Flux

The Wrath of the Lich King expansion is only a handful of months away.  When it arrives gear will ‘reset’ making what you currently have outdated as fast as you can say level 80.  And gold will be far easier to get.  So why bother?  You could stop playing and wait for the expansion.  You will get better gear, make gold faster, and you can come back and go through all the raids you never got to see without wiping on the same boss every raid night.  You can laugh at all your friends who spend the next few months grinding in the arena, battlegrounds, and raid bosses.

Except there are six things you won’t be able to do after the expansion.  These will either be completely inaccessible or require a character at level 70 or lower.

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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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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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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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It’s an embarrassing fact of life. And most have had it or have given it to someone else, PvP Disease. It starts when a player, and you know who you are, joins your party or raid who is flagged PvP. And it quickly spreads like the plague when others start buffing and healing. Of course if you play on a PvP server you are immune, or more accurately you always have it.

Why is this a problem? There is of course the annoyance of getting ganked outside an instance or whereever you are grouping up. This particularly bothers healers and tanks who can’t always fight back. But more importantly when some players are flagged and some are not, it interferes with group buffs. This can cripple your groups effectiveness. And players typically will eventually have to buff two or three times to work things out which costs reagents and generates real life aggro.

What can you do? It is incredibly easy to stop this disease. Take a ride from any flight point. As soon as you do, the PvP flag is immediately removed.

Note that in patch 2.4.3 any time you zone into an instance on a PvE server you are automatically unflagged. The problem only occurs now for groups outside of instances.

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Describing where things are can be difficult. This is partly because you can’t reach your hand through the screen and point. Everything from where something is on the map, where you are when your friends aren’t in the same area, or just describing where to stand during a boss fight can all be deceptively difficult. Fortunately with mods, macros, or even some special items you can make things easier.

Let’s take a look at some.

Flare Marking

There are four different color smoke flares that you can buy or create. What makes these useful is that you can throw them on the ground up to 50 yards away. This is can be helpful for various fights where you need to point out exact placement positions before starting but you can’t get too close. They can all be made by engineers. The red, white, and green ones can be bought in limited quantities from vendors. For the purple one, you’ll have to find an engineer. They can’t be used in the cities but they can be used in battlegrounds where people have been known to make walls of smoke to hide behind.

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With the right talents there are three tanking classes; druid, paladin, and warrior. There is a fourth one eventually which we will see in the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion, The Death Knight.

For those of you who don’t tank, what’s the difference? Do you even care what kind of tank you have? Is there a better tank for healers or for damage dealers?

In long single target fights they all create comparable threat. The differences lie with initial aggro, healing, offtanking, multiple targets, and special abilities. Let’s take a look at each of them and what you should keep in mind when you are healing or dps’ing damage.

Druids

• best hitpoints and armor
• average initial aggro and multiple target
• worst avoidance

Druids are the easiest tanks to heal with their large hit point pools and high armor. With the right talents and gear they take damage light and consistently. Healers assigned to the druid often have extra time to take care of others. However over long fights as a healer you may find that the consistent damage may take more total healing than for a Warrior and drain your mana.

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World of Warcraft along with almost every MMO has numerous items, quests, NPCs, and creatures. However, there are times when hunting around hours looking for them when you don’t know where they are, is zero fun.

To help out many sites list these as well as every bit of loot in the game. Often with some excellent additional features like wishlists, filtered searching, 3d models, and character profiles. The most popular one currently ranks 284th. This is not just among game sites, it’s among all websites.

There are two behemoths for World of Warcraft databases. The more popular Wowhead and the upstart WOWDB. Both sites have great though similar features.

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The PuG, it is often ugly and sometimes lovable. But it always poses a problem.

A group of people you don’t know, the downside is they might have no idea what they are doing, the upside is that they are great people looking to do what you are.

Being Nice

When you join a PuG you can always bail out before you zone in. Watch for the warning signs. If you have a bad feeling, get out before you start. Don’t waste everyone’s time, including yours. Of course, you can never tell for sure until you get started. So some general etiquette should be used.

After a couple of pulls everyone will start to get used to each other. Many PuGs start badly and end up winning spectacularly once everyone settles down. So don’t go running after one bad pull. However, if the group is wiping consistently then it’s time to leave unless you are having fun.

If the instance locks you then please decide before everyone is locked. This is usually when the first boss dies. Otherwise everyone including yourself is left in a difficult position.

Warning Signs

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When you raid the group number you are in becomes important. Many of the buffs that you get from other players only work within your group number. If you are the raid leader or assistant picking and choosing which players are in which groups, it often makes the difference between success and failure.

As a player it’s helpful to know which buffs are best for you and as a raid leader it’s helpful to understand all the classes so you can decide how to organize the grouping. Let’s take a look at the player group only buffs. These are buffs that only work on your own group. This doesn’t include buffs you can cast across groups and ones that work individually. For example, a priest can cast Prayer of Fortitude which will buff the target and the target’s party. So they can cast it on the entire raid. But Vampiric Touch only gives mana to members in their own own group.

Let’s take a look at the player group only enhancements.

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