Flux

Most of you have been in this situation.  Someone in your group goes afk, brb, bio, gets a drink, has a computer problem, phone call, spouse aggro, inc kids, didn’t show up on time, forgot a quest item, forgot the daily quest, didn’t bring food, flasks, elixirs, needs to repair, is pvp flagged, or gets everyone killed when they didn’t pay attention before or during a fight.  They just wasted everyone’s time.

This is especially a problem in pugs when you aren’t there to socialize or in raids when the goal is to get to a certain point. How much of a problem is this really?  Let’s take a look.  A typical brb lasts around 2 mins, an afk can go on for 5 mins, a computer reboot can take 3 mins, on pve servers deciding to flag up or down or dealing with the split buffs can take 2 mins, running back to the bank for what you forget is 5 mins, and so on.  If you multiple that by how many people are in the group (minus the person who did it) you get a feel for how much total time was wasted for everyone.  Players tend to think, “Hey I was only gone for a couple minutes”.  But when there are many people waiting, this is more time than they think.  In a 5 player group you only wasted about 8 mins.  But in a 25 player raid you just wasted 48 minutes of other peoples time.  If you have a five minute bio or repair in a 25 player raid, you just wasted a whoping two hours.
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Completed the Targeting article with focus, monitor, tab, and a ‘handcrafted’ image which is only slightly worse than certain online images.

Updated Targeting with Hover and Macro targeting.

Selecting a target is not easy.

Tanks, it is not the bosses, it’s the mobs. This is what frustrates or drives you crazy.  You have to change targets quickly, don’t break crowd control, and do enough threat so that everything else doesn’t go kill someone.  Separating and positioning your targets during the pull can be tricky.  Even during boss fights it’s hard when mobs add, another tank dies, something aggro wipes, or the fight requires some combination.  Use tab, nameplate, and focus targeting as well as target monitors.

As a healer the most difficult thing is changing between friendly targets.  You usually can’t afford to heal a single target.  You may also have to debuff or shackle while healing.  And you deal with more targets than any other role especially in 25 player raids.  This leads to ‘playing tetris‘.  Most of your time is staring at health bars guessing who is about to die and target hopping.  And often this is trouble because you lose track of other peoples position, line of sight, mob special abilities, or range.  Use hover and focus targeting as well as target monitors.

DPS targeting requires you to keep track of two or maybe three targets at most.  Count yourself lucky.  You only have to worry about your primary, crowd control, and next target.  But several bosses or mobs with special abilities will also require that you quickly change between your primary target and a temporary target like a totem or object.  For example, Halazzi’s corrupted totems, Selin’s Fel Crystals, or Illhoof’s Demon Chains.  Overall you have fewer targets to keep track of, but targeting them quickly is essential to increasing your dps.  Spending time picking out targets results in defeat on the damage meters and for the group.  Use assist, nameplate, macro, and focus targeting.

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Updated Mods - Marking Raid Icons with a new section.  Auto-marking! If you are tired of marking in instances take a look at two recent mods which make it easier.

There is a baleful chant over the World of Warcraft chat channels, all begging for the same thing, in caps. LF TANK or HEALER. Wide shortages of these two roles in every stage of the game persist. Why? There are many reasons including what I will call most obvious, big numbers, specialization, and scope. In short, it’s less rewarding for most to play these roles.

Some players are tanks and healers for no other reason than they love it. Tanks are center stage, control positioning, and set the pace. And healers continuously save people from death and various debuff maladies. But because of how difficult it is, it’s less interesting to people who do not naturally want to play them. So you have a number of people doing it because they love it. And the rest are doing it because it’s the only way to form a group or join a raid.

DPS isn’t necessarily easier, especially good dps. Good dps can be just as hard as tanking or healing. Maximizing your damage while not pulling aggro, crowd controlling targets, debuffing or interrupting, and not triggering some special enemy raid wiping ability all requires skill. Optimizing this when your group is at the limits of it’s abilities is hard. But because there is usually more room for making mistakes as well as some other reasons it’s more fun to dps for most players, than to tank or heal.

Let’s take a look at why.

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Penny Arcade is having a wow short story contest. If you are a gamer of few words, exactly ten, and you can squeeze meaning into a narrow alley then give it a try. It’s for fun but you do have a chance of winning prizes. My first temptation was to use recursion to break the ten word rule, such as “Ttohnarawc the Orc, his name a recursive acronym, was confused.” But I quickly recovered my sense of slightly more useful purpose and sent this instead.

Screaming caps at the turtle, twitching afk silently watch, unmoved.

It’s entitled Turtles, Undead, and Honor.

Updated The Hidden Bosses - Doomwalker and Doom Lord Kazzak to note that the Shattered Sun Offensive has disturbed Kazzak’s once peaceful home.

Reclassified and updated tags on articles to be slightly more useful.

Are you in a guild that can’t seem to get past the next boss or raid? Or it can’t find enough of the right people? What it needs is more Pocky.

All raiding guilds should have a full course of Pocky. Without it they will likely suffer from loot drama, bump qq, personalities woe, unprepared players, and lack of progression. This can lead to /gquit, guild hopping, splits, merges, or just plain collapse.

A successful raiding guild has three keys that mirror the player stages. With two they may get lucky. With only one they will collapse. Let’s take look at the P.O.C. keys you need.

Progress

Players in raiding guilds want to see the highest level raids and the end game content. These raids are extraordinarily difficult and can be frustrating if everything is not going well. Every guild will get hung up on a raid from time to time but there are some things you can do to help ease the frustration.

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Updated Changing Your Look to include growth effects.

Updated Casual versus Hardcore to include our new definition of Dedicated.

Updated Having a Title that the new patch title may not be available after the Shattered Sun Offensive event, so make sure you are ready to pick it up.