So You Wanna Raid...

[Artega]

Some additional Warrior information, though it's not specific to the guild-related things the others are speaking about:

If you're in a tanking position and are at least 31 points deep into Protection, don't forget about Shield Slam. If your target already has five Sunders applied, your Revenge is still refreshing, and you find yourself with copious amounts of rage, use a Shield Slam or two. Shield Slam causes the most hate of ANY of our skills (even more than Revenge, though the Hate-per-Rage ratio is far lower), and can conceivably make a difference. Unless you're using a fast weapon (speaking of which, I'd deliberately choose a fast weapon like Annihilator or Silent Fang for tanking if you have points in Unbridled Wrath), Heroic Strike probably won't be able to be pumped fast and frequently enough to dump rage as quickly or efficiently as a Shield Slam will.

For Fury Warriors, see about finding a two-handed weapon with the highest possible damage range available (but don't go bankrupt doing so): The Nicker is an excellent choice, and reasonably easy to acquire in LBRS, and make sure you have Slam trained up. Dual wield (or use a FAST two-hander, depending on your specific build) to generate a significant amount of rage, and then burn it via Slam spamming. It can inflict extremely large amounts of damage in a short amount of time, and with much less hate than by spamming Heroic Strikes. Switch back to your rage-building setup, and repeat. If you (and your raid doesn't mind it) don't mind dying a horrible death, you can inflict a ridiculous amount of damage in a VERY short amount of time (and pull an ungodly amount of aggro in the process) on bosses that have hit the magic 20% mark. Tap Recklessness and Death Wish, and Execute with your current rage. Immediately hit Berserker Rage, and Execute that rage. Tap Bloodrage, and Execute with that rage. If you're somehow inexplicably alive after that trio of blows, Execute the remaining ten from Bloodrage's bled in portion, and any remaining. You can do truly obscene amounts of damage with this combination (20000 or more isn't impossible, depending on how well your MT can contain aggro from you), but it WILL disrupt the MT's aggro. It's fun to do, but don't do it during your first few times, or else you may find yourself not returning :)

For Arms Warriors, it's basically the same as anything else: build up rage, Mortal Strike, and Execute when low. Simple, quick, and efficient. It won't do as much as a competent Fury Warrior's output, but it's much harder to screw up with this pattern of attack.

EDIT: Clarification.

[TalAB]

Also, TalAB, overhealing doesn't cause aggro.  Too early healing does.  So far as I know, regrowth doesn't cause more aggro than healing touch.
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Not so much cause aggro or draw it off (though those things can happen as you point out). What it does do is generate secondary threat. How many times have you seen stray mobs go straight for the healers?

I still remember one instance in ZG where a sheep broke early and went straight for Itto, who faded causing it to munch right away on me. The more we heal (and overheal) the more secondary threat we build, this is why Blessing of Sanctuary is an absolute must whenever available - even in preference to wisdom :)

[Boutros]

For DPS warriors: hit berserker rage, then move to stand in the AOEs. Helloooooo 3200 executes! Also, drawing aggro off the tanks for extra rage on trash pulls can be fun and profitable.

For MAs: Molten Giants are the only trash mobs where the tank needs a serious aggro lead, basically nothing else detaunts. As soon as the taunt debuff is off and the aggro is on the tank DPS can be called on, though people should as always start slow.

[Darian]

I've seen boss fights fail because we didn't have enough healers, or warlocks, or tanks/offtanks, but I don't think I've seen a situation where a boss couldn't be done because there wasn't enough mages.
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Actually, we've had a LOT of boss wipes which we could directly attribute to not enough mages still being alive (in turn indirectly attributable to other causes, but still) to dish out DPS. I have, on more than one occasion, said on TS "not enough mages left, it's a wipe."

[NotSoDarklord]

Rogues are lazy though ma'am! Clearly my way involves less hassle :)

[Alrin]

So, are we really only for doing the 'Here's your water, Sir or Ma'am' role, and to maybe toss a few portals up every so often?

I've seen boss fights fail because we didn't have enough healers, or warlocks, or tanks/offtanks, but I don't think I've seen a situation where a boss couldn't be done because there wasn't enough mages. I know we don't usually want for mages, but honestly, would we be missed? If there wasn't enough of us, I think you could quite easily swap us in with hunters or get a few warriors to take a dps role.

Mages - imo - is one of those classes that rarely are spotted as key-roles in MC unless... there are none. The Lucifron fight would be increasingly difficult as all the druids would suddenly be on decursing duty. There would be no detect magic up on Shazzrah or Sulfuron or the Majordomo mobs. No sheeping and a substantial loss of dps during every other fight.

As for comparing our dps to other classes, yup it sucks right now.
Mages have no real clear way to get a significant boost to dps like melee/ranged classes have by just upgrading their weapon to a much more powerful version.
Sure, we have +damage gear but that needs to be applied to alot of our equipment slots overall to have a noticeable effect. Lets just hope that blizzard fixes its itemization and gives mages/casters an easier time boosting their dps.

Oh and playing a mage in ZG is... a blast. Pure and simple.

Here's a trick we found out when fighting those axethrowers that spin in place and does ranged knockbacks:
Have a mage chain-cast polymorph on them while fighting.
If they go into spin mode, polymorph will put them in sheep and the next melee attack (obviously a split-second later) will return them to their default state, ie NO spinning. It's wonderful. Just remember, sheep doesnt start regenning stats until its been untouched in sheep state for a couple of seconds. :)

[WildFire]

Actually, we've had a LOT of boss wipes which we could directly attribute to not enough mages still being alive (in turn indirectly attributable to other causes, but still) to dish out DPS.  I have, on more than one occasion, said on TS "not enough mages left, it's a wipe."
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Ah, but you said that because it was the collective mages (all 6 to 8 of us) who were providing the dps in that raid. You could just as easily have said "not enough hunters left, it's a wipe", or even just simply "not enough dps left , it's a wipe".

Point being you didn't need mages specifically for the battle. Any class capable of chucking out damage would be fine.

I will concede, like many of said, that we are of a bit more utility in ZG with the need to sheep/resheep mobs to reduce large groups down to more manageable levels, and that sort of makes me feel a bit better because I'm doing something no other class can do. But again, the dps boss encounters have really been all about the rogues, the hunters and the warriors... and all our damage is really flattered by the warlock's Curse of Elements.

As for itemization, I am leery in that being used as a way of boosting damage as it currently is for both casters and meleers. It feels like D2 all over again.

But for casters specifically, I think they had the right idea with priest racial skills and warlock pet quests. I would love to see new spells and abilities for different races be made available post level 50 through quests, with maybe an epic long-drawn out one, akin to the current hunter and priest epic weapon ones, at level 60 for a really uber spell - maybe a fire-based one for Humans and Trolls in Searing Gorge, and a frost-based one for Gnomes and Forsaken in Winterspring.

Yeah, I know this has taken the thread off on a tangent. Sorry about that.

[Tal]

Always have blessings!

Find out who the whispercast paladins are.. and spam them every 5 (or 15 in the case of imp salvation) minutes for blessings.  Then convince the others to use whispercast so you can get mights/salvationsghts/kings and whathaveyou midfight.
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I refuse to install whispercast because of the way we divide up the blessing duties and that frequently folks will make unwise choices when requesting blessings. For awhile I ran with a priest who felt that Wisdom was of more use for him than Salvation as he "rarely" got aggro. His definition of rarely evidently differed greatly from my definition so he got Salvation. ;)

Plus as a frequent raid assister I get enough whispers thankyouverymuch. ;)

[vor_lord]

Not so much cause aggro or draw it off (though those things can happen as you point out).  What it does do is generate secondary threat.  How many times have you seen stray mobs go straight for the healers?

Plenty of times -- because when you heal a target on a mob's hate list, it generates threat. (Unless you're a paladin :P)

I still remember one instance in ZG where a sheep broke early and went straight for Itto, who faded causing it to munch right away on me.  The more we heal (and overheal) the more secondary threat we build,

Do you have any evidence of something called secondary threat? What is the difference between secondary threat and "regular threat"? Threat is threat -- and overhealing doesn't cause it in my experience. Overhealing is a problem only because it is wasteful of mana -- it doesn't cause threat. Try it out.

this is why Blessing of Sanctuary is an absolute must whenever available - even in preference to wisdom :)
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I'll agree with that -- my group members all get salvation except for the tank, unless it's an AoE pull when the casters will get wisdom. Especially the druid, although in this thread learning that salvation and subtlety don't stack probably makes that less useful than I thought it was.

[TheDragoon]

Here's a trick we found out when fighting those axethrowers that spin in place and does ranged knockbacks:
Have a mage chain-cast polymorph on them while fighting.
If they go into spin mode, polymorph will put them in sheep and the next melee attack (obviously a split-second later) will return them to their default state, ie NO spinning. It's wonderful. Just remember, sheep doesnt start regenning stats until its been untouched in sheep state for a couple of seconds. smile.gif

Yeah, we've been using that on the runs I've been on. It works great! :)

[TheDragoon]

I still remember one instance in ZG where a sheep broke early and went straight for Itto, who faded causing it to munch right away on me. The more we heal (and overheal) the more secondary threat we build, this is why Blessing of Sanctuary is an absolute must whenever available - even in preference to wisdom smile.gif

This doesn't sound so much like some "secondary threat" so much as you were the only person that had ANY threat against the mob. If no one else has any threat against it, it will just keep coming after you. It's pretty easy for a priest to go far beyond the point where fade won't do anything if the mob got hit once by someone like the main tank (let's say it was the target of the pull or something) and the priest has been happily healing away the whole time.

On a slightly different topic, that's the sort of situation I'd seriously think about using Psychic Scream. Most of the time in Zul Gurub we pull things far away from other mobs so that the mobs cannot knockback/fear us into aggro range of something else. In that sort of case, Psychic Scream is a really nice skill to buy some time for the CC'ers to get the mob re-polymorphed.

[q4m]

I hope this doesn't sound like one of those 'give mages their dmg role back' whines you see on the official forums, but I am growing disheartened playing a mage.

It used to be that we compensated for our over-squishiness by being able to unleashed fiery and frozen wrath onto ugly beasties from all over. OK, rogues were outdamaging us, but then hey, they had to get up real close and personal to do it. I could live with that.

Then the advent of the SM/Ruin (and the MD/Ruin, possibly) warlock made us look less than ideal, at least from a DD point of view.

And now we have hunters and warriors with suped-up weapons who appear to be able to dole out the hurt without even breaking out a sweat, and without having to sit down and have a swig of juice every other encounter.

Sure, we still have AOE, but then the opportunities to use it are few and far between in raids, and it doesn't exactly lend itself to being useful when it matters - i.e. boss fights.

So, are we really only for doing the 'Here's your water, Sir or Ma'am' role, and to maybe toss a few portals up every so often?

I've seen boss fights fail because we didn't have enough healers, or warlocks, or tanks/offtanks, but I don't think I've seen a situation where a boss couldn't be done because there wasn't enough mages. I know we don't usually want for mages, but honestly, would we be missed? If there wasn't enough of us, I think you could quite easily swap us in with hunters or get a few warriors to take a dps role.

In short, Kateley is not feeling that she's making a difference by being there for a raid. It seems that she's only there to make up the numbers, and if it there was a toss-up for a 20th or 40th slot, it is quite likely you could find another class better to fill the slot than a squishy mage who's not really chucking all that much damage out anyway.

So, no love for the mage in present-day raiding, or are we being taken for granted because there's usually no shortage of us?
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Wildfire,
I personally think mages are very valuable to raids. I play a warlock and I can tell you that I can do high damage, but it's "spikey". The damage my mage (also 60) does is quite a bit more consistent. This might be a gear thing though, I'm not sure. So, mages put out consistent, high damage and let's not forget remove curse, which is huge.

q

[q4m]

Being a warlock in Molten Core -

Though most of the warlocks in Avarice capable of doing MC (that I know of) are already on these runs, maybe this will be helpful for a new warlock :)

Gear - Most of us are wearing +shadow damage and +stamina, end game gear (such as Dreadmist, robe of void, felcloth). The balance between +stam and +dmg differs depending on the warlock. I have seen that a fully damage geared warlock can be near the top in damage dealers. Tahapenes is consistently at or near the top. On the other hand, a +stam geared warlock can get quite a bit of life. Last time I checked, my warlock can get 6.7k life fully buffed. I think the main thing here is, get end game gear. Also, start thinking about a +fire resist set.

Shards - Bring them. Bring a lot of them. I usually bring 30-40 to a MC run. I also end quite a lot of the pulls with drain soul.

Healthstones - I generally make sure I and all the tanks have one. Other than that, I generally do not pass them out simply because I can't carry enough shards. If I could carry a couple hundred shards, the story would be different. I try to pass stones to the tanks before they ask.

Soulstone - The warlocks will have a channel. It will be decided amongst the warlocks who will be "stoned". If it's your stone that's up, keep track of it. Always know how long until you need to re-stone. Have a new one ready to go before you need it. Generally you will be stoning a paladin. I use a mod called shard tracker (or maybe is shard status). It plays a wav file when soulstone cooldown is complete and puts a countdown on my display. I highly recommend it.

Combat - You will get to use a couple of buttons during a fight. We've been trying to coordinate one warlock doing curse of elements (on non-fire immunes) and one warlock on curse of shadow. Try and keep those curses up, especially shadow. Then you just spam shadow bolt. Drain soul at the end if you need shards (as I'm sure you all know). In an onyxia raid, you will get to use some DoTs as well during phase 2 if you are in range.

Pets - Use the Imp. The tanks will love you for the extra 42 stamina. Sometimes a tank will call for an "imp totem". "I need an imp totem here", for example. This means you are to bring your imp to the tank and put it on stay. Your imp should always be phase shifted and not attacking. The only time you will not be using your imp is during a Garr fight.

Garr fights - You have two jobs during a garr fight. 1. Stay alive and 2. Keep your target banished. You will be using big blue on this fight and will likely have a hunter pet helping you out. You'll be assigned one of Garr's adds. When the go signal is given, send blue in (his taunt on). CoS and banish. Now you have a few seconds to heal your pet. Get that pet healed up while you're add is banished because he's going to take hard hits while you're rebanishing. Ideally, your add should not be near Garr. If it is, say so in /ra so appropriate action can be taken. If blue dies, get another out ASAP, you cannot take many hits (3...MAYBE) from one of the adds. I have been 3 shotted by these guys and I had ~6.2k life. Do not change targets. You will not be doing any damage. Chain banish...that's all you do. Eventually, the tanks will come to your add and grab it from you to be killed.

Lava pack fights - You will be a banish bot again. Get CoS on your mob and chain banish. Do not change targets to help with the damage until the raid is ready to kill yours. Keep that add banished at all times. Your target will be one of the stone elementals. Keep an eye on your life during these pulls, all this stuff hits quite hard.

Misc hints - Bring a lot of bandages. If you don't have heavy runecloth, get it. Keep banish hotkeyed if you don't already. Remember your imp totem. Always know who is stoned and approximately for how much longer (can't emphasize that enough). Listen to the raid leader and do what they say...always.

q4m

[anadrol]

Warriors:

In Molten Core, there are essentially a total of four possible roles you can play.

1) Main Tank.  As a newbie, you'll almost certainly not be asked to fill this role, as the main tank is generally going to be either the best-geared or the most experienced (or both).  If you are called on, however, your job is painfully simple: get aggro, hold aggro, avoid being feared, survive.  Regardless of your spec, you should be in defensive stance and carrying a shield unless you're so ridiculously geared that healers have no trouble keeping you on your feet while 2H or dual-wielding.  Sunder Armor and Revenge are your best friends, and you'll be mashing them every chance you get.  Your job is not to pump DPS.  Your job is to keep the mob's attention.  Period.  Sometimes you will be the puller; most times you won't.  It's important for the main tank to understand and accept this, and to know when it's time to let someone else do the job.

2) Main Assist.  Again, this role won't fall to you as a newbie, but you may be called on.  Your choice of weapon, stance, and spec isn't that relevant (unless you're also serving as secondary tank); your job is simply to pick the target and call DPS.  You generally want to call DPS on the target once 5 sunders have been landed by whoever's actually tanking the mob, except on boss mobs when the rules are completely different depending on the boss.  Sometimes, there won't be an MA at all -- Onyxia, Magmadar, Geddon, Shazzrah, Golemagg are all good examples.  Sometimes, the MA will just be the secondary tank (double giant pulls).  Sometimes, we actually require TWO main assists for a fight (double firelord pulls).  Adaptability is vital.

3) Secondary tanks.  This encompasses a couple of different situations.  One is the "kill one and move on to the next" battle plan, used on double giant pulls, Lucifron, Garr, Sulfuron, and Majordomo.  For this role, it's important that you be able to take punishment, but we'll set a kill order for the mobs in question, cascading down from the best-geared tank.  If you're not really well-geared up, there's still room for you at the lower end of the chain on the mobs which will die first.  The second situation is the "keep 'em busy" role.  This applies to both the core hound packs in MC, and being in a whelp group on an Onyxia run; you just want to hold aggro while AoE burns relatively benign mobs down.

4) None of the above.  One of the most difficult roles for a tank in raiding situations is to not have an assigned role at all, or to have a very limited role where you're the fifth offtank on the core hound packs or your target is the first kill target on a Garr attempt.  A lot of tanks have asked me in these situations what they should be doing.  Basically... you're just DPS.  Stay out of the fight until the DPS call, then come unload.

The skills you use are going to be directly related to your role.  Sunder, Revenge, Taunt if you're tanking (and Challenging Shout if you're the assigned warrior in an Onyxian whelp group -- you won't have a lot of use for it in MC).  Your usual suite of DPS abilities if you're not tanking.  Straightforward.

Gear... armor isn't important if you're not tanking.  If you are, it is.  One mistake you desperately need to avoid, however, is to build a single set of gear that leans heavily on one specific attribute.  Some tanks were completely blown apart by putting together +def builds only to see Blizzard nerf +def, for example.  In addition, gear which is heavily loaded toward one attribute is, by necessity, deficient in all others.  The best bet is to have your main gear be balanced.  In your pocket, a set of FR gear is vital as well.

Being a tank on an Avarice raid -- so long as you're on board with the game plan and not being a divisive ass who doesn't want to follow instructions -- is in my opinion one of the funnest "jobs" in the game.  It's all about teamwork (and that's the thing the Avarice tank corps takes the most pride in, being a TEAM that supports one another), being prepared to leap headlong into the breach when the guy in front of you falls in battle, and executing detailed plans of action under the command of the raid leader and/or main tank.
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Very nice summary, thanks D.

[Quark]

Garr fights - You have two jobs during a garr fight.  1. Stay alive and 2. Keep your target banished.[right][snapback]90848[/snapback][/right]

One thing to add here - sometimes, you will simply get unlucky and Garr will explode your target in between banishes. Make sure the warlocks are spread out so that multiple ones don't die at the same time, and make sure the group is (mostly) away from the warlocks.

[Skandranon]

Wildfire,
I personally think mages are very valuable to raids.  I play a warlock and I can tell you that I can do high damage, but it's "spikey".  The damage my mage (also 60) does is quite a bit more consistent.  This might be a gear thing though, I'm not sure.  So, mages put out consistent, high damage and let's not forget remove curse, which is huge.

q
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This is a nice pick-me-up, Bell, but the truth is your spikey damage averages out to two or three times a mage's damage. You can't discount your spikes because they happen with frightening regularity. Mage damage is consistent, but the more you raid, the more you realize that it's consistently low.

Anyway, I don't intend to detour this thread into another "mages suck" thread. I'll chime in with the end-game raiding section of my revised guide (which I'm about 65% of the way through revising) once I've had the opportunity to clean it up and polish it a little. Mages are weak, but there are things we can do to maximize our limited usefulness.

[Lissa]

This is a nice pick-me-up, Bell, but the truth is your spikey damage averages out to two or three times a mage's damage.  You can't discount your spikes because they happen with frightening regularity.  Mage damage is consistent, but the more you raid, the more you realize that it's consistently low.
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That spikey damage will be going away come 1.9. Likewise, I've seen the Arcane speced mages keep up riding off the CoS. Watching Recap or similar damage tracker, usually the Arcane mages ride along on the coat tails of me (typically top 10 looks something like Rogue, Me or Rogue, Rogue or Me, Mage, Rogue, Warlock, Mage, Mage, Warlock, Mage). So even with spikey damage, Warlocks aren't running away with the damage and said spikey damage can pull agro on mobs (which I've done ennumerable times because I would get like two or three criticals in a row, luckily, it's usually when the mob is at <20%). Consistency is not a bad thing.

[castille]

Where's the Priest love? ;)

[Mirajj]

Where's the Priest love? ;)
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No priest have answered, and mine's only 43. Hardly 'end game', so I can't give any personal advice on that. However, Over in the Strat/Game Mechanics forum, Mongojerry has pinned a very nice post "Advanced Topics in Priest Play" that may provide some insight. ;)

[Treesh]

No priest have answered
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That's because the priest job is easy. Heal the main tank, keep an eye on any additional tanks that are in your group. We don't have strict healer rotations, but if you see a healer holler that they're out of mana, keep a closer eye on their group and the main tank. If you're a dwarven priest, fear ward the main tank in Onyxia and for Mags. If there's mind control around, dispell it. If not all groups have a priest, we'll ask for volunteers as to who wants to fort buff the groups without priests. There's usually a reminder before bosses that deal out heavy shadow damage to put up shadow ward.

There are no real tricks for healers to do. It's pretty much common sense. Don't play like a monkey. Don't burn through all your mana in the first 30 seconds of a fight and expect to get an innervate from the druids. In places with AoE fear, stay out of fear range. Don't get aggro, don't get hurt. ;) Really, the "raiding is boring" part is absolutely completely true for priests. There aren't even many brief moments of excitement. Or maybe that's just me. ;)