Casual Raid Leader

I’m a fairly disorganized type of personality.  Its just the way I am.  It hasn’t changed much in the last 30 some years of my life.  If you saw my bedroom as a kid, It was always fairly full of piles.  Like most typical males, I knew exactly what was in each of those piles though.  I always got myself in trouble when I actually cleaned up…. because then I could never remember where I put anything.

In many respects that hasn’t changed much.  I’m a bit older, I have less crap… so the floor is generally cleaner.  Though my kids seem to suffer from my organizational abilities… which is a bit frustrating… but hey.

However… there is one area that I do function well in organizing thoughts.. and that’s developing raid strategies.  No… I’m not revolutionary.  I’m not on the bleeding edge developing strategies that nobody has ever ever seen.  I’m talking about adapting strategy to the group your running with.

Professor P… and Palatable Placement Process

Professor Putricide as a whole kind of stymied us for a little bit.  Not because I viewed him as particularly hard, but because we got to him right during when we had some people getting married and forming raids was a bit difficult when 4 of your core raiders are out and two of them are healers.

We started with what I’d call the “traditional” strategy of starting on the orange wall and then once the green slime was down everyone runs toward the green wall.. and back and forth.  Just a few minor problems.

1. The setup is stupidly easy, but… that works for the pull, after that everyone is running different paths through the room leading to…..
2. Slime puddles being spread all over the room.  It makes it extremely hard to get them all if you get a bad spread.  Which means you can actually get screwed in the fight because of it.
3. People aren’t good at moving back from the green wall to the orange wall.  You’re first instinct is to stop and DPS when you’re in range of the boss.  Meaning the melee ran all the way across the room and the ranged stopped about half way.  Leading to… the green slime almost inevitably picking that ranged dps standing in the middle of the room where its impossible for anyone to get to them before they get smushed and dead.

This kind of left me in a quandry.  I like the simplicity, but what I determined was that the strategy left us with two major gaping problems.

• There was too little time on DPS.
• There was just too much movement involved.  Too much time running of course meant… less time on DPS.

But inspiration… lands in the most unusual ways some days.

“A Friend of Mine Was Telling Me…..”

So our second tank mentions casually in raid that a friend of his told him they did the entire fight by just moving along the green wall.  My first reaction was….”That’s insane… that’s actually closer to the green slime.  I’m kind of failing to see how that’s helpful as we’ll get blasted around MORE often.”

However… I let it percolate in my brain and then it hit me….. The room is roughly a diamond.  (Yes… I’m going old school ASCII rather than doing something like Microsoft Paint…)

…………________……………..
………../…………….\…………..
………./………………\………
………/………………..\…
……../………………….\
……..\…..O…….G……/
……….\………………./
…………\……………/
………….._______/

What occured to me… is that the distance from side wall to side wall was roughly the same as the distance from where the slimes appear and the front of the room.  We could tank him up by the table at the front of the room and just deal with the slimes there.  For people hit with the green slime, we stand right up front and don’t move.  For people hit with the orange slime, they have a couple of seconds they can stand still while it closes on them, then they can kite it up the green wall.

Benefits:

• We aren’t running all over kindom come.
• The slime puddles are pretty tightly controlled.  So its easier for the abomination driver to deal with them.
• The only time people have to move is for the orange slime.
• The abomination only has to run about two steps out to spit on the slime.
• When phase 3 transitions, you’re all pretty well grouped up.  You can just start kiting him down the Orange wall and blast him into oblivion. 

Well… lets test that theory!!!!

Cleansing Totems SUCK!

The funny thing about the fight… cleansing totems actually affect the giant abomination effect.  It doesn’t appear as a disease on my debuffs, but sure as heck… cleansing totem clears it.  The first two times we tested our theory on tanking him by his experiment bench, we thought there was some effect by the bench that prevented you from doing exactly what we were attempting. 

We moved slightly up the green wall to try it again.  Again, the abomination just disappeared after a few seconds.  I’d grab a new one and boom… suddenly gone.  Ok it MUST be something by the bench… yeah … yeah that’s it.  We’ll go back to the old strategy.  We’ll tank him further back and just go straight across again.. 

BOOM… same effect.  Ok at this point I was pretty frustrated.  I mean I’ve driven the abomination before and this has NEVER happened… what the hell!?!?!?!?!

Suddenly the shaman looks up sheepishly… “Um… sorry… I forgot to change my totems from the Rotface fight… I still had a cleansing totem down…”

Whoops…. That kind of sucked.  Oh well… we learned something important.

Abomination driving 101

One thing I’ve learned is that as simple as it sounds, driving an abomination is not an easy task if you don’t stay on target.  Being the abomination driver is about focus.  You have to priotize your tasks and do them well or you make everybody else’s job that much harder.

First rule:  Thou shalt ONLY drive the abomination…
Second Rule:  Thou shalt NOT call out things to the raid… if you’re watching the raid.. you aren’t doing what the hell you’re supposed to be doing.
Third Rule:  If there’s an ooze (or gas cloud UP) Thou Shalt Spit at it first!!! Above all else.
Fourth Rule:  If there’s a slime puddle up…. thou shalt drink it.. and drink it quickly… spam the drink button as if you’re life depended on it…(it does…)
Fifth Rule:  IF the ooze/cloud has spit on it… AND there aren’t any slime puddles up, give it a good whack with a mutated slash. (or two… or three) 
Sixth Rule:  If there aren’t any slimes you have to deal with… AND there aren’t any slime puddles up… Always keep mutated slashes on Professor Putricide when possible.  It helps the DPS overall.

Some people may be able to ignore number 2.  I find personally, I can’t call things out for people AND drive the abomination.  That tends to lead to me falling behind on sucking up the slime puddles.  Which causes even bigger problems.  Getting behind on slime puddles means you’re highly likely to be overwhelmed and never able to catch up.  As soon as you see three slime puddles on the floor at one time, you’re pretty much fighting a losing battle.

I had an old friend of mine stop by last night to chat.  We’ve played together since he was just a new player back in the Burning Crusade days.  He did the traditional WoW route.  He started as a hunter because EVERYONE told him to play one.  Its simple they said.. and you know what?  He got pretty damned good at it, but it wasn’t quite fulfilling for him.  Ok that’s a lie.  Due to financial difficulties at the time that Wrath came out, he just couldn’t afford a copy.  So he did what any redblooded casual WoW player would do.  He started an alt.

Since that time, the Alt became the Main as far as raiding is concerned.  He’s learned by trial and fire how to tank.  He’s discovered that he really likes it.  I mean hell…. who wouldn’t like getting their face beat in day after day. 

Lets be honest, its a very high profile position in a raid.  What’s the first question the healers ask?  “Who’s the tank?”  Who do people pin their hopes on in 25 mans and 10 mans?  The Tank and the healers, but honestly.. tanks are more visual.  When you’re looking at killing the boss, you see the tank.  You half the time don’t notice the guys propping him/her up and keeping their furry …er… plated…. buttocks up and running.  Its not fair to healers, but it is what it is.

We keep in touch from time to time.  He has moved on to tank on the Alliance side on Whisperwind.  I’m of course tanking on the horde side on Thunderhorn.  So as I was babbling on, we got to talking and the conversation kind of progressed like this….

Me:  Rough night in ICC.

Him:  Which boss?

Me:  Not a boss, more of just a general feeling of people being off tonight.  Not terrible, just didn’t quite make it as far as we wanted.

Him:  Yeah?  …. hey do you mind if I ask you a question?

Me:  No sweat

(queue… long wait)

Me: Uh oh.. must be a long question??!!!

Him:  Ok… so I’m pondering is it normal to feel like you want to be the Main Tank and not the Off Tank anymore?  Is that a normal feeling? 

Good question… lets pursue it shall we??? (more…)

Some times you just kind of run dry.  You try and try to come up with things to say… and in the end you just sit there..and can’t really think of anything that you’ll find that important.  What’s most interesting about taking a break is that it does wonderful things for your creative juices as well as kind of putting you back in touch with why you do this.

I think when I started this blog, it was for an entirely different reason than why I write now.  I won’t ever be a Matticus. 

I won’t ever be hard core theorist.  What I am… is a 30 something disorganized raid leader with a little bit of whit and a whole hell of a lot of sarcasm.  Plus I have some good friends who watch here looking to see what I am doing from time to time.  Which is encouraging.  I’m not an expert at anything in particular.  Some people would say I probably don’t give myself enough credit, but to be honest, I believe in thinking you always have group to grow and learn. (more…)

I know… its been quite a while since I posted anything here.  To be honest… I just haven’t had it in me.  While I’m going to take a week or two to think about it, at this point I’m likely coming close to the point of shutting the doors down here.

Now… why?

Well lots of reasons.  Not the least of which is… I am a very busy man.  I have a lot going on with my kids.  I’m extremely busy at work, and I find my free time in the game filled with a million details as we work our way through Icecrown Citadel.

When I I first started this blog to be honest I was bored at work, I had a lot of free time and my kids were younger.  Since then my son’s in Karate 4 days a week and we’re trying to juggle everyone’s schedule and I have a different situation at work. 

I love to write, but its just not something I feel I have the time to do well…  I’ll give it a couple of weeks to just kind of mull over, before I put my final decision here.  In that mean time, I may post… or I may not.

*salute*

Happy raiding folks.

Last night was a good night to die!!!  Well for Saurfang it was.  We had spent Wednesday working on clearing the first three bosses, but as we thought we’d only have 5 attempts at Saurfang, we figured we’d hold off after a long night of raiding to do Saurfang on a fresh day.  Thursday I knew would be a very busy day for me.  My daughter had a music program at school, so I really didn’t anticipate having time to raid, but about 8:30 I jumped online and there the group was.. waiting for me to show up.

So we headed on in to Icecrown Citadel.  I suspect there was a bug as we were granted 8 attempts at Saurfang, but I’m not going to complain… we downed him.  Lets crank it up and see what we learned about Deathbringer Saurfang. (more…)

Its funny how we kind of find ourselves in a rut.  I think in an MMO, its kind of a natural thing.  You end up stuck… you’ve done most if not all of everything in the game and then.. things slow down… they crawl to a halt and you find yourself just filling in the spaces….

I’m sorry if you disagree, but Blizzard in my opinion has proved why they deserve the king of the hill for MMOs.  With the release of 3.3, they’ve redefined what it is to play WoW… again. (more…)

It has been an interesting few weeks.  I was accused of being a real pro the other day in a raid and to be honest.. it felt good.  I’ve been quiet on purpose.  I’ve had a lot to say, but to be honest, I wanted to give people I knew a bit of time to adjust… pick a direction and decide what they wanted to do with the game.

I’ve picked my path and thus far I’m not regretting it.  For those who have been watching, you know I jumped from Alliance to Horde and swapped servers.  $55 later (ouch), I found myself in a guild formed by some friends of mine I see once or twice a month.  So its a guild largely comprised of people who know each other.  Lets take a few minutes to dwell down what I’ve experienced and some of the surprises I’ve seen. (more…)

Friday was one of those blessid days.  Why you ask?  Because we got mail!!!!

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. (more…)

If I get one and only claim to fame for this expansion, its that I was blessed enough to coin the phrase, Children of Wrath.  Its one that spawned a TON of posts across the Blog Azeroth community, but lets take a bit of time almost a year out to do a little retrospective.  This was the first post that I did, that WowInsider took notice and was nice enough to crash my site over.  Its a post of mine that still gets hits to this day. 

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. (more…)

In the wake of changing guilds, I wanted to take a bit of time to sit down and really think about what happened and see the ripple effects before I really talked about what I learned. Its now been over two weeks since I left my previous guild. Since I left, my previous guild has become a shell of its former self. A lot of very good players have been scattered to the wind. Some of them went places I’d rather they hadn’t. Some of them have been left to drift in a quagmire not sure where to go. Others have picked new directions.

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. (more…)