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Ready Check: On damage meters
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. The smell of fresh territory. I have to say, despite being the most hated writer on the WoW Insider staff, there's nothing like writing under a new heading, no matter whether it be temporary or more permanent. While I love my other projects on the site, there's something ... thrilling when you get to write about a new topic. It's like buying a new car or getting a new apartment. You just love the thrill of new. In his goodbye but not farewell post, Mr. Gray listed five lessons that he had learned during his time writing Ready Check. For any who read my other works, you probably guess that I agree with his statements for the large part. There is one point that he made that struck a controversial chord with some of our readers: meters. People love their meters; people hate their meters. Many of us would love to play in a game where such things didn't exist, while the same number would probably make them required. What's a player to do?
Ready Check: 5 lessons learned from our readers
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. It feels like time has flown by me. I suppose that's the way things go when you're having fun. I've been writing Ready Check for two years; I started when we were all staring in awe at the magnificent architecture of Ulduar. Since then, my time in this column has been fun, a struggle, elating, and depressing. It is now, however, simply time to move on. I'm still raiding, and clearly I'm not leaving WoW Insider. But after two years, it's time to have someone else grab the steering wheel and help out the raids of Azeroth. Tyler Caraway will be laying down his DOT-laden wisdom in these hallowed halls, and I truly do believe he's going to do a great job. If you do a half-decent job of writing, you'll find yourself learning from your readers. I think it's a requisite for this job ... Are you listening to what people are saying? In the time I've been at the helm of Ready Check, I've certainly learned from you folks. I will now share those lessons as my parting "thank you" to the people who've made it worthwhile.
Ready Check: When you disagree with your raid leader
Ready Check helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week for the latest pointers on killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won't drop. A good friend and colleague, Mr. Matt "The Matticus" Low, recently recieved the following question: "I consistently disagree with my [raid leader] on raid decisions and I know I can do a better job. What do I do?" Matt's a man of few words. He's like a healing cowboy from the old (Canadian) West, riding into town on the horse of common sense. Hearts break at his passing, and bad guys (of poor logic) fall at his feet. His response was simple, borrowing the words of ancient wisdom from Lao-tzu: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. What he meant by that, of course, is that if you can't agree with your raid leader on anything and you think you can do a better job, then you should go do that job: Start your own raid. While Matt summed it up pretty easily, it's like I said -- he's a man of few words. I'm a tad more verbose.
Ready Check: Dealing with a failing second raid group
We recently received this mail from a reader, who's struggling to keep his raid group afloat. Let's get right into it. We'll leave the reader anonymous. I'm writing to you as an officer in a guild and a raid leader for one of two groups in said guild. Originally, our group struggled for numbers, mostly filled by alts from the other group. Then, we entered a golden age of progress, gaining several members who regularly attended. Then, we lost several to another guild. Then several more ceased regularly attending. Alts became less reliable. Several new recruits joined, and never show up for raids. Yet every new recruit, we check availability, everyone's availability for 2/3 raid nights ... I'm flabbergasted, and frustrated, with a hodgepodge group every night of non-ideal compositions born of necessity, less than ideal members not properly geared and less than committed to raiding, because we have no choice. We're not picking and choosing between members, we're taking whoever is available, which is usually just barely 10.
Ready Check: Soothe the savaged nerves
Some time between Naxxramas and Blackwing Descent, raid fights got a little more complicated. We left behind the careful Heigan dance, in which you simply avoided fire, in favor of the Omnotron Defense System, which has a dozen bells and whistles, lasers flying about, and fire you avoid as well as fire you do stand in. For better or for worse, modern raids have a lot going on. It's like standing in the middle of a laser light show programmed by a hyperactive teenager fueled solely by adrenaline, Mountain Dew, and giddy excitement about the new season of Doctor Who. With all this happening, it can be easy for a raider to get rattled. Especially following wipe after wipe, pressure builds up as the raider tries to overcome the challenge. That pressure, coupled with all the crazy spell effects and raw confusion, simply leaves the raider frazzled, stressed, and at the end of his rope. While it's probably not the most glorious task, it falls on the raid leader to help folks stay focused and calm. Let's talk about how to handle the frazzled raider.
Ready Check: Get ready for raiding changes in patch 4.1
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. Signs are pointing to the release of patch 4.1 soon. While there's a lot going on in the first content patch of Cataclysm, there are no new raids. The reason for that is that general progression hasn't sufficiently conquered contemporary content; it's still a little too soon for a whole new raid tier. But as with most things in the delicate ecosystem of WoW, you can't make many changes without those changes impacting other arenas of gameplay. There aren't new raids, but there are more than enough changes in patch 4.1 that raiding will be affected. The biggest impact on raiding probably comes from valor point changes. If you're like me, you probably have trouble logging in every single day to accrue valor points. As of patch 4.1, you'll be able to run your daily random dungeons in batches. You can manage your play time without being forced to do a dungeon every day, as if it were some household chore. This is a huge benefit to raids, since many raid members will now be able to pick up their full allowance of weekly valor points. More points translates into more gear, which will also translate into more progression. This is a change I've been hoping to see since Wrath, and I'm incredibly thankful to Blizzard for making random dungeon life more manageable.
Ready Check: The morning after a bad raid
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. It happens. Your raids are doing well, you're making good use of your time, and progression is happening. Then, all at once, you have a bad night. The exact reasons you have a bad night are wide and varied. Your tank might be having trouble picking up adds, your healers might be out of synch, or maybe your DPS isn't pulling the numbers needed for the boss fights. Raiding is complex enough that there are plenty of moving parts to go radically, radically wrong. A bad night isn't much of a challenge, in and of itself. The lost time isn't the end of the world, and you can always pick it up another night. Sure, if you're racing for a realm first or something, you could lose ground. But for most raids, that kind of competition isn't really an issue. The real danger that stems from a bad night is its harm to morale. Especially if you have raid members who take each raid night very seriously, then the mistakes and painful moments get overanalyzed and picked apart. Analysis is good, but dwelling on a fluke failings can wreck a good environment. So when you have a bad raid, the morning after becomes incredibly important.
Ready Check: Understanding boss positioning
Ready Check helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week for the latest pointers on killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won't drop. I have a few friends who usually play ranged classes but have now decided to try the wild, wonderful world of tanking. They're good players with a solid background in the math and mechanics of the game. They have solid reflexes and generally try to do a good job. But for whatever reason, they've struggled as they learned how to tank. We spent some time chatting about raids, boss encounters, and the like. It was only after really getting into the setup of each boss that I realized the problem was boss positioning. I've been tanking for so long that I take boss placement and movement for granted. Experienced raid leaders and tanks take things like "dragon positioning" and "there's no cleave" to be shorthand for many factors. "Dragon positioning" is code language for "Aim the head away from the raid; it cleaves and tail swipes, so melee need to be at the 5 o'clock position." There's a lot more going on there than a new tank or raider might realize.
Ready Check: How to explain a fight
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. Sure, you hope everyone in your raid has read strategies and watched videos before each boss fight. But even if your folks have taken this critical step, that doesn't mean they really understand the material. Here's why: Some of the boss fights in Cataclysm are confusing as heck. We'll use the Omnotron Defense System as an example here. Essentially, the Omnotron Defense System is a relatively simple council fight. Two robots are up at a time. Each one pops a shield periodically, timed according to when the new Tron has become active. Aside from that, it's fairly easy: Don't stand in stuff, kill the robots. You have to be ready to heal through Incineration Security Measures, because it does damage to the entire raid. Be ready to kill the slimes spawned by Poison Protocol. Of course, that's a simplification. You also need to get away from the raid when Acquiring Target takes place or if you get hit with Lightning Conductor. There are poison clouds the tank should put the boss in without being in it himself. And so on.
Ghostcrawler blogs about raid progression
After a bit of a hiatus as a public face, Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has returned to us with a post on the WoW community website about the current state of raid progress in Cataclysm. After discussing dungeon difficulty, Ghostcrawler has set his sights on tackling players' responses to the current tier of Cataclysm raiding. Ghostcrawler discusses how there is a fine line between too easy and making the raid game feel shallow, as people want and expect a challenge but don't want to grow more and more frustrated over time as the tier of raiding winds to an end. The sweet spot, according to GC, is making it feel like every raid group can make some kind of progress. One very interesting point that Ghostcrawler makes is about encounters nerfing themselves over time, as people learn new strategies, disseminating those strategies amongst the player base, as well as UI mods. Making specific mention of UI mods lends to the overall theme that the UI is moddable for a reason. Also, as we have suspected, Blizzard does like to nerf content slowly over time so that accessibility continues to be the name of the game.
Ready Check: Run speed is nearly a requirement
Ready Check helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week for the latest pointers on killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won't drop. I want to talk about run speed this week -- what it does, why you should have it, and how to get it. Let's start at the top. When I reference run speed, I'm talking about persistent, always-on effects that make your character's unaltered form move faster. Mounts don't count. Shapeshifted forms don't count, unless you're always in that form. When you're in a boss fight and performing your role, run speed allows you to move faster without hitting any other button (including cooldowns like Darkflight). What run speed really does for you is get you out of danger faster. If you're trying to get away from a boss, out of fire, or away from a landmine, enhanced run speed will help get you to a safe place.
Ready Check: Using macros for raid calls
Ready Check helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week for the latest pointers on killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won't drop. We talked last week about raid calling. Even if every raid member has read up on the fights, watched videos, and has all of their addons installed, some well-timed raid calls can do a lot to help your raid work together. A problem presents itself if some raiders can't be in voice chat. While I'm sure there are dozens of folks eager to say "can't chat, shouldn't be in raid," the fact is that voice chat isn't always possible. There are medical reasons, lifestyle reasons, and even practicality issues. It happens. Maybe in a perfect world with blue skies, everyone is always in voice chat; but the reality is that you should have a method on hand to deal with voice chat failures. Some people simply can't hear the audio clearly, no matter how carefully and loyally they turn on the program. Typing in raids isn't universally feasible. Addons like Deadly Boss Mods handle a lot of the typing and calling work, so it's not all bad. But what you need is a quick and easy way to spam raid chat with your unique instruction. The answer to that need is to use macros during your raid.
Ready Check: Mastering the fine art of raid calling
Ready Check helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week for the latest pointers on killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won't drop. A few positions in raiding are universal. Tanks, healers, and damage dealers are people who fill roles that are absolute, predictable, and consistent in every single raid. Other positions aren't quite as universal, but they're so much a staple of raiding that everyone assumes you have one. Good examples of that kind of position are raid leader and master looter. Not everyone, however, has a raid caller. I've been using one for a few years, and I find it incredibly helpful. The raid caller is the person who calls out important cues and dance steps during a boss encounter. When the boss is about to do something like Deep Breath, the raid caller shouts out a verbal warning. Sure, mods like Deadly Boss Mods will tell you that a Deep Breath is about to happen, but not where it's coming from and where you should go. When you're highly focused on your tanking rotation, your masterful healing, or your precise execution of your damage rotation, it can be simply convenient to have someone calling out the moves. Like a square dancing caller, those verbal cues make a huge difference to your team's precision and effectiveness.
Ready Check: 10-mans and keeping your raid flexible
Ready Check helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week for the latest pointers on killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won't drop. If your guild is focused on 10-man content, there are a couple of numbers games that can keep you up at night. First, with 10 people able to go each night, your roster is going to be a little more delicate than that of 25-mans. Second, your raid composition is going to be critically important. Most of these problems are inherent to the format; with 10 people, each and every raider counts for 10% of your performance. Most 10-man raids have two tanks, 2.5 healers, and 5.5 damage dealers. That .5 person is someone who can switch back and forth between damage and healing, depending on which fight you're doing and whether you want the extra heals. So, let's take a look at how this makes up an attendance issue.
Ready Check: Give your progression a shot in the arm
Ready Check helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week for the latest pointers on killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won't drop. Progression can be a challenge. Your team seems to be trying hard, you have enough people to raid on the appropriate nights, and it even seems like everyone has read up on the fights. However, when it comes "go time," you still don't seem to be moving forward. The first step in resolving this problem is obviously to try and diagnose what's going wrong. That's a complicated enough issue for most folks. The bigger issue, though, is what you should do when it's no one's fault in particular. Maybe your raid doesn't have enough healers, or maybe it has too much melee. Maybe you're missing a vital raid buff, or perhaps not enough people are in advanced enough gear. What do you then? These things are clearly an issue to be resolved, but it's not a particular person's fault. You still need to address the problem.
Ready Check: Getting your raid going
I've seen a lot of discussion around WoW circles that seems to be saying the same thing: Folks are having trouble getting their raids into "go" mode. This is another way of saying that raiding isn't happening as smoothly as it used to. People aren't signing up, aren't geared, or just don't seem in the mood. Even many seasoned players managed to burn themselves out at the beginning of Cataclysm and are now lackluster about doing the actual raiding content. Whatever the cause, raid leaders are being challenged getting their raids started. Even beyond that, once players are inside the doors of a raid instance, things aren't going as well. It seems like raid members aren't familiar with the fights, or maybe there's just not enough DPS. Maybe raiders can't quite tell if tanks are dying because the tanks are too squishy, or maybe the healers haven't adjusted to Cataclysm yet. The first message is: It's okay. You're not alone. It's not just you. Many players are having these problems, and lots of people are struggling with the issue. But there are things you can do about it.
Ready Check: WoW Insider's Guide to Throne of Four Winds
The Throne of Four Winds is a bite-sized raid with only two real fights. Despite its low number of bosses, the Throne of Four Winds can be very challenging to raid groups. This is because the mechanics of each fight require a lot of coordination and precise maneuvering. In the first encounter, the Conclave of Wind, you must split your raid into three parts. There are three bosses on three different platforms. Your team must be able to move across the platforms in a coordinated way and react to what the bosses are doing. Movement of this kind can be very disorienting for a raid, so folks who aren't comfortable with the dance steps could have some trouble. The second encounter is against Al'Akir. It's a three-phase fight and ends in three-dimensional space. Interestingly, Al'Akir combines the "fire wall" mechanic from Sartharion as well as the "fly around" mechanic from Malygos. Again, if you had trouble with those fights, you'll probably be challenged here also. That being said, Al'Akir is a pretty fun and engaging encounter. WoW Insider's Guide to Conclave of Wind WoW Insider's Guide to Al'Akir Ready Check shares all the strategies and inside information you need to take your raiding to the next level. Be sure to look up our strategy guides to Cataclysm's 5-man instances, and for more healer-centric advice, visit Raid Rx.
WoW Insider's Guide to the Conclave of Wind
The Conclave of Wind is the first fight in the Throne of Four Winds. In general, we refer to the three platforms as Wind, Nature, and Frost. You'll need one tank at least at the Frost and Nature platforms.
WoW Insider's Guide to Magmaw
Magmaw is the first boss in Blackwing Descent. You can do Magma with a single tank, if that tank can muscle through getting eaten. If not, you'll need a second tank to help relieve pressure during the "oh my god, I've been eaten" phase.
WoW Insider's Guide to Blackwing Descent
Blackwing Descent is an interesting new raid instance. This isn't merely because it's a new instance for Cataclysm but because it draws on the heritage of the game, going all the way back to a showdown with Nefarian in Blackwing Lair. But Blackwing Lair was just a setback. Deathwing has raised his little boy and girl back from the grave, and they're all zombie and angry at the world. So you and 9 (or 24) of your best friends need to go kill everyone in the Blackwing Descent and make things right again. Check out our strategy guides, below, to get the skinny on how to beat down the bosses all the way up to and including the big, bad Nefarian. Magmaw Omnotron Defense System Maloriak Atramedes Chimaeron Nefarian Ready Check shares all the strategies and inside information you need to take your raiding to the next level. You might also be interested in our strategy guides to Cataclysm's 5-man instances, and for more healer-centric raiding advice, visit Raid Rx.
