Guide to Healing, Leading, and Progressing in WoW Raids
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I’m telling you right now, that nothing beats that thrilling feeling of winning that fishing contest. Not killing my first Horde. Not doing my first instance. Not killing Rag. Not my first epic flying mount. Not even killing Vashj.
Thanks Blori and Keruen! Without their ability to run interference and crowd control, I would not have been able to get it. I wanted it on my priest initially, but I figured my Shaman could withstand the pain better from Horde.
I didn’t really want to do it. It just… happened! Honestly!
12 PM to 330 PM
Keruen and I set up a half Carnage raid to go in to Zul’Aman (We didn’t actually start pulls until 1 PM). We spent a few hours in there downing Bear Boss easily within three shots. The [item]Robes of Heavenly Purpose[/item] dropped. Unfortunately, I was on my Resto Shaman so they went to Keruen since he was the only healing priest in there. I think we’re a few weeks from being able to go for the time trials. We don’t have a consistent number of personnel to go in with at the moment. Then we tried clearing to Lynx, but we had a number of players drop out. By then it was around 315 and with our SSC raid starting in a few minutes, we had no choice but to abandon it.
330 PM to 9 PM
Spent the 30 minutes getting something to eat and getting flasks and such (By the way, you know all those Apexis Shards you have? There’s a use for them now at the Ogrila Quartermaster as you can use them to purchase Level 55 Potions for 50 shards and some silver).
Lady Vashj started off well enough. We were able to get her consistently into Phase 3. The main things that were killing us was a combination of Static Charges and poisons. After some more minor adjustments, Lady Vashj went down fairly cleanly as evidenced by my new Flickr shot. Her loot? Well, nothing I would be interested in:
[item]Vestments of the Sea-Witch[/item]
[item]Krakken-Heart Breastplate[/item]
A Champion and a Defender token
Then we jaunted over to Tempest Keep and here’s where the fun began.
Al’ar went down after two shots. Void Reaver apparently has been modified or something. I noticed his bolts now come at us in an arcing fashion. I don’t know if that has altered the speed at which they arrive, but we had some issues with him for tonight and wiped about 4 times before we killed him. By this time, it was about 830 PM and that gave us only one shot at Solarian.
We didn’t get her down sadly. I really want her [item]Ethereum Life-Staff[/item]. It’s a fairly sizeable upgrade over my [item]Crystalheart Pulse-Staff[/item]. What I plan to do is slap 81 Healing on one of them and Spellsurge on the other. I haven’t quite yet decided which for which.
9 PM – 12 AM
My real life friends and I decided to go in and tackle Zul’Aman. This time, I would go in as my Priest. We came, we saw, and we conquered the Bear Boss after 4 attempts. Ironically, the same Robes that dropped earlier in the day dropped for me again and the other Priests were kind enough to pass them (We had four, COUNT ‘EM FOUR Priests).
After that, we strolled over to the Eagle Boss. We didn’t have a Rogue and could not exploit the gauntlet, but we did discover something intriguing.
One of the Shadow Priests had the brilliant idea of mind controlling one of the spawns that come up behind us. Shortly thereafter, the gauntlet waves stopped. The Troll he mind controlled disappeared. We were initially stunned at first but continued to press forward. Sure enough, the Troll on the steps who we’re supposed to kill was not there. Like the Rogue infinite sap technique that GMW informed us about, I fully expect this one to get fixed at some point in the future. It was an interesting bug, to say the least. We didn’t let it to go waste either.
Eagle boss went down in one shot. The [item]Mojo-mender’s Mask[/item] dropped. It went to our Elemental Shaman. Sweet deal indeed. We started plowing on over to Lynx Boss but we alas, we could not complete it due to people having to leave again.
Aftermath
I still had plenty of energy. I haven’t done one of these in a long time. I know there’s no way I’d be able to consistently do something like this. But it was fun all the same. Most of my work was completed on Saturday so I had the entire Sunday free. All of that just to upgrade my PMC Robes.
By the way, for all you aspiring Priests out there, I made my [item]Primal Mooncloth Robe[/item] since the end of March. It is now halfway through November. Those Robes lasted me seven and a half months before I upgraded to the ones I have today. I cannot stress the uberness of those Robes anymore then this.
Sure you can try to gun for the Opera ones, but really the odds of that dropping have been quite minor for me. I have never seen it drop on my Priest. Not only do you need to get the correct boss, there’s the item randomness factor. So bear that in mind if you decide to wait.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, we raided Zul’Aman with four Priests. One of them was Discipline specced with Pain Suppression. Amazingly, he worked out great! On bosses like the Bear where tanks were taking enormous amounts of burst damage, he activated Pain Suppression which made healing much easier. There were a lot of clutch moments. His healing wasn’t terribly gimped either. I encourage more raiding groups to consider the viability of a Discipline priest until we can fully ascertain it’s benefits. But for the most part, it looks good. Real good.
Nothing debugs addons faster then a raid gone wrong. Don’t you love the feeling of raiding on patch day only to find out your raid frames aren’t working? Or your target of target’s target has disappeared? Or you don’t know when to jump in the water to avoid spout?
When 2.2 came out, Curse got flooded and was inaccessible for a while. I had to turn to WoW Ace to finish patching up the few dated addons I had remaining. This time, I’ve got the Curse Client ready to go. It’s served me well for the most part. It runs silently in the background and automatically updates addons when there are new versions on the site. You can either use that or WoW Ace updater (I think that’s what it’s called). They both essentially do the same thing. If you want to install a new addon from Curse, there’s a special link which prompts the Curse Client to install it for you without any intervention on your part.
Happy patch day! Expect instance servers to be flooded with everyone flocking to ZA.
Can that patch get here any sooner? The faster I get to deal more damage, the faster I can start getting money. Leiandra made a good point the other day. Why on earth do we do daily quests? With all the raiding and the wiping on Vashj, I need income from some source to restock on potions. I need Mana Potions to survive and make sure the rest of my team lives. Here’s my main problem. It’s not the inability for me to deal damage. It’s my lack of time. There’s so many things that I need to do on a given day that I just don’t have the time to farm the necessary Herbs. Therefore, I’m caught flatfooted and placed at the mercy of the auction house minutes before the raid is due to begin. That is why I need the money from daily quests. I’m trading time for money.
During the summer, the gain from doing dailies outweighed the loss from repairs and pots. I was raking in about 100 G per day between Mallet and Saphfira. I was able to pick up an epic mount soon after. It went to Saphfira. Why not my main you ask? Because Saphfira’s professions are mining and herbalism whereas Mallet’s are enchanting and tailoring. It makes more sense. The time I do have to farm can then be increased further.
Now that I have one epic mount already, I just don’t have the desire to collect the gold needed for another one. I just don’t see the point. Prestige? Whoaness? No, I rely on my gear for that. Just about everyone has an epic or a netherdrake already. My income has been cut dramatically short. It’s now something like 20 gold per day. It’s barely enough to get me by on potions and repairs. My gold count tends to stay below 100 among both my characters. I guess I’d be considered impoverished in WoW?
I think it’s a fair assessment to say that most raiding Guilds have some kind of a trial procedure before a new player truly gets accepted. Complications arise when they raid begin to raid. Oh sure they’ve got the right to loot and all, but what about the guys that have worked on the boss for three weeks? Let’s back up for a second here and talk about trialing.
From the new player perspective
So you’re the new guy who is eager to prove yourself to the other members in the Guild. You might experience some difficulty breaking into the atmosphere. You’re a little shy and intimidated. After all here’s a Guild that doesn’t run Karazhan anymore, crushes Solarian, mops the floor with Leo, rides Al’ar like a pony, and turns Lurker into sushi. The only raiding experience you have is to your fridge at midnight. The first thing you need to do is relax. The second thing you need to do is to prove yourself worthy of being in such a Guild.
Different Guilds will have different methods of evaluating you as a player and as a person. A PvP Guild examines players based on how well they PvP. A raiding Guild examines players on their raiding performance. When you join a Guild initially, chances are you’re not “technically” in the Guild yet. But at the same time, you’re kind of “in” the Guild. It’s similar to hockey. Some players who don’t have contracts with various clubs will start by trying out with the clubs and seeing how well they fit in. That’s where you, the new guy, will be: in the Guild but not quite yet. Now the time period could range from a day to a month. Most tryouts would not involve you running in a five man or a heroic. Five man instances are vastly different from raid instances. If there happens to be a roster slot open for you, you’ll get thrown into the frying pan. The first time you raid with a new Guild will make or break your application. Because if you’re inactive or heaven forbid that you some how screw up somewhere, you will always be labelled as such a player. When I started doing Lurker a few months ago (gosh it’s been so long), I would consistently get blasted by his Spout because my computer’s frame rate was not high enough for me to compensate. It didn’t take long before other players old and new alike were told to not “pull a Mallet”.
Usually on first raids, most players will be quite forgiving. They’ll understand that it’s your first raid with them and they’ll be extra patient. But that extra patience will begin to wear thin. You need to stay extra focused and on your toes. Don’t be afraid to speak up and ask for clarification. Better a raid to spend an extra five minutes on explanations then thirty on wiping and dealing with trash respawns.
My trial experiences went something along the lines of this:
During my period with Angelic Advocates, I did not have the ability to speak in Guild chat (quite a nuisance by the way, don’t do that to new people). My trial run consisted of being thrown into a 40 man Raid group and completing BWL from start to finish. I was immediately promoted (with speaking privileges) the moment we downed Nefarion. Oddly enough, it was a Guild first (Six Priests and I was the only fear ward).
When I was trying out for Aurora, I was asked to step in and raid Karazhan at 11 PM. We downed Attumen on the first try and I was signed within days.
After a lengthy 20 minute interview with the recruiting officer for Carnage, I was invited on a trial basis. It took me several Gruul runs and a Magtheridon death before I was finally accepted with open arms.
My experiences all have one thing in common: perseverance. I’ve run into my share of players who would leave the Guild immediately if they wipe 12 times in Karazhan on a single night. If you can’t handle wiping in a minor instance like Karazhan, then there is not a chance you can handle raiding in a 25 man instance where raid wipes in the 20s are not uncommon. People seem to expect a free ride from high end raiding Guilds. I think that is one facet of the game that really annoys me.
The worse possible thing that can happen is that you and your potential new Guild just don’t mesh. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Nothing will stop you from hopping over to a new Guild and beginning the process anew.
From the Guild perspective
Here is one possible method for handling loot and new players. It’s going to work if you use a DKP system to help manage all the purples that drop. You can set a period of two or three weeks where players allowed to accumulate points but are not eligible to bid for or spend their points on loot. This is plausible if some players are in the negatives. However, if no one in the Raid needs that particular item, then the new player can exercise his option and ask for it. If you think about it, it’s kind of like a big giant “need before greed” situation. The rest of the Guild has option before it is then passed to the new player.
It’s up to every Guild member to make the new player at home and help him out a little bit if needed. You don’t need to give him your 30 Uber Fires and Uber Nethers for his Ubercloth set, but do help him out if he wants a small quest done or needs a mob killed. The point here is to encourage participation. If you’re doing dailies, ask him if they’ve done it yet. If you need an extra spot in a five man instance, go to the new player FIRST and see if they want in. Not only do you make the new player welcome, but you can subliminally see how that player performs and interacts with the Guild. All it takes is for one Guild member to say “Ubernoob said this to me and wouldn’t do this because he didn’t want to do it” and he is placed on the scrutiny list. I’ve seen cases where new players ask for help in running an instance and some Guild members say “sure, just a sec” and Ubernoob drops off the face of the planet leaving the Guild members hanging and scratching their heads wondering where he went (twice from what I’ve seen :O).
With this additional examination process, it allows more opportunities for Guild members to check out the Ubernoob. Guild Leaders who may not be around as often or don’t have the time to play with the Ubernoob can ask players who have had experience with him to report their thoughts. Leaders can then make judgments based on the type of information they receive which leads to one or two directions: Ubernoob is considered an asset and receives a nod or Ubernoob is a liability and is not what the Guild is looking for.
Finally, whatever decision that is made by the Officers should be respected and should not be second guessed. They usually have more information then Tony Raider and should be trusted to make the right decisions.