 I’ve been really busy this last week or so. Haven’t got as much beta testing done as I’d have liked, but there are only so many hours in the day when I can play the game. Many times, I can write articles or forums posts most easily. I wanted to highlight a few key things. EJ For over a year and a half, Suno has been maintaining the DK tank thread at Elitist Jerks. He’s done well and I August 17th, 2010 | One comment |
 From: Addons, Guild management, Raid leadership in general |  Tags: ej, kahorie, leadership, raid leader, rawr  I hope everyone knows about this not-so-obvious tooltip. It shows which bosses have been killed when you enter an existing raid ID. You put your mouse over the number of bosses killed, and a panel appears below which names them. You can take a screenshot (like I did), so that you don’t have to remember if you later need to repeat its status to other people.  My guild, Axis of Dath’remar, a 10-man raiding guild of one night a week, tonight, finally killed the Lich King. I was so very happy about it. Axis is made up of a former hardcore guys who’ve now got the balance right, like four-day a week raiders in previous expansions. I must say our raid leader Dakas is superb, and this makes a big difference. He’s constantly calling ‘defile coming, away from middle’, or the reverse, making the decision June 11th, 2010 | 15 comments |
From: Raid leadership in general | Tags: leadership, lich king, raid, raid leader, strategy I just came out of an Ulduar 10 PUG. When I noticed it on trade chat, LF1M healer, I thought that’d be fun (and no waiting, since Character data not available. was the last slot required). Before that I’d just been passing time. In fact, just doing that alone is worth comment. I thought “hmm what should I do tonight, I’ve a few hours free”. I did the random daily of course, then actually sat and stared at the The guild I’m in, Axis, killed Blood Princes 10 last night. Last week, we got Putricide (I missed that one, had real-life stuff intercept me). We only raid once a week from 8pm til midnight. There’s a second raid night for alts. We don’t have a competitive stance in progression, which would be pretty silly for a raid guild of one night, yet are the most progressed in Icecrown amongst 10-man only Horde guilds on our little server. We’re March 5th, 2010 | 7 comments |
From: Raid leadership in general | Tags: blood princes, leadership, raid, strategy This endeavour is to make a film about raiding. Below is an HD promotional video made, featuring Darksend from Tankspot, and others. You can pledge a few dollars to help get a real film produced about our hobby by clicking on this mini-ad: Youtube video embedded after the break. The Dunning-Kruger effect. This is a remarkable theoretical and proven phenomena. I didn’t know they’d proven it: is a cognitive bias in which people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Meanwhile, people with true knowledge tended to underestimate their competence. Basically, people are so stupid they don’t even realise they’re stupid. Read a lot more here, where I came across it. I don’t think I need to say a lot February 7th, 2010 | 3 comments |
From: Raid leadership in general | Tags: intelligence, leadership, personality, theory Yesterdays post asking ‘whether DKs are being benched’ appears to have two root causes:
If you haven’t looked over the discussion, it’s a good read; and Honor’s comment could have been a post in its own right. Encounters which favour one tank over anotherDKs did have their time in the limelight with Sarth3D, where the (now defunct) Unholy-Vot3W spec reigned supreme. That spec has been ‘balanced’ away to obscure memory, so it doesn’t work anymore, but looked a bit like this. Block-tanks have theirs on Anub. I’d forgotten about Vezax, but Honors hadn’t and nor had Ghostcrawler. November 19th, 2009 | 13 comments |
From: Cataclysm speculation before Beta, Raid leadership in general | Tags: Cataclysm speculation before Beta, mmorpg design, raid, tank I really paused for thought after reading Tobold’s classification of raid encounters. Looking at the title of his post, ‘raid encounter classification’, you might well think his answers would describe the mechanics of a fight like this:
I used Naxx examples so everyone can relate to it. But in fact, what’s so clever, is he looks instead at where the pressure is placed, and who needs September 25th, 2009 | 3 comments |
From: Raid leadership in general | Tags: hard mode, heroics, leadership, performance, raid, raid leader, strategy The reactions to Gevlon’s feat of clearing Ulduar-10 in blues show that many players have fallen into the trap of thinking gear is the only solution to clearing raids. Gevlon called it a myth because he likes to be provocative and sensationalist, but at least on this he has a point. Here’s the argument:
This is a continuum though, more on that below. Skill is not a binary key that lets you beat content; sure you need some gear too but perhaps less than commonly thought. » continue reading August 28th, 2009 | 10 comments |
From: Analysis, Raid leadership in general | Tags: blues, casual, gear, progression, raid Wow. Thanks to RJK for highlighting this post on a site I rarely visit, Greedy Goblin. Great for money-making tips, but… raiding? In short: the goblin’s guild cleared 10-man Ulduar, wearing only blues (no epics), including Yogg. This is irrefutable proof that skill matters more than gear. Read about the accomplishment, and his comments on ‘the myth of gear‘. I don’t really need to say much about this. It speaks for itself. Good raiders are more important than good gear. People August 26th, 2009 | 9 comments |
From: Playing better, Raid leadership in general | Tags: blues, casual, gear, progression, raid, ulduar I just came across this speed-raiding guide on StratFu, written in February but I’d not seen it before. It’s very comprehensive, and covers in details the points I have just touched on about fast raids. Their guide includes:
August 26th, 2009 | 2 comments |
From: Playing better, Raid leadership in general | Tags: guide, loot, raid, speed I’m very pleased to say that Satorri, a well-known Death Knight poster on TankSpot has agreed to have his essay on leadership published here at pwnwear.com. His bio concludes this article. Enjoy the read! On Leadershipby guest author Satorri Leadership plays a very pivotal role in how a team performs, whether it is a pug, a casual guild run, or a high-end, high-intensity raid environment. Simply put, a team is a group of individuals who work together to accomplish a common goal. In order for the team to work together they need the following abilities in some measure:
1.) Personal skills (each member in whatever they’re responsible for) 2.) Composition/Balance (all the necessary elements in the right proportion) 3.) Communication (to coordinate the actions of the pieces) The nuances of communicating as a leader are complicated. The goal in this is that one person is paying attention to the big picture so they can orchestrate the smaller pieces. This does not mean telling the tank when to shield slam, but it could mean telling the tanks to swap targets, to expect a big burst of damage, or to expect a phase switch. Beyond just tactical direction, the leadership is also responsible for setting the pervading atmosphere and attitude of the team. In simplest terms, this atmosphere will determine the efficacy in raids and out of them, as well as the ability of your team to face and persevere through challenges. If you were around during BC, you’ll remember how the end of t5 led to many teams falling apart. That is a simple indication of the limit of the team’s atmosphere and attitude. When they reached that level of time and patience required the team disintegrated unable to support that amount of investment. So, it’s easy to make generalizations, but what specifically does this mean, where and how does the leadership need to use good communication and careful choices to ensure a strong team? Read more of Satorri’s guest post on leadership and communication One of my guild’s best healers (Diggie) asked once in officer chat, how do I learn to raid lead? He’s been doing it since, improving all the time, by running a Naxx 10 alts night. He also asked during a run ‘tell me if there is anything else I should do’. So if you’d like to raid lead, here is some advice. The first thing you need is a willingness to learn like Diggie. The fortitude to try leading and possibly fail. One reason some people do not even step up is the false belief that the raid leader needs to know everything and do everything. Knowing the contentAt a minimum: you want to know the raid content about as well as everyone else in the raid. Ideally: you should know it much better. You want to understand what each role has to do, where they stand, what debuffs are priority to remove, what burst damage healers need to be aware of, and so on. How to achieve:
Progression: if you’re all learning content together, the raid leaders role becomes more that of ‘problem solving leader’. You work out what to try, and when to persevere, and make the decision about whether the strategy is wrong or just the execution of the strategy is bad. This role is more archetypal leadership because you want to draw out insight from people, and also get noisy useless contributions shut down. You will probably have someone who knows the content a little better, so hear them out. » continue reading Many of you might be familiar with the incredible, voluminous and precise research carried out under the Daedalus Project, by Nick Yee. The researcher looked at MMOs for ten years before finally ceasing, just recently. His work on burn-out shows raid leaders that it’s largley inevitable, and guild member turnover is therefore a factor you simply need to accept and manage. Nick’s research is still available to peruse, and it’s a gigantic library of primary research mostly gathered through June 13th, 2009 | 5 comments |
From: Guild management, Raid leadership in general | Tags: addiction, burnout, casual, player, recruitment, wow love Two key topics here: (1) have a defined raid schedule (2) make it easy for people to sign up and be invited. Defined raid schedule Setting the day of week and time for a raid is basic, so here are a few less-obvious tips:
Loot is a huge topic. Do not think “I raid, therefore I DKP”. A loot system is a solution. To take your guild in the direction you intend, firstly define the problem you’re solving: is it to minimise drama, to reward attendence, to help decide who has more right to loot than another? What are the weightings you should apply to the choice of loot system? I value simplicity of admin very highly. A bad loot system implementation can June 12th, 2009 | Leave a comment |
From: Guild management, Raid leadership in general | Tags: dkp, loot, loot systems, review Loot systems are definitely something I’m going to write more about. Just came across this post about a system I’d never heard of before: Shroud Loot System. Personally I like EPGP and SK, and for DKP I think QuickDKP is a good implementation. Loot sytems are an incentive mechanic for leadership; they instituationalise rewards for effort. It’s crucial the guild’s loot system matches their guild ethos. To grossly generalise: casual guilds are usually better with SK (or similar queue-based |
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Raid mentor
I was watching the interview series celebrating 5 years of Wow and 15 of Warcraft. (I’d never played Warcraft, saw it a few times over shoulders, but RTS never grabbed me).
Frank Pearce (he’s a co-founder) reminded me of something I’d forgotten about raiding: the advantage of having an experienced raid mentor. He talked about Molten Core, hear from him here if you’d like, and how on his own guild’s first attempt at MC they had someone help them
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