Situation Awareness and tanks
Good article on Tanking UI on nostockui.com. The real story is not the eye candy, but the need for a tank to have good SA – echoing the original post on SA and the others touching on the subject.
Are you a robot?
I read a post on WowInsider about the difficulties of playing a Ret Paladin. Someone commented that while DPSing as a ret paladin was pretty simple, there are very few who know how to use other abilites to prevent deaths, wipes, or other things that make raids go wrong.
This touches on a few things, namely situational awareness, but it also concerns how well you know your class, its specs and capabilities.
I’ve known a few people who play hybrid classes as DPS specs. But they played like their toon was a pure DPS class. Even more so, it seemed as if they wouldn’t press a button if it didn’t cause damage. I liked to call them DPS robots, since really, a bot could do what they do. To a certain point this is OK, but to really be good at your class and affect how your raid performs, you have to use all of your available abilities when they’re needed. Of course, this doesn’t just apply to ret paladins, but I’ll use this particular example.
I raided with a ret paladin who lived up to what I described above. He never did anything except press one of his three dps buttons (pre 3.1). He barely even wanted to cast blessings, but he at least cast Blessing of Might on himself because it boosted DPS. During raids, you would never see a self-cleanse, a blessing of protection on someone who had aggro, a hand of salvation. This same person usually died to void zones or fire as well.
Point is, there are a lot of abilities that every class has, that most people never use. The best players will learn how, when, and where to use them. Rogues can blind or vanish/cheap shot a mob. Mages can polymorph, frost nova, decurse, spell steal, etc. DKs can save a healer by using chains of ice, or death gripping and using chains. A feral or balance druid can barkskin/tranquility to save a raid. I don’t play every class, but I’m sure every class has these tricks that can save a fellow raid member, save him or herself, and even just make the raid go more smoothly. It’s up to the player to know these things however, and to use them without needing the raid leader to ask you, or to have it done before the raid leader asks you.
Even though you may be a hybrid class, it doesn’t mean that you should limit yourself to what your tree offers. Pure dps classes shouldn’t think that since they can’t heal or tank, that their class has no utility.
An ounce of prevention..
..is worth a pound of cure. The old saying still applies in some aspects of this game. Learn to dispel, it will save you and your other healing buddies a lot of headache, healing, and mana in the long run.
Consider the average poison or curse that affects one person. If it’s a dot, it would probably deal anywhere from 12,000-15,000 damage. Ok that’s easily taken care of with one nuke heal, or two quick heals, maybe a stack of dots. Estimate anywhere from 800-1000 mana spent to make up for that. But if you dispel it as soon as you can, you spent 1 global cooldown, less than 300 mana, and your raid member is cured of any other possible negative effect from that poison or curse.
When there are raid bosses that cast poison volleys or area of effect curses, this becomes even more important, and every dispel after the first one saves that much more time and mana.
This isn’t just for healing classes either. Any class that can remove a negative on itself or other should do so. The momentary lapse in dps is trivial. Even as a paladin tank, I try to replace a GCD with a self-cleanse if it doesn’t affect my overall threat or survival. Everything counts, and dead raid members don’t contribute anything.
Guild good will
Often we get a chance to run PUGs for 25 man versions of various raids like Obsidian Sanctum and Vault of Archavon. Running a successful PUG has two positive effects. One is that people remember Horde Defense League for the fairness and efficiency of the PUG and are willing to run PUGS with us again. Another important point is the guildless or those thinking of changing guilds are more likely to come to us as an option. Remember to always put your best foot forward. Every person who PUGs and is in our guild is by default an ambassador of our guild.
Just something to keep in mind.
MMO Instances: Things to know for DPS
You’ve just started playing World of Warcraft and you’ve about to take your DPS character into some instances. Perhaps you are already level 80, and you wonder why the invites to instances and raids have disappeared. There are few things to know that hold true from your first Ragefire Chasm instance all the way though the end game. I came up with a short list of tips for DPS characters a year ago on the [HDL] forums, and they still hold. (more…)