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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.
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.
Ready Check: AVR is dead -- what did we learn?
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. Blizzard announced last week that the mod known as Augmented Virtual Reality will be broken and non-functional as of the release of patch 3.3.5. We'll get into some of the details here in a second or three, but this officially means that if you're using AVR to work on Icecrown Citadel, you're officially using a mod or method in a way that Blizzard does not intend. It doesn't mean you're exploiting or cheating, necessarily, but it does mean that you're not quite straight-shooting the encounters the way the game is meant to be played. Your mileage may vary on whether you care. If you're not familiar with AVR or AVR Encounters, it's probably fairly important for you to understand the mods for the context of this conversation. AVR, at its base, lets you draw stuff on the screen. These drawings will be seen by everyone else in the raid. Even more importantly, the combination of mods has the ability to draw stuff for you. If you're going to emanate a 10-yard circle of death around you in the next seven seconds, AVR will draw a 10-yard circle around you that everyone can see. Plenty of warning, ample visibility. Why does it matter?
Ready Check: Zen and the art of precognition
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. Your regular host, Mr. Michael Gray, is still trying to fight his way out of Tyler's fever dreams, so Ready Check this week has fallen to me. I had to check in the blackened heart and the mage-hate on the way in, so if you want that stuff, you'll have to read Blood Pact. I toyed with the idea of doing some hardcore theorycrafting post or the like, but instead I want to talk about one of the raiding "soft skills." Hamlet said, "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!" Today, we look at angelic actions through godlike apprehension.
Ready Check: You're fired, redux
Unfortunately, regular Ready Check author Michael Gray is a bit preoccupied this week. I've been told it has something to do with exploring lost pastafarian ruins that may lead to new information regarding raptor Jesus, but that may have just been a bad dream that I had. In the meantime, I am here to save you from all of your raiding woes. There's no case too big, no case too small -- when you need help, just give me a call! Using my patent pending way-back machine, I want us all to travel back in time to November 2009 when Michael released this article dealing with how to terminate a raid member from your team. All of the information and advice in that column are still very relevant to this day; however, there is a small issue that Mr. Gray did not address at that time. I am, of course, talking about what to do when you have a raid member you wish to terminate, but feel that your guild is currently not capable of handling the loss. It's the end of an expansion once again, and the same problems that plagued guilds during the months before The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King are hitting us all now. Raiding guilds by the dozen are finding their member rosters slowly trickling away. As Cataclysm draws ever nearer, many players are losing their interest in the raiding scene – at least temporarily. Recruitment is down across the board, and even some of the high-end guilds are having difficulties finding replacement raiders this late in the game. In such a system as this, it is very easy for any raiding guild to dissolve into anarchy. There isn't going to be another raiding tier released, there won't be another year's worth of content to explore and players are just generally losing interest in raiding.
Ready Check: Trading up from 10 to 25
With all of the officially announced changes to emblems and raid sizes, it seems like the day of 25-man dominance is nearly over. Sure, from what we know, 25-man raids will continue to provide the best path to getting fully geared the most quickly. However, you will no longer be forced to raid 25-man to get your various best-in-slot gear. I've always been a bit agnostic when it comes to raid size. I tend to do both versions, because I want to put out the best performance possible for my raid and friends. In the current game, the best performances comes from 25-man gear. Even if you have the one or two best-in-slot pieces in 10-man fights, I don't think anyone can realistically claim 10-man gear is as effective as 25-man kits. Sure, I'm open to the argument that 25-man raids are more difficult to organize, but I'm not exactly sure when "dealing with a pain in the butt" became a virtue in something that's supposed to be fun. Even more, it's not like every single person in that 25-man raid is dealing with the the same organizational pain. That's the job of the raid leaders. With those factors being acknowledged, I've always preferred to rock out with a handful of friends and truly have a good time. I still do 25-man raids for the gear and prestige, but it is kind of a bummer to be forced into the larger raids. So, at the end of the day, I'm fairly pleased that 10-man and 25-man raiders are going to be treated with a level of equality. But it does mean that now's a great time to upgrade your raid to a 25-man group if you're going to do so. By the time Cataclysm hits, I don't suspect many raiders will be yearning to start a new large-scale raid. It's more likely that 25-man raids will break down to 10-man raids than vice versa. If you don't get your 25-man raid started now, you might miss your chance. So, let's talk about how to upgrade your raid from 10 to 25.
Ready Check: Dealing with disruptive raid members
My primary guild has always traditionally worked with raiding alliances -- that is, two or more guilds who agree to raid together. It tends to go pretty well for us, since we happen to be a large group of relatively highly skilled players. What's more, we're packing all the healers, tanks and key buffs required to make a raid get up and go. We usually top the theoretical DPS for our progression levels and really just need to make enough friends to keep our raids full. It's a pretty good position to be in, if you're going to be setting up a raiding alliance. But, it doesn't always go so smoothly. Don't get me wrong. If you take the time to talk to applicants, make sure they know the rules of the group and have a general idea of how to do their dance steps, then things usually go smoothly. And since the dozen or so of the core group are doing most of the heavy lifting, there's not a whole lot that can go wrong. But sometimes, just sometimes, you get that one dude who's just completely off the rails. They can be a perfectly awesome player. Skilled, geared and knowledgeable. But they just won't shut up. You can beg, cry, bargain, plead, demand, threaten and cajole for them to tone their behavior down. But everything they say is offensive, and they like to say a whole lot of it. So how do you deal with this? Dealing with an obnoxious raid member is a little different than dealing with an obnoxious guild member, because there's an entire additional issue of immediacy. You have to handle this guy now, on the raid, before it progresses into something that disrupts your ability to kill bosses.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ready Check: The long bleak winter of spontaneous raiding
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. You might have heard that the east coast recently got slammed by an epic blizzard. Sure, sure, you folks out in Minnesota or Wisconsin are used to getting 50 inches of snow in the middle of summer. Heck, August only means your snowfall dwindles to a mere two or three inches. But out here on the right coast, from about Baltimore down to Florida, "snow" is something that we mostly see inside globes and Northrend. The last few weeks, however, have been so thick with the white stuff that many, many, many players are trapped in their homes. And they turn to a very natural, time-killing past time: World of Warcraft. The real issue with this snowy dynamic is that it led to a lot of people looking to spontaneously raid. In the middle of a Wednesday isn't when folks usually schedule their Icecrown Citadel raid. But this small legion of snow-stranded folks often already had pre-planned raids scheduled for the evenings. They were forced to look back at available content and try and figure out "What can we do as a group, without impeding already-set plans for our normal raid?" While I bring this subject up because I was one of the many trapped indoors by the Snowpocalypse, you will probably find dozens of reasons you need to come up with a spontaneous raid or two. Heck, maybe you just find yourself with a Friday night free. Take a look behind the jump and let's talk about what to do if you find yourself snowed in but wanting to raid.
Ready Check: Professor Putricide
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. 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's 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. Let's take a look behind the jump and talk about the fight in more detail.
