An Apology to the Thursday Raid Group

[Tal]

I'd like to take the time right now to apologize for losing my temper last night during the raid. I really should have kept my "professional" face on until I'd cooled down and I would like to apologize. I'd also like to explain the events that lead up to my outburst to give you an insight into what was going on.

The first that I was in a great deal of pain before we started. I've got a umbillical hernia that I will be having surgery on in September. Usually you can live with a umbillical hernia for several years before getting it corrected. Mine is evidently bad enough that the surgeon ordered it done ASAP. In fact he wanted to do it the day after I saw him a month or so back but I was able to put it off until after a big project at work. So consequently there are days when the pain is searing - last night was one of them. I'm not stating this for sympathy but to explain how my temper was already compromised.

Then when we were forming up I tried to work out with the other paladins in Healer, "buffbot" and finally raid chat what blessings they were going to do. Not receiving ANY response I made the decision to salvation the even numbered groups in the raid and Bless the MT with Light. Almost immediately things didn't go well, healers were getting aggro due to the fact that they were not blessed with Salvation. I explained again that I was doing the even groups with Salvation and the OTHER two paladins would have to work out who was doing what. When I noticed some of the odd numbered groups were still not salvationed I blessed them on the fly and tried to keep my mana up to help with healing. It was frustrating to say the least the lack of response my communications got.

Add into it a meatshield who argued with every strategy and was putting down my friend Anadrol's ability to tank or really any of our raid's tanks. Who also kept advocating that the use of decursive was mandatory and anyone who wasn't using it was doing something seriously wrong and my mood worsened.

The one "role" a paladin has in a raid is to be a buffbot :rolleyes: and a cleanse bot. We provide auras and can help heal but no one brings a paladin on a raid because their healing saves the day. ;) To have someone continue to argue that I should turn over two of the unique abilities I have to a mod was insulting and infuriating. Whispered arguments on the "legality" of using decursive and accusations that I was hurting the raid by refusing to install it also helped spiral me into a foul mood.

The final two straws were whispers from folks for blessings in the middle of combat and the blame for a wipe being laid on the paladins for not cleansing Mind Control off players in the Luci fight. I had had my doubts that I could cleanse them (turns out I was right) but I dutifully spent all of my time cleansing everyone in the even groups right up until the moment I died to one of Luci's guards. I hadn't spent one mana point on my own health while I frantically cast cleanse on everyone who got the 2k debuff and was Mindcontrolled. Some would say that I failed the group by not keeping myself alive in that fight. They are probably right. Right after that it seemed to me that folks were blaming the paladins for the wipe and I lost my temper.

First off with a 5 minute duration on my blessings I make every attempt to bless all of the even numbered groups plus the maintank and then drink to full before combat starts. Sometimes, well frequently, fights will last longer than 5 minutes. When I see my blessing is running out I will refresh in this order: MT, MT's healer, and the healers in the even numbered groups. I make every effort to salvation the casters and rogues but I must conserve my mana for when the healers take damage to help keep them on their feet. I must by necessity assign the casters/rogues to a lesser priority for blessings. If this makes me a bad player than I'll withdraw from raiding in favor of someone who can do it all at once.

That being said I would like to implore folks to trust in each other. I know I goof around a LOT in /ga and /ra chat but I really am not as dumb as I appear. I'm aware of my job, such as it is, in raids. I know how to hit the 7 button (cleanse) and how to bless folks. Please do NOT whisper me for these things in a fight. I'm doing my best juggling blessings, cleansing and throwing heals out. Please have confidence that I am aware of the situations and am doing my best to fulfill that role. I don't tell the mages when they should frostnova, the rogues when to stealth, the healers when to heal, the warlocks what curse to cast, or the tanks when to taunt. Please extend me the same courtesy.

Again I'm sorry I lost my temper. At least one of the problems was removed last night but I still owe you all an apology.

X-Posted to Carpe Aurum.

[Pesmerga]

::hands Tal a pie::

It's cool. We all lose our temper, and I was close at points last night (mainly because of a certain "tank" that could be outtanked by my bear...) but I also understand the pain of having a hernia. (It's not fun... at all, even getting out of school/classes because of the pain wasn't that much fun)

Those two, in combination with all the other things that were going on/being said last night, can understandably lead to frustration.

Worry not Tal, we still love ya. (For now.... :lol: )

[Kevin]

I'm going to apologize here as well. I'm also going to give my condolences to tal.

If it makes you feel any better until Altrius got on I was getting my salvations, the few times I had one, from you and I was in an odd group. And yes I pulled healer aggro a couple of times when I didn't have the blessing. I never saw a paladin blessing unless you put it up or I yelled about it, or until Altrius got online.

The warrior was not making me happy to begin with, and I was already upset. I get upset at what I see as the stupidity of my condition sometimes. It gets frustrating when you can't figure out why a bar of soap gives you the heebie jeebies (yes I had to have Treesh apply the soap to my wash cloth so I could shower yesterday) but you can play a stupid video game with strangers. This is why I said I may not go at all. I figured if I was too frustrated to start it would just be bad. Well I calmed down and I like it Molten Core, it's a neat experience so I went. With the crap that was going on with some of the things that were being said I had a high frustration level.

Then you add that communication was just bad last night in general. Some people even admitted that if they have TS up they don't really read raid chat. I don't like that idea since there are things that even if I'm on TS I'm going to type because TS has too much traffic or that I want to make sure are clear. And of course there are still people who for various reasons aren't on TS. The communication issues were frustrating Treesh as well, and of course when you are in the same room with someone you feed off their mood (or at least most people do) so we both had frustrations building and we helped spiral each other down.

In the 2nd attempt at Luci I was handling the decursing of at least 3 of the healers (generally more because even without decursive I'm quick with it), and when I died (I was OOM, had drank my pot and used innervate already so staying up didn't matter a lot) I noticed that even after I mentioned please watch these two healers that they were still the last ones to have a curse removed from them. Partly because of decursive and the fact there was no mage in their group. And while the mages were doing a good job, there were times that a few of our priests were staying cursed (not the magic bomb, but the curse) until the next curse hit. Everyone else in the raid would be cleared and these two were cursed for another minute, even after I said something. And of course Treesh being bugged casting Holy Fire after getting mind controlled and no one helping her with it until she said something in guilded (after asking in both raid and healerchat about it a couple of times) really didn't help with frustration levels. She didn't get fixed until she took damage from a mob BTW.

More ranting on the mods as well. Decursive and some oddity with CTRA caused a couple of Anadrol's deaths. His priest got stuck with decursive blocking casting because it was trying to decurse an imp that had restealthed or something of that nature. CTRA decided that since Anadrol was at less than 10% health that it was going to interrupt my heal just before it landed. Since I can't bubble or do any other rapic healing, he died. Not sure what the deal was with CTRA there because it had been working very nicely before that to help conserve mana for me, I only use it in raids and it has been helpful with keeping mana from being burned. Especially since I generally want to cast my 3.5 second healing touch for mana efficiency reasons. Unless Regrowth crits it's a mana hog and most of the HoT is wasted by flash heals from the priests anyway. So hearing all this, you have to have this mod #$%&, really pissed me off as well.

There were two other times that Anadrols position in the CTRA list got moved. Since I was a back-up healer, I felt that I could throw HoT's or heals on other people if they were taking some heavy damage and this did work pretty well, but when you click to get the MT back and you end up casting on a mage or a paladin or another warrior that is fully healthy because the positions moved, that sucks. I finally deleted one of my other macros that I use and put in a /target Anadrol macro to handle that issue.

I had a mini attack from the chatting on teamspeak, so I had to leave that, and I was broken down completely after the Luci fight and had to take some time to gather myself before I could mention that I had to go. I'm sorry my mood helped sour Treesh as well, though she had other frustrations building on her as well. Losing two healers before a boss fight is not cool. I'm glad you guys are all very understanding.

I didn't mind the slow progress and some of the mini-wipes and other oddities. I was frustrated that the MT kept dying and I couldn't figure out why and that 2 of the deaths were because of oddities with mods that we've grown to rely on. Had I not been relying on CTRA I could have gotten the heal that missed by .3 seconds started .5 seconds early one time... I was frustrated by what was being communicated and what wasn't being communicated. I was in a so-so state at the start but if the other stuff hadn't have piled on I would have been fine. All in all I still had fun because it is just cool doing that stuff with you guys but I'm sorry if I caused any additional headaches for anyone.

Again though thank you all for being so cool. Tal, I was never upset with you or really anyone but the warrior and his paladin friend so you are easily forgiven, and in my opinion justified. Everyone else thanks again for what was still a mostly good time despite the problems. I'm so glad you work so well with a recovering nutjob like myself.

[Bun-Bun]

Again I'm sorry I lost my temper. At least one of the problems was removed last night but I still owe you all an apology.

X-Posted to Carpe Aurum.
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Don't sweat it. Nobody's perfect, and I know all too well how a hernia can ruin your day, having had 2/3 of a hernia some years ago. I wish I had as good a reason for my occasional ... misconduct.

On the plus side, it was interesting to see Molten Core. I'm glad I did it with my 'lock first because once battle is joined, what actions warlocks can take are mainly focused on the mobs, so I got a good picture of the tactical situations. I also got to see MC without peering at little slices of MC between health bars. :)

So thanks for putting up with a low-DPS 'lock. We need to see about getting Hykim attuned so multiple druid gear can drop on future runs. :)

[TheDragoon]

First off, I hope people don't worry about getting frustrated last night since I think there was good reason to be frustrated. Everything just got off to a bad start. Blessings weren't being handled very well, we initially had aggro issues all over and once we got through that first wipe the instance bugginess reared its ugly head. Then add to it people who were screwing around or whining more than anything else and I think you've got a recipe for frustration. :)

Honestly, I wasn't so much frustrated as amused by how badly things started off. I mean, you can't really ask for a worse way to start off a run. Once I decided to not let he-who-will-not-be-named get to me, I was doing ok. :) I found it funny that someone can actually be as self-centered as he was, as well as arrogant and whiny.
/rant off

As for Decursive, I most definitely don't think it is *necessary*. I was experimenting with it last night and, as far as I'm concerned, the only thing I liked about it was that I didn't have to stop highlighting Anadrol when I went to dispel the damage buffs from Lucifron on my own party. However, that can really be taken care of by just making a macro to target the tanks. :) I suppose it also had some marginal use by being able to randomly dispel things from people in the raid that weren't getting dispelled, but, in all honesty, that wasn't necessary. In that capacity, it was sort of a "random dispel mod" that dispels a random person from the raid. Yet that's not the way to win against Lucifron. When you get going against him, you end up having to dispel and heal only as much as you can regenerate between AoE debuff pulses. Thus, you have to prioritize your targets and it's only once all the debuff removers settled into a groove of dispelling that the fight got under control. Decursive doesn't do that.

In the first attempt on Lucifron, last night, I was using Decursive. However, it was wigging out on me, causing me to target random people rather than dispelling them. Thus, when the second attempt rolled around, I did all my dispelling, manually (save for once at the beginning when I was checking to see if Decursive was working; it was) with no loss of effectiveness. In fact, I'd say that it was a better use of my mana since I was able to reason and only dispel those who really needed it. Thus, at the end of the fight when we just weren't getting enough healing I was able to let people high on life take the debuff damage once in order to dispel from people that were low on life or to heal the main tank. So for last night, I'd say it's Man 1, Machine 0.

Finally, for all those who left early, I don't blame you. We'd been in there four hours, already, and it was getting late (especially if you live farther East). Add in the frustration level from the night and I think a lot of others were ready to leave, too. As it turned out, the extra people wouldn't have really made a difference against Magmadar. We'll need another tranquilizer shot and a bit more coordination before we're ready to take down that big dog. :)

-------------------------------------------------

On a bit different topic, there was one thing that kind of frustrated me last night: do we really think it's necessary to wait so long for the call for DPS? In many cases, I was burning through mana pretty quickly and had to use potions and all of my other tricks repeatedly against trash mobs. In other cases, we had things well under control but were still throwing around a lot of healing so when aggro DID get stolen, it was from the healers, not the damage dealers. Judging by some of the whipsers I got, last night, others had the same frustration.

Thus, I always wondered why we were waiting for so long. Do people like to wait for big round numbers worth of health on the mobs before attacking? If so, that strikes me as a somewhat superstitious practice that slows things down considerably but doesn't really do much good.

The only real reason I can see for waiting so long is because you're afraid that someone is going to go crazy, unload everything they have, and pull aggro. If this is the case, then I think that this approach is not solving the problem, but treating the symptoms. Now, if there weren't drawbacks to this, it wouldn't be a big deal. However, going as slow as we did has many drawbacks:

1. You burn through the healers' mana pools (for some fights)
2. You invite respawns of patrols which are probably the most dangerous thing you can face in a place like the Molten Core, short of the bosses
3. You let things live longer, increasing the time in which "something can go wrong"
4. You bore the meleers to death and make the healers/tanks work for a lot longer than necessary, taking both groups of their game

So how do we treat the source of the problem, not the symptoms? I think that the only real way to do this is to educate people on aggro. DPS class players need to understand that it's ok to ease back on the damage (perhaps even just stand there) if you start getting streaks of crits. They need to know that it's a good idea to reduce aggro against you as much as possible. Above all, I think people need to realize that it's ok if you're not #1 on the damage meter as long as you're doing your job.

This sort of education can be a sort of education-by-fire. Case-in-point: In the early Onyxia attempts people were stealing aggro and she kept turning to one side or the other. Hopefully those people that drew aggro realized the error in their methods and have taken steps to remedy it. Also, I would hope most other people saw what happened and try to avoid doing that, themselves.

Now, in the short term, perhaps this isn't the optimal solution since it can mean a few more wipes as we're going. However, in the long term, I think it will help educate our players so that when we face even greater challenges, the solution isn't "sit around and wait for 10 minutes building aggro" but rather "everyone knows their limits and can do their job."


Let me just reiterate that I don't mean to attack people here. I don't mean to call people out. I just needed to get this off my chest and I honestly think it might help out with the experiences we're having in /ra. :)

[Sabra]

I had a very compelling time despite the bugginess and obvious tensions. I'm lucky that I only seem to recognize the remarks - verbal or written - from the people I respect. (Much love for Vilatra for the most excellent instructions I've ever seen in a raid!!!)

Maybe I'm kidding myself, but I don't think I'm one to advocate stringent measures as a matter of course, but I hope we are going to cleanse the one curse of last night's raid that can be easily dispelled. I advocate not inviting negative participants whose contribution in play is not sufficiently brilliant to off-set their attitudes.

Disagreements in game are to be expected at times, but outright trashing is unacceptable in any circumstances. As a mage I'm for crowd control, and I leave it to our leaders to apply it.

Last night I used Decursive for the first time and found it no more convenient or effective than plain old target and click. I needed to satisfy my own curiosity, and I wonder how many of you cat's my curiosity killed?

'Nuff said. Tal and GG rock.

[Treesh]

And of course Treesh being bugged casting Holy Fire after getting mind controlled and no one helping her with it until she said something in guilded (after asking in both raid and healerchat about it a couple of times) really didn't help with frustration levels.  She didn't get fixed until she took damage from a mob BTW.

I'd like to thank Quark for actually telling me how to fix the bug. As GG said, I mentioned in both raid chat and healerchat that I couldn't heal or dispell magic on anyone because I was stuck casting holy fire, there was no response. So I griped in /ga. Quark told me to sit down (didn't work), try to logout and then cancel it (it auto cancelled for me) and then finally, after doing the failed logout attempt I had to take damage before it was finally fixed. So again, thanks for telling me how to fix it Quark since no one else was.

More ranting on the mods as well.  Decursive and some oddity with CTRA caused a couple of Anadrol's deaths.  His priest got stuck with decursive blocking casting because it was trying to decurse an imp that had restealthed or something of that nature.  CTRA decided that since Anadrol was at less than 10% health that it was going to interrupt my heal just before it landed.  Since I can't bubble or do any other rapic healing, he died.  Not sure what the deal was with CTRA there because it had been working very nicely before that to help conserve mana for me, I only use it in raids and it has been helpful with keeping mana from being burned.  Especially since I generally want to cast my 3.5 second healing touch for mana efficiency reasons.  Unless Regrowth crits it's a mana hog and most of the HoT is wasted by flash heals from the priests anyway.  So hearing all this, you have to have this mod #$%&, really pissed me off as well.

Even before Vilatra (I think that was Anadrol's priest) mentioned he got stuck in constant decurse, I had mentioned in party chat (yes, I was in the group with the warlock with the imp who couldn't be cleared) to please unphase shift the imp so I could dispell the icky thing on him. Dead silence. I found it mildly amusing because earlier on in that party, there was great discussion about how "aw3s0m3s" decursive is and that the pally (not tal, another one) was required to go download it right now. Oh, and the warlock informed that pally that he was out healing every one of the healers in the raid. This to the pally that wouldn't even put a blessing on the priest in his group. Oh, wait, I may have gotten blessing of light from him once. :roll: Thankfully, Darian moved me out of that group before my head exploded. Many thanks to Silverflail (and then Flyndar who joined us later) for taking over healing for those monkeys (and the term is not being used in a positive fashion here :P ).

There were two other times that Anadrols position in the CTRA list got moved.  Since I was a back-up healer, I felt that I could throw HoT's or heals on other people if they were taking some heavy damage and this did work pretty well, but when you click to get the MT back and you end up casting on a mage or a paladin or another warrior that is fully healthy because the positions moved, that sucks.  I finally deleted one of my other macros that I use and put in a /target Anadrol macro to handle that issue.
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After the first raid with lurkers/carpe aurum folks, I've had a macro that targets the main tank and targets the main assist. I still frequently just do the healing off of the portraits/health bars and Anadrol's position bouncing around in that group threw me off. Now, when it was done out of combat to fix the idiot joining the wrong instance crap, that was all well and good and necessary. But for some reason, his position would change while in combat. Sometimes between one heal and the next. Now, add into the fact that in order for me to get LoS for heals in the beginning of both Onyxia and Molten Core (the places at the bosses are fine, it's just leading into them) I either have to be constantly levitating (recasting every three minutes and taking up a light feather each time) or basically right on top of the tank if they insist on fighting just over the crest of a hill, I either end up taking a lot of damage I shouldn't or having to farm up light feathers every other day. I tried to let people know about my frustration on that and was almost completely ignored. Silverflail did try to be helpful and point out during a couple of the fights that he was able to get LoS where he was for healing, but unfortunately those spots didn't work because I'm a dwarf priestess. So there was another frustration with the raid for me last night.

If you are fighting around LoS blocking terrain, it's actually better to be farther away from the crest of a hill than to be just past it. The farther out you are from the crest of the hill, or even just being on top of the hill (if you're bringing a mob that far back, bring them just a couple of feet more to the top of the damn hills), the more likely your short healers will be able to heal you. Flyndar has probably run these places a lot so he already knows where the sweet spots for us shorties is, but I don't. And I'm tired of having to constantly sit in harm's way in order to try to do my job in those places.

Maybe it's for the best I won't be able to consistently attend the 8 PM eastern raids anymore. The communication on the raids is seriously starting to break down. Teamspeak is good, but for those who have broken mics or can't speak on TS for various reasons, it's a PITA since no one seems to actually read any text once they get on TS so those of us relying on text to communicate things to the rest of the raid are screwed.

[kandrathe]

I think people were pretty worked up well before the Lucifron (attempt 1), and that fight is intense. Most of us are still not comfortable with MC at all. The path to Lucifron will become more routine. At this point in our newness to MC, we need to set our ego's aside and be open and critical of what we are doing that works and what does not work. This is not a blame game, this is a learning curve and we will make mistakes.

Some (positive) suggestions, and my two cents for what it's worth;

We (as a team) would do much better with more with, Mana, Health, Fire Resist, or Restorative Potions, but one person is not capable of spending all their non-raid time farming for Elemental Earth or Elemental Fire. We have alot of alchemy power that we are not using. My offer to anyone is; that I will supply the herbs, vials and skills if you can get me the elemental parts.

I think we need to start helping each other out more, by sending junk lvl 50+ items to our enchanters to build up their supplys, so that its not a big deal if someone wants to get some stamina on their boots. I would love to hear our enchanters complaining that they have too many mats.

We should start on time, and try to move a little faster if possible.

We should try to get 40 committed people before the raid begins.

The raid leaders get to call the shots and set the strategy. Period. No arguments.

When we have a wipe or partial wipe we should openly discuss why without blaming anyone so we can all learn. I pity the tanks and healers on this because so much of our success or failure rests with them. The DPS classes mostly get to stay out of the way and watch that life bar slowly descend, until the call comes out to kill.

Would it be possible for Hunters and Rogues to start DPS earlier on Mobs by having them Feign Death, and Feint? Just a gut feeling that if those classes that can zero their threat started at say 95%, and the others then started at 85% we would drop those early pulls much faster. The Lava surger respawn timer is 28 minutes, so it would be nice to get to Luci before the respawn, or at least before the 2nd respawn.

We need to remember this is recreation, and should be fun. We don't need to be cavalier and reckless, but we don't need to be so intense as we were. I chalk up alot of last nights frustrations as growing pains and learning curve. We are a collection of perfectionists; that is a strength and can be weakness if we allow it to be.

I think it was a good idea when one of warlocks suggested using the Felhunter to try to consume debuffs, like MC. Did that work? What other things are in our collective bags of tricks that we are not utilizing?

We should all train and equip our own Heavy Rune Cloth bandages. In the Lucifrom fight it saved me 2-3 times by keeping my own life always above 2000. For 3-4 seconds of channeling bandage, it kept me in the fight longer until I got caught eventually waiting for my bandage timer, and got hit by the curse at a bad time. I realize that many people (tanks, healers, decursers) are too busy to spend their own time.

Many people have been on these encounters before, so we can learn from their experience. I think there is a happy middle ground between going in blind, and going in with the IA playbook. I did some more reading about MC, after last night encounter and I learned many new things I did not know. I think we could do a little more work in scouting our enemy.

Against some critters, it helps to be more mobile and for those that can, to stay out of range until it is time to run in and apply your gift. Against, Magmadar, I only ever got feared when it was wipe time, after MT was down and the dog got loose. When I saw the AE fear warning I took that opportunity to back up out of range, then run back in and continue hitting.

Having multiple priests who can apply fear ward is nice. If we can do this, for that battle, I would suggest one stays back and applys the ward and heals those who are healing the MT, while the other focuses on the MT.

Two Tranquilizing Shot hunters is not quite enough, although I was pleased that our 3rd and final attempt on Magmadar we dropped him to 85%. With more experience and people we will do this without a hitch.

Anyway, food for thought. I hope this serves as a catalyst for some positive discussion.

[kandrathe]

...
Now, in the short term, perhaps this isn't the optimal solution since it can mean a few more wipes as we're going. However, in the long term, I think it will help educate our players so that when we face even greater challenges, the solution isn't "sit around and wait for 10 minutes building aggro" but rather "everyone knows their limits and can do their job."
...
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I concur.

[mjdoom]

First off, coming in late I wasn't party to all of the happenings on the raid so I don't really want to comment on that. I will comment on some of the things that Treesh said though.

I'd like to thank Quark for actually telling me how to fix the bug.  As GG said, I mentioned in both raid chat and healerchat that I couldn't heal or dispell magic on anyone because I was stuck casting holy fire, there was no response.  So I griped in /ga.  Quark told me to sit down (didn't work), try to logout and then cancel it (it auto cancelled for me) and then finally, after doing the failed logout attempt I had to take damage before it was finally fixed.  So again, thanks for telling me how to fix it Quark since no one else was.
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Sorry I couldn't help you here. If I remember correctly this was during battle (while I was preoccupied) and I didn't know a solution to help anyway :(

Even before Vilatra (I think that was Anadrol's priest) mentioned he got stuck in constant decurse, I had mentioned in party chat (yes, I was in the group with the warlock with the imp who couldn't be cleared) to please unphase shift the imp so I could dispell the icky thing on him.  Dead silence.  I found it mildly amusing because earlier on in that party, there was great discussion about how "aw3s0m3s" decursive is and that the pally (not tal, another one) was required to go download it right now. 
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I have never used decursive and to this day see no need for it. I'm never one for crutches just to be lazy. Humans can always think more intelligently than these machines (we can only make them as smart as we are with current technology) and are not stuck following preprogrammed routines. I've not yet run into a situation where I thought that saving a hair of a second with a crutch mod would have been the difference.

After the first raid with lurkers/carpe aurum folks, I've had a macro that targets the main tank and targets the main assist.  I still frequently just do the healing off of the portraits/health bars and Anadrol's position bouncing around in that group threw me off.  Now, when it was done out of combat to fix the idiot joining the wrong instance crap, that was all well and good and necessary. But for some reason, his position would change while in combat.  Sometimes between one heal and the next.
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This seems very strange; I've never noticed something like this before... Maybe try sorting by class so that even if Anadrol moves he is still lumped with the other warriors? Not sure exactly what to say here.

Now, add into the fact that in order for me to get LoS for heals in the beginning of both Onyxia and Molten Core (the places at the bosses are fine, it's just leading into them)  I either have to be constantly levitating (recasting every three minutes and taking up a light feather each time) or basically right on top of the tank if they insist on fighting just over the crest of a hill, I either end up taking a lot of damage I shouldn't or having to farm up light feathers every other day.  I tried to let people know about my frustration on that and was almost completely ignored.  Silverflail did try to be helpful and point out during a couple of the fights that he was able to get LoS where he was for healing, but unfortunately those spots didn't work because I'm a dwarf priestess.  So there was another frustration with the raid for me last night.

If you are fighting around LoS blocking terrain, it's actually better to be farther away from the crest of a hill than to be just past it.  The farther out you are from the crest of the hill, or even just being on top of the hill (if you're bringing a mob that far back, bring them just a couple of feet more to the top of the damn hills), the more likely your short healers will be able to heal you.  Flyndar has probably run these places a lot so he already knows where the sweet spots for us shorties is, but I don't.  And I'm tired of having to constantly sit in harm's way in order to try to do my job in those places. 

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Actually; Flyn hasn't been in MC or Ony much more than you have and I can say that LoS issues are LoS issues. My character is no taller than yours and I run into issues on occassion. This can definitely be frustrating as I'm basically rendered to a choice of healing the tank at risk of my own life or not healing at all. Being aware of these things as a puller/tank will garner you much appreciation from your dwarven priests on the back lines.

I'd also like to make a completely random comment that I posted some thoughts on our Mag encounter as a reply to a thread that Anadrol started on the CA boards if anyone is interested.

- mjdoom

[Treesh]

Some (positive) suggestions, and my two cents for what it's worth;

We (as a team) would do much better with more with, Mana, Health, Fire Resist, or Restorative Potions, but one person is not capable of spending all their non-raid time farming for Elemental Earth or Elemental Fire.  We have alot of alchemy power that we are not using.  My offer to anyone is; that I will supply the herbs, vials and skills if you can get me the elemental parts.


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Eth is also willing to make both kinds of restorative potions/elixirs (the ones that cure poison/disease/curse/magic over time and the ones that's just a straight shot (although the straight shot one only cures 3 of the 4)) and the greater fire resist potions, but as Kan said, I can't farm up enough elemental stuff to outfit the entire raid by myself. BTW, before you say anything Lum, the elementals that you told me to farm however long ago because they're so plentiful? The ones in Arathi? Always farmed by others so if I find one there, I'm lucky. I'll stick with farming the elementals that fewer people farm. And don't take much longer to kill.

[mjdoom]

I concur.
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I also agree that we can probably put dps on a bit earlier. No reckless opening up instantaneously but if people can speed limit their damage earlier engagement will make the jobs of healers much easier. Another thing to note is that against single mobs raid dps can actually kill them fairly quickly. If aggro does get lost to one player late in the game then all that will probably happen is that that player dies and then aggro returns to the MT. This will teach those players to limit their damage a bit more so they don't die so much and have such high repair bills. This obviously doesn't apply to bosses where lost aggro can spell wipe almost immediately, but against the trash we can probably turn dps on a bit quicker but possibly with a smaller nozzle.

- mjdoom

[Treesh]

I have never used decursive and to this day see no need for it.  I'm never one for crutches just to be lazy.  Humans can always think more intelligently than these machines (we can only make them as smart as we are with current technology) and are not stuck following preprogrammed routines.  I've not yet run into a situation where I thought that saving a hair of a second with a crutch mod would have been the difference.

Ding ding ding! We have a winner! I don't like having the game play for me and after hearing about Vi getting stuck trying to decurse the stupid phase shifted imp because of the decursive mod, I'm glad I do it manually. I still clear things quickly without it.

This seems very strange; I've never noticed something like this before...  Maybe try sorting by class so that even if Anadrol moves he is still lumped with the other warriors?  Not sure exactly what to say here.

That's actually what I ended up doing - pulling all the warriors and all the priests out with the default raid UI. The only problem is that my visible screen space gets even more limited by doing that.

[mjdoom]

That's actually what I ended up doing - pulling all the warriors and all the priests out with the default raid UI.  The only problem is that my visible screen space gets even more limited by doing that.
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CTRaidAssist has a way to sort by classes if you'd like. Also; can you scale the size of the default UI boxes?(I've never tried) Either of these might help. I know that I both upped my resolution (hooray for new graphics cards) and lowered the UI scaling of a few components for the run last night in order to increase my viewable area.

- mjdoom

[Kevin]

Ding ding ding! We have a winner!  I don't like having the game play for me and after hearing about Vi getting stuck trying to decurse the stupid phase shifted imp because of the decursive mod, I'm glad I do it manually.  I still clear things quickly without it.
That's actually what I ended up doing - pulling all the warriors and all the priests out with the default raid UI.  The only problem is that my visible screen space gets even more limited by doing that.
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Yep, I'm glad I never tried decursive.

I also sorted by class as well after the first time it happened and Anadrol still moved position. This is the first time I have ever seen that happen during combat as well but it was frustrating. I'm training myself to heal in several different fashions but my default style is still hit spell number with nothing targeted than click portrait.

On a happy note with the CTRA overheal protection, it does work with my healing style, at least some of the time. It stopped a couple of heals with .1 second left because something else landed and put them to full health. I can't manually stop a heal that fast so I will still use that feature in raid situations as long as I don't get the oddity of it stopping a heal when someone is too low on health.

I'll be cleaning and re-isntalling a lot of my Add-On's today anyway so hopefully that will fix that.

[Darian]

First things first... everyone's got valid points, and rest assured neither I nor anyone else in CA is upset about anyone here. ;)

Tal: believe me, only the knowledge that I HAD to keep my cool or risk the raid breaking down kept me from blowing up at several points last night. ;) I was especially unimpressed with the "i should be secondary tank" comment from you-know-who. You were entitled to a little steam venting.

GG: Like I said on the CA boards, we do need to get people to be more attentive to all forms of communication. Also, everyone's aware of and understanding of your situation -- and we still want you there whenever you're able. Don't ever worry about letting us down. If you've got to go, you've got to go; when all is said and done, it IS just a game, after all. :)

Dragoon: Yeah, I was getting kinda frustrated at constantly being asked when I was going to call for DPS when we'd discussed the number at which I was going to call for it already. It's all a matter of gauging the encounter and coming up with the right number, and the reality is that we're still getting things right. We've got a much better handle on the core hounds (assuming the tanks are sticking to one target and doing enough DPS). On the boss mobs... just have to get used to the right number, basically.

Treesh: God, I'm sorry. I saw you talking about the holy fire thing, but didn't understand what you were talking about, and then got distracted by more idiocy from the peaNut gallery. Not that I'd have known how to fix your problem, but I should have been yelling to get someone to come up with an answer. Also, I know we need to work on tank positioning.

And it's not for the best that you won't be able to attend consistently. I want you there, damnit... not because we need another dwarf priest, not because we need another priest, not because we need bodies... but because I don't want people I like to miss out on content and group success when it does happen. :)

Kan: Yes, yes, yes, not possible yet but yes, OH MY GOD THANK YOU YES, yes, probably, yes, good question, yes -- keeping in mind that AoE is hell on bandaging, yes, yes, yes. ;)

[Treesh]

CTRaidAssist has a way to sort by classes if you'd like.  Also; can you scale the size of the default UI boxes?(I've never tried)  Either of these might help.  I know that I both upped my resolution (hooray for new graphics cards) and lowered the UI scaling of a few components for the run last night in order to increase my viewable area.

- mjdoom
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The scale of the default UI boxes is based off your UI scale. If I make that any smaller, I won't be able to ever read any names. ;)

And now that there is a default raid UI in place (even if it is crappy), I've ditched CTRA because of it giving me odd little hitches in the game when it's installed. The default only gives hitches when I'm physically moving the boxes around. :roll:

[Treesh]

Actually; Flyn hasn't been in MC or Ony much more than you have and I can say that LoS issues are LoS issues.  My character is no taller than yours and I run into issues on occassion.  This can definitely be frustrating as I'm basically rendered to a choice of healing the tank at risk of my own life or not healing at all.  Being aware of these things as a puller/tank will garner you much appreciation from your dwarven priests on the back lines.
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Oh! I forgot to mention a thanks to Kapowee for giving me some savory deviate delight to make me taller to help with LoS issues after how ever many times of whining about LoS I did. ;) Although, now that I think about it, I didn't actually eat the silly thing right after she gave it to me. I think a core hound got pulled at that time and then I just forgot about it. But I do appreciate it Kap. :)

[Treesh]

Treesh:  God, I'm sorry.  I saw you talking about the holy fire thing, but didn't understand what you were talking about,
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Yeah, I figured my first call of "I'm stuck casting holy fire and can't do anything else" wan't exactly clear so I sent a call out on the healerchat simply saying I can't heal and I can't dispell.

[Tal]

Tal: believe me, only the knowledge that I HAD to keep my cool or risk the raid breaking down kept me from blowing up at several points last night.  ;)  I was especially unimpressed with the "i should be secondary tank" comment from you-know-who.  You were entitled to a little steam venting.
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Actually I don't have a reason, or am entitled to a little steam venting while IN the raid. I managed the entire thing opposite to how I usually mange it. I SHOULD have whispered the tankwhoshouldnotbenamed and 'splained things. I SHOULD have been more assertive to get the other paladins to communicate with me and coordinate the blessings better. I SHOULD have kept my cool and kept my eyes on the prize. I didn't and its not like me.