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Ready Check: Cataclysm class changes and their effects on raiding, Part 2
The hot news for last couple of weeks has been all of the April previews for Cataclysm class changes. I do want to take a moment before we dive into more analysis to caveat that these are previews. They're not full and complete changes as much as a sneak peak into the brains of the developers. They're saying things like "intent" and "vision" and "what we have planned." The code's not all written, and it's not all been through beta testing. Heck, any of it could change between now and tomorrow, let alone between now and the time Cataclysm hits the shelves. So the important part is: don't panic. That being said, these previews do give us a handful of insights into some new raid dynamics. I talked about new abilities like Leap of Faith and Vengeance in last week's Ready Check, but now that we have all of the previews out and published, there's even more to talk about. Let's start with that time-honored tank healers, the holy paladin.
Raid Rx: Cataclysm raid healing thoughts
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. There are some Dispel changes, shaman additions and priest additions coming. Have you read Joe's shaman thoughts and Dawn's priest thoughts yet? Be sure to check them out! I think the spell that will have the biggest impact for all healers is the addition of the Heal-type spell. It is designed to be the most efficient, single target healing spell in our arsenals. With Healing Rain and Power Word: Barrier, we're going to see a new element in healing assignments: Player locations. Lastly, we have the new dispel changes. Are you excited about being a healer for Cataclysm?
Ready Check: Cataclysm Class Changes and their effects on raiding
Your intrepid WoW.com staff has obviously been glued to the official forums just like everyone else, as we anxiously watch for each new bit of the Cataclysm class changes to be announced. Since the class changes apply to both PvE and PvP, it can be hard to get a good picture of how these announcements will affect the raiding game in Cataclysm. Heck, we don't even know what the raiding environment is going to be entirely like in the new expansion, so it's hard to get a handle on what anything really means. That being said, however, some of the old standbys of raiding are going to obviously be pretty mixed up. The warrior Sunder change is probably one of the biggest deals. As Matthew Rossi pointed out in his analysis, Sunder Armor and Devastate have been so iconic to the warrior class that this debuff has been a staple of raiding since vanilla. It's so thoroughly pervasive that there are entire guilds named after the ability, like Wait for Sunders. Although warriors aren't by necessity the main tank any longer, most physical heavy raids will at least wait until a full stack of sunders are applied to the boss before keying Heroism or Bloodlust. The decreased effect of sunder will mean that this key ability isn't such an obvious timer any longer. We'll get by, and we don't know how much the debuff will matter to our overall input, but raids will definitely feel different.
Raid Rx: It's all about trust and confidence
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. I am going to let you all in on a secret. It's something I'm a little ashamed and sad to admit. You readers of all players would probably hold me to a higher standard than that and I wouldn't be surprised if you immediately unsubscribe from me. You see, I have trust issues. I'm not kidding. Tonight after I ran Icecrown-25 with my guild, I decided to join a pickup group for Trial of the Crusader-25. It was 10 p.m. and I was bored, okay?! I managed to sucker a few guildies to join me in the killing of an hour. Out of the various characters I had, I opted to heal on my priest. Look, I won't lie -- I do get a slight kick jumping into a random pickup group dropping Val'anyr bubbles everywhere while I do my job. I always get an interesting reaction out of someone in the raid. Anyway, I want to get to the main point. Some of you veteran healers might feel the same way as I do about this, but I feel more calm and less anxious in a raid when I'm one of the healers as opposed to being a DPS player. It takes me an extremely long time before I get over my healing paranoia with new players.
Ready Check: How to fill out raiding applications
Most "srs bznz" raiding guilds require an application. Of course, about half the time, these applications are just to get into the guild's raid, while the other half requires the application to even get in the guild's non-raiding ranks. Either way, the entire point of an application process is for a guild to take a look at a new player, check out their gear, and get an idea whether the player is viable for that guild's content. I'm not sure who invented the current version of the generic "raiding application," but it seems like most guilds use the same rough format. There's some questions about PvE, gear, spec, and even some questions about PvP. (Of course, guilds that don't give a whit about PvP will probably skip this question, but I still see a lot of raiding applications that do care how many honorable kills you've acquired. Let's take a look behind the cut and talk over some of the most common questions you'll find on raiding applications, and what you should consider when answering those questions. Of course, before we do that, remember: the best advice is to be honest, open, and avoid being tricksy.
Ready Check: Raiding debuffs and the final key to synergy
We've spent the last two weeks talking about the core raiding buffs, the eclectic raiding buffs, and how those combine to create synergy in your raid. The final step of that Voltron-esque sum-being-greater-than-the-parts are the host of debuffs that your raid can put out. The thing about debuffs, though, is that many have to be actively applied. Sure, folks like paladins spam their Judgments at all costs, so the debuff associated with that spell is certainly going to be nearly always present. But what about a rogue's Expose Armor? Does that really have a solid place in their rotation? If a rogue has to go out of their way in order to Expose Armor (and they do), then you have to sort out how much DPS you lose from the rogue changing their rotation. Is that loss really worth having the debuff present for your raid? Equations like that is the stuff Elitist Jerks is made up of. Nonetheless, if you can manage to squeeze in all of your debuffs (or even most), your raid is going to have a vast performance improvement. Let's take a look behind the jump, and see who lays which debuffs down on the hapless and helpless boss.
Raid Rx: Things that change your healing priority
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. This post is aimed for the newer healers who have just started to enter raids or already have entered raids but are still struggling in some areas. It will be relevant for the tank or the raid healer. Okay, so here is the premise of this week's post. When we heal, we generally have our own assigned targets. Certain players and roles are generally ranked higher than others. This list is the way it is largely due to what their purpose is in the raid. This post idea came about after I finished writing the recent The Light and How to Swing It for ret paladins. When I wrote the section on abilities and rotations, it got me thinking. Healers don't exactly have a spell rotation but we do have target preferences. Now obviously tanks get immediate priority than others. I would also venture a guess and say that in most cases, healers would be right behind them followed by the rest of the DPS. However, there are things you can influence and factors out of your control that will affect which players in the raid you should focus on. Let us make the assumption that you're working on a progression fight of some sort. You're not exactly brute force healing the raid. The emphasis is on keeping players alive as opposed to keeping them all topped off.
Spiritual Guidance: Flaying Sindragosa (and friends)
Welcome back to Fox Van Allen's twisted, shadow-ish version of Spiritual Guidance, once again rescued from the diseased, holy mind of Dawn Moore. Presumably, she's currently languishing inside one of Sindragosa's Ice Tombs. I'd totally DPS her out of there, but according to the TV, this Slap Chop thing is a limited time offer, so I've really got to move if I want to get one. Bet she wishes she had Dispersion right about now. I could have sworn there was some kind of dragon encased in ice around here. Really. What's that? They chiseled it out of ice and moved it to Icecrown Citadel? The hell? When did that happen? December, you say? Those shambling horrors must shamble fast when I'm not looking. Or maybe I was just too drunk over the holidays to notice. Anyway. This bone dragon thing, it's not evil, is it? Oh. It is. Damn. Okay, I guess we'll go kill it. But first, we'll make this stop off and heal some generic green dragon we've never even heard of before, just to keep it from turning into some boss we'll have to fight later. Shadow priests, gather round as we storm the Frostwing Halls! We'll collect some fine loot! We'll also answer -- or at least ponder -- some existential questions. "Why can you Mind Flay a block of ice when it doesn't have a mind to flay? Why can you disease it?" All this after the break.
Ready Check: Raid buffs for great justice
Last week, we talked about the core buffs just about every raid needs to get by. I included the 3% damage buff provided by some folks like retribution paladins. While ample raids get by without that buff, it's so straightforward that I felt it merited inclusion. It affects physical DPS characters, tanks, and magical DPS characters all alike, so is fairly universal. Of course, I didn't mention a lot of other obvious buffs like Arcane Intellect. While I'll certainly admit I can't recall having been on a raid in while without that buff, I'm pretty sure at least a few 10-man groups have gone without a mage. But that's why, this week, we're picking up the remainder of the raid buffs that provide so much synergy for raids. As Brian Wood pointed out, raid buffs are some of the most drastic increases available in raid performance. Every class's power soars while under the effects of raid buffs (and while their targets are getting debuffed), and it's this synergy that makes raids successful. That's by design: Blizzard wants us to be exponentially more powerful while grouping with other players. The power of two players in a group is greater than the sum of their parts. With all that in mind, let's jump behind the cut and start going down the other important raid buffs.
Lich King strategy and tutorial video
The video embedded above, WoW.com's Lich King Tutorial, marks the arrival of Jerome Phillips (also known as Vodka's Kinaesthesia) to our team. He has a lot of talent and a lot of ideas, so we're happy to have him. You've probably seen some of his work before, most notably his trailer for Patch 3.3's Frozen Halls. This Lich King tutorial is just the first of many projects we'll be doing together, so we hope you enjoy it and find it useful. Due to the length of the encounter (and thus the tutorial), it has been split into two parts. The first part is above, and the second part is behind the cut below. As is true with all things in life, these videos are best when viewed in HD. This video is just the beginning of a larger project here at WoW.com. We're working to bring more video content to the site in all areas, raids and otherwise. We have big plans for Cataclysm in particular. With this in mind, we've made it a point to make our video content easier to find and navigate. Any videos made by the WoW.com staff will be posted to our new YouTube channel rather than scattered across the staff's personal channels willy-nilly as they have been in the past. Check it out, and if you're feeling especially kind, go ahead and subscribe, too.
Raid Rx: Healing Sindragosa
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. Sindragosa is easily the most agonizing boss in the entire instance. I personally thought Professor Putricide was bad but once I got to her chamber and started several attempts, my faith in myself was shattered. One of the big frustrations is that a player who is lagging or disconnecting can easily be the cause of a wipe. Sindragosa is not forgiving at all. You'll find her after you clear out the Nerubian trash room that's protecting her. Why she needs a bunch of undead spiders to act as her guardians, I will never know. Don't forget to activate the teleporter when you run into the area (It's on the left side when you enter). Once you've cleared out the whelps and the two mini-dragons in front, Sindragosa will come charging in. However, you can immediately run back through to the Nerubian trash room to get properly set up since she'll despawn. She'll reset allowing everyone to drink up and rebuff if necessary.
Ready Check: Core raid buffs
I've mentioned before that I'm a huge fan of Brian Wood's post Skill vs. gear. You should take the time to read through it if you haven't. However, in review, the basic premise of Brian's argument is that the largest DPS increases available to your raids are not directly based on gear. Instead, things like good rotations, talents, and ye-old "knowing your class" tend to have more to do with your damage than your gear. Brian takes it to another level, however, and points out the overwhelming effect your raid buffs will have on your damage. The same can be applied to healers and tanks. (The difference between an unbuffed tank and a tank who's sporting Commanding Shout, Fortitude, Gift of the Wild, and Kings is absolutely amazing.) With all that being said, hopefully everyone's got faith in the premise that "your raid buffs really, really matter." One of the fundamental design principles espoused by Ghostcrawler is that you should bring a player for their skill, not for their unique snowflake buffs (shaman have gotten a pass so far for Heroism, with a few different explanations). Most key buffs, debuffs, and such have duplication among multiple classes. Let's jump behind the cut and start looking at which vital buff and debuff.
Raid Rx: Healing Blood Queen Lana'thel
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. You'll find the Blood Queen at the top floor above the chamber that has the Blood Princes. She is the head boss in the wing and is one of the few encounters in the instance that drops tier 10 tokens. This will be a high stress encounter for healers as there is so much going on at once. Piece of cake? Oh you bet. The strain will be on your DPS players to take her down before the enrage. For us healers, we just have to stand on our head and balance raid health for about 5 minutes.
Ready Check: To Warsong or not to Warsong
For the first time this week, the Icecrown Citadel raid saw the addition of the "tugboat" buff known as Hellscream's Warsong and the Strength of Wrynn. Essentially, this buff will provide a 5% increase to raiders' damage, healing, and health. Over time, that percentage increase will eventually reach a 30% buff. For the purposes of this discussion, I'm going to call the buff "the Warsong," because "the Wrynn" just doesn't have the same ring to it. While I won't make the fallacy of trying to guess what the developers were thinking when they created this raiding buff, the Warsong will definitely have the effect of helping every person who wants to see Arthas die get the chance. That's a fantastic goal, and I think this buff is a pretty good way to do it. But it does have a few challenges. If you caught our initial post about these Icecrown Citadel buffs going live, you may have caught some of the argument that instantly sprouted in the comments. Is the Warsong tugboat "fair" for guilds that had been working on content previously? Will we be able to tell if a guild completed content using (or ignoring) the buff? Is there additional loot or Emblems of Frost for people who do the Icecrown content without using the buff? Ultimately, all these questions tend to boil down to pride. Many guilds are now struggling with the question of whether to take advantage of the buff, or whether they should skip it. One can easily consider it a blow to their pride if the cascading buff eventually enables you to conquer content with which you previously struggled. Is it your skill improving, or is it simply the spectre of Warsong hanging over your head? Take a look behind the jump, and let's talk about the dynamics of the Warsong a little further.
Spiritual Guidance: Raiding Icecrown Citadel, Part 2
Welcome to Spiritual Guidance with Fox Van Allen. Fox Van Allen is a caring nurturer, a member of several 12-step programs, but not a licensed therapist. He's going to do a great column on shadow priesting today. And he's gonna help people. Cause he's good enough, smart enough, and doggonit, people like him. Adjective-neutral news, everyone! A cadre of intrepid shadow priests cleared out the ramparts of Icecrown Citadel last week and are now preparing to strike at the heart of the Lich King's plague operations. This means taking on the fearsome Professor Farnsworth Putricide, but only after defeating his two mentally challenged children who seem to exist solely to fart, make "angry poo poo(s)," and eat up 15 minutes of your raid's time. At least you get to sift through their remains for new things to wear. Where's that laundromat in Dalaran again? As promised, follow me after the break for the shadow priest's guide to the Icecrown Plagueworks.
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.
Ready Check: Raid understudies and how to grow them
Ready Check is a column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Icecrown Citadel, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. As much as I'd like to think I'm an extremely dedicated and reliable guild member and as much as I live and breathe tanking in the end-game content, even I am forced to admit that I sometimes do that thing raid leaders dread most. I flake out. It's not like I'm lounging around my man cave, sipping an incredibly powerful beverage, and just spontaneously decide "I'm not going to raid tonight. Screw those 24 (or 9) other people." It's always a real life thing for me: I run late at work, I'm getting married, my cat's on fire. (I've missed three raids because my cats have caught themselves on fire. Once is funny, twice is a concern, but I don't think anyone believed me the third time.) But no matter how real and valid my reason for missing a raid, the fact still remains that I'm letting down a group of people. (Or, I'm letting down a group of friends if that's the flavor guild you're running.) Even worse, let's say I'm the main tank. Many raiding guilds use a deference-minded loot system: "main" specs get the loot for their role first, before people who only fill that role on occasion. So, not only is the raid missing a warm body, they're missing a warm body who is usually the most practiced at their role and the best geared for that role. It's a conundrum for every raid leader. You don't want to tell your Class A folks that if they miss a single raid, they'll find themselves benched. But at the same time, you're really out a whole lot of power by missing those folks. This problem is especially palpable for tanks and healers. That's not because DPS isn't important (it absolutely is), but because the tank and healer corp for raids tend to be much smaller. If you're missing one healer out of your 10 man raid, you're suddenly down 33% of your healing power. (Best case scenario might be you're putting the two-healer stress on someone, but that's still not great.) The only way you can mitigate your raid loss due to missing tanks and healers is to plan ahead. Let's take a look behind the cut and talk about how you can handle this issue.
Raid Rx: Frustrations of 2-healing a 10-player raid
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. This week, I'll be addressing the whole 2 healer thing in 10 mans. There are many things that just happen to annoy the living heck out of me and I wanted to get it out here to see if anyone else shared those frustrations with me. Who knows? Maybe I'm the only one. Maybe as a non-healer, you'll key in on several bad habits to make life easier for your healers. But two healing raids isn't quite the easiest thing to do in the world. Have to give a hat tip to Domni on Plus Heal since I know I'm not the only one who just wants to randomly rage out from time to time. So what greatly annoys me here?
Spiritual Guidance: Raiding Icecrown Citadel Part 1
Once, every week, Fox Van Allen takes control of Spiritual Guidance in an attempt to corrupt all the touchy-feely holy priests out there. I mean, seriously, you want to *heal* things? If you really wanted to heal, shouldn't you have rolled a shammy or something? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Icecrown Citadel. Over the next few weeks, Spiritual Guidance will be providing start-to-finish coverage of the Wrath of the Lich King's final and greatest raid instance. This week, we start at the very beginning. The first four battles were designed to be quite accessible to beginning raiders and PUGs, with a relatively low difficulty level as compared to the rest of the content inside. The encounters inside include a cuddly bone dragon monster thing (so cute!), what appears to be the result of Kel'Thuzad after his sex-change operation, a battle involving ROCKETBEARS, and... a lone orc -- against the might of the Alliance? Anyway. Step in, wipe your feet, and let's earn you that achievement that all those PUG raid leaders demand you have.
Ready Check: Blood Princes
Ready Check is a column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Icecrown Citadel, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. In every great raid, there is a council. Black Temple had the Illidari Council. Ulduar has the Iron Council. Icecrown Citadel chimes in to the chorus with the Blood Prince Council. They are three vampires who have been brought back (again) to serve the Lich King under Queen Lana'thel. These three Princes are Keleseth, Taldaram, and Valanar. The Blood Princes can be a difficult fight for many raids, forcing a ranged DPS to tank and for your entire raid to pitch in with handling adds. The challenge is that the Council is actually three different fights that swap phases according to which of the San'layn are empowered at the time. Let's take a look behind the jump and break down the individual pieces of this fight.
