Raiding

Evaluating Your Raid Group by Time Spent on Boss

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The idea of trying to come up with a working series of classifications for different types/levels of raiding guilds seems to be one of those subjects that everyone has an opinion on and most people love to discuss.

If you caught the Weekly Marmot a couple of weeks ago, Lore discussed some of the differences between the extremely hardcore, the super casual, and “everything in the middle” when it comes to raiding guilds. It is that “everything in the middle” group that I think seems to inspire so much discussion.

Bleeding edge world-first type guilds are just simply in a different league for the most part.  They are formed with people who push themselves beyond what most of us are able to in pursuit of being able to say that they are among the best in the world.  From what I was able to find, these guilds raid up to 30-40+ hours a week until they have cleared all of the available content, and then they quickly fall back to the 2-3 hours a week it takes them to clear all of the available content for a few months until a new tier of content comes out.

While I probably would have been able to pull that off while I was a student in college, it’s just not something I am personally able to commit to at this point in my life.  So instead I land firmly in the “everything in the middle” group.  Most of us in this group raid somewhere between 8 and 20 hours a week (2-5 days of raiding at 3-5 hours a raid) For the majority of the people in this group, there is one “shared” goal that I believe defines this group.  This one goal is simply to clear all of the available content, including hard modes, before the next tier comes out. There are also a lot of people interested in the competitive aspect of trying to clear the content ahead of as many other guild’s as possible in an effort to end up as high as possible in the various rankings as possible.

The issue that seems to cause such a surprising level of stress and consternation among people in this group though is based on the assumption that we should be evaluating ourselves in the same way that the guild’s chasing world first kills do.

New York Marathon

The whole discussion tends to remind me of the New York Marathon for some reason.  In the New York Marathon, the goal is simple; each participant needs to run 26 miles through the five boroughs of NYC in the fastest time possible.  Among the ~45,000 people running, there are only a small handful of ~10-20 people who have any real chance of actually winning the race.  For the past few years, the winner has usually clocked in at just over 2 hours. That is two freaking hours to run 26 freaking miles. The level of training and raw ability involved in accomplishing a feat like that is something that most of us are just never going to be able to experience first hand.  The average finish time for the marathon is four and a half hours. The longest record time for a finisher last year was nine hours and forty-five minutes, anything over 10 hours is not counted as having officially finished the race.

There is a lot of news coverage that goes on during the race every year and invariably you can find at least a couple of people whose journey seems particularly appropriate for this post.  The people I am talking about are the ones who will do something like stop partway through the race to join their families at brunch for an hour or so to catch their breath before continuing on with the race. There are also a lot of people who simply end up walking most of the course.  That being said, I think that there is something to be said for anyone who can cover 26 miles on foot in a single day.  It should count as an accomplishment.

My proposition for guilds and raid groups that are trying to evaluate how well they are progressing is to stop trying to compare your own performance to the rough equivalent of a professional athlete.  I would instead propose that one of the best ways to evaluate your team’s progress is instead to look at how many hours it takes you to progress through the content as well as how many attempts it takes you to kill each boss. I think that one of the most important lessons that we can learn from “the professionals” is that our time spent killing things should rapidly taper off once we have cleared them once or twice.  While I don’t think that any of us should be trying to claim that there are a lot of similarities between a guild who can clear a full tier of hardmode raid content in a manner of a few weeks and a guild that takes a few months to clear the same content, I think that one important similarity is simply looking at the amount of time both groups put in to accomplish the same task. 

I posted a report card for my own guild a couple of weeks ago outlining how much time and how many attempts it took us to clear all of the normal mode content (12/12 normal modes) and I was pretty pleased with the results considering that we only raid 9 hours a week.  It took us just over ~45 hours of raiding.  Had we had the time to devote to it, maybe we could have cleared everything before December?  We’ll never know but in the mean time I can be happy that we are well on pace to accomplish our goal; clearing all current content before the next tier hits the live servers.  WowProgress and GuildOx say that we are ranked ~500th in the US for 10man guilds, but that doesn’t account for our choice to take December off, or our choice to only raid for 9 hours a week (and it shouldn’t account for those either.)  There is no way to fairly evaluate yourself against another guild unless you either both agree to follow the same basic route the world first guild’s take (the clock is always ticking) or somehow devise a way to accurately measure how much time your group actually spends (something that isn’t really possible, and would be ridiculously easy to cheat at) and so in reality, unless you are competing for world or server firsts, the only people you are competing against is yourselves and Blizzard’s timeline for the next tier of content.

How is your guild or raid group doing so far? Do you keep track of any similar statistics for your own group, or do you measure your progress in some way other than the number of bosses you have killed?

When should you change your raid strategy?

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I have been reading numerous posts lately about how to pick a strategy for an upcoming boss fight and even more discussion about how to go about tailoring a strategy to your particular group. While I have read many good suggestions and valuable tips, I still think I disagree with the the basic premise of “choosing which strategy is best for your group.” The portion related to tailoring your approach based on your specific group is good, but the vast majority of the time, boss fights have one basic strategy that they were intended to be completed with.  Everything else is a modification of the basic strategy. Each decision to make additional modifications should be for a specific and, more importantly, *intentional* reason.

Here are the basic reasons for modifying a boss strategy. Whether it be during the research stage, during an actual raid, or after a full night of raiding, once you get some logs, a little perspective will help with the decision making process.

Wait! I can think of examples of multiple strategies used for bosses!

No, I actually put a fair amount of consideration into that statement.  For the most part, all WoW raid bosses have one basic approach/strategy that everyone used to defeat them.  That being said, almost every group that originally “progressed” through the boss fight made certain modifications to this basic strategy in order to adopt it to the particulars of their own group and situation. Generally though, each boss encounter has a single strategy/approach that is dictated by the mechanics of the encounter. Far too often I see people confusing two different modifications to the one basic strategy as somehow being completely separate from each other.  Understanding where something comes from is an essential step in the road to gaining mastery over it.

For example: in the Yogg Saron fight, the basic strategy required to complete the encounter is to kill sarah by blowing up adds next to her, then you send people through the portals to damage the brain, finally you kill Yogg himself all while dealing with the various adds/abilities/”bad stuff.” Whether you tank the adds in phase1 in the center of the room next to Sarah, or tank them by the door and then kite them into the center is a difference in tactics, the strategy is the same. Who you send into the portals during phase 2 is a question of assignments, the fact of the matter is though, in order to get to phase3, you send some people into the portals and they have to damage the brain to push through the phase while everyone else does stuff to stay alive.  In phase 3 you can tank the adds over here, over there, all grouped up or separated out, the individual assignments and tactics used will vary from group to group and depend on a number of factors but the basic strategy used to complete the fight is always going to be the same.

Reasons for modifying your strategy

You overgear or “out-awesome” one or more of the basic mechanics of the fight.

I’m not going to spend much time on this one although I think it is the most prevalent reason for differences in strategies being discussed. 10 man Sartharion 3D is a great example of this as is Yogg+0. Both are highly technical fights with what were some very unforgivable mechanics when they were “current content.” With access to greater gear and higher performance numbers from your average raider, it became possible to ignore the majority of these encounters core mechanics and opened up access to “new strategies” (and again, I am arguing that it is the same basic strategy to kill the boss, you are just choosing to ignore/skip a portion of it)  It is important to be aware however if you have chosen to ignore one of the basic mechanics of the encounter.  This can often be especially important when you get to the point of switching the encounter to hard mode or try and work on one of the raid achievements.  If you have only learned how to do the fight using some kind of short cut or something that ignores a basic mechanic, then forcing yourselves to relearn the fight is often times a tough sell for the raid leader and a frustrating experience for your raiders.  My advice is to learn to do it “right” the first time through.

You are missing some sort of raid utility buff/skill integral to the fight.

A lot of fights require something to be purged, dispelled, stunned, interrupted, etc… Especially when you are doing 10man raiding, it isn’t impossible that you will find yourself without one of these things while standing in front of a boss who “requires” that skill. Thankfully Blizzard is aware of this possibility and usually provide some method to address the issue.  For one, they have spread around all of the basic raid utility skills so that the likelihood of finding yourself in this position has gotten MUCH less likely.  In the past, they have usually toned down the adverse effects of the ability in case you don’t have the ability to purge/interrupt/cleanse each one.

One example of this for us in ICC were the occasions we found ourselves in front of Saurfang with 3 melee and no hunter to distracting shot kite one of the adds.  We have done this fight with just about every composition of range and melee possible at this point, and our raiders have pulled all of them off without any more struggle than we were having at the time with “optimal” setups.  Another example is when we were progressing through Naxx 25 and reached Instructor Razuvious without any priests in the raid, sorting out how to do that was an adventure all in itself.

The plan isn’t working

You outlined the plan on the guild forums ahead of time, you gave a brief synopsis over vent before you started, why isn’t the boss dead yet? Being able to accurately articulate the answer to “why isn’t this working” is a critical step that a surprising number of people get wrong in my experience. Here are some questions to ask yourself when trying to figure out the answer to this question:

How many times have you attempted the fight already this raid using this plan? If the answer is less than ~15-20, then unless you either clearly misunderstood some mechanic during your research, you probably need to collect more data.  Unless you feel that everyone in the raid is executing the plan exactly the way they were asked, keep trying.

At what point in the fight did the group diverge from “the plan?” Was it a milestone you failed to meet?  Unless everything went exactly as it was supposed to and your dps are putting out the same numbers they always do, you probably just need to let everyone work out their own kinks with some more practice.  Depending on the type of milestone involved, possibly consider things like switching between 2 and 3 healers.

Are people dying? Every raid leader should have some sort of death tracking addon installed so you can easily review what caused people to die and what happened to them in the ~15 seconds prior to death.

  • Tank death: did they use their defensive cooldowns appropriately? Were they where they were supposed to be? How much healing did they receive during their last ~10 seconds alive? If the healing received looks low, all appropriate cooldowns were used, and they were not out of healing range for some reason, it might be a “healing issue.”

If the healers weren’t healing the tanks, then what were they doing?

Were they all moving or unable to heal for some reason, maybe the positioning needs to be changed.

Were they healing someone else/themselves? Then those people need to get better at avoiding damage and your healers need to either have better healing assignments or different healing priorities.  This is one of the biggest mistakes I see raid leaders make in blaming the healers for people dying when in reality it is the healers being forced into a no-win decision in to try and compensate for other people’s mistakes. Find out why they weren’t keeping the tank alive.

  • Healer death: were they standing somewhere they weren’t supposed to be? Did someone fail to taunt/CC an add that killed the healer?  …there shouldn’t really be any other reason for the healer to have ever died.  Keeping themselves alive, followed closely by keeping the tank/their assignment alive is every healers only real responsibility in most fights.
  • DPS death: Were they standing where they weren’t supposed to be?  Did they pull aggro on something they weren’t supposed to?  If they weren’t killed via a one-shot, how much healing did they receive before they died?

If you can’t figure out why your plan is failing and the boss isn’t dying, then your biggest problem isn’t with the plan you are using. Thankfully there are a wealth of resources available to you as a raid leader and a truly amazing number of members in the various raid leading communities that are just waiting to help you figure it all out. All you have to do to find help is be able to do is follow two simple steps:

  1. Generate a combat log during your raid and upload it to one of the available *free* services that will parse the information into a useful format.  My personal preference is World of Logs.
  2. Ask someone for help.  Everyone starts out as a newbie at some point, none of us are born with the ability to play wow or lead raiders.  Some of us still remember what it was like starting out and we are more than happy to offer help.  Being able to provide a log of the your raid attempting the encounter in question will allow FAAARRR more useful feedback then trying to communicate all of the details through any other method.

Have you ever had a boss kill which came from a simple, yet overlooked strategy modification?

Question: When do you Call a Wipe?

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Keeping the post really short today. Whether it’s in a 5 man, a 10 man, or a 25 man, I’m curious as to under what circumstances your raid leaders call a wipe.

Does it ever frustrate you when your raid leaders do?

Does it annoy you when they should and don’t?

For the raid leaders, does farm versus progression content impact the times you call wipes?

I’ve called snap wipes when we lose 2-3 people in the opening minute of a fight. I’ve called for a continual push even when we were down a half raid.

What’s your take?

Does Your Guild Use Set Interrupt Teams?

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Have you ever been in a raid with less than stellar interrupts? I’ve seen it happen many times. A small number of players  seem to have that confidence where they feel they can conquer just about any spells or abilities thrown their way. That is, until the encounter decides to throw a wrench in their plans. It usually sounds a little something like this:

“I got next inter—No, I’m trapped! I can’t do anything!”

If you’re lucky, there’s another player with an interrupt who can bail that player out. If not, the group may have just suffered a large setback. Having dependable interrupters on your raid roster is one of those little things that grant peace of mind to everyone. Your raid leader can rest easy knowing that certain abilities will be shut out. There have been times when I cursed because a key melee player had to run out or died due to some random ability.

From what I’ve seen, raid groups usually have a minimal amount of players for interrupts. This allows for maximum DPS time from other players because if don’t need to worry about catching key abilities, they can focus more on their DPS.

But the case I want to make here is for stability. Doubling up on interrupts can help cut down on the number of wipes due to unnecessary boss attacks going off.

Some examples include:

  • Wind Shear: 6 second CD, 2 second lock out
  • Shield Bash: 12 second CD, 6 second lock out
  • Pummel: 10 second CD, 4 second lock out
  • Kick: 10 second CD, 5 second lockout

This is just the start though. There’s a whackload of other classes with interrupt capabilities (Mages, Death Knights, etc).

How should you set teams?

Your interrupt teams will vary by encounter. A typical setup would involve two teams of 2. Preferably, the interrupters would share similar cooldowns and lockout times. Back in Burning Crusade, there was an encounter called Reliquary of Souls. You could find it in Black Temple. That encounter really brought out the necessity for skilled interrupters who could identify which skills to let go and which ones to shut down (like Deaden, Spirit Shock, etc).

A more recent example encounter would be Maloriak where Arcane Storms and Release Abberations need to be controlled.

Every interrupter should use macros to announce their interrupt skills. Actually, if you want to take it one step further, I highly recommend an addon called RSA. It’ll announce whether you were successful or unsuccessful with your interrupts. Or even if your kick got resisted or if the target is immune! Great to have!

If you have a skilled player who can carry interrupts on their own, then you can definitely disregard this post. I’ll raise my coffee cup to you on that. For the rest of us who sometimes struggle with blown interrupts, that safety net will do more in the long run.

Tough Call: Time vs Talent

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803068_47829639aWelcome back for another episode of Tough Call with me, Viktory.  Today I want to discuss roster evaluation, and specifically, two factors to look at when examining your depth charts.

You do have a depth chart for your raid positions right?

… Please tell me you have a depth chart for your various raid roles and you’re not just bringing whoever shows up first …

(For anyone who doesn’t get the sport analogy, a depth chart basically lists each position and ranks the players have that position in order. You have your go-to guy/gal, the back-up, the back-back-up, etc.)

Editor’s Note: Before we go any further, if you are of the steadfast opinion that nobody deserves to be benched, or that your best friends deserve a spot in every raid, you will likely want to stop now.

Okay, so let’s say you’ve got your full raid roster in front of you and you’re trying to figure out who’s going to make the cut and get a stable spot in your 25-man raid. Obviously you have certain roles you need to fill (tanks, healers, melee, ranged) and certain skills you need players to possess in those roles (AoE heals, interrupts, soak tank, kiting, etc).  You’ve got a lot of criteria to look at when deciding who is THE BEST player for you to bring to your raid. 

(Remember, “take the player, not the class” implies “take the best possible player”.

One of the more common downfalls I’ve seen leaders suffer, and one of the worst traps I’ve seen players try to spring on their Raid Leader, is the substitution of Time for Talent/Aptitude.

A few weeks ago I told you that “preparation is king”, and while that still holds true, by now you should be seeing who actually knows what’s expected of them, and who’s just reading a script.  In fact, if we think of raiding like a foreign language, we can come up with three archetypes.

Native Speakers

Some players have a lot of natural talent.  These players are the mage who always does crazy DPS and makes it look easy, the guy who plays a utility spec and still manages to do competitive DPS, the healer who can instinctively spot issues with the raid and react in a clutch moment (see Matticus in his prime*).  Everyone loves to have these guys around, especially when they don’t act entitled or get lazy because they think they’re too good to need to put in the grunt work.

*Note: I said “see”, not “listen to”.  He’s a horrible story-teller.

Fluent Professionals

Other players have to work hard to produce the output you’re looking for.  Think Rudy here, the guy with a lot of heart who does his homework and gives you the results you’re looking for.  As a leader you know that he’s always reading up on the relevant websites, maybe talking to other progression raiders who play his spec, and is constantly seeking ways to improve.  Through their effort, they are just as good, or nearly as good as your top tier guys.  The key here is that you DO see them improving, carrying their load, and not causing wipes.

I think a “perfect raid” is filled with a solid mix of these two personalities.  However, we need to minimize or weed-out the last group:

Tourists

The personality to absolutely avoid is the “trained noob”, to borrow a term from Pure Pwnage.  These are players who bring sub-par skill, spend a lot of time logged on, but instead of learning and absorbing their class mechanics, they may have only learned the accepted boss strat.  These are the guys at the cafe with their French-to-English dictionary out, trying to look-up each word the waiter just said, because they were not expecting that response.

Players like this will present a liability to your raid anytime things deviate from the norm.  Get bad RNG on a boss, or timers that don’t line up with the abilities the boss is using, and you can bet that these players will be toast.  Customize the Tankspot strat to meet the capabilities of your raid, and you just may find these guys out of position and thoroughly confused.

Don’t be fooled by people who have a lot of time and very little aptitude.  It all comes down to who can get the job done. 

It is up to you, as part of raid management, to spot the player who may have raid knowledge, but not raid awareness, and figure out a solution.  Determining who’s a “fluent professional” and who’s just a “tourist” will help boost your raid output (and morale) immensely. 

If it’s my call, I’d put that person as far back on my depth chart as possible, only bringing them when I must class-stack, or when other players are missing, and I’d definitely keep recruitment open until I found a good core that was made up all “native speakers” and “fluent professionals”.

Please leave any questions or suggestions for future topics neatly stacked in the comments below.  Shoot, if you’re so inclined, leave details of your most epic knitting accomplishment, too. Those are always cool.