Dec 09
5
How to be awesome
I consider myself a pretty good player. I would actually go as far as to say that I am a damn good addition to any group. And this is no idle boast! I have certain standards, some requirements, that I set for myself, and I project those on to others aswell. In my world, its “If I can do it, then so can you”.
I never like to be the underdog in a group, whether its in World of Warcraft or at work, during sporting events and so on. It’s not that I am competitive by nature (I am), but more the fact that I don’t like to be seen the guy that was pulling people down. In World of Warcraft, gear is only a part of how you contribute to a raid. Whats much more important is the character you bring.
We spend anywhere from 4 hours to over 20 hours doing raids every single week. But you are not just spending 20 hours of your time – you are also spending other peoples time. the rest of the group, be it a 5 man PUG or a 25 man raid, there are people that has taken the time to play with you, and it is our responsibility to do our best to let everybody get most out of that time.
I don’t want to come across as “acting pro”, but it is very important to me, that I do my best – for my own sake, and for others. I have jolted down some principles, rules of play, if you will, that I try to follow, in the pursuit of being a good player.
Be on time
One of the things that annoy me most is waiting. We wait a lot during raids; Talking about tactics, figuring out why we wiped, summoning people, eating, buffing and the random, humerous talk on ventrilo. This is all fine and dandy – nessecary, even – and I’m cool with that. What I don’t like is to wait without reason. We start raid invites at 19.45, and that happens pretty much constantly every raid night. So when someone walses in at 19.55, asking for a raid invite, I get a little tick in my eye. Further more, the person that couldn’t be bothered to show up on time, couldn’t be bothered to be sure that he was at least where he had to be. We have to spend time summoning people, and the raid starts later than planned.
Ofcourse, people are simply just late sometimes. I am late myself, from time to time, and people live different lives, in different timezones, or even in different cultures. But there is also a kind of person that always seems to be late, that always needs a summon, that hasn’t quite gotten around to get his buff food yet.
Some people have barely walked through the door before they have to raid. Kudos to them for making it, being available for the rest of the raid group in time. But they can still delay the group, even if they are trying their best to avoid it. How can you fix that? I often see these people, the hard working just looking for a bit of fun, staying online after a raid. Wouldn’t that just be a perfect time to just catch up on things? If I know that I will be pushing it the next day, I make sure that I have stocked up on the things I need, and I park my character at the place I estimate it will be needed. I might push it just until raid start, but I can walk right in and be ready.
Another time waster is breaks. We all need to have a timeout, to go to the toilet, get a drink, get some food or to pet our cats. But despite our hardest attempts, there are always people that doesn’t quite get all of their things done in the 10 minute break they get, and this puzzles me somewhat. Surely, people realise that others are waiting for them, wanting to get the raid going. There are other people that stayed within the timeframe and are now ready to continue. If your 10 minute break turns into a 15 minute break, then you are a liability. Don’t be that guy.
Know your stuff
The best way to be a good raider, is to know what to do. You might know that you have to stab the boss in the back with a sword, but there are tons of resources out there that can help you gain that extra 3% DPS, or the trick that will help you survive, which in turn will help the succes of the raid. I spent a lot of time reading guides, participating in discussions, theorycrafting, partly because I want to help others, but because I know that the gamebreaking gem could be just in the next post I read.
But some people don’t have the time for that. I understand completely. We all have to prioritize our lifes, and while we want to play, we still have other obligations. So if you don’t have time to read through 10 different blogs and three 5.000 word guides, then search your information in other ways. Talk to the people you play with, and get the tips they hold. Have a chat between wipes or talk casually on ventrilo. And help others! If you pass along usefull information, it will benefit you, because the people you play with will perform better, and you can get more enjoyment out of the game.
Class guides doesn’t really take much time to read – you probably know much of the stuff anyways, simply by playing the game. That means that you can skim through a guide and only pick out the usefull bits, but these will be very usefull indeed.
The same goes for boss tactics, although they are probably a bit heavier. What I do before every new raid, or a new boss that we are trying, is to try and set aside 30 minutes to skim through all of them. I make a mental note of what happens on the fight: o0(Jaraxxus puts flames on me, I run away. He spawns adds, I kill them. Done, next!)0o. You don’t have to know that a Dark Vortex on Twin Val’Kyr’s does 8775 to 9225 damage, you just need to know that when they do, you change color. If you are a healer, you probably don’t have to worry about shooting down frozen orbs. Find out what you need, and hold on to that.
Sure, your raid leader will explain the fight to you before hand, but if you already know the gist of it, even if you don’t remember all of it, then you are a much bigger addition to the raid than the person going in and say “So, what does this boss do?”. If you have trouble reading, there are numerous of video guides and kill videos out there, and you are sure to have a lot of other people in your guild who are more than happy to help you – that is certainly how I look at it. You can make yourself more valuable, and I can make other people more valuable to me, by assuring that everybody can pull their weight.
The biggest tabu about PUGs is that you just KNOW that you will have five players that has never set foot in Naxx, and has just dinged 80 on their first character, or that you will have people that – after 5 years in the game – still has no clue about what to do when Onyxia does her deep breath. Don’t be that guy.
Focus on what you are doing!
A lot of people, especially DPS’ers, gets a sort of tunnel vision when they are fighting a boss, and there is always one eye looking at the damage meters. Thats fine, if you can control it, but many people can’t, and when they get hit by a blast of fire, they need to be ready to react. Some people, especially healers, have complicated playstyles that they need to get a grip on, and it is unfortunate that we all don’t have the same challenges and learn at an equal pace. Oh, how life would be so much easier then!
But if you are too focused on doing your rotation correctly, or if you are more interested in being on top of the damage meters, then you are drawing your focus away from what matters: Staying alive. Remember, dead DPS don’t do any damage.
I used to lead a small 10 man guild, as a tank. During the raid I was a vocal version of Deadly Boss Mods, and I had to have an eye out on every single raider, call out special events and making sure everybody was pulling their weight. This is probably where the “If I can do it, you can do it” shines the brightest. If I am able to do all of that, and still furfill my role in the raid in general, then so can you, especially if you only have to worry about yourself.
One of the reasons why I am able to do this, is because my rotation, my general role in the raid, has become second nature to me. I could probably (disregarding things like eclipse procs) do my rotation blindfolded, and at the very least, I spend very little time focusing on DPS’ing during a raid. Fighting a boss is like a dance across the keyboard, a carefully coreographed show that my hands does with little direction from me. This allows me to look at other places. It lets me glance at Grid to see how people are doing, it lets me read the notifications coming from Deadly Boss Mods, and it even grants me a peak at the damage meters sometimes.
Getting to this point is rather simple: Practice. Practice, practice, practice. But you can’t really just practice duing a raid, because you need to teach your hand and your subconcious to do this without any interruptions, and there are certainly a lot of them in a raid. For DPS, the solution is pretty simple: Go to the target dummies. They are there for that very reason.
If you want to be a good raider, you should spend time praticing your rotation. You may know your rotation perfectly, but you have to be able to do it without giving it a second thought, freeing your mind up to focus on other things. Practice until you can carry a conversation on ventrilo, or talk to your cat. And when you have done that, you practice some more. At some point, you will be able to ponder the existance of the universe, and still uphold your rotation – and more importantly, you can look out for the dangers you will meet in raids. If you don’t have to focus on your rotation, you can sit and wait, anticipate the moment where you will be hit by fire and have to move.
Not advanced enough? Read out special events during a raid, even if you are not a raid leader. Don’t do it on ventrilo so you echo your leader – just speak them out loud to yourself. This will force you to focus on the events of the fight, rather than just looking at your action bars, and it will make you more aware of the dangers that can distrupt your raid.
The key to being a good raid leader is to have an overview of everything going on, but this is also the key to being a good player, heck, it’s even what ensures you that promotion at work, because you are able to juggle more tasks at the same time. Do what you do, and do it well. The better you do, the faster you see results, and you will help yourself and your raid. Don’t expect other people to pick up your slack.
Some people suck. Don’t be one of them.
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