Things seem to be getting better (or rather, I’m being optimistic again…)

I would like to tell myself that all the baddies are starting to learn how to play. I believe that we all keep getting better (I do, why isn’t everyone else?). Then again it is more likely that most of those I raid with do not actually get “better” but they learn the encounters we are working on. 4 weeks of the first 3 bosses of ICC may be boring for some… but let’s face it… most guilds didn’t even SEE yoggy (I’m not even talking about hardmodes.) I’m just talking from a “people get disinterested” point of view. A massive instance like Uld overwhelms many guilds from the standpoint that they have to keep killing the old bosses again and again, and rather with less time in Naxx I assume it would have done it as well. Granted with the new lockout extending feature you can keep your farm bosses down to save time and keep raid time on the new bosses (not to mention trash) where the tradeoff being that you don’t get the loot off of the easy bosses and trash that could have dropped had you decided to spend the 2 hours clearing them out.

We kill Saurfang last week for the first time on 25man (apparently disc priests help slow down the rate of him gaining power… it was our first week one of our 2 priests were there, and last night I went on my alt priest who I respecced to disc for the encounter) and this week it was a “clean” 1-shot. This inclines me to think that people have learned the encounters and they fail less… but then again Lady D and Marrow both saw nerfs, and Saurfang had been wiped on enough that the bulk of the raid had to learn sometime.

We get to Rotface (is that his name?) and really as the strats say, he’s basically grob on crack. Except the adds do a little different movements and we found the little adds basically untankable so the entire raid when they got little adds needed to pay attention and keep it near the OT. All in all though, I felt like people weren’t messing up as bad as they could have and seem to have gotten the hang of it fairly quickly. The mark of good raiders to me is not knowing the encounters through and through (though that definitely helps you know where damage coming from/to and how to beat an encounter) but instead should be a group of people who know their roles, their spells, how they work, why they work, and the best way to use them… then you come at a big ugly and if everyone does their “job” while remembering the basics of raiding the boss will die. That’s all the strat you technically need.

Basics of raiding: Tanks take damage, healers heal them. Bosses hit tanks, generally cleave, spit fire at the raid which the raid should avoid. Novas one-shot. Glittering areas should be stood in for buffs, but check your debuffs. If you are the only one in the raid to get a buff, you should probably move away and then check to see what it does. OTs pick up adds, they should mostly be killed by ranged as they can swap faster, but should be tanked next to the boss (unless they are AoEing) so the melee can destroy them faster too with random AoE (via sweepin strikes, cleave, heart strike, consecrate, divine storm, blade flurry, killing spree… it goes on).

Not much more to it than that, a smart raider learns the mechanics of fights they have been in before and know how to apply them to the future fights they encounter. They are the ones that never forget.

Anywhoo, a boy can dream right? I hope dearly they are all getting better because if we all keep getting better we’ll eventually get ahead of the ‘norm’ of what blizz tunes encounters to and we’ll dominate all the new reg content while taking a pass at hard modes!