How to Improve at Raiding

How to Get Good

1) Research.

2) Adjust UI.

3) Practice.

4) Repeat steps 1-3 in an infinite loop.

How to Get Good - Extended Edition

Okay, in all seriousness, Neph and I have had several guildies approach us over the past several weeks wanting to improve. By and large, their biggest concern is output. "I'm learning how to not stand in fire. But no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to pull more than __k dps." I offer to those players, as well as *any* players wanting to improve, the four-step success plan above.

I don't mean to say by this that I am already good. The whole point of step 4 in the plan is that being a good wow player is a never-ending endeavor. You don't do a couple of things, and then "pow!", suddenly become classified as "good." You take the right steps, and get a little bit better. Then, you repeat the steps, and get a little bit better still. Then you... ok, you get the picture, right?

So with that in mind, allow me to expand on the steps 1-4, for those of you sincerely looking to be better players.

1) Research

What it means:

Visit multiple websites. Like, lots and lots. Take notes.

Quick Tips:

-Icyveins has always been good, but is far less frequently updated as of WoD. May contain oudated info.

-MMO-Champion seems to be the new hub for the best wow players and theorycrafters. I'd start there.

-Noxxic is bad. I'm sorry if this is offensive somehow, but it just is. Don't go there.

-Ask Mr. Robot is a gearing tool more than anything else. Do not depend on it to help you out rotationally.

-Class specific sites are often a great place to browse oodles of relevant information.

Here is my personal collection of bookmarked sites I visit. Take your time. The learning step is important.

Warcraftlogs

Now, let's get some data and set some goals.

1) Visit warcraftlogs.com.

2) At the top left click Zones > Hellfire Citadel > Statistics.

On the page that pops up...

3) Click Mythic and select Normal or Heroic instead (whichever is your current difficulty you're working on)

4) Select "For All Item Levels" and select the range that your personal ilvl falls within.

5) Click "Aggregate Using Normalized Scores" and select "Per Second Amounts."

Behold: This is how much damage each spec is capable of pulling at your current ilvl. Find your spec, and record this number. Make it your goal. If you want to see in particular for single target vs. multi-target, select "All Bosses" at the top and pick individual fights to see how your spec should perform on each of them.

Okay, now we're going to see what the best players in the world are doing to get these amazing numbers.

1) Visit warcraftlogs.com

2) At the top left, click Zones > Hellfire Citadel > Rankings

3) Select "By All Classes" and select your own class and spec.

You should now see a list of the top 10 "All Stars" for your particular spec.

4) Click the #1 guy's name. It will take you to his rankings page.

5) At the top left, select "Hellfire Assault" and instead pick "All Bosses." This may take a minute to load.

6) Also at the top, be sure the correct spec is selected.

Now, scroll down through the data to see how much damage he is pulling on each fight. Pick a fight that you'd like to know more about. Let's say, for instance, you're particularly struggling on Archimonde. Then maybe we'll look at how this guy approaches Archimonde.

Click on the top line (his highest rank) on the fight you want to study. Clicking anywhere on the line should work. You should now see a log of this actual boss kill, including this raider's entire raid team. Click his name in the list to generate a screen that is only about his contribution to the kill.

From here you're free to browse. I suggest checking out the "Casts" tab to see how many times he is casting each of his abilities. It may help you to figure out where you need to make some changes. I'd also suggest clicking the "Events" box, as it will show you exactly what this player did from start to finish.

Whatever you see, take notes on it. And use it. Do what he's doing. Because he's clearly doing it right.

Youtube

Don't underestimate the importance of a good visual example to inspire some improvement.

Find some kill videos of raid bosses in the current tier from the point-of-view of your particular spec. For me, I usually just search "BossName Kill Holy Pally POV" and find dozens of videos. For example, our group is working on Mythic Gorefiend soon. I'll search "Mythic Gorefiend holy pally pov" and watch a handful of other holy paladins heal the fight from beginning to end. The knowledge I've gleaned here is limitless. Sometimes it's little things like talents, but often I'll learn neat little utility type things just by hearing the players call things in vent, or by watching what skills the paladin uses as different phases of the fight come up. Plus, if it's on youtube, you can bet it will be a kill video, and it's always fun to live vicariously through someone else.

Research - Common Counter-arguments:

• It's lame to have to do "research" just to play a game.

• I don't have this kind of time.

• Just icyveins is enough for me.

My responses:

• A perfectly valid argument. It is 100% fine to play this game with zero outside research, but you won't excel. Your call.

• If you don't have time to research, you don't really have time to meaningfully improve. Sorry :-/

• Just icyveins is sort of bare minimum to keep up in raids. If you're reading this, I'm assuming you want to excel. If you really don't, probably stop reading :)

2) Adjust UI

What it means:

Get comfortable with addons and/or a whole new UI. If you're brand new to both, addons are probably the easier way to get started in using an actual raiding UI, since you can make them fairly non-invasive if you don't like change.

The addon I highly recommend above all others is Weak Auras 2. It is the God of addons. Also, pick up Skada if you don't already have a damage meter. You can't really see and measure improvement without a meter to show you some data. I'd advise using the Curse program to download and manage your addons. It's pretty great, and any addon that Curse supports and makes available is vetted and therefore safe to download without fear of any virus.

Now, here's what you do with these addons.

Regardless of what spec/class you play, you have a lot of information you can and should track. You may want to track resources, buffs, debuffs, dots, cooldowns, and any number of things that will help you improve.

As a simple example, do you play a class that has a "DoT" (damage-over-time) effect like Immolate, Corruption, Living Bomb, Rake, Moonfire etc? You're supposed to keep these dots up at all times on the boss you're fighting (we call this having 100% uptime). How do you know that your dots are always on the target you're fighting? Do you just cast them every few seconds and hope that's sufficient? Because that's awful.

If you have a dot or debuff that you're supposed to keep up on your target, your first step is to use an addon like Weakauras, NeedtoKnow, TellMeWhen, Raven or any other spelltimer addon to create a spelltimer for you for that particular dot. You can (depending on the addon) create either an icon with a sweep timer and countdown text, or a depleting bar with countdown text that represents the remaining time that your dot has on your current target. That way, when a site like icyveins says "refresh your dot at 3 seconds or less" you're not playing some bizzarre guessing game. You've got a piece built in to your UI, placed somewhere near your character so it's central and easy to keep an eye on, that helps you refresh at just the right time. "My spelltimer says 4 seconds left on Moonfire, so I need to refresh it after this Wrath cast." Plan, and keep that uptime on dots and debuffs as high as possible.

As an example, I've posted a picture of my hunter's UI.

What you see here:

-A large focus bar to help me keep a close eye on it. That way I never focus cap, or sit too low to use my skills the moment they're available.

-A small serpent sting timer bar just over the focus bar. if the dot falls off, that bar glows red and pulses to get my attention so that I put the debuff back up ASAP.

-Rotational icons, priority is left to right (BA, ES, DB, Barrage, ET). Each icon has its focus cost at the bottom right corner to help me plan and pool appropriate focus amounts when one of these core rotational abilities will soon be available. When I use a button, it turns grey while on CD, like Black Arrow icon in the picture. When it's fully colored, it's available and I should use it ASAP.

-A cooldown reminder for Stampede, my burst CD every 5 min. When it needs to be used, a giant icon on the right pops up, and bounces in place until I use it. When it's on CD, nothing is there, so that it doesn't annoy me.

Keep in mind that if this looks busy to you, then don't design yours this way. Don't overwhelm yourself.

Do like I did, and add a timer or two at a time, and get used to using them optimally before adding more. There is such a thing as too much information in front of your eyes, and you have to be able to process and react to it within fractions of a second, or it's not doing it's job. This is why, like all 3 steps, this step is repeatable. You should be constantly looking for ways to tweak and improve your UI.

UI - Common Counter-arguments:

• I'm too pro for addons.

• I don't know how to make WeakAuras.

• I don't like how that looks.

• I don't want to stare at a UI. I want to watch the fights.

My responses:

• Everybody has room to improve. If you don't want to, why are you reading this?

• I am *more* than happy to help teach and provide WeakAuras. Ask me anytime!

• You underestimate Weakauras! It's entirely versatile. Make it your own, until you *do* like how it looks.

• I'm 100% convinced that a good UI is key to being a top-end raider. Make it as non-invasive as you can, but if you're here because you're not happy with your output, then you're going to have to get over this. As I said above, design a UI you enjoy watching *while* watching the fights.

3) Practice

What it means:

Go to a target dummy. Get a snack and a drink. Pull out the notes from your research. Now, pewpew.

Practice everything you wrote down. Stop combat, double check notes, and try it again. Over and over. And over.

Also, do this for a long, LONG time. One go at it for 3 minutes doesn't count. I can easily spend 2-3 hours on a target dummy with a new max level alt. I spread out the notes from my research in front of me, park it in front of the dummy, make sure I like how my keybinds are arranged, and start dpsing.

I'll go for about 20 minutes straight, no breaks, just practicing hitting the buttons, allowing myself to memorize where they are. If I screw up, hit a wrong button, I don't start over, I just keep practicing until I feel like the mistakes are minimal. Then, I stop, and look back over my research. "Doh. I was forgetting to use such-and-such skill." Round 2. Another 15-20 minutes. Check Skada. Yes, it was better that time. Stop, check notes, tweak UI as I realize it's not doing quite what I wanted/expected. Back to practicing. Going to swap these keybinds because I think it makes more sense to me that way. Back to practicing.

After about an hour I usually decide I have the hang of the basic rotation, I like my keybinds, and I like my UI.

Then, I add in the cooldowns.

Practice, practice. Pewpew! Skada's looking better. Double check notes. Yep, I'm still doing things right. Keep practicing.

Okay, now I'm going to practice my opener. Double check various notes on opener, do it once in slow motion. Once I have the basics down, practice it all, including the pre-pot. Countdown and all. Practice, check Skada, check notes to be sure I did it right. Good. Go again, better that time. Re-check notes. Aaaaand again. I usually do this at least 20 times, until I develop muscle memory and know I'll get it right every single time.

Okay, now I'm going to practice dpsing while moving. Blizzard cruelly took away a lot of mobility, but these encounters still require us to move quite a lot. Here we go, 15-20 minutes doing as much as I possibly can while dancing around in front of the target dummy like a madwoman. Figure out how to plan for movement. How to use it to my advantage. Do I need to swap that talent to the other one for movement fights? Icy says yes. Swap talent. Practice some more. Pew-sidestep-pew-jump-pew-sidestep!

Okay, I'm a single target MACHINE. Now, let's try 2 targets. Double check notes. Time to practice. 15-20 minutes. Check Skada. How was my dot uptime? Good on one target, bad on the other. Ok, double check notes. Tweak UI if needed. Go again, 15-20 minutes. After a while, practice the opener on 2 targets instead of 1. After a while, practice 2 targets with movement.

After you're pretty sure you're the best, queue for LFR, and practice on the specific bosses you're hoping to annihilate on higher difficulties. Be sure to use your notes on talents to use per fight to see how awesome you can be at each individual encounter.

Just as a quick last thing, I've mentioned "keybinds" a few times. I'd like to be clear on one thing: you need to keybind your skills. At the very least, you need to keybind the skills you use frequently. If you are clicking each and every skill in your rotation, then you're playing sluggishly. Start keybinding. You'll get worse at first, until you get used to it. Stick with it, and you'll end up pulling far more than you were in the first place.

Practice - Common Counter-arguments:

• Dpsing target dummies is boring.

• I just go straight to LFR.

• I'm a healer/tank.

• I don't like have this kind of time.

My responses:

• If you find your class boring, perhaps pick a new one? Plenty of classes have fascinating rotations, when you do them right.

• That kinda cuts out 90% of the "practice" doesn't it? First, practice patiently in a standstill, no mechanics, no target swapping situation. In other words, get on that target dummy. It'll be okay.

• There are now healer and tank dummies, too! Your level 3 garrison has one of each next to your mine. The healer dummy can be healed indefinitely, and the tank dummy hits you back, allowing you to practice your self-reliance and survivability.

• If you don't have time to practice, you don't really have time to meaningfully improve. Sorry :-/

4) Repeat steps 1-3 in an infinite loop.

What it means:

So you've done steps 1-3 and you're raiding now. Your dps is much better. But remember those numbers you saw on warcraftlogs? Remember what the best players in the world are doing? The key to raiding is steps 1-3, once. The key to keeping your raid spot is repeating steps 1-3 on a regular basis, always looking to improve.

With each batch of hotfixes, and *especially* with major patches, classes change. Sometimes the changes are minimal and don't really change what you should do to do your job well. Other times, pretty major changes have to occur, either in terms of gear, talent selection, and/or the entire rotation.

Sometimes, though nothing has changed at all, the information available does change. New discoveries in gearing can happen as theorycrafting changes as average ilvl of the playerbase goes up. New ideas for how to handle boss mechanics with your various utilities, or which talents you should take for optimum output, arise from the work of top-end players.

It is always a good idea to recheck your favorite sites from step 1, tweak your UI to make sure it's still doing everything you need it to do and nothing more, and practice any and all changes on a target dummy, then in lfr.