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: Interface Setup

Disclaimer: This is not an article on making your interface look good, moreover it is a guide on how to optimize an interface for raiding. If you're interested in beautifying your interface the WoW Interface and Macros forum is a great place to go! There usually is a "Post your UI" thread where making an interface that is consistent and aesthetically pleasing is usually the focus.

I've put off this topic for quite some time due to the immense nature of the topic. After all, different roles within a raid require different types of interface setup and some of these roles are even split up between the same class or even spec. For instance, an elemental shaman who traditionally kites adds when needed may need a slightly different toolset than one that only needs to hammer away at the boss endlessly.

That being said, there can be a great deal of simplicity when it comes to setting up your interface and though it may seem daunting it really boils down to one simple question:

What information do you need to see in the heat of battle?

This can be a tricky prospect, however, as a great deal of information can be perceived as necessary when it actually isn't. In this respect it can be helpful to take a good long look at your interface elements (Preferably not during an encounter that requires your undivided attention!) and ask yourself.. do I really need to see that?

Here are some common elements that can be eliminated from most interfaces when there is a lot of clutter:

• Superfluous Action Buttons - Most of the time during a fight you won't need to bring out a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth or cast Water Breathing on someone. These extra non-combat utility and vanity spells can be placed on an action bar that hides itself when in combat or not moused over. OPie or Geist can also be used to give you a bank of action buttons that remains hidden until a keybinding is pressed.
• Full Buff Lists - In the current iteration of the game there are an obscene amount of buffs flying around. So many, in fact, that Blizzard is changing many of the talented raid wide buffs to be auras to cut down on lag as a result of buffs constantly being reapplied. One handy little feature that was added recently was the ability to consolidate long term buffs into a single button. You can find this by opening the game menu, clicking the 'Interface' button and opening to the 'Buffs and Debuffs' category. If you're worried about missing a particular buff when the readycheck goes out because they're consolidated try a mod like BuffEnough, which will give you a clear indication on whether or not you are fully buffed based on your raid composition.
• Scrolling Combat Text - OK, this isn't completely something to get rid of. However, it's not always strictly necessary to see all your uber crits rolling in as they happen. It wastes real estate and distracts from the goal at hand, which is to kill the boss. Try and keep scrolling combat text to important events like procs that you need to respond to, cleanses and buff and debuff application and removal. The goal here is to see the information you need to make an informed decision and nothing else.
• Extra LDB/Fubar/Minimap Buttons - With minimap buttons coming in as the lesser of the three evils this is another thing that commonly chokes portions of an interface. Try and keep these down to the minimum information required. Hide as many individual AddOn menu buttons as you can stand and use slash commands or the Blizzard AddOn menu to configure them (Game Menu -> Interface -> AddOns tab).
• Damage Meters - These are an intensely useful way to scrutinize your performance on demand, but embellishing the damage meter window by making it overly large or placing it in a place where it's distracting can detract from performance. Remember that the focus needs to be on the boss, the numbers should only gain focus in between attempts. Consider hiding the meters while your in combat to keep the largest part of your screen clear and prevent the meters from becoming a distraction.
• Redundant Information - If you have debuffs displayed just below your own unit frame then they probably don't need to be shown in the top right corner. If you have a damage meter that comes packaged with a threat meter try configuring it to switch to threat mode during combat instead of loading a separate threat meter. The basic goal here should be that a piece of information you need to have on the screen should only be displayed once on the screen.

Field of View

If you recall my first ever Raiding 101 post, the first and most important rule of raiding is to... not stand in the fire! An unwritten prerequisite for this is that you need to see the fire in order to not stand in it.

To help with this make sure the center of the screen, where your character is, is free from nearly all clutter. Avoid placing raid frames, cooldown bars or anything else that will probably be up for more than a second or two over this section of the screen. If your interface is cluttered up in the middle you might not know it until you're dead!

Viewports can also assist with your field of view, especially if you aren't running without a wide screen monitor. What this does is push the sides of the screen out so you have a better peripheral view of the game. This can help you see threats approaching from the sides before it's too late, an add charging your way for instance. Make sure your viewport mod shrinks the actual rendered area of the game instead of just placing a background over a portion of your screen.

Shrinking the rendered area of the game in this way can also benefit the rest of your UI placement. Not only will this give you areas where interface elements can be placed completely out of the rendered game world, but if the viewport is only adjusted on the top or bottom it will push your character (and thus the spot where bosses drop fire for you to not stand in) up or down, giving you extra space to place UI elements without overlapping onto your character.

An example of how the viewport can increase the field of view taken from the oUF_Viv page, an oUF layout that includes a viewport:

Some view ports that do this are: Viewporter, Viewport

Prioritize!

Understanding what your role and responsibilities are can go a long way towards knowing how to properly set up your interface for maximum efficiency. Though the three roles in WoW have some very different information requirements there are some things that are shared over all three roles to some extent.

• Interrupting - though there are some exceptions among the classes there are a good portion of specs that include at least one way of interrupting a spell - even if it has to be done via a stun or knockback. Make sure the enemy target cast bar (and focus cast bar if you're assigned to interrupt on a different target than you're assigned to target for another role) is highly visible and obvious. In this case the center of the screen is not a bad idea provided it's kept minimal to prevent obscuring environmental damage excessively.
• Cleansing - Oftentimes those not fulfilling the healer role can forget they have a cleanse button, but this is an area where the healers would probably appreciate a reprieve. Remember a raid environment is all about supporting the group, and any burden that can easily be take off another should be. Use a mod like Decursive for an easy click option for cleansing or configure your raid frames to change health bar or border color for debuffs that can be removed so decurse target can clearly be identified.
• Crowd Control - Moreover today than in raids of yesteryear it's not just DPS that has the ability to crowd control. The role of CC today is very different than the trash controlling techniques of the past. Generally speaking CC is a dynamic aspect of boss fights like Lady Deathwhisper. Decursive also has support for this type of response.
• Movement - More and more raid encounters are highly movement oriented. You need to be able to perform your duties on the move a great deal of the time and this can be especially difficult for healers and caster DPS. Using keybindings for spells as much as possible can be helpful, but prioritizing instant cast spells on single keys can increase the efficiency of keybindings, the basic idea being: do you really want to try and hit ctrl+5 at the same time you're fanning out to avoid the next Defile from the Lich King?
• Cooldown Management - Whether you're a tank, healer or DPS you have some type of cooldown you can use to help survive or eek out that much more DPS or healing. Having an appropriate mod like CooldownWatch or CoolLine placed in a central location can help manage these. The former is shown via a configurable list of bars and the latter places all cooldowns on a timeline. Personally I prefer bars over the line as I feel it's more accurate for my time sensitive DPS rotation but if it's not vitally important that a cooldown be used as soon as it's finished the cooldowns in line format are perfectly adequate.
  

DPSing

DPSing may seem like a no-brainer in terms of interface management but the job of a DPS is deceptively involving. Generally speaking it's a good idea to push out the hammer mentality as soon as possible when a DPS character is your main. Of all the roles in WoW this can be the easiest to pass the buck off to someone else, but a good DPSer will do more than just top the meters. Often a great deal of support and utility can be squeezed out of a DPSer.

Here you can see the basic (though slightly outdated) DPS layout for my interface. In a column directly below my character I have everything I need to fulfill my basic role: target, target debuffs, cast bar (the enemy castbar is a couple inches above the target frame so it's blatantly obvious when an enemy is casting a spell), cooldown timers, my debuffs and my health and mana - both of which glow when I'm getting low to draw my attention.

This won't necessarily be the best arrangement for every single DPS, but in general you'll want to ask yourself what tools you need for your main role and then place them in a place where your eyes won't have to wander far.

It's not necessary in most cases to place everything front and center. This can lead to excess clutter that confuses the information you need. Anything that uses audio warnings can be placed in non-central locations. As you can see from the screenshot my threat meter is placed just above my mana bar as I largely don't have issues with threat. However, when I am creeping up on the tank a unique audio alert quickly draws my attention to the threat meter.

Boss mods generally work the same way, though it can be a good idea to place the large or imminent progress bars closer to the center of the screen so your eyes don't have to wander to a wayward corner of the screen to find out what tricks the boss has in store for you next and take your attention too far away from other important information.

Tanking

Tanking largely worries about many of the same things melee DPS worries about, but threat can be more of a priority for a tank, so it may be prudent to have a more detailed threat meter in a more central location. Skada and Omen are both very good detailed threat meter AddOns.

And yes, I'm going to harp on Nameplates... again!

Bosses aside, they're just a real handy way to see if an add that you don't have targeted is still aggroed to you. Unfortunately since the patch that allowed nameplates to overlap a bit of configuration is needed to optimize them:

Open Interface options in the game menu and under the 'Names' category uncheck the option to 'Allow overlapping nameplates'. With this option enabled nameplates would overlap with each other making it near impossible to single out each enemy. Without nameplates overlapping you should be able to easily identify and target anything you may be losing aggro on by the highlight fading to yellow or disappearing.

Of course, nameplates aren't exclusive to tanks. As they're an easy indication of aggro on mobs that aren't currently being targeted it can be a good indication for DPS that some stray enemy is about to become an unfortunate friend!

Healer... ing

The most obvious element to healers is the raid frame. A little bit of personal preference can dictate here, but your raid frames should be very close to the center of the screen. As a DPS/healer hybrid I put much more emphasis on my target frame which is placed just below my character, leaving the raid frames just to the right of my character. This leaves the space over my character clear while still providing me with the necessary elements in close proximity to the center of the screen.

For pure healers a more appropriate space may be right underneath the character as that area tends to garner a greater amount of attention. Once again, personal preference will dictate to some extent but you'll want this vital piece of information to be close at hand. Placing raid frames in a corner of the screen may not detract from healing and seem like an acceptable location as they tend to take up a large amount of real-estate especially in 25 man raids, but placing them too far away from your character can contribute to tunnel vision and deaths as a result of standing in fire!

Eliminating Common Redundancy

While Decursive is a great mod for folks who need to perform certain utility on the raid like cleansing and crowd control of mind controlled players, if you need to run with a raid frame for healing Decursive become completely redundant. In this situation using Clique can provide identical functionality to any raid frames you may already be using, cutting the real estate taken up by raid frames in half.

Damage meters like Recount can be resource hogs as they track and log just about every combat log event. If you think it may be slowing you down switch to a modular meter like Skada and only load the modules you want to track information for.

Optimization

Unfortunately not every mod put out is suitable for raiding. The main reason for this is performance. Some mods that are very popular are also very CPU intensive and can impact your frame rate on a computer that's not top of the line. Just to name a few CPU hogs:

• Pitbull
• SatrinaBuffFrames
• ButtonFacade
• Recount

Not that these are bad mods by any means. In fact all of these are incredibly robust and feature-full mods. This is partially their downfall, though as far as ButtonFacade is concerned any mods that are purely aesthetic are not the focus of this particular blog.

An important distinction to make, however, is that a mod that uses up a ton of memory is not necessarily impacting framerate. What impacts framerate is generally mods that eat up extra CPU cycles. a good way to determine what mod is eating up CPU cycles is to use... another mod!

AddOnProfiler is a mod that you can set to profile your AddOns and report back on how much memory and CPU cycles each one is using. A good indication of a bad mod is one whose CPU cycles grow and then shrink again repeatedly and substantially. What happens here is that the AddOn is creating a lot of "garbage" that is used briefly and then thrown away. WoW will automatically run the garbage collector when RAM usage gets too high, but if you see the described behavior above from a mod it means that mod is creating an excessive amount of garbage and the collector is being run more and more often. When the garbage collector is run excessively this can create a drag on performance.

Once you've identified a problem mod with AddOnProfiler take a peek at some alternative mods that perform the same task and try a few out until you find one that you prefer and that doesn't cause the garbage collector to start slowing you down!

The Best Interface... is Your Interface!

While all these things are important considerations for how you set up your interface for raiding there are many nuances to how the interface works together that are exclusive to the person using the interface, and the best interface is one that's been used extensively and tweaked to support the playstyle of the user.

It's important to realize that if you've made an adjustment mentioned here and it's just not working for you go ahead and switch back or try something different. If you move your debuffs down to midscreen and suddenly find you just can't adapt to the new location move them back... but consider migrating other related pieces of information into the same area to reduce the amount of time you have to spend searching your screen for various bits of information.

It's highly important to recognize elements of your interface that are holding you back and adjust to compensate for them. Much like adapting strategy to deal with a bosses mechanics, adjusting your interface to display the right information at the right time is crucial to success. If you died from a debuff because you didn't see that you had it you may need to look for a more robust warning system or move the debuffs to a more noticeable location. If you're constantly fumbling your DPS rotation because you didn't notice your debuffs drop off the target make them bigger, or set up a warning in PowerAuras to make the status of the debuff more clear.

In general a successful interface will display everything you need to know and nothing you don't. It may take a bit of experimentation over time but adjusting the flow of information properly can mean the difference between success and defeat!

Note: though other roles were included this article primarily focused on elements of a DPS UI as that is my primary role and the primary focus of the blog. If you have any additional comments or suggestions for the other roles please do leave them in the comments!

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!

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.

Raiding 101: Don't Stand in the Fire!

This is the first in a series of raiding guides that will not focus on any particular encounter or instance but on the very basics of what one needs to do to be a successful raider. The first will focus on the most important aspect of any boss kill you will ever complete in WoW: Survival.

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.

This quote rings true for so many things and raiding in WoW is definitely one of them.

The tried and true method of educating a raid group about a particular boss or raid instance is to post a handful of videos and a recap of the strategy for easy reference. This tried and true method has the distinct disadvantage of not teaching the raider how to fish, as it were. I'm here to tell you there's a better way.

What is this better way? Why, teaching the raider to fish, of course!

There are many raid encounters in WoW alone spanning across three different iterations of the game and 9 (soon to be 10) tiers of difficulty. Each boss has a different strategy and requires a different level of expertise and cooperation. However, everything you ever do in any boss fight outside of your standard class responsibilities boils down to a half dozen or so types of attacks. Learning how to recognize and deal with these types of attacks can make the difference between a pro and a noob.

Types of Attacks:

• Point Blank Area of Effect (PBAoE): These are attacks that are targeted at the boss and do damage to more than one player in it's area of effect.
• Targeted Area of Effect (AoE): The more common type of area damage, targeted AoE attacks do the same thing as PBAoE except they are not targeted on the boss. Targeting mechanics differ but most commonly are centered on a player or a key point of the room.
• Conal Attacks: Conal attacks are attacks that originate at the boss and have an area of effect that widens as it gets further from the boss.
• Debuffs: Debuffs can cover all sorts of things a boss does. Most commonly they are DoT type debuffs but they'll often have special traits attached to them that can complicate matters.
  

Location, Location, Location!

Most all of these attacks can be avoided by knowing where you need to stand and when you need to stand there. This is possibly one of the most important aspects to end game raiding a raider could learn.

Especially in Wrath of the Lich King, end game raiding in WoW is an incredibly mobile thing. There are almost no fights where you can just stand in place for the entire fight and sling lightning bolts at the boss - although as an elemental shaman I can't say I would be upset if this wasn't true!

In most situations all of these attacks can be avoided. There are times when they can't and those times are all about testing the healing fortitude of the raid - which is beyond the scope of this particular posting. But knowing when the attacks are coming and knowing where they are coming to is one half of the equation. The other half of the equation is knowing what tools you have at your disposal - not just in your own character but in the encounter as well.

Point Blank Area of Effect

PBAoE effects can be avoided almost 100% of the time. They always start at the position the boss is and cover varying types of distance.

Some examples of PBAoE are cleave attacks that hit everyone standing in front of the boss to thunderstomp type effects that hit everyone in the immediate vicinity of the boss. Occasionally PBAoE can target players at a great distance, but these effects often have other ways of being avoided like interrupting General Vezax's Searing Flame or switching to the opposite color when one of the Twin Val'kyr starts casting their light or dark vortex.

Area of Effect

AoE attacks are possibly one of the easiest to avoid, even if you're targeted with one. Most targeted AoE will leave a splash of damage where the person being targeted is standing. This is where the term "don't stand in the fire" came from! The easy way to avoid these attacks is to spread out, because the more people are standing in one place the greater the chance that one of these targeted AoEs will be dropped in that spot.

And don't wait for other people to get out of your way either because odds are that the plot of land you've laid claim to has already been scoped out by another person in your raid. People are funny things when they don't communicate, they tend to assume another is going to pick up the slack and when they don't it's that person's fault. Never mind that any element in this equation could have easily avoided the situation; It's always somebody Else's fault.

Don't be that guy. Take it upon yourself to keep the distance between yourself and your fellow raid members when the threat of a targeted AoE is looming over your head.

Purely in terms of numbers on any boss with a targeted AoE the target of the AoE is likely selected randomly in the raid group. That generally gives you a 1 out of 25 chance to be targeted by the AoE. If you're standing on top of someone else the chances you'll be targeted have just doubled, so spreading out is really the best way to go in this scenario.

Conal Attacks

Conal attacks can partially be lumped in with AoE attacks in that the best way to avoid them is to spread out.

Conal attacks, like AoE attacks generally target a specific raid member. Unlike AoE, whose damage is concentrated on a specific piece of real estate, conal attacks start at the the boss and push forward directly away from the boss. The area of effect will also expand in a cone shape as it gets further from the boss.

Since these attacks will always issue forward from the boss this provides a danger zone that corresponds to whichever way the boss is facing at the time. This also provides for safe zone on the flank and rear of the boss and these are generally the spots you will want to stand in regardless of whether the boss does a conal attack or not. There are exceptions to this rule, for instance, Auriaya in Ulduar does a conal attack called Sonic Screech that does a high amount of damage split amongst everyone that was hit by the attack. In this scenario you will want to stand in front of the boss to split the damage into manageable numbers, but this is the exception and not the rule.

Most conal attacks will generally target the tank so as long as a raider is positioned to the side or rear of the boss they can generally be considered safe. There are exceptions to this rule as well. The best example of this is Icehowl, the third phase of the Northrend Beasts encounter in the coliseum raid instance. Icehowl will randomly target a raid member when he does his conal attack, a blast of icy breath that freezes everyone caught in it. Because it is randomly targeted you aren't necessarily safe standing behind or to the side of the boss - this is where spreading out comes in handy.

If a conal attack target is randomly selected odds are you won't get your chances of being hit down to 1 out of 25 but the chances can indeed be minimized. The way this is done is by spreading out around the boss. If the raid is evenly spaced out around the boss in a circle, only a minimal cross section of raid members will be hit by the attack. It is especially helpful to keep this in mind if your raid tends to stay clumped up on one side of the boss. If you find this is the case, try to gravitate towards the empty areas around the boss to lower your chances of being caught in the cone. This doesn't necessarily eliminate your chances to be targeted it, but it can exponentially lower your chances of being caught up in a conal attack targeted on somebody else.

Debuffs

Debuffs can have any type off effect under the sun and this is where having prior knowledge of the fight can come in handy. Know what debuffs the boss can leave on you, how they get applied and what, if anything, to do about them.

DoT attacks are one of the most insidious types of debuffs and very often the one you have the least control over.

Through some means, the boss applies a DoT debuff to a raid member and the debuff will start eating away at the raid member a little bit at a time. There are varying degrees of damage caused by DoTs from the fairly innocuous Biting Cold during the Hodir encounter to the devastating stacking DoT applied by the Fire Bomb AoE in Northrend Beasts heroic that can kill you in only a few seconds if you don't escape the fire quickly.

Stacking is another concept applied to debuffs. These special types of debuffs will reapply to your character every time you fail to avoid a certain attack. Sometimes debuff stacks will cap out at a certain point, but any stacking DoT debuffs will do more and more damage over time the more stacks you have.

Most debuffs can be cleansed by healers and casters but many you'll need to be familiar with the boss to fully understand. There are plenty of resources for researching the debuffs on a particular boss but there is no blanket solution for dealing with them. Resources for researching boss fights will be covered in a future post and will, at some point, be featured in a side bar on this blog.

Conclusions

It can be quite comfortable to fall into a pattern of stand in one place and do your thing, and it's easy to pass the buck to another player in terms of positioning than it is to accept responsibility and take the initiative, but if you take nothing else away from this blog entry please take this:

Don't stand in the fire!

Trust me, your raid group will love you for it!