Flux

So you are dishing out damage like a cluster bomb and still not getting aggro. But your raid is wiping. People are dying and the healers are out of mana. What more can you do?

Bad dps is easy but good dps is hard. What makes for good dps? The obvious and typical answer is to top the damage meters and not get aggro. But less well know and just as important is helping your healers keep you alive.  Dead people can’t dps.

The typical mistakes bad dpsers make are getting out of range or line of sight of their healer, running away from their healer when trying to avoid damage, and not putting on stamina when it’s needed. Let’s look at some ways for dps to stay alive.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)