Tuesday, May 17, 2011

On raiding: PSA


No gold making entry today, sorry about that. Today I'm going to talk about raiding and the crap that for some reason people are still doing that causes fail after fail attempt. Today is one of the few times where if you disagree I will flat out say you are entirely 100% incorrect and need to stop playing. Yes they are are very simple things and yes they DO matter. They matter a lot.

And to answer the question that is begged by an entry such as this let me explain why these things piss me off. Getting killed because 5 people don't know that fire hurts is not fun for me, nor is it fun for the other 19 people that you just stole time from. Also it's not annoying that you're bad at a game, it's aggravating because if you cannot comprehend "dps switch to skull" then you are not just a dumb player, you are a dumb person. Fact. If you can't do that, then I'm terrified to be in the same state as you because you might not stop when you see a red light show up. And nothing pisses me off more than blatant stupidity.


If you click, you are wrong.
At the risk of sounding rude, if you click most of the abilities in your primary rotation/priority then you have got to have a brain the size of a golf ball. The amount of physical coordination is zero, if you can type a single sentence without a spelling error then you can use keybinds. The only exceptions here are certain CD's that are used maybe once or twice a fight.

Some examples are bloodlust, army of the dead, and maybe even vanish. These spells are typically cast only once per fight so there's no reason to keybind them when if you wait the 1-2 seconds to hit them it most likely won't change the outcome. It can and does happen, but rarely. If you're a mage clicking fire ball or arcane blast, then you are wrong.

And before you even THINK about moaning that "oh well keybinds may work for you, but clicking is still better for me and works better" shut up. Don't talk because everyone that might read that by accident will become dumber. There is zero excuse outside of a crippled hand not to keybind your skills. If you think that clicking is better for you, get better because you're terrible right now compared to ANYBODY in equal gear and half of your "skill."

EDIT: Thomas made a good comment that requires me to clarify this a little. They mentioned that as a healer they use a click addOn which most healers use in some form or another. This is entirely different than what I was getting at above so let me expand on this a bit. By "clicking" I refer to (as a tank) click on the boss, move mouse, click charge, move mouse, click rend, move mouse etc. As a healer click a player, move mouse, click heal 1, move mouse, click player, click heal 2 etc.

What should be done is click player, hit button 1 to heal click next player hit button 2 to heal. That sort of thing. It may not be a lot of difference in time, but over the course of a 5-10 minute fight it adds up really quick.

When using a click addOn to heal it's usually just left click for heal A, right click for heal 2, alt+left click to de-curse and so forth. For dps there shouldn't be any clicking involved aside from the extra long, once per fight, CD's that I mentioned. As a DK I'm not going to waste a bind on army of the dead, I cast it once per fight or every other fight depending on recovery time. While tanking I click my "go go uber threat" abilities because they also only get used once or twice per fight. They aren't used nearly enough to add another bind to memorize and commit to muscle memory.


Keyboard turning is wrong.
Again with the keybinds. You have strafe and run keybound by default and, if you're not clicking your spells there is no reason not to hold down your right mouse button to turn. You're slow, you're clumsy, and you're losing a ton of dps-heals-tanky positioning. Yes a lot, and yes if you keyboard turn when you have a perfectly good mouse you're wrong.

Here's a link to an image that illustrates (see wut i did thar) this fact far better than I ever could.


Bad stuff is bad.
Obvious point is obvious. If your graphics setting are even remotely decent, there is no excuse to start running immediately when you're on fire. This is the main reason why I would make a terrible raid leader or GM. If you get hit by the bad stuff for more than two ticks EVER I would instantly kick you from the guild if I could and spam your account information all over the interwebs to make sure you get hacked so nobody will ever risk playing with you ever again. Now if the bad stuff has an obvious warning like, I don't know, the sound discs on Atramedes there is no reason to get hit once. No reason, no excuses. If you get hit you failed terribly at the most basic human instinct, don't get set on fire.


Yes +5 stats are worth 2k.
I've already proven how easy gold is made in this game. No I'm not referring to my 2 million gold, I'm talking about when I had full epic gear, gems, top end enchants, epic flying, full BoE purples, AND 50k in under 2 months with a single toon that had zero help from a single person. For a DK 5 strength is equal to about 10 dps (using simple numbers here).

If you include tanks and assume 8 healers in a raid, that means there are 17 people doing damage on the boss. 17 people X 10dps X 300 seconds in a fight = 51k more damage. Now multiply that by another 5 gear slots and that's over 250k more damage. I don't know about you, but I've seen MORE than my share of sub 200k wipes. If you wouldn't be so lazy and get the top enchants, you wouldn't have those frustrating wipes.


Skill > gear.

Ulduar was done by Gevlon with a raid wearing only blue gear. World first Neferian kill was done in 333 blues and a few greens. Your raid is probably in all purples now with a few actual epics by now. If you're wiping on Chimeron still, that's because your healers have no idea how to do the fight. If you're wiping on halfus it's because your DPS are plain retarded. You do NOT need better gear, you need to learn wtf to do!

This is, was, and always will be a cold hard fact. If you think you need better gear for normal modes then don't ever join a raid with me or I will cut you. My shammy was doing over 11k dps the moment they hit 85 with not a single boe purple. That means they're ready to raid 3 minutes after hitting the level cap. Why? because I learned how to paly while leveling instead of hitting the "any-key" to continue the grind. Get better, get loot.

No you are not in paragon, no you are not in midwinter (well maybe not), but that doesn't mean that you have to act like the lol-kids that click 1-2-3-4 all night long. Take some pride in doing something well for gods sake. Just because you're not the best doesn't mean you can't try. Aim for the moon and reach the sky and all that jazz.


BiS > purple.
Outside of the odd racial bonuses, if you're wearing a pvp weapon and don't roll on a pvE weapon of the same ilvl then you are wrong. Resil does nothing to help you pew pew. If something is an upgrade and you don't take it then you're most likely doing it wrong. The rare exception is if you're next in line for a weapon or OP trinket or 4pc tier and if you take a second best item you won't be next in line for BiS anymore. That I get and agree with, that's a legitimate investment there. But if you're using say the boe strength trinket and the BiS trinket drops from chimeron and you pass...you're wrong. That would constitute you being called a loot whore.

Why? Because all you want is loot and lots of it and you don't give a damn what it is or if it's even good. Just higher numbers and more purple than the last purple. This is why I wore (wear) tank gear because it was an upgrade over my blue dps gear. And lastly, if you're claiming that you're passing on loot to save DKP for gear in firelands, then you have no business in a guild that is even remotely interested in progression. Go join the social raiding guilds, max out your valors there and let the guild replace your monkey ass with somebody that wants to down more than 5 bosses a week. You're holding them back not the other way around.


Dead DPS = zero dps.
The moment you die your super good dps is worthless and has no meaning, no matter how high it is. I recommend to every single person that raids to never have recount running. It's a terrible distraction and promotes shitty playing. However if you still insist on it, look at damage done during a fight, NOT your dps. 20k dps is like a 20" dick. Sure it's great to brag about, but it's worthless if you don't know where to stick it. If you think you're top shit because you can do 30k dps and die from fire standing 20 seconds later, may I suggest to you a blender. WILL IT BLEND!?


For the tanks: Stamina is no longer your god.
Back in ICC and ToC heroic where 2 hits could easily kill you, stamina stacking was the only way to go to ensure that your healers (and their infinite mana bars) could land a few heals to top you off. Now two big heals won't fill you up at all, and especially not if you cram stam gems everywhere. Now it's about taking as little damage as possible, not being able to take more. In other words, dodge enchants are your friend and mastery is the new stamina or whatever the bear equivalent is. In current gear, shield tanks are very close to blocking every attack.

A DK and a bear can pump up their pseudo shield pretty high and are able to ensure it's up back to back almost all of the time. That's a huge amount of damage taken off folks, your stamina does nothing to reduce mana and let your healers top off the raid. In other words if you're stacking stamina gems or wearing dual stam trinkets and not working on HM progression, you have no business in tank gear. You're wrong.


Thanks for stopping by!

18 comments:

  1. "check the armory page for the top 3-4 guilds in the world"

    Being in a top guild doesn't mean people actually know what they are doing. For example I know shadowpriest mechanics better than majority of players and I often see top spriest making rather weird choises about gearing and occasionally even talents. By far the most important thing in top guild is being able to follow orders and get out of the bad stuff. Having decent performance in your role is good but you absolutely don't have to be a world-top performer in your class/spec.

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  2. Good points poorly made, your so aggressive in your writing

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  3. For better key-binds I just have 2 words.
    "Razer Naga"
    It looks advertising, but its not, it improves the game in some many was you cant imagine.

    No matter how hard you try, Dumb people will be always be dumb people.

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  4. Hey, great post I am going to link this to my guildies. sneaking suspicion we got 1 or 2 of the ppl you described floating around

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  5. The previous replies in some cases seem to miss the point...

    BAD IS BAD....

    Good is: Making a decision you can defend, talents, gems, gear etc... and that defense is not "its purple"

    Bad is: the multitude of casual who in a raid or guild, ask "Is it an UG?" "What gems?" "What enchants" and take the advice without any discussion about WHY...

    The good vs. the bad. Players that care, and those that dont. those that have flasks, food, enchants, gems, fight knowledge, class/spec knowledge, rotation/priority knowledge... these aproack good
    Not the players that have the "I have to play to figure it out" "thats so expensive, so no enhancement" (wrt gems and enchants) those that argue stam vs avoidance w/out perspective to the situation.

    Good vs. bad.

    Players with a brain and a give a damn about all of that, are not intimidated by doing all of that, begin to be good. Practice, show up on time and perform, you get closer to greater...

    If you lack some of these and the multitude of other things that are little pieces of successful raiding, tend to start leaning more and more to being epic badies...

    Its not a linear rant with a focus to a single point with a single reference... Its all of the things... and none of them sorta kinda, you get it or you dont..

    At face value with perspective to Stok's rant... I agree completely BAD PLAYERS DRAG YOU DOWN.. the game loses its edge, is less fun and loses its attraction. WoW is its it own demise. By being the biggest it attracts many casuals, and they destroy the game from the inside...

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  6. Aggressive writing? For sure. Still right? Absolutely. I could never tell my guildies in this way (most don't need to be told...I think) but accurate all the same.

    Also, I second the Naga comment. Changed my life forever.

    Oh, and I do click for most of my abilities...but then again, I'm a healer using Vuh'do. Different ideas, I think. At the same time, I realize how bad I am at tanking and DPS so I stick to healing.

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  7. @ Alberthus
    I haven't tried the razer naga, but it does look sweet for classes that have a ton of skills they need to key bind but don't have massive shovels for hands. I know on my rogue I have god knows how many strange binds with every modifier I can slap onto them and just cannot remember them all.

    For me anything past 4 is a no go for instant on the fly use. If I had tried it I'm sure I'd be able to give it a glowing recommendation.

    @ Progression comments
    The best way to progress in raiding, or anything IRL for that matter, is to surround yourself with like minded people. It's not the gear that comes with time, it's not the skill that comes with actual practice. It boils down to teamwork and you can't have a functional and cohesive team if you are all after different goals. It isn't always an entire raid's goal to down a new boss. Half of the average raid just wants something purple, not a challenge. How often have you gone to a faceroll farm raid for the last hour instead of trying to build on the progress you made that night?

    Why do you think gold bloggers read so many different gold blogs? Why do all the people at the top of the company act the same? Because that's what it takes to succeed.

    @ I'm too angry, aggressive, wrong.
    Tell me when standing in fire for half your life is a good thing.

    Tell me when not attacking who you're told is a good thing.

    Tell me when dragging atramede's breath into the raid is a good thing.

    Tell me when #2 on threat shouldn't run from chimeron.

    Tell me when it's ok to forget interrupting blast wave on nef's prototypes is an ok cool acceptable mistake that couldn't lead to people dying.

    In fact tell me how not being able to lean on your strafe button for 2 seconds to get out of fire is difficult with a pair of functional hands.

    These mechanics are not complicated to understand. It is literally as easy as stopping at a red light. It's as basic as turning the stove off when you're done cooking.

    You down the boss by following directions and performing your role as it is supposed to be. Not doing so is what leads to wipes. Get used to different positioning and movement then the rest is cake.

    As achieve said, this entire entry can be summed up as "Good is good. Bad is bad." Outside of bizarre mechanics, there are no exceptions. If you camp in fire you're bad, if your raid leader says to attack toxitron and you start attacking toxitron you're good. How that can be argued is beyond me.

    @ Thomas
    Healing is an entire different ball game than tanking or dps'ing for sure. I haven't healed in a raid since ToC 25 on my disc priest, but I had to use grid and clique to do anything. If recount absorbs are even half accurate I was pretty good at spamming my "don't die" button. I'll edit that into the post, totally forgot as I haven't healed in ages.

    As for telling your guildies, you don't want to be half as blunt as I am because then they'll just retort with "well you're being a dick so therefore you are wrong." But don't lie to them. Honesty is always the best policy even when it's not. If they love the fire or can't manage their threat if that's an issue then tell them.

    Tell them a lot.

    What worked for many guilds that I ran with at different points was having the addOn failBot report everything in raid chat. If interrupts aren't begin done, or in the case of maloriak done wrong, spam recount and call out who fucked up. Don't assume that they know they messed up. It could be something as simple as arcane torrent being used for mana or energy at a bad time. I've done that a couple times and didn't notice it until I looked. Tell them and it's an easy fix. If it's a blatant screw up let them know and leave it at that.

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  8. One last point, my writing style has yet to change and never will. I've never said "lol hai guys I'm super nice and helpful lol!" because I'm not. I am not nice or accommodating. I'm blunt, honest, and to the point.

    Ask my friends, ask my gf, hell ask my parents. I talk to them all the same way I write and always have since I first learned the phrase "you fucked up." If they screw up I'll be the first to let them know and the first to thank them when they do the same for me.

    You can call me a dick. You can hate me, think I'm rude or overbearing. That doesn't make me any less right. Your raid leader can yell and scream at you for dying in fire all night long. Does that make them an asshole? Sure does. Does that make them wrong or make it OK to die to something easily avoided?

    Not one bit.

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  9. You sum it up in one word.

    TEAMWORK

    I submit a second word you seem to hit around there...

    ACCOUNTABILITY (team, personal, group etc)

    How you hold others accountable, well, if we all knew that we would not be having this discussion

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  10. I have been a big fan of this site for many years. This was because this is and was a great gold bloging site. Please leave the raid progressive bloging to other blogs, i am sorry to say you are not good at that. This is a rant of some one who has either been kicked or has decided to play rift which is so dam boring it hurts. I will be reading this blog for many years to come if you start writing about gold making again. p.s your fan, stick to what your good at!

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  11. Your argument about clicking and keyboard turning only holds water in pvp. In a raid, it doesn't matter. At all.

    By the way, I highly doubt you talk to people in the real world the way you talk here on your blog, lol. This is the internet and you are anonymous, you can type however you want without repercussion. If you talked to anybody in person like this, you'd have your ass kicked in no time.

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  12. Your argument about clicking and keyboard turning only holds water in pvp. In a raid, it doesn't matter. At all.

    Only a baddie who missed the entire point of the post would say this.

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  13. Great post! Pretty much sums up most core issues with progression raid teams. No matter how much you weed out the raid there always seem to be one or two baddies that slip through. And everyone makes mistakes, but not everyone makes them every damned pull.

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  14. Keyboard turning and clicking in a raid environment or PvP is on par with being a talking monkey, this is not an FPS. Go app to even a world 1000 guild and tell them you click and KBT and see what they have to say. Even when people use ASDW they still use their mouse to turn with those keys being used for strafing and forward and backward movement and with actual binds for all their common abilities.

    World guilds for those that are unaware (been there, done it, made it, you?) tend to be populated with the most teamwork oriented, competitive, and best-in-class people. They are people that are frankly good at video games and they also tend to research thoroughly and keep up to speed with developments. Blizzard develops their hardmodes with them in mind, nobody else. These are also people that will scream at you to your face when you take more than one tick - no excuses.

    While Stok's post sounds angry, this is entirely correct. When 1, 2, or 6 people in a raid can't be asked to understand the game and play correctly, they are being selfish assholes and not respecting everyone's time. These are people in the real world who tend to get fired, passed up for promotions, and work bottom rung jobs all their lives because nobody can count on them for anything; all the while blaming everyone else for their shortcomings.

    How this relates to gold making? Well same thing. If you aren't competitive or motivated to learn from mistakes and understand the motivations of your buyers and markets then you tend to be a person who will remain poor in video games as well.

    I always liked Stok's attitude anyhow, get your shit together and do it right or pack it up.

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  15. Good post except for lumping the keyboard turner/clickers into the bad category. (At least, that's how I read the inference.) I used to be one until I wanted to clean up my PVP game. While it did VAST improvements to my pvp quality, it did nothing for my PVE.

    As far as the idiots that don't listen to simple 7-words orders on vent, I feel your pain. How hard is it to just be a follower and do what you're told. Amazing how low some people's comprehension will go. I always say to my college-attending wife, "There's one more you won't have to worry about when he applies for the same job you do."

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  16. "While it did VAST improvements to my pvp quality, it did nothing for my PVE."

    Then you probably aren't doing high enough level pve encounters. I'm talking about actually hard content not getting the third boss in raid down for first time after 2 months of raiding while already in full purples.

    Alternatively, you got carried by your guild :)

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  17. "Then you probably aren't doing high enough level pve encounters."

    When I did the transition, we were 11/12H ICC. I was always in one of the top 3 dps on recount and rarely died. I don't know what you consider "enough" but I personally believe my experience is sufficient.


    "Alternatively, you got carried by your guild :)"

    Without you having most of the data involved in my conclusions, that is certainly an extremely hasty conclusion. It will be news to my guild though if I informed them they carried me.

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  18. Hmm, have to be a dick here myself... and suggest that the goofball that keyboard turns and says its fine does not "strafe" either, or only just decided that its a good idea....

    Either that is funny or its not... you get it and the underlying point or you don't

    Rant, argue, point, counter-point... Nope... Just "LOL..."

    It's the same principle as the 2K for +5 stats... the fractions are always worth it... Always... and thats what you get for mouse turning, fractions.

    If you said "11/13 H Cata" you would have had my attention and I would have asked why you "chose" to not to mouse turn, what are you keybinds, role etc. that led to that decision, but no.. you said 11/12 H ICC...

    "LOL..."

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