Filed under: Ready Check (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.

When Cataclysm was being developed, Blizzard announced a lot of changes that they would be making to the raiding scene. Specifically, 10- and 25-man raids would now essentially be considered one and the same. They would share the same lockout, reward the same loot, and generally be considered as equal.

The community, in their grand resistance to change, called foul on many of these changes. Certainly, WotLK created an embitterment towards 10-man raiding as being "easier" or a "lower class" of raiding that simply wasn't on the same scope as 25-man raiding. In their defense, they had every right to think this because that is exactly how Blizzard had made raids at the time.

Now that we've been through a whole tier of raiding under these changes, and as we move onto the next tier, it is time to reflect back on all of the arguments that sprouted and see how realistic they really were.

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.

Are you willing to spend a night wiping on new content?

It's a fairly common question seen on applications to raiding guides these days and has been for the longest time now. Wiping is a part of learning content. Everyone wipes -- everyone. There's simply no way that you can hope to avoid it. Anyone who wants to join any raiding guide at any level of progression is going to have to accept the fact that they are going to spend a good deal of time tanking the floor.

Despite how common it is and despite how much we have all come to accept that it is going to happen, people really don't like wiping. It isn't fun, after all. Wiping means that you've failed, and people hate to fail. Still, this is a truth that we must all learn to accept and all learn to deal with.

Are you willing to spend a night wiping on new content? Can you really deal with it? How do you deal with it?

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.

Those people who know me would probably say I'm a rather agreeable person. Perhaps not always entirely nice, but if you ask me to do something or for help, then chances are I'll say yes. However, should you demand that I do any task, then you're better off talking to the wall, and you'll be lucky if I so much as recognize you exist.

This makes being a part of a raiding team interesting. Raid leaders often do make demands of their raiders, and usually that's just considered to be how it is. On the other hand, there are raid leaders out there who do nothing but ask, and they do so ever so nicely. They're effective, yet these leaders can sometimes be viewed as soft, weak, unable to actually control the raid. Every raid is composed of several different personalities; every raid is led in a different way.

How, then, to know what to do as a raider? How do you know the best way to handle your team as a raid leader? It's all a big, jumbled mess.

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.

Raiding is a lot of work, and it can actually end up being fairly costly. Players often underestimate the overall cost of raiding; between food, flasks, and repairs, it does add up. Beyond that, each new piece of gear that you gain from raiding adds in additional costs through enchants and gems. Further still, some players have to re-spec frequently despite the existence of dual spec, and switching glyphs multiple times every raid can rack up a nice price tag, too.

With such a high cost placed on raiding, who is ultimately responsible for all of it? Early in WoW, the answer was easy. Each player was individually responsible for having his or her own materials. Wrath created a new issue with the introduction of feasts, where a single item could provide for an entire raid group. Now, Cataclysm offers another raid-wide consumable via cauldrons. As these items become available, who is left footing the bill?

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 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 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.

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.

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 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 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 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 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.

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.

In my years of raiding, I've more or less played every role. I started my raiding life as a hunter, admittedly to get better gear to enhance my PvP life. When my guild needed another tank to do better in raids, I rolled a paladin and have been tanking ever since. I keep trying to heal but just don't seem to get the groove right. Mostly spending time as a paladin (and later, a death knight), I often melee DPS as necessary.

Which brings me to relatively recently, when I found myself going from bear tank to boomkin. Now, I'm a fairly competent player. I'm not the best in the world. But I've been playing WoW for a while, my reflexes have earned me some arena success, and I've done most content the game has to offer. I write about this stuff pretty regularly. I Have A Clue And Don't Stand In Fire.

Switching my role from tank and melee DPS to being a ranged boomkin was like smashing my face into a brick wall.

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.