OK, it has been a while, and I've been short on time, so I'm going to make one large post with all you need to know for FL.
Spec - not changed much, but drop lunar shower, picking up aoe or utility talents along with dreamstate (for when you multidot a lot, since it no longer costs less mana).
Gear - Originally, we were to keep t11 4pc until we got the full t12 4pc of the same lvl (heroic to replace heroic). Thanks to the t11 4pc nerf though, go ahead and go to 2pc 2pc when you can. The shoulders are still the slot to go non-tier with spirit/haste instead. We still have the same stat priority as well.
Boom Boss DPS Strats
Shannox - Any way your raid decides to do this, multi-dot everything while going through your rotation on your main target, including if somebody is stupid enough to get stuck in a trap.
Beth'tilac - This is where you can shine with dreamstate and having removed your lunar shower. Stay on the bottom. Get to solar and double dot every spinner and the drone. Mushroom and typhoon the spiderlings, then use normal rotation once Beth'tilac drops down. For filler, use starfire so you don't push out of solar until the burn phase.
Lord Rhyolith - Stack with everybody in middle, just stay solar, shroom the little adds and double dot/starfire the larger adds. When called to help turn the boss, starfire the correct leg. Enter normal rotation for burn phase. You won't be top damage here on normal mode, let the single target and channeled aoe folks have the fun.
Alysrazor - We are ok to fly, but fire mages and spriests are much better (and aflic locks are great too). If you're flying, do your normal rotation as much as you can until wrath is more than haste capped, then get into solar for double dotting and spam starfire...when dropping down, dot up the hatchlings as you fly past. If you're not flying (which is the usual), run through your normal rotation and dot up both hatchlings while killing the add on your side, and double dot alysrazor while it flys by each time. During tornado phase, have picked up at least 1 feather prior and try to get through the fire hoops on the ground to pick up the haste buff, even if you weren't flying. During burn phase, solar beam an add so it can't channel power into Alysrazor and pop every cooldown you have during this phase for maximum dps.
Baleroc - Pure dps burn, just go through your rotation and pop your cooldowns as they make sense to. If you're called to be a shard soaker it won't hurt dps, but be sure to use barkskin each time your stacks get higher to make healing much easier.
Majordomo Staghelm - Keep dps on him with your rotation the whole time. Throw a dot, or two if they live long enough, on the secondary adds during cat phase (Especially as you transition him since the dots will keep ticking while everybody is stunned).
...and that leaves Ragnaros - "TOO SOON!"
Phase 1 - Burn him
Transitions - As ranged you'll probably have 2 adds to worry about further from the hammer. This is cake as a boom. Set up shrooms under where the closest one will spawn that you're handling. Pop starfall just as it is about to spawn, blow the shrooms when it spawns, then double dot it. Double dot your second add while backing up, and then be ready to typhoon. Sometimes I get dots off on another add to help somebody else and then typhoon 3 or 4 adds (including my 2nd one).
Phase 2 - shroom the stacks, typhoon when folks need to move the stack off of fire to give more survivability, starfall during the packs when it is up.
Phase 3 - Just burn him down, make sure to save cooldowns towards the end of p2 for this. Thanks to the extra adds (scions) in the last transition you should have starfall up again by the time you fully enter p3, even if you use it during the transition. Dot both of the scions and rag while doing normal rotation on the appropriate scion, then rag as you push into full p3.
And that...is all of FireLands normal in a Boomkin nutshell.
Showing posts with label example. Show all posts
Showing posts with label example. Show all posts
Monday, July 18, 2011
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Moonkin 101 for 4.0.1
OK, so 4.0.1 has entirely changed the game, here is what you need to know.
1) Go to your trainer and learn everything, lots of things need to be trained (again) such as Bear Form.
2) Use this spec: http://wowtal.com/#k=15tOzTvD.a67.druid.dyfgnz
3) Put your abilities back in your bars, and add the new one (Starsurge).
4) Sell your reagents, you won't need them anymore.
5) Visit your friendly scribe or the AH. Pick up any druid glyphs you don't have (as you now "learn" a glyph and can apply it at will).
For the glyphs, follow the above spec. You may want to swap in/out the following for Major Glyphs depending on the situation: Focus (situational), Monsoon, Hurricane. I've included Rebirth, which isn't a dps glyph, but helps a lot if you ever need to brez, which we often do.
Now that your spec is all set, let's look at gear. Follow these simple rules:
1) Take off any cloth you have.
2) Put on the highest ilevel caster leather that you have (keeping your 4pc t10 of course).
The main things you need to know about stat changes:
1) You now need the full 17% hit. You will hit cap at 446 hit.
2) Spirit becomes hit, use it instead of hit when you can, because it also gives you mana back (this won't matter now, but it will as you level).
3) Int = spellpower (weapons and some trinket procs may still have spellpower, but everything else will have int).
Your stat priority looks like this:
Int > spirit (to hit cap) > hit (to cap) > haste > sp > crit > mastery
Now, gem everything to match socket bonus if the bonus is sp. If it isn't, put a pure int (red) gem in it. You should use:
Red: Brilliant Cardinal Ruby
Blue: Purified Dreadstone
Yellow: Reckless Ametrine
You will also want to go to Wyrmrest and Hodir to pick up the old healing head and shoulder enchants. The mp5 has turned to spirit and the sp to int. The sp/crit ones stayed sp/crit (so if you're on a budget or don't have the rep, they're still ok to keep using, but not optimal).
Now comes the fun...reforging. Chances are, you have extra hit and extra spirit, and you're finding yourself with less crit and haste than you had before. There is a reforging NPC by the enchanting trainer in Dalaran. You will want to get as close to the hit cap as you can (slightly over is better than slightly under). This works by first taking your gear with hit and reforging that. Reforge to the stat priorities above, each reforge will remove 40% of the stat and let you turn it into another secondary stat (haste, crit, spirit, mastery, hit) that isn't already on that item.
There you go, now you're ready except for the "how to play" part. So, here's the way your "rotation" works.
You have 5 main abilities: Moonfire (MF) which morphs into the exact spell but called Sunfire during solar eclipse, Insect Swarm (IS), Wrath (W), Starfire (SF), and the new one Starsurge (SS) which is on a medium cooldown. You continue to have 2 long cooldowns in Force of Nature and Starfall. You also have an eclipse bar with a sun at one end and a moon at the other (just under your player portrait in the default UI). In order to do maximum dps, you will always want to keep the eclipse bar progressing one way or another.
In order to do that, you should know that only 3 spells move the bar: SF, W, SS. SF will move the bar from the Lunar side towards the Solar side and W will move the bar from the Solar to the Lunar. SS is unique in that it will always move the bar in the best direction. It is important to note that the bar will only move in one direction until it gets all the way to the other end, at which point you trigger the eclipse. You should generally treat your spells as a priority:
Instant SS > MF > IS > SS > W or SF depending on which eclipse.
There is a little debate over that vs having a more strict timing for MF (since it is what gives us the haste buff once we proc an eclipse), but in general it is better to have it ticking than to wait, and you won't waste the haste buff anyway, you'll simply trigger it at a different time...which isn't a problem since eclipses are now based on number of casts, rather than time. It is also helpful since your talents will let you clear the cooldown on SS and also turn it into an instant as a chance per dot tick. I say prioritize MF over IS because both dots are affected by haste (and crit) now, so you want to proc the haste from MF before casting IS.
A couple quick notes on spells for AoE. Hurricane and Starfall are now effected by their respective Solar and Lunar eclipses to make them more powerful. Starfall has unfortunately lost all its splash damage, so you just get 20 stars now with 2+ targets or 10 with 1.
There you have it, the basics for Boomkin in patch 4.0.1. Look for an update soon™ for Bears, as I and some others try out various proposed specs and rotations.
1) Go to your trainer and learn everything, lots of things need to be trained (again) such as Bear Form.
2) Use this spec: http://wowtal.com/#k=15tOzTvD.a67.druid.dyfgnz
3) Put your abilities back in your bars, and add the new one (Starsurge).
4) Sell your reagents, you won't need them anymore.
5) Visit your friendly scribe or the AH. Pick up any druid glyphs you don't have (as you now "learn" a glyph and can apply it at will).
For the glyphs, follow the above spec. You may want to swap in/out the following for Major Glyphs depending on the situation: Focus (situational), Monsoon, Hurricane. I've included Rebirth, which isn't a dps glyph, but helps a lot if you ever need to brez, which we often do.
Now that your spec is all set, let's look at gear. Follow these simple rules:
1) Take off any cloth you have.
2) Put on the highest ilevel caster leather that you have (keeping your 4pc t10 of course).
The main things you need to know about stat changes:
1) You now need the full 17% hit. You will hit cap at 446 hit.
2) Spirit becomes hit, use it instead of hit when you can, because it also gives you mana back (this won't matter now, but it will as you level).
3) Int = spellpower (weapons and some trinket procs may still have spellpower, but everything else will have int).
Your stat priority looks like this:
Int > spirit (to hit cap) > hit (to cap) > haste > sp > crit > mastery
Now, gem everything to match socket bonus if the bonus is sp. If it isn't, put a pure int (red) gem in it. You should use:
Red: Brilliant Cardinal Ruby
Blue: Purified Dreadstone
Yellow: Reckless Ametrine
You will also want to go to Wyrmrest and Hodir to pick up the old healing head and shoulder enchants. The mp5 has turned to spirit and the sp to int. The sp/crit ones stayed sp/crit (so if you're on a budget or don't have the rep, they're still ok to keep using, but not optimal).
Now comes the fun...reforging. Chances are, you have extra hit and extra spirit, and you're finding yourself with less crit and haste than you had before. There is a reforging NPC by the enchanting trainer in Dalaran. You will want to get as close to the hit cap as you can (slightly over is better than slightly under). This works by first taking your gear with hit and reforging that. Reforge to the stat priorities above, each reforge will remove 40% of the stat and let you turn it into another secondary stat (haste, crit, spirit, mastery, hit) that isn't already on that item.
There you go, now you're ready except for the "how to play" part. So, here's the way your "rotation" works.
You have 5 main abilities: Moonfire (MF) which morphs into the exact spell but called Sunfire during solar eclipse, Insect Swarm (IS), Wrath (W), Starfire (SF), and the new one Starsurge (SS) which is on a medium cooldown. You continue to have 2 long cooldowns in Force of Nature and Starfall. You also have an eclipse bar with a sun at one end and a moon at the other (just under your player portrait in the default UI). In order to do maximum dps, you will always want to keep the eclipse bar progressing one way or another.
In order to do that, you should know that only 3 spells move the bar: SF, W, SS. SF will move the bar from the Lunar side towards the Solar side and W will move the bar from the Solar to the Lunar. SS is unique in that it will always move the bar in the best direction. It is important to note that the bar will only move in one direction until it gets all the way to the other end, at which point you trigger the eclipse. You should generally treat your spells as a priority:
Instant SS > MF > IS > SS > W or SF depending on which eclipse.
There is a little debate over that vs having a more strict timing for MF (since it is what gives us the haste buff once we proc an eclipse), but in general it is better to have it ticking than to wait, and you won't waste the haste buff anyway, you'll simply trigger it at a different time...which isn't a problem since eclipses are now based on number of casts, rather than time. It is also helpful since your talents will let you clear the cooldown on SS and also turn it into an instant as a chance per dot tick. I say prioritize MF over IS because both dots are affected by haste (and crit) now, so you want to proc the haste from MF before casting IS.
A couple quick notes on spells for AoE. Hurricane and Starfall are now effected by their respective Solar and Lunar eclipses to make them more powerful. Starfall has unfortunately lost all its splash damage, so you just get 20 stars now with 2+ targets or 10 with 1.
There you have it, the basics for Boomkin in patch 4.0.1. Look for an update soon™ for Bears, as I and some others try out various proposed specs and rotations.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Speed tip confirmed
So, I took myself to task to up my DPS, as it seemed fairly far off from spreadsheets, rather than somewhat close.
The last post was the result of that and some dummy testing. So how did I do?
Well, I did quite well. I went from being about 85% for ranking status on most 10 mans to being a top record holder on many of the fights (as according to World of Logs). Needless to say, faster fingers do wonders when dealing with below GCD haste levels.
The last post was the result of that and some dummy testing. So how did I do?
Well, I did quite well. I went from being about 85% for ranking status on most 10 mans to being a top record holder on many of the fights (as according to World of Logs). Needless to say, faster fingers do wonders when dealing with below GCD haste levels.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Are you fast enough?
This question is a larger question than you might think, and all aspects of it are valid to ask and discuss.
Firstly, are you fast enough to be observant?
Then, are you fast enough to move (usually out of the way of something bad)?
Are you fast enough to react to a raidlead's instruction (brez, adjust, etc)?
For these 3, and other similar issues, please see my previous post on raid awareness, much of it applies to how quickly you are aware, reducing the time it takes you to do everything else.
Can you move fast enough to get out of said problem?
AKA, do you use tustkar's or cat's swiftness? Do you make use of travel form, sprint/dash, blink, rocket boots?
If you can't say yes to any of the above...you need to.
Lastly, and my main focus and inspiration for this, are you fast enough to do max dps?
Let's assume you can stand in 1 spot and never have to move (since all of that is covered in the above areas).
You will have 3 main things that determine how fast you can cast and get a spell out.
1) Do you have enough haste?
Make sure you're at LEAST at the soft haste cap (roughly 400 as a boomkin with full raid buffs).
Get more, more is better.
2) Is your ping/latency low enough?
There are many ways that people go about dropping this, but they all boil down to network settings changes. The simple and easy answer is to look up leatrix latency fix for you Windows users, their faq also has info on how to do the same via command line on Mac. Sometimes it helps, other times it doesn't. Some folks, especially in other countries from their game server, will use a third party game proxy service. You're aiming for something in the <50 range, but even 200 is playable. If you have huge latency, especially as a boomkin, use crit instead of haste once above the soft cap, or just pure SP (as most do anyway).
3) Do you understand how spell queueing works? How about for instants or shorter than GCD casts?
Let's take the easy example of Starfire (since it will pretty much never be non-queued).
When you cast starfire, it takes longer than the GCD. Once the GCD is done AND the spell is about to finish, you can press it again and it will be queued. This lets the server start casting it as soon as the other spell is done, for a net result of no lost cast time. The most effective way to get this to happen is simply to spam your cast key, so you'll get into that queue window asap, even if you have bad latency.
Now let's look at a spell like wrath (which will drop below the GCD cast time easily once in mostly 264 gear, when you proc on crit, if not before). I'll use me as an example. wrath takes .7 sec to cast, the GCD is 1 sec, so I have a minimum theoretical time of .3 sec every sec of not being casting. This is how any kind of dps spreadsheet or RAWR will look at things, for the most part.
Now let's look at how this is implemented, technically. You press the wrath keybind (you're not clicking are you?), your client checks to make sure you're not inside the GCD...if you are it throws away the keypress, then it checks to see if you're CC'd or unable to cast for some other reason...if so it throws out the keypress, then it checks to see if you're casting...if you are, and you're not in the queueable window, it throws away the keypress...then it sends the wrath command to the server (internet latency), then the server checks to make sure you're not doing anything else, then the server executes your command. This is where a lot of people end it, but it is important to note the next step too. Your client doesn't start the GCD (local on the client) until the server tells your client (internet latency), that your command has started.
Now that you know how it works, let's talk about speeding up Wrath casting. The average button spammer hits the keyboard about 4-5 times per second. For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to use 5 times/sec, which means you hit the key every .2 seconds on average. So, looking at our wrath example, you cast, get back a gcd, at which point you need to INSTANTLY hit the wrath button. In our average situation, you're going to miss by anywhere from almost nothing to .2 seconds. .2 sec on a spell that only takes 1 sec (only because of the GCD) is fairly significant...making it up to a 20% increase in cast time used for 1 cast. Clearly, the answer is to "FACEROLL HARDER!" Seriously though, we need to generate more wrath commands faster, so that we loose less time doing nothing. Bliz has stated that programable keyboards and such are violations of the ToS and User Agreement, and can result in a ban...but there is an easy answer. Most people can use 2 fingers alternately, almost as effectively as a single one. So, if you use...say, 2, as your wrath button. Put wrath into the 3 slot as well and use 2 fingers to mash on it. You won't be consistant with 1 vs the other, one will probably end up slower sometimes or get you off pattern, but just try to get comfortable with alternating fingers to hit the keys. This can bring your tap time down easily to about .1 sec instead of .2...which means now you do 10% more dps while casting wrath (assuming your latency is reasonable).
This is applicable to any chain casting class that is hitting the GCD with the same spell, including restos using intants and mouseover targets. Please let me know if this helps you too! :)
Firstly, are you fast enough to be observant?
Then, are you fast enough to move (usually out of the way of something bad)?
Are you fast enough to react to a raidlead's instruction (brez, adjust, etc)?
For these 3, and other similar issues, please see my previous post on raid awareness, much of it applies to how quickly you are aware, reducing the time it takes you to do everything else.
Can you move fast enough to get out of said problem?
AKA, do you use tustkar's or cat's swiftness? Do you make use of travel form, sprint/dash, blink, rocket boots?
If you can't say yes to any of the above...you need to.
Lastly, and my main focus and inspiration for this, are you fast enough to do max dps?
Let's assume you can stand in 1 spot and never have to move (since all of that is covered in the above areas).
You will have 3 main things that determine how fast you can cast and get a spell out.
1) Do you have enough haste?
Make sure you're at LEAST at the soft haste cap (roughly 400 as a boomkin with full raid buffs).
Get more, more is better.
2) Is your ping/latency low enough?
There are many ways that people go about dropping this, but they all boil down to network settings changes. The simple and easy answer is to look up leatrix latency fix for you Windows users, their faq also has info on how to do the same via command line on Mac. Sometimes it helps, other times it doesn't. Some folks, especially in other countries from their game server, will use a third party game proxy service. You're aiming for something in the <50 range, but even 200 is playable. If you have huge latency, especially as a boomkin, use crit instead of haste once above the soft cap, or just pure SP (as most do anyway).
3) Do you understand how spell queueing works? How about for instants or shorter than GCD casts?
Let's take the easy example of Starfire (since it will pretty much never be non-queued).
When you cast starfire, it takes longer than the GCD. Once the GCD is done AND the spell is about to finish, you can press it again and it will be queued. This lets the server start casting it as soon as the other spell is done, for a net result of no lost cast time. The most effective way to get this to happen is simply to spam your cast key, so you'll get into that queue window asap, even if you have bad latency.
Now let's look at a spell like wrath (which will drop below the GCD cast time easily once in mostly 264 gear, when you proc on crit, if not before). I'll use me as an example. wrath takes .7 sec to cast, the GCD is 1 sec, so I have a minimum theoretical time of .3 sec every sec of not being casting. This is how any kind of dps spreadsheet or RAWR will look at things, for the most part.
Now let's look at how this is implemented, technically. You press the wrath keybind (you're not clicking are you?), your client checks to make sure you're not inside the GCD...if you are it throws away the keypress, then it checks to see if you're CC'd or unable to cast for some other reason...if so it throws out the keypress, then it checks to see if you're casting...if you are, and you're not in the queueable window, it throws away the keypress...then it sends the wrath command to the server (internet latency), then the server checks to make sure you're not doing anything else, then the server executes your command. This is where a lot of people end it, but it is important to note the next step too. Your client doesn't start the GCD (local on the client) until the server tells your client (internet latency), that your command has started.
Now that you know how it works, let's talk about speeding up Wrath casting. The average button spammer hits the keyboard about 4-5 times per second. For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to use 5 times/sec, which means you hit the key every .2 seconds on average. So, looking at our wrath example, you cast, get back a gcd, at which point you need to INSTANTLY hit the wrath button. In our average situation, you're going to miss by anywhere from almost nothing to .2 seconds. .2 sec on a spell that only takes 1 sec (only because of the GCD) is fairly significant...making it up to a 20% increase in cast time used for 1 cast. Clearly, the answer is to "FACEROLL HARDER!" Seriously though, we need to generate more wrath commands faster, so that we loose less time doing nothing. Bliz has stated that programable keyboards and such are violations of the ToS and User Agreement, and can result in a ban...but there is an easy answer. Most people can use 2 fingers alternately, almost as effectively as a single one. So, if you use...say, 2, as your wrath button. Put wrath into the 3 slot as well and use 2 fingers to mash on it. You won't be consistant with 1 vs the other, one will probably end up slower sometimes or get you off pattern, but just try to get comfortable with alternating fingers to hit the keys. This can bring your tap time down easily to about .1 sec instead of .2...which means now you do 10% more dps while casting wrath (assuming your latency is reasonable).
This is applicable to any chain casting class that is hitting the GCD with the same spell, including restos using intants and mouseover targets. Please let me know if this helps you too! :)
Friday, June 4, 2010
Raid Awareness
It is a topic often screamed about over vent, especially after many wipes.
"Pay attention!" "Get out of the fire!" "Why the heck did you get cleaved?"
After a few of these, especially in pugs, you will often hear "Get out of my raid!" along with a raid removal.
So, how do we actually be more raid aware? How do you NOT be that n00b that is oblivious?
There are a few things to do, some easy, some simple, and some that come with observation (counterproductive if you aren't).
1) SEE THE FIGHT!
This sounds obvious, but for so many people, it isn't. You can't be aware of what happens around you when you can't see it!
So here's how:
a) Make your raid frames small, get them out of the way. If you're a healer, keep them semi out of the way, but not burried. You need to see, but if you're only paying attention to a small corner of the screen, you still won't.
b) Put away your meters. Seriously...if you do better dps when you see somebody is ahead of you...stop slacking and do better all the time. Meters will not help you do anything other than hide the fight.
c) Hide addons for buffing and other random displays...you don't need them during a fight, they just cover up what is happening around you.
2) KNOW THE FIGHT!
Yes, we all know the basics of a fight once we've seen it. Hit boss, stay out of fire, run to/away from this person when this happens. But what does it mean to really KNOW a fight?
a) Understand the abilities and how they work. This is simple, go read them on wowwiki. Knowing how slime spray works, or how defile works...will let you react to it in a more intelligent way, such as using nature resist aspects or rocket boots.
b) Use something like DBM (Deadly Boss Mods) to tell you when those abilities are happening. They don't just tell you the raid warning of "Defile on X" when you see a black puddle, they tell you exactly when this is going to happen. You can move the size and style of all those warnings so that they catch your attention at just the right time, but aren't in the way the rest.
3) FOCUS THE BOSS!
Target the boss and type /focus . I don't care if you are healing, dps, or a tank, this can save you lots of headaches. You will be able to see their casts...and if you're smart and have target of target turned on, you'll even see who the defile is being cast on before it happens. If it is you, you can know to run away from the raid even more than your typical spread. If it isn't, you can start to run back in to stay away from the person with the defile. If you're even smarter, you can set up macros that target your focus (or your focus' target) with abilities when a modifier key is held down. This is great when you need to dps one thing and cc another, or do fast target switching but still know if you can pop that aoe ability (like starfall) or if that will just push the boss into the next phase at a bad time.
4) REST!
Seriously. Get some sleep...the extra Red Bull and coffee you just had really don't help, and will be worse later. If you are rested you will be more alert, more reactive, have more stamina to focus, quicker reflexes, and a much higher mental capacity and state of thought.
5) DON'T BE EMOTIONAL!
This is a game. Yes, it is serious and people have more fun when things go down, and you don't want to be the one keeping it from happening. But in the end, it is just a game, so if you screwed up, don't worry about it...just keep performing as you know how. The time to get lost in thought and reflect on how to do better is not in the middle of the fight when malleable is coming at your face...that's the time to move. Reflect on how to do it better while you're collecting loot or doing the corpse run.
6) DON'T BE ON SOMETHING!
a) If you get off on your e-peen...don't be on it. How good you say you are doesn't matter, and it'll just piss people off. Besides, if you have to talk about it instead of it just being noticed, it isn't that big anyway.
b) Don't be getting high. Seriously...if you're high, just walk out and let somebody who doesn't know a thing and has blue gear take your place. They'll do better. This includes getting drunk, among other things.
7) LISTEN AND READ!
Your raid leader will be telling you things...either in raid chat/warnings or in vent. The boss and encounter will also tell you things in emotes and sounds. If you can't hear any of them over your music or see it through the spam on your screen...turn it down instead of rocking out and make a new chat frame with only the raid in it. Great music is great, especially when it puts you in just the right groove...but not at the expense of knowing that you got battle rez'd 2 minutes ago while you were looking at youtube, and you would've let the raid beat the enrage timer they just missed by 5 seconds.
Most fights have gimmicks in them. Most of those gimmicks are easy to avoid if you know their trick. If you have a clear screen they are easy to see. Most of those are easy to spot when you know what is going on. If you can't do any of that, mods, the game, and your raid lead will fill you in...though it'll be delayed. But you'll never be able to do any of that if you aren't rested enough to be alert and are of a clear mind.
The short version...DON'T BE A N00B!
Oh, and BTW...everything up there will also help your tanking or dps/healing output.
"Pay attention!" "Get out of the fire!" "Why the heck did you get cleaved?"
After a few of these, especially in pugs, you will often hear "Get out of my raid!" along with a raid removal.
So, how do we actually be more raid aware? How do you NOT be that n00b that is oblivious?
There are a few things to do, some easy, some simple, and some that come with observation (counterproductive if you aren't).
1) SEE THE FIGHT!
This sounds obvious, but for so many people, it isn't. You can't be aware of what happens around you when you can't see it!
So here's how:
a) Make your raid frames small, get them out of the way. If you're a healer, keep them semi out of the way, but not burried. You need to see, but if you're only paying attention to a small corner of the screen, you still won't.
b) Put away your meters. Seriously...if you do better dps when you see somebody is ahead of you...stop slacking and do better all the time. Meters will not help you do anything other than hide the fight.
c) Hide addons for buffing and other random displays...you don't need them during a fight, they just cover up what is happening around you.
2) KNOW THE FIGHT!
Yes, we all know the basics of a fight once we've seen it. Hit boss, stay out of fire, run to/away from this person when this happens. But what does it mean to really KNOW a fight?
a) Understand the abilities and how they work. This is simple, go read them on wowwiki. Knowing how slime spray works, or how defile works...will let you react to it in a more intelligent way, such as using nature resist aspects or rocket boots.
b) Use something like DBM (Deadly Boss Mods) to tell you when those abilities are happening. They don't just tell you the raid warning of "Defile on X" when you see a black puddle, they tell you exactly when this is going to happen. You can move the size and style of all those warnings so that they catch your attention at just the right time, but aren't in the way the rest.
3) FOCUS THE BOSS!
Target the boss and type /focus . I don't care if you are healing, dps, or a tank, this can save you lots of headaches. You will be able to see their casts...and if you're smart and have target of target turned on, you'll even see who the defile is being cast on before it happens. If it is you, you can know to run away from the raid even more than your typical spread. If it isn't, you can start to run back in to stay away from the person with the defile. If you're even smarter, you can set up macros that target your focus (or your focus' target) with abilities when a modifier key is held down. This is great when you need to dps one thing and cc another, or do fast target switching but still know if you can pop that aoe ability (like starfall) or if that will just push the boss into the next phase at a bad time.
4) REST!
Seriously. Get some sleep...the extra Red Bull and coffee you just had really don't help, and will be worse later. If you are rested you will be more alert, more reactive, have more stamina to focus, quicker reflexes, and a much higher mental capacity and state of thought.
5) DON'T BE EMOTIONAL!
This is a game. Yes, it is serious and people have more fun when things go down, and you don't want to be the one keeping it from happening. But in the end, it is just a game, so if you screwed up, don't worry about it...just keep performing as you know how. The time to get lost in thought and reflect on how to do better is not in the middle of the fight when malleable is coming at your face...that's the time to move. Reflect on how to do it better while you're collecting loot or doing the corpse run.
6) DON'T BE ON SOMETHING!
a) If you get off on your e-peen...don't be on it. How good you say you are doesn't matter, and it'll just piss people off. Besides, if you have to talk about it instead of it just being noticed, it isn't that big anyway.
b) Don't be getting high. Seriously...if you're high, just walk out and let somebody who doesn't know a thing and has blue gear take your place. They'll do better. This includes getting drunk, among other things.
7) LISTEN AND READ!
Your raid leader will be telling you things...either in raid chat/warnings or in vent. The boss and encounter will also tell you things in emotes and sounds. If you can't hear any of them over your music or see it through the spam on your screen...turn it down instead of rocking out and make a new chat frame with only the raid in it. Great music is great, especially when it puts you in just the right groove...but not at the expense of knowing that you got battle rez'd 2 minutes ago while you were looking at youtube, and you would've let the raid beat the enrage timer they just missed by 5 seconds.
Most fights have gimmicks in them. Most of those gimmicks are easy to avoid if you know their trick. If you have a clear screen they are easy to see. Most of those are easy to spot when you know what is going on. If you can't do any of that, mods, the game, and your raid lead will fill you in...though it'll be delayed. But you'll never be able to do any of that if you aren't rested enough to be alert and are of a clear mind.
The short version...DON'T BE A N00B!
Oh, and BTW...everything up there will also help your tanking or dps/healing output.
Friday, April 23, 2010
HELP! GEAR DROPPED! WHAT SHOULD I DO!?
I get this question so often, even from people not my class, that it is no longer funny, nor something I can often be helpful with in a time frame they hope for (while rolling on 1 item vs another).
I could tell you that you should always grab this stat vs that stat, or to tell you to take higher item level gear, or to always use your set bonuses, or to roll on everything usable...but all of those would be wrong answers (I may try to generalize for different gear situations though in the future). The truth is, there is no "easy" way to judge what gear and stat is better (though I think it is plenty easy right now, if you understand how your character works). This is because what stat is better for you will change based on the other stats you currently have.
Let me use a real example for me from recently.
There are 3 trinkets in icc that casters care about: Dislodged Foreign Object (haste with a sp proc on cast), Phylactery of the Nameless Lich (crit with sp proc from dot tick), and Muradin's Spyglass (crit with continual refreshing stacking sp).
When I was in my 3 pc t10 and 2 pc t9, glyphed for insect swarm, my moonfire dots could crit, and my insect swarm did more damage. Now, in 5 pc t10 I'm glyphed for starfall instead of insect swarm, and moonfiire dots can no longer crit, so I don't keep dots up as often. When you look at that, and being at more than 50% crit when raid buffed now, it is no surprise that while Phylactory was by far my BiS (Best in Slot) trinket then...it no longer is, and DFO is now my BiS by a good chunk. The trinkets didn't change, but my gear, stats, and bonuses did.
That being said, since I'm still using Eye of the Broodmother...either one is a HUGE upgrade, so I should, and will, roll on both (I already have Muradin's). I'd love to go get Reign of the Dead, but it just never drops, and the one that would beat out these is the Heroic version...which I doubt I'll be going back to get anytime soon.
So, how does one know? Well, if you're not math oriented, there are a lot of tools out there to help you out. The easiest one though, which helps very quickly answer the "which is better for me now?" question is to go use RAWR. It used to be download and run only, but now has a pretty handy web interface as well (though unfortunately it requires MS Silverlight to use it that way). You can find Rawr here:
Once you load it up, go to the file menu and choose Load from Armory, put in your realm and character, and go forth. When you want to compare things, just choose that slot from the drop down on the right (just above the gear list that looks like a bar graph).
For dps, it is pretty simple...the larger the bar, the better the item is for you right now.
For tanking it can be a little bit different, as you have threat, survivability, and mitigation. You can sort by all of them, depending on what you need/want more of at that moment, as well as how the items are overall (which uses all 3 rankings).
I'm not going to go into the details of everything you can do with Rawr at this point, likely I will in a later post...but this should allow you to look at the gear you want to compare, and with reasonable certainty, know if it is better, similar but different, or worse.
The Short Version:
Don't trust a BiS list, or that Blizard's tier items are going to be the best. Figure out the math, or use a modeling tool like Rawr, to see what is actually helping you the most.
I could tell you that you should always grab this stat vs that stat, or to tell you to take higher item level gear, or to always use your set bonuses, or to roll on everything usable...but all of those would be wrong answers (I may try to generalize for different gear situations though in the future). The truth is, there is no "easy" way to judge what gear and stat is better (though I think it is plenty easy right now, if you understand how your character works). This is because what stat is better for you will change based on the other stats you currently have.
Let me use a real example for me from recently.
There are 3 trinkets in icc that casters care about: Dislodged Foreign Object (haste with a sp proc on cast), Phylactery of the Nameless Lich (crit with sp proc from dot tick), and Muradin's Spyglass (crit with continual refreshing stacking sp).
When I was in my 3 pc t10 and 2 pc t9, glyphed for insect swarm, my moonfire dots could crit, and my insect swarm did more damage. Now, in 5 pc t10 I'm glyphed for starfall instead of insect swarm, and moonfiire dots can no longer crit, so I don't keep dots up as often. When you look at that, and being at more than 50% crit when raid buffed now, it is no surprise that while Phylactory was by far my BiS (Best in Slot) trinket then...it no longer is, and DFO is now my BiS by a good chunk. The trinkets didn't change, but my gear, stats, and bonuses did.
That being said, since I'm still using Eye of the Broodmother...either one is a HUGE upgrade, so I should, and will, roll on both (I already have Muradin's). I'd love to go get Reign of the Dead, but it just never drops, and the one that would beat out these is the Heroic version...which I doubt I'll be going back to get anytime soon.
So, how does one know? Well, if you're not math oriented, there are a lot of tools out there to help you out. The easiest one though, which helps very quickly answer the "which is better for me now?" question is to go use RAWR. It used to be download and run only, but now has a pretty handy web interface as well (though unfortunately it requires MS Silverlight to use it that way). You can find Rawr here:
| Downloadable: | http://rawr.codeplex.com |
| Web usable: | http://www.elitistjerks.com/rawr.php |
Once you load it up, go to the file menu and choose Load from Armory, put in your realm and character, and go forth. When you want to compare things, just choose that slot from the drop down on the right (just above the gear list that looks like a bar graph).
For dps, it is pretty simple...the larger the bar, the better the item is for you right now.
For tanking it can be a little bit different, as you have threat, survivability, and mitigation. You can sort by all of them, depending on what you need/want more of at that moment, as well as how the items are overall (which uses all 3 rankings).
I'm not going to go into the details of everything you can do with Rawr at this point, likely I will in a later post...but this should allow you to look at the gear you want to compare, and with reasonable certainty, know if it is better, similar but different, or worse.
The Short Version:
Don't trust a BiS list, or that Blizard's tier items are going to be the best. Figure out the math, or use a modeling tool like Rawr, to see what is actually helping you the most.
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