An Open Letter to 25M Raid Leaders

Dear friends,

I know what you guys are going through. I've been there myself. The job you take, whether willingly or not, is most nerve-wrecking.

I know you're already distressed with your raiders laziness or inability to understand simple commands. It seems the whole raid is taking months to understand what you've just read on boss tactics.

Cataclysm's raid changes have been heralding the death of 25M Raids, according to some people. You are already fed up with wiping on easy bosses in 25M NM while you clear 10M HM on a weekly basis. With the normalization of gear and increase in raid difficulty, it seems there is little reason to do 25M content and pain yourself in the process.

I'm making preparations to find a new guild for Cataclysm. Since beginning, I've told myself to look out for quality before quantity, so, I was never going to go out my way to recruit half the server just to wipe at 25M NM bosses. I told myself that amount of players I had would determine the raid size, not vice-versa. But after raid announcements, I must admit I contemplated long whether I should just stick to 10M raids.

I had forgotten why I loved to raid lead so much.

I must admit there's some (Alright, a good chunk of) arrogance in me. I am not humble. If I had to take a shot, I would say most of us (the ones that drive their guild to progression) are some of the best players out there. By definition, a Raid Leader should be two-steps ahead of its guild. This causes us pain at times as we sigh "I am better than this!". We say, "Look at me, I'm doing the best I can as an X, explaining EVERYTHING to people, and we're wiping on THIS boss. It's not even Hardmode!"

There is a reason why I chose Hermes Trismegistus for the daily picture. He was worshipped by Greeks and Egyptians alike as the Teacher-God. I always saw him as a persona that was interested in developing the Art not for the sake of it, but to help his pupils to be better at it. This is why he's such an inspiration for me.

I can't speak for everyone's behalf, but I love teaching. So much that I'm contemplating being a teacher in the future. The reason why is I had unquenchable thirst for knowledge as I grew up. I had to know everything. This is why I'm a very rapid learner. And this is why I enjoy helping people learn how to learn. I don't sympathize with the poor, with the crippled, nor with anyone else for that matter -but I just can't stand when someone can't learn something. I feel obliged to help. 


Take a look at your WoW past. What do you remember the most? For me, it's the Yogg-Saron fight, 25M NM. Sure, we cleared 10M HM content as an A-Team, even did some TotC 25M HM before I quit WoW. But Yogg-Saron 25M NM was something else for me. It was watching helpless little chickens triggering clouds and wiping in P1 become serial killers in cold blood. I screamed my guts out on the Ventrilo when that fucking beast was down.

My exact part in execution of the fight was, as DK class leader, I was responsible for the melee group and the brain phase. I did some hefty work. In the end, I felt I accomplished something -and considering we were a "Casual-but-serious" guild, some of us even doubted we could be among the Yogg-Saron killers. People felt they had accomplished something and there was lots of joy. I can never forget that.

When I look back, I remember these moments, not the ones us officers facerolling in 10M HM content. Yes, we literally face-rolled it all. There wasn't a challenge to speak of. These were more "Chill & Fun" moments that make me miss the friends I had in that guild. But accomplishment? No.

I know that a good amount of you feel arrogant and burned out with the feeling of "Carrying people over your shoulder".  There are times you wished you were the basic Grunt in a Hardcore raiding guild, fulfilling your responsibilities dutifully, in an environment where you don't feel you're carrying others.

But that guild's Raid Leader's thinking the same with joining Ensidia,

And Kungen's probably singing Is There Anybody Out There?

The point here is, the Raid Leader will always feel one step ahead of their raid. If they don't, then they're not making any progress anyway. And there are times we ask ourselves "Is it really worth it?"

If you really only want to see the end-game content and the reason you're a Raid Leader is it's the only way to ensure that happening in your guild, you could either run a 10M HM guild or get a spot at a 25M HM guild, come Cataclysm. But if you enjoyed the perhaps a little megalomaniac feeling of watching a crippled raid turn into an orchestra of death, and took pride in your efforts to teach people how to learn the encounter, then I say: Give it a shot again. Guilds desperately need good raid leaders like you, and they will thank you for your work. For me, a few people personally took time to thank for my efforts, and I can say it was worth all the trouble.

Cataclysm 10M Raids & Buffs

For a while when our guild was moving to TotC 25 HM, we had an A-Team that explored TotC 10 HM to gain experience. I was de jure raid-organizer for these runs, even though the runs themselves were pretty much anarchic.

We didn't had Anub'Arak down on the second week, and tried to have a shot for some of the tribute rewards the next weeks. So we started to theorize a perfect setup that had best possible buffs. After hours of hours of discussion, drama in the guild and so, we downed it with a non-optimal setup with 45 attempts remaining (War/Pala tanks, Pala/Druid healers, Blood DK, MM Hunter, Spriest, Elemental Shaman, Mage, Boomkin).

This whole ordeal has given me an insight with the problems of 10M raid designs. Wrath's Bring the player, not the class motto pretty much works out in 25m raids, when you can cap out the raid buffs with ~15 people very very easily, and past that point, you really do bring in your best DPSers/Healers/Tanks for the job regardless of the class/spec.

My experience with 10M Hardmodes in Wrath was they weren't balanced around min-maxed groups, so pretty much a random group with a few exceptions would have a decent shot at any and all Hardmode Encounters.

When this does happen, there's a few consequences to it:

• Shamans before anything else is the most important addition to 10M raids. Before tanks, before anything, we'd look at which shaman could make it to our raids, and compose our raids on that. When the playing ground is even, Bloodlust makes Shamans more equal among equals. Icing on the cake, their totems are absolute bonkers, and nullify the need for other classes. There is nothing a Blood/Frost DK can bring that an Enhancement Shaman can't. 

• Retribution Paladin is the close second to Shamans. While Kings is God, it's just top of the iceberg. Replenishment, Haste, Damage, Crit Chance all are a few reasons why Retribution Paladins are gods. Now, all Wrath raids are balanced around Replenishment, so you need either a Shadow Priest or a Retri Paladin. And Shadow Priest does not compare to Reti Paladin, not even remotely closely.

• Druids are the fail-proof additions. If you don't really care for the buffs past Replenishment and Bloodlust, each Druid is one more combat res and innervate. 

It's kind of a funny feeling that, once the ground is "level" for all classes, some classes are more equal. If you balance the raids for a DPS setting of Rogue, Survival Hunter, Frost Mage, Shadow Priest, Arms Warrior with no Restoration Shaman, then any of the classes I've listed in bulletins will make the content far, far easier. And if you balance it with at least the classes having moderate amounts of synergy together, and with Bloodlust, then it's mandatory. You just can't win this one. 

Case in point, my old DK was pulling 4.5-5k sustained DPS on Boss Dummy with no buffs and around 10k in a tank-and-spank in TotC. That's %100 damage increase. If you arrange the bosses for minimum DPS in a most most random raid setting, then for example a stacked physical DPS team (which is often the preferred medium for 10M HM raids) will absolutely destroy the setting. 

Another interesting point of Blizzard was "Making 10M just as hard as 25M". While relative DPS and HPS/Survival numbers were yes, in favor of 10Ms in Wrath, 10M HM were often much harder, at least from what was expected of a single player to do. The only reason more people did 10M HMs over 25M is logistic problems, since it's easier to find 10 people willing to go %150 than 25 people doing their %100. 

But for example, where a DPS in 25M encounter is %6-7 of the raid's damage output, a DPS in 10M was %17-18 of raid damage -a little more than a double. I remember us just giving wiping certain hardmode fights after one dps was down ~1 minute into a fight. Same as with healers -Most 10M Hardmode groups bring 2 healers to compensate steep DPS requirements, and as such, death of one healer is the loss of %50 healing on the raid. In most cases, it was just impossible to kill after a healer death (Though we did have a really uber Druid, who healed Anub P3 HM solo. That was some feat, that was something. I still have no clue how he pulled that off). 

But anyways, each healer/dpser is more responsible on 10Ms, which made most fights even harder than when compared to their 25M versions. To negate that, for example, adds-per-dps etc numbers were low and in favor of 10Ms.

Tuning it now even harder, I can see 10Ms being a retro-case of Burning Crusade, when raid-stacking was important and where 10M content (Especially Zul'Aman) was not just something that was PuGable. 

All in all, I have to say I (and most of the casual guilds strictly 10M) didn't mind to know that, yes, 10Ms were gimped, were easier on the whole and reflected the best "Bring the player, not the class" mentality. However, I'm not sure how casual crowds will reflect that, if Blizz does keep its word and make 10Ms harder, the fact that they're now wiping again for hours like a 25M guild. 

But in the end, it's always easier to find 9 more patient and sentient people to wipe with, as opposed to 24.

Obligatory Cataclysm Post

So, I really should do this to attract more attention, right?

Well, there's really not much to talk about, to be perfectly honest. Path of Titans idea is scrapped, Guild Talents are gone. There's going to be even more competition and name calling among guilds now, especially with Guild RSS feed, Guild Achievements, etc. This, I really don't like. I enjoyed "We did X!" over the recent "You noobs haven't done X!" elitism of WotLK. An ex-member of our guild didn't stop bitching about to a rival guild after we killed Freya Knock x3, rubbed it all over their faces.

Accomplishments in WoW is for personal satisfaction, and while it's fun to race server firsts and have some friendly rivalry, to the point of progress is the norm and thus lack of it is a cause of booing -that doesn't really suit me.

I'm going to high-light some changes that are relevant for high-end guilds:

Guilds: A lot of crappy fluff, which, if I don't have to exactly go out and grind ZG outside of my guild's weekly content farm for, I won't mind cool rewards like mounts with guild tabard and such. But most important point is Guild Reputation, you're going to need these to buy the rewards that your guild has unlocked.

Now again, from what I've understood, rewards are fluff only. If you can earn Guild Rep in only raids or trading with guildies or such, then I'm a happy fella that now has a metric source to measure my members' contributions.

Raids: There's a few changes, most of them I support. A quick glance over them:

Different raids, same bosses: Say, you went to Naxx this week and killed up to Patchwerk. Now, once your guild's raid catches up to Patchwerk, you both can join the same instance now. Sounds fun.

More Algalon: Heroic raids will have exclusive Algalon raids with half a tier above loot. More bosses = Fun! But, even now the casual crowd (Who has been given access to all the raids without even attunements just so they can see the content they complained that they were unable to see) complain how Algalon was for hardmode raiders only. I hope Blizzard won't listen to them for this one instance now.

Splitting it up: You can 'downrank' a 25-Men raid lockout to 10 men, for cases like it's Tuesday night, some assholes blew you up and you've got only 20 people, so you downrank your ID, and go with 2 x 10 groups. It only can do good.

Path of the Titans scrapped over: Personally, I've got mixed feelings. It was going to be another gold sinker that forced the raiders to put more effort into (Which already is a lot in the beginning, with insanely high prices for flasks, foods, enchantments and crafted epics). Also given the slow nature of its explained progression, either the raids would be balanced around the premise that guilds had max Acheology already, or not at all. In first case, it would take a fresh recruit months to get him in proper position to raid among the others, in the second case, the profession would make any half-decent raider just way over the top (even if it was just a simple %5 damage/health/healing increase).

Matt at World of Matticus said Cataclysm lost one of its selling point probably because of release rush, but I disagree. Path would make either characters overpowered, or the ones without it miserable. Neither are profitable for a raider guild, who's always looking out for bright talents on their side even if it's a fresh re-roll. I think it's nice that it's gone.

Praying by Damage Meters

I think the name of the blog is biased enough to let you know what I think of Damage Meters. While the tagline is a tongue-in-cheek joke, I still base my analyses of my DPSers on how they perform on the Damage Meters. I got booed off the stage numerous times for defending Damage Meters, and even met some fellow DPSers who refused to install a Meter addon, just because they were opposed to the idea.

How more wrong can you get?

I've read a reader reply on Wow.com, that said "DPS is a science, Healing is an art." As much as the quote sounds biased on the "Healers & Tanks are the serious business har har har!" mentality, it's still true. Everything a DPSer needs to do, is shown on the Damage Meter. Let's refine our role for this matter, once again:

A DPSer's job is...

1. To attack the right target and interrupt as needed
2. To deal maximum amount of damage
3. To receive minimum amount of avoidable damage

This is a science (While certain specs' rotations/priorities borderline the "art" scope, those are still rotations that could be better performed by a machine than a human if enough variables could be calculated). Everything we have to do, is calculated on the Damage Meter: Outgoing Damage, Damage dealt to whom, Damage received from what. This is why it's crucial for a DPSer to know how to handle the statistics gathered from Recount/Skada. 

Let's learn how to avoid the common pitfalls when using that data:

The Right Target:

Hodir is a fight of two priorities: After each freeze, rescue the silly DPSer NPCs (They fail horribly on the third bullet), and then unleash hell on Hodir. The fight's mechanics really help Mages with their DPSes, since NPCs give you a lot of crit and haste.

If you're good on the Damage Done meters, odds are some of your guildmates are going to grief about your constant performance, especially if you're a hybrid and they're a pure DPS class. This time, I was the Death Knight and the other suspect was a Mage. I heard the "Ha! I beat Nighthavk on DPS!!!11!" on Ventrilo. After the fight was over (as a wipe), I did what all the bad DPSers do after each fight: Linked the meter in raid chat. The one statistic I chose to show was Damage Dealt to Frost.

The top damage was an Arms Warrior (Who was usually Fury, but had changed to Arms for better movement during the fight for Hodir only. Talk about perfection!) and second was me. Our good old mage was nowhere to be seen.

It didn't help that we just had a wipe, especially because we were slow to rescue frozen NPCs.

This is where a lot of DPSers fail - they understand that they're performing a job with quantitative statistics, and want to "exploit" the system. The utter most important thing in a raid for a DPSer is to tag the right target and interrupt as needed. No excuses.

The old "Oh, but I lose precious DPS when I switch targets!" is a moot point. Rogues and feral druids even, one of the classes that benefit most to sticking to the target, just refresh their SnD/SR and switch their targets. Even better, some niche specs excel at AoE or Cleave damage. If you're so concerned with your performance that dropping a few slots from the Recount is important to you, why didn't you come with a better spec for this fight?

Any raid worth its salt will concern themselves with damage done to the right target first and foremost.

The Right Damage:

This one is simple: You should be constantly comparing yourself to your past performance and other members of your class. I've seen a lot of people who don't help others of their class just to show that they're valuable to the guild and do more DPS than the others of the same class. This is unacceptable. When I was DK Class Leader, I was the DPS/OT, and so my recruits were DPS alone. After a few discussion, me and the Guild Leader decided we needed three DK DPSers including me. So I had to find two other DKs who showcased insane damage.

It wasn't easy. I recruited around fifteen people, far more than any other class leaders did, and worked with them at Ebon Hold, burned literally thousands of golds to respec, reglyph. In the end, I found two other excellent members.

Those days were a blast, as the Recount's top three was painted in dark red at all times, and it made me more proud than just seeing my name on the top. It was a group effort, that my recruits volunteered to work with. In the end, we were constantly teasing ourselves for doing 23 more DPS than the other or silly stuff like that and generally having a blast. The guild leader congratulated me on my work, and my recruits were thanking me for the opportunity and for taking my time to work with them.

The work wasn't simply a matter of me teaching them either. I had dropped Unholy long after the nerf, only using it for gimmick fights with a lot of AoE requirements. I was Frost first after the buffs as it held the best single target damage, which was replaced by Blood in TotC gear. One of my members showed interest in going Unholy, and we went down to Ebon Hold, tested out several specs and in the end, he stuck with Blood with his overabundance of ArP, and I respecced to Unholy. Hadn't it been for him, I wouldn't have given Unholy another shot.

DPS should be handled by people who genuinely enjoy excelling at this science. Is it completely necessary? It can be done without all 15 DPSers in the raid min-maxing to the balls, though certainly more people who take it seriously should do it. But the more important question is, admit it: You're DPSer because you enjoy dealing big damages. Why don't you work harder for this joy?

Avoiding the Damage:

"Nighthavk, get away from the boss."
"Naah."
"Dude, he's going to Overload!"
"Yeah, I know. Watch dis:"

"HOW, WHAT, YOU BARELY TOOK ANY DAMAGE?!"

Anti-Magic Shield says "Hi!".

I loved Overload. Stormcaller of Ulduar's Council was a bitch, and I was constantly on interrupt duty on him. Overload meant I had seven seconds of freedom to just whack at him, and also using Anti-Magic Shield as a way to refill my Runic Bar. In the end, the damage I would take from him was about ~2k. Which I'd promptly Death Strike to regain back, and unleash my Runic Power to the boss.

(The side effect to my exploit was, a feral friend stuck with me DPSing the boss on next Overload. When I told him to move away, he told me "Watch dis:" and promptly died. We all burst in laughter on Ventrilo. Good times...)

I come from the school of rogues of the vanilla content. Raiding was a lot primitive back then. A DPS getting healed was a DPSer who was lucky. Between health potions you could use multiple times in an encounter, bandages, health stones, a DPSer was meant to take care of himself. While I understand that there's a lot of unavoidable damage that DPSers take nowadays, I learned to thank for every Renew or Shield tossed on my way. We had to get... creative, with out class mechanics. A Warlock would life tap as usual, but would Drain Life to regain back the health lost. Warriors would stance dance to get survival countdowns. We exploited the best of our abilities.

I see very rarely that abilities like Anti-Magic Shield, Icebound Fortitude, Feint etc used to minimize the damage taken. They should be keybound and used as much as possible.

Some fights, like Mimiron, brain room at Yogg-Saron, these fights make me nervous with relying on healers to survive, despite anything I might do.  In these cases, I either try to take talents that reduce the AoE damage a la Rogue and Feral Druids, or else ignore these cooldowns unless a real emergency comes up. The reason is simple: Healers flow into a rotation of HoTs and heals in these cases. You don't want to illusion them that you take less damage than other DPSers. They might put you off their rotations, and believe me, you'll notice it once your CDs wear off. Your health will drop like you didn't know it, and you'll be topped off by several healers wasting mana on Greater Heal equivalents. For fights like this, trust that your healers are good, and if shit hits the fan and one your healers die, you'll hear "Alright ladies, you're on your own!" which means, blow off those survival cooldowns and pray, pray that feral aura will be enough to keep you alive.

In both cases, you have to make your healers job easier. Know beforehand the abilities of the boss and understand the mechanics, plan ahead when to use your survival cooldowns and minimize the avoidable damage. In some cases like XT, using Icebound Fortitude/Feint/Dispersion will only make your healers thank you, but in others, such cooldowns will mislead your healers and make several healers blow off big heals on you (That's a NO!). Your own survival is more dependant on your actions than the heals of your healers. Understand this.

...What do you mean, "What does this section have to do with DPS Meters?"

But why, silly: We keep track of the source of damage you took! This is yet another area where you have to be competitive among others and impress with your magic skills. Your job is to stay low, very low on this meter. And again, if you're melee, compare the damage you took with other melees (Preferably of the same armor class). Ask around for tips if you can. No one likes a big DPSer who constantly needs a pocket healer to keep him up.

Wrapping up, we can see that the science of DPS is very much mathematically calculable and your friendly Recount will give you all the data you'll need.

Nature of DPS is competitive, especially because of this simplistic design. While in a raid there's only so much healing can be done, and as the same for Tanks, whose role is that of a success-or-failure, DPSers show their importance by the quantitative data. The line of "Player A is better than Player B" is much more refined than compared to other roles. Thus as a DPSer, you have to constantly keep your A-Game up, constantly think of ways to make things work better, to do more damage, to take less, and such. The simplicity of our roles demands a dedication that burdens you to use the few tools you have to the maximum efficiency.