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Ready Check: Run speed is nearly a requirement
Ready Check helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week for the latest pointers on killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won't drop. I want to talk about run speed this week -- what it does, why you should have it, and how to get it. Let's start at the top. When I reference run speed, I'm talking about persistent, always-on effects that make your character's unaltered form move faster. Mounts don't count. Shapeshifted forms don't count, unless you're always in that form. When you're in a boss fight and performing your role, run speed allows you to move faster without hitting any other button (including cooldowns like Darkflight). What run speed really does for you is get you out of danger faster. If you're trying to get away from a boss, out of fire, or away from a landmine, enhanced run speed will help get you to a safe place.
Ready Check: Using macros for raid calls
Ready Check helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week for the latest pointers on killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won't drop. We talked last week about raid calling. Even if every raid member has read up on the fights, watched videos, and has all of their addons installed, some well-timed raid calls can do a lot to help your raid work together. A problem presents itself if some raiders can't be in voice chat. While I'm sure there are dozens of folks eager to say "can't chat, shouldn't be in raid," the fact is that voice chat isn't always possible. There are medical reasons, lifestyle reasons, and even practicality issues. It happens. Maybe in a perfect world with blue skies, everyone is always in voice chat; but the reality is that you should have a method on hand to deal with voice chat failures. Some people simply can't hear the audio clearly, no matter how carefully and loyally they turn on the program. Typing in raids isn't universally feasible. Addons like Deadly Boss Mods handle a lot of the typing and calling work, so it's not all bad. But what you need is a quick and easy way to spam raid chat with your unique instruction. The answer to that need is to use macros during your raid.
Ready Check: Mastering the fine art of raid calling
Ready Check helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week for the latest pointers on killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won't drop. A few positions in raiding are universal. Tanks, healers, and damage dealers are people who fill roles that are absolute, predictable, and consistent in every single raid. Other positions aren't quite as universal, but they're so much a staple of raiding that everyone assumes you have one. Good examples of that kind of position are raid leader and master looter. Not everyone, however, has a raid caller. I've been using one for a few years, and I find it incredibly helpful. The raid caller is the person who calls out important cues and dance steps during a boss encounter. When the boss is about to do something like Deep Breath, the raid caller shouts out a verbal warning. Sure, mods like Deadly Boss Mods will tell you that a Deep Breath is about to happen, but not where it's coming from and where you should go. When you're highly focused on your tanking rotation, your masterful healing, or your precise execution of your damage rotation, it can be simply convenient to have someone calling out the moves. Like a square dancing caller, those verbal cues make a huge difference to your team's precision and effectiveness.
Ready Check: 10-mans and keeping your raid flexible
Ready Check helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week for the latest pointers on killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won't drop. If your guild is focused on 10-man content, there are a couple of numbers games that can keep you up at night. First, with 10 people able to go each night, your roster is going to be a little more delicate than that of 25-mans. Second, your raid composition is going to be critically important. Most of these problems are inherent to the format; with 10 people, each and every raider counts for 10% of your performance. Most 10-man raids have two tanks, 2.5 healers, and 5.5 damage dealers. That .5 person is someone who can switch back and forth between damage and healing, depending on which fight you're doing and whether you want the extra heals. So, let's take a look at how this makes up an attendance issue.
Ready Check: Give your progression a shot in the arm
Ready Check helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week for the latest pointers on killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won't drop. Progression can be a challenge. Your team seems to be trying hard, you have enough people to raid on the appropriate nights, and it even seems like everyone has read up on the fights. However, when it comes "go time," you still don't seem to be moving forward. The first step in resolving this problem is obviously to try and diagnose what's going wrong. That's a complicated enough issue for most folks. The bigger issue, though, is what you should do when it's no one's fault in particular. Maybe your raid doesn't have enough healers, or maybe it has too much melee. Maybe you're missing a vital raid buff, or perhaps not enough people are in advanced enough gear. What do you then? These things are clearly an issue to be resolved, but it's not a particular person's fault. You still need to address the problem.
Ready Check: Getting your raid going
I've seen a lot of discussion around WoW circles that seems to be saying the same thing: Folks are having trouble getting their raids into "go" mode. This is another way of saying that raiding isn't happening as smoothly as it used to. People aren't signing up, aren't geared, or just don't seem in the mood. Even many seasoned players managed to burn themselves out at the beginning of Cataclysm and are now lackluster about doing the actual raiding content. Whatever the cause, raid leaders are being challenged getting their raids started. Even beyond that, once players are inside the doors of a raid instance, things aren't going as well. It seems like raid members aren't familiar with the fights, or maybe there's just not enough DPS. Maybe raiders can't quite tell if tanks are dying because the tanks are too squishy, or maybe the healers haven't adjusted to Cataclysm yet. The first message is: It's okay. You're not alone. It's not just you. Many players are having these problems, and lots of people are struggling with the issue. But there are things you can do about it.
Ready Check: WoW Insider's Guide to Throne of Four Winds
The Throne of Four Winds is a bite-sized raid with only two real fights. Despite its low number of bosses, the Throne of Four Winds can be very challenging to raid groups. This is because the mechanics of each fight require a lot of coordination and precise maneuvering. In the first encounter, the Conclave of Wind, you must split your raid into three parts. There are three bosses on three different platforms. Your team must be able to move across the platforms in a coordinated way and react to what the bosses are doing. Movement of this kind can be very disorienting for a raid, so folks who aren't comfortable with the dance steps could have some trouble. The second encounter is against Al'Akir. It's a three-phase fight and ends in three-dimensional space. Interestingly, Al'Akir combines the "fire wall" mechanic from Sartharion as well as the "fly around" mechanic from Malygos. Again, if you had trouble with those fights, you'll probably be challenged here also. That being said, Al'Akir is a pretty fun and engaging encounter. WoW Insider's Guide to Conclave of Wind WoW Insider's Guide to Al'Akir Ready Check shares all the strategies and inside information you need to take your raiding to the next level. Be sure to look up our strategy guides to Cataclysm's 5-man instances, and for more healer-centric advice, visit Raid Rx.
WoW Insider's Guide to the Conclave of Wind
The Conclave of Wind is the first fight in the Throne of Four Winds. In general, we refer to the three platforms as Wind, Nature, and Frost. You'll need one tank at least at the Frost and Nature platforms.
WoW Insider's Guide to Chimaeron
Chimaeron is the fifth and penultimate boss in Blackwing Descent. As long as the Bile-O-Tron is active, no one in the raid whose hit points are above 10,000 will die. Any killing blows on a raid member with at least 10k hit points will merely take them down to 1 hit point.
WoW Insider's Guide to Magmaw
Magmaw is the first boss in Blackwing Descent. You can do Magma with a single tank, if that tank can muscle through getting eaten. If not, you'll need a second tank to help relieve pressure during the "oh my god, I've been eaten" phase.
WoW Insider's Guide to Blackwing Descent
Blackwing Descent is an interesting new raid instance. This isn't merely because it's a new instance for Cataclysm but because it draws on the heritage of the game, going all the way back to a showdown with Nefarian in Blackwing Lair. But Blackwing Lair was just a setback. Deathwing has raised his little boy and girl back from the grave, and they're all zombie and angry at the world. So you and 9 (or 24) of your best friends need to go kill everyone in the Blackwing Descent and make things right again. Check out our strategy guides, below, to get the skinny on how to beat down the bosses all the way up to and including the big, bad Nefarian. Magmaw Omnotron Defense System Maloriak Atramedes Chimaeron Nefarian Ready Check shares all the strategies and inside information you need to take your raiding to the next level. You might also be interested in our strategy guides to Cataclysm's 5-man instances, and for more healer-centric raiding advice, visit Raid Rx.
WoW Insider's Guide to Atramedes
There are two phases to this fight, an air phase and a ground phase. The phases are repeated until either your raid or Atramedes is dead. The ground phase lasts 80 seconds.
WoW Insider's Guide to the Omnotron Defense System
Power Conversion converts incoming damage into increased DPS. Purge or steal the spell or stop DPS. This usually forces you to switch to the next tron.
Ready Check: Cataclysm raiding guide for Baradin Hold
Ready Check helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week to get an idea of the latest in killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won't drop. Ladies and gentleman, welcome back to raiding. It's now been three weeks since Cataclysm has been released, and we're staring down the barrel of an exciting time not standing in fire, killing adds, and watching the tanks swap aggro with unmitigated skill. There are habits for us to rebuild, of course. Healers have been struggling with mana issues, tanks are finding themselves working to produce good threat, and damage dealers are laying down crowd control for the first time since Burning Crusade. It is a new environment for raiding and everyone's getting a chance to learn the ropes again. The first tier of raiding content in Cataclysm takes place in four different instances. These four raids are Baradin Hold, Blackwing Descent, Throne of the Four Winds, and the Bastion of Twilight. Raiding progression doesn't really go from one instance to another; instead, most raids will do the first boss of each fairly easily, struggle with the second, and then really work if there are any further bosses in the group.
Ready Check: Raiding 102
Ready Check focuses on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, from Icecrown Citadel to Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. We covered Raiding 101 a few weeks ago. One of the interesting things you discover when you talk about "the very basics of raiding" is that people actually tend to say the same things. The key things are to read up on fights, listen to your leaders, pay attention and don't stand in fire. The actual skill itself in "raiding" (as opposed to "playing your class") is really just those tenets of cooperation. Unless you're in a bleeding-edge guild, there are lots of resources on the internet whose authors have already figured out the puzzle. Now you're just convincing 24 of your closest friends to read up, too. That being said, our readers have quite a few helpful tips. So, now we follow up with Raiding 102.
Ready Check: Raiding 101
Ready Check focuses on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, from Icecrown Citadel to Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Wrath of the Lich King had many goals; one of these goals was to make raiding more accessible. Blizzard wanted to move away from a raiding model which demanded that victory could only go to the most devoted players with the most time to spend on the content. The developers were somewhat successful with that goal. In Wrath, more players than ever before got to storm the raid instances, throw down against bosses and feel the shame and pain of wiping on a raid boss all night. We should certainly expect more of this kind of content in Cataclysm -- and so we begin WoW.com's Raiding 101 series. We're talking about the very, very basics of raiding. These are the fundamental building blocks that will get you into the instance, help you kill trash and finally help you defeat the boss. Most of this stuff will seem like common sense to experienced players. That's good news; if it's obvious data, that means you're already on top of the dynamic. But for others, not every aspect of raiding will be obvious, especially to players for whom WoW is their first MMO.
Totem Talk: Enhanced moves with Halion
Axes, maces, lightning, Windfury and wolves. It can mean only one thing: enhancement. Rich Maloy lives it and loves it. His main spec is enhance. His off spec is enhance. He blogs about the life and times of enhance and leads the guild Big Crits (Week 10 now out!) as the enhancement shaman Stoneybaby. The last patch of an expansion feels like the last gift of Christmas; you want it to be the most epic and the most incredible gift of them all, the one gift by which you'll remember this time forever. But instead, you're at your in-laws' doing the family gag gift exchange with a price limit of 20 bucks and a penchant for As Seen on TV products. In some ways, Ruby Sanctum is like that; it's not huge, it's not epic, it's not expensive, but it does have some potential. Maybe Ruby Sanctum is the Slap Chop of this expansion. None of this has anything to do with the article today. Except that I'm talking about Halion. Halion, the Twilight Destroyer. Three phases, good loot and a huge scale-up in difficulty on heroic mode. It's a good fight that requires paying attention throughout the entire 8-minute enrage timer, in which one death can mean a wipe, especially on heroic. There's no 30 percent buff incoming, so you either learn it and beat it, or you don't and fail. For our part, as enhancement shaman, there are a few tricks we have up our sleeves.
Ready Check: Everything I need to know about raiding, I learned in Karazhan
Well. All that kids nowadays seem to care about is Cataclysm. The bad news is that there's still not much new information about raiding in Cataclysm. At this point, I'm not even holding my breath that we'll have starter raids at the time Cataclysm ships. That could be a good thing. (After all, that means there's more development time being spun into the raids to make them awesome.) For now, since I can't effectively look forward to Cataclysm raiding yet, I'm forced once again to look backwards. And that makes me think (again) about Karazhan. When I compare the hallowed halls of Medivh to the many instances in Wrath of the Lich King, I'm forced to realize I owe all my raiding success to Karazhan. Think I'm crazy? No, my gentle reader. I assure you that everything you need to know about raiding you learned in Karazhan. Allow me to share the many, vital skills we all learned from that first Burning Crusade instance. SPOILER WARNING: There's totally story spoilers for a four-year-old instance behind the cut.
Ready Check: First look at Cataclysm raids
There's been a huge splash of Cataclysm information released unto the wild in the last few days. Every since the beta hit the streets, we've seen information about warrior changes, hunters and even racial emotes. I guess I called it a splash. What I really meant is that there's been a flood of information everywhere. It seems like we can virtually see anything we'd possibly want to know about the expansion, right now. But what we haven't seen yet is much information on raids. Our good friends over at MMO-Champion have some great information about 5-man instances, but their raid information is running a little behind so far. Of course, that's never kept us from drooling over new raid content before now, so let's not start bad habits. Let's take a look at what raid information we do have and spend a little time getting excited about the new expansion.
Ready Check: Peer pressure, responsibility and teamwork
Ready Check focuses on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, from Icecrown Citadel to Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Last week, I talked a little bit about tools and methods for getting that unreliable person to show up for raids. One of the specific tools I discussed was peer pressure. I probably should have expected it, but there was quite a bit of discussion in the comments and elsewhere about how peer pressure shouldn't be used as a tool. Also, to how the idea of "forcing" someone to show up is a bad idea. I want to acknowledge that this subject is wildly open to interpretation; after all, we all play the game differently. The first thing I want to establish, though, is that there's no one forcing anyone else to raid. I can't make you sign up, I can't make you log in and I can't make you do anything in WoW you don't want to. However, I can exert influence. As a raid or guild leader -- or even simply as a friend -- that influence is usually in the form of peer pressure. (If it's some weird power struggle or dominance issue, that's a can of worms waaaaay outside the scope of this blog.) Why would this ever be desirable? While I am a real person -- and my time is valuable -- I am also raiding with nine to 24 other real people. Their time is also valuable. When we're talking about a scheduled, coordinated raid, there are all these other real people sitting there and waiting for you. This is why having redundancy and letting people take time off is so important. Everyone's real, has real lives, and no one should be subverting real life to support the raid. But if you make an agreement to show up somewhere at a certain time, there are 24 other people waiting for your attendance.
