Like i promised in the MC thread i will begin with some sort of strategy guide for endgame raids like Zul Gurub and Molten Core. The reason i'm doing this is because these instances require everyone in the raid to work together as a team. The things you need to do are in itself not different from doing 'normal' instances, but failing to do the things needed will cause alot of wipes, which aren't needed.
Before i begin i have to say i don't know everyting. I'm just gonna write what i've observed during 2 succesful raids with groups that know how it has to be done and are fairly succesful in their raids. The things i'm gonna state may very well be not the best things, so please feel free to add/comment if you think otherwise.
Personal setup
The 1 thing EVERYONE should have installed is CT_RaidAssist (ctra). This is an essential addon that you NEED to have. I would even go as far as us kicking everyone out of the raid who doesn't have ctra. It provides the raid with a very clear form of communication. The raidleader can give instructions to everyone that appear on the top of your screen and that play a sound to warn you. These messages are hard to miss and that is why this mod is essential. The chat screen is easy overlooked in the heat of the fight. Also it gives the tanks the abbilty to tell everyone when to hit the mob in the same way as the raidleader.
For people that can remove spells from players (mages/priests) a mod called Decursive is also very very much wanted. You can bind it to a key and by just pressing that key it tries to remove spells from players. So no more need to select a player first, then press the button and start looking for more people to remove things from. Everything is handled by pressing the key you have bound to decursive. In some fights you don't do anything else then pressing this key, because curses need to be removed as soon as possible.
For the rest there's lots of nice addons you can use to make your live easier, but thats up to you.
Raid setup
The ideal setup for a group is different for every instance. It depends on mobs you're gonna encounter and may even be different for each boss in the same instance.
That doesn't mean you can only do it with that ideal setup. Blizz has done a great job in balancing the classes to a point that there's even discussion about who is the better tank (warrior or druid) or the best healer (priest, druid) etc. So idealy you want x priests for a raid, but having a few druids replace priest isn't gonna make the raid fail. However going into MC with 40 mages probably is gonna fail
Esential in a raid
There are 3 roles essential in every raid, namely raidleader (which i'll discuss later) healers and tanks. In every endgame instance you need at least 2 tanks and mostly more. These tanks are there to take the beating so need to be definsive(?) specced. The tank with the best gear should be the Main Tank (MT). That is because he will get the most and the hardest hits. If you're fighting that nasty boss the MT will be the one standing in front of him and getting most of the damage.
Next to the MT there are 1 or more Off Tanks (OT).
Also healers are very important in raids. There should be enough to keep the tanks alive and preferably some backup healers that can step in when Main Healer(MH) is out of mana and that can keep an eye on the rest of the raid and do some heals when needed. But most important task of healers in the group is to keep the tanks alive.
The raidleader
While in the fight the tanks and healers are the most important persons, during the entire raid the raidleader is by far the most important element. There should be 1 person who calls the shots. He/She (will refer to raidleader as he but she is just as good) is the one telling the rest what to do. This is a very hard job and i don't think everyone can do it (i know i can't). This person needs to be able to react fast, type fast, know lots about macro's, ctra etc. Also i think this person has to make tough calls. He is the one ultimately making the call as to who gets/can roll that nice epic in case there is discussion. He is also the one kicking someone for not doing what has to be done and thats not nice to do if it is one of your own guildies.
For reasons like this it has to be someone that everyone thrusts and respects. And that person has to keep that respect. Making to many bad calls will ultimately result in people wanting someone else calling the shots and 1 ninja epic that goes to your good friend when it shouldn't have will cause people to fight/leave.
The raidleader should also know about what we are up against. So lots of strategy guide reading is needed, because he tells the rest what to do/ where to stand etc. Offcourse things go wrong in this, espacially if you are somewhere for the first time. It's his job to learn from the mistakes and try something else next time.
That doesn't say the rest can't have input in what to do. If you think you know what to do tell it to the raidleader and it's his job to determine if it's viable or not. But in the end everyone MUST do what the raidleader says. Even if you know it's gonna go bad (and have told the Raidkeader so) if he is gonna do his way anyway you must do his calls (and wipe if you were right
) Because having half of the raid doing something else as then the other half is a disaster.General things
Everyone in the raid should keep the raid channel (/raid) as clean as possible. So no chatting/joking or what ever on the raidchannel. This channel is used for things that involve the raid you are in. Raidleader tells his strategy in the raid channel, assigns targets for crowd control (hi sheep
) says who can roll on that nice epic etc. So 39 others having a nice discussion about what they are gonna do next weekend is a sure way that alot of people miss important information.Some raids forbid even the talk of strategy in raid channel, but the 2 i was in did these sort of things in raidchannel, as it is taking place before the fight or after a wipe. Offcourse when downing a boss everyone is shouting in raidchannel and thats not a problem either as long as its over before the next fight.
Most raids create an extra channel for players to comunicate with each other for things like ?can i have water?, ?stam buff please? etc.
The thing is that everyone keeps his chatting to a minimum. If you want to have a nice discussion about the meaning of live go do it somewhere else.
No-one should ever loot when we are still fighting. This so called combat looting is very very annoying as it forces people to look at it and make a descission for need or greed while they should concentarte on the fight. In some cases people have buttons in the middle of the screen to be able to click fast on that button (some healers for instance) and having the loot window pop in front of that can be a disaster.
Offcourse here accidents will happen but you should watch this and learn not to loot as fast as you can (what you did when leveling to 60
). Also when there is a target immobilized (sheep/banish etc) you are still in combat, so don?t loot then. A helpful thing to do to see if you are still in combat is to place a abbility on the lowest bar that can only be used when out of combat. These ability?s (i have drink/eat on my lowest bar) willl be faded when you are in combat. So in case of a wandering sheep, that you might not see, you can check this button to see if you are in combat or not.Also take note that if there is someone dead you should not loot. Don?t know if it?s true but there are reports of people not getting loot they won on a roll when they were dead at the time the roll was taking place.
So don?t loot until the fight is over and everybody is alive again.
The Fights
Ok now on with the most exiting part of a raid, the killing
.The most important thing about fights is that you want to fight as few mobs at 1 time as possible. So crowd control is very important here. If you are facing 3 mobs you should try to immobilzie 2 of them and fight the third. This can be done by sheep, shackle, sap, sleep, banish or frost traps(although they don?t last very long). What to use depends on the mobs you are fighting.
The raidleader assigns targets for what to immobilize and who has to do it. In Zul Gurb for instance mages have to do alot sheeping and raidleader tells each mage what his sheeping target is. Something very usefull in this process is the assist command. You can assist everyone by selected that players portrait and then pressing the F key. The target the person has selected when you assist him will then become your target. This way raidleader can select a mob, call the name of a person who should crowd control that mob, who in his turn presses the F key and by doing so selects the mob he has to sheep/banish ect. Then raidleader moves to the next mob and repeats the process until every mob is selected by the right person. Mages can (and should if they are in range) cast ?detect magic? on the mob they are gonna sheep, so the rest can see that it is being sheeped by the debuf slot that appears under the portrait of the mob when you select it.
If everything is allright only 1 mob remains and this is the target for the Main Tank(MT). Everyone who doesn?t have crowd control duty should select the MT and then press the F key to assist the MT on his mob. In CTRA it is also possible to show all the tanks targets on screen and this is used also very much. You then get a little lifebar for the targets of each tank and you can simply click that lifebar to assist that tank.
After everything is selected the fight starts with the pull. Mostly MT shoots his target, or runs to it and starts the fight that way. All crowd controllers then use their spell to sheep/banish etc their target.
In some fights however you start with the crowd control and have the mob you want to fight running to you and have the MT intercept it. How the pull is done depends on the situation and the call what to use is given by the raidleader.
After MT has engaged the mob and the rest of the mobs is crowd controlled the rest of the raid does absolutely nothing at all. This is very important. The only people that can do something are healers, if they need to heal the MT or crowd controllers if their target breaks the immobilizing. No one should be doing ANY damage. Not 1 arrow gets fired, not 1 bolt gets cast. NOTHING. All have to wait a number of seconds before they do any damage to the mob. The MT has to build up his aggro with the mob and that is vital to success in the fight. Depending on the mob this can take a few seconds to maybe even 20 or 30 seconds. If you don?t give him time the mob will break loose from the MT and will come running after you. Alot of the rest of the raid are cloth/leather wearers and can be killed by 1 or 2 hits. So MT losing aggro is reason for alot of wipes during the raid.
The MT has special spells to increase the aggro he has on the mob, but needs rage in his ragebar for these spells, and he starts the fight with no rage. When he is getting hit by the mob his rage starts to build up, so that is way the rest has to wait, to give the tank time to generate rage. When the MT feels he has enough rage and enough aggro with the mob he will make the call that the rest can start attacking. He should make a macro for this that gives everyone a CTRA message that they can start hitting (usually called Damage Per Second - DPS). Depending the mob it might be necessary to start doing damage slowly. Especially bosses break free from the MT easy and then it is needed that the MT builds more aggro.
Aggro is generated by how much damage you do to the mob. The one that does the most damage will be attacked by the mob. However there are spells that next to their damage can have an impact on the aggro you gain. Some spells don?t do much damage but create alot of aggro, so you might get to the top of the aggro list by using these spells. If you aren?t a tank you should never use spells that generate high aggro as it will have the mob attack you. MT offcourse uses these spells alot to stay on top of the aggro list.
There are also spells that don?t do much aggro or talents that reduce the aggro you generate with your spell. You should use these spells as much as possible.
So the MT gives the call how much damage the rest can do. Usually he has 3 macros?s that tell people what to do :
1. Stop DPS (or no DPS) ? If MT calls for this you should stop doing damage immidiately
2. Slow DPS ? You can attack the mob, butdon?t use your most powerfull spells/attacks. There are several ways to do little damage. 1 is using lower rank spells which do less damage. Another is waiting a few seconds between each spell. If you have low aggro spells/talents you could use that spell
3. Full DPS ? Now you can go full out on your most powerfull spells and kill the mob as fast as possible. But you have to watch it that the MT doesn?t make a Stop DPS call. If he does you stop immidiately.
So its?s the MT?s job to tell the rest when to attack and with how much power. He can screw this up, like any of us can screw things up by calling Full DPS too soon. A MT has to learn this too. Every new boss we fight might take a different time before we can start our DPS and the MT has to figure out how long this time is. This means that chances are high we wipe the first few times because DPS call comes too soon and MT can?t hold aggro. Don?t blame the MT for this, he?s learning too. Also some mobs/bosses have special abbilities to break away from the MT so he can do nothing about it. In these cases its just part of the fight that the mob breakes loose.
However if the MT continues to loose aggro all the time he might not be the right person to be the MT and should be replaced. This sounds abit hard, but not everyone is good at everything and having good tanks is essential for success.
If for some reason the mob breaks loose from the MT another tank should pick the mob up as soon as possible. This is often called the Off Tank (OT), although offtanking can be something else too, which i shall explain later. He has to prevent the mob from running to the healers/cloth/leather wearers. The rest of the raid should stop their attacks as soon as the mob breaks loose. They have to wait until the OT has picked up the target. In some raids the MT returns to the mob and takes it back from the OT and in some other raidgroups the OT becomes the new MT and the old MT should be ready to function as new OT. What is to be used can be discussed but should be clear to everyone.
After the mob is picked up by a tank again the same things apply as with the start of the fight, because the MT has to rebuild his aggro again. So everyone has to wait for the MT to call for DPS again before they coninue their attacks.
If you were assigned a target to crowd control you should keep it immobile at all costs. If you have sheeped (using sheep as example as i am a mage) a mob you should keep it sheeped at all times. This requires you to keep an eye on your sheep at all times and recast the sheep spell as soon as it breaks out of it.
Usually there is enough DPS in the raid with hunters, rogues and warlocks and when that is the case i would strongly recommend you not attacking at all. You keep your sheep selected and recast as soon as it breaks. It is very hard to know which sheep is yours when there are 2 or more wondering about and you are in the middle of the fight. This may seem a bit boring and in fact it is but it helps the group and thats whats the most important thing. At some point during the fight your sheep is up for killing and after that you can do your damage. In other fights you can?t sheep but the mobs are banished, so its the locks turn to do nothing.
The thing is that you can take 1 mob, maybe 2 but 3 or 4 usually means a wipe. So if your sheep breaks and you do nothing about it YOU are to blame for the wipe. Offcourse accidents do happen and no-one should yell at you for making a mistake, but doing so very often might lead to you being removed from the raid, because you do more harm then good.
After the first mob is down the MT selects another target and the rest should assist him on this new target. The whole thing starts from the beginning and this repeats until all mobs are dead.
This way fights really are very easy.
In some cases you can?t immobilize all the mobs, because there are too many or they are immune the spells. I?ll give an example on how to fight then using 2 mobs but the same goes for 3,4 etc.
If there are 2 mobs, the mobs are assigned to 2 tanks. The biggest, meanest mob gets assigned to the MT (who had the best gear remember). The other mob to an OT. Both tanks pull their mob or charge to it. They both start hitting their mob and start to build aggro. The rest does nothing again (except healing if needed ofcourse).
The first mob to go down is the OT?s target, so everyone should assist him first. The OT has lesser gear so dies easier, so his mob should go first. When OT makes the call everyone attacks his mob same way as described above. When this mob is dead everyone switches to the MT?s target and should be able to start their DPS immidiately, because the MT should have enough aggro already. But do keep an eye out for slow DPS or NO DPS calls!
If there are more then 2 mobs the order in which mobs are killed is determined by the raidleader and he should call the next the next mob to take when the current is almost dead, He should name the name of the tank (OT) who?s target is next up for killing. He should let you know through a CTRA message.
The above is however a general outline on how most fights should be. In special cases or with some bosse a different startegy might be needed. In that case the raidleader has to inform us on the new strategy.
In most fights however this is how it should go. In fact it shouldn?t be necesary to explain this before every fight (1 of the reasons Seikou was going so slow through ZG imo). All that has to be done is selecting of targets to crowd control (so everyone who can do this should be ready for this) and the tanks have to select their target. Then raidleader says ?Go? and the above process starts and when everyone knows what to do you?ll be racing through the instance (for example we did 3 bosses in ZG with the vexilium group in less then 3 hours with a few wipes with 1 of the bosses too, once they figure out how to beat this boss it should take them no more then 2 hours to kill 3 bosses).
Healing
One very important aspect in any instance is the healing, but i don?t have any endgame healing experience so can?t tell you much about that.
One thing i know is that keeping the tanks alive is vital (duh) and that everyone else should keep the healers alive (duh again)
It would be nice if a healer could add to this.
Ok i can?t think of anything else for the moment so thats it then.
If you feel i?m wrong or would like to add something please do so. I know i don?t know everything and certainly don?t know everything about every class so please shoot at this !
) everyone had some kind of buff food ready, pots stored n ready, repair bots etc and ppl helped with the gathering/farming/attaining useful recipes etc