12 Written by
Anna on
February 12, 2009 – 5:02 am
So BRK has posted a few times about his typical response to people that ask him randomly for gold – he sends them out on a quest for 99 light feathers, and if they come back, they get 40g. A few other people have reported similar tasks, and similar good responses, but overall – it’s rare that anyone bothers with the 99 feathers.
Being that I play on an RP-PVE server, we get our fair share of people that don’t know what RP is, or how it works, or they just have friends here (or they come here specifically to be asswaffles and grief RP). So it’s rare that I’ll run into low level players that are interested in RP.
Tuesday night, however, I came across a first.
A level 14 rogue approached me and waved. He was unguilded, wearing grey “ragged leather” items.
Rogue: alms for the poor?
Aely: Aye, lad – ‘ve ye been t’ Cathedral a’ late?
/rogue looks puzzled.
Rogue: i go every week.
Aely: An’ y’ve been t’ see th’ Orphan Matron, get a good meal?
Rogue: yes maam, every wednesday and sunday.
Aely: S’ what’cha needin’ gold f’r?
Rogue: to pay for my lessons maam and maybe a new dagger
Aely: A’righ – be good, an’ luck to ye – someday, mayhap we’ll see y’ on th’ lines.
And I gave him 2 gold. He thanked me, bowed, and walked away.
Did it take him long? No. The whole exchange took less than a minute. But he not only got the gold he was looking for (and possibly more, he didn’t ask for an amount), but we both had a nice little impromptu conversation, and hopefully I got to encourage both a new player on the server and someone new to RP.
Did he use capital letters and punctuation? Not really. But he was trying – and honestly? The whole exchange made my night.
21 Written by
Anna on
February 11, 2009 – 1:37 pm
So, every once in awhile, something shows up in Twitter or my feed reader that I can’t help but /boggle at while I’m reading it. Usually that’s either a story of someone being unbelievably asshattish, or someone coming at something from an angle totally unlike the one that I’ve ever experienced in game.
Tankspot recently had an article, posted by Veneretio, on how Role affects Raid Leaders.
I had to read it two or three times to get a handle on what was going on (and turn off my initial reaction to pass him off as asshattish, since I’m pretty sure that wasn’t his intention).
From reading through it, his assumptions are that tank RL’s will give tanks really hard assignments, to challenge themselves (and as such will bring too many healers) and will give DPS less than optimal roles or challenging “non DPS” things to deal with to avoid threat problems; healer RL’s will bring too many healers all the time so their job will be easier and nobody has to work hard, and will assign tanks in ways that minimize damage; and DPS RL’s will be meter slaves, inviting people based on DPS/meter numbers rather than contribution, as well as bringing too few tanks/healers so that there can be more DPS in the group.
Ok, forgive me if I’m wrong here, but there’s one background assumption that’s being made in the article that I think runs in the face of every Raid Leader I’ve ever run with.
Raid leaders, if they are good, are not self serving/selfish.
They don’t lead raids to make it easy on themselves, or to show off how awesome they are. If they wanted it to be easy, they’d join another raid and not have to deal with all the other crap that goes into raid leading.
A good raid leader – regardless of “role” in the raid -
- knows when to bring an extra healer (Malygos) or send them home (Sartharion)
- when to push the DPS (Thaddius) and when to have them lay off and worry about survival (Kel’Thuzad)
- when to have a Warrior tank, a Paladin tank, a Deathknight tank, or a Druid tank to both minimize damage and maximize effectiveness in the raid as a whole
In short, a good raid leader is leading the RAID, and makes the raid his or her top priority – not his or her own comfort/discomfort/need to top the meters.
Good DPS can kick frostbolts, avoid polarity charges, stay out of void zones, and still dish out pain. Good tanks know when to say “This’d be better tanked by Peter the Paladin/Wendy the Warrior/Donald the Deathknight/Debbie the Druid, because of XYZ mechanic – I’ll DPS (or heal) this fight”. Good healers know that bringing too many healers means that they’re bored and stuff takes longer to kill.
Good players are good players.
And good raid leaders can NOT afford to be self serving… or they’ll end up falling into the traps listed in the Role of Raid Leaders article. Because I do not think those roles are how things should work, or how they work in great raids.
Those “Raid Leader roles” are the pitfalls of sub-par raid leaders or raid leaders that haven’t gotten a handle on how to manage an entire raid yet.
Posted to »
Feature, Raiding
4 Written by
Anna on
February 11, 2009 – 11:49 am
This is the second in a series of posts on how to arrange your healers in Naxxramas 25.
I’d highly suggest reading up on Herding Cats in general, especially if you’re filling in for heal lead and aren’t usually the one with the job.
Otherwise, this is just a quick overview of how and why I arrange our healers the way I have been – which isn’t to say that it’s the end-all, be-all of healing assignments for Naxx! Just how things have worked for us. Most fight’s I’m going to assume six healers, though some I’ll recommend an off-spec/hybrid healer to help out (or possibly picking up a seventh healer), and you can almost always safely substitute classes.
Yes, Naxx25 has been done with only two healers, but I’d venture to guess that those raids are experienced and not just starting out, and those new ones are the raids that this guide is primarily written for (’cause if you’ve got the place on farm, you don’t need my piddly advice on how to set up your healers!).
This is not, in fact, a raid-wide, boss killing strategy – if you want one of those, I recommend looking at www.wowhead.com, www.wowwiki.com, and www.bosskillers.com!
Construct Wing Boss the First: Patchwerk
- Main Tank – One -Two healers
- Offtanks – Two healers each – Patchwerk’s Heroic Strike can hit an offtank three times in very short succession – this is a high stress fight for healers.
- Raid Mans – no healers. They shouldn’t take any damage.
Patchwerk melee’s only the tank. His heroic strike hits whoever is in melee range with the highest health, so two offtanks are recommended. Each offtank should have two healers, the “easiest” healing job on this fight is the Main Tank. Ideally I try to balance a “single target” healer with a “multi target” healer on each offtank. Chain Heal shines in this situation, as does Beacon of Light.
(Construct Wing Miniboss – Frogger: No specific healing is necessary, but having a person with a res spell wait at Frogger until everyone has safely gotten through is likely a good idea, especially if Gluth’s Aura of Lag is still active)
Construct Wing Boss the Second: Grobbulus
- Main Tank: Two healers: Druid and Pally/Disc Priest generally – Damage on this fight is pretty consistent, unless someone accidentally drops the cloud in the middle of melee.
- Offtank: One healer: Druid OR Pally OR Disc Priest – this is the tank who will be picking up the Oozes that Grobby barfs up periodically. If this tank gets Disease Injected, the MT will need to taunt the ooze off of him, and will temporarily need a bit of extra healing.
- Raid Mans: Holy Priests, Shamans, Druids – raid healing is largely single target on people that are dropping poison clouds.
Two things: DO NOT CLEANSE THE DISEASE DEBUFF. If necessary, have people remove the buttons from their bars. The other important thing is for healers to be aware that people that get the fart cloud debuff will need some bursty healing – and if two or three healers get the debuff in a row, it can get a little squirrely. Communication is key!
(Construct Wing Miniboss – The Pipe: Don’t fall off the Pipe, or you’ll have to go fight Frogger again. If someone falls who is notoriously bad at Frogger, send a person with a res spell back to speed things up.)
Construct Wing Boss the Third: Gluth
- Main Tank/Offtank: Two-Three healers: Druid/Pally/Disc Priest – there will be two tanks swapping back and forth every 30(ish) seconds
- Kiters: One healer, any type – Something with CC is nice, in case Zombies get a hankering for healer snax.
- Raid Mans: Holy Priests, Shamans, Druids
Raid healing is pretty insignificant in this fight… until the Decimate, when all hell breaks loose for about 30 seconds.When the Decimate happens, healers with AOE Stun/CC abilities (Earthbind Totem/Holy Wrath) will probably want to use them if the Zombie Chow get close to Gluth – if Gluth eats any Zombie Chow, this fight gets MUCH harder.
One thing that we’ve done that works really well for healer-aggro on the Zombie Chow is to have a kiter healer swap with a Tank healer if the Tank healer gets too many friends. Obviously this is serious communication, but once you get used to the swap, it makes it pretty easy – having a the kiter and tank healers both as Paladins can work if (when healing the Tank) they want to pop on Righteous Fury temporarily as a “decoy” so that the Zombie Chow don’t run amok. Three or four Zombies on a Pally healer and they call out and swap with the kiter healer.
Construct Wing Boss the Fourth: Thaddius and Friends
- Stalagg Tank: Two-Three Single target healers (a Druid is nice if you’ve got an extra one around) – this guy does an enrage, and hits the tank hard, but the tank is the only one taking damage
- Feugen Tank: All your AOE heals – this guy hits EVERYONE on the right side, so will take more substantial group heals.
- Thaddius Tank: Two-Three healers on the MT, rest on the raid. Watch Polarity, and if you have too much healing, feel free to have anyone who’s bored nuke a little. Extra DPS is extra DPS!
Stalagg and Feugen are going to chuck the tanks across the room every 30 seconds, so you’ll have to switch to the new tank when that happens. (I’m told that the flying part makes Phase 1 of this fight a lot more fun as a tank!) These guys are like corehounds/Romulo and Julienne – have to kill them at the same time – so balancing the DPS on the two sides is pretty important (again with the communication thing).
Thaddius himself is a DPS race, and the most important thing is to PAY ATTENTION to polarity. Know which side is positive, which is negative, and pay attention in case you switch, so you don’t blow yourself/everyone else up. Explosions are bad.
Also – if you have lag/framerate problems, the spell effects on this fight can be disastrous, so turn your spell effects (in your video settings) all the way down – but make sure you turn them back up for Sapphiron!
*****
Hopefully that’ll help get your raid going on Heroic Naxxramas! Obviously, these are flexible assignments, and you can adjust them to your own raid compositions as necessary. Bringing an assortment of healing classes and specs is a plus, especially in a place like Naxxramas where you’ll have diseases, poisons, magic effects, and curses flying at different times in the raid. Just don’t cleanse that disease from Grobbulus!
Good luck, have fun, and may the Loot-Fu be with you!
12 Written by
Anna on
February 10, 2009 – 10:25 am
*Photoshop editing by yours truly, inspired by Der Panzercow.
Posted to »
Raiding, Silly
