For everyone.

The vote kick system, in theory, is an excellent idea. Someone’s messing up your heroic run, so you can cast a vote to remove them. It takes three people out of the remaining four to agree to remove the person in question, and since  you cannot whisper people cross-realm, it’s hard to negotiate a vote kick behind the scenes. You can’t remove people until their dungeon cooldown debuff runs out, so that stops the *inspect* “OMG HE HAS BLUES!?!?! KICK NOW” kind of crazies. However, in its current incarnation, the system seems to be designed to punish people who perform, while rewarding those who don’t.

As I’ve mentioned, you can’t cast a vote to kick someone who still has the dungeon cooldown debuff. That’s all good, but no sane group needs fifteen minutes to discern whether someone’s going to be a good addition to the group. The people who are so bad that they need to be weeded out as soon as possible – you can smell those in about a minute. Full T9 but no gems, no enchants? Yup. The hunter with a 71/0/0 spec and spellpower mail? I don’t need to carry this guy for 15 minutes.

I’ll stop here and explain something – there will be people reading this and going “WTF, how about if you try to teach them instead of lolkick?” I’m big on personal responsibility. There are a ton of resources on the internet that explain how to play, gear, gem and enchant any spec of any class. Anyone who’s somehow managed to get to level 80 and wants to be a part of group play should be researching how to do that effectively.

It’s not my responsibility in a random heroic to teach someone the basics of their class, and if we stopped so that every newbie we got in our group could get a lecture of “How To Play Class X 101″? The number of heroics I can get done every day would be about halved. I don’t mean one can never ask questions or receive advice from more experienced people, but if you haven’t bothered to at least get the basics down? You haven’t bothered, why should we?

Going back to the point, so you have one of these people in your group, and you want to remove them after a couple of pulls. You can’t. Worse, perhaps you have a non-participant, which seems to be a trend these days. You get someone joining and going AFK without saying a word, putting another character on follow. There’s nothing you can do.

Most people finish the majority of an instance, if not all of it, in the 15 minutes it takes to be able to vote kick someone. No one wants to wait around just to be able to remove the troublemaker and get a replacement. Everyone’d rather just move on one man short. And most people are counting on… precisely this. So what if you’re put on ignore? Plenty more where this PUG came from, just collect your badges while going about other business.

And again, let’s say you have that semi-AFK huntard who pulled barely 400 DPS through the entire thing. You’re almost at the last boss and the timer is about to run out. You could initiate a vote kick, but most people would think, what’s the point? The instance has been smooth, no one died, just let the guy get some emblems.

The point is that you just carried someone — and if he didn’t know he was bad, he didn’t learn. If he learned, or already knew, that he was not up to standards, who cares? There was no penalty, he did the heroic fine, so he doesn’t really need to improve, does he? He’ll just join another party, secure in the knowledge that his playstyle is just fine. Congrats, the lack of a solid vote kick system just encouraged another “noob” to stay a noob.

So how to fix? First off, it’s clear that 15 minutes’ wait to be able to vote kick is way too long. Lowering it down to 5 minutes is fair – 5 minutes are enough to know whether someone is an asset or a liability. It also encourages people to perform right off the bat.

Second, the implementation of a Deserter-like debuff for being AFK too long. Again, the principle is simple – if you need an AFK of longer than five minutes in a heroic, you don’t belong in there. IRL > badges, sort it out before joining a group.

Third – the way people think! It’s not wrong to vote kick people for legitimate reasons, but I see people feeling like this very, very frequently on wow_ladies, dear_gnome, or other blogs. There are many posts that basically go “This player was not up to standards, and it really annoyed me, but I was too shy to start a vote kick.” You don’t have to carry anyone who isn’t up to par. You don’t have to feel bad for them because “we’re so close to the end”. The system doesn’t even tell others who initiated a kick. Again, not kicking them will encourage them to stay bad, and you don’t want that!

Part I of the series is here. Part II of the series will deal with how to lead the raid during the actual raiding phase.

To begin with, you need to make sure that you have authority over the raid and that you will be listened to. It’s important that your raiders don’t go running around and ignoring your commands. This might sound like an ego-trip on the part of the raid leader – but there is a fine line between ego-tripping and asserting your authority. There’s nothing worse than deciding on a strat on a boss, trying to implement it, then some other guy deciding to follow his own strategy anyway, and that needs to be prevented.

Yes, leading a large PUG is very reminiscent of herding cats, why do you ask?

The easiest way of asserting your authority is commanding respect. Let your raid follow you not out of threat of a raid removal, but because they have respect for you.

To help with this, always speak in correct English, with proper grammar, punctuation, and capitalisation. Stay calm and collected, don’t spew obscenities or use all caps. People are a lot likely to listen to you when you sound like you’re someone worth listening to. Don’t abuse /rw, in fact don’t use it at all if the information you’re conveying is not crucial. Most players start ignoring raid chat altogether if /rw is being overused.

You need your assistants to be listened to, too, since they’ll also be leading when you’re for one reason or another busy. The raid also needs to be respecting them. Don’t contradict them publicly, don’t have a disagreement with one of them in raid chat. If you want to sort something out, sort it out in whispers or a chat channel. Let the leadership present a unified front.

Loot is a very big part of any raid, and there is nothing that puts a damper in a good PUG quite like masterlooting issues. Make your loot rules crystal clear, before the run starts. There needs to be absolutely no mistake on that, make sure everyone has understood them.

A set of loot rules I like to use, that has worked for me so far is:

Every item is open for regular rolls, highest wins. Mainspec before offspec. Armor class priority – as in, if a cloth wearer and leather wearer covet the same cloth item, the clothie has priority on the item. Otherwise, use of common sense is required, otherwise the leadership may interfere. (As in, if a hunter and a rogue both roll on Sinister Revenge, we may well tell the hunter to fuck off.) If someone wins too many items, too many meaning > 5, again, the leadership reserves the right to interfere. BOE items may be won on mainspec rolls, but the winner is required to equip it right away and be inspected. BOE items may not be won on offspec rolls, they will be raidrolled if no one wants them for their mainspec. If no one wants a piece of loot, it goes to a designated disenchanter.

Note that in these set of rules, you have to define what mainspec is. We define it as “the spec you have been in for the majority of the raid”. Letting people define their own mainspecs, especially with the dual spec system, is way too complex. And again, you can’t trust them to not abuse the system.

As for offspec rolling. I try not to permit offspec rolling as it’s not fair to other people – offspec rolling in this context meaning that someone forfeits the right to roll on anything for their mainspec, but gains the right to roll on offspec loot as if it was their mainspec. This can go pretty badly if everyone decides that they want to roll offspec, it’s again open to exploitation, it’s overcomplex, and more often than not leads to drama. If I have to, though, I’ll let one or two people roll offspec, with the agreement of other people who are interested in the same loot.

If someone will be rolling offspec, make sure everyone in the raid is made aware of that fact so as to prevent potential drama.

Reserving loot also tends to lead to drama. I’ll never do it, out of principle, because I feel it’s very unfair. I suggest that all PUG leaders avoid it.

If you’re the raid leader – don’t masterloot. Just don’t. You have more important things to be doing, so resist the temptation and pass it off to an assistant you have confidence in to do it right.

Your assistant will need to know very well who’s rolling on what, for what spec. Make no mistake, people will try to cheat others out of loot, and that needs to be nipped in the bud. There will be people who will try to roll multiple times, hoping their duplicate rolls are hidden among other rolls. There will be people rolling on offspec items, hoping the masterlooter isn’t paying enough attention and will give them the item.

If there is no one else you trust to do it right, do it yourself, but this will quite likely slow down the raid.

From the first pull onwards, the raid leader has a very important role: Assessing your group. I’ve mentioned in part I of my guide that no matter how many achievements and epics someone has, they might make mistakes, or just have areas they are weak at. It’s your responsibility as the raid leader to find those weak spots and patch them up, or otherwise compensate for them.

This endeavor has tiers. First off, you’d like to weed out the people who are clearly underperforming. If someone’s damage done is below the tanks’ on Patchwerk, that person has to go, unless they had a good reason why they did badly.

In fact, as a side note, everytime I start a Naxx PUG, I do Patchwerk first, since it’s a pretty good indication of your DPS, healing, threat, and general survival capability. If  you wipe on Patchwerk, the reason is generally pretty obvious, and the people who caused it can easily be spotted.

This is also part of the mistake compensation that I’ve mentioned. Sometimes, a player is not bad enough to warrant removal from the raid – they are just weak at one thing or the other.

Some people who are otherwise good inexplicably fail at certain fights. You might have a really great DPSer who’s bad at kiting. Your amazing single-target tank might be bad at add pickup. Your holy priest might be great, just don’t ask her to juggle her cooldowns with the tank’s. Until I got a new computer, I was incapable of tanking Heigan because I had about 5 FPS maximum during the entire fight. My amazing co-raidleader’s computer always froze whenever he got a void zone underneath him on KT, which resulted in him eating dirt for the majority of the fight. A good raid leader keeps an eye on these things and moves people around as needed.

Part of mistake compensation is putting people on roles they’re familiar with, unless you’re confident they’re capable of learning quickly. If a tank has never done tunnel on Thorim, off into arena he goes, even if his specific class would have functioned better in the tunnel.

Speaking of learning, as the raid leader, there will inevitably be times where you’ll have to teach people a fight. Handling these times well will make the difference between success and failure. Remember that in a PUG, you cannot afford to fail repeatedly, as you will, more than likely, lose people doing so – as a result, helping people learn the fight quickly with the minimum amount of attempts is important.

Keep the explanation simple. I cannot stress this enough. As simple as you possibly can make it. The less they have to keep in mind, the better.

Don’t use ability names if you can help it – “big spell with 8 second cast time” is easier for a lot of people to remember than “Flash Freeze”. Obviously though if it’s a well known spell, like Blizzard, Rain of Fire, void zone, etc, go for it.

Try to draw parallels between fights that your raid is likely to already know, and the one you’re working on. When I’m introducing a bunch of oldschool raiders to Mimiron, telling them that Spinning Up/Laser Barrage is the same as C’thun’s Dark Glare is a lot simpler than explaining the ability. They’ll know exactly how to avoid it, and feel a lot more confident in their ability to do so.

Don’t explain to people anything they don’t have to know. Your DPSers don’t have to know about Thorim’s tank switch requirement, only your tanks and healers do. To explain it to the DPS is just overcomplicating things.

As an example, here is how I explained the Twin Valkyrs fight to a DPSer who was new to it.

“Okay, we’ll split into two groups. You’ll either be DPSing the light twin, white, or the dark twin, black.

“In the beginning of the fight, touch the portal that is the opposite color to your twin for a debuff. This debuff is called your essence, and it’s a DPS boost.

“There will be little orbs floating around during the fight. Run into the orbs that are the same color as your essence. That’s also a DPS boost and it prevents the bosses from getting stronger.

“If your twin is casting the long Vortex spell, you immediately have to run to a portal and take on the same color essence as the twin. Otherwise you will die.

“Once in a while any of them will shield up and start casting a big spell. It’s the same deal as Kael in  MGT – break down the shield and interrupt the spell, except the end result of the spell is a heal instead of Pyro. If it’s not your twin that is casting it, you should change essences, go to the other twin, and help DPS and interrupt.

“So to sum up: Have the opposite color as your DPS target, absorb the same color orbs as yourself, have the same color as the twin that’s casting Vortex, help burst down shields and interrupt. DPS target = opposite color, orbs = same color, Vortex = same color. ”

You can see how the explanation is getting progressively shorter as I go on. First a rundown of the fight, then a simpler summary, and yet another even simpler one. The repetition also helps reinforce the basic concepts of the fight. Also note how I’ve omitted the damage spike ability on tanks, as it has nothing to do with a DPSer.

Keep up the pace! Efficiency and speed are key to a happy group. Encourage tanks to pull for as long as healer mana looks okay. Don’t waste time on looting – as soon as a boss dies, resses need to immediately go out, rebuffs done, and trash should be pulled. The master looter stays behind to link items and take the rolls. 15 seconds after the roll command goes out, close the rolls, there’s really no reason to wait longer. If someone hasn’t done their homework on loot, that’s their problem, not yours.

Speed up wipe recovery, encourage people to heal and buff on the run. After a wipe, remember that it’s faster if everyone releases and runs. If someone dies, there’s no need for the entire raidgroup to sit and wait around. Go pull the next group (but yeah, don’t put your resser in combat).

Set master looter threshold to Epic, anything less can be individually looted with no penalty.

Ask your raid to cut down on AFK breaks. If anyone needs to go AFK, they should do so between bosses and be back before the next boss, or wait until you announce a break. Here is where that authority and respect comes in handy!

This is it for Part II of the series. Part III will deal with common problems that arise in a PUG, and how to solve them most efficiently.

Ever since I hit level 15 on Kaliah, my first character, and was introduced into the wonderful world of instancing, I’ve loved it. For reasons I myself can’t explain either, I love group play in WoW. However, the boyfriend and friends who introduced me to the game were higher level, and as such, didn’t have much interest in spending time with little Kaliah ingame. This meant that I was doomed to PUG, rather a lot.

I’ve been in countless PUGs into countless places ever since, leading anything from a 5-man to a 25. Let me say that, in my opinion, PUGs aren’t disasters, unbearable, horrible, etc, all the time.

Perhaps half the time.

Although, I can say with certainty that a good leader plays a great part in a successful PUG. So without further ado, to today’s post: How to lead your PUG to success. I will mainly focus on PUG raiding, however, everything I say can easily be applied to a 5-man context.

First things first: If this is anything larger than a 5-man, having an assistant or two, who are knowledgeable and handy, helps tremendously. Don’t randomly give assist to people who you think might invite more people. Make sure that your assistants are people whom you trust to handle things fairly and appropriately.

When I’m out to lead a raid, I’m the person who looks at the raid makeup and decides what classes/specs we want, and keeps track of the people we already have. I do things such as be on top of “Who’s tanking?” “Who’s healing?” “Who’s rolling on offspec gear?” “Do we have too many melee for KT25?” “Do we have kiters for Gluth?” “Are our priests able to MC on Raz?”.

I then tell my assistants who to look for, and they find people who fit the bill. One of us checks Armory, necessary questions are asked and answered, if all of us agree, an invite goes out.

This accomplishes a few things. First, you don’t get burned out from the responsibility of leading, because now there are other people who share it. Second, keeping track of everything, especially in a 25-man, is much easier when you delegate duties. Third, more people to discuss things with lead to easier, and in most cases fairer, solutions to problems.

So you have your raid, and you have your assistants. Time to find more people.

I’ve already written a post about how to write a good trade ad. Put yourself out there, and see what you get. Make sure you reply to everyone. I don’t care how much time it takes, make a “/r No thanks, not what we’re looking for” macro if you need to. Most people consider not getting a reply back very rude, not to mention that unless you reply, they can’t be sure you even received and read their whisper!

This is where assistants also are great, as they will help field many of the whispers themselves.

As for picking people – remember that gear, and achievements, aren’t everything. Try to pick people who have the right attitude (and yes, even a two-line whisper can give away a lot of things about your attitude). A lot of the time, I’ve recruited people with no achievement, and merely decent gear, after they were honest with me and said “Look, I’ve never done this, but I’ve read strats, watched videos, and I’m ready. Just try me.” I’ve rarely been disappointed in such recruits, whereas some people I’ve had a lot of trouble with were people who had the gear and achievement for the fight.

Striking a balance is a good thing. Decent gear, partial or no achievement, but great attitude: Gets in. Good gear, achievement, and bearable attitude: Gets in. But if any of the two lacks strongly, the person stays out. I’m not going to recruit someone who can’t pull their weight, or someone for whom I have to spare ten minutes before every boss fight to explain how it goes. It isn’t fair to the rest of raid if someone is getting carried, and during a raid, the leading team already has enough on their plate without having to deal with explaining tactics from scratch. On the other hand, I’m not going to recruit someone with a terrible attitude either, for obvious reasons.

The discussion of recruiting also brings us to another point about leading a PUG.

A bad PUG leader checks gear, checks achievements, and often has unrealistic expectations for the content that’s being done (”LFM Ulduar10, be in full T8,5″). When he gets his, in his eyes “uber”, group together, he is very sure that the instance will be cleared with no hiccups.

A good PUG leader knows that no matter how geared, skilled, and experienced people are, mistakes will happen. He sets up in his group in such a way that those mistakes will be compensated for.

My point here is that group makeup matters a lot in this compensation. While you can bring ten druids and beat Naxx10, doing that is not the fastest or the most advantageous route. Different classes bring different things to the table – and all of those things, you might need to beat the instance.

As far as classes and specs go, start by looking for diversity, and looking for balance. You know how many tanks, healers and DPS the instance requires. Now you should be picking various types of those.

Let’s say you want to bring three tanks. You can pick three warriors and they can do the job just fine – but remember, you want tanks capable of doing different flavors of jobs, so you can use different ones for different situations. Put in a warrior, a DK, and a paladin instead, and now you have:

1. A jack of all trades tank
2. A tank strong against magic damage, and bosses with occasional hard-hitting damage phases
3. A very strong AoE tank.

They all bring different things to the table, and while they can individually tank everything, they all have encounters they are best at. That little edge X type of tank has on Y boss is your mistake compensation.

Same with your healers. Six shamans? Will do the job. But it won’t be pretty. Seek diversity. Two paladins, a disc priest, a holy priest, a resto druid, and a resto shaman is a much better healing setup. You have your strong single-target healers, raid stabilizers, and massive AoE damage healers.

Last but not least, the DPS. You can’t expect to stack a single type of DPSer to success. Some fights favor melee, and some fights favor ranged. There are fights you can’t do without a healthy mix of both.

Buffs and debuffs are another important point. Anything that causes the boss to die faster, or do less damage, or gives your group more resources to do so, is something that will make up for inevitable mistakes.

In a 25-man, this doesn’t matter much. Because of the number of people involved, crucial buffs and debuffs come naturally. It’s hard to set up a PUG 25man raid that lacks Replenishment, or Bloodlust/Heroism, or basic stat buffs. In a 10-man, this changes drastically.

Blizzard has said that they balance raid encounters assuming that the group will have Replenishment. Assuming your group doesn’t completely overgear the instance, you will need someone that can provide it. Ret paladins, survival hunters, destruction warlocks, frost mages and shadow priests fill that role.

While, to my knowledge, Blizzard hasn’t said that they balance encounters around Bloodlust/Heroism, it is a massive DPS boost and can give you that final push you need. Get a shaman. Considering that shamans also come with a great variety of raidwide buffs, having one in your PUG is pretty much mandatory.

Try to get as many primary stat buffs as you can. Fortitude from a priest helps tremendously in fights that have heavy raid damage (which is pretty much everything in Ulduar). Your healers and casters love their intellect from a mage. Mark of the Wild is a nice overall stat and resist buff.

From there on, fill in the other buffs that you would like to have according to the makeup of your raid, and whether you overgear the instance. For your melee, Sunder or Expose Armor, Leader of the Pack, and a 10% AP buff from a blood DK, enhancement shaman or survival hunter are some of the basic ones you might want to have. Their magic equivalents are Curse of the Elements (warlock), Earth and Moon (moonkin) or Ebon Plague (unholy DK) for increased magic damage taken, a moonkin or elemental shaman for the 5% crit, and a spell damage totem from a shaman or the spellpower buff from a demonology warlock. Mutilate rogues, elemental shamans and ret paladins give the whole raid an extra 3% crit on the relevant mob.

There are more buffs that stack with these and can build on those – pick and choose according to your raid’s makeup. If you’re melee heavy, stacking melee buffs is to your advantage, a caster heavy raid, the other way around. At any rate, try to maximize the number of buffs given to both camps while keeping a balanced raid.

Here is an example Ulduar10 raid I might want to make. Let’s say I started off with myself, dual specced disc/holy priest. Plus my prot paladin and arms warrior friends (happens a lot these days, incidentally).

I’m going to take two tanks. I already have a strong AoE tank, so I want a strong single-target tank now. My primary choice would be a warrior, jack of all trades tank plus provides Sunders and Commanding Shout for the whole raid. However, I’m already bringing a warrior who can Sunder and CS if needed, so I’ll take a feral druid instead for all around 5% crit to all melee classes.

But really, any of the two will do, and I might prefer the prot warrior anyway because both Last Stand and Shield Wall will see some use on various chain-cooldown dependent bosses.

I have myself, healing. I want a resto druid for great raid stabilizing capability plus a combat res. In a real PUG situation, I typically leave the last healing spot open till the end – if I can find an elemental shaman, the last healing spot will be covered by a paladin. If not, I will take a resto shaman. But for now, I will assume I have an elemental shaman, so I am taking a holy paladin.

“But we have two paladins!?!?!” Yes, paladins are one of the rare classes that stack well, because they can provide different blessings. So I will not hesitate to take a second one.

Our healing team is quite well-rounded now, with a holy paladin as the strong single-target healer, a resto druid as the raid stabilizer and the holy priest on the AoE. If I get a resto shaman, I go as disc and cover the single target healing slot.

Ideally, I would take two melee DPS and three ranged ones. I’ll take an elemental shaman for amazing all-around raid buffs. If I do find a destro warlock that can supply Replenishment, I will take a mage for the last ranged spot, otherwise I’ll go for a survival hunter (a ranged Misdirect is quite handy). The reasoning here is as follows: I like having warlocks around because Soulstones and summoning stones are fairly handy to speed a raid up, they have good AoE, 13% more magic damage taken for the entire raid, and high personal DPS. Mages, if fire or FFB specced, supply a 5% spell crit debuff on the target, buffing both the elemental shaman and the warlock, and come with an intellect buff.

If my warlock cannot provide Replenishment, a hunter is the next best thing for it, however, remember that the hunter will benefit from melee buffs rather than the ranged ones.

This brings us to the melee. I’ll go for a blood DK for 10% AP for all my physical DPS plus extra threat for tanks. I already have an arms warrior for the last slot. Raid complete.

Our final lineup is:

*Tanks: Prot paladin, feral druid
*Heals: Holy priest, holy paladin, resto druid
*Melee DPS: Blood DK, arms warrior
*Ranged DPS: Elemental shaman, warlock, mage

I hope the example gave some insight into the line of thinking that goes into forming a balanced PUG. This would be pretty close to the kind of lineup that I want, with a balanced set of buffs and debuffs. I feel that this group will give me quite a high margin for error.

So you have your group, you’re all summoned, and ready to go. Part II of the series will deal with how to lead the raid during the actual raiding phase for maximum success.

A few useful code tidbits, with credit to Frohman in the Quartz comments on Curse.com and Wurzel on Xperl’s WoWAce page. These are workarounds for certain problems with Xperl and Quartz, since as of now, versions of these for patch 3.1 have not been released.

Your Quartz showing everyone’s buffs/debuffs on the target, regardless of what is yours, and driving you crazy? Try this:

Go into Interface/Addons/Quartz/Quartz_Buff. Open Buff.lua. Notepad will do.

Use the Replace function to replace all instances of “if isMine and duration > 0 then” with “if isMine == ‘player’ and duration > 0 then”.

Save the file.

Go into your Quartz folder, and if you have a folder called Buff, delete it.

Quartz should now work as it used to.

Xperl getting you down? Your druid form mana bar not showing? Here’s the solution!

Open up Interface/Addons/XPerl_Player/XPerl_Player.lua. Go to line 210. It’s a line starting with “local PlayerClass”. Delete the word “local”. Save the file, and enjoy your mana bar.

One of the most basic requirements of getting together a group, or finding a crafter, is your trade ad. The quality of your ad will directly influence whether your experience will be good. Want to know how to avoid some of the simple mistakes that make an ad a bad one? Read on!

1. Resist the temptation to use all caps. This will make a lot of people ignore your ad, and you’ll end up looking like a terribad in the process.

2. On the same note, resist the temptation to use strange punctuation, to put your add in a box, or anything else that will flood people’s chatboxes and annoy them. Don’t make people notice your ad for the wrong reasons.

3. Don’t use /y. Again, it will annoy people, and we’re trying to do the opposite here.

4. Be clear and concise in what you want. If your ad is for a raid group, make sure you mention any required achievements or specific classes/specs that you prefer. If it’s for a crafter, specify the item that you need as well as the crafter type.

5. Use good grammar, proper capitalisation, and correct spelling. This is perhaps the most important thing to do. Making your ad look professional will go a long way towards getting you what you want.

6. Add something to your ad that makes it unique! I like to add a few humorous words, as it tends to attract a better crowd. In my experience, people who get and appreciate the joke are often more mature and capable.

7. Don’t use words that might be considered offensive. People take “LFM Naxx, please have good gear and experience” a lot better than they take “LFM Naxx, no scrubs” or “LFM Naxx, no noobs”.

8. No matter what you do, do not spam the ad! It’s not like smacking your advertisement macro will get you people faster. In all likelihood, you’ll end up in the ignore list of a few people, and be reported for spamming. Be patient, and ideally put your ad out there once every 1-2 minutes.

9. When someone replies to your ad, it’s only polite to reply with “No thanks” if you don’t need their services. It’s considered rude to not reply, assuming that they will realise they are not needed, and will make people less inclined to answer your ads in the future.

Ah, what will some Naxx fights become when you cannot spam Circle of Healing anymore? Here is a small guide to help you get through!

1. Spider Wing

Anub’Rekhan: There is not much difference in this fight. You might want to wait and use CoH more than once to top off the people who were injured by his spikes, but other than that, you won’t miss your cooldown-less CoH much.

Grand Widow Faerlina: You will probably utilize Prayer of Healing and Flash Heal a lot more frequently to top off the people damaged by the Poison Bolt Volley, and those that were silly and stood in Rain of Fire.

Maexxna: Heal as normal! There is no AoE damage going around here.

2. Plague Wing

Noth the Plaguebringer: You might miss your CoH spam when the Arcane Explosion-ing adds spawn, but other than that, you can just heal as normal. There is no damage Prayer of Healing can’t heal through here. You can still heal the rest of the incidental damage, if there is any, with Renews and Flash Heals.

Heigan the Unclean: Ah, here is the first fight where you will start missing the mobility afforded by CoH spam. You no longer have a handy tool to instantly top off those that were hit by the slime, so just try to Renew them up and maybe a Flash Heal when you have time. If you have excess mana, Holy Nova is also an option, though it does not heal for much. Most priests have low HP, though, one or two hits from the slime will be the end of you, so don’t risk stopping too much to Flash Heal people.

Loatheb: Loatheb is the first real challenge without cooldown-less CoH. You really need to start abusing Prayer of Healing to heal through Inevitable Doom damage, especially at the later stages of the fight where Doom hits every 15 seconds instead of every 30. Start casting roughly two seconds before Necrotic Aura is due to expire – this gives enough time for Prayer to hit, and you can throw a CoH afterwards if it’s needed. If you have any GCD’s still left before Necrotic Aura ends, try a Holy Nova. Most of the time, only Circle of Healing will not be enough to heal all of the Deathbloom/Inevitable Doom damage.

3. Construct Wing

Patchwerk: Did you ever use CoH on Patchwerk, anyway? Spam those Greaters, and pray.

Grobbulus: Grobbulus just got a little bit harder, since a single CoH is not enough most of the time to top off all incidental damage. I found myself relying on Flash Heal a lot more, with more PoMs on nontanks. If there is a slime among the melee, Prayer of Mending on one melee will work wonders due to the slime’s AoE damage pulse. When things are going really terribly, Prayer of Healing will get you out of a bind.

Gluth: Healing through Decimate damage is now a more serious challenge, since people might get hit and die to the zombies before you load up your Prayer of Healing. If you’re on raid healing duty, CoH, Prayer of Healing, maybe toss a PoM/Renew on the tank or the lowest HP people to use up a few more GCDs before your CoH is up again. Alternately, CoH, Prayer x 2, then CoH again if it’s still needed.

Thaddius: Yet another fight where you have to lean on your Flash Heal and Renew a lot more. His Chain Lightning damage is no longer easily healable by CoH spam. If someone messed up their charge switch, Prayer of Healing might be needed. Overall, you’ll probably find yourself wishing your Circle was off cooldown quite frequently.

4. Death Knight Quarter

Instructor Razuvious: This fight is largely the same as before. His shout damage is healable by one CoH or two, and is not urgent anyway. Alternatively, hit CoH once, then Holy Nova.

Gothik the Harvester: Again, largely the same as before. On the live side you can get by without using CoH at all, but if you’re on the Undead side, you’ll probably want to be ready with quick Flash Heals and Renews, or maybe a Holy Nova, to top off incidental AoE damage that Circle can’t heal through.

The Four Horsemen: If everyone does what they’re supposed to, Meteor damage from Thane only needs one CoH or two to heal through, so if you’re healing on Thane, you won’t see much change. You will still miss cooldown-less CoH, though, to top off that silly melee who chained Holy Wrath on Zeliek. There is not much to do aside from lean on Flash Heal a lot more.

5. Frostwyrm Lair

Sapphiron: Needless to say, Sapph just got a lot harder. Make sure your assigned group is always standing together during the ground phase, because you WILL want Prayer of Healing, and you will want it a lot more often than before. PoM bouncing works wonders here as well, especially on melee that’s hard to reach with Prayer of Healing (unless you have a shaman, then you can forget about melee completely), so mash that button every cooldown for very mana efficient heals on five people. Speaking of mana, it might be an issue, so watch out.

During the air phase, healing will change significantly, and get harder since everyone will be running around and you can no longer rely on Prayer of Healing as your primary heal. Always keep PoM and CoH on cooldown while running around, and spam Holy Nova and Flash Heal to catch up on healing when you’ve got yourself comfortably settled behind an Ice Block.

Kel’Thuzad: Healing KT is largely the same as before, to everyone’s relief. KT’s raid damage is more concentrated on a few people in pre-determined intervals (Frost Blast, Frostbolt volley), instead of constant raid damage on everyone like Sapphiron, so even the new CoH will be more than enough. I can’t think of a moment in this fight where I wished my CoH was off cooldown more frequently, except if your raid messed up and got a banshee in its midst during phase 1.

Perhaps the greatest responsibility of a guild or raid leader is to remain, or at least look like they remain, in control. This both ensures that things run smoothly, and reassures your group of players that there is someone capable in charge. But how to gain the confidence and respect of your raiders, and stay in control? Here are 10 golden rules that will help you do so.

1. Be patient.

Patience is perhaps the most important virtue for a raid/guild leader. You must be patient and remain so through the five million wipes, people who misunderstand tactics, people who don’t listen to tactics, people who suddenly have to go after wipes on progression bosses, that guy who just can’t kill his ghosts/dance/not stand in the fire/explode in the right place. No matter what you do, don’t lose your temper – remember, all your raiders are looking up to you and your mood will be contagious.

2. Avoid public displays of emotion, especially negative ones.

This is an extension of being patient. Never be openly mad over voice or raid chat. Aside from not being constructive and affecting morale, the raid will be much better served and will be more fun if you will remain calm. Likewise, if you are annoyed or sad, if things are going badly, it’s best to keep your cool instead of giving your raid the message that things are about to fall apart. Be firm, be assertive, but never angry.

Furthermore, make sure the same rule is enforced among your guild/raid members too. Do not attempt to resolve highly charged issues publicly, take them to whispers or chat channels.

3. Be impartial.

Impartiality matters a lot. Whatever dispute you are presented with to resolve, never take sides, publicly or privately. Taking sides is the easiest way to antagonize people in your guild or raid group.

4. Read the mood of your raiders/guildies.

Being able to read the mood of the people you are in charge of is an important skill. Get a feel for how your raiders are, and try to act accordingly. Is your raid discouraged after countless wipes? Maybe it’s time for a pep talk or maybe you should switch bosses. Is your raid in a great mood and determined to succeed? You could just go try that boss that you couldn’t beat for ages. If everyone is tired, maybe it’s time for a raid break. A raid whose leader is empathetic will have a higher success rate than one whose raid leader is not.

5. Have a clear ruleset and make sure the rules are enforced.

This basic rule is often overlooked. Setting down clearly defined rules is one of the most important responsibilites of any leadership. Make sure the rules, and the penalty for not following them, are put down in writing someplace everyone can see them, for example, your guild forums. Encourage everyone to read them and abide by them. Then make sure the rules are enforced and those that do not follow them are appropriately penalized. Yes, even yourself and your officers. There is only one thing that looks worse than a leader who thinks they are above the rules – and that’s the leader who is unaware of the rules of his own guild.

6. Know your stuff.

It’s easy! Know the rules of your own guild/raid (it’s amazing how many people who call themselves leaders don’t bother!). Know the tactics for every boss. Know the easiest ways to kill trash. Know the abilities of not only your own, but each and every class, and the best way for every class to go about their job. It’s one of the easiest ways to command respect, and it helps your guild to boot!

On the other hand, no one likes an overbearing guildmaster, so try not to cross the line. Giving people kind advice on how they can better their play might be okay, but forcing your playstyle on them isn’t.

7. Don’t hold your praise back.

You are leading people, not machines, to success! Every guild wants to know when they have done a great job. Praise your players often and you will see you end up with a much, much better team.

8. Remember that you are representing your guild.

When you are interacting with people outside of your raid group or guild, always keep in mind that you are the direct representative of a group of players. Anything you do will also reflect on the reputation of people other than you – so remain polite, calm, and kind no matter how much you feel like acting otherwise (yes, we all know those PuGs, but try anyway).

9. Keep your raiders/guildies in the loop.

Whether it’s a merger in the works, changes in raid hours, or a new website, make sure your entire guild gets notified. Having knowledge of what’s coming up is a very easy way to make people feel at home and part of a team.

10. Listen to others.

You might be in charge of the raid or the guild, but it does not mean your opinion is the only right one. Make sure you listen to your raiders. Multiple opinions do make solving a problem easier, and most times when you are stuck, trying something different will be the key to success. Of course, your raiders need to know that there is a time and a place for suggestions, but forbidding people from speaking their mind is not constructive at all.

An anecdote: When my 40-man guild was raiding during classic WoW, we were stuck for weeks on Nefarian. No matter what we did, we could not even get through phase 1, and our guild leader was adamant that his tactic, and only his tactic, was the best one. He would quickly shut up anyone who dared to speak of a different way to do it. When Nefarian was finally downed by us, it only happened because the officers finally convinced the guild leader to do it a different way. Don’t be that guild leader.

What other rules would you add to this list?

…so it’s time for Random PvP Tips!

1. Reflective Shield. If you play 2v2 and are not specced into it, you are utterly missing out. Great freedom in battlegrounds as well – solo those pesky warriors!

1a. A good 2v2 strategy against warrior/healer teams vs rogue/priest: We go 2x 1v1s, with Rinny on the healer and me tanking the warrior. If the healer dies before me, awesome. If he doesn’t, a Blind/Fear chain when the warrior is on 50% (thanks Devouring Plague, SWP, and Reflective Shield) is usually all it takes for me and Rinny to stage a Shadowstep gib on the warrior.

2. You can safely spec out of Silent Resolve without missing it. I really don’t notice the difference when there is an enhancement shaman purging the everloving %$!& out of you while smacking you with 1k Windfury crits, which is when you really need that dispel protection.

3. 2v2 – play aggressive against healer teams, it really pays off. Smack that dispel button. Fear whenever you find an opening. Contribute with SWP, Mind Blast/SWD combos whenever your DPSer’s target gets low. It is the difference between getting that pesky druid down and seeing him heal up to full again. Focusing just on health bars is the biggest mistake you can make, bar none.

Plus, most teams really don’t expect that PI/Smitespam from 30% onwards.

4. Make sure everything you do has a point to it. Otherwise it’s just a waste of mana. For example: Have you mana burned a target to zero? Well that’s not really useful unless you can make sure they won’t go powerdrink. Have you just feared a target? Better make damn sure it was for a kill, to save someone’s ass, for an interrupt, or for a Mana Burn opening. If you can’t justify what you just did, don’t do it.

5. Prevent rogues from reopening constantly, SWP rank 1 is your friend.

6. If there is a chance you will get Blinded, save your trinket for Blind. Your trinket is your precioussssss.

6a. However, in the rogue/rogue zerg or ferlol/rogue zerg situations, it might be wise to trinket the initial 5 point Kidney so you can gtfo out of Dodge, else they can and will kill you before their stuns wear off, their entire strategy depends on this.

7. Powerdrink like your life depends on it. It usually does. Disc priests are notoriously mana inefficient, especially when you have to heal through MS effects and Mana Burn and Dispel at the same time.

8. Learn how to SWD sheeps. I haven’t. That’s why we lose against mage/rogue.

9. Holy Nova is great for getting rid of Snake Traps.

10. Downrank Holy Nova to rank 3 for Snake Traps. Downrank Psychic Scream to Rank 3 if all you ever do is 2v2 like me.

11. Against warriors, heal early, heal often. You never know when mace stun/Deep Thunder stun/Improved Hamstring/whetever else will proc at the same time, not to forget Pummel.

12. I read all the guides that say “Survive the Bloodlust” against warrior/shaman and feel like facepalming. You don’t need to survive no stinking Bloodlust – you do have a dispel button, right?

It has come to my attention that some Horde do some very stupid things in battlegrounds.

I think we all need to learn a golden rule.

IT DOES NOT MATTER IF ONE PERSON DIES. Unless said person was carrying a flag, solo defending a node, or was otherwise doing something that will ensure the team’s success, one person’s death means nothing. At. All.

Now that we have established this fact, let’s see its applications.

WSG, you’re all riding midfield to get the opposing team’s flag as a group. Suddenly, out of nowhere, one of you gets sapped/Cheap Shotted/Sheeped/Feared etc.

What happens?

a. A few of you dismount to help the teammate under attack.
b. All of you dismount, overpower the single attacker, get carried away by the even more attackers coming your way.
c. Everyone rides past.

Now, if you chose a or b, you are and/or your team have terrible tunnel vision or are just plain incompetent.

The opposing team used one or two people to split up your attacking force to ineffective numbers, or worse, delay your entire offense. They lost pretty much nothing, but meanwhile your flag grew feet and is probably midfield. So what if those one or two attackers died? Their purpose was to delay your offense, which they did exceptionally well… because you fell for the trap.

Setting: AV. Two of you resto druids are on your way in stealth to cap the DB bunkers. On the way a hunter unstealths one of you in a weak position, and gives chase along with 500 other NPCs.

What should the other druid do? Pop out and start healing despite being outnumbered and in a weak position, or just move on to cap the towers?

Yes. Move on. Move on. MOVE ON.

“But Ely OMGZWTFBBQ what about teamwork?!?!?!??!?!??!?”

That is not “teamwork”. An entire attacking team dropping everything they are doing to help a single person is not teamwork, it is getting on the slippery slope to losing.

Being a team dictates that sometimes, you take one for the team. Unless you are crucial to the team’s success at that moment, for example carrying a flag, the team is under no particular obligation to care what happens to you. The team is not there to look out for every member in every situation. The team is there to together accomplish objectives that are otherwise too hard to accomplish. That is what teamwork is.

Play smart, don’t think only of yourself (”OMG WHY DIDN’T YOU DISMOUNT AND HELP ME NOOBS YOU SUCK”), don’t look at the situation only through the eyes of your character. Always make an effort to see the greater picture. Don’t get tunnel vision.

That is all.

P.S For even more detailed articles on this, check out these posts.

…Except not.

With AV weekend rolling in EU realms at the moment, a lot of games are being played. In my battlegroup AV is by far the most honor/hour so if any character needs honor I stick them into AV. Starlet has just hit 70, as a result, she is seeing the inside of many AV games at the moment (gogo nonset epics).

I was just in a match where the first thing the Horde made contested was Stonehearth Graveyard. Protests went up in /bg, and I got into a debate with someone who believed that capping SH GY and holding it early would make it much easier for Horde to win.

Now, this could not be any further from the truth, and here is why.

Assume that Aid Station and SP have not yet made contested, and Snowfall is Horde dominated or contested (ie start of a match). From north to south, the spots Alliance can resurrect at are:

1. Aid Station
2. SP Graveyard
3. Cave
4. SH Graveyard

Let’s say you just made SH Graveyard contested. Guess where the Alliance forces will resurrect?

No, not the cave. The game has been changed so that if one or more graveyards (read: graveyard, not spawn point) are available to any one side, they will always use the _closest_ of those graveyards to res at, closest meaning the closest to their death point. If there are no graveyards available to the side, they will res at their starting point.

As a result, capping SH Graveyard will cause the entire Alliance force, that is offense AND defense, to res at SP Graveyard. Now by implication, the entire Alliance team is defending.

This results in either A) A reinforcement war, where towers and bunkers frequently get capped/recapped and the game ends up being tied to HKs instead of a fast and clean Vann/Drek kill B) An Alliance win should some of them manage to get past the Horde offense now ressing at Stonehearth and take Frostwolf, Relief, Snowfall or Iceblood.

In the first case, it is near impossible to cap Dun Baldar bunkers with 20+ defenders constantly ressing at SP or Aid, let alone any of those graveyards, since Horde has to run a longer distance than Alliance to reach where the action is. If Horde has decent defenders who manage to recap their graveyards as they are made contested, and if IW and SH bunkers are down (which they more than likely will be), Horde wins by reinforcements – but you just defeated the point of queuing for AV since you could get 300 honor in 45 minutes in some other battleground, too. If Alliance manages to make FW or Snowfall contested, it’s an autoloss, and a long, painful one at that.

On the other hand, if SH is never made contested:

1. Until Frostwolf/IB gets capped, the entire Alliance offense is ressing at SH, far, far from where the action is. This buys you a lot more time to recap towers and graveyards.
2. A not-unconsiderable amount of the defense is ressing at SH, again far from where the action is.
3. If SH is made contested after Aid and SP GY are safe, now they are ressing at their cave, guaranteeing that it will take any of them ages to get to any trouble spot on the map.
4. Making a graveyard contested/capping it gives no extra honor, so it loses you absolutely nothing.

An argument is that not making SH contested makes capping SH and IW bunkers a lot harder since they are more easily defendable. In my experience, this is simply not true – in only about 20% of all matches I play is there an _organized_ opposing force defending and recapping SH and IW, regardless of which graveyard is contested. Most attacks can be thwarted by simply having three to four people guarding a bunker at any one time.

To sum up, capping SH graveyard before Aid and SP are Horde controlled forces a lot of the Alliance team into defending Dun Baldar, therefore causing either a prolonged match or a Horde loss. The Alliance equivalent of the above would be capping Iceblood early in the game with similar results.

*is the name of Elysiane’s RMP 3v3.