will use a max rank flash heal just because tanks are taking so much damage that my heals are only maintaining his health instead of restoring it up. Used mainly on players taking damage frequently such as the main tank or in an emergency.

Greater Heal: The big brother of Flash heal. This one I keep max ranked. You don’t have to. Its entirely up to you and your playing style. Drop these ones on your main tank or your assigned healing target.

PW: Shield: There appears to be much controversy over the usage of this spell. Philosophically, I disagree with many other priests on how and when it should be used. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Your duty is to the raid. If spamming shields every 40 seconds is the only way to do it, then you spam it and you like it. Usually though, I will cast it if a tank jumps from 100% to 40% (or any number below 10000 health). These bosses hit like a freight train on afterburners. I’ve seen players get taken out with an 8k crit followed up by an 11k special attack. I am one paranoid priest.

Prayer of Healing: Don’t spam flash heal 5 times to heal your party. It’s a huge waste of time. Just drop a Prayer repeatedly until everyone’s back to full. 3 seconds on a prayer versus 7.5 seconds on flash heals. Usually, once the boss executes some sort of AoE damage which nails your group, you’ll want to cast this.

Prayer of Mending: Use in case of an emergency. The amount of damage it heals is a little more then the amount of damage received. But I am referring to a normal hit not a special attack at will knock off a good portion of the tanks health.

In case of emergency, break open glass

You’ll remember the other day I wrote about what Priests should do in the event they have pulled aggro. Here’s the other side of the equation: What to do if the tank has less than 10% health and in imminent danger where he could die and wipe the raid. Follow this process to ensure maximum possible survival.

1 – PW: Shild (Prevent further damage) 2 – Prayer of Mending (Mitigate further damage done) 3 – Renew (Constant heals) 4 – Flash Heal (Fastest way to heal. We’re concerned about time now) 5 - Repeat step 4 until he’s back up. Use shield’s again if your assignment’s health is questionable.

Other Healers

Usually, if there’s other healers on the tank, you’ll have no idea what kind of spell they’re casting. But here, time is of the essence. Drop flash after flash until he’s back in the game. Let other healers drop the big heals. Either way, get your assignment topped off. If you and your other heal happen to both drop big heals simultaneously, there’s a 3 second window where the tank could get critical’d and spontaneously die. You don’t want this to happen so be on the safe side and spam flash.

Exercises

So here, I took random screenshots through the past few raids with our raiders at various stages of decay. More often then not, you’ll encounter such similar situations. Take a look at them and think to yourself what you would do, who you would heal first, and why.

Here is shot number one. Light damage has only been applied to the raid. Matticus (Mallet) is in the uber healing group. Lang is down 25% (our main tank) and Bdon (an off tank) has also sustained hits as well as the rest of the melee DPS in his group. Although you can't tell, I have Lang selected. But it looks like Cheever also has him selected too. So my play here is to deselect and drop a prayer of healing to top off the group. Then I'd probably take care of the rest of the DPS.

This shot was taken too late. But look at the assist window on the right. This shows us who is healing Lang: All five of us. If that happens, just move off of him and take care of someone else, like Bdon.

Ah, our first casualties of the night. Going to save my own skin and heal myself. There's no real danger at this point so long as the tanks are still alive. We lost a healer (with 6 left) and an off tank (with 3 left). No big loss, no sense of panicking.

Again, cursor on Lang shows that I'm not the only one on him. Renew, Prayer, move on. Let the Priest and the Paladin on him take over with flashes and greater heals. Dropped renews on everybody on group 5 and group 3 that was wounded. Keep the shield cooldown on standby in case Lang gets spiked again.

Now we've got some real pressure applied to the raid here. A lot of damage has been done and the raid is in various health states. I included my target of target of target window along with my Nature Enemy Cast Bar (NECB). Seeing how my group is wounded, I light off a Prayer of Healing. Then I noticed Mirri was also in the process of casting and is closer to getting the heal off. I cancel my prayer, and default to healing the tanks starting with Lang and Bdon. Once they're up, I ease off and begin my renew cycle on DPS.

Now we've got some serious problems. We're down a healer and the tanks are taking serious damage (465 doesn't seem like much). When you get to a case where you have multiple tanks with relatively low health, pick one and stick to it until they're topped. I chose Blori and called out in vent "I'm staying on Blori". This cues the other healers and frees them up knowing they don't have to worry about him as much. For example, now Mirri can heal Bdon or Dager can heal Lang without needing to rotate flashing Blori. Communication is important. Let the rest of the healers know who you're healing.

This one was a big giant leap of faith. One of our healers is offline and one of the tanks is under enormous stress. Notice that my target is Maeve. Also take a note that there is only one other healer besides me who has Maeve targeted. Bdon is a hit away from going under. But seeing as the assist window only shows two healers out of six who have Maeve targeted, it stands to reason that the other 4 must most likely be on Bdon. There is no other player in the raid who is prioritized higher then he is. Although there is no way to say for sure (unless I clicked him to determine the assists), I do believe it's a logical conclusion to make.

In any case, you may or may not encounter such situations like that in the future. Just remember, if one person dies, it's not the end of the raid even if it is the main tank. Hopefully, your off tanks are quick enough to jump in and snap up the loose mob. The important thing is to develop your own style of healing and work with the others in your group. Don't panic. Keep your cool and prioritize your targets. Good luck!

Matticus just finished farming up 5000 gold for his epic mount on his Shaman so that he can farm faster and more efficiently. Read more at http://www.worldofmatticus.com.

The Oh $#@& Reaction

matticus — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 02:02:34 GMT

Very sorry about the lack of updates. I've been overwhelmed with school. It's only the first week and I've already been hit with several assignments! But it's okay, because everything is fine now. I've gotten my time back from the hecticness of school. After perusing my daily dosage of blogs from my fellow Priests, here's [http://egotisticalpriest.omen-guild.net one that I want to share.

Ego provides an excellent overview of what to do when you pull a lot of mobs towards you without needing to. Her first rule in a nutshell? Don't move, don't worry, and most importantly don't panic. In a party, getting aggro at worst will wipe the entire group. In a raid, getting aggro at worst will wipe the entire raid, rack up hundreds of gold in repair bills, and http://www.worldofmatticus.com/2007/0.../optimize-your-raiding-time/ lose precious time in an instance]. I want to provide you a list of actions that I execute whenever I gain aggro. If you see my spec, you'll notice that I have zero points in Silent Resolve. That means it is quite likely and possible that I will pull aggro. Usually, I don't but lets say for the sake of argument that I have. Most of these have already been repeated in Ego's post, so I'll touch on it briefly and add one more final step that many players overlook.

If you've taken any kind of logic and reasoning course or if you're into computer programming, it's kind of the same way.

If things go to hell, do this else just heal the main tank.

I know that's probably wrong, but I hope you get the idea. Here's my sequence:

1st Option is Fade: Lowers your aggro temporarily. Problem? It's on a 30 second cooldown. So if the mobs are out for healer blood, you have to live at least that long.

2nd Option is PW: Shield: Damage prevention. While you do this, run towards the tank. Don't make them run after you.

3rd Option is Desperate Prayer: Granted, not all of you Priests have access to such a glorious spell. It is the ultimate Oh $#@& button. Take a few blows, then slam it to shoot yourself back to full. If you don't have the ability to cast this spell, then...

4th Option is Prayer of Mending: It's similar to a low cost PW: Shield. On your next hit, you gain this much health. Most of the time, mobs will hit you for under 1000. This spell guarantees that you will survive that one extra hit.

5th Option is to Die: This is slightly different in context but is still worth mentioning. This happened to us the other day. It wasn't our best raid night, but we were in Voidreaver's Room clearing out trash. One of our casters got caught facing the wrong way and got punted into another group. Instead of running towards the raid group and bringing extra mobs, he did the right thing and ran towards them and sacrificed himself to preserve the raid knowing that we were still under pressure from the initial mobs. In a raid environment, your first duty is to your raid. I cannot emphasize or stress this enough. There is only one main tank. There maybe 2 or 3 additional off tanks depending on the encounter, but there is only one main tank. Typically, there are 7 - 9 healers. If you go down it is not the end of the world. Let the others pick up the slack. So again, I will remind you. If you accidentally pull aggro from another group when your raid is not prepared, unequip your weapons and your wand and sacrifice yourself.

My panic buttons on my keyboard: PW: Shield: 1 Fade: 2 Desperate Prayer: 3 Prayer of Mending: Ctrl+1

I usually never bother with binding heal. I almost never use it because I never find the right situation for it. Or I just forget and drop two flash heals instead. I suppose I should start using that more often. But it just feels so... weird.

I'll have another large update tonight after the raid. I have lots of screens and it's all sorted. Now I just need to upload them. Time for us to do some potential Priest theorycrafting and analysis.

In addition to the Daily Quest, Matt runs a WoW blog where you can find more related articles on Priests, Shamans, Guild Management techniques and more. Check it out at http://www.worldofmatticus.com/.

Pug Etiquette?

matticus — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 21:14:40 GMT

After Gruul's last night, I popped onto a vent server of a guild that I am friendly with. I just joined the channel as they were beginning to engage Prince. I noticed some regulars and some new people who I assumed were pickups. He did a fairly decent job of explaining the fight, telling the MT where to stand, telling which healer should heal who, and all that. Then out of no where, someone else starts speaking up and re-explaining the encounter in a much greater detail (and he was wrong in some aspects) in a manner that was disrespectful.

Here's my beef: If you're the guest of a raid, that is, you're not a regular member, you keep your mouth shut unless it's something super important to say that the raid leader overlooked. Even then, there's a certain amount of tact required. For one thing, you don't just blatantly interrupt the raid leader as they're speaking. There's a certain amount of etiquette required. Even though WoW is largely considered a social game, a lot of players don't have an ounce of social skills.

There's a lot of things you don't do in life.
You don't date your best friend's sister
You don't tell racist jokes at your black girlfriend's house (saw the movie on tv yesterday, it was pretty funny)
You don't go over to someone's house and tell them how to do things without being asked to
and you sure as hell don't overrule the raid leader

If you're going to go join a pug raid with another guild, it's important to remember that you are just a guest. If you leave a bad impression like the aforementioned fellow did, don't expect to get an invite back if they ever need an extra body. It's wrong, rude, and impolite. It took me an insane amount of effort to tell that player to stuff it. But of course, I wasn't in the raid nor was I in the guild and I did not have the authority to do it. After speaking to a few of the players afterwards, they agreed with me in thinking that that player was a pompous zealous idiot. While his intentions were good, he mistakenly assumed that my friends were all idiots who were starting Prince for the first time when most of the players in the raid already have half the gear that he drops. It almost sounds as if he's got some kind of superiority complex involved where he likes to tell players what to do when they don't need to hear it. Don't insult their intelligence. In addition to that, the extra crap he was spewing out was largely irrelevant or had already been covered. It was already 11 PM server time, and he was wasting precious raiding time.

My friends, when you have a chance to join a pickup group to raid Karazhan or Gruul's, mind what your manners. You are a guest of the group, nothing more. You can be replaced at any time if they feel like it.

There's a lot of things that you don't do, but I'm under pressure and can't think of anymore to add. Now, off I go for my last 13 hour shift. Eurgh :(.

Optimize Your Raid Time

matticus — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 10:20:47 GMT

Building off of Kirk's guide on forming a raiding group, I wanted to follow up with making the most out of your raid time. Face it. We waste a lot of time in raids farting around and just slacking off in general when we could be pulling mobs and downing bosses. My Guild has a time window of three hours from first pull before we call it a night. Every precious second of raiding counts. Unless you're a super hardcore Guild who raids every day, chances are you don't have a lot of time on encounters. It seems the primary respawn timer is two hours. That's not a whole lot of time to work with.

The next time you attempt a raid boss, try this experiment. Start timing your raid and see how fast they can ready up before the next pull. This means from the time you wipe, to the time your entire raid team is alive with full health, full mana, and full buffs in front of the boss. Unless your Guild has the discipline of the Queen's Guards, you'll be amazed at the time it takes. I guarantee it.

Thankfully, there's many different ways for you to trim the fat and get as many attempts in as physically possible.

Release and Run Back

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out when your raid wipes. But if you're new to raiding, here's a few tell tale signs:

Your Main Tank dies
Over 50% of your healers are down
Over 20% of your raid is down within the first minute of the pull
A class with a specific role goes down (ie, mage tanking mage on the High King Maulgar encounter)

Now don't get me wrong. It is perfectly possible to recover from sloppy mistakes in raid. Obviously if the boss is down to 5% or less, keep plowing away. But back to my original point, let's try not to prolong the fight. Don't run around trying to escape him. Run to him, die, release, and run back. But there is an exception to this...

Use Protection

And I'm not referring to a Trojan. I mean use wipe protection. It will save you a lot of time. Warlocks have soul stones. Paladins can Divine Intervention. Shamans have the ability to self resurrect themselves. If you can time it properly, have a Druid battle res a priest or someone and make sure he doesn't accept it until after the encounter resets. Meanwhile, raid members should move to a safe location away from the boss if the raid leader calls a wipe that is within range of a person who can resurrect. The only players who should not be withdrawing would be the main tank who ought to try and stay alive as long as possible to allow the rest of the melee to get some distance. Once you get that done...

Res Ressers First

I should not have to say it. But I still see it happen so it must bear repeating. A lot of beginning players aren't aware of this, but always resurrect other players who can res first. Instead of ressing a mage or a warlock, pick up a paladin or a shaman. Just imagine it as a snowballing effect. Try using a res notifier. I believe CT Raid has one built in as does X Perl.

Now you can res two other players together instead of one other. Then the four of you can res another four and so on and so forth. Ideally, it would just be tanks and other melee running back in through the front door. Typically, they'll have a lot of ground to cover between the entrance and where your encounter is. Which leads to...

Summon the Runners

Remember back before we had summoning stones? We relied on Warlocks to summon the whole raid into the door steps of MC or BWL. Sometimes it seems as if people forget they have this ability. If there is a Warlock alive, have him start summoning players the moment they zone in. There are instances the trek back to the boss is agonizingly long. You'll shave precious seconds or even minutes which could be used towards engaging the boss.

Buffing

There's a neat utility called XRS (X Raid Status, I believe) which comes with X Perl Unit Frames.What it does is scans every player and lists what buffs are missing for them, so players don't have to keep asking for buffs repeatedly. The raid leader presses the button, and it spits out the list.

The onus is then on everyone else to buff the rest of the raid. The only buff that you absolutely need on trash is Power Word: Fortitude. Otherwise, you can just whisper a player to toss a 30 minute one instead of repeatedly asking for it in raid. This is one of my pet peeves in raiding is people asking for buffs in the middle of trash. Whatever it is, it can wait. It's just trash. You shouldn't even need Salv right away if your tanks and healers are able. Hopefully, you'll be given a 5 minute one in between trash pulls as the raid is steaming along. The last thing players need is a break in momentum. If you're a buffer and you notice someone is missing a buff, just take the time and give them a 30 minute even if you're not the person assigned to buff that group. Just do it, and it saves time, frustration, and heartache.

Preparation

Illidan has taunted us by continually saying that we are not prepared. Shut him up by proving him wrong. Mages should start conjuring water and food before everyone even gets to the instance. Bandages should be made before the raid. Most importantly, repair, repair, repair. I cannot count the number of times I've had the urge to strangle guildmates for failing to repair. You know there is a raid. There should be no excuse for you not to be repaired 100% on first pull.

AFK'ers

Alterac Valley isn't the only instance to suffer this problem. Raids will have problems of players going AFK. Even I am guilty of this. But I've learned and gotten better. I try to time my AFK's on trash pulls knowing that my presence is not essential. Bad times to go AFK are the pulls just before the boss, pulling the boss, or during the boss encounter. Do things that you would normally do before going on a flight to London. Make sure you go to the bathroom, and make sure you grab a bite to eat. I'll admit I don't have the luxury of eating at my computer on some nights. My family's quite traditional and is required to eat at the dinner table sometimes during raids. I go there, I wolf it down, I come back during trash pulls not during Tidewalker or Lurker.

Hopefully, these tips will help streamline your raid some more so you can get in an additional 2 or 3 shots at the boss.