For the few of us unlucky souls who are undergoing a summer semester in school, it serves to have a helpful reminder of what we students can do to get ahead and get an A. The flip-side is that some of these lessons work both ways and can be applied in WoW.
Do your homework
In math class, you derive equations from problem solving questions in order to find a solution. Practice, practice, practice. The goal here is to continue killing bosses like Tidewalker, Leo, Rage, Gorefiend, and etc to keep your skills sharp. Before you expect it, you’re going to get hit with an examination (who happens to be known as Illidan). The end-raid bosses serve as a check to see if you’ve learned anything from earlier bosses .
Make friends with the A-level students
Hint: They’re usually the ones that sit in the first two rows of the class. They have a good work ethic, they always pay attention, never miss a lecture, and they know what they’re doing. Typically, these A students won’t mind helping you out. They’ll give you a few tips for homework or help you study by giving you easy ways to remember certain facts. They help isolate your weaknesses in the subject, so you can recognize and prepare for them. In WoW, this might be someone in a slightly more progressed Guild. This is a player that’s already done what your Guild is working on and it pays to make friends with them so you can call on them from time-to-time for some advice on what they’ve done at certain points of a fight. If you happen to have your own blog, you just might discover that one of your readers has gone through the same experience that you’re going through right now and can help you get through the proverbial hump.
Get sleep
Before every major exam or test, get a full night’s sleep. It’s been shown that sleeping is the most important thing a person can do to prepare because it allows the body to fully recharge and absorb materials from your studying sessions. The same holds true for WoW. There have been some raid days where I’ve been exhausted from lack of sleep. Raid time comes around and as a healer, it’s hard for me to keep my attention level high (because it can be boring on trash). I typically counter the effects with a combination of coffee or tea (and at one point in time, caffeine pills but you shouldn’t do that), but the results are no substitute for the real thing. A rested raider is a happy raider.
Stick to the schedule you set for yourself
More importantly, make sure the raid leader follows this. There should be a 30 minute invite grace period allowing people to scramble in, get repaired, purchase reagents, create potions, etc. During this time, they should also be in position for the first pull the moment the 30 minutes are up. A late start is never a good sign since people will get frustrated. Figure out your goals for the evening and what to do if they’re met early. Will you give everyone the rest of the night off? Or push on and get some attempts on the next challenge? Decide out what you want to do, how to get there, and what can be realistically achieved with the time left. There’s a time for WoW, there’s a time for studying, and there’s a time for Wii Fit. Just as crucial is knowing what to do when you run out of time When there’s a scheduled end time, make sure that is followed. If it looks like the attempt is going to go over, kill the raid there. Don’t fall into the "just one more" trap. It’s best to come back the next raid day full of energy and life, and this ethic continues to reinforce your commitment to starting on time by ending on time. Respecting that 24 other players have set aside this time specifically for raiding, and they’ll be more likely to show up and push through the entire raid whether you succeed or fail.
Hopefully these four lessons can help you when you’re raiding. If not, maybe they’ll help you outside of WoW!
Any other students or retired students? Might there be some more sagely advice that can be added?
Honestly, the main one I’d suggest is cut down on your raiding for a while… as far as the studying is concerned that is. I have fallen into that trap and failed university and I’m sure that playing too much wow was one of the factors that caused me to flunk. 🙁
Welcome back, Matt.
Study groups work, too. Having a set group to run with in WoW… for dailies, weekly Kara, heroics, or BG’s makes those things a lot more enjoyable and efficient.
Prioritize – Create a focus point for your time and energy. Do you need help learning derivations or do you need to work on your spell cycle? Pick one or two things to focus on and master before you move on to the next thing.
Unrelated to the post in any way, but since this is a priest blog – here’s encouraging news to priest raiders:
Alliance first Kil’jaeden kill (Method) was to a raid with 5/25 priests 😉 Guss they didn’t have access to that many shaman being alliance and all…
Welcome back Matt and thanks for another insightful article.
“No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.” — Hunter S. Thompson
F*ck off runs were always beneficial when I went on them back in ye olden days. “Ok guys, we’re not actually trying to get him down, we’re just going to go fool around and let folks get comfy with some timing. Trash mobs are for anyone who needs to work on a spell rotation or get your gui fixed up.”
There was NO pressure whatsoever, and everyone KNEW they were going in there to wipe and goof off in a combo “study session/fun run/blow off steam with friends” environment. We had a few “problem” guildies that were overly defensive when they screwed up, but in these cases when the raid lead said “Ok, here is what happened, and this will help you to prevent that in the future.” it went over a lot more smoothly. (I also noticed them taking criticism a lot better in real runs after that as well.)
Yeah, it was a smidgen expensive if you stuck around for 5+ wipes, and you only used pots if you had some spares you didn’t mind blowing, but letting folks new to the instance get a gander around without any performance anxiety helped a lot later on in crunch time.
Tip: we usually asked for a 2-5g “entry fee” for newbies to pay for the MT repair bills.
Welcome back. Your site’s been very helpful to me and I am glad you’ve returned; though it’s good to pace oneself and not burn out in too many directions all at once.
I’ve just started raiding Kara with my guild (and am the only level 70 priest in it) I’m trying to learn as much as I can and your site’s one of the more entertaining and helpful.
So I guess I’m saying thanks for not disappearing 😉
Ammy
Amandine: Thank you! I had no such intentions of disappearing permanently. =)
Boss cheat sheets – I have a notebook next to me with the highlights. I started it when I was raid leading Kara (back when that was still needed) and when I couldn’t remember which beams Netherspite had and who went in them. Now I have one for each boss, just a quick set of bullet points to remind me what to pay attention for. Equip the medallion for the first boss in MH, watch out for the stuff on the ground, etc. This means that the strategy is fresh in my mind.
I also make notes as to raid positions as explained by the RL before a fight. Sometimes I’ll just note the healers, sometimes I’ll do the healers and the tanks, like on Maggy. It’s good to have something to glance at if a healer goes down, to know where the weak spots may be, etc. It’s also good for analysing how healing went afterwards with WWS.