Now… I actually have a decent amount of people who read what I write, but comments are kind of few, and emails are kind of slow some days, but Edgar… we love you man.  Since you wrote in to ask me about a topic I hold dear, you get to be answered all personal and such :p

Edgar wrote:

Hey Starman, I’m a new reader of your Casual Raid Leader blog, so I’m not sure if you’ve addressed this before but I saw an article on WoW.com that dealt with the topic “How to coach your raid members“. I was interested in knowing what you felt, knew and could say about the topic in general, not just what was said in the article.

Regards,
Edgar

Thanks Edgar.  I actually hadn’t even noticed that article to be honest… though I’m not even sure how I missed it.  Its not a bad article, but… I feel it glanced over a few key points.  Lets pop the hood and see what we’ve got.

Coaching Concept

I know I’m on a hiatus right now, but I’ve been a raid leader for several years.  Let me say… this isn’t always my strong point, but I’m learning.  What I mean is that I understand the concept, but being a generally positive person, I probably cut people a bit more slack than I should and I should approach it a bit more analytically.

What you need to bear in mind while coaching is that it really breaks down into four key parts from my view.

1. Analysis – i.e. what’s going on.
2. Education – Finding out what YOU need to know. 
3.  Coaching – Offering solutions.. suggestions and engagement
4. Feedback and Follow up – Starts analysis again and reviewing forward progress.

The Environment of Coaching

First and foremost, I’m going to whole heartedly agree with Wow.com’s first point about coaching being about everyone.  And I mean EVERYONE.  Everyone has to enter into the raid understanding that coaching is just part of what you’re trying to accomplish, but… that has to be weighed with what your raiding goals are.

If you’re in the raid to just mess around and have a good time with friends, then coaching might be more geared toward catching someone who is taking things a bit too serious.  The coaching has to be appropriate to where you want to go as a group. 

For instance I would expect a progression raiding guild to coach people constantly on how to up their DPS, how to avoid damage, how to maximize their healing for a given fight.  If you want to down bosses, you need to communicate.  Especially if you’re progression raiding.  People need to share what works for them and their own ideas. 

Coaching though has to include the raid leader.  I know personally, I’ve found myself occassionally falling down on my tanking and not generating enough threat simply because I got lazy or I was too busy trying to make sure that everyone else was doing their job.  So I missed rotations and boom… someone got killed.

Does that mean its only my fault?  No… obviously the DPS should have watched their threat, BUT… I’m not blameless, and.. I have something to learn in that instance.  You have to be willing to accept you aren’t perfect either and understand the simple fact that shit happens…

Analysis…. Don’t go it alone

Analysis of a problem is where a lot of people fall down.  Its hard to coach on a problem if you don’t really understand what the problem is.  You also have to have a threshold where you recognize that a problem is going to hinder you.  Does it mean you can’t always strive to get better and push your limits?  No… but.. you know there’s a point where things should be “good enough”.

One key point I can’t stress enough is that you can’t do it all on your own.  Matticus, of World of Matticus, has sited on numerous occassions, that he has a team of people who help him sort through Wow Log parses to find problems.  He has built a raiding guild based on working together, coaching each other and learning from one another to excel.  To be honest… I’d love to see them at some point just to see how it all works.  From the outside looking in, it just sounds like a fantastic setup.

The key point though is that Matticus does not proclaim to be an expert on Feral Bear Tanking… or Unholy Death Knight DPS.  Matticus knows, that he can’t solve every problem on his own.  He has a team of people who understand log parsing, understand their classes, and basically watch out for problems.

You would be foolish to assume you are gods gift to all things and thus able to just hand out advice to anyone and everyone on how to play their class.  You know that guy in the PUG raid that you do that just grates you wrong. 

You know that guy who is playing a DK and says, “Hey Mages need to do X… and its easy… I should know I have a mage.” 

You know how that guy just pisses you off and you want to scream at him to “DON’T TELL ME HOW TO DO MY JOB!!!”

Don’t be that guy… k

What you need to do is fully understand the scope of the problem.  So don’t be afraid to sit down and sift through the logs.  Take those logs to some experts you know… either in guild or out of guild.  Here is a great example.  We have a Boomkin in my current guild who is really good at DPS, but… their overall numbers tend to be low.  Its not a huge hinderance, but it confuses the hell out of some people.  How can you do 3600 DPS, and be down near the bottom of the overall damage list?  I mean what’s going on?

When you sift through the logs, one thing pops out for you… the person does wonderful on fights where you have a single target… and you have to nuke it, but any fight that requires transitioning from target to target is a problem.  Or maybe their time on target is bad.  Their DPS is solid when they DPS, but maybe they aren’t consistently doing their rotation all the time. 

In this particular case, I don’t know what the problem is as I’m not running the logs, but its probably a likely cause.  Is it hindering us as a guild?  No… honestly we’ve cleared all the content except for Yogg Saron and Alagon the Observer, but if you’re going to coach someone, you need to understand:

1. Is there a problem?
2.  What is the problem?

Educating yourself

Once you understand the scope of the problem, education is the best way to ensure that you know what you’re talking about.  This can be as simple as googling a few resources online, or talking with your class lead, or consulting a friend/expert you know.  Other problems might take a bit more time and energy. 

Odds are high if you are in a 25 man raiding guild that you have class leads and “experts” that can help you in guild.  Educate yourself so the next time you are trouble shooting a problem, you know what to look for, and what they solution might be.  Don’t be afraid to brainstorm with your officers or your raid leaders to find possible solutions.  Some times the KISS principle is best.  Keep it Simple Stupid!!!

If you are from a smaller guild, your in house resources are probably limited.  Many 10 man guilds DON’T have a dedicated class lead.  Its hard to have a lead for every class when there are exactly 10 classes and odds are you don’t have exactly 1 of each class in your raid.  If you’re from a smaller guild, I recommend finding online resources to educate yourself.  Find blogs that have good reviews of the class or problem you’re trying to solve.  Sift through some authoritative sources, but always double check with at least two other somewhat reputable sources.

When I’m trying to diagnose a problem or find a solution to a particularly vexing fight, I’ll typically talk over the situation with a couple of other raid leaders.  They’ll offer suggestions based on their experiences on things we can try or ideas.  At the end of the day, I’m picking the brains of other people to come up with a solution to my problem. 

The important thing is that you have to know what your options for solving the problem are.  If your problem is that people are having trouble ensuring they are killing the right mob at the right time, you might have two simple solutions. 

1. Have a well defined marking and kill order.  Have people memorize what each mark means and ALWAYS follow it.
2. Assign a “main assist”.  That person is in charge of determining what mob NEEDS to die next.  Everyone else has an “assist” macro and always kills the assist’s target.

Both are easy solutions, but one might work better for your group.  Understanding the group dynamic is important.  Having solutions to problems is important too.

Coaching appropriately

Coaching is a type of feedback.  Which means… it should follow the general rules for feedback.  It needs to be timely.. and specific.  It does you no good to coach someone on an incident that’s 4 weeks old.  By that point, the person in question won’t have a clue what you’re talking about and depending on the scenario, things may have drifted out of hand by that point.  People can get bitter when you let things just kind of hang out there and suddenly hit them with it.

Ensure that the person doing the coaching can approach the person without coming across condescending.. or trite.  Let me give you an example… in my last guild, our GM was well…. lets just say socially challenged.  He was a good guy to talk with.  He was a good guy to joke around with, but when it came to discipline or coaching, he had all the sublty of a bullet train.  He’d roll over you and leave you sitting there either completely willing to fight back or just stunned and awed as to what just happened.

Lets face is, not everyone is cut out for talking with people.  Odds are, if you’re a decent raid leader, you’ve probably gotten the chance to know some of your players and your probably approachable.  However, coaching needs to come from the appropriate source.  If you’re guild has the expectation that coaching comes from class leads, then you need to ensure your class lead is the person doing the coaching… and that they have the skill to do it.

In my opinion, you need to ensure that when you approach the person, I’d recommend personally getting on vent.  Pull the person into a private channel and discussing with them the situation.  The reason I recommend Vent over typing is that a lot of times, the things you type won’t come across with the right emotion, or emphasis or empathy as just talking with someone.  A statement that you think is just a simple statement, can come across as abrasive or even acusatory. 

If the problem involves one or two people, NEVER address it in front of the entire raid.  Coaching should happen on the side where people don’t need to feel like their being embarressed in front of the entire raid.  People’s tolerance for being embarressed will vary greatly.  However almost nobody wants to feel like they are being put down in front of an entire room full of people.

Coaching though can be raid wide as well.  For example, if you’re running into problems with phase 2 of Iron Council where Molgeim throws down the huge green rune of death, then it might be appropriate to coach the team right after the fight… or before the fight.  The coaching must be timely and address the specific problem you’re trying to solve. 

I do agree with Wow.com that in most cases, the person involved, has to be willing to go to bat and be part of the solution.  If the problem is that too many people are dying due to frost damage, offer to help people get what they need to make frost resist gear.  If the problem is that someone has trouble swapping targets, find them a person to assist.  You need to make the person feel that you’re willing to work with them.  You’re milage may vary depending on your guild, but from personal experience, I believe that the person you thought was clueless before, might turn out to be one of your best raiders, if you coach them and set them up to succeed.

Feedback and Following Up

For better or worse, we are humans and we don’t function well in a vacuum.  Once you’ve coached, you need to ensure that you establish a two way feedback channel.  The person being coached needs to be providing feedback on what they learned, what is causing them issues, and maybe some suggestions they have to help them.  Your coaching person needs to be analyzing the situation to look for improvements, changes in the situation and then provide a solid channel of honest feedback to the person.

This could be making your leadership team aware of the situation and then having them all watch for improvements.  This could be an “atta boy/girl” that you toss out when you see them do what you want.  Positive reinforcement can be a wonderful thing.  We all want to hear that we’re improving and we can succeed. 

As you monitor your problem, remember to keep in mind what solution(s) you’re trying.  Don’t be afraid to change directions mid stream and look at other solutions.  At this point, you are really in a cycle.  You want to periodically go back to the Analysis step, ensure that you have a problem and look for new solutions or see if your situation is getting better.  You can keep cycling through these steps until the problem is resolved, but in some cases, it may not be solvable.

If you have a problem with someone consistently dying during fights where there are huge amounts of AOE effects on the screen and they basically go to 1-2 FPS, then there may not be anything you can do if the person can’t upgrade their PC hardware.  Some problems are limited by financial things like this.  I know personally I have issues with AOE bloom.  Its generally not fatal for the DPS in 10 man, but if I tank in 25 man, I’m always praying that I don’t get anyone killed.  I’m planning an upgrade, but hey… finances take time.. and I’m trying to limp my PC along till I get a loan paid off…. so I do the best with what I can, but I can’t make my PC render any faster till I upgrade it.

If I were to boil down my thoughts on raid coaching into a single idea, it would have to be about establishing a two way feedback channel for your raiders.  Raid coaching is about providing a two way dialogue where you try to solve your problems or challenges in a constructive manner.

When I did the original post, I was focused on the things that a Child of Wrath missed.  Now… almost a year in the future, I want to take a look back and see what their world is like.

This is probably one of my more interactive topics folks.  I would highly encourage anyone who has grown up in Wrath to post on this, whether it be to share your perspective, or to show me where you blogged on it.  This is something that really fascinates me, and to be honest, I’m really curious what life has been like for someone who started the game after Wrath of the Lich King was released. 

But for now, lets take a deeper dive on my perspectives on how life has been for the Children of Wrath…  I’m not going to go into the world of PVP servers, but stick with our care bear PVE servers.

The Formative Years… 1-55

A Child of Wrath entered this world in one of many ways…. they could be a spouse who joined the game.  They could have been sucked in by their friends, or maybe… they just saw the game and thought they’d give it a try.  Their world has been one where they walk through a world almost devoid of people.  When they roam into a major city, they are surrounded by the bustle of people going to and from the auction house, but otherwise, the rest of the world is almost barren.

If leveling with a friend (from the recruit a friend program), they are literally only spending a couple of weeks just quickly leveling up.  The old world becomes a blur.  Its just something you do to get to where the “real game” is.  If surrounded by friends, they are encouraged to get to 55 so they can test out a death knight.  They are bombarded with ideas and thoughts both new and old on the best way to level. 

They live in a world where Paladins are not difficult to level.  They live in a world where leveling priests or almost any class can be done without having to perform heavy grinds.  They live in a world where a whole host of resources is available to them.  Money grows on trees, so those with friends are just as likely to find themselves holding 100g in almost no time flat.

Since Wrath, they’ve seen the cost and levels of riding skills change not once, not twice, but three times.  They’ve likely not stepped into many instances.  Trying to get into a low level instance is nearly impossible for a while.  High level 80 characters are queuing and getting priority for instances making it difficult on any medium or high population server to provide access to instances.

Level 55 – 68…. Lands of the Death Knight

Upon reaching level 55, the Child of Wrath is faced with a choice.  They have instant access to a brand new level 55 character.  They can begin a new life as a death knight.  They are presented with a character that not only has a very well done starter area, they are presented with a powerhouse.  A character extremely well equipped.  For some, the draw of this new type of character is too much to resist.  They set aside their level 55 character in favor of a new type of challenge.

Upon moving to Outland, their world transforms.  They are surrounded by Death Knights.  They’re everywhere.  They’re constant.  They may be bombarded with requests for instances as new Death Knights endeavor to spread their wings and face roll instances.  Depending on when they reached Outland, they were able to fly.  They started in a world where flying was instantly available. 

They quickly moved through the zones.  They probably saw less than half of the zones available in Outland.  They moved to a world where suddenly there were a ton of people running around.  Most of them were death knights.  They probably learned to love or hate death knights for their ability to gather up 4-6 mobs at once and kill them all.  They probably learned to love or hate death knights ability to pull mobs from great distances to them. 

68+… Welcome to the brave new world

Children of Wrath were likely not the front runners.  They walked into Northrend to be greeted by zones with plenty of people, but not overflowing with bodies.  They didn’t struggle to complete quests, but rather were lead from quest hub to quest hub.  Lacking practical raiding knowledge, they likely struggle to make sense of what gear is actually good for their class, but yet….Blizzard has standardized so much that they find it easier to pick gear that works for them.

They go out to Google, and their senses are barraged by a multitude of choices.  The have very extensive blogs.  They have resource sites.  They have access to a variety of forums and podcasts.  Everywhere they go…. information.  Gone are the days that detailed information could only be found in forum threads 500 pages long.  Gone are the days that information is hidden way in Ivory towers… but now… everyone has an opinion.  Right or wrong.. Conventional wisdom or not… sorting through the mass of data is the challenge.

The Children of Wrath see a world transformed.  Varian Wynn is mad… he made the Archdruid look like Mr. Sunshine and Happiness.  The Alliance has lost the path of righteousness and has taken up the mantle of revenge.  Their storyline smacks of it.  The Argent Crusade has taken up the mantle of destroying the Lich King, but the cracks in the foundation appear if you look closely.  They walk closely to treading over that line.

Getting late to 80 though is no longer the barrier that it once was.  Yes… the Child of Wrath was behind, but with Blizzard’s new path, catching up to a “reasonable” gear level is easy.  The Child of Wrath is not weighed down by the limitations of their forefathers.  They are not eternally behind.  They have the opportunity to see more content than they ever did before… yes… The Child of Wrath may yet see Arthas… They may shake the halls Icecrown Citadel…. The Child of Wrath…walks.. into a new world….  Every major patch brings access to new gear.  PUGs are reasonably successful.  They are not limited to being only in a guild to have access to gear.  They can run 5 man dungeons to get raid equivalent gear.  They can do dailys to get access to starter gear.  Higher end 5 mans provide access to raid equivalent gear.

The barriers of entry that so limited the forefathers… do not exist.  For anyone with the dedication and willingness to try hard.. they can catch up.  They can be ready to move forward.. with everyone else.

What about you?  What is your view on the Children of Wrath…What are their paths as they look forward to Patch 3.3?  Where will they go?  What have they seen?

In my original article, I felt that a great deal of the reason that healing had burned so many healers out was the sheer difficulty.  Scrusi contends that difficult encounters would wake healers up and actually there’s a great deal of boredom involved with healing.  Ok… I’m 3 weeks into  my horde transformation.  Lets see what I’ve learned.

Healer Quality

In my previous guild, we were very much what I’d call finesse players.  We had a handful of players that were really into maximizing their characters.  These were the people pushing the upper limits of their class learning to average about 5k DPS on a 10 man.  These same people pushed the tanks to really stretch their abilities. 

Otherwise we had a lot of 2.5-3k DPS style people.  That’s respectable.  Its not a slouch, but given their gear levels, its entirely possible to do considerably more damage than that.  But we tuned our encounters to adjust for how our people played. 

For an example…. on the Iron Council fight, we made sure to interrupt Stormcaller Brundir to pull him all the way to the back.  That meant that his chain lightnings weren’t hitting the raid and only the tank and his healer had to eat any of that damage.  It simplifies the job of the healers up front.  Its more of a finesse technique. 

Enter my new guild.  The first time I ever got to see them do Iron Council I tried to pull the same technique we always did.  I started moving Stormcaller Brundir toward the back and they all stared at me like I was on crack.  The healers said, “Look its a waste of time, we’ll just heal through the damage”.

Ok wait… you want to run that by me again?  My last healers bitched and moaned constantly about how the chain lightning damage just overwhelmed them and they ran out of mana.  You’re just going to heal through the damage? Wow……  And we are talking about 2 pally healers and a druid healer or shaman healer.  Not an extremely “raid healer” friendly setup. 

Thinking back, what it sounds like we ran into was an issue of healer quality.  In fact, we had a couple of healers who stopped playing due to well… in retrospect… boredom.  Hmmm maybe Scrusi  is on to something here.

DPS to Healer?

We have a healer in my new guild who actually went from being a ret pally capable of 6k DPS to being the guild’s main healer.  For her, she described it as a nice break.  With DPS, she was constantly watching her rotation and trying to figure out how to push the limits.  With healing, it was a nice mental break.

She’s trying to plan a wedding for next year, so it was a nice easy way to spend her evening just playing whack a mole in reverse.

Hmmm point two for boredom.  Ok… maybe I missed the mark a bit here.

Examining my own level of boredom….

I have done quite a bit of healing this expansion.  We were short on healers and honestly I needed to fill in on the Alliance side off and on.  What I found was really a lot of boredom.

Almost inevitably I ended up being the raid healer.  We had a pally and a shaman (yeah I know shaman can raid heal too, but I wasn’t in charge of healing assignments).  The fights I found most interesting?  XT-002, Iron Council, Ignis, Hodir, Mimiron

Why?  Because it kept me moving the entire time.  I’d end the fight sitting there almost panting from working so hard.  Constant raid damage.  Always having to make decisions on who lived and who died.  Basically, you’re playing triage trying to keep people alive and ensure that your entire raid doesn’t just keel over.

Of course for the counter point, the ones I found most boring were ones like…

Kologarn… extremely predictable pattern
Auryaya … zzzzzzzzzzzzz
Razorscale
Thorim
Freya

Ok… I have to admit, maybe the problem with healers is a lack of choices.  Really lets look at what I’m doing when I’m healing as a druid.

Tank healing:
Lifebloom, Rejuv, Regrowth.. Nourish with the occassional Swiftmend

Raid healing:
Rejuv, Swiftment, Wildgrowth, Nourish

Really its pretty mindless.  Tank healing is a bit more interesting, but its all about pattern and timing. 

Ok does that mean that if you find healing challenging that you suck?  No… it probably means your inexperienced.  Or it might mean your doing something wrong.  Or it might mean your raid can’t figure out how NOT to stand in bad stuff.  Or it might mean your tanks just aren’t that good or your backup healers aren’t that good.

I guess what I’d like to see then is some different dynamics thrown into fights.  Or give healers something more interesting to do than just making them spam the same button over and over.

First let me say, I spend a lot of time dealing with this particular audience.  Well actually I don’t.. I spend a couple of seconds every few days whiping their comments off of my pages.  Yes… spam.  Glorious Spam.  Lets take a look at what my spam tells me shall we?

Experiment Setup

For this portion of our experiment, I decided I needed a random sampling.  To begin, I cleared every bit of spam I had on Thursday October 15th.  I wanted to pull one week’s worth of data to see just exactly who my spammer’s are.  Now it would be safe to assume that while I’m a fair and impartial individual (queue snickering and eyeroll), I’m going to sort them here in order of who posts most. 

Those of you spammers who are at the bottom…. well you’re going to have to try a bit harder.

Summary:

Russian Spam:  45
Flattery:  4
Money Makers:  2
Cross Linkers:  2
Drug Manufacturers: 1 (sleep)
African Love!: 1

Russians…. I blame my roomate

Now… I had this roommate in college.  He was kind of a crazy SOB.  He actually planned on volunteering for the military.  Ok planned is the wrong word… he succeeded in getting in the military.  I have the deepest and utmost respect for those willing to do military service.  However this guy wanted to not only be in the military, he wanted to be an army ranger.  Those crazy SOBs that end up having to speak like 3 languages and get parachuted behind enemy lines?  Yeah… that was him.

Now before I blame this wholy on him, understand he’s a writer.  He also studied Russian in college.  So while I’d LOVE to write back to my Russian spam audience, I must admit I only learned ONE phrase in Russian from him and I haven’t learned to write it in cyrillic.  Besides…. I don’t think “Your mother works in a whore house” is probably safe for public consumption in Russia.

My old roomate also sings.  Though I recommend seeing him live.  I can only assume that he’s the cause of all my Russian hits.  He’s just that crazy.  He probably put my web site out on some Russian site just to see how many spammers I could get.  Yeah… that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Pimping me softly

Now.. more than a couple of times, I’ve been very tempted to clean one or two of these posts up and post them, but in the end..  they are spam and well… I probably shouldn’t.  However I’ll be nice enough to answer their questions here just so they don’t feel left out.

Are you a professional journalist?

Why no… no I’m not… I’m still waiting for Wow.com to break down my door and offer me a job, but unfortunately my lack of consitent writing and the occassional meltdown has impeded my progress.  I encourage you spammers to write more about my mad skillz over at wow.com.  Just make sure to include how much I should be paid and the hours I’m willing to work.

Papa needs a trip to Blizzcon next year and I seriously doubt that I’m going to be able to afford it all on my lonesome.  So show your support spammers who think I have mad skillz and get me hired some place I can get a free trip to Blizzcon… k thanx bye

Money Makers

Now… I must say you’ve got me curious.  How much CAN I get out of a vending machine?  Can you fill me in here?  I mean seriously.  If you’re going to give me ideas to make money, can you at least provide a bit more details?

I’d recommend providing posts in multiple parts.  That way we can all learn and leave that last crucial detail hanging.  Then I HAVE to click on your link  Just baiting me with “How much can you make out of a vending machine?” isn’t cutting it ok?

Ode to the Cross Linker

Now… I must say I appreciate your attempt to make me link back to you.  Its not many days that I get the honor and the priviledge to cross link to people who steal accounts, credit cards, offer phishing scams or even easy to find downloadable viruses and trojan back doors.

God… if my readers only knew the fun things your offering. 

They too could have their identity stolen for the low low price of a single click.

They too could give up any sense of privacy and hope of having a normal life.

They too could in a single click get to experience the joys and raptures of rebuilding their PC two months after they click their link when they suddenly discover that you’ve installed a really nifty rootkit. 

Yes… you offer such a rare special glimpse into the world… maybe I SHOULD cross link back to you…  naw… I’ll make you work for it.

Oh how the mighty have fallen…. Ode to the Drug Addict

God… 6 months ago I would have bet MONEY that drug manufacturers would be my top spam.  God its not even good spam. 

Look I know we are gamers. 

Look I know we have this reputation for staying up late and gaming till all hours of the night and then getting up and going to work/school/volunteer work/whatever.

That’s what we call choice.  If I take a sleep aid, not only would it be irresponsible, it would be dangerous.  First my fellow raiders won’t appreciate me falling asleep at the keyboard during the raid.  The keyboard leaves funny impressions on my face too. 

If I got up after only 5 hours of sleep and attempted to drive into work while still under the effects of your drugs, I’d probably get someone killed.  I’m one of those rare people who are biologically predisposed to NOT need 8 hours of sleep.  In fact if I get 8 hours of sleep I’m all sorts of screwed up for days. 

I mean at least make it a good drug.  Who wouldn’t want to be able to have sex for hours?  I mean what ever happened to male and female enhancing drugs?  Huh?  Where’s the fun ones?

God… obviously the drug manufacturers need more work.  At least they were good for a few laughs.

Ode to Africa?  Ok you lost me here….

Now… on what planet does someone from Africa care what I think?  No… I recognize there are civilized portions of the land mass.  Yes… there are highly educated, Internet connected people, but on what earth would someone go to the lengths of trying to look like a ping back on some completely unrelated African Freedom blog site? 

Yeah… Ok I didn’t have the guts to click through to find out if I could help save some deposed Prince by trading some money with them. 

Ok I could have probably found out it was spam… or viruses… or a trojan just for my readers, but just the amusement factor from having a spam linked to some “African” site deserved a separate section of its own.

Yes… you’re a very special person.  I’m not entirely sure where to go with you.  Good luck on getting people to post to wherever the hell you’re aiming for.

Lets start with something I’ve learned about burn out. Just a fair warning… if you’ve ever seen a bear wall… this is going to look an aweful lot like one.

Understanding Burnout

There have been times in my past where I’ve burned out and just didn’t want to play the game. This isn’t one of those times. Yes. I know just by reading my words over the last few weeks, you can tell a discernable stress level built up. You can tell a level of frustration that built too high.

Burn out can be a lot of things. In this case, it was a situation that I’d seen before, and it was playing itself out again. I wasn’t going to sit in the same situation twice and watch it happen again. I was burned out on seeing the situation. I enjoy being a raider. I enjoy raiding. Hell I’ve enjoyed the hell out of spending the last two weeks raiding just a couple of nights a week.

Will I get back into raid leading? That’s probably a stupid question. Yes… I almost guarantee I’ll do it. The draw of Ice Crown will be too hard for me to resist. Seeing new bosses and designing raid strategies around those bosses? Um yeah… Its just how I’m wired. I recognize that.

Learning Point 1: Casual Raid Team Design

I’ve actually seen this repeated in previous guilds. I should have learned from my second guild given their past history, but as several famous people have said…. “Those who ignore the past… are doomed to repeat it.”

Can Casual Raiding Work? Yes… yes it can. Honestly I’ve read enough of other people’s sites to know that they are extremely casual people making raiding work. However… casuals and serious raiders DO NOT MIX well. Just by watching other more casual guilds, they go in to have a good time. I do too, but its for different aims and ends. For some raiders, they just want to go, mess around in Naxx for a couple of hours, or they want to play in Obsidian Sanctum, or try to kill Onyxia. Regardless of their desire, they aren’t there to worry about if the final boss goes down. They are doing it to have fun.

Its a fine way to play the game. I think its a great thing that Blizzard has done for them. They can go mess around with Molten Core. They can play with any of the old raids. They can PUG. They can generally just go and have a good time and they never sweat how far they’ve gotten. Will they see Arthas? Yeah… yeah they will, but they know it may not be till they are 85…. or even 90 or even higher. For them, they know its going to take a bit of time to get there, but they aren’t in a hurry. Sunwell? sure… someday.

As soon as you get a few “serious” players in the mix, you’re kind of doomed to some kind of split. I admit that in this expansion, I became a somewhat more serious player. I had a very good team of players, and from the start, I wanted to make a run at Arthas. I still believe my original team could have made it to Arthas. They have the skill. They were finesse players who honestly learned fights at an extremely rapid pace.

The problem really came that as we progressed, the team really started to fracture long before I had left. Its not the fault of anyone person in particular. Yes… some people will point and say it was so and so’s fault. That’s not the point. What happened…. happened. Now its time to learn and move on. What really came to our failing point I think was that we had a lot of people moving in different directions. Some people really wanted to be pushing the limits. They were very good players who had logged a lot of time on their characters. They were putting strain on the tanks to keep up who had very little access better gear.

Some players wanted to do 5-7 days a week of raiding. Some people wanted to be doing 1-2. Others wanted to do 3. Others wanted to be not raiding at all. Mostly, everyone had different wants and needs and unlike my hope that we had built a program based on concensus of direction, we had a lot people who all started in the same spot with the same goal, but as they progressed, their original direction kind of scattered. The speed at which they wanted to approach the goal was different as well.

Learning Point 2: Understanding Support Systems

I have this great failing in life. I just kind of jump in and do things. Not to take things over from other people, but I’ll jump in on things that aren’t getting done and help out. As one person told me, I put too much on myself. My wife recognizes it in me. My friends recognize it in me. Its part of who I am and how I’m wired. I guess you could say I’ve been that way for a very long time.

Back when I left my second guild, I said I had to make a decision. I had to decide if I wanted to form my own guild or if I wanted to join someone else’s. At the time, my wife and I spent a lot of time talking it over, and we reached the decision that with a lot of the thing going on with my son at the time and my family, I didn’t have the time to dedicate to getting a guild off the ground myself. So I made a decision. I’ve had plenty of people tell me it was probably the worst one I’ve made in a while, but… of course there’s the whole hind sight thing.

At the end of the day, what I really learned is that for me to be a raid organizer, I really need a check/balance type person. I need that person who is there every day, who hears me bitch and moan and complain and hear what’s stressing me. I need that person who will listen to me and then translate that and bring it forward to the guild for digest. Someone who can then help formulate those small stresses into a game plan of attack that the entire guild can work on to fix.

Basically… I need a support system of someone who I can vent to regularly. I’m not talking about just officer chat style venting. Basically… what I almost need is my wife to be a guild master for me. She’s certainly not affraid to take those vents and recognize when I’m just not dishing things off. Or recognize when its time for me to attack a problem more head on. Basically someone to advocate for me.

You remember that whole should I have formed my own guild? Hind sight baby… hind sight…

Learning Point 3: Raid Leader As Life

“One thing you taught me is that who the guild master is doesn’t really matter if you like the raid leader.”… Random DPS

“You realize you’ve been the defacto GM since day one right?”… Random DPS

The above two quotes/paraphrases really hit home for me. We were a casual guild, but what happens is that in many cases, if you have a group of raiders who become more serious inside of a casual guild, their fun, their lives in many ways revolve around the raid leader. I didn’t want to admit it. Hell I didn’t even realize. I figured I was a regular guy. I was just like everyone else. I just happened to be the guy with the plan.

What I’ve learned in the wake of my old guild going boom is that for a lot of people, you become central to their fun. If you aren’t prepared for that, it can be a daunting prospect. In my mind, when I made the decision to remove myself from that raiding situation, I was affecting me. What I discovered is that suddenly, there were 8-11 orphaned people sitting there staring at the void I’d left in a mixture of shock and awe.

People don’t want to have the stress of leading. When you get that rare person who wants to do it, they kind of latch on and follow. We had three people we’d picked up who came to us. One was an ex raid leader. He specifically didn’t want to raid lead. He didn’t even want to be a main tank. He’d rather be the off tank. He knew what went into it, and he wanted to be a follower. Why? Because its a lot of work and lot of stress some days.

Its easier at times when people find someone to follow to just latch on. Its hard to describe how that weighs on you over time. I was a bit more oblivious than some I think, but what I’ve learned in the wake of my leaving is that in many respects, if you’re the raid leader in a casual guild, the raiders make you a bit more central in their lives than the GM.

That’s not to say the GM can’t be a very important figure, but in many ways, I was the guy who always said hi. I like to chat it up a lot in guild chat. So I’d carry on conversations with a TON of people. In many respects, I became a central figure for a lot people. I hadn’t realized it. I just figured I was being friendly.

Learning Point 4: Guild Focus

Everyone has a goal and a desire. For a guild to function, I truly believe that there has to be a balance. If you want to be a casual raiding guild, you need to balance the casual side with the raiding side. There has to be kind of a yin and yang. There has to be an ebb and flow. If you don’t get that, it overbalances and things begin to topple.

If you’re a guild focused on raiding, then its easier to balance as your off times are dedicated to prepping for raiding or just doing whatever you want, but generally everyone in the guild is probably focused at some level.. on raiding.

I’ve heard the argument that my last guild failed because we got too focused on raiding. While its possible that’s true, the reality is that what we lost… was the balance.

A guild’s focus will be dictated by a combination of forces. The GM will set the tone for what the guild is supposed to be. When they put out clarion calls for people to help and everyone steps up? Yeah.. that’s what we’re talking about.

In the early days of The Rosuto Samurai, people were really engaged. We needed a high level enchanter for raids. One member stepped up and volunteered to do it. They spent a lot of time and money. I dumped my entire stock of old enchanting mats on the person and we then began running instances over and over to get the right type of enchanting mats. Everyone came together and gelled to a single purpose. Between myself and the other guy, we probably dropped 2-3k gold on the prospect, and other people pitched in too. Guess what? Nobody bitched. Nobody complained. Everything was just that one common goal.

If someone said they were leveling a profession, people tossed in mats to help them out. If we needed something for the guild bank, 3 stacks more than we needed showed up in the bank the next day.

As time progressed, the focus shifted. We had a mix of people and honestly it became hard to balance. The GM drifted away more and more to focus on important family matters. I’ve heard a lot of blame tossed his way. While I won’t consider him blameless, I can’t fault someone for putting the health of their family above a game.

From the same perspective, if you don’t have a balanced view and approach, things shift quite a bit. The problem really becomes that everyone wants to feel like someone’s steering the boat. When I ask for feedback, I want an opinion on your thoughts. I don’t want you to decide for me, but I want feedback. I don’t throw it out there and expect nothing but stony silence. The GM and I had trouble reaching a balance where we could toss opinions back and forth.

Where people began to point blame really came down to the fact that at some point, the GM just needed to be left alone. For right or wrong, they stopped making decisions. They stopped providing feedback. The decisions they did make came across as mandates with no explanation behind them. They hadn’t said hello to anyone who came online in weeks. So people started to not see the vision and suddenly there was only one vision…. There was that guy leading the raids.

When people lose sight of the overall vision, they are going to find vision to follow. Did we get too focused on raiding? Maybe… when we were on raid days, that is my focus. when we weren’t on raid days, people were diving into PUG raids. Suddenly, I couldn’t even run 5 mans in house. You can’t get away from raiding. The people who wanted to raid 5-7 days a week began to make it impossible to actually enjoy 5 mans in house or just mess around having a good time having a convesation.

When you log in and there is you… your wife and one other person who isn’t in a raid? Yeah. Originally when the guild formed, we’d all jump into Ventrillo and spend half the night just chatting away in Vent having a good time.

When you can’t strike up a conversion with some people you used to talk to all the time because their off in their own world? yeah…

Its funny. I have a strong focus on raiding when I raid. I want to make progress. I want to be the best tank I can be, but there’s a big part of me that wants to also just be social. I want to BS with a good friend and talk about how they got engaged. I want to BS and find out how their day went. I want to know we’re talking about the finer points of making a good pizza or what someone plans to do with their kids this weekend. I want to know these people.

Somewhere, we lost that focus and you know what… it wasn’t a social place to be. There wasn’t an advocate there and if you logged in on a non raid day, you just felt a bit lost. There was rarely enough people to do anything unrelated to raiding. And you can’t really BS and shoot the breeze with someone? I guess the game loses a lot for me. There’s something to be said for having a good time with friends where you can go mess around and have a conversation…even if you aren’t in the same zone.

Somewhere, people lost sight of that aspect of the fun. And there’s a focus that when you lose… its just not gonna come back without some serious effort on everyone’s part.

I’ve been using the same iLVL 200 trinkets forever.  Now granted… for bear tanks I’m pretty sure they are about the best of the best.  They have mountains of stamina coupled with dodge or the shielding effect that you get from the “Black Heart”.  They are great trinkets.  I’ve got no complaints there.

So I went and bought a nice trinket upgrade.  I was talking with a friend of mine about my Emblems of Triumph purchases.  I was pretty excited.  I only had one more purchase and I’d be all done I told him.  I figured I’d pick up the idol they had and then I could start buying off set items.  He then promptly whispered me, “Don’t need any T9?  That stuffs just vendor bait”

Wait… run that by me again?  I looked over the T9.5 stuff and I knew it took a token to buy… did I miss a vendor?  Oh my god… I did… There’s a T9 vendor you can buy the T9 stuff with no extra token… *headdesk*

I’ve wasted friggin badges already hunting things like a ring upgrade etc.. I could have had 4 pieces of T9 by now… So I promptly ran back to the badge vendor… sold back my shiny new trinket and ran over to the T9 vendor to buy a couple of really nice upgrades.  I’ve been dying for a shoulder upgrade forever… yeah… silly me.  Well at least I wasn’t alone.  The other bear tank in the guild didn’t know either… so we’d both wasted a bunch of badges.

Oh well.. call me in another 200 badges once I’m done buying all my upgrades ok???

Last week Thursday I announced I was leaving my existing guild.  Its not an easy thing to do.  In my position, for better or worse, a lot of people place their hopes and successes on your shoulders.  Their game in many ways revolves around your involvement and your continued involvement.

How did we get here?

Ok.. its only fair that I kind of give you the skinny as it has a direct impact on what I do here.  Let me introduce myself… Hi!  My name is Starman.  I’m a raid participant!

Now… you’ll probably note that there’s a distinct change in that sentence right?

For my long time readers, back in February I suffered a bit of a meltdown.  Well not exactly a meltdown, but I reached a breaking point with my guild at the time.  I was being pulled a lot of different directions.  I had a few people leave, and I had at least a couple of loose cannons I just couldn’t reign in.  Given that one of them was married to the Guild Leader, it wasn’t conducive to the type of situation where you feel like you can just can gkick them and move on. 

So I decided to make a break from the guild.  I talked it over long and hard with my wife.  I planned an exit strategy.  I announced it in upper management.  I executed the strategy and poof.

Now what came next was a decision my wife and I discussed long and hard.  I really had three options. 

1. Build my own guild.
2. Join a friend of mine who was breaking out and forming a new guild.
3. Find some other random guild that I really didn’t know much about.

I was extremely busy at work and honestly I didn’t feel I had the time to start up a new guild.  Both my wife and I knew the amount of work that would go into it.  It just didn’t sound like a good idea.  Since I really didn’t know that many other guilds, I thought option 2 sounded pretty sexy.  The guild master and I got along well.  We talked a lot.  I took over the raid progam and he took care of the day to day starting the guild stuff.

Fast Forward….

Starting up a guild is always a challenging thing.  There is a lot of blood sweat and tears that goes into it.  People get stretched… strained and in the end, the ultimate survival of the guild relies on reaching a sweet spot in the size of the guild and the direction of the guild and the dedication of the people in that guild to the goals of the guild.

We hit that sweet spot somewhere in June of this year.  We had at least three dedicated healers.  We had a couple of tanks and everyone was firing on all cylinders.  We moved into Ulduar.  We started smoking through the content and life was good.  The pace we were setting through the content was very accelerated only because the people we brought learned it fast and moved through it fast.

Enter July…. July was a heavy turning point for us.  The summer slump hit us hard.  I had a week or two of vacation scheduled with the family.  By the time I returned, my 13+ team signups were down to 4-5.  We ended up canceling almost all of July due to inability to put together a viable raid team.  During this time one of our healer vanished entirely.  Another one burned out and went to DPS.

That put an incredible strain on the one remaining healer.  Suddenly we had our top DPS converting to help out and heal.  Every week turned into a struggle to recruit, refresh the healers and try to get people backon the characters they loved.

The Soul Grinder

I made a statement to my raid team that the last few months had been soul crushing for me.  I have this problem.  I take a bit more on myself than I probably should at times.  Its a fault I have.  Its not because I don’t believe in other people to get things done.  Its that when I see something not getting done, I just kind of step in to do it. 

This isn’t always the best teaching tool, but its a fault… work with me here people.  I had at least one raider point it out to me… and they are right.  I probably take too much on myself.

It was a fairly large struggle to get back to running a viable raid team.  We constantly fought to get back to normal.  While we still only had a single dedicated healer, we were adding people to the roster who could fill in and heal.  So we had about 5 people who had off specs who could heal. 

The frustration really landed hard when one by one, people would burn out… need a vacation, have school or whatever life brought forth.  Sign ups drooped to 6-8 signed up.  Consistently we had to lean on the same people… over and over.  They never complained.  They never said a word, but you could tell they were getting frustrated.  It kind of tears you up inside if you view these people as friends of yours and you’re constantly having to ask them over and over to give up a bit of their fun to help the group.

There’s only so much people can take before that frustration builds to an unbearable level.  We had big successes.  There were times that we just absolutely nailed stuff and every time… it looked like things were moving the right way… then boom… another setback.

Break Throughs and Burn Outs

We’d been recruiting for months with little luck.  We picked up the occassionaly person, but really hadn’t had any real luck.  Finally we had a solid break through.  We picked up three very solid players.  We filled in a recently vacated tank spot.  We had a new DPS and BOOM!!! A HEALER!!!

This was just what we needed.  With 4-5 backup healers and 2 solid healers, we could finally get people back on their mains.  Should be a nice easy stroll right?  Then our main healer we had been leaning on for months burned out.  Almost the day we introduced our new healer to the group.

What followed was basically more of the same for the soul grinder.  Its hard for me to describe the emotions that kind of followed.  I was training a new raid leader who was doing a bang up job.  He was learning things quickly.  He had a good eye for it and was really coming along nicely.  It did take stress off me, but stress still builds when you know you’re forced to make the game less fun for other people.

You very quickly get stuck in no win scenarios.  People bitch when you cancel, but then log in to find 15 people online.  People bitch when you pug.  They bitch when they can’t be on their main.  It turns into a very vicious circle where no matter what you do, you can’t make people happy.

Moments of Clarity

Monday of last week was actually a really good day.  We finally had a chance to go into Onyxia’s Lair as a guild and we downed her.  People got loot… it was a good day.  Then we went on to 10 man TOC and we did our guild first kill of Lord Jarraxus.  This is great stuff..  Tuesdays raid went pretty well.  We had a few hiccups, but overall it wasn’t the end of the world.  We had to stop a bit early, but people were just cranking through the content.

But…. By Wednesday I was just at the end of my rope.  Our sign up numbers were sagging again.  And then some friends and I did the unthinkable… we got all sorts of shades of stupid on one another.  Two of my friends who had followed me over to this guild decided to attend another guild’s raid.  Now… for long time raiders this may sound blasphemous.  This may seem like they are committing cardinal sins.  They weren’t.  They were frustrated.  They had been two of my people who had filled in consistently on raids to heal.  And for one night… just one night they needed to be playing their mains… so they went where they knew they could do that.

At the time, of course, all my frustration from the past months had come pouring out.  Its the beautiful thing about being a human being.  We store our own frustrations away until we just can’t take it any more.  Is it right?  Probably not.  Its certainly not a healthy way to live overall… but its a human condition… We learn to deal with it.

So the long and the short of it is…. some friends of mine didn’t vent their frustrations to me.. which lead them to go off on another raid while we were struggling to fill our raids.  Which in turn lead me to be mad about it.  We’re all human.  What it really accomplished at the end of the day… was making me realize how frustrated I was with being frustrated.  I was tired of making people fill in.  I was tired of trying to keep it all together and then being crushed when the next person broke down or had a bad day/week/month.

I also didn’t like that I got mad at people I really like over wanting to just have fun while in a casual guild.  We’re all human.  We all make mistakes.  In this case it was misplaced frustration over the overall situation which turned into anger directed at the wrong person(s).

How not to walk away…..

By Thursday morning I had already decided that I was just going to hang my hat up on raiding on Whisperwind.  It wasn’t a decision I reached lightly.  I had thought through it pretty seriously.  I had basically two issues. 

1. I knew if I just took a break, I’d end up back in the exact same situation.  I’d do it to myself again.  I’m at least honest enough with myself to know that.
2. I knew that there were more than a couple of people who had come to the guild because of me.  They were there to raid with me.  They were there because I was there.  Period… end of story. 

What I didn’t want to do was walk into a new guild and bring a huge surge of people.  This would also have the effect of decimating the existing guild which I still believed in.  They were solid players.  And I wanted them to stay together and play together even after I decided I just couldn’t raid in my current situation.  So I made the decision to pull my main character off of Whisperwind and transfer to a horde server with a friends I knew from real life.

So what I did was post what I deemed was a pretty positive message in the raider section in the hopes that they would stay together and I would be able to just pull my main off for raiding purposes while still coming back to be social and chat.  Two points I failed miserably at were…..

• Remembering to tell my wife… BEFORE.. I posted that I was leaving… married, engaged and dating guys… please learn from my example… NOT A GOOD IDEA.
• Failing to spell out that I was only really planning on pulling one character and stepping away from raiding in my existing guild.  In other words failing to spell out that I was planning on still leveling my alts on Alliance and chatting it up with all my friends from time to time.

Of course the one of the two people I traded barbs with immediately took it as their fault that I was leaving the server entirely which had to be the furthest thing from the truth.  They promptly guild quit along with their significant other (another good friend of mine).  Another person who was probably already on their way out, decided to use my announcement as their time to announce they were leaving.  Another person.. who seeing four of the people they chatted with most leave also decided to leave.

By Saturday I logged in to find myself completely deguilded.  It wasn’t what I planned, but… given hindsight… I should have expected it.

The 60/40 Rule….

I like to think that hind sight suffers from what I call the 60/40 rule.  It doesn’t matter which is which, but when we look back at the million of things we could have done differently, we know that there’s probably a bit of truth in what we tell ourselves…the other bit is the things we make up to help ourselves feel better.  Or the story we craft about why things happened.  I guess it could be an 80/20 rule or a 90/10 depending on the person.  Does it really matter?

The point is that in any major event you look at a few key things.

1. Do I feel better at the end of the day?  In other words, in this case, we’re paying to play a game.  Am I happier doing something different than I was a while ago.  (This may take a while to answer and your milage may vary…)
2. Did I learn something?  Did I learn something about myself?  Did I learn something about other people?  Did I learn anything of value?
3. Are you willing to change moving forward.

While I could type a lot more… its probably best saved for a different day.  We’ll dig more into what I learned a bit later this week.

I’m running a bit short on time this week due to having a certification exam to study for by next week Monday.

Me…. I’m just filled with apathy about the whole damned thing.  I’m not entirely sure why.  Maybe its because I’m just not going to have the time to dedicate to the game.  Maybe its because I seriously doubt I’ll be able to raid in the next expansion.  Maybe its because… I’ve just played the game too damned long.

More Grinds

I have a hard time getting excited about what’s coming next when I’m still trying to plan a path to seeing and downing Arthas.  I have a hard time being excited as we deal with adding 6-10 new reputations that I’ll be required to grind if I want to get my shoulder/head/recipe.  Oh.. and adding things like path of the titans where I get to compete with the 3,000 other people on my server grinding for relics to grind my Path of the Titans up…. because… god knows you can’t raid without it.

Yes.. sorry I’m having a hard time getting excited for something that’s basically meaning that we’re going to need to start all over again.

Yes… they are transforming the old world.  Yes… they are adding new races. 

Sorry… its not thrilling me.  I have 9 level 60+ characters.  I have 6 over 70.  I have 4 level 80s.  Yes.. I’m sorry, but I’m not excited about starting some other new character and leveling 1-85.  Will they streamline zones?  Sure…

Will they make them prettier?  Yes probably.

Will they make it even easier to level because god knows… we need to get to max level EVEN FASTER!!!!?  Probably.

Worn Thin

I think a lot of WoW players have kind of gotten dug into the groove too much to be honest.  Is it a great game?  Yeah… is it something other games should aspire to?  Dunno…

For me, I’ve been playing this game long enough, its kind of worn thin on me.  I still have goals I want to complete.  I WANT to see Arthas.  I want to kill him in 5 man.  I want to kill him in the raid.  Is it realistic?  Who knows???  Maybe its a pipe dream.

I actually enjoy looking and working to that goal, but its hard for me to really get excited about what’s coming after it.

The Failure of the 10 man Experiment

If I’ve got one thing that I’d really put my finger on and say has really worn me down the most lately, its the failure of 10 man content.  Yes… I think its succeeded in some ways, but in many other ways its failed as well.  There is such a substantial difference between 10 man and 25 man gear.  Its such a large differential that people don’t want to participate in 10 mans just to see the content.  They want their shiny gear.  They want the better stuff.

Want the best trinkets?  Gotta go to 25 man.

Want to get that cool weapon?  Gotta go to 25 man.

Want the best itemized gear pound for pound?  Yep… 25 man.

Blizzard went to great lengths to make 10 man available, but then cripple the loot tables in 10 man.  Hell just look at the leather DPS drops in Ulduar.  Its aweful. 

But wait you say…. you can get badge gear toO!!!!

That’s not the point.  Look at the gear that’s actually available in the 10 mans.  Clearing 10 man Ulduar in only 10 man gear is a pain.  Is it doable?  Yeah… but when everyone can just go get their badges or go get a 25 man PUG, then why should they waste their time with your 10 man?  I mean if they show up they are guaranteed to basically need nothing.  They don’t need a gear upgrade.  They will be showing up to basically say… they downed the content in 10 man.

Blizzard has almost made 25 mans manditory again.  Sorry… your gear differential sucks.  There isn’t a trinket that can match the 25 man stuff.  Oh.. want that shiny Idol that you need to tank?  Guess where its located first?  25 man.  You 10 man people?  Sorry gotta wait till we put it out there for badges.

Hell you shouldn’t even bother building your 10 man set since you can buy better with badges.

Sorry its a sore subject for me.  Yes.. I want people to have a way to catch up. Yes… I want people to be able to not be left hopelessly behind, but 10 vs. 25 man is just an aweful setup.  The gear differential isn’t working.  The 25 mans aren’t appreciably hard enough to warrant having a higher gear level.

I mean when people avoid signing up for your raids because they’re going to be off doing a 25 man.  Yeah.. thanks Blizzard.  Thanks for making 10 man viable.  Glad to know you care….  People care about shiny… and guess what??? 10 man doesn’t have shiny gear.

Yes.. I tank with my face.  My job is to beat my face on the bad man’s big left toe repeatedly till he says… “Ouch… a hang nail” and proceeds to try to pick my off his toe.  Healers though… somehow their problem seems more dramatic.

Wrath Burnout

I’ve talked with several friends and the story always seems to be the same. 

“Oh… we had a full set of healers… then so and so got burned out.”

“We had to have our top DPS/tank swap to healing because our healer went DPS/tank.”

Consistently the desire is to find a healer who can heal their way out of a paper bag, but Blizzard keeps making encounters challenging by making the fight SUCK for healers.

Lets look at Hodir… there’s a section of the fight during frozen blows where your raid will take 32k damage to each person (unresisted).  Um… ok so every so often you’re gonna make the healers want to hate themselves?  Yeah.. that’s a plan.

Mimiron has a consistent long fight with lots of damage spread in every possible way.  In phase 1, you basically have massive ZOMG damage going on the tank.  In phase 2, you have consistently high damage going on the raid all the time.  In phase 3 you’re juggling a person getting hit by bomb bots as well as a ranged DPS who is now tanking and taking massive damage and a third tank rounding up mobs.  In phase 4, we’ll throw all THREE of those things at you and see if you break AND throw in the need to almost constantly move in case you needed something else to do.

We go into General Vezak and Yogg Saron and the picture is the same…. oh.. you don’t regen mana… oh you have to watch santity… oh you’re going to be dodging tentacles…. and diving through portals… and.. and … and…

Losing the Touch with the DPS

I think the part that frustrates me most about it is that healer seem to be burning out a lot more frequently in this expansion.  Just about the time I think I’ve got two solid healers lined up and ready to rock, we hit a snag and suddenly one of them needs a break.  So now we’re down to one healer who is covering the bulk and two people filling in.

Hell at this point I’d have an entire team of people doing 3500 to 4k+ DPS if I didn’t have to keep making my top DPS heal to cover our slack.  More DPS = less length of fight which means…… less stress on healers!!!!

But spreading people out means….. People not on their mains… not getting the gear they need meaning their progress slows down…. meaning?  We don’t clear as much.

Bring Back the Fun

I’ve talked to some of the long time healers.  I think it takes a certain person to consistently heal.  Just like it takes a certain person to get consistently GOOD at tanking.  There are plenty of what I’d deem “passable” tanks, but really good ones are kind of a special breed. 

Healers are kind of similar.  Its hard to come up with consistently good healers.  Its also largely a very challenging mental exercise.  You have to in some ways be able to do what I call “predictive analysis” if you are to be really good as a healer.  You have to be able to know a fight well enough to know when the damage is going to land and then when you need to spin up your heals ahead of it. 

Overall its not particularly fun in my opinion.  I understand Blizzard’s problem.  If they make healing too easy, suddenly, anyone can heal and the only way to balance a fight is to make it so that if you don’t execute “X” at the right time, you just die.. period end of story.  That’s not particularly fun either.  Or every fight becomes a tank and spank with a timer. 

Then the fights transform from being healing limited to DPS limited.  So now… you shift your emphasis.  Which honestly I would like to see a bit more of.  What I’ve seen in this expansion especially with Ulduar and beyond is that they put consistently high pressure on the healers to execute and execute perfectly.  It seems to me that pressure on DPS is light.  Yes… standing in bad stuff is bad, but so frequently the fights are built around large sums of environmental damage that’s just consistently pelting the raid.

That just doesn’t seem fun.  Blizzard can you bring the fun back to healing in some way so I can stop burning them out???

Don’t mind me… I’ll be off in the corner…. looking for another healer.

So the focus on this set of articles is to walk you through the Trash mobs currently present in Ulduar.  I’ll give you some insights on how we clear them in 10 man and try to provide tips for 25 man from my past experiences.  So without further ado, lets dig in shall we?

Flame Leviathan… The Long Walk

The initial section is just a simple walk in the park if you’re paying attention to what’s going on.  You’re in vehicles and as long as everyone stays together, you’ll do just fine. 

The number one rule for controlling trash in the first section is simple.  Kill the skinny towers.  These are present all over the place.  They are what spawns the small soldier style adds.  They aren’t deadly on their own, but if you let yourself get overwhelmed?  Yeah… it could get ugly.

There are three other types of trash mobs that are most prevelant.  First is the massive giants, Ulduar Colassus.  These guys are best tanked by a Siege engine.  The fastest method of taking these guys down is to hammer them with 2-3 of the Pyrite blasts.  The DOT from this will kill them quickly.  Their main ability is an overhead ground slam which is completely interruptable just like Flame Vents can be.  I recommend seige engines interrupt where possible.

The second type of add is an Iron golem.  They aren’t particularly dangerous.  Just focus fire them down and they should drop without too much problem.

The third dangerous add is the Air force as we call them.  The little flying machines.  Now you’d imagine these can only be targeted by your gunners?  Well that’s not true.  Your gunners will take them down the fastest with rockets, but you can take them down by targeting the ground under them or even targeting them with your catapults.

The best rules for clearing out the trash are:

1. Siege Engines up front.  They are meant to be tanks, us them as such.
2. Demolishers should NOT be afraid to pound the bigger adds with the Pyrite barrels. There is ample time to deal with refilling your pyrite.  You’ll clear things faster if you use your pyrite judiciously.  Just keep pounding things down.
3. Bikes need to lay down as much tar ahead of the siege engines as possible.  Bikes are in charge of most of hte little adds.  Its simple for your bikes to clean up the small trash.  Tar SHOULD be ignited by siege gunners.
4. Group up tightly and aim straight down the middle of the concourse unless you’re doing hard mode.

There are two mini bosses you need to deal with as well.  For the spider tanks, just have the demolishers focus fire down the spider tank with pyrite barrels.  They’ll die extremely fast to focused Pyrite damage.

Clearing to Ignis

The first type of mob you have to clear if you want to get to Ignis is basically… molten giant.  The Molten Colossus is a rather large and their abilities are simple, but its a big old flame giant.  The key trick here is that their most dangerous ability is dependent on Line of Sight.  The “earthquake” effect will cause about 7k damage and knock everyone down and silence them for 4 seconds.  What we use to clear them is have the two tanks pull them to just at the corner.  The tank is visible to their healer who’s pinned against the side of the column near the tank, but the healer generally can’t see the mob. 

When the mob stuns everyone, the healer isn’t affected, because they are out of sight.  There will be a decent amount of raid damage going around during this pull.  Healers should prehot people if necessary to ensure two back to back earthquakes won’t kill anyone.  Once you get the positioning down, its simple to just DPS one.. and then the other down.

Magma Rager

Magma Rager

Magma Ragers are in essence your most dangerous of the three mobs in this area.  The pull can be simple if your DPS can wait until the mobs are in position.  Healers shouldn’t do anything either as one of the tanks won’t have any agro.  The simplest way I can tell you to position them is one on each side of the ramp about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way up.  The best way I’ve seen to pull them is have one of the tanks ride in on their mount and pull them.  NOTE:  THe person “pulling” with their mount has generated ZERO THREAT.  They just agroed the mob.  Any amount of healing, DPS or otherwise pissing the mob off WILL get you killed.

The deadliest part of the encounter is the ability called “Superheated winds”.  When that pops up, the mob pops a single cyclone which targets a single raid member and then tracks them for probably 8-10 seconds.  When you are targeted or if you think you are, your best bet is to run to the middle of the ramp and straight up it.  DO NOT RUN AGAINST THE WALL!!  If you get pinned against the wall, the cyclones WILL KILL YOU. 

So for these guys… Single target DPS.  When Superheated Winds appears, you run AWAY from the cyclones and then return to DPS when its safe.  Rinse and repeat.  Tanks may need to pop a cooldown if their healer gets targeted and is forced to run. 

Forge Construct

Forge Constructs

These are the simplest of the pulls.  If you’ve cleared the Magma Rager’s first, you can just pull one side or the other.  They have two simple abilities.  One is a frontal cone AOE ability.  This means tanks keep them pointed away from the raid and not at each other to avoid damage.  The second ability is a charge.  Like all charge abilities, the raid should STACK UP behind the mob.  Now… what seems to escape most people is that when i mean stack up, I mean hump the mobs ankle.  I mean be soo close to his butt you can see what type of underwear its wearing.  Hunters are the only exception to this rule.  Hunters should run in till they can’t shoot, then back up to JUST barely be able to shoot.

This serves two purposes. 
1.  It may prevent charges period.
2.  It keeps people from getting killed when the mob runs off to the far side of the room to charge someone and then the DPS keeps pounding him while the tank is unable to generate any threat for 5 seconds.

XT-002 Trash

There are only two trash packs near XT-002.  However like a lot of things, its important to understand your kill order and when to move the mobs before you engage.

Parts Recovery Technician

Your number one kill target in all cases is the Parts Recovery Technicians .  These mobs are only dangerous because they put up a fairly large and hard to miss shield which will buff the mobs inside it to begin healing rapidly.  You need to pull all the mobs out.  Beyond that, the mobs don’t hit hard, and just need to be your first priority target.

Salvagebot

The second mob you should concentrate on in these packs is the Salvagebot .  The salvagebots are big, orange and throw spinning saw blades at a person.  The person who gets targetted will then have a whirlwind style effect surrounding them.  Its important to spread out if you see a saw blade coming your way.  This can be a leading cause of death among raid members.

The next mob on your kill list should be the compactobots .  These are distinguishable by their ability to suddenly leap up into the air and suddenly land on someone’s head.  While this ability is annoying, its not particularly dangerous.  They should be killed third.  Just stay spread out like you were for the saw blades and it will affect a minimum of people.

Disposalbot

The final mob is only dangerous for his final ability.  The Disposalbots have a laser that will target somewhat randomly, but its not a ton of damage.  When they get down to 30% health, they will begin a self destruct sequence.  At this time you need to focus fire DPS on them and just nuke them down before they explode.

Images provided by wowwiki.com.