How to improve raid awareness and dying less in raiding.

[chooi]

- build your UI with the most important information (player health, cooldowns, debuffs, WeakAuras, boss timers) around the center of your screen
- remove all the unnecessary information from screen and put less relevant information around the edges
- use WAs with sound warnings!
- setup BigWigs/DBM to only show relevant mechanics for you and emphasize/countdown the most important/lethal mechanics
- analyze your fails and understand what you did wrong and could do better next time
- understand boss mechanics and use movement/damage reduction CDs preemptively
- focus on surviving, reducing damage taken and playing mechanics properly on progression first, then try to maximise DPS/HPS when you feel safe
- analyze personal and raid positioning, you can avoid/minimize certain fails by better positioning or playing different strats
- do not backpeddle or keyboard turn & keybind everything (mentioning this just in case...)

[Zantera]

In my experience high keys really help with awareness and getting better as it's a more "intense" experience than what raids can be sometimes. Other than that like others have said, I suggest removing as many distractions as possible and to really be 100% focused during the encounter. Being prepared for when an ability comes where you may have to move and so on.

[crono14]

I don't know your preparation at all, but I find understanding each mechanic in the fight is almost the #1 way of staying alive. If you are always playing re-actively, you will always be slow to either move out of things or prepare for abilities that might kill you. For example, if you know an ability is coming and you might need to spread out to prevent yourself or others around you dying, you can do so a few seconds before you need to. Some of this also comes with attempts and feeling more comfortable on fights.

Overall some people just learn fights quicker than others. Don't rely on your raid or others to hand-hold you through fights. Learn your mechanics and be a proactive player in regards to your play style. Things like weak auras and boss mods absolutely help, but you I think preparation is the best thing.

[JepJepa]

Muscle memory for me is huge part. I dont learn anything if i just read up tactics (ofc Basic stuff you gotta know) but when i die To certain thing its highly unlikely not To die again To same mechanic. Unless its healing issue ofc

[Druitz]

I am the healer

this can be the problem. while dps can braindead button spam 1 2 3 with occasional tab for target switch you need to watch raid frames. Try to move raid frames into position that will let you watch other things.

Also check your ui. maybe you dont see anything because of 8383884849 addons? or you dont have "must have" addons? idk why but some pll turn their brains off and download all those addons that tell them EVERYTHING -maybe try it.

[DreamSlaveOne]

UI and multitasking training is a must for a healer.

[Hoofey]

He is a healer tho. Last thing he needs to hear people yelling at him for their failures.
Less stress = better healer
Last thing you need is a distracted healer. They have addons to warn them abauth standing in fire. And addons to see if your hp is low.
Also you make plans before raid, not in middle of it.

You obviously havent raided at a high level.
People dont yell at others for failing in high end guilds. Discussing what happened, talking about what went wrong etc, yeah. But it takes a whole new level of stupid to make people yell in well organized guilds, and if that happens you probably deserve to be yelled at.

Having raidlead mythic raids for years, I would instantly replace a raider if I found out he had muted comms.
Being able to adjust on the fly, taking calls to ress, replace someones important task if they died etc is paramount at a higher level.

If you're sitting in your own world, listening to music as the raid falls apart just because you didnt hear the call to do something important, you have no place in high-end raiding.

[Sarnaxxx]

Hi there.

So I am in a quite a good raiding guild now and I enjoy raiding with them quite a lot. I have always been seen on as quite good raider. No one ever picked on my skills during my 13 years of semi hardcore raiding.

However, I keep analyzing our logs from raiding and the most interesting section to me is the bottom part of the death section. I find myself on progression sometimes in the lower half part of the people when it comes to staying alive. I average around 80-90%. Which means I am alive 80-90% of entire evening of raiding while we are in combat on bosses. The upper better part of the guild are more in the 85-95% area.

I would like to improve this. I do prepare quite a lot for the fights. Watch movies beforehand, like Fatboss, Stankie guides. I read up on the abilities etc. I still end up like 2-3 dying to really stupid things during progression. I hate letting my guild down or halting them, though I have never been told I am doing so.

So finally, the question is how can improve this? How can someone be better at deal with not just dodging bad stuff, but handle overlapping mechanics on the fly. I play a healer role by the way so I the hard part balancing my attention on watching healthbars, my cooldowns, timers and whats going on around my character.

Thanks in advance for any advice that helps me be a better gamer.

Half of the solution is complete. You realize that you are not a perfect raider and actually have the desire to improve. I have been out of the raiding world for a while but alot of good suggestions in here.. talk to your guild. Talk to the guild leader.

[NPI]

Anyone knows a good camera settings, which works for bosses like Opulence?

[Tesshin20]

Thanks for advice so for. They are all really good. Some of you asked for my UI or a movie to further guide me.

This is one of them. From Warlords of Draenor which isn't that long time ago in wow terms.

[Nikkaszal]

Customise your UI to put everything front and centre. You want all your "need-to-know" stuff in on place, so you can see ot AND your character simultaneously. The biggest error you can make with silly deaths is glancing left to see your own HP and then glancing down to see your cooldowns while at that moment fire is in the middle of your screen under your feet.

On each character I play, I use a similar setup with ElvUI. My character is in the middle, with a small gap of absolutely free space to allow me to see what's in my immediate vicinity. Just below that is my class power bar (mana/rage etc) and cast bar if applicable, and immediately below that I have a small row of double-sized actionbar buttons where I slot in copies of my most important spec cooldowns. For example, as Frost Mage I have IV, Orb, CmS (if talented), Ebonbolt, Glacial Spike (for the big glow when I have 5 icicles, in case I lose track) and Shimmer. All these important cooldowns are right in my line of sight, so I never need to look at my actionbars for any reason whatsoever.

As a bonus, this whole package from the power bars to the action buttons are designed to fade into invisibility when not in combat, so it limits clutter when you don't need it.

When I'm playing a healer, I set it up a little differently - I use that space for my party/raid frames and stick my cooldowns on two vertical rows either side.

The idea is you never want to have to have your eyes leave your character at all, except in situational cirsumstances. You'll find yourself far more reactive and responsive to your surroundings when you're focussed just on one spot.

[Baroclinic]

Practice and persistence.

Very few people start out perfect, but the more time you spend dodging crap or whatevs, generally the better you get at it.

Also good healers for when you do mess up, heal potions for a second chance of "hope no one saw that" and heal stones.

[Vargulf the Happy Husky]

just practice. fuck all the add ons, except dbm...and your healing add on i guess.

just throw yourself into as many different scenarios as you can and learn your character as much as possible. that way you dont have to think about what buttons to press, only getting out of fire.

[neildown]

As a healer its easy to get caught focusing on the health bars while crap is going on around you - GTFO is a great addon and the rest will just come down to learning the fight

[Baine]

Iam surprised no one said: git gud /thread.

[beelgers]

Your question reminded me of this article from years ago, but most of it is probably just as valid today
http://iam.yellingontheinternet.com/...acticed-skill/

[Marrilaife]

Tbh I'd add to the advice about UI, too much stuff is clutter, too little and you lack information. Boss mods usually by default only signal abilities that can target you, but feel free to tweak with them so you see the abilities that can kill you. Weak aura packages are good, but even better if you can customize what you actually care about instead of 20 cooldowns and 10 raid abilities flashing your screen at once.

Same with raid frames / healing addons, they should show important debuffs (that require dispel or heavy spothealing) but not every possible thing.

Personally I don't even show flying numbers and dps meter during combat because it distracts me, I can check these things after encounter has concluded.

Anyone knows a good camera settings, which works for bosses like Opulence?

Opulence isn't that big of a deal when you have the timer for deadly abilities like the flame breath thing so you know to be behind the robot before he casts it. For some weird reason I've seen raiders who have timers disregard them and do stuff like drop gold under the boss in p2 even though they have big chat bubble gold is on them...

Now if someone told me how do you turn camera on the gnome boss when you're shrunk so you can actually see fires coming from the sides, I would be happy. When you're normal size, you can put camera top down and see them coming from all sides, but when you're small the camera pans behind the character with no way to move it up so you have very narrow field of view...

[grippo]

Get WA for the bosses then edit them with sound files for the stuff that is going to oneshot you make it loud. As a healer you will often be watching raid frames which cannot be right on top of your charecter where dps or tanks will be looking most of the time making it eaiser for them to know whats happening with the boss. Find an area for your raid frames that suit you and allows you to see both your charecter and raid frames without having to move your eyes around to much. A lot of people have them at the bottom of their screen for me personally I have them to the left in the center all just a personal preference but you need to find what works for you.

Another thing to consider when learning a fight is if you have the triat that increase your primary stat but increase damage taken below 25% hp take it off. As you get better at the fight and handling mechnics put it back on for the dps or HPS increase.

[tclphz]

As a healer I have always tried to rely on audio as much as possible. Making WA's with audio I can recognize and get my immediate attention and modify DBM to have sound queue for only the most important things during the encounter. Having DBM bars next to your healingbars/grid works well for me so I can easily follow the progress through the fight if healing require too much attention.
I have not tried it myself, but I could imagine if you get an eye-movement-tracker to show where your focus of attention is through the entire fight this could probably help as well to show if you are keeping your attention too much on the health bars of your raid or something else.

Like most people here have said; know the fight. I would advise to learn the entire fight and not just "what you have to do as a healer", memorizing the entire fight makes it easier for you to react to what is comming next and still have excess to track your char.

Agree strongly on this. I too use audio for as much as possible. I keep my DBM bars right under my character. I try to keep my eye movement right around from where my frames are and my character. Jeathebelle on his stream also talked about using a different language on DBM as that'll be something that's out of the ordinary and forces your attention to go to that. I changed all my DBM voice outputs to Chinese (I do understand Chinese).

Similar to what Samsalittle said, learn the fight very well. Learn when there's bad overlaps or timings when you might die. More likely than not, deaths will come at similar points in the fight. For those parts get ready to use defensive, health pot, healthstones. Know what kills you and what doesn't.

My mindset is that you can't heal if you're dead. So unless there is someone who needs to survive more than me (usually tank or maybe another healer), I'm not going to stand in mechanics in order to pump out healing.

- - - Updated - - -

Anyone knows a good camera settings, which works for bosses like Opulence?

I've kept the camera angle the same. And instead twist my character around so that I can keep the camera constant.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I find that the only way forward to improve my own performance was to move my UI to be centered around the character model.
It also helps to play BM Hunter, but you'd be surprised how many players can't simultaneously utilize the BM freedom of movement + the damage potential + given tasks such as baiting or absorbing etc.

I'd say that making every piece of information centered around the character/slightly to the side and above helped me greatly with awareness. This goes for any class I play. That, and checking the fight out in video form, text form and in-game via the Dungeon Journal.

Also, audio cues. Can be downloaded for DBM, not sure about BigWigs.