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Raid Rx: No pally? No problem
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host, Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus, is on vacation. Hello readers! Your favorite Canadian priest is off on some sort of an adventure this week so I'm here to cover for him. (I don't know the specifics, but I heard something about a Princess Leia metal bikini and twenty boxes of tropical flavored Fruit Roll-Ups. Your guess is as good as mine.) Usually I just handle priest healing over at Spiritual Guidance (thus, don't be surprised by the heavy priest bias) but I figured I could take a stab at this. I should warn you though: I'm no phlebotomist. I might need to stab you multiple times. No big deal right? I've got Flash Heal. Anyway, when I asked Matt what topic I should cover, he relayed a story to me on how his raid leader refused to start their 25-man ICC because the group had no holy paladin. The raid leader wanted someone who could "heal the tanks." This forced them to wait 90-minutes for a healadin while available healing priests, shamans, and druids were turned away. Sounds frustrating, yes? Matt suggested I tackle the topic in his place (probably so I can take all the flames), so here I am. So here's the situation: you're putting together a raid and either your normal pally is absent, for some reason (read: debauchery), or you're in a pug and there are no paladins to be found in ye ol' trade chat. What do you do? Can your other healers handle the tanks or are you doomed to a wipe fest?
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.
Raid Rx: Healing talents trimmed
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. First, I just want to say that members of my guild and I scored ourselves a set of drake mounts from Glory of the Icecrown Raider. Took a few weeks, but we managed to pull it off. Hard modes and other achievements are an excellent way to keep your healing in form! Anyway, those experiences can come at a later time. Some big announcements this week about talents! Have you seen the new looks yet? They're by no means finalized. We're still months away from anything resembling completion. Many talents have been removed from the tree entirely.
Raid Rx: Healing Halion in Ruby Sanctum
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. The 3.3.5 patch brought us the final raid instance before Cataclysm strikes Azeroth. Halion, a fairly large Twilight dragon, has invaded the Ruby Sanctum. Naturally, the job falls to us to try to repel him and and the rest of his followers. Before you get to engage Halion, you have to deal with Saviana Ragefire, Baltharus the Warborn and General Zarithrian. There's also the trash, which has crippled and stalled many pickup raids (and some guilds).
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.
Raid Rx: Cataclysm healing overview
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. There is a ton of information that is now available for Cataclysm. During the class previews, I covered on some of the healing changes from class perspectives. Most of those still stand and there has been little change since then. This week, I wanted to help clarify some of the more general changes that are impacting healing.
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.
Raid Rx: Healing the Lich King
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. Welcome to the end boss. It is possible to heal through Arthas with a less than ideal composition -- my first kill with 25 players was done without the presence of any holy paladins. If your guild is still struggling with it and the issue might be from the healing side of things, maybe I can help you out here with some additional pointers. If you're not quite sure about the overall mechanics of the encounter, refer to Kinasthesia's awesome tutorial videos: Part 1 and Part 2.
Raid Rx: Is addon-less healing possible?
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. I see a fair number of emails and messages about this topic. Is it possible to heal without using any addons of any sort? Naturally, the default user interface (or UI) includes a limited number of features where this is possible. Is it recommended in dungeons or raid instances? No, not quite. I've seen opinions from some players where they practically insist that healing without addons should be the way to go. Anyone who does use addons is relying on a crutch. I don't think that's quite fair to say. It's not like these addons are scripts or anything that can "think" and heal for you.
Ready Check: How to make that vital member show up
Ready Check focuses on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Icecrown Citadel or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. It's probably my years working in operations, but I'm very, very against the idea of single points of failure. Any time I build a raid, I build it from the ground up chock full of redundancy, fail-safes, and contingency plans. Tanks, heals, replenishment, and DPS are all carefully doubled-up, so that if someone doesn't show at the last minute, they can be replaced. Hell, I even make sure we have a back-up instance available, because who the hell knows what might happen in the final minutes. I've even gone so far as to read from a book to my raid members one night during bad lag. My point here is: have a back-up plan. But despite my best efforts, I still had someone that I absolutely could not risk having go AWOL. (That's "absent without leave," in case you're not caught up with hip internet language.) Maybe it's a tank with sufficient hit points, or a vital spec of healer who'll make a progression fight relatively trivial. Hell, maybe that person's usual backup is on vacation, so that if the main raider misses, there's no available replacement. If you find yourself in this position, there's a few things you can do to hedge your bets. Here's how to do your best to make sure those vital raid members show up.
Ready Check: Raiding has changed in five years
Ready Check focuses on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Icecrown Citadel or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Raiding has changed in the five -- almost six! -- years since World of Warcraft has been on the shelves. How's that for a pretty dumb statement? Can you imagine playing a game that hasn't changed in six years? Nowadays, people barely keep real-life jobs that long. Blizzard hasn't kept us engaged and constantly playing WoW because they hit on some single magic formula. Instead, they found a pretty good formula, made it better, and then kept it changing and improving for over half of a decade. The game continues to grow alongside its player base. Of course, the argument you hear most nowadays is whether the game has somehow been "dumbed down." Epics are available more easily, so clearly Blizzard is catering to noobs. The entry requirement into raiding isn't as prohibitive, so that game's gotten somehow cheaper and too easy for your average raider. DragonFireKai recently made a comment on a post that got me to thinking. Basically, he said that the biggest difference in raiding since the release of WoW is "the meta game. There are so many more effective resources for raiders to tap to up their game." This mirrors things Ghostcrawler, the lead systems designer at Blizzard, has had to say about the growth of the community. Let's take a look at how new resources and tools have grown over the years.
Raid Rx: Shaking the bad healer label
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. Not getting the respect you feel you deserve? Pickup raids passing on your skills and services? You ever wonder why that is? Even though healers are typically one of the most sought-after classes, it is incredibly easy to completely shoot yourself in the foot and get looked over. How exactly does a healer get labeled as a "bad" healer? A better question would be, how would a healer get un-labeled as one?
Ready Check: I miss Karazhan
Ready Check focuses on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Icecrown Citadel or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Recently, your devoted WoW.com staff of journalists and trained monkeys were huddled in the newsroom discussing raiding in Wrath of the Lich King. We naturally looked back to the Burning Crusade for comparisons and recalled that most favorite raid: Karazhan. Man, how the memories came rolling in as soon as its hallowed name came up. I couldn't help but think about all the things I miss about Karazhan. There was something magic about that place. I loved everything from the music to the tapestries to the well-developed NPCs that were lurking around every corner. It all combined to form one of the most engaging, interesting raid instances in the World of Warcraft. I look back at it with the same kind of fondness I usually reserve for music played at my prom or the soup eaten at my wedding. But to me, Karazhan was the best of times I've had in WoW. I readily admit the game has come a long way since the days of Kara, but I have to constantly question what it is about that place that promotes so much nostalgia.
Raid Rx: Healing indecision
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. Heal the raid. How many times have you been instructed to do that by your raid leaders? What does that even entail doing? It seems like such a monstrous task to keep everyone alive. Especially for first time healers, it certainly is an overwhelming responsibility. I did write a similar piece several weeks ago that detailed what things to consider when healing. That was more of a micro-level analysis of my own personal decision-making when I was healing. One of the complaints was that it was still a little too advanced even for the entry level healer. I'll try to simplify it further by tackling a slightly related topic, which I call "healing paralysis."
WoW.com's Guide to Professor Putricide
Professor Putricide is the final boss in the Plagueworks. He's kind of the R&D guy for the Lich King's slime armies. If you recall from fighting Rotface, Putricide is the guy who's constantly screaming about what good news it is that the slime is working again. Frankly, I'm mostly motivated to kill the guy to get him to shut up about the slime. Putricide is a movement fight. There are a lot of mechanics that will require your raid to rapidly swap targets (to kill adds) and then not stand in stuff (most of the stuff you'll not be standing in is one variety of slime or another). It's not really much of a coordination fight, per se, because your tanks are probably pretty well-versed in swapping aggro back and forth. However, Putricide is going to put to the test your raid's ability to get on an add quickly. And not stand in stuff. Table of contents Composition General strategy Abilities Tank strategy DPS strategy Healing strategy Other resources
WoW.com's Guide to Precious and Stinky
As you cruise to lay the smackdown on Professor Putricide and company, you will encounter two giant dogs. Yup, they look just like Gluth. These guys don't drop emblems, they don't have heroic modes, but they're difficult enough for many raids that they're worth a quick shout-out. We'll keep this guide short, though -- they're not terribly difficult. They just require a bit of management. Table of Contents Composition General strategy Abilities Tank strategy DPS strategy Healing strategy Other resources
WoW.com's Guide to Valithria Dreamwalker
Valithria Dreamwalker is the easiest fight to DPS. No, really, it's amazing. Unfortunately, your success with Dreamwalker has almost nothing to do with your DPS. The basic premise of the Valithria Dreamwalker encounter is thus: She is being held captive by the bad guys. She's more than capable of getting herself free ... if only she weren't damaged. So your job is to heal her to full. But that's a lot of health, so she opens portals into the Emerald Dream so that your healers can juice up their own healing. Then, they heal her. Meanwhile, the rest of your raid kills a bunch of adds. Table of contents Composition General strategy Tank strategy DPS strategy Healing strategy Other resources
WoW.com's Guide to Blood-Queen Lana'thel
Get bitten. Savor the succulent flavor of your raid friends once every 50 seconds. Do crazy, sick DPS. Oh, and stay alive, 'cause this lady's got a lot of health. The Blood-Queen is a fairly unique encounter. The gimmick here is that Lana'thel will bite one of your raid members seconds after the fight begins. Doing so will turn that player into a vampire. Before too much longer, that person will feed on another, and then that person will need to feed. This horrible pattern of events will continue until everyone's a vampire. Like many other boss fights, Blood-Queen Lana'thel has an attack that can cause you to damage nearby allies. The range for this fight is 6 yards, but doing a range check for 10 yards is a good way to be safe -- there's plenty of room. Because of the need for distance, the best positioning for a caster is somewhere in the outer circle of the room. Table of contents Composition General strategy Abilities Tank strategy DPS strategy Healing strategy Other resources
WoW.com's Guide to the Gunship Battle
Here's the quick summary of the Gunship Battle in Icecrown Citadel. You run onto the boats and grab your backpacks from the goblin. You put that in your shirt slot right away. (If you wait until you're in combat, you'll find yourself unable to put on the vital piece of equipment.) Some of your raid will get inside the guns on deck. And then the people in the guns blow up the enemy boat. A tank on your home ship tanks adds as they appear. When guns get frozen, an "away" team consisting of a tank, a healer and some DPS shoot over to the other ship. The tank tanks the enemy faction boss, the DPS kills the mage and the healer keeps them all alive. Rinse and repeat. Now, we will go into more detail. Table of contents Composition General strategy Abilities Tank strategy DPS strategy Healing strategy Other resources
WoW.com's Guide to Lady Deathwhisper
Lady Deathwhisper is a two-phase fight. When you approach her in her throne room, you'll immediately note that she is standing on a stage. She's surrounded by a big mana shield. In order to get to her, you have to beat down that mana shield. When you get all the way through the shield, she immediately becomes mobile and starts to fight you. Of course, you don't get to remain unmolested when you're trying to storm her castle. As you damage down the mana shields, adds will be summoned on each side of the room. They need to tanked and killed in very specific ways, or else the adds will swam and destroy your raid. Table of contents Composition General strategy Abilities Tank strategy DPS strategy Healing strategy Other resources
