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This Friday, July 29, 2011, Rawrcast is hosting a Healing Round Table Special Episode. To prepare for what is shaping up to be our biggest round table yet, take a minute to get to know the guests who will be seated around the virtual table with today’s Daily Fan.
Get Involved with this Special Episode of Rawrcast…
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Derevka is a mainly Disc priest in the guild Edge(US-Garona), currently ranked in a top #100 US. Recently retired from TalesofaPriest.com but can still be caught tweeting about progression raiding and a regular poster on the Plus Heal forums.
Twitter.com/derevka
www.PlusHeal.com |
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Our healing shaman,Vixsin is in Pie Chart (US-Firetree) currently ranked #19 in the US. Writer for Life in Group 5, Vixsin is a go to source for raiding, great insight on patches seen from a shamans point of view and anything else that crosses Vixsin’s mind.
Life in Group 5
twitter.com/Vixsin_LiG5 |
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Eade is a holy pally in the guild AIE’s raid group, If Looks Could Kill. He is also one of the host of the new healing oriented podcast, My Epic Heals. Along with the podcasts, you can catch his own views on healing pallies at My Pally Heals.
My Epic Heals Podcast
My Pally Heals Blog |
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Foofy is a long time friend of the show and long time progression raider as a Resto Druid. Currently in a top #200 guild in the US, Crisp. Foofy has her hand in a lot of pots, including moderator at Moonkin Repository, video creator and blogger. Go give her a read, listen and watch!
Moonkin Repository
Foofy’s Youtube
Foofy’s Cupcake Blog |
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Something is missing in this expansion and about half a million people have walked away as a result. The absence of a sufficient amount of end game content is having a nasty effect on Blizzard’s ability to keep its players playing. The biggest gamble that Blizzard made with this expansion was to focus all of their resources on fixing Vanilla WOW. After having leveled several characters through Old World content, I can’t help but feel that they’ve succeeded. The content feels fresh, the leveling curve is much less steep and the quests are interesting and compelling.
An unintended side effect of this focus on Vanilla WOW has been the absence of enough end game content. Further, the pace of additional content releases has been significantly slower than previous expansions. A couple of examples. The Burning Crusade was released on 1/16/07 and the Black Temple was released with their first major content pack roughly five months later (5/22/07). With the exception of the Sunwell, Black Temple and Zul Aman, the Burning Crusade was release with the following raid content: Gruul’s Lair, Tempest Keep, Karazan, Magtheridon, Serpentshrine Cavern and Battle of Mount Hyjal! Wrath was released on 11/13/08 and their first content release, which included Ulduar was released 4/14/09 (about five months later). With the exception of ICC, Ulduar, Ruby Sanctum, Onxyia’s Lair and Trial of the Crusader, Wrath released with Naxxaramas, Saratherion, Eye of Eternity and Vault of Archavon.
Cataclysm was released on 12/7/10 and the first content patch came on 4/26/11. Raid content included Baradin Hold, Bastion of Twilight and Black Wing Decent. The new patch included….Zul’Aman and Zul’Gurub…and no raids. Instead of releasing MASSIVE raid instances like Black Temple and Ulduar in a span of 4-5 months, we’ve received…2 heroic 5 man dungeons.
A good friend has reminded me that WOW has been going for 6 years and maybe their decaying release pace is a result of the amount of time they’ve been working on the project. I countered that if anything, they should be going FASTER than they’ve gone in the past! Content should be flying out of Blizzard instead of slowly plodding onto the PTR. What’s become clear is that WOW has finally plateaued after six years. The long tail effect has begun. In order to extend that phenomenon as long as possible, Blizzard needs to be releasing content much faster than what they’ve currently done in this expansion.
Good communication is an incredibly important part of any team and I firmly believe that the source of and solution to most problems in life comes down to how we communicate with each other. Since I consider raiding in WOW to be a team sport, good communication can often be the key to success when faced with a complex encounter. One of the ironies of WOW is that finding good communication can often be difficult. Below are a couple tips that will serve you well when trying to communicate in game.
1. Be polite. It’s incredibly important to remember that you are playing with folks from all walks of life who deserve to be spoken to with respect. Most people who make mistakes are not “slow” nor are they intentionally sabotaging your team. They made a mistake. Insulting or belittling them will just make you feel even worse the next time you make a mistake (and trust me, you’ll make a mistake). Politeness can help diffuse a difficult situation, especially considering that most people get defensive and embarrassed when they make a mistake.
2. If something is wrong, say something. If you feel like something isn’t working properly or you don’t understand a mechanic, it’s up to you to say something. Its impossible to decipher what you’re thinking or not thinking unless you say something. If you feel too embarrassed to bring it up over vent, throw a whisper to someone in raid for a quick explanation. Remember, there is no such thing as a bad question.
Hopefully these tips can help your raid team communicate more effectively with each other.
After a half dozen progression attempts on Chimaeron last night, I sat back to think about what a difficult job healers have. The analogy that popped into my mind was this: healers are just like your mom. Think about it; they’re always there to clean up the mess you’ve made and you never thank them. Healing is one of the most thankless jobs in WOW. It’s only when a healer makes a mistake that they get any type of attention at all. Most times, they quietly and heroically do their job, bailing you out of the fire and keeping the tank up, all the while managing their mana pool and responding to the same mechanics as the rest of the raid.
Healers hold a tremendous weight on their shoulders during dungeons and raids. A DPS can step away mid cast to respond to a mechanic without any real impact to the raid. Sure your DPS will dip a little bit but no one will die as a result of your decision to leave early. Now put yourself in the shoes of a healer. In a split second, they have to decide if they need to take the damage on the chin from the mechanic and finish their cast or hold off on casting and fire off a quick heal on their target when they are done responding to the mechanic (all the while hoping that their target won’t die in the mean time). When was the last time you faced a decision like this as DPS? Maybe once or twice a raid cycle? Healers face it multiple times on every boss.
If healer’s have such a tremendous amount of importance placed on even their tiniest decisions during fights, then how can you accurately judge a healers performance in a fight? Measuring the performance of a healer is an incredibly nuanced exercise that is way more difficult than pulling up their HPS. Is there any meter that shows whether or not the healer cast the right heal in a given situation? How about a meter that shows how quickly the healer responded to life threatening damage on a raid member? Unfortunately, there are no standard meters that measure any of these things. What you can rely on is your healing class leader helping to analyze the decision making of all healers in order to help improve their overall performance. And, like most complex analyses in life, we should leave this to the professionals.
In conclusion, I’d like to give a big thanks to the Healing Team of Bound and all other healing teams out there who have saved my ass (and the asses of thousands of other tanks and DPS) countless times!
Can you run and gun? No, I’m not talking about sprinting the length of the basketball court to drain a three. What I am talking about is are you capable of moving AND dpsing in instances and raids? This skill, although it isn’t discussed very often, is an essential ingredient to success in 5 mans and raids. Haven’t quite mastered this ability? Below are a couple tips to help you keep alive and in the top five on recount.
Set aside your instant cast spells as well as your fast cast speed spells for when you’re moving. Having these on hand can ensure that you don’t lose too much dps when you’re responding to mechanics in a boss fight. Moving without casting is a complete waste of DPS. That said, don’t put your life in jeopardy to try and cast and move. If you’re having difficulty with this, try to only cast a couple spells while you’re moving. Over time, you’ll get more comfortable and casting while moving will become second nature.
Don’t move unless you have to! I see people moving all the time when they don’t need to. Think about it this way, every time you move when you don’t have to, you LOSE DPS. It also adds additional confusion to what can already be an incredibly confusing situation. Long story short, don’t move unless its completely necessary.
Save your cool downs for moments when you know that you’ll be stationary. There’s no sense popping your trinkets or triggering other cool down spells when you are going to be moving around. Save those cool downs for a moment in the fight when you know you’ll be standing in one spot for the duration of the cool down.
Hopefully these tips can help you increase your DPS in movement heavy fights!
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Another victim of too much Warcraft time and another divorce, thanks to the game. Well not exactly, see this edition focuses on a nerd’s life with the wife before she played Warcraft vs. when she gave in and discovered the beauty that is WoW.
Pre-Wife WoW Life
I’ve been playing Warcraft since roughly the summer of ’05, while at the same time dating my now wife. WoW use to be the biggest argument in our relationship. I played too much, didn’t pay attention to her, and of course, the vent talking and having to tell her for the 500th time, “That wasn’t to you”. If you ever had to say this, you know that goes about as well a solo run through 40-man Naxaramas. This lead to us breaking up at least once, possibly twice, and finally to me quitting the game for several months as a peace offering. Nothing makes you feel like a nerd more than negotiating raid times so I can finally give a guild the thumbs up on my attendance. Eventually, I mustered the rage to ask her to marry me and we eloped. Read more…
This is part two, of a two-part mini-series on the topic of re-rolling. If you missed part one, you can find it here. To briefly recap, in part one, we focused on when it’s right to re-roll, in this article we will focus on the why. It wasn’t until I started talking with other individuals, listening to the Rawrcast pod cast, then writing a pro’s/con’s list, and started writing this very article, that I had a epiphany on the topic. I will share this “epiphany” with you, the readers, later on. If you read part one, you know that I‘m not just pulling this topic out of thin air, it‘s something that has plagued me for weeks/months now. Along the way, there are many pitfalls to stay away from, but on the flip side, there are some very valid reasons to re-roll. I’ll investigate both with this in depth look at, The PvE perspective: Why is it right to re-roll. Enjoy Read more…
Geek Culture Happy
Resubbed to WoW: A
The Rawrcast Show
Geek Culture Happy
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