A Guide to Serious Raiding

[LSPrimigenia]

Bumping, maybe will reach some new readers.

[Deleted]

You dont "need" damage or healing meters or addons as part of your UI, it is distracting and can cause you to tunnel or play bad.

If you are in a "Serious raiding" guild then your guild will be live logging and you can check it after every pull to see what you want to see.

While damage meters are nice its not required to be a serious raider, other then that....nice read.

[Claynoe]

It's a very nice guide. I think some people might have misunderstood the title, but it is indeed a guide to serious raiding. However, the serious raiding is more going from doing normals ----> doing heroics and actually making progress. In general, a guide for new(ish) players and not the people that already play in top 200 guilds.

Still a good read and some points made me rethink a few things. Maybe I should replace my wooden chair with something more comfortable?

[Deleted]

You lost me at "top-tier raider for the past three expansions" when you haven't even finished clearing normal modes.
Have you ever been in a top tier guild, cause wowprogress does not reflect that. ?

[LSPrimigenia]

Still amazes me how many people just go straight for the ad-hominem and ignore the wall of text that the post was actually about.

[Nairobi]

Still amazes me how many people just go straight for the ad-hominem and ignore the wall of text that the post was actually about.

Ironically, it's almost ALWAYS the ones that actually NEED the advice in said wall-of-text that jump straight towards character attacks without even attempting to glean any useful information.

Gotta love this generation of gamers/people in general.

[pld]

There are quite a few heroic raiders who browse this forum, so there was probably some misinterpretation with your wording. While everything you wrote was definitely valid, I think it's also fair for someone to run a quick check on the author to see if his experience actually backs up his claims of being a "top-tier raider". That term is subjective, but for someone who's probably in a top 200 guild, it may not meet their credentials or expectations.

THAT SAID -

I thought you had a lot of good points. One thing I would definitely add in the UI section is to make sure you keep it clean. I've seen so many UIs where people try to stuff as much as possible into the center of the screen it just ends up getting cluttered and even more confusing. People should decide what they NEED to see at all times and what they could reposition off to the side.

For instance, it may not be super important for a DPS to see health bars of the entire raid at all times, but it would be absolutely necessary for a healer.

Also, personal preference, but I never saw the need for scrolling combat text. It's nice to have, but I've found it to be more of a distraction than anything else. I'm rarely looking at the numbers during the fight anyway.

[MoanaLisa]

This guide isn't too useful for anything. It's too basic, has no depth and it's target audience doesn't exist: If you want to be a serious raider, enough that you could actually achieve it, nothing in this guide is news to you.

It's a good starter guide for people that wonder if Normal/Heroic raiding is really any different than LFR. As to all the criticisms about it being basic, well...basic guides are necessary to have around as building blocks for the more complicated stuff. One of the things that repeatedly comes up is that 'guides' generally assume too much prior knowledge, especially for anyone that has never really played in that area. There are still more people who have never stepped into a raid than have and if you take LFR out of that equation, the difference is overwhelming. So more basic and introductory things should be welcome.

Nicely done. Glad you took the profanity and such out.

As to whether or not there's a target audience for it, I think there clearly is and point that remark at anyone who has ever complained about anyone that appeared lost in a raid and unsure of what exactly to do. I see people like this in LFR frequently so there's an audience. Whether or not they're willing to read the thing is another question and not really the point. Having it available will make someone better and to that extent improve someone's raid experience at whatever level.

In any case, bookmarked to send people to. Sorry I missed this the first time around.

[Nakkí]

Interesting read. Thanks.

[Almonds1]

Great read for raiders looking to bridge the gap between normal and heroic progression raiding with an atmosphere full of people looking to do the same thing. This would be a great thread to a number of guilds out there looking for the tool to motivate or influence a change in productivity amongst their ranks.

[Tseng]

SAID -

I thought you had a lot of good points. One thing I would definitely add in the UI section is to make sure you keep it clean. I've seen so many UIs where people try to stuff as much as possible into the center of the screen it just ends up getting cluttered and even more confusing. People should decide what they NEED to see at all times and what they could reposition off to the side.

For instance, it may not be super important for a DPS to see health bars of the entire raid at all times, but it would be absolutely necessary for a healer.

Also, personal preference, but I never saw the need for scrolling combat text. It's nice to have, but I've found it to be more of a distraction than anything else. I'm rarely looking at the numbers during the fight anyway.

Some very good points, when watching videos I'm often amazed how many people clutter up their UI to an extent where they are in fact no longer able to get any useful information out of it.
When building an UI I would suggest a bottom-up approach: Start with nothing and only add elements that actually give you information during the fight.
For example:

x) Combat text: Debatable, imo the only valuable information is "parry" to realize youre positioning is wrong
x) Healing text: Clutter, deactivate
x) DPS/Heal Meter: No valuable information infight (but very high distraction potential), great information between fights - have some option to minimize it
x) Boss timers: Customize so you only see bars that are actually relevant to YOU


And one of the most underrated things: Addons that utilize SOUND - I know that many people like to listen to music while raiding, but for serious progression this is a No-Go in my opinion. Unless you got Jedi-like precognition, GTFO will enhance your "walk out of the fire" reaction time, believe me.
I also like to use BigWigs' emphasize option on the most important ability per boss fight - you will be able to mentally associate the "5, 4, 3, 2, 1" sound with the upcoming boss ability while staying completely focussed onto the game-world.
And the most important thing: Sound adds valuable information without creating UI clutter at all .