raid

Wyn’s UI – Part One

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In the beginning… there was stock. And it was okay, but very limited. Thankfully, Blizzard designed the game to be almost infinitely customizable by players. I started out just wanting to show you the view from my chair, but then I realized that I’ve never found “standing around a major city” screenshots useful. Instead, I’ll be posting some “action shots” of my UI, the mods I use, how, and why. You’ll get a better idea of how I heal, and how I’ve gotten my UI to help me do that. There’s a lot of explanation involved, so I’ll do this in a couple of parts.

Personally, I don’t like a lot of crap that I don’t use sucking up power or my attention. I also like mods that pack a LOT of information into tiny packages. That said, I use a lot of add-ons, and I’m constantly auditioning more and deleting the old ones. Your eyes would bleed if I marked each one and told you what it was, so if you have questions, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Intro to my UI:

I had this idea in the middle of Black Temple, so I waited to get a nice, basic shot. Things will get a little more complicated when it’s in action. Personally, I want the middle of my screen as clear as possible. Priests have a bad reputation for dying, and I’ve found that keeping my field of vision very clear helps me move out of the way and stay alive. The mods I look at the most are right below my ‘toon, with those less relevant during combat further from that point.

Basic UI Shot. Englarged version coming!

1. The bar across the top is FuBar. Lightweight, with lots of modular plug-ins, FuBar makes it really easy to access and customize your mods. Keeps buttons off my mini-map, too. My personal favorite is RegenFu. This little gem tells me my int/mp5/spirit ratio on the fly, and how much time I’m spending in the 5SR; (85% on last fight). It also has a timer bar (which is faint, over my raid frame) that shows when I’m in the 5SR. Over time, I know if spirit or mp5 food or elixirs are more appropriate for a given fight, and I can better control my mana-consumption rate.

2. AG_UnitFrames. Before I used grid, I used AG for my basic Raid Frames. I still use it for 5-mans and a couple of other things because it’s lightweight, and very customizable. I’ve tried Pitbull, but found that it couldn’t do anything AG couldn’t do, and I already had AG the way I wanted it.
(2a) My frame and my target are at the top of the screen, and just above my chat box
(2b) you can see my focus frame and their target (in this case, I’m focused on myself for
some reason, so it’s just a miniature of what’s going on upstairs. Sorry about that.)

3. Grid took some getting used to, but it’s now my favorite mod. It shows a LOT of information in a very elegant and minimalistic manner. My groups are arranged horizontally, and the player names are cut off at a max of 4 letters. They are also colored according to class. That “W…” is me, and my group includes Wizendone (resto-shammy), Nl (s.priest), Haidi, and Alden (both healadins). Those that are greyed out are simply out of range.

A word on targeting: Obviously, you can see my target up at the top of the screen. One of the best rules of being an efficient healer is to maximize your reaction time. Minimizing the distance your eyes need to travel to get the information you need helps. Part of my solution has been to set Grid to have a white border around my target’s square. (Since I have myself targeted, and priests are denoted in white, it’s not showing properly.) Also, I use Quartz for my casting bar, and have it set to show the name of my target in the cast bar. Like this:

This makes it easy to avoid healing the wrong target, since my quartz goes right above grid.

4. Your spells have to go somewhere, and I use Bartender3 to keep mine organized. There are a LOT of mods that do this; find one that you like. You’ll notice that nearly all of them are hotkeyed – I navigate and target with my mouse, and cast with my keyboard. (That blank spot is for my Spirit buffs when I spec disc on the weekends.) You’ll probably notice a lot of icons you don’t recognize – I use macros very heavily. You’ll also notice how many ranks of Greater Heal and Flash heal I use. 4 of each. The fifth (5 and T, respectively) are stopcasting macros with the max-rank of the heal. (T is a little special, but I’ll get to that in the upcoming post on macros.) You may also notice that the only offensive spell I have hotkeyed is Pain. This is because I’m a healer, not a DPSer. Don’t worry, my offensive spells are easy to access (hold shift and scroll the mousewheel up once), it’s just that in the average raid, I don’t need them taking up space. I tend to click pots and such, so I don’t hit them accidentally while typing. The average amount per heal (or offensive spell) on each icon is from Dr. Damage. It helps me down-rank without having to read tool tips and do math in my head.

5. Recount. Use it. Love it. I have some great shots of how to use it for self-coaching later on. I have it running, set to “current fight” AT ALL TIMES. (Which is why it cleared once the boss was dead. Sorry about that, too.) See my previous post for why.

6. Simple Mini Map. I like it because it interfaces well with cartographer, it’s light, and it is very customizable.

7. Prat. A chat mod that lets remove you those damn arrows, and scroll with your mousewheel. Has a bunch of other nifty features I find useful. You’ll notice I don’t keep a combat log open. Recount substitutes for that.

8. ElkBuffBars. Matt made me get this one, and I’m glad he did. Montiors buffs, debufs, and everything else you need to know in a (say it with me!) Lightweight, customizable format.

Essential mods that you can’t see:

Deadly Boss Mods. Don’t leave home without it.

Omen Threat Meter. KTM was great. Omen is better. If you haven’t upgraded, do it now. Omen interfaces with KTM, too, so just because your Tank lives in the stone age isn’t an excuse for you to do the same.

Instant Health. This is a combat log parser that updates the health of your party or raid, with any raid frames, without waiting for the information to be sent to the server and back. It saves insane amounts of time (up to 3 seconds!!), and buys you time to react. As people keep stacking more and more Spell Haste, this kind of thing is going to become more popular.
(Edit: As I’ve been using this, I’ve noticed it messes with Recount and other combat-log parsers. Please be aware that it may interfere with any other mod you have reading this information; it is a known issue with the beta.)

More on Quartz. This has been around for a while, but I wanted to point out that it does more than allow you to change the look of your casting bar. The tail end of a given cast comes up in red (or any color you pick), and alerts you to your latency. What’s more, it allows you to begin a new cast before your computer has finished communicating with the server. This means you’re less at the mercy of Blizzard and your ISP to get those heals off in time. Pre-2.3, Quartz and a stop-casting macro were indispensible for quick heals. I still use stop-casting, although now more for mana regen purposes than global cooldown.

PoM Tracker – I found this after I took these screenies. I used to use Mending Minder, which stopped working at 2.4. This tells you who has your ProM, how many bounces it has left, and how much it’s healing. Nice.

To Be Continued. . .

4 Smart Studying Lessons to Help Get an A in Your Raid

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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

sleeping

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

schedule

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?

Is it Time to Quit Raiding? 16 Questions to Find the Answer

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With the recent disbanding of Death and Taxes, it’s time for another moment of introspection.

When is the best time to retire? Or at least, go on a hiatus from raiding? While it may not be applicable for everyone and their guild. Here’s a few questions you’ll want to ask yourself before hanging up your armor and weapons for good.

  1. What are the goals I have for this game? Have I achieved what I set out to do?
  2. Am I even interested in raiding anymore?
  3. Am I getting personal satisfaction from raiding?
  4. How many raids have I attended in the last 60 days? How many mandatory raids have I missed?
  5. Do I have the time to dedicate myself to raiding so that I don’t hinder the progress that is being made by them?
  6. Am I satisfied with how raiding is being handled?
  7. Are my contributions being noted or appreciated?
  8. Did I give this guild’s raid groups enough time to stabilize and progress?
  9. Where does this Guild expect to be in raiding a month from now? 6 months from now? A year from now?
  10. Do I have conflicts with the leadership that cannot be resolved in a way I’m satisfied with?
  11. Will I still be raiding in 6 months or will real life activities take over? (School, work, etc.)
  12. Is this guild dying?
  13. Am I getting tired from raiding? Is it sapping my energy and cutting into my life responsibilities?
  14. Am I an asset to this Guild’s raid?
  15. Could I be doing anything else other than raiding right now?
  16. How will my departure affect the guild? Will they survive without my presence?

EDIT: I forgot to hit the save button. I wanted to add an extra note that this post was inspired by this post at Problogger. Don’t forget to attribute your posts if you borrowed the idea from someone. Stuff like not crediting the original source would’ve gotten me expelled.

Open Discussion: How Do You Improve Players Without Coming out as an Arrogant Jerk?

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Image courtesy of kalilo

The above picture is quite fitting. The shot is of one bear standing atop of a log looking down at another bear. It’s almost as if the tall bear is trying to tell the other bear that his technique of catching fish is incorrect. I suspect that both bears engage in a bear-like scrap which involves tussling the opponent around until they both run out of breath and call it a draw.

This leads me to today’s open discussion post. I’m going to describe to you a completely and entirely hypothetical situation.

Seriously.

Let’s assume for the moment that I’ve lost several healers over the course of two weeks. The fact that it really did happen has no bearing at all whatsoever on his hypothetical scenario.

We take on 3 extra healers, all considerably green in terms of experience and gear. They’ve done Black Temple and Hyjal a combined 5 times. Their health is not up to par. Their spec is even more puzzling. The primary reason we take them is because if we don’t, we are effectively paralyzed.

Again, hypothetically speaking.

You understand my beliefs in the matter. A raiding guild that is not raiding is not a raiding guild.

I want to help

I want to do whatever I can to get these players developed and up there in no time. But attacking a healer’s technique, gear, spec, and situational awareness can be a bit disorienting all at the same time. Unfortunately, my guild doesn’t exactly have a lot of time to spend waiting around for them to see the light. So I have to shine a really large bulb in their eyes right now so that changes can be made as quick as possible in order to balance the ship.

Did anyone who read that last paragraph understand what I was trying to say there?

In other words, if I get all nice and touchy-feely I might not get taken seriously enough. If I don’t get taken seriously enough, then they will still continue their mistakes and inefficiencies. If that continues, I will have to eventually turn to look for other solutions and I start right at the beginning going through the processes again.

On the other hand, if I come on too strong, they become defensive and tone deaf to the suggest improvements that I offer. This results in them nodding and of course, not doing as I ask.

Where are all the healers?

I don’t exactly have a whole lot of healers barging down my door begging to apply. I have to work with what I have. Skipping straight from T4 instances to T6 would just about overload anyone.

As my distant cousin Carlos Juan Atticus would say, "you loco, ese".

How can I possibly pack six months worth of raiding skill, information, and knowledge into a two week trial period? Because that’s all the time I have before these guys either sink or swim. We let them go in favour of looking for new ones. There is no readme file on how to be an awesome healer. Compressing information such as positioning, healer smarts, situational awareness, and all these big mumbo jumbo terms is tough.

Which leads me to…

I have to trim down all this fat. I have to tell them what they need to know, what they need to do, how to do it, when to do it, and why they should do it. Don’t ask me why, but people find it reassuring to know why they are doing the things they do. Do you know how amazingly cooperative people get if you give them a perfectly logical reason as to why they should do something?

Example, every time you see a Doomfire, abandon healing your tank and run. Why? Because they’ll die if they don’t. A dead healer is a useless healer.

Never forget my principles.

I want these players to get better so that I don’t have to bring in a new batch of healers to shepherd. 3 hours of my time is spent in the raid. When I handle assignments and briefings on what healers are doing, I do it several trash pulls before. This way, I don’t waste time when we get in front of a new boss and spend 10 minutes explaining exactly what we’re doing, where, when, how, and why.

It’s quite satisfying to hear my raid leaders call out for various things to find them already done.

"We need Shadow Resist buff."
"Done."
"Did anyone tell the new priest what they’r-"
"Done."
"By the way, Lang needs a fear war-"
"Already up and 10 seconds in."
"So the paladin knows who to hea-"
"Yeah, main tank, can we pull now?"

I wonder how many man hours I’ve saved.

About me

I am an extremely direct person. If I want something, I’m going to say it. If I see something wrong, I’m going to mention it. My trouble is that I want to convey my thoughts in a manner where I won’t come out as an ass yet can instill a sense of urgency.

Let’s talk about specs.

Let’s hypothetically assume there is a Priest with a 21/40 build (that’s Divine Spirit without the improved, and the Circle of Healing without the Circle of Healing).

Can you tell me what is wrong with that?

A normal person might say nothing. It’s a perfectly decent spec and players should be allowed to spec however they want. Empowered Healing does increase base flash heal and greater heal by a sizeable margin, to be sure.

The healing lead would have alarm bells go off in their heads. Can you tell me why? In a raid, there are 25 players allowed. A certain percentage consist of tanks, DPS, and healers.

This is the argument that I would make and that I would say but I would just feel so guilty of saying (I do have a guilt complex).

"Bob, you know, you’re an excellent healer. You do what you’re told and heal who you’re asked to heal. You’ve been a tremendous service to the Guild. But I’m in a tough bind here. I can only let in 7 healers at a time and you don’t exactly supply a lot of options for yourself. You’re specced Spirit without the Improved Spirit. You also don’t have Circle of Healing. Why should I take you? You’re useless to me. Give me a reason to take you. I want to take you in, I really do. But when I weigh you against the other potential classes, it looks quite grim."

Of course, Bob, the ever so brilliant opportunist would counter with the fact that I don’t have a lot of options to choose from. This brings me back to my opening question. How do you improve players without giving the impression of an arrogant jerk? Because frankly, I am one. But that’s because I care.

I did mention this was all hypothetical, right? This is the kind of material that gets pumped out when a blogger sits idle in a chair with his eyes closed.

It’s quite refreshing.

Random Thoughts for Thursday

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  • Guild bank infiltrated. 80 hearts taken and many epic gems lost
  • Our bank was not the only one
  • Mages need another rank of conjured water
  • 1 healer means the difference between doing Black Temple or Mount Hyjal
  • Warlocks have something which allows them to increase healing done on them by some percentage
  • The feeling of dread is universal be it an exam the next day or a deadline to face
  • My Spiritual Guidance column is almost done and will be ready over the course of the weekend
  • I need to find more free stock photo websites
  • Freedom happens after 6 PM
  • Learning is not about regurgitating what is taught to you, it is about applying what you learn
  • Profs make more sense when you speak to them one on one than in lecture
  • How did Kael’s forces take over Quel’Danas?
  • Raiding on an empty stomach is not fun
  • Running Hyjal with 6.5 healers with the .5 being a Prot Paladin
  • Bocelli helps a lot with stress relief
  • Contemplating writing another RP post on a slightly larger scale
  • Dirty D is liveblogging tonight’s raid. Go check it out!