Casual Raid Leader

Now that the plague has finally cleared my house…. we can get back to work.  I swear why in the hell can’t Heigan clean up after himself?  You’d think the guy would have learned after we slapped him around on our first day in, but no… he had to leave his crap all over my house!?!?!  (Trust me 3 days of dealing with the stomach flu is enough to drag anyone down…)

But moving on, the question is how in the world do you deal with raid walls? 

What is a Raid Wall?  A raid wall is any barrier you run into in a raid instance that halts your progress.  For some in Burning Crusade it was Attumen.  For others it was Curator.  Still others were plagued by beasts such as Shade of Aran or Moroes.  Whatever your wall, there’s always a cause and there’s always a solution.  Deconstructing the wall?  Now that can be as hard or easy as you make it. (more…)

***** NOTE:  This post has been updated in this post.  Please see it for the latest information******

Part and parcel with the whole raiding gig is being prepared with all sorts of things.  Flasks (or Elixirs), Individual buffs, raid wide buffs and of course food buffs.  Food buffs can come from a vast array of sources, but theres nothing quite like feeding yourself.  Most people consider cooking to be a complete waste of time.  And if you are fine dumping anywhere from 200-500g a week on buffing food then more power too you. 

I personally try to be 100% self sufficient if I can.  But to do that takes a lot of dedication if you want to be eating nothing but the best food they have to offer.  However lets just talk about for now what you CAN eat not necessarily what you can make.  Note you will see some repeats as you progess through this, but I’ll felt it better to group foods by what type of buffs they provide. 

Unlike the old BC foods, the new foods are really really good.  Gone are the days of Spirit on every piece of food and in its place you’ll find a nice helping of Stamina. (more…)

Its been a very heavy learning week for me.  This was my first week back in the saddle of raid leading.  Its a lot different mind set to follow when you are leading people through content you’ve cleared a million times to working on bosses that people either haven’t seen or trash they aren’t familiar with.  So its a complete change of mental attitude and focus to put the right mindset on.  But here we are… two days of raid leading and I’m feeling it again. 

I have to give props to the team though.  They make my life a million times easier.  Most of them are very professional about their approach.  They’ve lived the noob life in Kara so they know how much a difference, enchants, buffing foods and pots mean.  So even though our rules and requirements for raids aren’t 100% fleshed out, they’ve already made sure that almost all their gear is enchanted, they’ve got buffing food and they’ve got their elixirs or flasks.  Again… it makes my life a million times easier. (more…)

Wow… what a week.  I can’t think of one that’s been much more productive than the last one.  Well probably there have been, but that very first whirlwind of a week getting ready to raid is always overwhelming.  You’re suddenly thrust into looking at enchants, elixirs/flasks and buffing foods.  Its just a crazy time filled with rapid fire changes to your character, their gear and your perceptions. (more…)

Recently I’ve been touting the benefits of active candid feedback.  Well blessidly I have some good people in my guild who have been kind enough to take it to heart and sent me a note.  To give you some background, this note originated out of a discussion we’ve been having over loot in our guild among our officers and raid leaders.  We are now on page 5 of the discussion so its been a long drawn out, heated yet polite exchange of ideas. (more…)

Filling in a raid is as much about finding the right people for the right job as making sure you’ve got your ‘i’s dotted and your ‘t’s crossed so to speak.  However running a raid and establishing things like kill orders takes a great deal more thought.  How do you get your kill on?

Note:  This was originally slated for publish a few days ago… and I clicked the wrong type of post… added a page instead of a post…. sigh..

(more…)

Ok ok.  You’re guild has finished off with their training wheels.  You’ve grown from that small to medium sized guild into a much more robust and focused machine.  Or you’ve leveraged an alliance with another guild and now you want to move up into the “heroic” mode of raiding.  Why get iLVL 200 stuff when you can rake in the iLVL 213 stuff?  Why get 2 loots per kill when you can get 4-5 loots?   I mean why, why, why???  Why not???

Enter the 25 man.  Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just multiply everything by 2.5 and say… hey… 10 man vs. 25 Man is simple right??? Well…. not exactly.  Following suit with our first in this series, lets delve into the hows and whys of building a 25 man group to meet your needs. (more…)

There’s plenty of “well duh… of course you do it this way” type of advice out there, but how many people really think about methods of running a raid.  One of the items I wanted to delve into is the why’s and how’s of designing a 10 man raid group for your Wrath of the Lich King needs.   The front runners are already there.  Odds are high on your realm you’ve been assualted by a realm first announcement spewing all over the chat window.

But for the people approaching the content at a more measured pace its time to start putting together your raid teams and planning for the future.  Lets take a moment of two to sit and relax and see what a typical 10 man raid load out would be like. (more…)

Thank you dear readers for sticking with me.  I fixed the issue of not having a contact page.  You’ll note in the upper right hand bar there is a section now to contact me.  From here on out if you have requests for information, questions, comments etc, please feel free to send information from there. 

My next few posts I’ll be outlining this week are going to be dedicated to raid setup and planning for our current iteration of Wrath.  I’ll walk you through some tips and thoughts on possible raid layouts as well as the importance of various roles created between 10 and 25 man settings.  Expect the first one out on Wednesday and follow ups on Thursday and Friday this week.