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Ways to avoid LFR wipes
We all know that feeling of dread. The one when you zone into your LFR group, and see the aftermath of a wipe. People start leaving, your group that you've waited an hour for falls apart at the seams, and all because of a wipe. It seems that patience, while undoubtedly sill a virtue, is in short supply once players zone in to the Raid Finder. Players leave when wipes happen, and if I put on my impatient hat, it's not that hard to see why with the sheer duration of some Raid Finder battles. Certain fights seem to last forever. So, how do you avoid wipes in the Raid Finder? Check roles and readiness It's often the case that players in the Raid Finder aren't really paying attention just before a pull because of the group waiting while the tanks discuss strategy, or that the tank has zoned in, glanced at their panes, and gone barreling in without paying too much attention to the status of other players. As a result, a ready check is often a great idea. Fire one off just before the pull happens just to see whether people are paying attention, and to say "hey we're ready to go."
How do you feel about warming the bench?
You know how raid nights go. Sometimes you have the bare minimum of people showing up, and you're desperately trying to fill spots. And on some occasions, everyone inexplicably shows up at the same time. When you go from barely scraping by with eight or 22 to suddenly dealing with a glut of 15 to 25, obviously somebody's not making it into the mix. So how do you decide who? Some guilds simply go by attendance numbers; if you've shown up consistently, you're in. If you just happen to be making an appearance for farm night, you're out. Some guilds pick based solely on performance in the raid itself; if you're consistently pulling high DPS and not standing in fire, you're in. If you can't find your way out of a poison cloud with a map and GPS system showing you the way, you're out. But what do you do when you're the one being sat?
How encounter design plays into game balance
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. Questions, comments, or something you would like to see? Email me at tyler@wowinsider or message me on Twitter @murmursofadruid. Game balance is a very frequent topic when it comes to WoW. With every nerf or buff, there comes a vast explanation from the player base as to why it was and was not justified. Perhaps one of the most common lamentations regarding a nerf that we see is when Blizzard "nerfs PvE for the sake of PvP." While Blizzard does make PvP damage adjustments from time to time, there are far more damage changes that are made due to PvE concerns than there ever has been for PvP. It's an easy fallback to take up; blaming the aspect of the game which you don't actively take part in, yet it would be far more accurate for PvP players to complain about PvE. There's another trap that's easy to fall into: that PvE balance is easy to do. To be fair, balancing against Patchwerk encounters isn't that difficult, although you'll still never get it perfect, but WoW has only had a single Patchwerk encounter, and that was Patchwerk. For all the damage juggling that Blizzard does, the largest factor in game balance is always going to be the encounters themselves. Each fight has unique mechanics which mingles with the way specs operate and it is that which determines how a spec fairs just as much as any damage balancing on Blizzard's part.
The last gasp of 25-man raiding
Imagine you have been placed in front of two hedge mazes, both leading to the same wonderful prize at the end. It could be a car, money, a trip to an exotic location -- whatever you really want, for the purpose of this imaginary exercise, OK? So there are two mazes, each leading to the awesome prize, but as you look at those mazes, you realize one of them is twistier, longer, and has potentially more hazards in it. The other is difficult, to be sure -- but side by side, it's slightly less hazardous than the other. And they both lead to the exact same thing. So which maze do you take? Most people would much rather take that shorter, slightly less hazardous maze. I mean, if you've got two choices that get you to the same fabulous prize, you'd be out of your mind to take the difficult path, wouldn't you? Welcome to the debate of 10-man vs. 25-man raiding -- and the main reason why 25-man raids are slowly dying out.
Does a video game have to force us to make good choices?
Take a moment and picture this: There's a politician out there, a pretty sleazy politician, who is basically in a position of power to use that power to do whatever suits him or her best -- no regard for anyone that voted him into office, no real sense of caring for those he is supposedly serving. One day, someone comes up to that politician and says, "Hey man, I'll give you $3 million if you start taking an interest in your constituents and doing what is best for them, OK?" The politician agrees, takes the money, and promptly starts doing the right thing. Is that politician in the wrong? Or is that politician simply learning that if he behaves badly, he'll get a bribe to start behaving correctly? What's to stop him from behaving badly again, if he thinks he's going to get another $3 million out of the deal? More importantly, if all the other politicians out there see this guy get a bribe to behave like a decent politician and all of those politicians decide to start behaving badly in an effort to get that bribe for themselves, are they in the wrong?
Ready Check: The loss of itemization in Cataclysm
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. Questions, comments, or something you would like to see? Email me at tyler@wowinsider or message me on Twitter @murmursofadruid. Like it or not, there's one constant about raiding. No matter what your reason for raiding is, and no matter what joy you happen to get from it, there's only one thing that matters at the end of the day. Obviously, I'm talking about loot. Loot is the one thing that makes the raiding world go 'round. Sure, we raid for story, we raid for friends, we raid for challenges. All of that is well and good and makes for a nice, lovely, non-selfish story that we can tell the world. Who knows? It might even be true -- but there's no avoiding that loot is the result. Maybe that's why raiding has popularity issues. Maybe it isn't the experience so much as it is the reward. I suppose we'll never know -- at least, not from this Ready Check. No, no, instead there's there one part of loot issues that I really want to get into, the problem that has been plaguing Blizzard for this entire expansion: the lack of loot.
Is there such a thing as casually hardcore?
Once upon a time, I was an MC raider back in vanilla WoW. I raided six nights a week, three to four hours a night. My off night, Friday, was spent gathering plants in Felwood and other materials for potions and flasks. We busted our butts on completing progression content before anyone else on the realm, and if we couldn't manage that, before anyone else on our side of the faction fence managed to do so. Somewhere in the midst of AQ-40, the guild fell apart. People were just burnt out on way too much raiding and all the preparation involved in getting that raiding done successfully. These days, I raid three nights a week, three hours a night or so. To me, it's far, far more casual than what I used to do. I don't spend a ton of time on farming materials, and I don't spend a ton of time on other things unless it happens to be in game holiday time. I don't usually run random instances unless I'm after something specific, and I don't really do PvP at all. I'd call myself casual, simply based on the time that I play and what I do with that time. Yet there are still plenty of people out there who fling the hardcore title at me. When I look at how I used to play and how I play now, I can't understand why anyone would think what I'm doing now is anything but casual, and I'm confused as to why anyone would say differently.
Ready Check: Tiered raid progression vs. raid accessibility
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. Questions, comments, or something you would like to see? Email me at tyler@wowinsider or message me on Twitter @murmursofadruid. Let's do a little bit of polling in my head, shall we? How many of you raided during vanilla? Not all that many, I'm sure, and not purely because not that many folks from that time are still around but also because a horridly low number of people who were around back then did raid. But let's say you did raid. How many actually got to clear through the original Naxx? Now, that's a small number of hands; after all, even Blizzard said that less than 1% of the player base so much as downed a single boss in the that instance. Moving on to The Burning Crusade, how many raided there? More hands that previously, I'm sure. Now how many of you progressed past Karazhan? How many cleared through Black Temple? Sunwell? Let's keep getting more current, though. How many say Naxx in Wrath? Now how many saw ICC? OK, how many say any T11 content? How many of those saw Dragon Soul? Interesting! The number of hands gets progressively smaller as the raids within vanilla WoW and The Burning Crusade progress, yet it stays relatively the same throughout Wrath and Cataclysm. That's because in Wrath, Blizzard drastically changed its view on raiding -- far beyond merely making it easier.
Why we need difficult raid encounters
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. Questions, comments, or something you would like to see? Email me at tyler@wowinsider or message me on Twitter @murmursofadruid. Welcome back again, raiders. Last session, we discussed those things that make a raid fun. Fun, as with many subjects, is a highly personal experience, and the simple matter is that not everyone finds even the concept of raiding itself very fun. This week, I want to continue with that discussion but in a different topic of course. Fun is merely a single part of raiding; another side of it is difficulty. Difficulty comes in many shapes and sizes, not all of which are exclusive to one another. Further, difficulty often gets a rather tough rap in terms of how it influences a player's experience. Often, when we hear the word difficulty, we think of bosses that are just downright annoyingly hard. We envision these impossible encounters that act as roadblocks toward progression that end up only frustrating raiders. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Lichborne: Siege of Wyrmrest Raid Finder advice for the death knight
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. Once you've finished the new patch 4.3 dungeons and gained a bit of loot from them, you may ask yourself: What's next? One of the most obvious answers is the Raid Finder tool. You'll get better loot and faster valor point gain, as well as some starting experience in the raid game if you ever get the desire or chance to join an organized raiding group. Still, the idea of heading into a raid (even a simple one) can be a little daunting, so today I'd like to help allay your fears by giving you a quick look at the first of the Raid Finder scenarios, the Siege of Wyrmrest. Before we get into the boss strategies, though, there are a few things you should get down. Make sure your gear's good enough. If you can, get it gemmed (with strength gems) and enchanted. While you can head into Raid Finder as low as ilevel 372, don't be afraid to pick up an extra piece of gear or two from the heroic dungeons. A good weapon upgrade, for example, will do wonders for your DPS. If you can afford them, consider grabbing some consumables. A Flask of Steelskin and some Lavascale Minestrone for tanks or a Flask of Titanic Strength and some Beer-Basted Crocolisk for DPS will put your performance at the next level, and for a good group, you'll only need one flask to face the whole dungeon. Morchok's easy enough that sometimes I save the flask until we engage the second boss, just to make sure it stretches. Follow your raid leader. A raid is only as good as its raid leader and its members' abilities to follow their raid leaders' instructions, even in Raid Finder. Use these boss strategies, but defer to your raid leader where you can. They don't always know what they're doing, but in Raid Finder, sometimes that doesn't matter; either way, the more everyone works together, the easier things become. Don't Panic and don't get uptight. This is a pickup group, so things will go wrong and people will randomly drop between groups. Just stay loose, have fun, and be prepared to wait a bit for replacements in between each boss. Griping just makes it less fun for everyone.
WoW Insider's guide to Warlord Zon'ozz
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. Questions, comments, or something you would like to see? Email me at tyler@wowinsider or message me on Twitter @murmursofadruid. Unlike the other encounters in Dragon Soul, Warlord Zon'ozz only requires a single tank. For cooldown purposes, it is possible to bring in a second tank; however, there isn't too much of a need to do so. Per usual, you will want to have around five to six healers. Switch your off tank for an additional healer if you feel that would help. Your DPS should be a solid mix of both ranged and melee; there does need to be a solid balance of both. Healers should be split among the DPS, with tank healers staying with the melee. Abilities Zon'ozz doesn't have all that many abilities, but he's still a hands-on encounter. Most of your time will be spent watching the Void of Unmaking and bouncing it back and forth. Healers will focus more on clearing away Disrupting Shadows. For once, tanks probably have the easiest time on this encounter, only really having to watch out for a single ability that occurs about once per phase or so.
WoW Insider's guide to Morchok
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. Questions, comments, or something you would like to see? Email me at tyler@wowinsider or message me on Twitter @murmursofadruid. Greetings raiders, and welcome to WoW Insider's raid boss strategy guides! With the release of 4.3 and the new Dragon Soul raid, we're finally onto the last bastion of evil in this expansion. Finally we are given the chance to face down Deathwing himself and end his destructive madness. Before we can reach this cataclysmic destroyer, though, we'll first have to break the siege upon Wyrmrest Temple and battle our way through the most powerful minions the Destroyer has in his arsenal. The first of this is Morchok, a giant earth elemental that is assaulting the front gates, as it were, of the Temple itself. Although not challenging for the first encounter of the raid, this pile of rocks isn't going down without a fight. Are you prepared to break yourselves upon his body? (Oh, wait ... that's a different encounter, isn't it?)
The return of raid stacking?
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. Questions, comments, or something you would like to see? Email me at tyler@wowinsider or message me on Twitter @murmursofadruid. Many people are currently all in a tizzy over the recently released ability lists and talent trees for all of the classes in the next expansion. I suppose I too am no different in this respect. Yet while all others are in their throes of joy (or desperately pleading for changes), I am struck with a thought, a concern if you will, that leaves me slightly worried for the future of raiding. At some point in time, a great wise man once said that we are doomed to repeat history and all that jazz often if we fail to remember it. Sometimes I feel that he is only half right. Much like Know Your Lore, this week is something of a tinfoil-hat deal, meaning that it's all speculation on my part. I could be wrong -- in fact, this time around I beg to be incorrect -- but I am merely reporting what it is that I see trending. Take it all with a grain of salt.
Ready Check: Cleaning up issues with Raid Finder
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. Questions, comments, or something you would like to see? Email me at tyler@wowinsider or message me on Twitter @murmursofadruid. Last week, we talked about a few of the issues that are currently speculated for Blizzard's new Raid Finder tool that is being released within the next patch. Specifically, that discussion was about raid size and raid leadership; however, these are not the only concerns that people have. The Raid Finder is a rather charged topic within the community, for a wide variety of reasons, all depending on whom you ask. This week, we will be wrapping up the discussion as best can be done as I attempt to address the remaining issues that people have put forward. Before we begin, let me say that, until this all goes live, we cannot accurately judge the success or failure of the tool. The Dungeon Finder, similarly, had a significant amount of backlash and down talk before it was released, yet most people now wouldn't play without it -- just to put everything in perspective.
Ready Check: The human element of the Raid Finder
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. Questions, comments, or something you would like to see? Email me at tyler@wowinsider or message me on Twitter @murmursofadruid. These past few weeks have been quite the doozy here for Ready Check as we've discussed the future of raiding in Pandaria followed by the more current notion of raid accessibility, two seemingly different topics that are heavy intertwined. This week, we'll be brushing into another similar topic as we delve into the newest tool that Blizzard is releasing in order to increase raid accessibility across the board: the new Raid Finder. Currently on the PTR, the Raid Finder has been running rather hit or miss with some of the playerbase at the moment. A few are avid PTR-goers, while others have only just now popped into the process. For either group, they certainly don't have a lack of being vocal on the forums. Despite what problems some players have been raising, I feel and have experienced that the Raid Finder tool will go over amazingly well. A lot of the complaints that we hear now are the exact same ones that were given for the Dungeon Finder when it was being released, and while not everything from 5-man content transitions to raids, both will have the same success. Join me as I defend the single tool that I will probably never use in this game.
Ready Check: Looking at raid accessibility
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. Questions, comments, or something you would like to see? Email me at tyler@wowinsider or message me on Twitter @murmursofadruid. Last week, we brushed upon the topic of what the next expansion might hold for raiding. Specifically, the talk centered around the concept that raiding cannot be Blizzard's sole focus any more. As much effort as has been put into raiding, not every player is capable of getting involved with it. The argument was that Blizzard needed to focus on other content for max-level players aside from raiding and questioned what impact that would have on raiding overall. First, at little bit of information. The blog Player vs. Auction House went off the norm and provided a little bit of numbers gleamed from WowProgress about T11 raiding before 4.2. While there is some interesting data as it relates to last week's topic, that isn't the focus I want to bring up. An argument was put forth that Cataclysm raiding is less accessible today than it previously was. I feel this is a great topic to delve right into this week.
Ready Check: Looking into the future of raiding
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. BlizzCon 2011 was a great source of new information for a lot of players. One of the things that Blizzard didn't really speak about, however, was the future of raiding in the next expansion and beyond. Since The Burning Crusade, Blizzard has made enormous strides in changing the face of endgame content. It started with the reduction from 40-man raiding to 25-man raiding along with the introduction of 10-man raiding. In Wrath, we saw an even larger change, with every raid having a 10-man option that allowed even greater access to the raiding scene than ever before. Now, 10-man and 25-man are, to Blizzard at least, considered to be on equal footing. With each expansion has come a drastic change to the raiding scene, yet nothing was announced for the next game. This leaves us rather up in the air as to where Blizzard intends to take the raiding scene. WoW is becoming a game of accessibility, where the end goal is to make the largest amount of content available to the widest audience. In light of this, it is time that we don our tin foil hats in taking a look at what the future might hold for raiding players of WoW.
Twice-weekly raid resets being tested in Taiwan and Korea starting this week
Here's some relatively crazy news that's just been posted on the Taiwanese Battle.net site: All patch 4.0 and 4.2 raid dungeons -- that is, every Cataclysm raid up to Firelands -- will reset twice a week, once on Thursday and once on Sunday. This change will not apply to the Deathwing raid, which will reset once a week as usual, nor will the weekly valor point cap be changing. The change is, according to the post, meant to allow people to gear up faster by killing bosses twice as often. There is currently no word on whether this will play solely to Taiwanese servers, or to all regions. If it does come to U.S. servers, it is likely our reset will revolve around Tuesday downtime, making the ideal second-reset day Friday. Check after the break for a quick and dirty Google translation of the post. UPDATE: Community Manager Zarhym has posted the following: 4.0 and 4.2 Raids to reset twice a week? The new raid lockout changes for Taiwan and Korea adjust the lockout timers for the patch 4.0 and 4.2 raids. The lockout timers for these raids will now reset twice weekly instead of once. These raid lockout changes are being made to allow players to raid more often and get more chances at epic loot drops. Players will be able to down current Cataclysm raid bosses twice a week, accelerating players' progression. We are testing these new raid lockout changes in Taiwan and Korea first. Our goal is to expand this change to other regions in the future, but we don't have anything further to announce at this time with regard to North American implementation. source
Ready Check: How legendaries destroy PVE
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. By now, everyone is familiar with the bitter arguments that follow the release of any legendary weapon. There are always the petty squabbles over who should get it first, which class or spec gains the most benefit from it, even down so much as to who should be allowed to get the item at all. Beyond those things, there is always the riled-up PVP crowd. PVP doesn't offer itemization or choices to mirror or match legendary items by any means, and every legendary item has long been a must-have for any serious PVPer. Basically, you have a legendary, you rock face without even questioning it; without one, well, you just better pray you end up matched on equal footing. Every legendary has done this, and each one has created a new controversy, yet no one ever gives any consideration to the opposing side of the game. Yes, legendaries come from PVE, and any raider can technically get one with dedication, but they have just as of an unbalancing impact on the raiding scene as they do the PVP-verse. This week, we'll be looking into those negative reactions.
Ready Check: What to do when there's no raiding left
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. As we all sit by our computers, patiently awaiting for some news about the oncoming patch wherein we get to finally kill that blazing dragon that has been a bane upon all my alts for the entire expansion, it can be difficult sometimes to find things to do. Sure, there's still a raid that not everyone has completed on heroic difficulty -- in fact, most people haven't -- yet what statistics we have access to shows that not every raid group has any interest in heroic raids. Some raid groups just want to clear out normal and be done with it. With only seven bosses to tackle, clearing our Firelands certainly isn't an all-week affair. What to do then when the current raiding content is cleared? The number of bosses in Firelands isn't really a major concern; even with nearly double that in the first raiding tier of this expansions, several raiding groups would clear out everything available well before weekly resets. Keeping your raiders engaged in content while not overwhelming them is just as much the job of the raid leader as it is Blizzard's. There is a lot of content out in the world of Azeroth -- years worth, in fact. It's up to you to exploit it all.
