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Karazhan, April 27th, 7am server time.
Tanks:
Fineilldoit, warrior, <Nightstalkers>
Mensenox, druid, <Nightstalkers> (a.k.a. Fox in Sox)
Healers:
Anthrak, resto shaman, <Defiance>
Mourl, resto druid in <Nightstalkers>
DPS:
Frogvete, hunter, <Nightstalkers>
Enhtiar, enh shaman, <Defiance>
Rantu, warlock, <Defiance>
Niteprincess, mage, <Nightstalkers> (late joiner)
Draculette, warlock, <Nightstalkers>
Mariothebull, hunter, <Nightstalkers> (I'm pretty sure it was Mario; it was definitely a guild hunter)
As previously stated, the ideal Kara makeup is 2 tanks, THREE healers, 5 DPS, so we were one healer short and one DPS high.
POSITIVES:
We started on time.
We filled the group with two guilds-- Nightstalkers and Defiance, which is a level 70 Kara-raiding guild.
For next week, Rantu said he'd bring his tank and tank for us, a weak point we were having this week (more about that later).
Anthrak brought repair bots so we didn't have to call a mid-raid repair break, but could repair our armor right there.
I've double-spaced this in an attempt to look less negative, but I'm not sure it's an effective strategy.
NEUTRAL:
I have a new raid-evaluation strategy. It goes like this:
BEGIN with 10 points.
+2 If raid starts on time (within 5 minutes of scheduled time).
+2 If raid contains ONLY guild members.
+1 If raid contains guild members and friends of theirs, no one else.
+0 If raid contains any pickup players.
=====total possible at this time: 14 points
Now, raid continues until 2 points remain, as follows:
+1 for every boss (extremely difficult) kill.
-1 For every total wipe (all players killed).
-1 for Specifically Forbidden Mistakes, as defined here.
If you tell someone "Hug the left wall" and they do not do so, take away one point-- if their mistake wipes the group, take 2 points, one for the wipe and one for the SFS.
Of course, if they do something that no one has told them not to do, it doesn't lose any points (unless there is a wipe and then it's only the 1 point for the wipe).
When 2 points remain, then one of these things will happen:
A) The raidleader should say "OK, at this time we are wiping repeatedly, if you are undergeared please leave the raid and we will attempt to replace you with someone who is properly geared. If you are underattentive, I will be addressing that momentarily, and either that problem will be fixed or you will be replaced as well." Then fix the problem players, repair up, and continue as best you can. Add 2 points for this and continue.
B) The raidleader should say, "OK guys, thanks for coming, we sure have learned a lot. One of the things we learned is that we don't have enough properly geared people and we aren't quite sure as a guild what to do in each situation. So we're gonna focus this week on gearing up and learning more and try again next week, bye bye now!" Keep your 2 points and add them to the next event's score. (In other words, if you don't feel like you're going to be trapped if it's a losing situation, you're a LOT more willing to keep going next time.)
C) People in the raid should continue playing because nobody wants to be first to quit. The raid should continue limping along until someone runs completely out of armor, or until someone (preferably a key player) manufactures an emergency at home and leaves. Continue deducting points as above, but begin using the below additions to the point scores:
-1/2 point. For each PERSON who requests to call the raid (not per request) as long as the answer is NO.
0 points For the final request(s) to call the raid when it is finally called.
If the final score is negative, subtract it from next week's 10 points. The more people have to fight to get OUT of your group, the less patience they have, and the more they want to leave early.
DOOOOOOOM... I mean, NEGATIVE:
(1)First, one of our tanks didn't have the add-on software Omen.
What does Omen do? Well, it has to do with the role difference between tanks and DPS. Tanks can do quite a bit of damage, but their primary role is to create threat. The stuff we're fighting (mobs) will attack whatever is threatening them most, or "whoever has the most threat." That should be the tanks, because the tanks can take the beating.
DPS-- the group I'm in-- does damage. Damage creates some threat. So our job is to do as much damage as possible, WITHOUT getting more threat than the tank. Now, you can do this without an addon, but it's as difficult as measuring your car's speed using a stopwatch and mile markers, while driving.
Omen shows you the amount of threat being generated by each person in the group who has Omen, on a bar graph, so you can easily see "oh, I don't have much threat compared to the tank" or "oh gee my threat is climbing, I shouldn't cast that next spell" or whatever.
But, since it only works on people who have Omen, if the tank doesn't have it, it does damn near no good.
The short version of this is, the add-on that should have been giving me useful information on a business-card-sized chunk of my screen, was instead screaming alarms for most of the instance because I was doing more damage than the other DPSers, and wasn't telling me shit about whether I had close to the tank's threat or not.
As a side note, it takes about 5 minutes to install Omen, or 10 if you've never installed an add-on before and have to read the instructions.
(2) Anyways. Enough about the lack of Omen. The same tank who was Omenless also didn't seem to get which mob to target. The raid leader can "mark" different critters with giant symbols that hover over their heads. These symbols were, I think, picked to be maximally different: white skull, red X, orange circle, blue square, etc. So, at one point, the raid leader asked this tank to "attack skull."
Now, anyone can use a feature called "target of target." If you target someone, whether it's a player or NPC, you can in turn see a little target circle next to their name showing what THEY have targeted. So if Bob has Jenny targeted, and I target Bob, I'll see Bob(Jenny).
I target druid. I see druid(red X).
Raidleader: "Druid, on skull please"
Target again. Druid(red X).
Half the raid: "Druid, on skull"
Druid(red X).
Me (thinking): You know, I don't care what they say about "nothing to learn on trash mobs," I have just learned that we need to allow over 2 minutes for this frisking idiot to target the ONLY THING IN THE ENTIRE PLACE WITH A BIG GLOWY SKULL OVER ITS HEAD.
I know it was more than 2 minutes because the second that the raidleader said "attack skull" I cast my totems, which have a 2 minute timer, and I had to re-cast them, and they were halfway through the second iteration when the druid finally got his bear butt in gear.
(3) In other minor annoyances, the druid healer kept shouting "TUANT!" at the tanks/DPS group in raid chat. It was annoying until I made up that it was a regional pronunciation of an anatomical insult, and then it got funny. Did I mention that this druid thought he was a special snowflake and needed to be in the tank/DPS group, instead of the DPS shaman whose totems help them do damage?
The druid healer was surprisingly good-natured about being the first to die every time, and I think he deserves a Red Shirt Award for that.
I will note that if a person is watching primarily raid chat, having a healer scream "HELP" is not particularly useful, especially if they don't announce when they are dead and no longer healing their target so that someone else can pick it up. And, of course, if a person is watching health bars, they aren't going to know who that healer is healing. That's more of a suggestion for next time, though.
(4) Final note: LOS means Line Of Sight. Learn it, live it, love it. Casters need line of sight, which means that if you have three casters in another room, you can bunch them all up together by pulling them, then running around a corner out of sight so they have to follow.
Furthermore, though, YOUR HEALERS are LOS-dependent too. So don't pull into a room where your healers aren't, or you won't get any heals while they are running after you.
Hey Lintra, can I give you a cookie to make "L2Pull" video, showing a pull around corner?
Tanks:
Fineilldoit, warrior, <Nightstalkers>
Mensenox, druid, <Nightstalkers> (a.k.a. Fox in Sox)
Healers:
Anthrak, resto shaman, <Defiance>
Mourl, resto druid in <Nightstalkers>
DPS:
Frogvete, hunter, <Nightstalkers>
Enhtiar, enh shaman, <Defiance>
Rantu, warlock, <Defiance>
Niteprincess, mage, <Nightstalkers> (late joiner)
Draculette, warlock, <Nightstalkers>
Mariothebull, hunter, <Nightstalkers> (I'm pretty sure it was Mario; it was definitely a guild hunter)
As previously stated, the ideal Kara makeup is 2 tanks, THREE healers, 5 DPS, so we were one healer short and one DPS high.
POSITIVES:
We started on time.
We filled the group with two guilds-- Nightstalkers and Defiance, which is a level 70 Kara-raiding guild.
For next week, Rantu said he'd bring his tank and tank for us, a weak point we were having this week (more about that later).
Anthrak brought repair bots so we didn't have to call a mid-raid repair break, but could repair our armor right there.
I've double-spaced this in an attempt to look less negative, but I'm not sure it's an effective strategy.
NEUTRAL:
I have a new raid-evaluation strategy. It goes like this:
BEGIN with 10 points.
+2 If raid starts on time (within 5 minutes of scheduled time).
+2 If raid contains ONLY guild members.
+1 If raid contains guild members and friends of theirs, no one else.
+0 If raid contains any pickup players.
=====total possible at this time: 14 points
Now, raid continues until 2 points remain, as follows:
+1 for every boss (extremely difficult) kill.
-1 For every total wipe (all players killed).
-1 for Specifically Forbidden Mistakes, as defined here.
If you tell someone "Hug the left wall" and they do not do so, take away one point-- if their mistake wipes the group, take 2 points, one for the wipe and one for the SFS.
Of course, if they do something that no one has told them not to do, it doesn't lose any points (unless there is a wipe and then it's only the 1 point for the wipe).
When 2 points remain, then one of these things will happen:
A) The raidleader should say "OK, at this time we are wiping repeatedly, if you are undergeared please leave the raid and we will attempt to replace you with someone who is properly geared. If you are underattentive, I will be addressing that momentarily, and either that problem will be fixed or you will be replaced as well." Then fix the problem players, repair up, and continue as best you can. Add 2 points for this and continue.
B) The raidleader should say, "OK guys, thanks for coming, we sure have learned a lot. One of the things we learned is that we don't have enough properly geared people and we aren't quite sure as a guild what to do in each situation. So we're gonna focus this week on gearing up and learning more and try again next week, bye bye now!" Keep your 2 points and add them to the next event's score. (In other words, if you don't feel like you're going to be trapped if it's a losing situation, you're a LOT more willing to keep going next time.)
C) People in the raid should continue playing because nobody wants to be first to quit. The raid should continue limping along until someone runs completely out of armor, or until someone (preferably a key player) manufactures an emergency at home and leaves. Continue deducting points as above, but begin using the below additions to the point scores:
-1/2 point. For each PERSON who requests to call the raid (not per request) as long as the answer is NO.
0 points For the final request(s) to call the raid when it is finally called.
If the final score is negative, subtract it from next week's 10 points. The more people have to fight to get OUT of your group, the less patience they have, and the more they want to leave early.
DOOOOOOOM... I mean, NEGATIVE:
(1)First, one of our tanks didn't have the add-on software Omen.
What does Omen do? Well, it has to do with the role difference between tanks and DPS. Tanks can do quite a bit of damage, but their primary role is to create threat. The stuff we're fighting (mobs) will attack whatever is threatening them most, or "whoever has the most threat." That should be the tanks, because the tanks can take the beating.
DPS-- the group I'm in-- does damage. Damage creates some threat. So our job is to do as much damage as possible, WITHOUT getting more threat than the tank. Now, you can do this without an addon, but it's as difficult as measuring your car's speed using a stopwatch and mile markers, while driving.
Omen shows you the amount of threat being generated by each person in the group who has Omen, on a bar graph, so you can easily see "oh, I don't have much threat compared to the tank" or "oh gee my threat is climbing, I shouldn't cast that next spell" or whatever.
But, since it only works on people who have Omen, if the tank doesn't have it, it does damn near no good.
The short version of this is, the add-on that should have been giving me useful information on a business-card-sized chunk of my screen, was instead screaming alarms for most of the instance because I was doing more damage than the other DPSers, and wasn't telling me shit about whether I had close to the tank's threat or not.
As a side note, it takes about 5 minutes to install Omen, or 10 if you've never installed an add-on before and have to read the instructions.
(2) Anyways. Enough about the lack of Omen. The same tank who was Omenless also didn't seem to get which mob to target. The raid leader can "mark" different critters with giant symbols that hover over their heads. These symbols were, I think, picked to be maximally different: white skull, red X, orange circle, blue square, etc. So, at one point, the raid leader asked this tank to "attack skull."
Now, anyone can use a feature called "target of target." If you target someone, whether it's a player or NPC, you can in turn see a little target circle next to their name showing what THEY have targeted. So if Bob has Jenny targeted, and I target Bob, I'll see Bob(Jenny).
I target druid. I see druid(red X).
Raidleader: "Druid, on skull please"
Target again. Druid(red X).
Half the raid: "Druid, on skull"
Druid(red X).
Me (thinking): You know, I don't care what they say about "nothing to learn on trash mobs," I have just learned that we need to allow over 2 minutes for this frisking idiot to target the ONLY THING IN THE ENTIRE PLACE WITH A BIG GLOWY SKULL OVER ITS HEAD.
I know it was more than 2 minutes because the second that the raidleader said "attack skull" I cast my totems, which have a 2 minute timer, and I had to re-cast them, and they were halfway through the second iteration when the druid finally got his bear butt in gear.
(3) In other minor annoyances, the druid healer kept shouting "TUANT!" at the tanks/DPS group in raid chat. It was annoying until I made up that it was a regional pronunciation of an anatomical insult, and then it got funny. Did I mention that this druid thought he was a special snowflake and needed to be in the tank/DPS group, instead of the DPS shaman whose totems help them do damage?
The druid healer was surprisingly good-natured about being the first to die every time, and I think he deserves a Red Shirt Award for that.
I will note that if a person is watching primarily raid chat, having a healer scream "HELP" is not particularly useful, especially if they don't announce when they are dead and no longer healing their target so that someone else can pick it up. And, of course, if a person is watching health bars, they aren't going to know who that healer is healing. That's more of a suggestion for next time, though.
(4) Final note: LOS means Line Of Sight. Learn it, live it, love it. Casters need line of sight, which means that if you have three casters in another room, you can bunch them all up together by pulling them, then running around a corner out of sight so they have to follow.
Furthermore, though, YOUR HEALERS are LOS-dependent too. So don't pull into a room where your healers aren't, or you won't get any heals while they are running after you.
Hey Lintra, can I give you a cookie to make "L2Pull" video, showing a pull around corner?
