Clique: Not Just For Healers Anymore!

I occasionally like to showcase a mod on my blog that I feel is incredibly versatile and solves a serious problem for all the raiders out there like myself.

My last entry on this subject, PowerAuras: the Best AddOn You've Never Used!, showed off just a small portion of the robust warning system the mod PowerAuras brought to the table. Today, I'll be covering the finer points of the mod titled Clique.

Since I've been spending a bunch of time in the higher end 10 man encounters healing on my shaman I became intimately familiar with this life-saver of an AddOn. I hadn't actually healed full time in a raid since about halfway through the Burning Crusade expansion and Clique severely shortened the re-learning curve for me and, I feel, made me a better healer than I had been in the past relying on keypresses and raid member targeting.

But I LOVE My Keybindings!

I don't blame you. In fact, I wholeheartedly support you in mapping as much as possible to keybindings. Using a keybinding setup for spell casting is far superior to clicking. It increases reaction time, decreases the amount of miscast spells and allows you to focus more on what's happening around you and less on where the mouse pointer is.

However, when you're talking about raid frames and any interaction a player might have with those raid frames be it healing, buffing, decursing or ressurecting... you'll find yourself relying on raid frame mouse clicks one way or another.

This is where clique can help you out the most by not only freeing up keybindings for other spells that would otherwise be devoted to heals or buffs, but by eliminating the targeting step of raid window interaction. It does this by binding spells to mouse clicks instead of keyboard bindings. These mouse click bindings work with any unit frame unless otherwise specified and are independent of any keyboard bindings you may already have for the same spell.

The All-In-One Raid Window Assistant

You probably have, at the very least, a raid window mod if you ever have to mess with the raid windows.

Often pure DPS will have the window hidden or not run with a raid window mod to save on memory and CPU cycles, but most folks will need their raid windows out at one point or another for some reason and regardless of which baseline mod you go with Clique can probably help you perform certain tasks better.

The exception to this are mods like Vuhdo or HealBot, raid window mods that have built in Clique-like functionality that renders Clique itself redundant. The concept and configuration for this functionality between mods, however, is nearly identical.

Some folks also go with mods like Decursive that provide a secondary raid window specifically for purposes of cleansing and other non-healing raid utility like crowd control and buff management.

Keep in mind, though, that clique can bind any spell that is targetable to mouse clicks so all of these other things that redundant raid frame mods take care of can also be taken care of in Clique, streamlining your interface and saving screen real estate.

All of these things (and probably more) can be handled through Clique bindings:

• Healing
• Crowd control
• Cleansing
• Buffing
• Intercept
• Tricks/Misdirect
• Resurrection
• Divine Intervention
• Macros
  

There is also a custom macro system where you can assign a macro version of a spell without using up one of the limited macro slots provided by the default interface.


Configuration

Clique has a very simple configuration, albeit a very important one. It is extremlely simple to set up, but getting your click-binding priority straight shouldn't be neglected.

Once the mod is installed simply open your spell book in game. You'll see an extra tab which, when clicked, will open up the Clique configuration menu.

Take a moment to notice the dropdown on the top right side of the Clique configuration window. This dropdown controls the conditions of the keybindings. Anything placed in the "default" page will take precedence only when another condition isn't active and/or isn't bound to anything.

To bind a spell to a mouse clock simply browse your spellbook with the Clique config window open and click the spell you want to bind with the mouse click combo you want to use for that spell. For instance, to bind Healing wave to Shift+LeftClick hold shift and left click Healing wave and it will be added to the Clique window.

For example, in the default section of my Clique bindings I have Ancestral Spirit bound to right click. In the "helpful" section of my bindings I have right click bound to Lesser Healing Wave. This means that while I'm clicking a friendly unit frame, right clicking will cast Lesser Healing Wave on the unit. While out of combat, however, the Ancestral Spirit binding will take precedence and will be cast instead of Lesser Healing Wave on right clicks when not in combat.

The Right Frame at the Right Time

It's a good idea to give a little thought to which frames you want to have the Clique bindings work for.

For instance, when I first set up my clique I had completely neglected this part and while clicks were enabled in the player frame I found I was unable to change the difficulty of an instance as right clicks on my player frame were attempting to cast Ancestral Spirit.

That being said, even showing the right click menu can be remapped to another click-binding through Clique.

Raiding 101: Dragons!

They've been a one of the most revered and feared mythological creatures throughout time with their portraits etched in stone from every corner of the world. Sometimes benevolent, sometimes cruel tyrants, and more often than not found perched atop a mound of treasure any adventurer would covet... they are Dragons!

And in this blogger's opinion they should come hand-in-hand with boobies more often!

WoW is no stranger to these beautiful and powerful creatures, and throughout the game you'll find these dragons exhibit similar attack patterns to those found in classic pen and paper games like Dungeons and Dragons.

There are several static dragon attacks that can almost always be counted on. This is not a comprehensive list of all dragon abilities throughout all of WoW raiding, but will provide a baseline understanding of the types of attacks that all dragons share. As with any encounter, it's ultimately necessary to have a good grasp of the mechanics that are specific to the fight you're currently working on, but knowing what kind of generic mechanics this awesome creature type exhibits can make learning a new encounter that much easier.

Cleave

Most dragons will use a frontal cleave that will hit anyone in front of them in a fairly large arc. This is generally a quite powerful hit that only the tank should be taking.

Breath Weapon

All dragons have a frontal cone breath weapon. Many have different mechanics associated with them, but this is another attack that really should only be hitting the tank. Just like all cone mechanics the area of effect gets wider the farther away from the boss you are. If you find yourself in front of a dragon book it to the left or right as soon as possible to get out of the area of effect, noting that you'll have to run farther to find a safe spot the further away from the boss you are.

Tail Swipe

Most dragons, with Malygos being the exception, have a tail swipe attack. This attack is, in effect, a rear cleave with a knock back.

Take special care not to be standing behind the dragon and eat one of these attacks as often there are environmental mechanics to avoid and getting knocked back by a tail swipe can put you face to face with a clutch of dragon eggs or drop you in a bath of hot lava!

Fear

Fear is a classic dragon mechanic back from the Dungeons and Dragons days, and not all dragons in WoW have a fear mechanic. It is, however, something to be aware of. Dropping a tremor totem or using trinkets and class abilities to break fear can help long term survivability.

Generally when a dragon fears it fears the entire raid, so take advantage of fear breaking mechanics whenever possible on these fights.

Safe Spot

Now that nearly the entire encounter area around a dragon boss has been cordoned off by various attacks it's a good to mention where the best place to stand is.

As you can see in this picture of the Sindragosa fight in Icecrown Citadel, the cleave, breath weapon and tail swipe are marked in orange around the boss. These attacks create a safe spot on each flank of the boss. The best and easiest way to identify these areas mid fight is to simply stand between the dragon's fore and hind legs.

You may also notice there are no orange areas directly overlapping the dragon. This creates a safe zone directly beneath the dragon that can be used to pass through to the other flank if environmental or grouping issues call for it. Don't be afraid to take advantage of this, just be aware of any other issues that may cause the boss to move like phase transitions or tank swapping and/or repositioning.

When in doubt, stay between the two legs on the dragon's flank.

The Legend of the Flying Dutchman

It's been a long time since my guild had taken a serious crack at One Light in the Darkness, the last Ulduar achievement many of us needed for Glory of the Ulduar Raider and the Rusted Proto-Drake that goes along with it. Last night one of the officers, Mhoe, approached me wondering if I would be up for a few attempts. Being that it was an off night and I had no plans I happily accepted.

Upon joining the raid and plowing headlong into all the trash bosses standing between us and Yogg-Saron Mhoe mentioned that "There was a Flying Dutchman sighting, good things are going to happen."

I had no idea what he was talking about, and as I joined the ventrillo channel late I assumed I had just missed a part of the conversation and went about the night of clearing. As circumstance would have it, I was not the only one who was as yet unaware of The Flying Dutchman; And once it was mentioned a second time the inevitable questions arose from the raid and Mhoe imparted the tale of the shadow guild member, the Flying Dutchman... Hephaestus.

Hephaestus has supposedly been in Prime for longer than any other and yet, not even the founders know who he is. His logins are rare and silent, coming online for only a short time once in a great while and then disappearing back from whence he came once again. However, these logins are greeted as a boon! Much like carrying around a four leaf clover or rabbit's foot, the guild believed that a Hephaestus showing was a good omen.

Said Mhoe, "When there's a Hephaestus sighting, good things happen."

Superstition aside, this was something of beauty. My guild had it's very own legend!

The night went on fairly normally clearing a handful of lesser hard modes that made the kills faster and having a few frustrating wipes on 1 Light Yogg due to some bad RNG... although we did have several attempts that made it look as though the achievement was definitely within our grasp; And rightly so, as we were terribly over geared for the goal at hand. But the fact that a group was put together and made it to Yogg was, in and of itself a slight miracle so I wasn't about to karmically expect anything more...

Low and behold, on the last pull of the night, pushing 20 minutes past the normal raid end time, we break into phase 3 with only one trip to the brain room. With nine and a half minutes left on the enrage timer and all raid members up we easily slew the old God of Death, netting a good majority of the raid group their achievement... and a rusted Proto-Drake.

"In Hephaestus we trust!" exclaimed Mhoe. I think next time I see him online I'll hit Zul'Gurub once more... I've always wanted a raptor mount on my Alliance shaman!

Blue Buttons: Making Your Interface look "Cool"

I recently posted a new "mod" that some folks on wowinterface.com are thoroughly enjoying. I hesitate to call it a mod, however, because there's no code, no AddOn to enable or disable, and the amount it interacts with the rest of the interface is minimal.

What is it? Blue Buttons.

Less of a mod and more of a skin, Blue Buttons simply provides a host of textures that skin the blizzard interface buttons to be a different color. I've long detested the "angsty red", as OarisJM posted, and liked the idea of changing the skin to be something different. I'd sifted through a handful of UI compilations at one point in search of a skin for the entire interface, but what I found were either incomplete panel skins or button skins that looked out of place against the rest of the UI textures.

So I set out with a simple goal: skin the in game interface buttons to be blue, like those found on the login screen. The solution is rather simple, and can be accomplished easily with just a few free tools. My version of the blue buttons is posted at the link above, ready for download, but what if you want the buttons to be green? or orange for cataclysm?

The following tutorial will show you how.

First, you'll need to download a few Programs:

• Custom UI ToolKit: This is Blizzard's own custom UI toolkit, although it's not so much a toolkit as a set of resource files. Once you download it, run the installer and tell it to install the interface art. You can have it install the interface data as well if you like, but those files are not necessary for this tutorial.
• BLP2PNG: Blizzard uses the file extension blp for it's textures, but this isn't an easily edited format, so to convert the files into something we'll be able to edit we need this command line software. It come in a zip file and doesn't need to be installed. Simply extract the folder to some place you can get to easily like your desktop. NOTE: If you are working on a system whose desktop does not reside on the hard drive(for instance if you are on a computer that is part of a domain and uses roaming profiles) you'll want to place this in a location on the hard drive like the root of your C: or system drive.
  
• Paint Shop Pro free trial: This is the software we'll use to change the color of the buttons. It is a paid program but offers a free 30 day trial. I personally own my copy and have found many miscellaneous uses for it over the years. If you have another photo editing suite that has a color changer tool you may be able to use it instead, just make sure it will change a range of color in a region and not only one contiguous shade.
  

Once you have all those things go to your WoW directory and you should find an interface art folder that the Custom UI Toolkit left for you.

Inside that folder open the BUTTONS folder and copy the file named UI-Panel-Button-Up.blp to the folder with the BLPConverter in it.

Next, right click a blank space in the same folder and create a new text file named whatever you like (for this one I use the file name 'topng' since this batch file will convert textures from the blp format to the editable png format). Open the text file and type in the following:

BLPCONVERTER -m UI-Panel-Button-Up.blp

Then save the file as a batch file. To do so, go to File -> Save As. In the save dialog box change the file type to all files and put the extension .bat at the end of the file name.

Once you've got the batch file in your BLP Converter folder double click it and it will briefly flash a command line window as it performs the conversion. Once the command line window disappears you should see a new file in your BLP Converter folder. This is the file we can now edit in Paint Shop Pro.

Next, open the new PNG file in Paint Shop Pro and use the scroll wheel to zoom in on it. Choose the color changer tool from the toolbox (if you can't find a color changer tool it shares a button with the bucket flood fill tool; mousover the bucket icon and click the arrow beside it to get a drop down and select the color changer tool).

Now, with the color changer tool selected you can click on the red background to change the color of the button. Make sure to set your foreground color on the upper right corner of the screen. The RGB values I use for the Blue Buttons are: red 38, green 66, blue 143. If you accidentally color the wrong section the key combination ctrl+z is a quick way to undo your last change. As a side note when editing the remaining textures later on, I came across a texture or two that didn't cooperate with the color changer tool as well. For these textures you may have to experiment with coloring different regions of the image to get the desired effect.

Feel free to play around with different colors but keep in mind that any text placed over the button will come up yellow, so if you use the wrong color you may not be able to see what the button actually says! Once you're satisfied with how your new button looks save the file.

The next step is to make another batch file just like the one above with one exception: change the .blp extension to .png so your new batch file should look like this:

BLPCONVERTER -m UI-Panel-Button-Up.png

I name this one 'toblp'. Regardless of what you name your batch file, make sure to get the old blp file out of the folder before you convert (to prevent corruption of the file) by either deleting it or, preferably, moving it to another folder for backup purposes.

That's it!

Now that you've successfully skinned the button you can add it to your interface. To do so, copy it it your WoW directory under Interface\Buttons. If the folder is not there go ahead and create it. What happens in game is that WoW loads and extracts all these textures from it's MPQ files to a hidden directory in Interface\Buttons. You can't see these directories, but while the game is loaded they are effectively there. By creating a skinned button with the same name and placing it in the same directory our skinned button takes precedence over the default textures. This works for any texture you can find in the interface art folder created by the Custom UI Toolkit.

OK, so I lied. That's not completely 'it'. There are actually a ton of files you would need to skin like above to get the desired effect on all the UI buttons. Conveniently enough, all of the buttons that you'd need to skin are located in the same Buttons folder in interface art:

CancelButton-Down.blp
CancelButton-Highlight.blp
CancelButton-Up.blp
UI-DialogBox-Button-Down.blp
UI-DialogBox-Button-Highlight.blp
UI-DialogBox-Button-Up.blp
UI-MinusButton-Down.blp
UI-MinusButton-Up.blp
UI-Panel-BiggerButton-Down.blp
UI-Panel-BiggerButton-Up.blp
UI-Panel-Button-Down.blp
UI-Panel-Button-Highlight.blp
UI-Panel-Button-Up.blp
UI-Panel-CollapseButton-Down.blp
UI-Panel-CollapseButton-Up.blp
UI-Panel-ExpandButton-Down.blp
UI-Panel-ExpandButton-Up.blp
UI-Panel-HideButton-Down.blp
UI-Panel-HideButton-Up.blp
UI-Panel-MinimizeButton-Down.blp
UI-Panel-MinimizeButton-Highlight.blp
UI-Panel-MinimizeButton-Up.blp
UI-Panel-QuestHideButton.blp
UI-Panel-SmallerButton-Down.blp
UI-Panel-SmallerButton-Up.blp
UI-PlusButton-Down.blp
UI-PlusButton-Hilight.blp
UI-PlusButton-Up.blp
UI-ScrollBar-ScrollDownButton-Highlight.blp
UI-ScrollBar-ScrollUpButton-Highlight.blp

Additionally, you'll need to edit your batch files (right click the batch file icon -> Edit) in order to convert the entirety of the files for skinning. You can add as many files as you want for skinning with the same batch file, simply tack another name on to the end of the line with a space in between each file name. For ease of conversion I'm including the full batch files i use below for your copy and pasting pleasure. Happy skinning!

toblp.bat

BLPCONVERTER -m CancelButton-Down.png CancelButton-Highlight.png CancelButton-Up.png UI-DialogBox-Button-Down.png UI-DialogBox-Button-Highlight.png UI-DialogBox-Button-Up.png UI-MinusButton-Down.png UI-MinusButton-Up.png UI-Panel-BiggerButton-Down.png UI-Panel-BiggerButton-Up.png UI-Panel-Button-Down.png UI-Panel-Button-Highlight.png UI-Panel-Button-Up.png UI-Panel-CollapseButton-Down.png UI-Panel-CollapseButton-Up.png UI-Panel-ExpandButton-Down.png UI-Panel-ExpandButton-Up.png UI-Panel-HideButton-Down.png UI-Panel-HideButton-Up.png UI-Panel-MinimizeButton-Down.png UI-Panel-MinimizeButton-Highlight.png UI-Panel-MinimizeButton-Up.png UI-Panel-QuestHideButton.png UI-Panel-SmallerButton-Down.png UI-Panel-SmallerButton-Up.png UI-PlusButton-Down.png UI-PlusButton-Hilight.png UI-PlusButton-Up.png UI-ScrollBar-ScrollDownButton-Highlight.png UI-ScrollBar-ScrollUpButton-Highlight.png

topng.bat

BLPCONVERTER -m CancelButton-Down.blp CancelButton-Highlight.blp CancelButton-Up.blp UI-DialogBox-Button-Down.blp UI-DialogBox-Button-Highlight.blp UI-DialogBox-Button-Up.blp UI-MinusButton-Down.blp UI-MinusButton-Up.blp UI-Panel-BiggerButton-Down.blp UI-Panel-BiggerButton-Up.blp UI-Panel-Button-Down.blp UI-Panel-Button-Highlight.blp UI-Panel-Button-Up.blp UI-Panel-CollapseButton-Down.blp UI-Panel-CollapseButton-Up.blp UI-Panel-ExpandButton-Down.blp UI-Panel-ExpandButton-Up.blp UI-Panel-HideButton-Down.blp UI-Panel-HideButton-Up.blp UI-Panel-MinimizeButton-Down.blp UI-Panel-MinimizeButton-Highlight.blp UI-Panel-MinimizeButton-Up.blp UI-Panel-QuestHideButton.blp UI-Panel-SmallerButton-Down.blp UI-Panel-SmallerButton-Up.blp UI-PlusButton-Down.blp UI-PlusButton-Hilight.blp UI-PlusButton-Up.blp UI-ScrollBar-ScrollDownButton-Highlight.blp UI-ScrollBar-ScrollUpButton-Highlight.blp

Raiding 101: The Duty of a DPS

"Duty...

A starship captain's life is filled with solemn duty. I have commanded men in battle. I have negotiated peace treaties between implacable enemies. I have represented the Federation in first contact with twenty-seven alien species. But none of this compares to my solemn duty as... Best man."

But enough from Captain Picard. The duty of a DPS is quite unlike the duty of a starship captain. While Jean-Luc here was tasked with diplomatic exploration and peaceful contact with alien life forms... a DPS just has to beat the shit out of anything with a red health bar over their head.

That's right, I went there.

So the life of a DPS may seem simple, but I promise you that it's not. Take away all the baseline expectations of a DPS like: learning your spell rotation, optimizing your spec and gemming and enchanting properly; What you're left with are all the combat decisions that could mean life or death for you and possibly the raid group. While much of the time these decisions are based around survival that's not always the case.

Rule #1: Don't Die

This is really the only hard and fast rule of a DPS. There are times when damage taken is out of your control and beyond a certain point you need to be healed, but a vast majority of the time understanding the mechanics of an encounter and properly avoiding damage can mean a world of difference in your DPS output: You can't DPS if you're dead. Period.

There are plenty of types of attacks, many of which are detailed in my previous post, Don't Stand in the Fire. It is imperative that these types of attacks are avoided at all costs. There is a reasonable expectation of attention from the healers but in return DPS must avoid as much collateral damage as possible to minimize the stress on healing and allow them to focus on more important targets.

Keep in mind that running away isn't always the only way of getting away from dangerous enemy attacks. Many classes and professions have ways of traversing distances quickly to escape areas where damaging attacks are destroying anyone in the area so keep those abilities in mind. Some examples are the Mage Blink, Engineer's Rocket Boots and Hunter's Disengage. Additionally there are tricks to avoid damage altogether like Ice Block or Divine Shield.

The final measure of survival is the most important...

Threat Management

Do not pull threat from the tank.

It's easy to pass the buck and claim the tank is shitty, but that excuse won't prevent a DPS from being dead, especially one wearing cloth armor. There are tanks whose skill level are not quite at par, but in the vast majority of cases I feel like there is a fundamental misunderstanding between the tank and the DPS. That misunderstanding relates to the fact that all tanks... are melee.

There are few things more annoying to a tank than to tag a mob and watch as a flurry of spells pulls aggro from the lone shot fired and the tank now has to taunt the mob back or chase it down. All tanks have some method of tagging a creature from a distance, but that doesn't solid aggro make. Since all tanks are melee it isn't until they come toe to toe with something that solid threat can be established and it's imperative that DPS allows the two to connect in melee before engaging.

There are all manner of mods that help to monitor threat and a DPSer should have on installed and visible at all times. If you find it's hard to remember to check it than Omen would likely be the best choice, as you can configure it to play a customizable audio warning and/or shake and flash the screen to warn you of high threat. SimpleThreatMeter and TidyThreat are also great threat meters, but lack threat warnings so require a bit more attention. Where they excel is at saving screen space as they provide a single bar representing your threat relative to the tank instead of an expansive overview of the entire group.

Do not pull threat from the tank. They say the best method of embedding something in memory is to repeat it three times. Do not pull threat from the tank. =)

DPS Target Priority

Efficiency is the key word here. The best of the best DPS teams will work in a coordinated fashion to burn down targets as efficiently as possible. That usually means following a kill order. It's important that a DPS knows what kill order they should follow, and keep in mind that it may not always be the same, or even the same as another DPSer's kill order.

With the new raid instance open for business it's even more important to know, at the very least, which targets need to be killed first and work in tandem with your other DPSers to focus fire targets down. This is especially true when targets can regenerate health or get heals from other enemies. Focus Firing targets down will also lead to less strain from multiple damage sources on the healers and allow them more breathing room to perhaps throw DPS some more incidental healing.

Teamwork

Always remember that, especially in 25 man raids, it's not the individual that accomplishes the goal, it's the team. When other DPSers are encumbered be having to move out of fire or being crowd controlled by the enemy it lifts your spirits a bit to get that much more of an edge on the damage meters.

When these incidents lower one person's DPS it lowers the DPS of the group and stretches out the encounter closer to the enrage timer. There's not always anything that can be done to get that person back in the game, but on occasions where help can be rendered it's important to do so in order to get your team back at it's peak operating capacity.

The most obvious form of help would be from decursing effects that impede the ability to DPS like silence and slowing effects. One of the increasingly more common instances is when a raid member is disabled by a killable aspect of the encounter. During the Northrend Beasts encounter Gormok throws Snobold Vassal's at players that sit on their back and kick players, interrupting spell casting. Also, in the new Lord Marrowgar fight he periodically impales players on bone spikes, immobilizing them. It is important that DPS switch to these targets as soon as they can be DPSed and free trapped players. If immobilization is allowed to stack up at all the raid force will be less and less effective until the entire group is disabled, and slow breaking of these effects can drag out an encounter with DPS unable to contribute to the fight.

Most of these effects are important enough to get down immediately that it's advisable to use a macro for targeting them. You could either set up a separate macro that would need to be clicked independently or make a macro for one of your main rotation spells and you'll automatically target them, alerting you to their presence. Whichever way you choose you can enter these lines into a macro to automatically target the above mentioned mobs:

/target Snobold Vassal
/target Bone Spike

Enter as many of these lines for priority targets as you like. If any two or more targets could be available at the same time in the same encounter make sure you put the highest priority target as the last targeting line in the macro. The downside of this is that dead mobs will still be targeted, so if you are using this as a macro for one of your main rotation spells (which I recommend) you'll end up spamming your spell on a corpse. To prevent this add the following line to your macro after all the targeting lines, but before /cast spell name:

/targetlasttarget [dead]

Support

The proper handling of encounter dynamics and damage enhancing buffs and debuffs can ramp up raid DPS by up to 30-40% of the bosses health if the proper optimization isn't already taken into account.

Some weeks ago my group had been working on the Northrend Beasts encounter in Trial of the Grand Crusader, and through one issue or another we slowly lost and replaced many members of the raid group throughout the night. As we did so we slowly became further and further behind on Gormok to the point where the worms were coming out the gates with Gormok still at 40%, following an early showing of clean transitions just an hour or two prior.

What was unfortunately neglected in the confusion of the night was that those key players who lost power, were called away on an emergency or otherwise hadn't been able to attend brought key buffs and debuffs that were, up till then, taken for granted. By restacking and reshuffling duties we pushed ourselves right back into a clean transition.

With that in mind, keep an eye on all the necessary debuffs that you, yourself can provide and consider using PowerAuras to monitor them. Be aware of when a key member leaves the raid an whether or not you need to fill in for the buffs or debuffs he was providing. Keep Curse of Elements up when an Unholy Death Knight is unavailable, or Expose Armor up when a Warrior is not in attendance, etc. If you're not sure who might cover the same buffs/debuffs as you, there is a handy raid composition tool at MMO-Champion. You can mouse over the effects you provide and it will class color abilities other classes provide with identical effect and highlight the particular spec, if applicable, on the other side of the page.

Where totems are concerned, try to lay them in a central location to those who need the buffs. Placing melee totems near the boss or melee target, and the caster totems near the healers and ranged for instance.

Crowd Control

I'm sure there are many DPS who have a special place in hell for being delegated to crowd control duty, but if it's important enough to be assigned then it needs to be a priority. Preventing a healer from topping off a burn target or a caster or other deadly enemy from demolishing the raid en masse are just as important as the damage meters. Allowing those mobs to kill players damages the effort of the raid as a whole and in some extremely nasty cases can result in a wipe.

Moreover, it's important to take initiative and use crowd control during encounters where players can become mind controlled. Having one of your own heal the enemy, slaughter another member of the raid or even pop Heroism or Bloodlust for the boss can seriously impact the performance of the raid as a whole. Make sure you get these people under control with sheep, traps, fear, stuns or whatever it takes. When another player is mind controled take them out of the fight if you have it within your power to do so.

Just don't kill them. That doesn't count!

Raiding 101: Research and Development

It's commonly known in the real world that knowledge is power and it is no different in the virtual world.

If you remember back to my first Raiding 101 guide last month I went over a group of standardized attacks that bosses use across the board. These are excellent things to know because they help you to classify a wide array of boss encounters in similar ways and that can help you to make a quick, informed decision during an encounter you may not be familiar with.

This, however, is only a small piece of the pie.

Back in my Everquest days boss encounters were simple. In fact the most dynamic encounters really only amounted to breaking line of site or dealing with waves of adds spawning, and the vast majority of raid encounters were simple tank and spank fights. During my brief stint in Everquest 2 I found, disappointingly, that this narrow vision of a boss fight had carried over to many of the raid encounters there as well.

WoW does a tremendous job with it's raid encounters making each one different from the last. There are practically no boss fights that are simply tank and spank fights. Nearly every encounter has some elements that prevent brute force tactics from being effective. Simply put: you have to do more than just mindlessly outgun your opponent!

The attack response strategies outlined in the aforementioned blog entry Raiding 101: Don't stand in the Fire! are only one piece of the puzzle. While they do help immensely in dealing with a wide array of attack forms they don't cover any number of endless boss mechanics presented in WoW raid encounters. To fill in the gaps what we need to do is research boss encounters.

Game resources are another area where WoW far exceeds other MMOs, and this is in no small part due to the immense community of 10.5 million subscribers. This allows for tremendous diversity in community projects, and with diversity comes strength.

But don't adopt just one source for boss strategies - bookmark them all! While the following are all great resources for boss strategies, often one site will go into more detail than another about a certain type of attack or a particular site's strategy might be less suited to your guild's play style than another. For this reason it's good to get as much exposure from as many different sources as possible to boost your understanding of an encounter.

Boss Killers
http://www.bosskillers.com/

Boss killers is not particularly my favorite as I've read several strategies where tactics seemed counter-intuitive or sloppy. However, this site does host a vast number of boss strategies that are rated for accuracy by the community.

This is a good place to go and find strategies that have worked for a wide array of guilds. The strategies may have to be tweaked slightly to suit the play style of your group, but the strategies found here can be a good starting point for working on a new encounter.

One of the major strengths to this site is in detailed diagrams. This site does the best job in my opinion of showing detailed images that help to understand safe zones, positioning and spacing.


TankSpot
http://www.tankspot.com/

Tankspot is by far my favorite resource for boss fights. On this site a host of authors come together and post videos along with voiceover tutorials for various boss fights. You could always search YouTube for a boss kill video, but most are simply showcases of a particular guild being successful at the encounter and don't include explanations of what is happening in the fight.



TankSpot excels in this in that the videos all include full explanations of the tactics used to complete a boss encounter. This is exceptionally invaluable as often simply reading about an encounter isn't enough. You may read about every ability a boss has but still not be clear on exactly how the fight happens. Having a visual reference can significantly boost your understanding of the boss fight.

StratFu
http://www.stratfu.com/

StratFu is a site similar to TankSpot, in that it acts as a community portal for authors to come together and post their own strategic video tutorials of boss encounters. This site, at times, takes things above and beyond the level of TankSpot with video effects that highlight certain tactics much like the video I posted in my blog entry Power Auras, The Best AddOn You've Never Used!

WoWHead
http://www.wowhead.com/

Wait a minute, this isn't a strategy site... it's a database site! What gives?

Well, yes, this site isn't dedicated to raid strategies and guides but that doesn't mean there isn't a wealth of information to be had here!

Where this site can be helpful is in the comments for various bosses and achievements. Hard mode encounters, especially when they're new to the game, can be hard to find information about. Often video tutorials won't be posted yet on StratFu or TankSpot, but if you search for the achievement associated with a certain hard mode encounter you can generally find some pointers and raid composition examples lurking in the comment boxes.

WoWWiki
http://www.wowwiki.com/Portal:Main

This is perhaps not the best site for overarching boss fight strategies, however it does generally have very excellent and specific descriptions of boss abilities.

Not sure the area of effect for a PBAoE?
Want to know how a boss decided on a target for a raid-breaking ability?
Curious what kind of debuff that DoT that keeps killing you is and whether or not it can be cleansed?

All these questions and more can usually be found within the pages of WoWWiki.


All of the links presented here now have a permanent residence on the side of this blog.

Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting! ... For Charity!

A little while back I posted this video in my recap of the WoW patch 3.2.2. It showcases a new vanity pet called the Panderan Monk and aside from being totally friggin' awesome is now being used to support the Make a Wish foundation!



Blizzard has released what they're calling a new 'feature': the pet store.

In the pet store you can buy vanity pets that can be redeemed in game. Vanity pets don't really affect the gameplay so they're strictly a matter of personal preference. But seriously... who can resist that Panderan??

The pet store account fortunately, isn't tied to a specific WoW account so you can buy these pets and gift them to someone you know who plays the game, and half the price of every Panderan Monk bought before the new year will be donated to the Make a Wish Foundation!

So if you're a WoW player, buy one! If you're not... buy one for a WoW player you know! And yes, I myself am proud to be a supporter of the foundation!