UI Review - Curse you Curse

Talk of the day is Curse no longer doing for free what they promised to do, but trying to scam us out of money for it instead now. Other bloggers have spoken their mind on the issue already, I agree mostly with them, and think that Curse is shooting themselves in the foot, but for the moment it does mean that we'll have to live with it.

So with the 'update all addons' button now costing 5$ per month, I figured it was a good time to clean out the addon folder and leave as few installed as possible, since the less there , the easier the updating process.

I've recently upgraded my system and went from a 17" monitor to a 24" widescreen. I didn't get rid of the old monitor, so I'm now running a dual monitor setup. This means that there are a lot of addons I don't have to run in game but can simply look up the information online.

Let see what I have installed before cleanup:

• Ackis Recipe List
• Align
• Atlasloot
• Auctionator
• Bagnon
• ButtonFacade
• Carbonite Quest
  
• Cartographer
• Chinchilla
• Classtimer
• Clique
• Curse Profiler
• Dominos
• DrDamage
• Elkano's BuffBars
• Gatherer
• Ghost: Mount
• Grid
• Higherlearning
• InspectEquip
• Itemrack
• Minimalist
• MinimapButtonBag
• Monkeyquest
• nUI
• Omen3
• OPie
• Ratingbuster
• Recount
• Swatter
• TomTom
  
• Deadly Boss Mods
  

Wow, that' s quite a list. And to think that there's a couple that I don't even have turned on. Which does make it a lot easier. Lets get rid of a couple.

• Ackis Recipe List
  An addon that lets you track which recipes you have and are missing. When I installed it I figured it might be handy, in the end I ended doing nothing with it.
  
• Align
  This addon shows a grid on your screen so that you can neatly put your bars at the exact right spot. Everybody speaks highly about it, I never used it. I just configured my bars by eye, worked fine for me.
  
• Button Facade
  I had a whole pile of different once, so I figured I would get rid of the ones I'm not using since they all are considered a separate addon if you have to update them. I Adorn: Dark Round.
  
• Carbonite Quest
  This mod is handy while doing the quests for the first time. I have 3 80s, I think I know where to find the quests now. Besides this, they can say that they're compatible with the current WoW version, for me it's buggy as hell
• Cartographer
  The Blizzard UI has gotten better and better, and so have their maps. Since I have all my maps filled in, I had switched this one off a while ago already. So to the bin it goes. I can advise this mod if you don't have all of the maps filled in yet to use this mod though!
• Chinchilla
  This mod allows you to change the position and appearance of your minimap. I love it, but since quest tracking has changed (and apparently has been attached to the minimap) this mod has been buggy. I kept getting messages that I could not track this or that, not even achievements, so for the moment, bye bye Chinchilla.
• HigherLearning
  Addon that allows you to track the timers of the books in Dalaran. I installed it since I thought it would be handy, but never used it. Should really go back to working on that achievement, but hey I'll join the bookwatch channel.
  

That at least cleans up some, and with this I have a nice opener for tomorrow's post where I will review my UI as I have it set up now.

As a preview a quick screenshot.

To Achieve or not to Achieve?

"Wait! Wait!"

"What?!"

"We're 10 seconds too early, or we'll enter hard mode."

"Wha?!"

This is about what you could hear on vent on our first Thorim 10man try. It took us a couple of tries to get to know the hallway, but once we did we went through it so fast that Sif was still up. If our people had continued we would've accidentally entered hard mode.

However, one of our healers and a ranged dps were down. Should we have done it? Should we have tried? We didn't, we hesitated and in that split second we decided that getting to know the fight was more important at that point. After all, we had no idea what was going to come after that hallway.

We killed him, with 8 people standing.

So how do you know that your team is ready to try for achievements and hard mode? And should you try anyway, even if you doubt you can do it?

Generally you don't do the fight with achievements the first try, though there are achievements that just accidentally happen of course. There is almost a sort of checklist that you can go through before you would even consider doing a hard mode or achievement.

Know when to pick a fight.

Most of the times it's a bad idea to do a specific achievement or hard mode when your team doesn't know what the fight will be like. There are of course exceptions, like Dwarfageddon for example, but most often you'll find that you're better off to make sure that your team knows the fight inside out.

Sometimes you can do achievements with one or two people who have not done the fight before, or who don't know the fight as well. In this case you either want to make sure that these people are pretty good in reacting to the fight or that the rest of your team can carry these team members if they do accidentally mess up.

Achievements don't just happen most of the time, they generally take some planning. So if you do plan to do achievements, it's often a good idea to anounce them ahead and make sure that everybody understands what needs to be done for that achievement.

Of course when a fight was particularly easy last time you did it, and you have a team with the right mindset, you do want to try for the achievement next time you do that fight. And even then, don't be surprised if it turns out that your team is simply not ready to do the fight with achievement.

It might simply be a case of not knowing the fight with achievement well enough, or even being undergeared for the harder version of this fight. After all, achievements generally make the fight harder and more challenging than doing it without achievement or hard mode.

Should you try anyway?

Trying anyway, even though you have doubts if your team can do it, depends on a lot of factors. Does your team have the right mindset to handle wiping, or as some might see it, failure? If you're not sure how well your people perform after disappointment, going for the harder version of the fight too early might cause demotivation.

How early on the evening is it? When people are tired it becomes harder and harder to focus and put that extra step forward. I personally try to plan new fights for the start of the evening, so that we're all fresh, and even when we do wipe we still have enough time to do the fight in a straight forward fashion, or go back to a different boss, and return to the achievement later.

Normally you know when your team is ready for it, but when in doubt do make sure to discuss with your team members. They too have opinions and maybe even good ideas on how to approach an achievement.

Also, be prepared to just switch tactics in the middle of the fight if it turns out that it doesn't work just yet. We tried getting the heart killed on Deconstructor, but simply didn't have the dps for it that evening. Since this was very clear, we decided on the spot that we would just do him on normal that evening, and get back to hard mode later. We still managed to kill him.

Don't reach for the stars.

Even though it might sometimes feel like failure, wiping simply is part of getting to learn the fight. You just pick up the pieces, discuss how it can be done differently, and get it right the next time. Even if you leave a boss up for that evening, don't feel sad about it. You tried your hardest, and next time he will go down.

What you don't want to do however is set impossible goals for your team. If your team is nowhere near ready, don't go for it anyway. It will only work demotivating, and that boss you did easily last week suddenly seems impossible as well.

If this is your current top, then reach just that little bit further, but don't try to jump too high, it will only cause your team to hit the ground with a bang.

In the end we're all stars.

I've been following the blog from Mister K ever since he commented on one of my posts. And last week he had a post that completely made me feel pride alongside of him. He's not high end raiding, in fact the small guild he is in is just conquering Naxx10 level content, but they've been doing so well lately. And you can just hear the pride in his blog. They play 'ubercasual' as he calls it, and they still manage to get this content done. (yay you!) They reached just that little bit further, and made it.

Seriously. If you have just conquered content with your team that is really hard for you, and you did it anyway, you are just as good as those top guilds killing the hardest bosses in the game.

After all you just killed your hardest boss in the game, right?

Guide to the Red Proto Drake

I've been wanting to write this one for a while already. There are simply not enough people flying around on red proto drakes, and they are so incredibly pretty! We need more of them!

What I will do is go down every achievement on the list, and give the crucial tips & tricks to each of the achievements on it. There are several ways to cheese some of the achievements, we have used none, and I refuse to describe any. If you want to earn that drake, then earn it.

Finally, I have left out the 'finish this or that dungeon' type achievement. If you start working on this, you will have done them all at least once.

Ahn'Kahet

Volazj's Quick Demise

Defeat Herald Volazj in Ahn'kahet on Heroic Difficulty in 2 minutes or less.

• Don't bring a healer specced as a healer
• We did this with a priest in shadowspec in healing gear
• If you bring melee, stand on top of eachother so the melee doesn't have to run too far

Respect Your Elders
Defeat Elder Nadox in Ahn'kahet on Heroic Difficulty without killing any Ahn'kahar Guardians.

• Clear the long room behind Elder Nadox's room by going left and clearing all the trash leading to the stairs to the next boss
• Party composition: 2 healers, 2 DPS, 1 tank. One healer should be a paladin, who will aggro the Akn'kahar Guardians and heal through their attacks as they spawn. He will stay at the base of the stairs leading from Elder Nadox's room to the long room
• The tank, DPS and the other healer will kite Elder Nadox to the other end of the room and fight him there, where he will be beyond the range of the Guardian's damage immunity aura

Volunteer Work
Defeat Jedoga Shadowseeker in Ahn'kahet on Heroic Difficulty without killing any Twilight Volunteers.

• Save damage reduction cooldowns for the enrage after she sacrifices a cultist - have the tank use a cooldown on the first enrage, and other classes can provide abilties to help on the second. Either the tank or another class can take the third
• Melee needs to stay out of melee range while she is enraged, as the Cyclone Strike will kill melee if it hits while enrage is up
• If you have problems with the tank surviving the enrages, bring two tanks and swap between the first and second or second and third enrages

Azjol - Nerub

Gotta Go!

Defeat Anub'arak in Azjol-Nerub on Heroic Difficulty in 4 minutes or less.

• This achievement has been changed from 2 minutes to 4 minutes as of patch 3.0.8
• It's a minor dps race, just kill the adds fast enough to make the phases that he goes underground as short as possible

Hadronox Denied

Defeat Hadronox in Azjol-Nerub on Heroic Difficulty before he webs the top doors and prevents more creatures from spawning.

• Kill the 3 spawns first, and then wait for him at the top of the slope
• You have to engage him before he reaches the top of the slope
• Kill him in between 2 poison sprays, melee dps makes it easier, but it is very doable with casters

Watch Him Die

Defeat Krik'thir the Gatewatcher in Azjol-Nerub on Heroic Difficulty while Watcher Gashra, Watcher Narji, and Watcher Silthik are still alive.

• 1 healer, 1 tank, 3 high dps > ignore the adds, just kill him. You will die doing this, but only after you got the achievement
• 1 healer, 2 tanks, 2 dps > one tank on him, one on the adds, ignore the adds, kill him
• This is a dps check

Culling of Stratholme

The Culling of Time
Defeat the Infinite Corruptor in The Culling of Stratholme on Heroic Difficulty.

• Keep moving between waves - don't stop to loot, make sure to call out or ping which direction to go to minimize time between waves
• Talk to Arthas and start him moving again as soon as the dialogue bubble appears on him. He spends enough time talking to allow mana users to drink to full for the next fight
• You do not need to defeat Mal'ganis first, as soon as you're through the last of the gauntlet, leave Arthas alone and head left from the archway leading to Mal'Ganis to find the Corruptor

Zombiefest!

Kill 100 Risen Zombies in 1 minute in The Culling of Stratholme on Heroic Difficulty.

• Do the dungeon like normal until you get to the second boss
• Drag the second boss to the inn and kill him very slowly, giving all the zombies time to respawn outside, once the second boss is dead no more zombies will respawn
• Continue the instance through the inn, and kill the third boss
• Tell slow-poke Arthas to go wait at the end of the tunnel
• Have your tank gather up all the zombies form the first half of the instance and drag them along through the tunnel. They go really slow so he won't die.
• Kill them all and take a couple extra from the last street, since the first half of the dungeon is missing 10 or so zombies to get to 100

Drak'Tharon Keep

Better Off Dred

Engage King Dred in Drak'Tharon Keep on Heroic Difficulty and slay 6 Drakkari Gutrippers or Drakkari Scytheclaw during his defeat.

• We normally run with a pallie tank and just grouped all of it up and aoed it down
• If you don't have a strong aoe tank, or aoe dps, gather up the raptors and kill them until they are almost dead. Then engage him, kill the raptors quickly, and then finish killing him

Consumption Junction

Defeat Trollgore in Drak'Tharon Keep on Heroic Difficulty before Consume reaches ten stacks.

• The trick is that he only spits consume on characters (PC and NPC) who are in sight
• So have your party hide and make sure that the adds are pulled off to the side as well
• He casts consume about every 10 seconds
• We just had one person watching the stopwatch and anounce 10 seconds, but I found a macro that might help

/sw 10
/script Stopwatch_Play();
/rw === Cast consume, safe for 10 secs! ===
/in 10 /rw === Back out now! ===

• Credit for the macro goes to magekill

Oh Novos!

Defeat Novos the Summoner in Drak'Tharon Keep on Heroic Difficulty without allowing any undead minions to reach the floor.

• This achievement sounds more difficult than it really is, all it takes is to have your party on the stairs and make sure nothing that comes from the stairs reaches the floor
• The adds coming from the side entrances don't have to be stopped

Gundrak

Less-Rabi
Defeat Moorabi in Gundrak on Heroic Difficulty while preventing him from transforming into a mammoth at any point during the encounter.

• Bring at least 3 players who can interupt, one who can spam interupt (rogue fan of knives)
• The 1st 50% of his health he transforms every 10 secs, 2nd 50% of his health every 5 secs
• The casting speed of transform is sped up as his health goes down by a percentage equal to the percentage of life he's lost (50% health means 50% faster casting)

Share The Love

Defeat Gal'darah in Gundrak on Heroic Difficulty and have 5 unique party members get impaled throughout the fight.

• This can be an endurance fight, depending on how lucky you are
• He only impales those who are in sight
• Bring 2 tanks, or a dps who can OT and have the OT tank him until the tank is impaled
• Have the OT move out of sight and switch off until you have all been impaled

Snakes. Why'd It Have To Be Snakes
Defeat Slad'ran in Gundrak on Heroic Difficulty without getting snake wrapped.

• Tank Slad'ran at the top of the stairs leading to his platform, with everyone on the platform behind him
• AoE the snakes as they come up the stairs to kill them quickly - be sure to catch and kill any snakes that get away from the tank
• Use AoE knockbacks to push the snakes away if they're starting to pile up

What the Eck?
Defeat Gal'darah in Gundrak on Heroic Difficulty while under the effects of Eck Residue

• Leave Eck for last if you entered from that side of the instance - you want to kill him right before you go to Gal'darah to prevent anyone dying early in the instance
• Have everyone stand on the tank while fighting Eck through the first Eck Spray - once you have the Eck Residue debuff, you can move away from the tank again
• On Gal'darah, quick heals are needed on the impale target - any class with healing abilities will want to keep the healer up if they are targeted, while the tank uses cooldowns to stay alive

Halls of Stone

Abuse the Ooze

Defeat Sjonnir the Ironshaper in the Halls of Stone on Heroic Difficulty and kill 5 Iron Sludges during the encounter.

• Dps him down to about 50%
• At 50% the sludges start spawning
• Wait until the sludges turn into oozes and kill them
• The fight is a stamina fight for your healer, and your part has to make sure not to stand in his lightning circle

Brann Spankin' New
Defeat the Tribunal of Ages encounter in the Halls of Stone on Heroic Difficulty without allowing Brann Bronzebeard to take any damage.

• Stay near the stairs leading down into the Tribunal area - the tank will normally be standing on the first stair
• Any damage done to the adds will cause them to lose focus on Brann and not attack him until the players are dead
• Use frost traps or slowing totems to keep the mobs near the stairs

Halls of Lightning

Lightning Struck
Defeat General Bjarngrim in the Halls of Lightning on Heroic Difficulty while he has a Temporary Electrical Charge.

• Go left and clear the platform to fight him Bjarngrim on - clear down the path to the center platform if you have time, but it's not a necessity
• Kill his adds first before moving onto him to cut down on the incoming damage
• Keep track of his stances - melee needs to get out during Whirlwind during Battle Stance and spell casters need to watch for spell reflect during Defensive Stance

Timely Death
Defeat Loken in the Halls of Lightning on Heroic Difficulty in 2 minutes or less.

• Bring good DPS - if your healer is geared enough, stand at his feet and nuke him down through the lightning nova
• If you have healing issues, you can kite the boss between two specific points - the circle in front of his throne and the base of the stairs that lead directly to his platform. Have everyone but the tank stack on his back, so they have less far to run to get out of the nova.
• Alternatively, clear the ring leading to Loken's throne, and kite him along the ring. Have everyone move together and don't move too far away from Loken - thirty yards away is the furthest you need to move

Shatter Resistant
Defeat Volkhan in the Halls of Lightning on Heroic Difficulty without allowing him to shatter more than 4 Brittle Golems.

• Clear the room in front of Volkhan entirely to give you more room to work with
• Ignore the adds - mages can use frost nova, Priests can shield their targets, but overall the damage is easy to heal through
• Bring good DPS - the quicker he's down, the less you have to deal with adds

Nexus

Chaos Theory
Defeat Anomalus in The Nexus on Heroic Difficulty without destroying any Chaotic Rifts

• Clear the stone area at the base of the platforms to have more kiting space
• When Anomalus gains Rift Shield, everyone should run out and wait far enough away that they don't take lightning damage from the rifts. When Anomalus loses Rift Shield, let him come to the party
• Have the tank stand a little forward from the rest of the party to AoE the adds while Rift Shield is up and keep them on him - ranged can then AoE them down while the party waits for Anomalus to join them

Intense Cold
Defeat Keristrasza in The Nexus on Heroic Difficulty without allowing Intense Cold to reach more than two stacks.

• Intense Cold is dispellable by movement, including jumping... so jump up and down between attacks or spells
• Classes who can dispel magic need to remove Crystal Chains as soon as they are applied, since they prevent movement
• Casters should use instant or quick spells over long casting spells to prevent getting a stack of Intense Cold and then being incased in Crystal Chains

Split Personality

Defeat Grand Magus Telestra in The Nexus on Heroic Difficulty after having killed her images within 5 seconds of each other during both splits.

• This is a coordination achievement
• Use shift-V (or just V) to see the healthbars
• Make sure to wait until the frost mage is done channeling blizzard since you cannot kill her whil she's channeling

Occulus

Experienced Drake Rider

On three different visits to The Oculus, get credit for defeating Ley-Guardian Eregos while riding an Amber, Emerald, and Ruby drake on Heroic Difficulty.

• This is a good one to get to know Occulus well enough for Make it Count
• Nothing special, just takes going 3 times on 3 different drakes

Make it Count
Defeat Ley-Guardian Eregos in The Oculus on Heroic Difficulty within 20 minutes of Drakos the Interrogator's death.

• Bring good dps, and know the paths through the instance
• Drake combination: 2 red, 2 green, 1 bronze
• Don't try to avoid the patrolling drakes, kill them if they're in the way, or might be in the way

Amber Void

Defeat Ley-Guardian Eregos in The Oculus on Heroic Difficulty without anyone in your party using an Amber Drake.

• Bring 3 red drakes, 2 greens but 3 greens and 3 reds works too we later discovered
• Have 1 red drake keep him targeted, this is your adds tank
• 1 red drake target the adds, this is your MT
• 1 green healing the MT and the other the OT and rest
• Do keep touch of the nightmare up

Ruby Void + Emeral Void

Defeat Ley-Guardian Eregos in The Oculus on Heroic Difficulty without anyone in your party using a Ruby/Emerald Drake.

• This is 2 achievements for the price of one, bring 5 bronze drakes
• You rotate 3 time stops per round (each round lasts until planar shift) you cannot use more because he goes immune to the Time Stop, each Time Stop has to follow the next seamlessly so he doesn't get a chance to poop out little dragons. You do need a little luck with this
• The trick to this is to have 1 player channel while the other 4 stack this player up to 10 by shooting. Once the first player hits 10 he announces it and the other 4 players start channeling, the first player shoots twice (in case the first is a miss) and with that shoots all 4 other players to 10 stacks. He then channels again, and is shot back up to 10 stacks. Rinse and repeat
• If this is well executed you will do enough damage that he will never not be Time Stopped in between planar shifts
• Time Stop has a cooldown, make sure that you have 1 of the 2 players who didn't time stop in the first round, start with Time Stop in the second round

Utgarde Keep

On The Rocks

Defeat Prince Keleseth in Utgarde Keep on Heroic Difficulty without shattering any Frost Tombs.

• The Frost Tombs hardly have health and die really easy
• Don't use aoe, at all (poor DKs)
• Don't accidentally try to use penance, or related type spells since they turn hostile and shatter the Frost Tomb

The Party's Over

Defeat Prince Taldaram in Ahn'kahet on Heroic Difficulty with less than 5 people.

• 1 healer, 1 tank, 2 dps
• Don't heal the target he leeches off, because you will be healing him
• For Priests: PWS works like a charm since he will slowly chew through it, but doesn't get healed himself
• Don't stand in the fire orbs

Utgarde Pinacle

Lodi Dodi We Loves the Skadi

Defeat Skadi the Ruthless in Utgarde Pinnacle on Heroic Difficulty within 3 minutes of starting the gauntlet event.

This achievement can be done at the same time as:

My Girl Loves to Skadi All the Time

Defeat Skadi the Ruthless in Utgarde Pinnacle on Heroic Difficulty after having killed Grauf from 100% to dead in a single pass.

• Run in and gather 5 spears
• Then run out and reset him. We have checked, since this felt like cheezing it, but this is indeed the only way to do him, so either you have to reset him, or you have to wipe it.
• Run through till the end and have the tank gather up any adds
• Shoot all 5 spears on the first time that he is in range
• Kill him fast, ignore adds if they are still up, he has to die
• Extra-added bonus: a chance for the blue proto drake to drop

King's Bane

Defeat King Ymiron in Utgarde Pinnacle on Heroic Difficulty without anyone in the party triggering Bane.

• To do this achievement you need to know what Bane is.

Bane
2 sec castSurrounds the caster with an aura of Bane, which deals 1414 to 1586 Shadow damage to nearby enemies whenever the caster is dealt direct damage. Lasts 5 sec.

• There are 2 ways to do this, either you dps him hard enough so that goes to the boats before he ever gets to cast bane, or you have to call everybody to hold off on hitting him when he casts bane

The Incredible Hulk
Force Svala Sorrowgrave to kill a Scourge Hulk on Heroic Difficulty in Utgarde Pinnacle.

• DPS an Abomination to 30% or so while Svala is talking, a small amount of AoE until the first Ritual of the Sword should bring the Hulk close to death
• Tank the Hulk under the sword and have stuns ready if the tank gets knocked off the platform before the sword's hit
• If successful, you see the achievement as soon as the Hulk dies

Violet Hold

Defenseless
Defeat Cyanigosa in The Violet Hold without using Defense Control Crystals and with Prison Seal Integrity at 100% while in Heroic Difficulty.

• Pick up portal guardians and groups of enemies next to their portal - keep an AoE running to catch any adds that appear during the fight so they focus on the players instead of getting to the door
• The group from the portal in front of Zuramat on the upper left can split - grab the group going left and have another player tag the mob going right so you can taunt off them.
• Don't try combining this achievement with Dehydration, it makes Dehydration much more difficult

Dehydration
Defeat Ichoron in the Violet Hold on Heroic Difficulty without allowing any Ichor Globules to merge.

• Use the crystal activators to kill the globules during the split phase
• Tank Ichoron in the center of the lower circle between split phases
• Have the designated person pulling the switch stand with their back to the next switch to pull, that way, when they're knocked back by the split they land on the switch they want to pull

Lockdown!

Defeat Xevozz, Lavanthor, Ichoron, Zuramat the Obliterator, Erekem, and Moragg in The Violet Hold on Heroic Difficulty.

• This achievement has been an exercise of patience for my group since we just couldn't get Xevozz to spawn, so we did it almost every day for a couple of weeks
• Other than this nothing special, just go do the dungeon and hope that it spawns the right bosses

A Void Dance
Defeat Zuramat the Obliterator in The Violet Hold on Heroic Difficulty without killing any void sentries,

• Kite Zuramat away from his Void Sentries to reduce the damage the group takes
• If you get Void Shift, avoid using any AoE damage moves to prevent accidentally killing a Void Sentry.
• Dispel Shroud of Darkness from Zuramat or stop attacking while it is up. Players will otherwise take five stacks of Shroud of Darkness from attacking and you cannot heal that player anymore

A big thank you to Thrornir for helping me fill the gaps where I got lost. I did all of these achievements with him as my tank.

7 tricks of the raid lead trade

So with more information coming out about the new patch, and with Children's Week destroying the BGs it's hard to find too many positive thinking people. And I have to admit I've been sort of pissy about all of it myself yesterday.

It's hard to constantly adjust to everchanging rules, but in the end, I enjoy playing this game so I decided to wait with posting until my mood had cleared a little.

People often say "Think Positive!" to someone who really just isn't in the mood for that. Maybe this is because it's really hard to do when it feels like everything around you seems to fall to pieces. However, the power of positive thinking is quite strong, and without it I can guarantee you that whatever you do in life, and in the game, will fail more often.

When you have been wiping all evening and you lose your positive thinking it's almost a guarantee that you won't succeed that evening at all.

There are several tactics that I have used in the past to get the raid back to think they can do it, and to getting them out of the fail mood, and I figured I would share them so maybe others can profit from them as well.
1. Have a break, have a KitKat!
Tell everybody to just go away from the keys for 5 minutes, don't buff just yet, run back in and leave your characters just standing there. Urge them to stand up and go use the bathroom, get a drink, or indeed a small snack. Once you get back to keys everybody will feel better and their heads will have cleared slightly.

2. Laughter is the best medicine
Go for a silly joke, it may be as lame as you can think off. As long as it makes people laugh. The best raids my group has had is when we were all in the silliest moods, and were throwing back and forth silly remarks, like "Wow, couldn't get a bigger mace, needed to compensate for something?" My group got undying like this ;)

I know it sounds lame, but whichever works for your raid to get the people in good moods and have fun. These are the moments that you really have to remember that the game is all about having fun.

3. The Peptalk
Tell your team that you're certain that they can do it. They are the best team in the world after all. Make them feel proud and buff them with positive words. People will often put in that little extra step to get the job done.

4. Running Commentary
Keep a running commentary on what is happening in the game. When the boss is about dead call out his remaining health, and keep updating it. Encourage everybody to keep at it, even though half of the raid may be dead, just keep going, and talk them through the last couple of Ks health on the boss

5. The Lecture
Don't use this one too often. But every now and then it's ok to tell people to keep it together, and get their heads out of their asses. If there is chaos, it's ok to take a firmer tone and lecture your raid back to focus.

6. Change Tactics
Sometimes when you have been bashing your head against a certain boss for a while, and it just doesn't seem to work, it is best to try the boss in a different way. Think out of the box, and instead of having the weight on the healers, put the weight on the dps for example. You can read about an example of change of tactics, and how positive it can work here.

7. Hard Bosses go early
Try to start your evening with a startup boss, and then move on to the harder bosses. A little warmup, and then into the fray for the harder ones. Also don't save the hardest (or new) bosses till last if you can prevent it. People will be tired and that alone will make it a lot harder to stay focused and positive.

The Extra Optional!
Bring silly stuff to raid. Have a fair few stacks of Pygmy Oil at hand for example, or bring a small feast to use on a simpler boss. Bring some extra flasks, yes expensive, but the mood does go up when you provide people with a free flask at times. There are many things that you can do, but the goal of this is to lighten the mood and have people's minds off wiping for a second.


In the end you know your team best, so it's up to you to decide which one you wish to use when. After working together for a while you will know better and better how to keep your team thinking positive, or drag them away from a negative mood.

Motivation out of the Box

Today I part-pugged VoA again, this time on my balance druid. It was a lot of fun, and a whole new challenge entirely.

My boyfriend (Thrornir) came to tank, and we had a couple of guildies who wanted to come as well. We needed 4 more, so I jumped into LFG, and quickly we had found a second tank, a second healer, and the last 2 dps we needed.

I found myself checking the gear quickly, but then remembered how well it went yesterday, and figured we would be able to do it anyway. We would find a way.

So we went in, killed the first couple of adds, and though I thought we were doing fine, the pug healer obviously didn't agree. She started whispering me that we had to lose the DK and one of our rogues since they were both low on dps.

At the same time she started insulting the DK in raid, so I whispered her and asked if she could please be a bit nicer. She obviously took offense, but I ignored the objections she made, and checked recount. I saw that the DK was doing about 2.2 K dps, and the rogue she was talking about was doing about 1K dps.

Both of these players were guildies and we were in vent at that point. I asked the rogue what was going on, and she started laughing. She had forgotten to retalent, and said that she had now stuck points in, and that it would go better.

So we took down the couple of exploding adds, and they went down easy with only 4 and 5 stacks respectively. I checked the rogue's dps again, she was still at about 1K dps, but I shrugged. We had easily gotten those adds down so we should be fine on the boss.

Once again the pug healer didn't agree, and let me know in whispers. I told her that if she didn't want to stay, that she was free to leave, that we would be ok to find another healer, but she didn't say anything in response...to me.

Instead she was starting to harass the rogue about her dps in whispers. I got the whole story on vent, and my guildies were getting a bit annoyed with the healer, but hey you need two healers so we stuck with her.

We buffed, ate fish (yay fish!) and pulled. About 2 minutes later we were all on the floor, but in a sort of cheerful mood. Most of the people there had not managed to kill this boss before, but we had gotten him down to about half on the first try.

So we ran back in, buffed up and started again. We wiped again, but this time because the tank on Emalon died due to lack of healing, from, guess who, the pug healer. Wiping is part of the whole learning process, and though I know what to do with this boss now, as said most of the group were there for the first time.

So we were running back in for the third time. And all of a sudden one of the pug dps remarks that we wouldn't be able to do this anyway, and left the group.

For a short moment I was a bit confused, but then the pug healer started to announce in raid that we should drop the DK and the rogue, and that we had just lost our second best dps.

I removed her from the raid.

In say I told her that she was about the most negative person I had come across in a looong time in the game, and that she and the group were obviously better off going separate ways. That negativity was about the worst thing that can happen to motivation.

She called us morons, and said we were rude (talk about an oxymoron). Then she started again to me in whispers about how we just had to kick the rogue. Then she said the thing that made my red flag go up. "ooooh, she's in your guild, now I get it."

Yes, the rogue was in my guild, but seriously, with her attitude I would rather take 10 rogues of 1K dps than one mediocre healer with a bad attitude.

I told her once again that it was her negativity that had made me remove her from the raid, but she started about the dps once more. I was pretty amused by now, after all, the second time we wiped because she couldn't keep the tank healed.

What I said however was: "Well, it seemed to me that the dps was doing fine, until the tank died."

It was quiet for a moment.

Then came her reaction: "We only had 2 healers, this is a 3 healer fight, oh I'm so done with you!"

I managed to squeeze in a. "Uhm, this is always done with 2 healers" and then got message that she was now ignoring me.

I burst out laughing in vent and told the story. My guildies thought it was hilarious. and were happy that I had removed her from raid. The pug healer had been harassing dps, but a soft poke of critique on her own job she obviously couldn't appreciate.

And though it was funny, here we were once again with 2 players short. The guildie who played the DK offered to bring his main, a druid healer, to replace her. And we managed to get 2 new pug dps.

We now had a raid with 2 tanks, 2 healers, 2 ranged, and 4 melee dps. The first thing one of the newly joined rogues said was that we were very high on melee, and that it would be practically impossible.

I told her we'd be fine, and she luckily didn't say anything further.

We tried a couple of times the normal way (adds to one side, boss to the other), but got blown up and wiped a couple of times. Unfortunately the rogue did have a point, we were rather high on melee. And melee loses a lot of dps when having to run to and from the adds.

So over vent we discussed some ways to see if we could change the tactics a bit. We decided to tank everything on top of eachother and the adds tank would run out for the nova together with the dps.

I announced the strategy to our pugs, and got some scepticism, but they were willing to try.

It worked like a charm, and about 5 minutes later Emalon was dead on the floor.


Lessons to learn from this?

1. Negativity in your raid, whether pug or guild run, makes you fail.

2. Think out of the box, and you can do what a lot of people would see as impossible.

Which brings me to the next topic: Motivation, but that will be for a different post.

(And oh, I'm sorry Mandy, we killed him again without you :( got one unsaved character left though!)