leading
Latest
Raid Rx: A history of organizational healing
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related. Organizing healing continues to be one of the many intriguing challenges that raiding groups face today. In some cases, there are pre-set players assigned to do specific things. Sometimes they are even worked out in advance on a forum or a white board. In looser groups or pickup groups, there isn't the luxury of planning healing in advance and the organizers have to go with their gut feeling and "stereotype" classes in order to figure out assignments. Examples, any holy paladins are told to heal a tank. Restoration shamans are told to heal a specific group and holy priests are told to heal another group. It wasn't always entirely like that. This week, I want to take you back in time to the era of vanilla raid healing, through the Burning Crusade and to now. I'm also going to include my thoughts as to what Cataclysm might be like.
Introducing WoW Insider's Guild of the Month contest
Think your guild is one of the best in all of the World of Warcraft? Have you dominated your server since vanilla WoW, or run a packed RP event every week for years? Are you leading one of the biggest guilds in the game, running group after group through Naxx without any drama or wipes? Think your guild is awesome? Prove it!WoW Insider is proud to present our brand new Guild of the Month contest. Each month, we'll be choosing a guild from the game who impresses us through performance in raiding, originality in what they do as a group, or just plain old community (because casual guilds need love, too). And the winner will not only get profiled here on the site as our Guild of the Month, but they'll also get a $100 gift certificate to Warcraft.Swagdog.com, where they'll be able to pick up custom-made guild shirts for the top members of the guild.To nominate your guild, just send a short message (no longer than 200 words, please) to guildofthemonth@gmail.com stating why your guild should be chosen as a winner. Make sure to tell us why your guild stands out from the rest -- you don't have to have conquered all of the raid content, but you do have to be doing something extraordinary and special with your little ingame community. Every month, we'll choose a winner from those entries, and profile them here on the site (so don't enter if you don't want to get profiled), as well as award them the gift certificate from the kind folks at Swagdog. More rules after the break:
Raid Rx: Are you ready to be the healer leader?
Raid Rx has returned from retirement! Every Thursday (usually), Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Today, it is all about the healing leader and what you need to know if want to do it. Organizing healers is often difficult (and sometimes) a thankless job. Having a healing leader to quarterback and direct the efforts of the other healers in your raid increases the overall survivability of the raid instead of just having healers on free for all healing. I've handled healing assignments in no less than 4 different guilds and it becomes a new experience every time.
Have You /hug'd your raid leader today?
Good raid leaders need to have a lot of tools in their tool basket. People skills, the ability to manage people and understand people is critical. Tactical skills, being able to study an encounter, look through a combat log and understand what went wrong, and being able to make the adjustments to complete an encounter more efficiently and more easily next time is critical. It's a political job, keeping groups happy and managing everyone's expectations. It requires time, effort, and a lot of knowledge. So give your raid leader a /hug.
A Guide to Frustration-Free Instances
Sehojan from Khaz Modan over on the forums says he likens most of his ST runs to hell itself. A few others mention Gnomer, and I've had my share of bad runs in there, but lately BRD has been giving me headaches left and right. Here's a few tips to make your runs through instanced dungeons (some of my favorite stuff in the game) a little easier.-Forget PUGs. I know, you've heard this before, but if you really want your instance runs to go well, pick up groups just aren't going to do it, period. Get yourself a guild (make sure it's not a "pickup guild"-- a quick test is to see if they have a website and forums), and it'll make instance runs much, much easier and more fun. If you have to have a PUG, try to stick to friends and people you've grouped with before. Random LFG is more like "looking for trouble."-Study up. There are guides, maps, and strategy all over the place for every instance in the game (yes, even RFC). Look at them. Know the routes, know the mobs, know the quests-- where to go and what to do. Not only will it help the group go smoother, but it'll help you with looting, too. Things are much more fun when you know what loot to hope for-- and you get it.-Have a leader. If you've done the studying, it's probably you, but the best way to make sure an instance goes well is to choose one person to lead and have everyone follow them. One person chooses a route, one person assigns targets, and one person calls pulls. Organization is the key (which is usually why PUGs don't work).-Prepare! The boy scouts were right: Repair before you go into an instance. Get together to share quests and buff. Make water and food, make healthstones when needed, keep an eye on soulstones, shaman bring ankhs, locks bring shards, and hunters bring arrows.-Be patient. There's a lot of reasons to get frustrated in instance runs: wiping, not getting the loot you want, people making mistakes, people leaving early. Don't let it get to you. If you do a few instance runs and things go south, go solo for a few levels, come back, and it might make all the difference in the world. Instances, especially high lore stuff like Maraudon, Scarlet Monastery, and the Sunken Temple can be some of the most fun parts of the game. Have fun in there, and don't fret the small stuff.Instances can be tough, but when you're in there with a great group and you know what you're doing, they're definitely worth it. Following these tips will help you do just that.
Jobs to spend more time at Apple
Steve Jobs told shareholders this week that, in light of Disney's acquisition of Pixar, he would actually be spending more time at Apple, in part because he'll be relinquishing his CEO position at Pixar in a couple of weeks once the merger finishes. Many have been speculating that Mr. Jobs would be spending more time at Disney, but he publicly responded "that couldn't be further from the truth... It'll require less of my time than Pixar did."This should be good news for anyone concerned about Mr. Jobs' continued involvement with Apple.[via Wired]
