The new Looking for Raid (LFR) tool is a new avenue of advancement introduced in 4.3 for characters.  Out for a few weeks, the feature has had enormous popularity with players.  For those of you who haven’t experienced it yet, here is an overview based on my experiences using it.

LFR is raiding with training wheels.  To compensate for throwing a bunch of strangers together, many of whom will be inexperienced or underskilled or just bad as following directions, the fights are stripped down and tuned to be very, very easy.   They are designed to be successfully done provided at least half the raid is conscious and capable of following basic instructions, a difficulty level that is arguably necessary to ever get anything killed in such an environment.  As a result of their ease, they offer low quality loot — just slightly better than the new heroics — and lack the perks of regular raiding like achievements, epic gems and Valor-points-per-boss (LFR awards VP only for completion), or the ability to work on the tier’s legendary.

To use it, one queues through an icon on the menu bar like with random dungeons, and is automatically matched up with 24 other players.  It can be done multiple times a week (although you only have one chance at loot), and will not lock you from doing the raid on normal mode.

Organisation

The group is composed of two tanks, six healers and seventeen DPS.  The fights are designed to always use this same comp, so there is no need for dual spec or talent switching during the raid.

Raid leadership is on a volunteer basis.  To queue as a potential leader, one must check the box on the queuing window along with their usual role – same as is done for the LFD tool.  If the raid leader leaves, a new one is assigned from amongst the other volunteers.  Raid leaders get no special perks or powers and mainly exists as a way of saying “yes I will give any new people instructions if they want them.”  Unlike with a real raid group, here the leadership rarely is required to do anything different than any other raid member, although you shouldn’t volunteer for the job if you’re not interested in explaining the fight mechanics.

Players are in and out of the raid group constantly.  It is not uncommon for people to leave mid-fight, or to start a boss down a few people.  The tool is very efficient about replacing these people the instant a group leaves combat, but the fights as also easy enough that the empty spots are rarely a problem.  For this reason, no player should feel intimidated about having to bow out before a run is finished; it is possible no one would even notice.

Niche

LFR has such a huge scope of utility across all spectrum of players, that it’s hard to just pin as “raiding for casuals,” although this is the thing it is typically billed as.

However incomplete that statement might be, though, it is still very much true.  With the difficulty level so low, even someone who has never played in a raid environment can stumble through it successfully.  The tool is an amazing way to let players see the raiding content they might have not otherwise dared to try.  The DPS checks are minimal, and even a few stronger players can balance out a handful of inexperienced ones.

Additionally, with the [currently] very short queues for DPS and healers, players who don’t raid due to lack of time may also find LFR to be an exceptional tool.  Not longer do forays into raiding content require regularly scheduled groups and hours and hours of attempts learning new bosses and farming old ones.  Instead, these players can opt for a limited “demo” version of the raid instance on their own schedule as an alternative to seeing nothing at all.  Currently, both wings of Dragonsoul in LFR take about an hour each and with so many players in and out constantly, it is not harmful to your teammates if you need to bow out even earlier.

Another advantage is that LFR provides a way for all players, serious or casual, to have an opportunity to try raiding on an alt that they wouldn’t have otherwise raided on.   Whether you just want to get more familiar with that class, or take a break from your main, or practice with them for a potential re-roll, the tool can fulfill this niche.

The LFR tool can also be extremely helpful as a tool to help seasoned raiders become familiar with the fights in advance.  Although the stripped down nature make it nearly useless for learning the mechanics themselves, seeing even the basic version of the fight can be helpful in figuring out position, learning spawn points for adds, what that special mob or ability looks like visually, and getting a general feel for the way the particular fight works.  Instead of just watching that tankspot video, now you’re immersed in it, and you can control the camera angle and zoom yourself. Paired with a written guide or a video, I’ve found the LFR tool to be immeasurably helpful in understanding a fight.

Finally, let’s not discount the huge advantage LFR provides for gearing up new players, alts and rerolls and for filling in gearing holes on raiding characters.  It also allows for main raiders to get their set bonuses faster and get small upgrades more often, and the nerfed tier pieces will still work towards completing a set bonus.  Lastly, as a source of Valor Points, you might choose to get the currency to buy those VP items through LFR rather than LFD.  Although its steeper item level requirement means you can’t just waltz in as a fresh 85, the requirements can still be met by doing the new heroics rather than raiding.

Success Ratio

Queuing at least once weekly on four characters, I’ve had very good luck in terms of success with my LFR groups.   Most bosses take just one or two tries to down, with ample forgiveness for mistakes.  Trash wipes typically only occur when someone facepulls several packs or the boss itself (or both in the case of the slime boss).  The worst group I’ve encountered spent 45 minutes just on the first boss of part 2, which is still a good deal faster than a real raid might take, and they still went one to one shot every following boss.  In the best group, I’ve cleared part 1 of Dragonsoul in just over a half an hour on my lunch break.  The raid is definitely succeeding it its goal to be painless and easy.

Loot

You can roll on loot for each boss in LFR once per week. Once you’ve already beaten that boss, you will be ineligible to roll on loot from that boss again during the week if you continue to queue.  Many of the items are now limited to particular appropriate classes (ie, a rogue cannot roll on a strength sword).  Roll bonuses are given if you are ‘need’ rolling on an item for the spec you are queued as, so if a piece of intel/spirit mail drops, the resto and elem shaman will have an advantage on it over the enhance spec’d one, but the enhancement shaman may still roll for their offset without worrying about the item getting dusted.

The system is far from perfect and is still peppered with bugs and oversights, but overall it is a large improvement over LFD.

Attitudes

Just as any environment in which anonymous strangers are thrown together and forced to interact, LFR certainly contains its share of jerks.  Every group has the one DPS who spams Recount after every attempt to brag about his numbers, and the other guy who spends more time bitching about the weaker DPS than he does doing his own job.  You do encounter those two people who get in a fight over something petty and insist on holding up the entire raid so they can bicker over it.  And yes, there is the guy who tries to publicly shame anyone who makes a mistake or taunt everyone who dies with “newb!”   There are also people who are abusing the system by joining then going AFK, and those lazy people that don’t want to help with trash or run back after a wipe.

However, I have been largely impressed by the bulk of groups.  For every asshole throwing a tantrum, there are three people telling him to shut up.  I have encountered players who have made special effort to explain the fights to the people that ask, who give helpful call outs and reminders, who present solutions instead of complaints.  There are those people who are cheerleaders and in the face of others bitching can say, “we were really close, we can do it, we just need to be a little more disciplined.”   There have been people who win duplicate loot and gracefully hand it out to the second highest roller.  I have seen more people booted for being a jerk than I have for making mistakes or doing low DPS.

Overall, I’ve found it to be a smoother and more enjoyable experience than doing PuG five mans.  The jerks are diluted in a sea of people, and the bad players don’t hurt the raid’s success and there are always at least a couple good and patient players to help teach the inexperienced what to do.

My conclusion on LFR is that it is a wonderful tool that many people will find useful and/or enjoyable.  Since it is only a few weeks old, I suspect that once the novelty wears off and people are capped on valor goodies, the demand for running it will decrease and queue times will grow.  Nevertheless, it is reasonable to believe it will still be one of the most popular game features Blizzard has ever implemented in WoW.   Love it or hate it, the thing is clearly a hit.

Blizzcon just finished and I’m sure we’ve all heard the new announcements by now.   New race: Pandaren.   New class: Monk.   Demo computers were available to see both the Pandaren starting zone and give the new class a whirl.

WoW fan sites have posted the details of all the new World of Warcraft announcements, ability lists, gameplay trailers, etc, but I thought I’d do something different and talk a little bit about how actually playing the new monk class felt and give my own impressions.

Remember, all of these details can change between now and when the expansion goes live, and probably will.

Basic Information

Monks are a new hybrid class; they have specs that will allow them to heal, tank, or melee DPS.  They are heavily martial arts themed, aiming for the archetypal monk class.  They are not a hero class, and will begin at level 1.

They wear leather and will share their gear with rogues and druids, depending on their role.  They start in leather gear from level 1.  They can currently use fist weapons, polearms, staves, and 1-handed swords or axes. As healers, they will use offhands rather than shields.  The current plan is for tanking to lead towards 2h while DPS and heals will use the 1h weaponry.

They will use stances, presumably similar to a warrior and based on their role.

They are available for every race except Worgen and Goblin.

Resource System

Monks use a unique resource system different from the current ones in game. They have an energy bar, called Chi, which functions similar to that of rogue and cat druids by refilling quickly to a hard cap.  This is paired with a combo points-like system, but this is where it departs from the familiar.  Monks get two sets of combo points — Light and Dark Force — and these are tied to the player and not the thing you’re fighting.  They do not appear to decay (although they probably clear at log out) so you can carry them from fight to fight.

Your basic attacks cost Chi but build combo points of either the Light or Dark Force or both.   You then spend those force points on special stronger attacks.  Unlike the finishers that rogues and cats spend their combo points on, these abilities don’t scale based on number of points – they cost a flat amount.  Because of this, you will not be capping your points and then spending them, but rather using a rolling priority system of using both as needed.  The playstyle ends up being very different than the usual “point-point-point-finish” feel of other energy classes.

Blizzard has said that when Monks are spec’d for healing, their Chi bar will be replaced with a Mana bar.   It was not explicitly stated but seems obvious based on their design goals that the class will still keep its Light and Dark Force bar for healing, allowing it to maintain its unique feel in all three talent specialisations.

Abilities

Here are some of the spells & abilities that were available in the demo:

Level 1 Abilities

Jab
40 Chi – Melee Range, Instant
Requires Stance of the Drunken Ox, Stance of the Fierce Tiger.
You jab the target, dealing 5 damage and generating 1 light force and 1 dark force.

Jab is your basic attack. This is the button you are hitting the most to spend your Chi and generate your Force points. I imagine you get different ones later as you level and based on spec.

Tiger Palm
1 Light Force – Melee range, instant
Requires Stance of the Drunken Ox, Stance of the Fierce Tiger.
Deals 10 Physical damage, deals 5 additional damage if the target is above 50% health.

Level 2 Abilities

Roll
50 Chi – Instant
Roll a short distance.

Roll is a mobility tool to keep you moving around the battlefield (and, when out of combat, to appease your pining for that mount that is eighteen levels away).  It costs only energy, so you can zoom around as often as your bar refills.  It’s very fun for getting quickly from enemy to enemy or just getting around faster.  You can roll in any direction, including backwards and sideways.

Level 3 Abilities

Blackout Kick
2 Dark Force – Melee range, Instant
Kick with a blast of energy, causing 28 physical damage to an enemy target. If the target is killed by blackout kick, you are returned 1 Dark Force.

Level 5 Abilities

Flying Serpent Kick
8-40 Yards range, 25 Seconds Cooldown, Instant.
Soar through the air towards a targeted enemy, knocking them down and stunning them for 2 seconds.

Spinning Crane Kick
Instant, 2 Lights and Dark Forces
Requires Stance of the Drunken Ox, Stance of the Fierce Tiger.
You spin while kicking in the air, dealing 23 damage every 1 second to all nearby enemies within 8 yards. Movement speed is reduced by 30%, last 6 seconds.

Some other abilities were loosely discussed at the various panels, but were not in game to try.

Auto-Attack

Monks do not have an auto-attack like every other class.  Blizzard developers said they wanted the monk to have a “street fighter feel” where each button press from the player is an attack from your monk.  This is very unique to the game, and it is controversial enough that this may end up not going live (in fact, I would predict it will be in and out of the beta several times before a decision is made).  There are some concerns about that, and I’d like to address them the best I can for a player who has only played the first six levels of the monk class.

The first worry I have heard expressed (totally justifiably) is that this will make playing the Monk very spammy.  I’m sure those of us with Warriors heard the announcement and were thinking old school Heroic “I eroded a hole in my keybind” Strike.  The good news is that it does not feel like this at all.  Your Jab costs enough that you are not hitting it a million times a minute, but fast enough that you don’t feel like you’re standing around waiting for energy regen (usually… more on that below).  You are also limited by your GCD, which is current the same 1.5 seconds of most players [note:  I am pretty sure Jab is limited by the GCD]. The playstyle is fast paced but far from overwhelmingly or spammy.

However, the lack of auto-attack does have some weaknesses that need to be addressed eventually.  It is annoying when you find yourself in a situation with neither Chi nor Force points and you’re up in some mob’s grill unable to do literally anything but stand there.  That might not happen often, but it can happen in numerous circumstances:

When moving quickly from fight to fight, the small delay before your opening attack could prove frustrating in those situations where you’re racing to tap a rare mob and have to stand there waiting for the precious energy to claim it as yours.

As a raider who currently plays a rogue, I can think of a lot of current situations in group play where I am swapping to an add and auto-attacking it until I have enough energy to use Mutilate.  This would be very frustrating to find myself in that position as a Monk, chasing an add but doing literally no damage.  I can think of a lot of situations where the add dies before I get enough energy for that special, making my only contribution my white damage (or perhaps I am pooling for when I return to the primary target).  For a monk, there would have been nothing.

I can also see it being problematic from a tanking perspective, where one at least builds minimal threat in the seconds before or between breaking out a special, especially if you’re juggling multiple mobs at once.  Those white attacks can often be the difference between you or the healer tanking in those first microseconds of a pull.

There are also the circumstances of when a mob has a sliver of health left, and one would finish it off with auto-attack. A Monk would be forced to use its resources which perhaps it wanted to save for the next fight. At the very least, it would be a bit overkill.

The other thought that occurred to me is doing old content.  When I was working on Loremaster, I often had to bare-knuckle auto-attack mobs that I needed to get low but not kill for some quests.  If a Monk can only use specials, how would he do such quests?  A level capped Monk would surely one shot these low level mobs in a single Jab.

That may sound like a lot of problems, but they are very situational.  I actually like the feel of the gameplay and being in total control without the auto-attack, so I hope these issues can be resolved in a positive way that allows Monks to keep this unique flavour.  Perhaps a no-cost but super weak attack with a cooldown to use in those situations?  Still, I wouldn’t be at all shocked if Monks went live with auto-attack like everyone else.

Healing

My disclaimer here is that this is all based on Blizzard’s conjecture and will [very probably] not end up like this on live.

They want the heal system to be unique and involve damage reflected into AoE healing for friendlies, rather than the traditional three-cast-time-heal bread and butter for current classes.  For example, Blizzard envisions moves like this to be the means through which a Monk heals its party:

Statue of the Jade Serpent
5 Sec Cast
Summon a statue at the target location. Anytime you deal damage, a nearby friendly target within 20 yards of the statue will be healed. You can have up to 3 Jade Dragon Statues active at a time.

I have serious doubts that the class with go live with things like this as their primary means of healing.  It’s too different, too hard to balance and seems like the kind of thing that would end up overly powerful in some circumstances and too weak in others.   Statues radiating heals seems like it would be very awesome as a raid healing, but what about five mans, or high movement fights?   What about when the healer needs to keep up a tank taking a lot of damage?  What about when the monk is forced to move out of melee for whatever reason?  It’s a very big move away from the “we want all the healers to be able to do successfully do all roles” design goal that Blizzard just implemented, and against the homogenisation that all other healers faced in the last expansion.

The current design goal for healing is to heal through DPS, making the Monk the true melee healer.  This is something they’ve toyed with trying to achieve with Holy Paladins with limited success.  The difference is that Blizzard wants even healing Monks to do “massive” damage and for that to be the vehicle for their heals.

I’m not sure what the implications of that will be for gameplay if we have one healer who is able to contribute significantly to DPS while the others are not. The worry is always that the other healers will be less desired if a raid could instead choose one that helped with those tight enrage timers — a variation of this was voiced frequently when Death Knight tanks were doing a lot of damage and while it didn’t end up proving true, DKs did ultimately receive a series of nerfs in this area to bring them in line with other tanks.  I can see this also having negative PvP connotations if your arena player can both DPS and heal effectively at the same time.  And what of the shadow priest, whose passive raid healing was nerfed because it was too powerful in conjunction with strong DPS?

I suspect that when Monks are being beta tested and tweaked, we will find them being homogenised into the same foundation as the other healers, with the [fast expensive heal], [long, big heal], and [slow efficient heal] and the moves like the statues and vampiric-embrace-like abilities will be dropped to supplemental, expensive AoE heals like Prayer of Healing or Tranquility.  I think they will use melee attacks to add the flavour of their class and to earn the Force Points to do unique and different things with their heals in order to keep their very unique class feel.  I suspect they will not end up doing significant damage as healers, and may perhaps be more in line with a tank or smite-spamming Disc priest.

Tanking

We don’t know much about Monk tanking, except that it will probably involve using staves and polearms and the gearing will be about the same as current Bear druids.

Overall Impressions

Despite being somewhat similar to rogues (my primary reason for being uninterested in feral cat), I found the Monk to be fresh and engaging and am definitely interested in leveling one up in Mists of Pandaria.  Monk is definitely appealing to me a lot more than Death Knights did initially (the DK class and starting zone was amazing but I found the resource system cumbersome and the pace at which you get abilities as a hero class overwhelming).  I thought the resource system here was unique and fun but still very intuitive and user-friendly. The abilities are fun, simple, and well paced.  Roll is super cool.  That handful of levels I got to play in the Blizzcon demo was very enjoyable.

I love hybrid classes and I’m interested in trying both tanking and healing as this new class.  I’m already thinking about which races I will choose for each faction.

In my last blog entry on the current situation of raid recruiting, I proposed that guilds who are struggling to build a full roster should make alliances with other guilds for the purpose of raiding. Instead of having three or four guilds all with empty spots that prevent them from raiding, these guilds could join together and build two or three raids to work together so that everyone can keep raiding while still maintaining their individual identities.  Raiding alliances may be the future of small guild survival.

Creating and maintaining a raiding alliance can be a daunting task — but ultimately very rewarding — so I thought I would offer my insight from my experience from MCA.  I use MCA as my example because not only have I raided with them for years and am a member of the leadership committee, but because as my server’s oldest and largest raiding alliance, I think MCA’s system and policies have been refined over the years to become a truly successful model.   [further reading: The MCA wowpedia entry]

Why You Should Form A Raid Alliance

The biggest advantage of a raiding alliance in the current climate is that it allows small guilds who might not otherwise be able to to raid to do so again.  If your guild is unable to build a full roster but you want to maintain your guild tag rather than disbanding or folding into another guild, an alliance may be the only solution for you to keep raiding.

On a deeper level, a raiding alliance can fulfill a lot of needs, even for guilds that are mostly self-sufficient for their roster. One obvious example is that a raiding alliance gives you a place to find subs when there are absences, and houses a pool of people that you know and have played with before, and are usually of higher quality than random people one might pluck from /trade. These people may be alts of skilled players, mains who didn’t raid that week or who raided a different instance than your objective, or players who want to raid but cannot commit to a regular schedule. Sometimes they are great players who prefer to be unguilded, or even raiders from “hardcore” guilds that can no longer make their guild’s schedule but doesn’t want to leave their guild. A raiding alliance also benefits from shared resources and knowledge and the insight of dozens of experienced raiders.

Equality and Fairness

Setting up a raiding alliance that has the potential for success can be a very big project. You will need to attract like-minded players to join, establish a solid leadership, set universal policies and create a shared chat channel and webforums. The foundation upon which you build all this is equality and fairness to your members.

Standardised rules and universal policies are extremely important to raiding alliances on two fronts:  First and most importantly, it allows members to always know what they are getting into regardless of whose raid they join. It allows the information readily available to everyone and known in advance when building new raids or pulling subs.

Fairness is a critical component for success and you cannot have a happy raiding alliance without it. Having all members operate under the same rules and held to the same policies, regardless of guild affiliation, friendship, or reputation ensures this. As a result, it greatly limits drama (because who needs that) by putting on players on equal footing, making everything transparent and pre-established by the leadership.

Finally, when the rules are accessible and reasonable, you will gain loyalty from your members and trust from your subs.   When we have a stable roster in a guild, we might not care about keeping the people who sub for us happy (since you may never see them again), but in a raiding alliance — especially one that is built for the purpose of allowing small guilds to raid — it is extremely important that you make sure the non-guildies that run with you are treated equally and are happy. Those loyal subs are what will keep your raid together; we all support each other.

Getting Started

Your first step for building a raiding alliance is to approach other guilds on your server that seem to be “on the same page.”  Don’t just advertise in /trade or the official realm forums when you are first starting up.  Raiding alliances rely on a degree of exclusivity to be successful, otherwise they are no different than a random PuG.  You may choose to open up later once you have an established core of good raiders, but don’t do this during formation.

You need to find guilds that are very similar to your own in terms of skill and progress. Approaching guilds that have good players means that anytime you pull from channel, you know you have a quality player who approaches raiding in a similar way, even if you have never played with that individual before. You want skilled members who want the same things out of the game and don’t expect too little or too much of each other.

It is also very critical that the alliance has a shared attitude about raiding, progression and atmosphere. You can’t have a successful alliance where half of members want to raid 20 hours a week and the other half wants to raid six. You can’t field successful raids if you mix people who like to take things slow with raiders who are fast-paced and aggressive. You need players who have a similar mentality with regard to their seriousness, pace, and expectations.

Finally, you need to make sure you recruit guilds whose schedules can actually merge with yours. If your guild primarily raids weekends, you need to look for other weekend guilds. If you raid late evenings, seek out others that do the same. In the future, a successful raiding alliance may be able to field a variety of raids scheduled at all different times, but when you’re starting off, it’s more important to get your raids off the ground by finding people that can raid with you.

Leadership

Once you have some guilds on board, the next step is establishing your leadership. These will be the people that set the policies, quell any drama, and manage the alliance. Unlike a guild, a raiding alliance functions far better with an egalitarian committee of leadership rather than a hierarchy. It may be tempting to make your guild the “boss” since you started the alliance, but this approach will spell your demise in time. Instead, you should pick a handful of people (depending on the size of the alliance) that you think are capable of being reasonable and will look out for the interests of the group. The people who intend to lead raids are probably the best place to start, while guild leaders (unless they are one and the same) can sometimes be the worst since they are not only overwhelmed with other responsibilities but may not always be able to see past their own guild loyalties.

Each member may have a unique role (forum management, recruitment, etc), or they may split all jobs between them, but the important part is to value each person’s opinion as much as the next.

The leadership should establish a private area where they can set policies and discuss issues, and should set up a ratification plan for making suggestions become official rules. Allow the leadership to round table discussions, put them to vote, and gain a consensus with what works best for members.

In MCA, the leadership team is made up of the raid leaders, but also has included active players that put in a lot of time helping the alliance. We have found that a “set the policies, then hands off” approach has worked best for keeping our members happy and the atmosphere relaxed.

Chat Channel

Set up an in-game channel for members to join. This channel will be used to recruit for raids and fill spots due to absences. It can also be used to create heroic groups, legacy runs, trash farming groups, find crafters, and make Baradin Hold PuGs so players can get familiar with playing together. It also is a good avenue for social interaction to build friendships. Encourage members to join on their alts and also to invite raiding friends and good players they may encounter in PuGs. This has the advantage of not only being accessible even outside cities (unlike /trade), but is much more inclusive than a guild channel that can’t communicate with alts or allied guilds, but still exclusive enough to weed out the morons. This channel will be the foundation of your success.

It is very important to establish some ground rules for the channel regarding raid recruitment. You do not want people creating spur-of-the-moment PuGs for current content raids in your channel, as this will mean players who might have otherwise made viable subs will get locked out, hurting your legitimate raids later. In MCA, our channel rules permit only recruitment for established MCA raids (or new ones that are being built) for all current tier instances. Regularly scheduled PuGs are allowed and function like normal raids except with a fluid roster. Making legacy raids, five man groups, raids for prior tiers, or PuGs for things like Baradin Hold are permitted, and many members enjoy grouping together for these things. The one caveat is that when an established raid is doing invites for their regular run, no recruitment for anything may occur in channel until they either fill the raid or until it is 15 minutes past their usual start time.

You may also wish to set rules regarding language, spam and channel content, and even age restrictions, to prevent your raiding alliance channel from degenerating into /trade or making your members uncomfortable. Your guild may be used to bawdy jokes, but your new friends may not and you don’t want to scare them away.

Shared Forums

A shared webforum is also a necessity for a raiding alliance. It gives every member a place to meet, have access to rules and policies, and to socialise. Every member who wishes to raid with the alliance should be required to register with the forum, and individual raid leaders may request that their members check the forums on a regular basis for updates and details about their particular group.

The alliance leadership should give each raid its own subforum, and give the raid leader moderation privileges so they can create stickies, make polls and control the flow of discussion. Each subforum should include that information on its raid including roster, schedule, rules, leadership contact information and can be used to communicate absences, strategy ideals, or current goals.

MCA requires that all raids utilise the MCA forums for raid-related communication instead of their guild forums. This makes sure that all members of the alliance — including potential subs and new members — have equal access to rules, information, and communication without having to register at a guild’s personal website. It keeps all the data consolidated and available for all members.

The forums are also a necessary tool for building rosters and hammering out schedules among members who may not share a guild. It will also allow you to advertise new raids and raids that are seeking new members, drawing the attention not only of players who are seeking a raid, but those with alts who may wish to help out.

Finally, shared forums bring the benefit of inter-raid communications. It gives you a place to share strategies, resources and help one another. Your alliance may choose to let other members know when they got a rare in-demand crafting pattern, post a useful macro or to ask advice on that final end boss.

Loot Policy

The next critical policy your leadership must set is the loot rules. The loot policy for a raiding alliance should either be a standardised system used by every raid in the alliance, or there should be a requirement that each raid to publicly post its rules in advance so that everyone may have access to them and to prevent spur of the moment changes. If you use a points-based system like DKP, the points should be unique to each raid (not universal across the alliance) and they should be posted for fairness.

A very important factor to consider when setting up your raiding alliance’s loot policy is sub raiders. Although it seems counter intuitive, it is necessary for your raid’s success to institute a policy that is at least somewhat favourable to subs. If subs do not have a chance at loot, they will not raid with you, and a raiding alliance — more than anything else — relies on these players to keep raids running in times of player shortages. Your policy does not need to shower these players in loot, but they need at least a chance to benefit. Remember, they are helping you out by being there. Consider implementing a policy that allows them to win loot, but limits them to one item a night, or something that allows them to roll but permits reserved raiders to lock them out on critical pieces.

The simplest system, and the one most of MCA uses today, is a simple need/greed with minor limitations or custom tweaks. In my raid, for example, every reserved player is allowed to win one item by ‘need’ a night, but greed rolls are unlimited. Subs are allowed to roll ‘greed’ on anything they will use but can always be locked out by a reserved player’s ‘need roll.’  Special loot items may be established ahead of time to be separate from these rules (fun items, tier tokens, etc).

Your alliance will also need to set up a universal system for handling BoE drops. Unlike a guild, which may use these to fund their guild bank, these items are earned by a multi-guild roster with no clear way to share the bounty. You may choose to open roll these among members to do as they desire, or you may choose to distribute them like regular loot to the characters that will use them. You might even offer to share them with other raids in the alliance, or to sell them and distribute the profit equally among all members who were present at the time of the drop.

In MCA, we allow people to request BoEs for personal use (raiding characters only) provided they equip them to prevent selling. If no one present in the raid wants to use the BoEs, we allow other MCA raids to request them for their members (sometimes we trade if they have a BoE we want and vice versa). If they are unneeded within the alliance, the BoE is sold and the profit goes to the raid members.

Consider also how you will distribute legendary weapons, crafting patterns and materials, and raid gold.  You may choose to provide maelstrom crystals from sharded gear for your raiders free-of-charge. This is not only a nice perk for your members, but also encourages people to use the best enchants (which in turn helps your raid). If your raid is financially successful, you may also choose to distribute gold to your members or give people a repair “allowance.”  You may handle these things on a per-raid basis, or you might require all your raids to pool their crystals and other resources so that all raiding members may request them.

My final word of advice in this area is that I highly recommend against using loot council in a raiding alliance. Loot council can be a great system when used among a tight team, but it is a nightmare and a drama magnet when used with PuGs and players outside your guild. In the MCA, the only time loot council is ever utilised is for legendaries, to ensure they stay within the alliance, and this policy is established in advance and made clear to all members.

Roster & Attendance Policy

In a guild, it is always clear who has priority on a raid spot when inviting players from outside of the guild: your guildmates, of course. However, things are not this simple in a raiding alliance, both due to a multi-guild roster and the fairness requirements. Because of this, it is necessary to establish an attendance policy to allow people to “earn” their spot in the raid.

The policy should be clear how many raids need to be attended in order to be considered a regular, and should set rules regarding finding subs for players who will be late or absent. For fairness, it should be accepted that once a spot in the raid has been filed for the night (either because a player was late, missing, or failed to accept their invite), their sub cannot be removed from the raid should the original raider show up later or should a more “desirable” option log in (like a guildmate), unless you establish that plan with their replacement ahead of time. Sub raiders should only be removed from the raid for behavioural (or connection-related) reasons.

In MCA, attendance of four out of every six raids is required to earn and maintain reserved status. However, just meeting this requirement does not automatically grant a person reserved status; the final say is always with the individual raid leader. A raider leader may choose to keep a spot open because they need a particular class for balance, or because a regular raider is expected to return after an extended absence or for a number of other reasons. However, raid leaders must publish their reserved roster on their subforum so raiders players know where they stand in the raid. This is to prevent a raider from subbing for a number of months without knowing they are not considered reserved, and then being replaced unexpectantly by someone’s guildmate or friend. However, raid leaders should be aware that if they hold a spot for too long without offering the player a reserved spot, that that member may lose interest in the raid and they may lose the player they have been gearing and training for weeks.

Lastly, it is important to consider that an 80% guild roster can earn guilds achievements and experience and because of this, lot of guilds will try to maintain this ratio even in a raiding alliance. It is important that these raids be allowed to do so, however it is paramount that these raids still understand the premise of equality among members. Your leadership must establish policies to make sure that the other 20% of the raid is treated equally, with equal access to loot, funds and other advantages you offer to your raid membership.

Raider Responsibility Policy

Another universal policy you may wish to establish is regarding what things each raider is individually responsible for. In a raiding alliance, this usually extends far beyond what might be provided by a guild raid with a shared bank.

If each raider is expected to bring their own food, flasks, reagents, and gold for repairs, this should be clarified in the form of official policy. The rules should also be explicit if raiders are expected to keep their gear enchanted and gemmed proactively and on their own dime. Consider unique situations like resistance gear, too.  If a raider is expected to maintain the spec, talents and glyphs that he or she signed up with (you might never think that your main tank would show up one day spec’d Retribution and demand to DPS, but it can happen!) or if a raider is expected to change talents or roles at the demand of the raid leader, this should also be set as official policy.

These rules can be set alliance-wide or by each individual raid. If each raid takes its own approach, you should require the raid leader to post their policy on their sub forums.

Summary

The basic message your small guild should take from all of this is:

• Approach guilds with similar skills, attitude and schedule to raid together.
• Use a shared chat channel and web forums for recruiting and communication.
• Treat all members equally, regardless of guild affiliation.
• Reward subs and encourage them to keep raiding with you.
• Establish standardised rules and policies for all raids to follow.

If you think your guild or server can benefit from a raiding alliance, don’t wait for someone else to start one.  Get out there and work with friendly guilds to make it happen!  Good luck!

In World of Warcraft, player verses player (PvP) can be defined in many complicated layers.  In the simplest terms it just means killing the other player, but in the realms of Azeroth, the venues where it occurs can mean that PvPing often involves a lot more than just mowing down a lot of enemies.

You should know that venturing into battlegrounds the first time is super intimidating if you have no PvP experience.  You can negate this by reading some strategy guides and replacing your nervousness with confusion.  Or, you can just go in, copy other players until you kinda figure it out, and have a good time doing it.

But if you do want a guide, there are hundreds out there on how to PvP in WoW: how to kill the other guy as swiftly as possible, how to maximise your class abilities, how to win battlegrounds the most efficiently, overviews of PvP etiquette, and discussions of strategy.  This is not one of those guides.  Or maybe this is all of those guides.  Mostly this is my own guide: one part fun, one part silly, one part useful.

Basic Tips For Everyone

•  PvP is not always about killing your enemy.  It is also about crowd controlling, stunning, incapacitating, distracting, kiting and disorienting them.  Be smart and know when it’s better to stun someone and move on to something more important rather than always staying for the killing blow.

•  Communicating in /bg is paramount.  Call out when enemies are about to attack an objective (resource node or flag), where the flag carrier is headed or hiding, or where you are heading with the flag.  Be brief and clear; avoid chatspeak but do familiarise yourself with battleground-relevant acronyms.

•  Become familiar with your “get Away” abilities, like Blink, Sprint, Vanish, Disengage, Earthbind, etc.  Always have a plan of action for escaping a fight you know you will lose.  Some of these abilities will clear debuffs or movement impairing effects and others you will need to pair with another ability.

•  Kill healers first.  Kill healers first.  Kill healers first.  If you can’t do that: crowd control, stun, fear, incapacitate, interrupt, knockback, relocate or distract the healer and keep them away from their target.  By the way, kill the healer first.  They should always be your primary focus target as long as they are nearby.

•  Know when to use your keyboard and when to use your mouse.  The usefulness of keybinds in PvP can’t be emphasised enough.  PvP is largely about quick thinking and fast reaction times, and keybinds are pretty much the only way to do this.  On the same token, get used to mouse movement because keyboard turners are at a huge disadvantage.  You can also do things with your mouse like jump while running, turn around and instant-cast something, land facing forward and keep running without missing a beat.

•  In PvP, instants are awesome because battlegrounds are often high movement and you don’t have time to stop long enough to cast a big nuke or giant heal.  Next best is things with a quick cast time.  Not only do they make it so you don’t need to be a sitting duck for as long, but they a lot harder to catch with an interrupt or silence.

•  Heals, dispels and cleanses are a big deal in battlegrounds.  They can often make or break a game.  If you really love DPS and hate playing as support, then go ahead and stick to that, but a truly good PvPer will know when to use any heals or dispel in their arsenal, either on yourself or on your teammates.  It is often better to heal, even in DPS gear and spec, if there are no other healers around to help your teammates, or if you think it might be more advantageous to just heal yourself while you wait for reinforcements to arrive.

•  One really important thing in pvp is to know when to walk away and how to pick your fights.  Your teammates (and your enemies) will often be prone to stopping to fight anyone they see, even if killing that person won’t aid the objectives or there is no way they will be able to kill that person in a timely fashion.  Don’t get in heated one-on-one battles while your team is off doing something else, don’t stop to fight people in the middle of the map for no reason, and don’t engage in a fight you know you can’t win unless there is some legitimate strategy to it (ie, distracting the enemy).  If you avoid this, you’ll not only be a better player but you’ll also find yourself actually winning more games.

•  Using PvP gear in PvP makes a larger difference than a newcomer might expect.  Health and resilience impact your survival just as much as smart gameplay.  If you have nothing else, fly over to Wintergrasp and buy the heirloom PvP trinket until you play enough games to buy youself a whole set.  Even if you have a really good PvE piece, it is often still better to use a lower quality PvP piece in that slot.

•  Learn how to use terrain, range and line of sight to increase your survivability.  This takes practice and a different mindset than you may have from PvE, but it will help you a lot if you master it.

•  Nameplates are very useful in battlegrounds, both for watching your teammate’s health and for monitoring enemies.  It will let you know which guys are close to dead and also make it easier to target them and see them coming.

Learn Your Class Again, Because Everything You Know Is Wrong

Before you ever enter a battleground, the first thing to know is that many of the spells you like in your dungeons and raids are stupid and lame in battlegrounds.  That rotation you’ve got down perfect is useless.  And those weird abilities you got and never even put on your bar because “when the hell will I ever use that?” may end up being your favourite spells.

Look through your spellbook and consider something’s application against another player and the spells they may be using.  If you’re not sure if something is good or not, ask yourself: how much will this piss of the guy I use it on? If the answer is somewhere in the realm of “a lot,” then it is probably an awesome PvP ability.  Here is the secret to fun PvP: it’s not about killing the other guy, it’s about frustrating him endlessly.  Sometimes that involves killing him, but it also can involve things like a well-timed sheep.

At the risk of becoming a class guide, here are some spells each class should learn to love:

Mage:

•  Sheep people often.  The best times to do this are: when they are casting their big nuke spell, when they are about to heal someone, when they are running a flag or guarding a node, or just because they’re the only person around and you have the mana.  You don’t even need to fight them afterwards; if they’re just some random guy on the road, it’s better to sheep him and then run off to do something more important.  Protip: you can sheep people off their mounts.

•  Counterspell casters on cooldown.  Especially healers.  Nothing is more satisfying than that beautiful noise signifying that someone is probably going to die soon.

•  Frost Nova melee in places where they will be useless.  Actually, if it’s off of cooldown, go ahead and frost nova them no matter where they are.

•  Frostbolt and Cone of Cold are both awesome, even if you’re a fire mage.  Why?  Because it slows people, and slow people are almost as useless as dead people in battlegrounds.

•  Blastwave, if you have it, is good for relocating your enemies and interrupting their abilities.

•  Iceblock not just makes you immune to incoming damage but it will clear your debuffs so you can get back in the game.

Warlock:

•  Fear is your new favourite ability.  Your should use it as often as possible, and at the times when it will anger your opponent the most.

•  Put Curse of Tongues on all the casters.  Even if they can remove it, that’s still one more GCD when they’re not casting that heal or fireball.

•  Fall in love with your Succubus and Felhound.  Your succubus can seduce people, like healers who are healin’ a bit more than you’d like or that really buff warrior who is beating on you, and your demon puppy can spell lock anyone who you’d prefer not be able to cast.

•  DoT everyone (okay, that’s not one ability).  Seriously, put your debuffs and Damage-over-Time spells on anything that moves.  Just tab around and make sure everyone is feelin’ the hurt.  You have a good chance of killing people this way, and at the very least, the healer is going to be spending a lot of time dispelling his teammates instead of casting heals.

•  Use your Drains.  Lifedrain and manadrain benefit you at your enemy’s detriment.  Awesome.

Priest:

•  Psychic Scream every time you can.  It’s best used by running into a crowd of people before dropping it, but go ahead and use it on that one guy beating on you, too.

•  Mana Burn is great on healers, especially ones that are already low from slamming big ones on their teammates.

•  Silence, if you have it.  Of course.

•  Bubble your teammates that are getting beat on.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a healer; the rogue beating on your buddy will hate you for it, and that’s what counts.

•  Mass Dispell not only will remove magic debuffs from your teammates but also buffs from your enemies.  Best of all, it removes things like a paladin’s invulnerability bubble: the only thing in the game that will.  Use it on large groups of people fighting and also on paladin bubbles.

•  Mind Flay slows people, and because it’s channeled, will automatically turn you to help you follow runners.  Also it damages people, which never hurts.

Rogue:

•  Stock plenty of Crippling Poison, Wound Poison, and Mind-Numbing Poison.  Ideally, you want to have spare weapons to swap around for each in the appropriate situation.  Slowing player movement, delaying their casts, and making their heals weak are both extremely useful and very enjoyable.

•  Stuns are the thing you’re most loathed for.  Stun as often as you can.  Open with cheapshot and use kidney shot as your finisher.  If necessary, vanish so you can cheapshot a second time.

•  Cloak of Shadows will surely piss off that warlock who just spent a bunch of time DoTing you up.  Bonus points if you use it when he has like .2 seconds left on his big nuke, so that way he still wastes the time and mana.

•  Sap any people you cross out of combat, whether they are defending something or just merrily prancing around.

•  Dismantle will disarm your melee foes and Blind will disorient them.

Druid:

•  Shapeshift can be used to your advantage in a lot of ways.  Use it liberally to break snares.  Also know when is the right time to be in the right form; sometimes it’s better for a moonkin to bear up and wait for help than to try to fight it out.  Lastly, remember, you’re immune to polymorph when in form.

•  Hibernate works on hunter pets, shaman in ghost wolf, and other druids in cat, bear and cheetah form.  Don’t be shy about using it.  The awesome factor goes up if you use it on a wolf or cat running a flag.

•  Cyclone not only crowd controls your opponent, but it won’t be broken by your teammates incidental AoE, and the guy stuck in it won’t be healed from it.  When one guy is immune, just use it on another.

•  Typhoon, if you have the ability, is great for knocking around enemies (including off of nearby cliffs) and interrupting their spellcasts.

•  Use Roots on anything that’s going somewhere you don’t want it to.

Hunter:

•  Wing Clip is a good way to slow down your opponents, whether they’re running the flag or chasing down your healer, or just because you need to get range.  In all circumstances, it will annoy them, which alone makes it valuable.

•  Know your Shots, because depending on your spec, you can use different ones to silence, slow, sleep, and disorient.

•  Traps are awesome and you should make heavy use of both freezing and frost trap, depending on the context.

•  Disengage is a very handy way to get away from a melee attacking you, to get range on someone, or even to bounce out of someone’s cast range.

Shaman:

•  No matter your spec, Frost Shock is great for slowing people.  Pair it with an Earthbind totem and you can do fairly decent kiting of melee.

•  Grounding Totem is your best friend against casters.  Drop it on cooldown anytime one is nearby.  And don’t forget Tremor Totem to break pesky fears.

•  Purge removes buffs from your enemies.  This works on more than just things like Intellect and Fortitude: it will also remove things like speed boosts and heal-over-time spells.  Happiness is purging the HoTs off a tree.

•  Thunderstorm is a great knockback if you have it.  It is good as both an interrupt and a fun way to abuse your enemies.  Shaman are especially fond of using it to toss people off of cliffs when they get to close to the edge.

•  Wind Shear is your bread-and-butter interrupt, and it’s off the GCD.  It’s on a very short cooldown, so use it on those casters over and over and over again.  Picking a healer and waiting until their big heals are about finished to cast is both practical and extremely delightful.  Or, pair it with purge to destroy an oft-invulnerable restoration druid.

•  Hex is on a long cooldown, but it’s still great to use to crowd control people, interrupt their casting and make them an adorable frog.

Paladin:

•  Your Self Bubble is the thing everyone loathes you for.  Use it regularly to grant yourself immunity when running away or healing yourself to full.  Remember it will make your drop the flag if you’re carrying it.

•  If it says “Hand of” on the title, it’s probably great for PvP.  Freedom will break slows and snares and should be used liberally on yourself and your teammates.  Hand of Protection is splendid to use on your spellcasting and healing teammates to protect them from melee attacks (just don’t use it on physical DPS).  Sacrifice can be used to overcome abilities like sheep which will break on damage.

•  Hammer of Justice is on a longish cooldown, but it’s a great stun so don’t be shy about smacking people with it.  It comes with a highly satisfying BLAM! noise to remind you of how great it is.

•  Repentance is Retibution’s crowd control and can be used in combat.  Use it on that healer in the back or the guy playing defense.

•  Judgment of Justice will prevent your opponents from moving any faster than runspeed, whether they’re mounted or in travel form, or popping sprint.

Warrior:

•  Berserker Rage is a great ability that breaks fears and incapacitates and should be used off of cooldown.  Use it in conjunction with your trinket and you’ll find these abilities effecting you half as often as anyone else.

•  Hamstring will slow your opponents and can be used on as many people or as many times as you have rage for.  If you can, tab around and hamstring anyone who is melee DPS.

•  Disarm will cripple any melee opponent.  It’s on a decent cooldown, but don’t forget to use it when a rogue is beating on your healer or you’re locked into combat with a Death Knight.

•  Stuns should be used liberally if you have them.  All warriors have Charge, but if you’re Protection, you’ll also have Shockwave and Concussion Blow, which are both very powerful.

•  Pummel is great for interrupting spellcasting; every warrior should be prepared to Stance Dance to use it, or toss on a shield quickly for Shield Bash.

•  Few things will bring you as much joy as Spell Reflect, especially when you use it on a shaman about to Hex you or a mage coming at you with pyroblast.  You should carry a shield for this ability alone.

Death Knight:

•  Deathgrip has a lot of utility in PvP, on top of being very fun to use.  You can suck in players to interrupt their spellcasting, prevent them from hurting a teammate or capturing an objective, or getting them into range for you to kill them.  Use it with a smile and use it often.

•  Strangle is your silence to deal with those pesky casters.

•  Use Chains of Ice to slow opponents running away from you or towards a friendly.  It’s also fun just to toss on random people who are running by.  They want to be somewhere else, so appreciate how fun it is to deny them that.

•  If you’re Unholy, your Ghoul provides interrupts and stuns, so stick it on a caster target while you beat on someone else.

Approaches to Battleground

Although killin’ your foes is always superduper, what’s most important for success is different in every battleground.

Warsong Gulch

Warsong Gulch is a game of capture the flag.  The most important things that you can do in this battleground is protect your team’s flag carrier – by healing him or killing the people attacking him – or by returning our flag from the enemy – by killing him, or healing your teammates who are.  In this battleground, slowing or stopping the enemies is almost as valuable as killing then, moreso if you can slow multiple people.  Don’t get distracted fighting people mid-field.  Lastly, play to Offense if you can as you really only need a person or two on Defense in this game.

Arathi Basin

Arathi Basin is about earning more resources than your enemy.  You do this by capping and holding three resource nodes and defending them.  Playing defense is just as important as taking nodes.  Always watch on your zone map to make sure every node you own is adequately protected.  Offense may be more fun, but if no one is guarding, be the responsible player who does, or it could mean the game.  Final tip: never fight on the road, always near a flag.  Not only will you spawn closer to your graveyard, but you will be able to keep an eye on the flag at all times.  Roadfights are very common but don’t get sucked in.  You can, however, use them to your advantage if the enemy team is not watching their flag, allowing you to sneak in from behind and cap it.

Strand of the Ancients

In the Strand, the goal is to get the relic at the end of the battlegrounds, and to prevent your opponents from doing the same.  On offense, you need to use demolishers to break through a series of gates.  It is best to let melee players drive and use ranged, crowd controllers and healers as passengers to help defeat the enemies attacking your vehicle.  In defense, your top priority is always killing demolishers, either directly or by healing your DPS teammates.  Do not get distracted by players running around: always go for the demos.

Isle of Conquest and Alterac Valley

Both battlegrounds are different maps for the same objectives.  The goal is to either defeat the enemy’s general in their keep, or by depleting their reinforcements.  Capturing and holding the various objectives on the map will help your team and also grant you honour points.  Always try to find near and for these objectives rather than get caught in some random fight off on the road.

While most of us  do not have the time or drive to invest all that is necessary to try to become “the best of the best,” I know a great many of us expect more from ourselves than just average performance.  I crossed this post on MMO-Champion the other day and I felt it was very well-put and is the kind of wisdom we can all appreciate:

Written by ‘PrettyBiased’ on MMO-Champ

What do top guilds mean when they say “looking for exceptional players”?

I just read a thread the other day titled “what is skill” and to be quite honest most of the answers could not have been further from correct. There is a common line you will see from nearly every high end hardcore guild in this game. The most recent trends leaves paragon to be the front runner for favorite high end guild, so right from their wowprogress page “Always recruiting exceptional players.”

What does exceptional mean?
Going for a literal explanation straight from the definition “Deviating widely from a norm, as of physical or mental ability, Well above average; extraordinary”. So literally they are looking for well above average players for recruitment.

The breakdown
So, what exactly makes up an exceptional player? What does any given player have to do to be seen as exceptional to top players, or even catch their attention? I’m going to give a definitive answer of what I personally look for and have looked for in my five years of high end gaming in the world of warcraft.

What they know, the fundamentals
First off before you even have a shot at being called average you’ve got to have a fundamental understanding of everything that makes your character preform. What does that mean exactly? It means knowing your talents and abilities, their interactions with eachother, their interactions with glyphs, their interactions with stats, their interactions with set bonuses and trinkets, their interactions with other players buffs and talents, and lastly their interactions with your environment.

What they do, the checklist
High end play is not a rigid priority list firing off in a predictable manner, it’s a constant ebb and flow of reaching out to help others and allowing them to help you. Nearly everything happening in a high end raid is on the fly and reactionary, immediate reactions and timing are key which will require keybinding. I’m going to do it a disservice and number things off on a list, this is just for ease of understanding not something to be actually followed in order.

#1. Maintaining your highest output value efficiently and consistently, this is maximum damage healing or threat per second. This is the most basic aspect of playing well, without it you might as well not even be in the raid. Effectively this is the “why you’re there” check on the list, it’s fundamental.
#2. Maintaining full utility within reason to your situation, this means interrupts, buff uptime and debuff uptime management etc. This is what keeps targets taking maximum damage and dealing their minimum, again fundamentals.
#3. Pre-emptively avoiding incoming damage and negating or reducing unavoidable damage for both you and nearby raid members.
#4. Exploiting fight mechanics to the best of your ability, no this is not the kind of exploitation that gets you banned. This is how you get world firsts, by finding a buff and using every last square inch of it.
#5. Reach outside of your class role and help those around you, misdirects, controllable damage modifiers (tricks of the trade, etc) share them with your raid efficiently to maximize their potential and that of the raid as a unit.
#6. Assuming you’re doing all of these things at the same time without slacking at any of them, using ventrilo to communicate if you need help, if the aspect of the fight you control is falling behind or way ahead etc.

Misconceptions
Doing a lot of damage/healing/threat does not make you good, it’s what you’re supposed to be doing.
Standing in fire does not make you bad in itself, there are no golden rules in this game anything can be optimal or inferior depending on circumstances good play is always about what is best in the moment.
Min/Maxing is not an option, if you’re going to take this or any other game seriously you will inevitably find yourself becoming a min/maxer or you will be falling short of your goals.
Reaching your maximum potential as a player is far greater a task than reaching your maximum potential as a character.

The verdict
Can you do more than those 6 points? Always, anyone can always do more and in fact they are encouraged to as opportunities arise during an encounter. As far as golden rules go, I am rather confident I covered the main bases. Doing one or two of these things is just as far from exceptional, as doing all but one of them. You must do all of these things at the same time consistently to step outside the label of average, this game really is about teamwork and tunnelvisioning dps tanking or healing is never going to land you a world first. It’s all about communication and knowing your own strengths and weaknesses, asking for help when it is needed, offering your help when it is needed by others, and mastering the mechanics of a fight. The top damage players in the world could fall short of being exceptional if they don’t play outside the box and make these things happen. In the end, this is what separates players in top guilds from anyone else.

I thought all those points were excellent and something we could benefit from remembering.  It can also help us pinpoint areas we may need to improve on, and not let the fact we may be high on the meters distract us from other failings like regularly dying to environmental damage, or lack of knowledge about our class.  So if you thought you were a pretty good rogue because you can top the meters on Festergut but tend to drop your defiles right on your teammates during Lich King, you might want to reconsider your position 😉

Also, this topic also touches on something that those of us who play DPS need to remind ourselves sometimes.  Being a great player isn’t just about putting out good numbers (as the poster states, that’s just the bare minimum of our job).  It is also about doing, and doing well, those other things that may be asked of us, like kicks or interrupts or switching to those pesky adds that screw up your DPS rotation.  Most of us really hate doing those kinds of things and are not shy about lamenting our DPS loss for doing so (myself included), so sometimes we need a little kick reminding us that that aspect of our job is just as important — maybe even moreso — as how we look on the meters.