Healing Tools: Grid

The duty of a DPS is rather simple all things considered. Granted, there are some not-so-obvious hallmarks of a good DPS but the level of complexity that I went into in the blog entry linked above shows where the truly great players can really shine. Beyond these intricacies, all a DPS really has to do is repeat a spell rotation or skill priority to maximize damage done.

Now compare that baseline role to that of a healer and a very different schema comes to light. The baseline job of a healer is to keep the raid alive. Granted, there are many instances where folks not standing in fire or ignoring fight mechanics can make that expectation impossible to meet, but assuming your raid group is performing well, there is somewhat of a hidden level to "keeping the raid alive".

The classic game of whack-a-mole has evolved within Blizzard's encounter design over the years from Molten Core where often healers would either be assigned to heal their group or a tank to nowadays where pretty much everybody has to contribute to raid and tank healing to ensure success.

The Hidden Layer

So what is it that separates the true healers from the..... combat medics? I mean aside from using the venom from a single alien creature to take care of pretty much every virus, infection and tick infestation the far side of the universe can offer....

Damage comes in, and heals go out, we all know this. The truly skilled healers know when damage is about to come in and react accordingly with shield, HoTs or priming* their heals.

Much unlike DPS, healing is not an all or none game. When you want DPS on a target you want as much as possible as fast as possible. When you want healing you want it fast... but you don't want too much. Extra heals not only mean wasted mana, but they could potentially cause a death in the raid if a healer is focusing on the wrong target to heal at the wrong time.

I Give You... Grid!

Grid is by no means a new mod. Personally, I've been using it since back during The Burning Crusade when it was the mod for raid healing. Nowadays folks have Healbot and Vuhdo that come loaded with tons of extra features all rolled into one. For this raider, however, a combination of Grid and Clique are all you need.

It comes with all the normal bells and whistles that healers need: fading out of range targets, pre-configured cleansing indicators, aggro indicators, class coloring... and with the addition of Clique healing spells can be bound to your mouse clicks for ease of casting in combat.

Why Grid?

What I like about grid over other raid frame windows is the custom indicator setup. Each part of the raid frame has an indicator that can be loaded up with all kinds of buff and debuff indicators, which can be prioritized in the event two indicators are active at the same time.

Pair this up with the ability to add a custom buff or debuff and all of a sudden a wide array of boss encounter information is being displayed right on your raid frame and you know, for instance, which 3 people in your grid window have been linked by Pact of the Darkfallen during the Blood Queen encounter.

In the example above I've set my Grid frame borders to display the three pact targets as a pink color. And whenever I see this during the encounter I know to start slinging chain heals on these three targets as they'll be running right up to each other, making my job much simpler.

Some other examples of excellent buffs/debuff monitoring in Icecrown Citadel are: "Frost Beacon" during Sindragosa, "Harvest Soul" during the Lich King and "Bone Spike" for heroic Lord Marrowgar (The Bone Spikes don't deal damage during the encounter on normal mode so it's not necessary to track them). In terms of buffs I've found it extremely helpful to add the buff "Essence of the Blood Queen" while I'm DPSing as it makes it much easier to identify raid members that can still be bitten during the fight.

Of course, there are other examples as these are just a few. When researching a new boss fight if you notice any debuffs that deal large amounts of damage to the target it may be a good idea to add an indicator to Grid to assist in healing the right target at the right time.

Configuration

"But Oobie," you say. "How do I set this up? The Grid menu is so confusing!"

Don't worry! I've taken care of everything...

First, open the Grid configuration window by clicking the minimap/Fubar/LDB button depending on which setup you use. Or if you're like me and prefer to keep all that crap off the screen the following command will open the menu:

/grid config

Once that's open scroll down and click on the Auras heading. You'll see a couple boxes where you can input a custom buff or debuff name. For this example, we'll add the Pact of the Darkfallen buff to the border of the health frame as depicted in the image earlier in this entry.

Type "Pact of the Darkfallen" into the debuff text box and hit enter.

Once this is done, expand the Auras heading and you should be able to find the new entry labeled Debuffs: Pact of the Darkfallen. Here you'll be able to set the color for the debuff and it's priority. Don't be concerned if the color is white regardless of what you choose with the color picker. The proper color will be reflected in the raid window when the indicator becomes active.


Once you've selected a color look up near the top of the config menu and expand the Frame heading and select Border just beneath it. Then scroll through the list of buffs and debuffs and place a check mark next to our new Pact of the Darkfallen debuff. NOTE: All of the items under the Frame heading behave similarly. I've found the best results using borders and corner indicators for debuff monitoring.


That's it! The new indicator is now set up, and this will work for all custom auras. Just make sure you add new items properly as buffs or debuffs as Blizzard tends to use both in their encounter design.

*"Priming" a heal is the practice of casting a healing spell before damage has actually been done to a target. This is done typically when damage is known to be incoming on that target so that the heal lands just after the damage comes in. Often when this is done a player will monitor the healing spell cast time and cancel it if it will be wasted.

Raiding 101: ZOMG Phat Lewt!

So you're fighting a new boss in ICC and wipe after wipe after wipe things seem to be getting nowhere. Then, from out of nowhere the fight comes together in a beautiful crescendo of fire avoidance, positioning and target priority... and with a thud the boss' grill hits the floor.

Congratulations, now it's time to loot! But does the boss drop anything you want? If he drops something you can use, will you need any other gear pieces to fit it into your set? Are there other players who will also be interested in this hypothetical item?

If you don't know the answers to these questions when the loot windows pop up, you probably should.

Best in Slot (BiS)

There is a lot of talk amongst the WoW community of items that are called best in slot. While it is typically beneficial for players to find a list of their BiS gear, what's BiS for one player may not be for another. This can be true even when comparing players of an identical class and spec in some situations.

True, there is a ceiling where items can be considered BiS for the entirety of a particular class and spec, but when you're talking about an individual person you have to be a little more flexible in your definition of BiS.

For the purposes of this blog entry, what we'll consider BiS is defined by the following parameters:

• Class and Spec
• Statistic Hard and Soft Caps
  
• Guild Progressions Level

Class, spec and stat caps should be pretty self explanatory if you're at a raiding level already. Casters take caster gear, plate wearers strength gear, tanks defense and avoidance gear, etc.

Balancing stat caps properly while inflating other non-cappable stats to the maximum achievable should be the goal in assembling a BiS list. For those with multiple stats to cap it can be even more important to plan ahead to avoid situations where you pick up an spectacular piece of gear only to lug it around in your bags until you can make up the lost defense or expertise.

Here is a list of cappable stats and their caps:

• Defense: 540
• Expertise softcap: 26
• Spellcasting Hit: 17% (14% with boomkin/sp debuff)
  
• Melee 1h/shield, 2h & yellow dmg Hit: 8%
• Haste rating softcap: 50%
  

Because the stats you need to cap these statistics are spread out over your gear set it's important to develop a full list of your BiS gear with properly balanced stat caps so that when an item drops you instantly know if it will be an upgrade for you over the long term.

This is important to the overall health of the raid because of how loot is dispersed to the raid. For instance, if a spellcasting neck drops and a caster with loot priority in the guild decides it's an upgrade over what they currently have they may take it. But in the grand scheme of things if there is a better item out there for that person that drops the next raid week that first item is going to be turned into a shard or vendored instead of being put to use by another raider.

Guild Progression Level

This is the factor that makes cookie cutter BiS lists less than optimal for those who are not yet fully progressed through a raid zone, or guilds who only run 10 main instances (although the 10-man 25-man distinction will vanish come Cataclysm).

The research necessary may seem daunting at first... I know I don't want to sift through all those wowhead pages! However, the folks over at mmo-champion.com have this nifty page that will show you an overview of gear from all of ICC that's easily referenced.

To assist in the compilation of a BiS list I recommend a spreadsheet. You can use the Microsoft Office suite if you have it available, but for broke folks like myself there are free alternatives, the easiest of which to set up is google docs. If you'd prefer software for your computer over a spreadsheet embedded in the browser Open Office is a free office suite that's compatible with Microsoft Office.

Setting up... The List!

Set up columns for slot name, item type (this will help later in organizing items), item name, each of your class and spec specific stats and each color of gem. You can see my full example spreadsheet here.

Under the slot name column you'll need 16 row names: Head, Neck, Shoulders, Back, Chest, Wrist, Gloves, Waist, Legs, Feet, Ring, Ring2, Trinket, Trinket2, Main-Hand, Off-Hand.

just below the Off-Hand row, beneath each stat column heading set the box to add up the sum of all the rows above it. to do this, click in the box and type the following (assuming the first column is column D): =sum(D2:D17)

For each column adjust the letter of what you type to the column you're typing in, so for instance, type the following into the box beneath the item rows for column J: =sum(J2:J16)

Once that's all done you're ready to start importing items. When I did my BiS list I simply imported every item off the 10-man heroic list and 25-man normal list because those are the items I would potentially have access to at my guild's current progression level. Use the Item Type column to list what kind of item it is, that was you can simply move this item's boxes up and line them up with the appropriate row.
Trinkets can be a difficult prospect for someone in a guild not fully progressed through 25 man content because often community discussion focuses solely on the best available from 25 man content. Thumbing through threads in your class forum on elitistjerks.com can often shed some light on which trinkets are best for your situation.

Once you're all done and satisfied with your list you can be prepared for loot drops during a raid. With this information at hand you can identify whether a particular item is going to be very useful or simply a short term upgrade. This is especially true for classes with multiple caps to juggle like tanks as it can be helpful to hang onto a wide array of gear in case you need to make up for lost stats when you pick up an exceptional new upgrade that, as a side effect, drops you below the expertise, or worse yet... defense cap.

There's nothing wrong with taking an intermediary item if it's better than what you have, but for those pieces that are not in your BiS list consider passing to another player, especially one who is under geared. After all, items do more good for your raid as a whole on another player than they do collecting dust in your bank.

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.

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!