We did Gruul's last night with the guild Captain's Crew and some other Left Claw friends like Suzzy and Ratshag (who was too leet in his T5 or T6 or Twhatever gear he's got on and ended up a squished priest a couple times). We were able to get the first guy down on the third attempt, but by the time I was able to adjust the way I wanted to, the bugger (who am I Ratters?) had already disappeared, thus making me yell out "Damn it all to hell!". So many thanks to Kaho for grabbing the pic above. We then put in a couple attempts on the last guy where I think we got him down to 13% before we had to call it.
A couple thoughts on my first 25 man. I definitely liked experiencing it for the first time, and seeing something new was cool. But it was a huge change and in a way it felt like I had sensory overload. Compared to what I was used to, it was a lot of people's voices over vent, half of which were new, and a lot of people's asses in my face (though there were some hawt asses in Captains Crew, I'm telling ya... especially a certain priest named Rapunzel...).
A 25 man just seems to take tons and tons of planning and oversight during the raid. Jess did do a great job as the raid leader with great help from Mumu. Even though Vel and I heckle him mercilessly (who, us? Passing notes in the back of the class while Jess is lecturing?), Jess' raid lectures/dissertations are quite necessary.
So I hear that most 25 man raids have a raid nazi, someone who sorta enforces some rules (minimal chit-chat, minimal or scheduled afks) during the raid. I know that last night definitely was not run in a serious raiding manner, and it was really more for fun and to experience new content. It was our first time so things were more lax. However, if we were to go again, I think we can go a little faster and spend our time more effectively. For those of you who do 25 man raids regularly, what kinda rules does your raid nazi enforce?
Now before Gruul's I wanted to grab some of those unstable flasks for Gruul's incase they came in handy to anyone. Four of the flasks are only buyable from a vendor after what I call "the defensive event thingie" up in Blades Edge. Ok, so its technically called the Bash'ir Landing Raid, detailed here. It seems to occur on our server every two hours on the even hours. As many times as I've been there, I wonder how I had never seen this event before? Anyways, I called two guildies to come help me (thanks Sin and Nio!) and a horde character ended up calling some of his guildies, so we had maybe 7 or 8 people. We were able to get through phase 1 so I got to buy a bunch of flasks. We also got through phase 2 and the vendor who sells gems showed up. I think we failed the last phase though.
Finally, last night was not only The Left Claw's first foray into a 25 man, but it was also the one year blogaversary for my fellow guildie blogger Jess at Pretty in Plate. Happy 1 year anniversary or birthday or whatever Jess! Did you even realize yesterday was your blogaversary Jess?!?!
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Gruul's, the defensive event thingie, and belated blogaversary
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We do several things ta helps cut down on chaos and information overloads. First is, we use chat channels for certain tasks. There is one fer the healers, and after the RL has made laid out the overall strategy, the lead healer makes specific assignments here rather than on vent. Pallies do something similar, plus they use that PallyPower add-on to coordinate. Vent is kept pretty quiet - almost never hear a voice other than RL's, Lead healer's, lead hunter's, MT's, and the GM/deputy RL's. Is used to issue instructions, not discuss.
ReplyDeleteEveryone is reuired ta have elixirs/flasks, food buffs, weapon buffs. There's a add-on fer ta check this - Big Brother, I thinks is called.
Once folks is used ta the system, is hardly ever any enforcementizing needed. Everyone just do.
Now, the tricky part here is having more folks than slots. If ya can say "follow rules or ya don't get to come" then ya has leverage. Otherwise, ya needs ta persuade more than enforce, and that be slower.
No I didn't remember my own blogaversary. Sad isn't it?
ReplyDeleteI'm our raid nazi, for timed ZA runs and whatever 25-mans we run.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, silence during tactics. I explain everything once and only once, and will take questions after. This is important, because in my experience most wipes/lost time are caused by people not listening and then spamming you with questions about things you've repeated 5 times in the past minute. Training 25 people to listen is hard, but once it's done, it's a massive timesaver.
While explaining tactics, trying to keep it as short and to the point as possible really helps. Make it easy for your raiders to listen: Don't confuse people, or overload them with extra information that is not needed for their class role. Just give an overview, and a three sentence summary at the end. Keep said summary extremely simple, like "Tank and spank, heal, and don't stand in the fire", so you can repeat it as many times as needed. (After raid leading for a year now, you can see that my faith in people's capability of understanding fight mechanics has severely diminished.)
On timed runs I give instructions on the fly, so too much chitchat over Vent is not permitted. If I realise it's getting out of hand and people are losing focus, I'll tell people to cut it out.
Make macros of important information such as Vent details/kill order so it can be easily spammed. You will realise how useful it is when 389283 PuG members start going "Vent details?" "Vent?" "Vent plz?" three hundred million times.
Do point individual and group mistakes out, that's how improvement happens and lost time is prevented. Some raids have a walking on eggshells mentality where people will not point out blatant mistakes in execution but will instead credit it to "shiz happens" and move on. I personally hate that since the next time around the same thing happens again, and again, and again. Instead, tell people what they are doing wrong and how to fix it, but don't overdo it and rage on people.
Keep replacement summons, buffs etc as fast as possible. Tell people to buff on the run while recovering from a wipe. Poke warlocks to summon replacements in as soon as they possibly can. Poke tanks to chain pull.
Be authoritative, and keep a level head as a raid nazi, because people are looking up at you to maintain order and make things happen.
@ratshag: a healer chat channel sounds pretty good... if only it is to make fun of the tanks. ;)
ReplyDelete@jess: I know you have minimal intellect... but must I do everything around here?
@elysiane: some really great points. thanks!