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!