Tips on Being a Better PC Gamer

[Inori]

http://kotaku.com/5761715/some-handy-ob ... r-pc-gamer

I woke up super early one morning and came across this article. The video is kinda long if you watch the entire thing, but the author Sean "Day[9]" Plott arranges it in a manner that I think puts the most important fundamentals up front. While the video is about Starcraft II, a *lot* of it applies to WoW as well.

Starcraft II's game system rewards players who are capable of processing large amounts of information and efficiently execute (speed + accuracy) commands to units to reactively address events occuring in the game and proactively influence how events will unfold in the game.

The exact same thing applies to World of Warcraft. Let me go into this in detail.

[Inori]

Speaking for myself, I used the Cataclysm overhaul of priest healing to completely overhaul how I set up my control scheme in WoW. Ever since Vanilla, I had my healing hotkeys assigned to keys '5' through '9'. This was simply carry over from leveling up in Teldrassil where I put my DPS abilities on '1' through '4'. Vanilla raiding didn't punish me for this setup simply because priest healing at the time was 'stop and pop' -- I could move to a location using WASD or left+right mouse click, settle down, move my hand to my healing hotkeys, and fire away. It wasn't until WotLK that my outdated keybinding habits would start causing serious problems. The emphasis on player movement now exposed me to a lot of risk. Even though I added a lot of clique bindings so I could heal on the move, my fastest reaction times for spammy WotLK style healing could only be achieved on my '5' to '9' hand positioning because that's what was ingrained in my muscle memory. I can recall several ICC boss fights where I subjected the raid to a wipe because I had to move my hand to WASD for movement, I was one key off, I hit 'R' instead of 'E' for strafe right, started sending a spammy reply of 'rrrr' to someone, I had to stop, backspace it away, hit enter, move my hand to the correct place -- all the while falling behind on healing/movement. The error could also happen on the return to my '5' through '9' row and I'd be one key off and throw the wrong heal ('7' for renew instead of '6' for penance). The long winded summary to this paragraph is -- when things go wrong during a boss fight, always, always, *always* rewind the events that lead up to things going wrong and double check that your control scheme is not contributing to the problem. Your answer does not have to be, "I need to change from being a hotkey healer to being a clique healer". The solution to control problems is not the same for everyone. It may very well be that you just need to practice more mouse accuracy or keyboard accuracy. It may just be to move your frequent healing hotkeys to be closer to your WASD keys. You have to find your own answer.

[Inori]

The very last thing I want to talk about is a different type of proactive influence. It is doing research on the boss encounters before the fight by reading online or watching videos. I have a very mixed stance on this that is entirely my own opinion -- be sure to follow the expectations of your particular raid leader (Jim, Jeff, or other).

On my old server, I raided with some people who did exhaustive research on boss fights. Some of these people were the raid leaders and they were rightfully doing research in order to devise an initial strategy (if we were doing a boss for the first time) or to improve strategy. Some of these people were just rank and file raiders. Among the rank and file raiders, the ones that drove me nuts were the ones who verbatim copy-pasted a written strat or verbally recounted a video strat. They did not understand the 'why' things were being done in the strategy -- they would just tell the raid leaders, "dude, you're doing it wrong; in the Forte video, all the priests stood over here". This just cluttered vent and caused my raid leader (who had an Australian accent) to have to mute them.

This isn't as big a deal nowadays since in 10 man raiding, you can actually communicate and try out a lot of different strategies on the same night. Back in the 40 man days, you couldn't communicate and set up too many different things on the same night not to mention a lot of the strategies revolved around raid composition. My personal expectations in a 10 man raid is that all ideas are welcome. However, I do expect people to state their suggestions in the right way.

If you have an idea and know the reason (or think you know the reason) why the idea has an advantage or mitigates a disadvantage, say it -- "The healers and ranged should stand in melee range of Magmaw so that they aren't valid targets for the pillar of fire". This clearly communicates to your raid what they should plan for so they can take advantage of it (e.g., the DPS know that they can stand still and just lay down AE without wasting time moving).

If you have an idea and don't know the reason why the idea has an advantage or mitigates a disadvantage, say it -- "In a video I saw, only one guy was at range and everyone else was in melee range". This clearly communicates to your raid that there is something they can try and that they should plan to be in an observational mode so we can figure out why it should be done.

While I personally don't like doing things randomly just for the sake of trying them randomly (I'd rather troubleshoot what's wrong with an existing strat and adapt it), there have been times where Jim has said, "let's try it this way and see how it goes" and I just have to shut up and try to observe as much as I can during the experimental attempts.

[Inori]

I think that's it for my long winded rant. That's what happens when you wake up early and can't go back to sleep and actually read/watch something mentally stimulating. I'll go ahead and say that this rant sounded a lot more eloquent and well thought out when it raced through my head earlier in the morning, but since I took a long time to type it out, most of that was lost and all that's left is what my addled mind could remember as I typed the various subposts out.

We've got a lot more people actively raiding and I'm hoping that bits and pieces from this rant can help you out with some of the problems you might be facing with your own playstyle. Even though the raids are harder, I personally find them a lot more fun (PW:Shielding 10 people nonstop during WotLK was boring as hell).

-HP

[Inori]

Egad, there are a lot of spelling and grammar errors. I'll try to fix them before anyone notices. Hope I don't miss any.

-HP

[WarmApplePie]

This isn't a rant, this is EPIC!!

/ps we all know you are just driving up your post count!

/delete this reply, sticky and lock thread, link in MotD


XOXOXO

[Inori]

The way PvE encounters are architected in the Cataclysm content rewards players who are capable of processing large amounts of information. In the Starcraft II video above, Sean talks about screen control, tapping, and training yourself to use the minimap more -- all of those translate into effectively using the Starcraft II UI to gather large amounts of information. In WoW terms, I want you to ask yourself the following questions.

"Is my UI not giving me the information I need?" -- Are you always missing the boss timer that tells you when things are going to hit or need to be interrupted? Are you always missing that buff/debuff that needs to be purged from the boss or your raid members?

"Is my visual scan path through my screen paced inappropriately so that even if my UI shows me what I need to know, I'm not seeing it until it's too late?" -- Are you fixated on your DPS addon so much that you never check your feet for that circle of fire you need to move out of? Are you fixated on the raid healing grid so much that you don't notice you're standing in a whirlwind and now have to heal yourself through a massive DoT.

In the Starcraft II video, Sean talks about how bad players will be doing 'micro' on their guys during a battle and will completely miss that their opponent was fighting the battle while simultaneously expanding, outflanking them, etc. Sean explains that if you are constantly including the minimap in your visual scan path, you won't miss a beat. The same applies to WoW. I play a healer. Even in the most intense boss fights, I am doing the following:
I am checking 10 health bars.
I am checking 10 raid frames for debuffs (and not just priest dispelled ones).
I am checking the boss timers.
I am checking my feet.
I am checking my positioning.
I am checking the positioning of the players in my visible area.
I am checking the positioning of mobs in my visible area.
I am checking the player proximity window if applicable.
I am checking the boss/mob raid frames for buffs.
I am checking my healing cooldowns.

That's a lot of stuff, but the game rewards me for being able to process all of that information. I am able to heal effectively. I am able to always be in the optimum position for events that unfold in the fight. I am able to recap to the raid how the fight unfolded (what went bad and what went well -- as well as the events leading up to it) after a wipe.

[Inori]

In the Starcraft II video, Sean has a segment where he demonstrates excellent use of the minimap: "hotkey to base, build some units -- check my minimap -- click on the minimap, hotkey my units, click on the minimp, move them to chase this drone, hotkey to base, start an upgrade -- check my minimap..." and so forth. When he's demonstrating tapping, you notice how the status bars of the production buildings flash at the bottom of the screen. He states that this isn't just meaningless APM, this is effective use of the UI to gather large amounts of information. The same applies to WoW. I check my 10 health bars, I start a greater heal -- it has 2.5 second cast time -- I check my boss timers, I check my feet, I check the proximity window -- 2.5 seconds is almost up, I check the 10 health bars to decide if I need to cancel my heal due to overhealing and pick the next heal target -- heal goes through, no new heal target, I check my main tank's buff/debuff to see if PW:Shield needs to be refreshed, I cast PW:Shield on the tank -- 1.5 second GCD -- I check my PoM status, I check the boss raid frame for debuffs, I check the 10 health bars, I start moving to a better location, I refresh PoM on the run on a melee with middling health -- 1.5 second GCD -- I check the boss timers... and so forth. Notice how even though I'm healing, I'm scanning my entire UI in order to grab a lot of information. With more information, I'm able to process the current situation more accurately and predict how the situation will unfold so that I can plan my heals and cooldown usage effectively. If all I did was sit and stare down the 10 health bars like a madman, a lot of bad things could happen:

I could be standing in fire. Now I have to heal myself which means that I won't be healing the tank which could lead to a wipe immediately or it could be more healing load on myself which means I'll be regretful later when the boss is at 10% and I'm OOM because I burned 20k mana just healing myself for all the fire I stood in during the fight.

I could not be paying attention to the kiting path that the tank is taking and suddenly be more than 40 yards away from him. I waste 3 precious seconds moving back in range during which the tank gets heal starvation and dies (or uses a precious tank CD that he was saving for boss burst damage 15 seconds later).

I could miss out on a melee DPS standing in fire and I miss out on the opportunity to pre-shield and under-PoM him so that he lives a little longer (and not cause me a healing distraction) while he slowly reacts to being in a bad spot.

Your UI plays a huge role in your ability to effectively gather information in WoW. Are your boss timers tucked up away in the upper right corner of your screen? A favorite of mine was back in Sartharion where after a certain patch, the default big bar boss timer position was right under my feet which caused me to miss seeing void zones when I was doing my visual scan -- when things go wrong during a boss fight, always, always, *always* rewind the events that lead up to things going wrong and double check that your UI is not contributing to the problem.

[Inori]

Have you noticed how in Cataclysm, the Blizzard designers have loaded up the fights with a lot of positioning tactics? While you may hate or love the additional challenge this brings, I don't want you to ignore that Blizzard also made DPS simpler. The biggest thing that stands out in my book is that DoTs/HoTs have fixed duration, haste just makes them tick faster. This makes DPS rotations a lot simpler. For almost all classes, the DPS system is set so that you settle into a rotation which includes proc's every once in a while to spice things up (and for almost everything where there's a proc, Blizz added a hotkey flashing animation or a power aura notification). This was done so that people wouldn't have to stare so intently at their DPS rotation information in the UI and could now be reasonably asked to pay attention to what's going on (like not standing in fire). Let me expound on this further.

As a shadow priest, I have done enough heroics so that I can do my DPS rotation just like how I heal -- I scan my remaining DoT duration, I scan my DPS cooldowns, I scan my DPS procs, I scan the boss' health -- among all of the other things that I scan like boss timers, position, etc. I want to emphasize that the way Cataclysm PvE encounters are architected stratify poorer players from better players.

Poor players are not accustomed to their DPS rotation. They stare at their DPS UI elements intently and miss out on all of the other important information in the UI. They stand in fire and take extra damage. They don't notice that the tank is repositioning the boss and are suddenly out of range to cast their next spell.

Average players are accustomed to their DPS rotation and don't have to stare down their DPS UI so much. They notice that their DPS cooldowns are up, so they use them more often. As a result, their DPS is higher than that of poor players.

Superior players scan their UI and take in a lot of information. They know that there is a fire circle under their feet, so they move. They see a boss timer that tells them the tank is going to reposition the boss, so they move during the GCDs of their instant casts so they are in a better location and don't lose DPS time trying to stay in range while the boss is repositioned. They notice the spell alert that tells them they have a proc and can use their super DPS attack earlier in their rotation (for a shadow priest, this means noticing that you have a stack of 3 shadow orbs and casting that mind blast pronto before you 'waste' potential shadow orb procs). As a result, their DPS is even higher than that of average players, they rarely take damage, and their healers love them.

[Inori]

This leads into the next chunk of the Starcrat II analogy. The way PvE encounters are architected in the Cataclysm content rewards players who are capable of efficiently executing (speed + accuracy) commands. In WoW terms, I want you to ask the following questions.

"Are the hotkeys for abilities that I use located in effective places?" -- Do you always have to move you hands to various areas of the keyboard to hit certain keys? Does this sometimes cause you to go back to your 'home row' one key off (e.g., you mistakenly bring your middle finger down on 'D' instead of 'S' and spin in place instead of walking backward)?

Early in the Starcraft II video, Sean talks about hand positioning on the keyboard and the mouse that apply in general to computer usage as well as gaming. If you're getting very fatigued while playing WoW or even worse, making inaccurate mouse clicks or key hits due to bad computer usage habits, you should examine them seriously.

[Inori]

In the Starcraft II video, Sean talks about the advantages of having your group bindings match your mental scheme. He sets his group bindings 1-2-3 left to right. He finds it advantageous because it matches his ingrained mental/muscle memory that groups are bound left to right according to their relative horizontal position on the map.

I take advantage of the same scheme in WoW. For my clique bindings, I bound all of my instant heals to button 4 (button 4 is PW:Shield, alt+button 4 is PoM, shift+button 4 is renew). In a worst case scenario where I have to panic heal on the run, I can by muscle memory roll through that sequence of three bindings and get three GCDs of movment. Similarly, I bound my direct heals to the right mouse button (button 2 is penance, alt+button 2 is binding heal, shift+button 2 is greater heal). To round out the ingrained mental/muscle memory, I bound my right mouse button over an enemy target frame to be smite. That way, when I'm scanning the 10 health bars deciding who to heal, if no one needs a direct heal, I scan my vision (and move my mouse) over to the enemy target frame and fire off a smite to get an atonement heal.

Similarly, I have bound my right mouse button over an enemy target frame to be my rapid action for a given class/spec -- for my disc priest, it is smite; for my shadow priest, it is silence; for my prot paladin, it is taunt; for my holy paladin, it is judgement.

The scheme I use above is not for everyone; you may use a different scheme. If you do change schemes, remember what Sean says in the Starcraft II video, "You will suck for a while". I practiced, tweaked, and troubleshot my new healing scheme in the overpowered random heroics we did when patch 4.0.1 came out prior to Cataclysm. If you want to overhaul your scheme now, be sure to allot for time to practice it in guild heroic runs so you can commit it to mental/muscle memory (and give the group a heads up) before you need to use it in a raid.

[Inori]

The next chunk of the Starcrat II analogy is shorter. The way PvE encounters are architected in the Cataclysm content rewards players who reactively address events occuring in the game. A lot of this relates to the gathering of large amounts of information discussed earlier. It does segway into the next chunk which is the way PvE encounters are architected in the Cataclysm content rewards players who proactively influence how events will unfold in the game.

If you have ever been in a raid with me, you have usually seen me type (or if you were in raids much earler, heard me say over vent), "If you wait to hear that something is happening in vent, it is already too late". The round trip delay of:
1) Having someone else in the raid observe something happening.
2) Having that person mentally compute that it is important to say it in vent and formulate a sentence.
3) Have that person say that sentence into the microphone (e.g., "XYZ, get out of the fire").
4) Have that data go from the speaker's computer to the vent server.
5) Have that data go from the vent server to your computer.
6) Have you hear the sentence from your speakers.
7) Have you mentally compute that it is important and decide on an action.
8) You take action.

By this time, you have taken enormous damage from standing in the fire. Your healer now spends 10k mana and 5 seconds landing two greater heals on you instead of healing his tank. His tank notices healing starvation and uses a tank CD he really wanted so save for that uber boss ability that was coming up 10 seconds in his boss timers. Eventually, your raid wipes at 10% boss health because your healers were running on fumes and the raid is frustrated and angry.

[Inori]

Playing proactively means always, always, *always* rewinding what went wrong in a boss fight (even if you kill the boss) and think of ways to improve for the next time you do it. Here are some examples.

In heroic Stonecore, the first few packs of trash have berserkers. These berserkers love to charge people (it's random secondary target). These berserkers also love to whirlwind in place which places a stacking DoT on anyone nearby. I learned the first few times I ran that instance that they love to do both at the same time. Proactively, if the mob charges me, I PW:Shield myself. During that 1.5 second GCD, I check to see if the mob starts to whirlwind. If he starts to whirlwind, I immediately strafe out and PW:Shield the tank or some other low party member if I see a weakened soul debuff on the tank -- it doesn't matter if the tank is at half health or if I have a melee about to die. This is a proactive movement action -- I'm pretty sure a lot of you have been in a group where the healer stood there following through on the 2.5 second heal they had queued up. Now that healer has a huge DoT on them. This now poses them with a huge dilemma because any time they spend healing themself, they are not healing their tank or some other melee who didn't move out and is eating a huge DoT. To toot my own horn -- I rarely find myself in bad healing situations because I plan to never be in a bad healing situation.

Here's a DPS example. In heroic Grim Batol, when Drahga Shadowburner is mounted on Valiona, the boss will periodically cast this huge cone breath that hits half the room. A lot of times, this happens while there is a fire add spawned that is tracking to a target to nuke them. As a shadow priest, during the 3 second channel of mind flay, I will scan the field (and pan my camera) to find the fire add spawn point. Once I locate the spawn point, I proactively move myself so that I am next to the boss on the side farthest away from the add spawn point. I pan my camera and mouse over the add spawn point. If there is a risk of accidentally clicking on the boss, I proactively tilt my camera so I have an unobstructed view of that fire circle. As soon as the add spawns, I click on it to target it and cast a 1.5 second mind spike. I visually scan the boss to check for its breath charging animation. If I see the animation and see it pointed at me, I run through the boss the minimum distance needed to not get hit by the flame. Since I am now safe, I spike the add some more, mind blast, and SW:Death it. By proactively positioning myself, I set myself up to have no DPS time lost on the add *and* I don't burden my healer by standing in the breath. I'm pretty sure a lot of people have been in a group where the DPS had to run miles to get out of the breath and when the add reached the healer, their excuse was "I couldn't get any DPS time because I had to move out of the breath". Proactive players plan ahead so that there are no excuses that need to be made.

[Inori]

The last example that will be very relevant to the Forged Alliance raiders is the Omnotron Defense System. When the Toxitron mob is up, he periodically does an ability that summons adds that fixate and chase down random raid members. If they reach their target, they nuke and usually one shot the person. I proactively position myself so that the shaman's totems (particularly earthbind) are between myself and Toxitron. That way, if an add does spawn and fixate on me, I am already in an excellent starting position. I learned this from previous attempts where I'd be in a random room position and have to kite the add towards the snares -- this almost always lead to tank healing starvation and a wipe that was ultimately my fault. By being in position ahead of time, I could ramp up my tank healing in anticipation of having to move. While landing my tank heals, if I assessed that my add would be last in the kill priority (e.g., the melee chased down the other two adds first), I would strafe sideways so that I kept my add inside the totem snare. If I followed my first instinct and just ran backwards, my add would no longer be in the snare and I would now be kiting my add causing heal starvation on my tank. By strafing, I could stop, land more heals on my tank, and not put myself in a bad situation. Note that if there is a high priority positioning situation (e.g., an arcane buff circle for mana regen), I will move the mana regen circle and be aware of the totem location and Toxitron location. If an add fixates on me, I know ahead of time my immediate exit vector.

[Inori]

I have also raided with rank and file raiders who did absolutely zero research on a boss fight beforehand. While this may anger some people ("I do all this preparation, but why does XYZ get to always go"), my old guild kept these guys on the roster for a logical reason. There are some players who learn by doing and adapt very quickly within the same attempt. They're the guys who as soon as they see splashing damage on a boss fight (whether it happens to them or someone else), they immediately take a few steps to space themselves from their neighbors. They're the guys who you wonder, "He said this is the first time he's run this dungeon on heroic, but he is rocking it".

These people have a very acute sense of observation and they integrate mental/muscle memory from other PvE encounters that they've done previously into what they're doing for a new encounter. I'm not one of these people. I have to either read the boss abilities beforehand or experience a wipe to jog my memory, "Oh yeah, we should make a melee triangle behind Maloriak so that the biting chill debuff doesn't splash the melee like we do on Kel'Thuzad" or "Oh yeah, we need to punch through Ironstar's shield and interrupt the execution just like Kael'Thas".

So how do you know how much research to do beforehand?

1) It depends on your raid leader.
2) Use the following guiding principle, "Never be lost". You don't have to know a fight inside-out beforehand -- that's an unreasonable expectation. You are expected to not be completely lost during an encounter. You are expected to be taking steps to improve between attempts and between weeks of raiding -- you should always be striving to make this week's kill of Magmaw better than last week's kill of Magmaw.

[Blue]

Exellent post! But lay off the coffee and get some sleep

[draven]

epic thread is epic. well done, sir

edit: sticked and moved to general in the hopes that people will find it more easily

[Aezelkvalae]

Although this game is a bit ridiculous IMO because there are certain parts that are essentially impossible, it is an interesting concept of
how good your innate "gaming intuition" is.

http://www.jmtb02.com/flash/grid16-jm.swf