Coaching

Inori · Post by **Inori** » May 6th, 2009, 12:46 am

http://www.forgedalliance.org/Forums/ta ... fault.aspx It may be due to other factors (e.g., school, work, Blizzard holidays) that our Ulduar 25 attendance is dropping. However, with some newly minted 80s in the guild, I want to encourage them to step up to the challenge of Ulduar. Having a warm body in there doing 2k DPS in blues is better than no one at all, so don't be discouraged from trying out Ulduar. The fights are architected in a manner, though, that requires us to step up our game -- a warm body that does 5k DPS to the raid due to a light bomb is not so good. To that end, I'd like to invite our veteran raiders to share their knowledge with new raiders (and existing raiders -- you never know when you'll learn something new). I'd like to restart some OS 10 + drakes so that people can get a few runs in under duress -- perhaps wipe (or succeed) for 30 min to an hour, then dial it back. Also, remember that every 5, 10, or 25 man run, no matter how 'easy' it is, is an excellent place to practice and experiment with new techniques. I know I learn the most about healing when I'm in a PUG with a tank in greens -- it's a great workout and keeps reflexes sharp. -HP

WarmApplePie · Post by **WarmApplePie** » May 6th, 2009, 1:29 pm

I can't begin to express my frustration with our raids. We need to go back to Naxx and finish gearing up, there are still a lot of mains that are missing gear. We need to go back to Naxx and go for some of the achievements. Undying, Immortal, Dedicated Few, are a few of the achievements we could be going for that promote paying attention. Sarth 3D obviously too, but we dont want to be banging our heads against the wall without gearing people up. I raided last night as Elemental. I'm not hit capped, I'm not geared out, I mess up the rotation a lot. If you did less DPS than me then you are full of FAIL. Ask someone for help. But more importantly then anything else, we need to recruit. I noticed we were short on tanks again in our 25man last night. Maybe we should stop turning down tanks that apply.

Ofie · Post by **Ofie** » May 6th, 2009, 6:43 pm

It's not always a shortage so much as the availability. Maybe we need to do a vote or a count on a better day? I know for a fact we have umpteen zillion active tanks in the guild. I also don't think going back to Naxx full time is a viable option. 2/3 of us have already full-cleared it multiple times, and will not have our hearts fully into it when it's been done to death, especially with new content lurking. Some of the 10 mans going around to gear the new people I think is great, but switching over 25 man to it would probably be a mistake.

WarmApplePie · Post by **WarmApplePie** » May 6th, 2009, 6:48 pm

Ofie wrote It's not always a shortage so much as the availability. Maybe we need to do a vote or a count on a better day? I know for a fact we have umpteen zillion active tanks in the guild. I also don't think going back to Naxx full time is a viable option. 2/3 of us have already full-cleared it multiple times, and will not have our hearts fully into it when it's been done to death, especially with new content lurking. Some of the 10 mans going around to gear the new people I think is great, but switching over 25 man to it would probably be a mistake.

Yeah you're right, I like wiping in Ulduar all night long for weeks on end. We could do like we did in BC.. Tuesday nights we hit up the new stuff as far as we can, thursday night we go back and clear (practice) our old stuff for gear. I dont mean abandon Ulduar, but we're not ready for it, and honestly if our gear is good enough then thats saying worse things about our skill as players.

Ofie · Post by **Ofie** » May 6th, 2009, 6:52 pm

Progression isn't really going to come without wiping. The only reason our 25 man succeeded as well as it did was because of Wadup's previous knowledge of the encounters and mechanics. No one has that in Ulduar, except where certain 10 mans have progressed farther. And even then, 25 man versions are radically different most of the time, not even including the increased amount of coordination each fight takes. If we get a full or at least mostly full raid on every 25 man raiding night, and make attempts and try to stick to the same group of people, we'll learn. If people stop showing up and we have to bring in alts or people who have never been in there, it's going to grind to a terrible halt. As for switching raids on nights, that's clearly up to Andy, but I think that'd be worse. We haven't shown that we can finish Naxx 25 in a single night, so it would be mostly wasted on us. Taking two nights a week to learn the Ulduar encounters until we have them down isn't so bad. Especially if we maintain consistant and heavy attendance.

Wadup · Post by **Wadup** » May 6th, 2009, 7:17 pm

K, i read this thread. First off the biggest issue to our inability to raid is we can only really raid 2 nights a week as it is so that we can let 10 mans do their thing. Also, when we do try to raid 2 nights we still have issues filling raids. The issue atm is not gear, its attendance. We almost downed XT with 21 people in the raid, were off by about 500k which is nothing and he healed by about 8 bots i believe. This is pretty amazing. This also shows its not gear we need, its bodies that actually show up. Right now in our gear if we had our key raiders show up we would be able to do the Dragon, XT, first boss who we 20 manned, Iron Council, Kologarn(healer hater fight), and Auriya for sure. Those fights there is no reason we shouldnt be able to down. Attendance needs to be worked on, also we need people to stay focused during a raid. If yuo go to a 25 man in naxx and you arent paying attention, most the time you wont wipe the raid. If you go to ulduar and arent paying attention on any fight, you will wipe the raid. Ulduar is not naxx, at the same time a lot of the entry lvl bosses were nerfed which jsut means you need to focus. I am trying to get us a recruitment officer and it is in the works and i feel that that is what we need the most atm. As far as going back to naxx 25 man on one of the 2 nights we have to do 25 mans i feel it wouldnt work. This is for a couple reasons, mostly being that a majority of people are sick of naxx. Even when we went to do naxx 25 man with 20 people who were geared, we still only got through 1 wing till people said they had to go or sleep or something. I have no problem with going to naxx 25 if we are short for ulduar but right now if we have 25 for ulduar we need to do ulduar. The bosses are realitively easy, our dps is amazing as it is, and the gear is 10 item levels higher than naxx. Sure not everyone has 213 gear, but not everyone needs to for ulduar. Also 200 gear is good enough. The biggest thing though as i said about naxx 25 is people wont want to go. Quite a few people only log on just to do ulduar and if that gets cancelled for 25 man naxx they will end up jsut logging off and i cannot blame them. I do understand that there are still people with under 200 gear, but there are a lot of ways to get the gear to 200 or even 187. A lot of people have alts and will run 10 man naxx to help. In the end we just need more dedicated raiders that know what they are doing. I feel if we got even just like 5 more people that had the gear to join the guild we would be able to progress 200% faster than we are now. That and being able to raid all 7 nights which i am sure i am the only person who wants that

Wadup · Post by **Wadup** » May 6th, 2009, 7:26 pm

o and as far as 25 man naxx achieves i am totally down to go for them the only issue is for some of those achieves we have to be a bit more selective such as Undying, Less is More, etc, and as a result we would have to turn people down potentially and that is somethign that is looked down apon by a lot of guilds. This is why people complained about achieves like less is more and undying.

Deathrow · Post by **Deathrow** » May 6th, 2009, 9:24 pm

I myself didnt understand alot of things. I saw several 80s that were on the entire time we raided that were in various places, such as naxx and heroics, that sure could have come to ulduar. Why they werent there is their business, but for me i find it rude to be on the entire time your guild is raiding, have people ask for dps in /guild, and have people not respond, but thats just my opinion. I also feel that this talk of "learning" an encounter is all fine and dandy if we try new things. Instead we wiped on a boss that we have seen several times, start later than the announced raid time, rush to the first boss and almost wipe. then we take another 30 to 40 mins to get to the 2nd boss, who has been nerfed into oblvion, spend another 20 mins waiting to attack, for a total of 90 mins from raid start time to engaging second boss, when that time should really be half that. then we lose to that boss when the dps of one more person could have turned the tables. As i said this is my opinion, and perhaps it has merit, perhaps it doesnt, you decide. the bottom line is that if people dont have motivation and desire, you either have to accept your lot, or replace them with people who do.

Ofie · Post by **Ofie** » May 6th, 2009, 10:42 pm

First off, not being a hardcore guild, people can choose whether or not they want to raid, which while sometimes crippling, is their choice. They may not be raiders, they may not have gear, or they may have previous obligations; there's a thousand reasons or more why they couldn't be there. As far as I know we've only downed XT once, so wiping on him is still expected, at least from me, especially when all the people who downed him last time aren't present. As for the raid times, it's clearly a suggestion and not a guideline. You can't force anyone to show up at a particular time and then just have a cut-off. We're shorthanded as it is, if we got pissed at people for coming late and they got pissed and stopped coming? It wouldn't do anything but hurt us more. Sometimes real life engagements and obligations have unexpected additions to them. It happens. I don't know why it took so long, but I'm going to assume that having new people and being undermanned was the main reason. I'm pretty sure most people that were there last night were a lot of the normal people who have the motivation and the desire, so I'm not sure either of those contributed to the trouble. It's not really for one person to say why, it could be almost anything. Healers blame the DPS, the DPS blames the healers, the tanks blame everyone, etc. Sometimes it just goes to crap and there's no one at fault.

Daghi · Post by **Daghi** » May 6th, 2009, 10:55 pm

naxx was retardedly undertuned, blizzard even say so, such is not the case w/ ulduar (although if the nerfs keep up, it might get that way). Anyway if anyone is looking to walk into ulduar and NOT wipe, they're doing it wrong. People been softened up by naxx so much that now they think all fights should be so easy they can just ignore 90% of the mechanics and win. I don't know if you guys remember SSC but we wiped.... a lot. Going back into naxx and rolling our faces over the keyboard and collecting epics WILL NOT better prepare us for ulduar. You like, have to move and stuff in ulduar and think on your feet and purples don't help w/ that. Mostly we need people. People who show up and are willing to learn, it's a bonus if they have gear. Those new 80s should run things during non-raiding time and show up for ulduar25.

Tsuni · Post by **Tsuni** » May 6th, 2009, 11:15 pm

Deathrow wrote then we lose to that boss when the dps of one more person could have turned the tables.

We almost killed the boss undermaned, and the only reason we didnt is too many scrapbots got to him. Our dps was solid even undermanned just needed better control of the scrapbots when they spawned. And some people died to being to close to othrs when they had debuffs. Ulduar is more like Black Temple than Naxx. Individuals need to be paying attention and do their part in the fight. Honestly I think the biggest problem with Naxx being so easy is it didn't do a good job of teaching people the importance of individual contribution. The fact you could kill Heigen with over half your raid down at the beginning says a lot. When I started in this guild, Gruul's was the only raid and it was on Tuesdays. And it wasnt a guarantee kill. Then after a month of being in the guild, we started doing SSC. It took us a month of attempts on Lurker before we finally killed him. (And he was the loot bag of BC!) But people needed to get a feel for real raiding, cuase a lot of the guild only had Kara experience. That's pretty much where this guild is today. We lost a bunch of our really experienced core raiders from BC, and we have a good amount of people newer to real raiding. Naxx is about as useful to teaching people how to raid in Ulduar as Kara was for teaching people how to raid in Black Temple. It gives some basic fundamentals but since it's so forgiving, it doesn't teach tight raiding. And Ulduar is tight. (I also remember having this conversation about continuing in Hyjal after a week of really bad wipes. There were people that said we should stop with progression and just work on T5 content for a few months. But the officers stuck to their guns and we got the place on farm.) Our 10 man group has only 3 bosses left in Ulduar, but it took a lot of wipes and attempts. But everyone stuck with it, cuase we wanted to learn the encounters. Yes Deconstructor is talked about being easy now, but so was Lurker, Void Reaver, the first 4 bosses of Hyjal, Najentis, and Akama. But our BC group still had to struggle and learn these fights. Yes it feels wrong and frustrating to wipe so much after having an instance on farm for so long. But that's what raiding is. It's working as a team to overcome obsticles till it gets so easy that you find yourself wondering how we ever found it hard. We're at the point again, and if everyone's willing to put their best foot foward and really try on a personal level, we'll do with Ulduar what we did with the raids of BC.

Aezelkvalae · Post by **Aezelkvalae** » May 6th, 2009, 11:37 pm

Daghi wrote
You like, have to move and stuff in ulduar and think on your feet

This and what Eric said about personal repsponsiblity gets really to the heart of the issue the best I think, outside of attendance issues. Naxx was reactive. Boss does "X", raid leader sees it, says "watch out for X" on vent, and it's okay. Ulduar, there isn't time for that nonsense. People need to know how to play their class top to bottom and every ability you have needs to be utilized when and where it is appropriate and quickly without being begged by the raid leader. Forged Alliance is going to have to decide what kind of a guild it wants to be. What I keep see happening is "oh my bff forever just wants to join for fun" and then sooner or later we feel obligated to start taking everyone and the kitchen sink on raids no matter how underprepared or unskilled of a player they are. You have to decide if you are going to demand that people put in individual work, or not. If you don't, we'll probably hit the next expansion and not clear Ulduar. I remember when I was that noob. I hit 70 and I didn't know WTF I was doing, but I KNEW I sucked and I was whispering Akumabarai day in and day out trying to learn from him. He probably wanted to /ignore me pretty bad at points, but I didn't want to be the one pulling the raid down. These days frankly, it kinda seems like we will just drag anyone with even if they don't give a rats ass. It is fine if you just want to hang out with everyone in Forged Alliance and not work super hard on your toon because it is a friends/family guild, but then don't expect a raid spot. I'll admitt, I wouldn't want to be the person responsible for taking friends out of a raid slot because they aren't putting the effort in, but if someone doesn't do it then you will only face frustration form here on out. /complain off

thandrenn · Post by **thandrenn** » May 7th, 2009, 9:32 am

Those of us with us during the early Gruul's Lair, then SSC days ought to recall how many weeks we went with just Lurker, High King and Gruul down. How many times did we walk away with repeated failed attempts on Hydross? Supremus? Anatheron? Second bosses. Those guys kicked our asses many times before we finally got them down. So here we are, 3 weeks in to Ulduar raiding and we've gotten Flame Leviathan down all 3 weeks and XT-002 down once (and hopefully tonight). We've also got attempts on Razorscale and Kologarn. Seems about on par with our Black Temple progress. We'll do it. People just need to pay attention more rather than waiting for someone to call out on vent what to do. Remember how many times we wiped on Solarian in TK because somebody got the bomb and didn't move away from the raid? In fights like that every last person is important and must be on their toes. I'm not a huge fan of bringing Non-raiders in to our 25's. They're classified non-raiders for a reason. If they want to raid, they should start doing 10's and ask for their rank changed. I'd rather call off 25 man's for the night and split into 2 10 mans than try to underman it or run with people in greens. More productive imo.

Nagashi · Post by **Nagashi** » May 7th, 2009, 4:14 pm

Well I may be a "bad" but I'll still stay say this: Even back then in TBC (TK, BT, Hyjal) we still picked up and brought bads along because they were friends and family and that's all we had available. Had we been more of a "raiding" guild and been more picky about recruits and who we brought to raids either A. We would never have had enough warm bodies B. Would have progressed faster with less whole nights of wipes, because we actually recruited. Thandrenn your 10 man group is pretty well stacked with some of the most dedicated, experienced and well geared players in this guild. The rest are struggling, when they can actually get a group together, with whats left over. Ulduar is the new BT, it isn't easy mode anymore for most players anyway. If you all recall we never even got VashJ, Archimonde, KT or a few others down pre-supernerf TBC and even after the supernerf we still couldn't get thru all of BT. So umm basically I wouldn't sweat it, I see that some of the more dedicated (read obsessed) players are surely feeling pain because the guild is lacking in so many areas for actually progressing well and quickly through 25 Ulduar. I also see that some of the more casual players are probably happy they even are getting a chance to actually attempt Ulduar bosses and overall both parties are feeling the pain with three hours of wipes and one boss down. Surely this will improve... by the next expansion release we should have it cleared like we did BT er... I mean Kara bwhahahahah!!!

mahonri · Post by **mahonri** » May 7th, 2009, 5:22 pm

What we always need to remember is that I like boobies. Without that we are nothing. I think that as long as we can get groups together of people, and the majority of them like boobies too, then we will be alright. Naxx was totally non-boobalicious. Easy like seein boobies on prom night. Ulduar on the other hand is like trying to get to third base in Salt Lake City. No boobies for you. If we need to recruit some other boobie lovers I don't really care, as long as they are motivated yet yet casual boobie lovers like the majority of the guild.

Tsuni · Post by **Tsuni** » May 7th, 2009, 7:19 pm

Nagashi wrote
Thandrenn your 10 man group is pretty well stacked with some of the most dedicated, experienced and well geared players in this guild. The rest are struggling, when they can actually get a group together, with whats left over. Ulduar is the new BT, it isn't easy mode anymore for most players anyway. If you all recall we never even got VashJ, Archimonde, KT or a few others down pre-supernerf TBC and even after the supernerf we still couldn't get thru all of BT.

The thing about our 10 man though isn't even the people, it's that none of us quit. We'll wipe over and over and over and everyone will stick with it. Which is part of why we all gravitated toward each other. We spent 4 hours on Malygos before downing him our first time. Then I heard when the next group did it they did it for like an hour or something and called it. Which is to say I don't think the other groups are unable to do the content, just it seems hard to get people in general to want to stick with the wipes. I agree with you Nagashi that we should help people willing to come in learning the fights. I think that's where Inori's orginal post really comes in. It'd be nice if people really helped each other esp. those of the same class. Calling them out in a good way to help them learn how it's done. I was a very mediocre healer when I started MC with my paly but the other palys were really helpful in teaching me raiding skills and I was willing to admit when I was wrong. (That was one benefit of the old days of 40 mans. Guilds generally had class officers and a nice handful of each class which could work off each other in optimizing their posistions.) I dunno maybe a helper channel or something to have up that people can join to ask more class specific questions they may not want to ask in raid.

Sinistyr · Post by **Sinistyr** » May 14th, 2009, 7:50 am

Since the topic is coaching.. and started off on trying to build attendance, I would like to throw my (nub) comments in here as well. I can appreciate that FA would like to have a fully geared, fully skilled, fully educated 25man raid... but it doesnt. So there are really two options. 1: coach the members in FA that arent performing to expectations..or 2:recruit for ppl that can hit the ground running and ignore the existing members that WANT to do better but maybe need the coaching.. coaching on the fights as well as playing that class/spec/etc. I, for one, and not satisfied with my DPS output. However, this is the first toon I have had where I have reached max level... so I dont have a lot of raiding, tier gear experience etc. I have privately messaged other locks in the guild to discuss and seek advice. I have followed the advice as much as possible. I would love to be able to be a valueable DPS for the guild. I was excited to see that my DPS was "up there" last night in Naxx, but I want the 4k+ numbers I see from other guildy locks. I dont know if the gap of where I am at (~2k DPS) and where I want to be (+4k DPS) is all gear, gems, enchants, etc.. I doubt it. I have read about max dps rotation for affl locks.. have the dot timers etc.. but I just feel like with a little coaching from other locks, I might be able to squeeze even more out of what I have. That is why I was excited to see the title of this post. Since I am not a veteran raider, I would vote for a mix of recruiting and grooming. I want to be better at my class. Reading about a specific fight wont help me with that.. simply staying alive isnt my objective. I want to get all the DPS I can get to help the group.. AND stay alive. The problem is that I ask what I know to be stupid questions... I ask them because I dont know the answer.. because I have never played end game content before this toon... and I feel bad about asking too much. I dont like to be a pest. That said, I think it would be awesome if we could get some class/spec coaching from the vets. Maybe pick a run where we dont need vent for the raid so we can use vent channels for classes to get coaching in the raid.. something like that. I, for one, dont learn as well by reading a post online about how to do something better... I need on the job training. My two cents.

Wadup · Post by **Wadup** » May 14th, 2009, 10:50 am

I know that the officers had a meeting about this yesterday and we will be trying to put together benchmarks of specs and their dps naked. Basically say i am nakid with only my wep on and can get 1500dps with unholy, then we would expect every death knight in the guild to get at least 2k dps since it is possible to get 1500 without any gear on etc with the right rotation. I believe this will happen for every class and its "main raid"spec soon. On another note i am happy to hear that you want to get better, i know i do as well. A lot of that comes not only from listening to others but also from researching. Namas, one of my friends from other MMO's, had never rtouched WoW before level 80. I bought him an account and pay for it, and when he hit 80 it was from him following me while i was lvling him, and i believe that he now gets in the top 5 dps slots every fight. This is because while he was following me looting items, he was also online browsing elitistjerks.com for hwo to dps as a mage as well as researching all of the mage specs and everything. This is something that everyone is able to do and i know that even some of the top dpsers in the guild still go to forums to find out tips on how to improve dps. Another main part of being main dps is not even focusing on dps at all but rather focusing on survivability during a raid experience. If we are raiding say 3 drakes, and you have to avoid lava zones and void zones, we will know if you get hit by them. The best dps cannot make up for dieing to the raid mechanics and so the biggest key to being an experienced raider is surviving the raids

All these things can be worked on but mostly need to be worked on on a personal level since we can only tell people how to do the strat so many times, after that any deaths are due to the user not moving when needed

P.S. if anyone has any questions about their class dps or raid encounters they are having problems with surviving feel free to message me ingame on either Wadup or proe. Always down to talk strategies.

Sinistyr · Post by **Sinistyr** » May 14th, 2009, 11:54 am

I agree that being dead is the worst thingh you can do for DPS. Knowing the fight mechanics keeps you alive. I would like to think I have a good memory and learn quick. I dont need the Naxx dance explained, the Naxx Loetheb explained, the polarity explained (after last night) .. a combination of reading and doing is all I need. Also (BTW) there are a lot of youtube vids on the individual fights that are handy learing tools. That said, I have read on EJ the rotation to use for the best DPS.. but that is assuming buffs/stats/boss fights.. I am not sure when I should be spamming dots and AoE across multiple targets (trash fights) vs focused fire on a single trash target when the tank is holding many. The naked target dummy exercise is a great one I think (going to measure that tonight).. and really levels the playing field to get class play equitably measured. I would be thrilled to know that I have the same (+/-) DPS naked as Rathr does. I would love for a vet lock to spend 15mins w/me on a target dummy helping me fine tune what I have implemented after reading EJ etc... I just feel bad asking... I guess I will ask anyway. I just want to make sure that its understood that experiece isnt something that can be gained by JUST research (though it helps). A lot of the guides say things like "This is a lot like the fight in Kara that ...." .. I never did Kara... so that doesnt really help. I am not trying to make excuses.. just trying to point out some personal limitations I have that others may share but not speak up about. I know that I want to be DPS you WANT in the raid.. not just fill a slot.

WarmApplePie · Post by **WarmApplePie** » May 14th, 2009, 12:08 pm

Sinistyr, because you were the first to ask I decided to help. http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t53164-pve_ ... um_v3_1_a/ Go forth and become uber.