Raid Leaders. What can you do to help them?

 

So you’ve gotten yourself a spot in a 10 or 25 man raid and you’re in there dps’ing, tanking, healing, doing your thing. You aren’t the worst player in the world and the raid is making decent progress, but the raid leaders are stressed out every week and can get downright snippy from time to time. Look at things from their point of view, though. They’re the ones responsible for the whole run. They need to know the strategies ahead of time to know what kind of class balance is necessary. They need to know the schedules of 24 other people and need to make all of those mesh so that they can herd all 24 cats people into the same place at the same time.

Then you get into the run itself. The new guy from another server is whispering the RL with strategy ideas from his old guild. The hunter and the rogue are arguing about a loot drop from the first boss and you’re on the sixth. The warlock seems to have a terribly weak bladder and runs to the bathroom at least once every half hour. These are all just the problems on a farming run. Progression runs bring a whole new swath of problems. After every wipe the tank yells at the healers. The mage says “We just don’t have the dps for this” and tries to convince everyone that you’re wasting your time. It sometimes can really be miserable to lead a raid. So what can you do to make yourself more useful to the raid leader to save him/her some headache? I’m glad you asked.

• Show up on time.  There’s nothing worse than being down 6 people with 5 minutes to go to the first pull. You are pretty sure that they will show up, but what if they don’t? At some point you’re going to have to start lining up replacements, but what if you get a replacement and someone shows up 2 minutes late? If you get there on time, you eliminate this concern for the RL and allow them to focus on getting the raid going.
• Be prepared. Have your consumables and know the strategies that you’re going to be working on ahead of time. A raid runs best when it runs quickly. If you have to stop to explain every single fight, people lose focus and start wandering off more and more.
• Don’t tell the RL how your old guild did it. Honestly, if your old guild was that great, why did you leave? Snarkiness aside, most RLs have a plan for a fight going into it. If they ask for help, by all means chime in, but if they aren’t asking, let them run things. If you’re making comments in guild chat or raid chat about how you used to do things, you’re going to irritate them.
• Don’t constantly whisper the RL. You have to consider the amount of stuff that he/she has going on right now. It’s also entirely possible that up to 24 other people are sending whispers at the same time. Don’t be offended if you do send a whisper and don’t get a response. In general, though, ask yourself whether or not this can wait until after the raid. Most of the time it can.
• Don’t get up all the time. Try to consolidate afk’s so that you’re grabbing your snack, your drink, and hitting the bathroom all at once. If the raid has to stop constantly, people start to lose interest, dps goes down, tanks miss mobs, and healers start thinking about other stuff. Also, the RL has to keep track of who is available at a moment’s notice. Don’t be the problem.
• Don’t whine about loot. I know that the hunter may not ever equip that dagger and I’m sorry, but everyone gets their DKP and can spend it as they see fit. He might actually use it. One way or another, this lowers raid morale and isn’t at all necessary during the raid. If you have a continuing problem with one person, take it up outside of the raid.
• Worry about your job.  The RL is there to wrangle all those pesky DPS. You don’t have to. If there is really a problem with the healing, let him/her handle it. You make sure you’re doing your job to be best of your ability.

This isn’t nearly a complete list, but it’s a nice starting point. If you do these things, your raid leader may come out of Naxxramas with the same amount of hair he went in with and you will have a smoother, more successful raid.

What is Tanking Part I.

This is the first in a series of posts about warrior tanking. Tanking has changed since the first version of WoW. It is a series of questions you have to ask yourself. The first question is, "What is my actual job?" and the answer is simple. You want to build the maximum amount of threat in the minimum amount of time. You want every baddy out there to hate you more than it hates your healers and damage dealers.

There's bad news. Tanking isn't always sexy. Damage dealers (DPS) throw up huge numbers with each strike or cast and use a meter to watch how much damage they are doing. They like to fight about these meters and try to be the guy on top. If you are not putting out enough threat, these DPSers are going to have to throttle back and hit less hard. This makes DPSers irritable and makes for a dangerous situation. If they accidentally go too hard or hit a crit or two, they could pull the mob off of you. Tanks have less ability for immediate feedback, although UI mods like Omen allow us to see our threat level and the threat level of the other members of the raid. What you have to do is learn to use that threat level as the first basis for your next set of questions.

In the earlier days of WoW, we could use a set rotation to generate the maximum threat in most situations. Wrath of the Lich King changed that. Now you have to be more aware of your situation and attempt to weigh available talents versus the situation. This makes tanking a lot more fun, but also makes it a tougher affair. Gone are the days of mindless button mashing and in their place are the days of dynamic tanking as you attempt to balance avoidance, threat, and even a little bit of DPS yourself to help the raid along. How can you get better? The easiest way to become a better tank is to tank. Jump in guild groups that you know are going to be good and where all of the members will do their jobs. These show you how things are supposed to run and allow you to gear up in the fastest way possible. Jump in pick up groups (PuGs) where you don't know what you're going to get. Sometimes they will be a solid group and sometimes they will be horrible. Stick with the horrible groups as you will learn a lot about snap threat generation in a worst-case scenario. Your dps will start early and will over-nuke on groups of mobs. If you can keep them alive through that, you're going to be fine when you get in with a more restrained, well balanced group. That second group is going to love you too, since you're going to know how to generate a ton of threat quickly.

In the next post I'll start to look at individual talents, what they do, and show you when you want to use them. Later on we'll take all of the talents and try to weigh them for the best use.