The following is borne out of my frustration at bouncing against the instance portal for an hour and a half come raid time, destined for a GM ticket. Unfortunately amusing as it is, the GMs can’t help here.

Sure, there’s the new raid encounter (and a very fine one it is too), but that’s not all. Three new dungeons, which link together to tell a story. I only had a chance to play through them from Saturday onwards, and the story they tell is one that I find somewhat satisfying. I have also been spending multitude time with the new LFG tools, but that’s another post entirely.

Arthas / The Lich King (depending on who you listen to) has cropped up a lot over the entire expansion – in fact, I think he appears in encounters at least once in each zone, and then again as an uninvited guest in the Trial of the Crusader.  The trouble with all of these encounters, though, is that he loses. The sole exception is the Drakuru encounter in Drak’tharon Keep, and that turns out to just be a waypoint in a longer story.  The net effect is that he seems rather too much like a pantomime villain, whose parting catchphrase may as well have been “I would have got away with it if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids, er, adventurers”

And so for me Halls of Reflection was something of a triumph. We actually lose, and have to run away. The blow still doesn’t seem so hard, though, as everyone gets out alive. If I’d had my way, we’d have seen a repeat of the Wrathgate scenario, and lost another major faction leader. The Lich King is badass, and yet he allows us a fair chance at escaping? Give me a break.

In terms of Icecrown Citadel, I’ve seen the first three encounters. Well designed, but we seem to be spending most of out raid time bouncing against the “Additional Instances cannot be launched” problem. Yeesh. I don’t enjoy spending my raid time being punished for being a guild that raids later in the evening (9PM server time). And the trash seems somewhat undertuned thus far – pulling both main packs of Lady Deathwhisper’s room at once and AoEing them down? I long for the carefully calculated pulls in Black Temple and Sunwell.

One of the first, and most important, is positioning. The most important rule to follow here, I think, is:

Always face whatever you’re fighting away from the group.

There are far and away huge numbers of abilities which can be used by both bosses and trash mobs which only attack the front of the enemy. Examples include:

• Cleaves
• Fire breaths
• AoE attacks (such as Dark Smash)

By facing the boss away from where the group starts, you also gain two extra advantages – firstly, they don’t need to move before engaging, and two, melee dps can position themselves faster, contributing to group dps. In addition, they’re unlikely to be parried, gaining you that extra bit of survivability.

This doesn’t just apply to bosses, though – in fact it can be useful on trash just as much, if not more so. By facing a trash pack away from the group, you can immediately see when one turns around and starts aiming for someone other than you. In addition, because you’ll usually have cleared up to where you’re currently standing, the only place patrols are going to come from places you sqaurely between them and the rest of the group. A quick AoE threat effect, whether it be swipe, thunder clap, consecrate, or whatever, will pick them up before anyone else has a chance to get eaten.

As tank, there’s another important point about positioning – keep out of the AoE. it sounds simple, but time and again I’ve seen tanks stand in the AoE oblivious to the fact that they’re getting the melee dps killed slowly (or not so slowly). Always keep an eye out, and move away. This especially applies to delayed-action effects, such as landmines, which will kill dps if they don’t notice it’s been laid. It’s a guarantee that they won’t, too, if the mine’s in the middle of a whole bunch of other things they’re still trying to kill.

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. Certain bosses in Ulduar require that the entire raid stand in fromt of the boss, for example. Some other bosses need as many people as possible in the AoE because its damage is divided between everyone it hits. On the whole, though, keeping whatever you’re fighting facing away from the vast majority of everyone else is a habit that everyone should be in.

Next time (whenever that is), I’ll try to talk a little about target prioritisation.

A raidleader needs to have the trust of his raiding team. Without that, it is very difficult to understand his decisions, to agree when a wipe is called. Look at it from another way – while you or I might have trialled in a raid in the past, the only person whose opinion really mattered was the leader. Did you do your job well and not put anyone’s nose out of joint while doing it? Trial a new raidleader and you’ll have twenty-four others you need to get on your side, or they won’t listen when you need them to.

I’m in the position of knowing enough about two equally-progressed guilds on our server. Their raidleaders are polar opposites – one never raises his voice, almost never swears. The other is a barrelful of expletives, ready to vent on Vent at the slightest irregularity. Remember, these are equally progressed guilds, but swapping raidleaders would be a disaster, because of the management style each set of raid members expects. It might be an insurmountable barrier.

I’ll leave you with an anecdote from my raidleading days back in Karazhan. We were undergeared and had managed a double pull, which our two priests had managed to get under control with on-the-ball shackling.

Then our (on the lower edge of competent) holy paladin dropped a consecrate under the shackles, making things ten times harder. The next thing heard on teamspeak was my bellow of:

“Which f***ing idiotic paladin did that?”

I’d never sworn at a raid member before, and I never needed to again. Sometimes an unexpected curve ball from a raidleader can do good. That can only work if the raid already has a well defined set of expectations of its leader.

Thursday was an altogether different story. This time we cleared the trash to Ignis, and actually got to engage him. After a couple of goes, and talking to other guilds, it emerged that the bugs reported (shattering not working, meleeing people in the slag pot) were still present.So we moved on to Razorscale. And in one sense, eveything fell apart.

That would be a good sense, though. The encounter wasn’t a faceroll. It was difficult, and we made some definite progress on it by the end of the evening. It was the sort of difficulty that might in the past have resulted in people screaming to go back to an easier instance to farm more gear. But as there isn’t any more gear – we’ve been farming Naxx for months, it’s all down to our own execution.

So.

• Total repair bill over 2 days: 250G
• Money spent on flasks: 100G
• Having an instance with isn’t nearly as easy as I was beginning to fear: Priceless

Looks like it’s time for me to actually do some dailies for a change…

For the record, I don’t think I’m either a Moron or a Slacker. I turn up having read the tactics, with appropriate levels of consumables, I pull my weight, I go away again. Pretty terse, but that’s the way a raid goes if you miss out all the interesting bits.

But… and this goes back to my new-found respect for pugging a few weeks ago – there are Morons and Slackers everywhere. I don’t think that the top level guilds have a lower proprtion of morons or slackers than any other guild. The difference is just in perception. To top level guilds, a slacker is someone who won’t flask up a third time for the last 30 minutes of a raid. In a more laid-back guild that isn’t so much of an issue

Morons and Slackers are everywhere – because we’re all morons and we’re all slackers by someone else’s definition. It isn’t helpful to label any of us.

Also, I have been breaking one of Namthe’s Rules for a Strees-Free Life. I have been pugging a lot of these.

Thus far, then, I’ve got hold of enough emblems of heroism to get hold of my Chained Military Gorget, and I’ve learnt a lot about how to stay alive when the healer just doesn’t cut it.

It has astounded me that so many people have managed to make it as far as level 80 without replacing their Tier 4, or even worse, level 70 heroic gear. There’s just no excuse when you see the wealth of items available from quests and dungeons, and I don’t understand the mentality that seems to think that because it’s epic it must be better than a blue item.

As a tank, I have to replace all my gear in order to remain uncrittable (though I’ll admit there are still a couple of Black Temple pieces I haven’t yet got rid of). I suppose it’s all too easy for other classes to take the quest reward that can be vendored for the most money rather than the one that’s best for you.

In terms of heroic instances, too, I’ve developed a special hatred for the Violet Hold. Wiping on the second boss means you have to do the first again, with no loot? If your healer dies, you’re stuffed if you don’t have a way of ressing him, once you’re out of combat? I’m not impressed with it at all, though I still need to keep going back there to try to get the tanking legplates.

In non-WoW news, I completed my NaNoWriMo novel earlier today too. So posting frequency should head back to normal as we move back into raiding more.

It involves the death of a major figure from lore, and the repercussions of that event everywhere else, culminating in a huge battle in Undercity alongside Varian Wrynn. To say that it’s amazing would be to give it its due. However, it also shows a side of King Varian’s personality that I never want to see again. He is a revenge-obsessed, warlike xenophobe. How long, I wonder, before he decides that all the non-humans in the world, including elves of all types, dwarves and gnomes, are equally untrustworthy? I’m vaguely aware of the lore reasons, but his reactions still seem way over the top.

At least the Forsaken are openly evil. There’s going to be a lot more War in the World of Warcraft soon, I gather.

I’m off on holiday for a week or so, to the American Midwest, to engage some of my other enthusiasms, namely roller coasters and tall buildings.

Updates will resume when I get back!