Tagra’s Tactics pt.5 – Respect and Negativity

Guest Post

Respect your Fellow Raiders.

This is a much bigger category than you might think at first glance. I don’t just mean like “Don’t make racist jokes because one of them might be that race!”, or “Don’t insult someone because they had a brain fart and died to something dumb this time.”

I mean recognize the fact that there are 24 other live (with or without lives…) people in the raid with you. You are not better than them. Your time is not worth more than theirs. It also means that it is not ok to tab out or go afk after every fucking pull, or god forbid after a wipe while you lie there waiting for everyone to run back and rez your lazy ass, because you are wasting the time of 24 other people. And it also means that it is not okay for you to watch TV while putting in minimal effort while everyone else is doing their best on an encounter.

I hope anyone leading a raid is aware enough to recognize disrespectful assholes and kick them out on their ass.

And a very important one for me…

Don’t be Negative.

I zoned into the battlegrounds the other day, and before the gates had even opened, a very familiar scene played out for me:

Newbie: Hey guys I’ve never been here before, what do we do?
Asshat: Lose.

Asshat has a lot to do with what is wrong with shitty raids. Let me explain!

The above is a battleground example, and the anonymous and random environment of BGs is basically a perfect storm with disastrous results, so it’s a great place to observe it, but if you think about it, you can see it applies to PvE raids as well.

Being negative lowers your morale and self-efficacy.  Being openly (raid chat…) negative lowers the morale of the entire raid.   If a persons self-efficacy is low, they are less likely to put effort into their actions, because they feel (consciously or unconsciously) that their efforts aren’t going to make a difference anyway.   If they stop putting in effort, then we are more likely to fail, which just confirms their beliefs… but had everyone in the raid put out 100%, maybe we would have succeeded.

The reason it bothers me so much is I had a lot of trouble with this back in the BWL days, back when consumables were a pain in the ass to collect and carry around and gold was hard to get and you needed to drink 20 different fucking potions every single wipe because there were no flasks that persisted through death.  Yeah it was a bitch and I can understand why people would try to sneak under the radar when we tried to enforce them.   What pissed me off was how when they were called out on it, they’d go “We weren’t going to win anyway, I didn’t want to waste them.”

Do you know how many times we called raids early because it seemed like we weren’t really getting close to killing the boss, but half the raid wasn’t using consumables (or putting in effort…) so we didn’t really have an accurate benchmark on how we could have done?   Do you know how many 1% wipes we had when there were negative cheapskates not using consumables?  1% worth of boss-killing consumables?   No, we didn’t win.   But we could have, you asshole.

And then the best part, my absolute favorite part… was when we did kill the boss and they were all “oh wow I didn’t think we could do it.”   What the fuck is that?  Not only are you negative before we start but you’re negative after we win?  No wonder we were plagued by shitty attitudes.

Positive results from shitty negative comments like those: … well if the raid really truly sucks, then it might end early!
Negative results: Everyone in the raid is more likely to put in less effort as they come to believe we are never going to win. Thanks for your contribution!

It’s tricky because a lot of times people make jokes (I know I’ve made several jokes about our impending horrible demise…) that they might not even realize are negative, but it can set a negative tone for everyone and take a lot of steam out of our momentum as everyone comes to think “well, we’re not going to win on this attempt either, so…”

Tagra’s Tactics pt.2 – Know The Fights

Today’s guest post is again by the mouthy and intelligent Tagra.  I’m glad to bring you part two of Tagra’s Tactics.

Know the Fights!

Know the Fights:
There are so many resources now that there is really no excuse for not at least having a vague idea of what is about to happen. I’m very much a learn-by-doing…-er, so I understand that the wall of text on Wowwiki doesn’t translate very well into “oh fuck there’s fire everywhere” until you’ve died to it once.

wowwiki.com
bosskillers.com

Raiders:
There’s really no excuse for not realizing that standing in fire is a bad thing, even if you have never seen this particular shade of fire before.

Leaders:
If there’s a new person don’t fucking talk about the fight for 30 fucking minutes, arrrghhh. Seriously, by the time you shut the fuck up and pull everyone will have lost focus and the new person won’t understand a goddamn thing you said until they see it in action anyway. If you have to talk, do it in a point form summary of things that will kill us, or on the SECOND PULL when they have a frame of reference for what you’re babbling on about. Thanks.

There are several common themes in WoW bosses, and learning them helps you pick up on what a new fight is going to expect, even if you haven’t seen it before. If it is killing you, don’t stand in it. If it is killing someone else and is attackable, we usually have to kill it so you might want to think about making a target macro.

/target XXX

It’s important to understand why we do certain things on fights, too. I remember on my first raid ever back in Molten Core, I asked the raid lead “why do we do (thing)?”, and their answer was “I dunno why, that’s just what we’re supposed to do.” This was before the days of guides on the internet, so the next attempt I went and did the opposite of it, whatever it was, and it did something god awful horrible to me and then I understood why it was vital to avoid it.

Before I understood that, it didn’t really seem all that important to me to avoid it. I was avoiding some faceless monster that didn’t seem worrisome because it was just another series of steps in the sequence, not something vital to remember to do. Remember to switch to the tree on Freya! But it’s not even doing damage! Surely I should keep killing these adds before worrying about th… a tree that will heal everything and wipe us if we don’t kill it in the next couple seconds? Oh shit, ok kill trees…

Which reminds me…

(to be continued in Tagra’s Tactics pt.3)

Strategy: Beasts of Northrend

Updated: 8.22.09

.

The Northrend Beasts consists of 4 different mobs, Gormok, Acidmaw / Dreadscale, and Icehowl.  The following strategy will be for 25man, however there are no differences in abilities between 10 / 25 man.

Raid Makeup:
Tanks: 2
Healers: 5-7
DPS: Assorted melee / ranged

First, I’ll go over each bosses abilities and then do a strategy breakdown at the end.

Voidwalker tanking Sartharion 3D

This is an alternative method of doing Sartharion +3 Drakes.

Instead of being tanked by a Druid or Death Knight, Sartharion is tanked by a Demonologist’s Warlock’s Voidwalker.  Through appropriate specilization and gear choices the Voidwalker can reach 60-80,000 health raid buffed.

Raid Composition:

Tanks: 4 (3 Tanks / 1 Warlock Voidwalker)
Healers: 6-7
DPS: 14-15

Sartharion Positioning Map

Positioning:

1.  Sartharion’s Initial Position / Where the 3 Drakes will be tanked.
2.  Random Tank
3.  Warlock’s Voidwalker
4.  Warlock / Voidwalker’s Healer

More In Depth:

Sartharion starts at the number 1.  He is face pulled by any of your tanks to where the number 2 is.  The tank doesn’t want to produce any aggro on Sartharion, just pull him that direction.  When the Tank has pulled him then a Hunter will misdirect(MD)  Sartharion to the Voidwalker(VW).  This puts Sartharion in the position seen above.  He is mostly removed from the platform allowing you to spread out a bit more then normal.  The Warlock as well as the healer for the VW stand at number 4.  No one does any damage to Sartharion at the beginning.  The aggro the VW produces is very small and can easily be outdone by a DPS.  If you have extra hunters than give the VW a 2nd or 3rd MD, remembering to save an MD for your tank and the first drake (Tenebron).

Drake tanking varies wildly among groups.  Some people tank the Drakes where they land.  Personally I feel this creates more trouble than it is worth.  It requires every person to relearn where they are standing for each drake to avoid flame walls.  If you move each drake to the same position then your raiders only have to learn one position.  In a fight that has so many things going on, keeping it as simple as possible is key.

We tank every Drake in position one.  This puts the tank on the edge of two lava wall gaps so there is minimal change in positioning.  It’s hard to see but on the far right hand side of the above picture is a gap on the edge of Sartharion’s Platform that the tank should move to for the corresponding lava wall.

Kill Order:

Drake 1 (Tenebron), Whelps, Drake 2 (Shadron), Drake 3 (Vesperon), Acolytes inside of the Portal, Sartharion

After the Drakes are dead and the insides of the portal are cleared you can reposition Sartharion.  The tank needs to watch for a Flame Breath and as soon as it finished the tank will taunt Sartharion from where his tail is at.  This puts the tank roughly where the number two is and then he follows the arrow at the number two so that Sartharion’s side is to the raid.

Warlock Information:

Warlock’s Spec

The Warlock should be applying Curse of Weakness to Sartharion to help out on incoming damage.  The incoming damage to the VW isn’t very significant and is easily healed by one person (usually a well geared Discipline Priest).  The Warlock should be DPSing the Drakes and adds up until the 3rd Drake (Vesperon) lands.  When Vesperon lands he summons an acolyte inside of the portal that gives every person a debuff.  This debuff increases the amount of shadow and fire damage you take by 75% and also deals around 3,000 damage to you when you do damage to something else.  It has about a one second hidden cooldown on it so an AE attack (Fan of Knives, Arcane Explosion, etc.) will not one shot you.  The Warlock needs to spam a rank 1 Health Funnel on the Voidwalker until the Acolyte is dead, thus removing the buff he gives everyone.  A Warlock’s Health Funnel decreases the damage the VW takes by 30% which is heavily needed during this phase.  WARNING:  The Warlock needs to STOP the pet attacking but be careful not to misclick and reposition the VW, wiping the raid. You’ll be surprised how often this happens.

The VW takes a portion of the Warlock’s stamina (not health) which means the Warlock needs to get a special set of gear for this.  He needs to obtain the gear with the highest Stamina (all other stats are irrelevant) and socket / enchant for stamina.

Gear: (stamina / item)

Chest:
241 Glacial Robe
163 Deadly Gladiator’s Felweave Raiment
150 Hateful Gladiator’s Felweave Raiment
147 Heigan’s Putrid Vestments
147 Valorous Plagueheart Robes
138 Heroes’ Plagueheart Robes

Feet:
177 Glacial Slippers
109 Deadly Gladiator’s Treads of Dominance
100 Hateful Gladiator’s Slippers of Dominance
100 Titan-forged Slippers of Dominance
100 Boots of Persuasion
89 Arcanic Templars

Hands:
109 Deadly Gladiator’s Felweave Handguards
103 Gloves of Granduer
100 Hateful Gladiator’s Felweave Handguards
99 Valorous Plagueheart Gloves
90 Heroes’ Plagueheart Gloves
90 Savage Gladiator’s Felweave Handguards

Head:
171 Deadly Gladiator’s Felweave Cowl
144 Cowl of Winged Fear
158 Hateful Gladiator’s Felweave Cowl
158 Titan-forged Hood of Dominance
155 Valorous Plagueheart Circlet
152 Hood of Rationality

Legs:
163 Deadly Gladiator’s Felweave Trousers
150 Hateful Gladiator’s Felweave Trousers
136 Savage Gladiator’s Felweave Trousers
135 Legwraps of the Defeated Dragon
135 Valorous Plagueheart Leggings
133 Leggings of Mortal Arrogance

Shoulders:
109 Deadly Gladiator’s Felweave Amice
100 Hateful Gladiator’s Felweave Amice
97 Valorous Plagueheart Shoulderpads
90 Heroes’ Plagueheart Shoulderpads
90 Savage Gladiator’s Felweave Amice
81 Mantle of the Locusts

Waist:
178 Glacial Waistband
109 Deadly Cord of Dominance
100 Hateful Cord of Dominance
81 Elegant Temple Gardens’ Girdle
81 Sash of Solitude

Wrist:
78 Unsullied Cuffs
66 DeadlyGladiator’s Cuffs of Dominance
66 Bands of Impurity
57 Hateful Gladiator’s Cuffs of Dominance
55 Bindings of the Expansive Mind

Wand:
36 Deadly Gladiator’s Baton of Light
31 Deadly Gladiator’s Wand / Hateful Wand
31 Shinygem Rod
29 Wand of Purifying Fire
27 Contortion
27 Savage Gladiator’s Wands
27 Gemmed Wand of the Nerubians

Cloak:
79 Deady Gladiator’s Cloak of (any caster)
66 Tattered Castle Drape
57 Hateful Gladiator’s Cloak of (any caster)

Neck:
111 Titanium Earthguarde Chain
66 Deadly Gladiator’s Pendant of (any caster)
63 Burning Skull Pendant
57 Hateful Gladiator’s Pendant of (any caster)

Ring:
124 Titanium Frostguard Ring
Any Naxx tanky ring that might rot.

Trinket:
111 Essence of Gossamer
111 Figurine – Monarch Crab
110 Figurine – Ruby Hare
81 Sonic Booster (engineering)
75 Indestructible Alchemist’s Stone (alchemy)
57 Commendation of Kael’Thas (jewelcrafting)
51 Darkmoon Card: Madness / Vengeance
49 Figurine – Crimson Serpent (jewelcrafting)
45 Commander’s Badge

Enchants:

Feet: Enchant Boots – Greater Fortitude
Hands:  Heavy Borean Armor Kit
Head:  Arcanum of the Flame’s Soul
Waist:  Eternal Belt Buckle
Legs:  Frosthide Leg Armor
Wrist:  Enchant Bracer – Major Stamina
Shoulders:  Greater Inscription of the Gladiator
Chest:  Heavy Borean Armor kit
Bracers:  Enchant Bracer – Major Stamina

Sockets:  Solid Sky Sapphire (24 stamina)

Meta: Austere Earthsiege Diamond

EDIT:  It seems that in 3.1 this tactic will sadly, no longer be effective.  The Voidwalker will no longer gain 60% bonus from the Warlock’s stamina, but 10%.

EDIT2:  Added this to the Guides page.

Deep Discipline Gear List!

Thanks to the efforts of Krayless and the math at dwarfpriest.com we’ve compiled a list of gear for those lazy people like myself who just want a list that tells them what to wear =)  Note, this is for DISCIPLINE spec.  If you need a holy gear list you can find that at dwarfpriest.com (there’s a link w/in the disc gear list).

Discipline Gear List