So after scouring the forums here, I have been wondering on what the community thinks about how you become a good progression guild. Many of the threads I have read through talk about the individual pieces of the group, where many people are keen to write posts and make comments on how to be a good player.

 

But after seeing all the posts that detail rotations, class specs, various healing/DPS strategies, etc., there was only one piece of useful information I could find in regards to being a good raider no matter your role:

 

Be a contributor.

 

How does one exactly do this? Just so you guys have a little bit of a background check on me, I raid with a guild currently on Begeren Colony. We are a solid 8 man group, where most of us are heavily min maxed with fully purple augmented top tier gear (78s).

 

How we do progression is quite honestly something I dare say is, inefficient. Our group will spend two nights a week, bashing our heads against one particular boss from 6:30 PM PST to 9:30 PM PST, and we won't down a boss until we know every single little in and out of their mechanics. It took us one week to down Nefra in HM, three weeks for Gate Commander Draxus, another two weeks for Grob'thok, and we have spent 3 weeks on Corruptor Zero without getting him below 75%.

 

So what exactly is our problem there? I have been watching raid clear videos, trying to understand how these top end progression raid groups clear this content. And one bit of evidence I noted, was that the members rarely used voice chat. Most of the run is silent, with only the essential mechanics being called out.

 

With this evidence in mind, I talked to the GM of the guild and came up with a possible exercise to capitalize on this weakness: running an operation that is difficult in mechanics, yet not strenuous in regards to DPS/healing/damage medigation without the use of our Mumble chat. With the perfect setup in mind, we took our progression group into EC NiM and began to run the mechanics for each boss.

 

It took us three hours, to down Firebrand and Stormcaller after repeatedly wiping over and over again on them. We spent four wipes on Zorn and Toth due to DPS dying from Fearful, and even some people forgetting to pop medpacs at the beginning of the fight.

 

Which clearly put, the problem there is raid awareness. Which despite the lack of any comment beyond "don't stand in stupid, call things out", I rarely see anyone discussing either. It's been about three weeks since we've tried that op, and since then, I haven't seen any improvement. Even a sharp decline as a matter of fact, in raid capability.

 

So how do you train people to be more raid aware? How do you form a tight knit progression team that can clear content without having to spend months on a single boss in the raid? What are your own secrets as to how to be a great raider?

 

I would appreciate any response, thank you!

Edited December 23, 2013 by ZooMzy

Competitiveness is the most important trait in a progression guild.

 

DPS - compete to do more damage, kill adds faster, avoid more of the avoidable hits (cleaves on Grob'thok, Tyrans, Raptus for example), cleanse yourself faster (Death mark on council, dots or Draxus and Nefra). Get in parsec and compete with each other, try to beat out the parses other people upload here to the forums or to the torparse website.

 

Heals - compete not just to put out more heals, but put out more effective healing (the amount of healing that's actually useful). This means getting to lower people faster and topping them off faster, responding or predicting damage and prestacking slow-release medpacs or prebubbling them to prevent the damage from ever occurring. Any healer can put out tremendous numbers if given the right circumstances (scoundrels can sustain at least 7k HPS, sages probably come in close to that as well). What is really important is putting up numbers that aren't wasted.

 

Tanks - compete to take less damage (if possible, not feasible for many fights simply because mechanics dictate one tank being more active, or phases take longer). One tank taking too much damage may indicate poor raid awareness (looking at Raptus here) or poor gearing choices. "Compete" to put out more threat than your dps so that you never lose aggro, allowing them to push their dps numbers as high as possible. "Compete" to find the best ways to hold onto adds so dps them down faster via AOE abilities. "Compete" to do mechanics better than the other tank (ex. Grobthok, see who is better at getting him into the magnet faster when pipe smash is cast).

 

Finally, your group needs to want to compete with other guilds, if not across the entire player-base, at least on your server or even faction. Don't be afraid to cut dps who can't make the cut, especially if you've given them a fair amount of time to review their rotation and improve. You can't be too friendly if you want to be the best. You need to dislike each other enough that you aren't afraid to call out those individuals holding the group back.

 

Another small thing that helps is being active in the game. People who play more often tend to be better just because they're constantly fresh on their class. They are practicing their rotation every day, not just on raid nights. Having alts is helps too. Playing a different role in a fight forces you to be aware of mechanics you might not have otherwise noticed if you play the same role every week. Get an extra alt run going each week. This has the downside that some people end up with too many alts and end up being no good at any of them.

 

TL;DR - Competition is essential.

Just want to add a little something.

 

"Competition" between Tank and DPS. Tank maintaining threat without a DPS threat dump when your DPSers unload everything, cooldowns, relics, adrenals, pre-casting at the beginning of the fight. Something Eudorus / Donn (maintank of suckafish until NiM TFB ish before he quit) was mindful to remind us DPS back in the day. There may be some fights in the future (in the past i think the first phase of 8-man NiM TFB is an example) where target resets happen faster than your DPS will have their threat dump on cooldown. Add an enrage timer and it can be a problem if the tank does not have enough threat.

 

There are tanks who would rather just yell when they lose aggro, and then there are tanks you grab aggro from today but never tomorrow.

Edited December 24, 2013 by paowee

One thing I forgot to mention, don't be discouraged by the silence in progression raiding videos. A lot of those first kills occur after a dozen pulls of a boss, where everything has already been discussed ad nauseum. When you pull a boss 70 or 80 times (16 NiM Cartel Warlords), every raider had better know that fight to perfection and not need to be told anything any more. If it helps your raid group, have one member with exceptional awareness call out big mechanics like add switches and important AOES (usually healers or tanks are better at this than dps). Warlords is an extreme example, but some fights really just require lots of tries to get down. We were the only guild to get NiM Thrasher for about 3 weeks, killing him in four or five pulls if I remember correctly, and during that time every other 16-man guild still threw themselves at it relentlessly to try and replicate our success, with each group attempting it dozens of times. A tough fight shouldn't be viewed as discouraging, but challenging.

Admit your mistakes.

 

When a wipe happens and the leader asks the question, "what happened <player X>? Why'd you die/Why were you unable to kill those adds/Why were you not able to heal?" Own your mistakes, don't blame anyone else but yourself. But more importantly...LEARN from your mistakes. And if you do not know what to do differently, ask the question.

 

As for the "silent running" thing: with a lot happening in any boss fight, time is precious commodity. And usually taking time to push-to-talk and then talking is a distraction most cannot afford. There is also the "do not talk in channel unless it is important," aspect because you want to keep the channel clear for what is important.

If you want to raid progressively, you always need to be aware of why you are wiping. If you do not know this, you won't make any progress.

 

In my opinion, a successful raid is not just about good players, it's also about having a good raid leader.

A good raid leader does not just read Dulfy's guides; he watches streams by other guilds (not just kill videos/farm runs) to see why other guilds are wiping; he reads the forums to better understand certain mechanics that are not covered very detailed in the guides.

 

Myself, I am a healer, so I always keep an eye on the HP bars and debuffs and am usually the first one to notice when someone makes a mistake - either because they received too much damage or because they got a certain debuff they should not get.

After each wipe I tell my group why we wiped and what we can do to prevent this in the future. I never say "What just happened? That must be a bug."; it always comes down to one person not following mechanics, or a flawed tactic.

Of course, this leads to name calling (player A stood in AoE, player B had the wrong target) but my group understands that I do not mean this as a personal attack but to improve our raid. Often, the players don't realize their mistakes by themselves.

And in case I don't know what happened, I ask the player who died first to look up why they died in the combat logs. It is important to not just look at the final attack that killed you, but at all the incoming damage during the last 15 seconds or more. And if you then still do not know what happened or don't know what the attack with the name XY does, you ask about it here in the forums.

 

Also, I frequently PuG so that I get to know other tactics. When you only run with your guild, you tend to stop thinking about different strategies. By running DF/DP with other groups (even if it is just SM), I often learn new tactics or mechanics. They are not always better than our tactic, but they give you new ideas, and in return I also tell them my tactic if I think it is better than theirs.

Each week, I try to give my group a slightly different tactic so that they remain spontaneous and can adjust to new tactics. I am sure that Nightmare mode will require a different tactic and that way, our group already knows many different tactics and is prepared to learn new ones.

 

So to sum it up, learn more about the mechanics and talk about your wipes while your are zoning back in and walking to the boss; then you know why you are wiping and can clear the content faster.

Edited December 23, 2013 by Jerba

So after scouring the forums here, I have been wondering on what the community thinks about how you become a good progression guild. Many of the threads I have read through talk about the individual pieces of the group, where many people are keen to write posts and make comments on how to be a good player.

 

But after seeing all the posts that detail rotations, class specs, various healing/DPS strategies, etc., there was only one piece of useful information I could find in regards to being a good raider no matter your role:

 

Be a contributor.

 

How does one exactly do this? Just so you guys have a little bit of a background check on me, I raid with a guild currently on Begeren Colony. We are a solid 8 man group, where most of us are heavily min maxed with fully purple augmented top tier gear (78s).

 

How we do progression is quite honestly something I dare say is, inefficient. Our group will spend two nights a week, bashing our heads against one particular boss from 6:30 PM PST to 9:30 PM PST, and we won't down a boss until we know every single little in and out of their mechanics. It took us one week to down Nefra in HM, three weeks for Gate Commander Draxus, another two weeks for Grob'thok, and we have spent 3 weeks on Corruptor Zero without getting him below 75%.

 

So what exactly is our problem there? I have been watching raid clear videos, trying to understand how these top end progression raid groups clear this content. And one bit of evidence I noted, was that the members rarely used voice chat. Most of the run is silent, with only the essential mechanics being called out.

 

With this evidence in mind, I talked to the GM of the guild and came up with a possible exercise to capitalize on this weakness: running an operation that is difficult in mechanics, yet not strenuous in regards to DPS/healing/damage medigation without the use of our Mumble chat. With the perfect setup in mind, we took our progression group into EC NiM and began to run the mechanics for each boss.

 

It took us three hours, to down Firebrand and Stormcaller after repeatedly wiping over and over again on them. We spent four wipes on Zorn and Toth due to DPS dying from Fearful, and even some people forgetting to pop medpacs at the beginning of the fight.

 

Which clearly put, the problem there is raid awareness. Which despite the lack of any comment beyond "don't stand in stupid, call things out", I rarely see anyone discussing either. It's been about three weeks since we've tried that op, and since then, I haven't seen any improvement. Even a sharp decline as a matter of fact, in raid capability.

 

So how do you train people to be more raid aware? How do you form a tight knit progression team that can clear content without having to spend months on a single boss in the raid? What are your own secrets as to how to be a great raider?

 

I would appreciate any response, thank you!

 

For most people I feel having a good progression team just takes time, especially if a lot of the team is experienced in running hardmode operations. When my group started raiding a year ago, every single one of us were new to raiding, and it took us about a month to clear Hardmode Zorn and Toth, and maybe 2-3 weeks to clear the tanks and we were all over geared. But I think being competitive is very important, but not to the point where you start ignoring mechanics to achieve the best numbers. They way I look at progression raiding is that its a team activity and not individual. When parsing and we have 1 dps 100 dps below everyone else, I say its the team's job to make up the 100 dps and not that individual(but if someone is 400+ behind then there may be a problem). At the time all the DPS in my group were practicing on the dummy during our off time because we were hitting enrage on Z&T.

 

To your question, which I dont think people have answered, I do not think you can easily train raid awareness. When people mess up in raids its either because they are not paying attention(intentional or not), have slow reaction times or they do not know the mechanics. I know you say you are watching videos but are the other 7 people in your group doing so? If everyone truly knows the mechanics and what to do, then you shouldn't be wiping as much. My group went into NiM SV after 2.4 and most of the group hadn't touched nim before at gear level, but people looked up the mechanics and we 1 shot every boss but Thrasher and Styrak.

 

Lastly, being from BC I understand how difficult it is to find people to raid with. When I was recruiting replacements for my raid team, a lot of people perceived me as having a very elitist attitude because I was very picky with who I would pick up for my raid team. Usually the biggest requirement I would have would be raid awareness and A LOT of people lack that on BC and dont understand why they cant to hardmode stuff, I turned down people every week because I did not feel they were ready/prepared to do hardmode stuff, and I made a lot of enemies when I told people I didnt think they were good enough.

 

TL:DR It takes time, being raid leader you should know who is messing up all the time. You can only give someone so many chances before you give them the boot.

Thank you guys, I really appreciate the feedback. I would like to continue this debate though, as I'd like to fully hit every single point I'd like in order to make our team better.

 

For starters, the "competitive" aspect of this. I actually fully agree, as the competitive edge is something that gives people the ability to actually push themselves more so than just to kill the boss.

 

Unfortunately, this is the problem of the guild I run with, as they try their best to avoid being that "elitist" group. I highly advise people to go into WZs and train themselves, as I believe the best practice in terms of being a raid aware player is to be a good PvPer. IE, if you can run Carnage in PvP, you can dominate with the spec in PvE if you design it towards maximizing damage in the op.

 

Many more so believe the ideas of being "elitist" and "competitive" will ultimately result in us hating each other, causing guild drama and issues that will be very problematic as some may not really understand the ideas of competition too well (IE, the difference between people who can put their heart and soul into a fight and say to themselves, "if this mofo kills me, I won't sleep for weeks", and then actually shrug it off once the failure happens versus someone who can't).

 

So how do you guys go about creating a successful guild amidst the issues? And is raid awareness something that can only be achieved from competition?

Edited December 23, 2013 by ZooMzy

So how do you guys go about creating a successful guild amidst the issues? And is raid awareness something that can only be achieved from competition?

 

You just call people out for their lack of awareness, preferably with tact, and eventually they'll hopefully get tired of wiping you. If you don't call them out, they most likely won't even know that they're the problem.

Edited December 23, 2013 by Lymain

Thank you guys, I really appreciate the feedback. I would like to continue this debate though, as I'd like to fully hit every single point I'd like in order to make our team better.

 

For starters, the "competitive" aspect of this. I actually fully agree, as the competitive edge is something that gives people the ability to actually push themselves more so than just to kill the boss.

 

Unfortunately, this is the problem of the guild I run with, as they try their best to avoid being that "elitist" group. I highly advise people to go into WZs and train themselves, as I believe the best practice in terms of being a raid aware player is to be a good PvPer. IE, if you can run Carnage in PvP, you can dominate with the spec in PvE if you design it towards maximizing damage in the op.

 

Many more so believe the ideas of being "elitist" and "competitive" will ultimately result in us hating each other, causing guild drama and issues that will be very problematic as some may not really understand the ideas of competition too well (IE, the difference between people who can put their heart and soul into a fight and say to themselves, "if this mofo kills me, I won't sleep for weeks", and then actually shrug it off once the failure happens versus someone who can't).

 

So how do you guys go about creating a successful guild amidst the issues? And is raid awareness something that can only be achieved from competition?

Don't take the competitive idea too seriously.

Good healers do not have high HPS/EHPS, it is more important to heal the right player at the right time. For many nightmare boss fights, 70% EHPS is in fact too high because you need to overheal, even if you'll only get 50% EHPS. Also, I barely get above 2k-2.5k EHPS because our tanks mitigate so much damage and our DPS never stand in voids - does this make me a bad healer?

Any player can get high DPS if he ignores mechanics and stands still. Your DPS can brag about who made the most damage, but never let the combat parsers decided who is a good player and who is not.

 

I agree that PvP players have a better raid awareness than PvE players. I once was in a Fortress SM raid with a pure PvP guild. They did not know the mechanics, but they never stood in any AoE. I was very impressed by this.

I would not say that you can learn raid awareness. I believe it has to do with whether you are good at mathematics and logical thinking; otherwise you'll never truly understand the boss mechanics.

Also, raid leaders always have the best raid awareness. I know a lot of the top WoW guilds consist exclusively of players who previously were raid leaders in other guilds. Maybe your members should try to organize a few raids themselves, and not just be the one who gives out the loot, but they should learn the mechanics and keep an eye on what the group is doing during the fight, and what mistakes they make.

 

If you want to be a progressive guild, you're members have to be strive to become better I would say. If your members are not competitive, you should not try to be a progressive guild.

 

You just call people out for their lack of awareness, preferably with tact, and eventually they'll hopefully get tired of wiping you. If you don't call them out, they most likely won't even know that they're the problem.

^ Also this. As long as you have a good raid leader who can explain people what they did wrong, they don't really need raid awareness. I call out pretty much every boss attack or phase transition in voice chat. Of course, some guilds may not need this when everyone is aware of the fight but I do it just in case someone did not notice it.

Edited December 24, 2013 by Jerba

The only way I have seen at improving raid awareness is to run alts, i.e. if you a main DPS, roll a tank alt. If your a tank roll a healer. This allows you to see the fight from different perspectives and will appreciate the jobs the other members in your party do.

 

As raiding has progressed through this game the DPS have had more and more things to do, from clicking a puzzle in EV to standing in circles in TFB to off cleansing/interrupting in DF. To get more proficient at these tasks you should make sure your DPS practice all of their skills while running dailies instead of just muscling through them. Interrupt the channeled abilities, cleanse when required etc.... The DPS who typically do the best are those who can do these off skills while still keeping up their DPS. Just like healers throwing in the odd DPS attack (Styrak being a prime example) to help avoid the enrage timer, or knowing when to heal (this one requires the healers knowing the fights and having a very good relationship with their tanks, i.e when and what defensive cooldown the tank is going to use)

 

I also concur with what is said above, those with the most practice online are more likely to be more familiar with their roles. DPS PVPers typically are the best at interrupting as they need to be to kill the healers.

 

Typically each fight in an operation tests each of the roles, whether it be testing the tanks (with swapping, positioning), testing the healers (with cleanses, insane spike damage) or testing the DPS (with AOEs, tight enrage timers). The key is to research the fight and know when to give up, for instance if you feel that you are regression raiding, call it a night and come back fresh another time. There is nothing more frustrating that hitting a wall for three hours trying to squeak out a little more DPS or to not miss interrupts only to fail.

A refinement of the "competitive" notion is to simply foster a culture of self-improvement. Start with the DPS. There is no DPS, not one, who cannot get better. Even more importantly, there is no DPS who is "good enough" or even worse "friendly enough" that they don't need to push themselves to improve. DPS improvement is easy to measure. Even if people don't want to benchmark against each other within the raid (group parsing), it is vital that they benchmark against themselves from week to week.

 

The same thing goes for healers and tanks. Did you lose someone during that high damage transition phase? That's bad. Why did you lose them? What could you have done better to not lose them? "I don't know" isn't a valid answer. Analyze, experiment, improve. Healers and tanks in particular have a tendency to get very complacent and to blame others for situations that they themselves could have averted (I do this plenty myself). Take responsibility. Learn. Improve. Never settle or consider yourself "arrived". The best tank in the world knows several other tanks which he/she considers to be even better.

 

On a more personal note, I will emphasize Boarder's point on tanks pushing themselves to hold agro off of DPS. Agro loss is not the fault of the DPS. Not ever. DPS should be blowing everything and unbinding their agro dump to pull off the tank. As a tank, I would expect no less from my DPS. If they pull off me, I own up to it and I learn. Understand what you did wrong (and if you lost agro, it was wrong!) and do better on the next pull.

 

The culture of improvement extends to the group and to the raid leader. The number one job of the raid leader is to answer the following question: why did we just wipe? A raid leader who doesn't have an answer to that question is a bad raid leader. Always focus on improving something from one pull to the next. Refine. Iterate. When you've gotten to the point where you feel that more practice is required and that's the main thing holding you back, then throw as many pulls as you can at the boss until you find something new to tweak. If you reach a point where the problems are numerous but small and hard to isolate, then call it! Don't be afraid to walk away and sleep on it as a group. Do research, read logs (yours and others), and come back with a fresh perspective. My guild downs a lot of hard bosses on the first or second pull of the night. Sometimes the last pull, but less frequently.

 

Always be critical of your success too. Great, you just killed the Dread Masters. How did it feel? Could you do it again? Could you do it better? Who screwed up, and why? What did *you* screw up?

 

If you can satisfy these attributes and demonstrate the patience and persistence to apply them, I think it's safe to call yourselves a progression guild. Even if your "progression" is story mode EV. Progression is an attitude and a culture, not a gear level or particular raid.

As my guildies on the harbinger used to tell me when I was still on BC. The Harbinger is that way ---->

When I read that you really needed 2 weeks to down Grob'thok I think your group lacks a lot of skills. This is not meant to be rude, it's just that this is maybe the easiest Boss I have ever faced in the newer Operations (past KP). It is basically tank&spank and doesn't require hell a lot of tactics.

 

However, I will try to give my thoughts about what makes a good progression group.

 

First I have to say, it is essential that you know your advanced class 100%. Make good use of all your abilities and even your skill trees. You need to be able to adapt for bosses. A dps who is always running the "standrad spec" and doesn't know what else he can bring in for a special boss is someone you will not want in your group. Same applies ofc to all other roles.

 

As mentioned before in this thread, you need one guy in your group that fits the role of a shout-caller. In our group it is always a tank as he has the best overview about the entire raid situation. That guy tells when to use Inspiration, a gunslinger shield, when some special dots are up and on whom (for example Tyrans Infernos), who stays in aoe and has to move out (should be very rare, as all guys should be able to recognize their positioning) etc.

 

I don't know if I would be up to form a new progression group again. The Team I am in right now is together already for 1 1/2 years (at least the core of 6 people). We know each other very well now so whenever there is new content to clear we take on this challenge with ease. Whenever I join a pug group to clear something on my Alts it feels very frustrating from time to time as you can't rely on these guys. If one guy goes down, a pug group starts panicking and it will result in a wipe.

 

So my tip is, get to know each other first. Do all kind of stuff together, speak on TS/Mumble so you know the voices of all guys. If someone needs a dispell in a raid group and the healer has to ask "who just said that" is not a good sign. If you have a good team synergy you will see that doing progression raids is something really entertaining.

In general I mean you need to socialize with your team members. When we're not raiding and hear each other in TS, we are always online in our skype chat group and write about everyday stuff as well as on SWTOR related stuff. That's why I love my raid group and we have good success.

Any player can get high DPS if he ignores mechanics and stands still. Your DPS can brag about who made the most damage, but never let the combat parsers decided who is a good player and who is not.

I've been saying this for years. People get too immersed in parser logs they tend to forget other things sometimes matter even more than pure damage output.

There's already a lot of good advice in here, but one thing I haven't seen anything about yet is knowing when to quit. If there was one lesson I learned the hard way, it's that some times walking away and finding a new group is the ideal fit.

 

The first step is to identify your personal goals. What level of content do you want to clear? What level of content do you realistically think you can clear? If your group was wiping on Grob'thok for weeks plural, I agree with the previous poster that says you have an uphill battle for progression.

 

This was my first real MMO, and when I was started I was bad. But I kept working at it, playing different roles and improving. After a year or so, I graduated to what I like to think of as the "HM casuals." These are groups that attempt to run HM and have some decent players, but do not consistently clear the content.

 

I got along with everyone, but I consistently felt let down by the groups I was playing with. It seemed whatever role I wasn't filling, we would struggle with. After bashing my head against progression walls for a few months, I struck out on my own and bounced around for awhile, still improving my personal skills and forging new relationships. And then I was fortunate enough to land in a burgeoning progression group and in a few months time went from barely completing HMs to having achieved a Dragonslayer title. There are much more accomplished guilds than us, but it was a remarkable turnaround for me personally.

 

Is this attitude elititist? Yes, it is. If you want to achieve on the highest level, you must be prepared to push yourself and others to that level and accept the fact that, no matter what kind of coaching they receive, some people will just never be that good. Any more than I can expect to walk on to an NFL field tomorrow and perform at a high level.

 

Skills and muscle memory can be improved, but talent matters. In my group, we mostly joke and have fun. We understand it's just a game. But are there ego collisions some times? Sure. Do people some times call others out? Absolutely. But in the end we achieve our goals and have fun playing the game at the same time.

 

So first I ask that you look in the mirror and decide what kind of player you want to be.

I agree, a lot of helpful advice here; I even learned a few things myself.

 

However, since the OP specifically asked about raid awareness, I want to clarify something.

Raid awareness is not so much about knowing the boss mechanics or having top DPS/HPS, it is about keeping a cool head during the fight. A lot of the boss mechanics are designed to create chaos, but raid aware players will not be overwhelmed by this. They will always see what ability the boss is casting, where a void zone appears, they already think of what they have to do in the next phase, and they are still able to deal top damage or heal so that no one dies.

In another thread, they compared raid awareness with the ability to multitask, and I highly agree with this comparison.

 

I can't stress enough how important a good raid leader is. Individual wipes are always the fault of a certain player, but it is the raid leader's responsibilty to identify what went wrong - be it a mistake by players or a flaw in your tactic - and make adjustments accordingly.

This of course means that the raid leader does not just have to do his role. He has to watch the entire group, see who's standing in a wrong spot, who's attacking the wrong target. That's why raid leaders need a much higher raid awareness than other players.

In my opinion, healers are suited best for this. Tanks are usually standing near a wall and have a huge monster in front of them. They can't see anything but the belly of the boss, how are they supposed to keep an eye on the raid? The DPS always keep an eye on the enemy, they don't look at their own group. Nevertheless, I know that there are good DPS and tank raid leaders.

Also, players in top world progression guilds don't need a raid leader to tell them what went wrong. They are seeing their mistakes by themselves, or can identify errors that the raid leader did not see.

I know that in my group the players are not able to do this themselves, so I keep an eye on everyone and call out mechanics during the fight. In your group, it looks like you also need a raid leader who watches the group, who tells each person what they did wrong, since your players do not see this themselves.

Edited December 24, 2013 by Jerba

Thank you all, I really appreciate and enjoy seeing this amazing amount of advice. I have picked up on a lot of things, and I'm eager to look into trying various new ideas, such as perhaps, encouraging our players to be leaders themselves and having our healers be more vocal on what went wrong.

 

But this next bit I find as key:

 

Also, players in top world progression guilds don't need a raid leader to tell them what went wrong. They are seeing their mistakes by themselves, or can identify errors that the raid leader did not see.

I know that in my group the players are not able to do this themselves, so I keep an eye on everyone and call out mechanics during the fight. In your group, it looks like you also need a raid leader who watches the group, who tells each person what they did wrong, since your players do not see this themselves.

 

And that's what I believe the big issue is. I've read through posts here, and the ones calling for you to know when to quit are actually extremely logical. It is sad really, as we have been clearing content since the days when EC HM was the frontier of progression raiding.

 

But my desire to clear content does not outweigh my desire to see it done with friends, and I am willing to do whatever it takes to get it done with this group. And the difference right there in that quote is what I personally believe can make a team great.

 

Raid leaders are important, yes. But their job should only be when the group isn't in the fight itself. Call outs, reminders, pretty much anything that results in someone relying on the command of another restricts the most important thing I believe people need for raids: adaptability.

 

This is something I strongly believe is applicable for PvP as well, because I have competed in a few ranked scenes where I was the leader. And back in those matches, I tried to avoid ever calling things out, as the type of response needed in those matches was way too fast for even VC. The matches where I voiced movement, who to target and etc. ended in defeat. I picked up that tactic actually when I was asked to help fill an 8th person role in an ITK pug group back when they still played on BC. No one really spoke, no one called out who to focus fire and who to guard. Only the call out that the guard was swapping, and the very rare curse when someone would die.

 

Every single member has to see things coming, and what I have learned is the many who rely on call outs are also surprised mechanic after mechanic, resulting in loss of DPS, heals, and you'll know when a tank is surprised by a mechanic change up versus one who adapts. This is why I also believe that in terms of raw talent, the best players in the game come from the top of the WZs. Anyone who can master healing, DPSing with a single target damage spec, and knows how to tank in one as well, already has a huge advantage going into an op because success in a WZ is all about overcoming the side that is directly trying to shut you down.

 

Which I feel that my group ultimately lacks heavily in adaptability, which would explain why we wipe do much on a boss before clearing him. We need to execute the mechanic flawlessly for us to pass it, otherwise we wipe and fail. It would explain why we have NiM EC as an Achilles' heel (we literally passed Warstalker with two minutes to spare with our main group), as the mechanics are tuned to require real time responses, and our group seems to lack a capability of "learning as we go".

Yeah, lots of good input here- I think something else that ties into assessing the question "what went wrong" goes into communication as a team as a whole. If you all aren't all on the same page of your goals (i.e. we want to clear this content, not bash our heads for eternity, and not screw up) and have that comfort/familiarity with each other, then sometimes tough love is good and necessary. Everyone needs to be open to criticism, suggestions, adjustments, all of that (although in the middle of a raid is not always the best time for a dramatic overhaul unless there's something seriously wrong tactically) and within your team understand it's not a personal thing, not being a jerk thing, but is trying to identify ways everyone can improve. If you lay it out there "I want to down this content, master it, and play my class better, let's make sure we communicate about things" and everyone has that same commitment, then criticism is not something elitist or drama inducing, but is the basic courtesy of helping everyone to improve together. It might not be bad to have a separate meeting or something to deal with some of these things, so that people aren't either at the end of raid time, exasperated with wipes and being extra harsh if this kindof conflict/ "calling out" of eachother is a concern as a potentially elitist attitude. Because quite frankly, if you're struggling to down a certain boss, bashing your head against it, and are NOT open for criticisms/suggestions/ideas, you're in for a rough ride and more pain.

 

Another thing that can be helpful is recording your fights- you don't necesarily need to upload them all, esp a not-kill, but I know for myself as i transitioned from being a casual raider to a more dedicated raider with an eye on downing content quickly being able to go back over and watch my fights either from a fight we were learning, or even kill footage I had uploaded for the rest of the guild's benefit was helpful for me to identify patterns and places where I'd forget it was my footage and I'd catch myself critiquing the heal selection, how long I left an ability off cooldown for, poor boss positioning as a tank, whatever it may be- I can learn a lot, and even from an attempt where I thought i was doing my job really well identify places to improve and make it even smoother next time.

Well, sounds like you already possess arguably the most important trait of not giving up and persistence. Nothing in the PvE side of this game is more rewarding than spending 150+ attempts and 20+ hours in the span of only like 3 days on a single boss (TFB NiM Dread Council) before you down the bastard:p Edited December 27, 2013 by TheRealCandyMan

On a more personal note, I will emphasize Boarder's point on tanks pushing themselves to hold agro off of DPS. Agro loss is not the fault of the DPS. Not ever. DPS should be blowing everything and unbinding their agro dump to pull off the tank. As a tank, I would expect no less from my DPS. If they pull off me, I own up to it and I learn. Understand what you did wrong (and if you lost agro, it was wrong!) and do better on the next pull.

 

As a dps'er of course I agree with this though I am wondering- one excuse I've heard from tanks that consistently lose aggro to high burst classes is "we've prioritized our gear optimization for survival, not for generating optimal threat". To all you tanks out there- is this reasoning valid?

Edited December 27, 2013 by Projawa

My opinion differs slightly on agro.

 

IMO saying a dps should unbind (never use) their agro dump is a little like saying tanks and dps shouldn't use a medpack or self-cleanse because the healers should be good enough to cleanse & heal through all the damage.

(re-reading this it comes off a little strong. It's not my intention for it to be that way but I feel like it should stay in)

 

Whilst it is every players responsibility to always improve and for tanks the way they play and hold agro is a major factor. It is also the responsibility of every raider to assist each other.

 

Raids are about players working together. You train as a team to work together. When you work together well enough you progress through raids. Never try and make someone in your team fail.

 

- As a dps I expect players to be capable of using an agro drop during a phase change, target swap or after a precast as well as during a fight without it impacting overall dps.

- As a tank I expect players to be capable of recognising where a dps (and which one) is likely to pull agro (for example the above scenarios) and take steps to avoid that.

 

Having said this a mistake like loss of agro, player death etc.. will always occur how you deal with that mistake and improve/ carry on from it is far more important.

Edited December 27, 2013 by Solar_Breeze

As a dps'er of course I agree with this though I am wondering- one excuse I've heard from tanks that consistently lose aggro to high burst classes is "we've prioritized our gear optimization for survival, not for generating optimal threat". To all you tanks out there- is this reasoning valid?

 

Nope, it's not valid. If you're consistently losing agro to any class, you're doing something wrong in your opener. All three tanks have an opener which will hold guaranteed threat (barring resists) against any DPS class in the game. Resists will happen on occasion, and they can result in threat loss, but this is why tank openers always include taunt fluff timed to marginalize the impact of such resists. I can lose threat in my opener, particularly if my Force Pull is resisted (yes, that can happen), but my first taunt is timed such that I'll get it back before it matters, and often before anyone notices.

 

To clarify, my tank is in fully mitigation-itemized gear without a drop of accuracy, high main stat armorings or power crystals. My group's DPS are in optimized Dread Forged and all four are pulling between 3.7k and 3.85k on the 1 million HP dummy.

 

My opinion differs slightly on agro.

 

IMO saying a dps should unbind (never use) their agro dump is a little like saying tanks and dps shouldn't use a medpack or self-cleanse because the healers should be good enough to cleanse & heal through all the damage.

(re-reading this it comes off a little strong. It's not my intention for it to be that way but I feel like it should stay in)

 

I think this is a fair perspective. In general, I tend to bias my thinking about raids in favor of taking load off of the DPS and healers and putting it on the tanks, simply because I main a tank myself. I do think that DPS shouldn't need to agro dump, and removing the agro dump as a point of concern for them frees up their concentration to focus on execution and high damage. Ideally, I want my DPS to be able to treat every boss fight as close to a dummy as possible, and obviously a dummy doesn't require agro dumps.

 

With that said, you're right that everyone in the raid should be supporting everyone else. If a tank does need an agro dump for whatever reason, they should be able to call for it and get it. For example, I call for my DPS to agro dump at specific times during Raptus due to the threat debuff from the tank curse. They know where the issues are, and they're happy to oblige when I ask. In turn, I try to provide them with the confidence to blow out their hardest-hitting attacks without fear of turning the boss at an inopportune moment and wiping the raid.

 

Having said this a mistake like loss of agro, player death etc.. will always occur how you deal with that mistake and improve/ carry on from it is far more important.

 

Yep. This is particularly true in the case of agro due to the fact that min-maxed tanks have less than 100% accuracy, meaning that they can and will run into situations where they hit an unlucky streak of resists, resulting in agro loss. Good tanks have their taunt timing such that this will never be a mechanical issue, which speaks to the "deal with that mistake and improve/carry on" point.

If a tank does need an agro dump for whatever reason, they should be able to call for it and get it. For example, I call for my DPS to agro dump at specific times during Raptus due to the threat debuff from the tank curse. They know where the issues are, and they're happy to oblige when I ask. In turn, I try to provide them with the confidence to blow out their hardest-hitting attacks without fear of turning the boss at an inopportune moment and wiping the raid.

 

And this is exactly what is required in a progression raiding group. Mutual trust in the group that everyone plays to the best of their ability and reacts to the changing situation. Well put.

 

Every player in the group is responsible for tanking, dps and healing something might be your main focus but you are still responsible for the others. If tanks and dps take less damage the healers can do more damage. If the tanks hold agro well the dps are more confident to do more damage and in turn avoid more damage because they feel like they don't have to 'push'.

That's why un nerfed DG was the best fight in the game. Everyone was playing all the roles to the best of their ability to down it.

Edited December 27, 2013 by Solar_Breeze

So what exactly is our problem there? I have been watching raid clear videos, trying to understand how these top end progression raid groups clear this content. And one bit of evidence I noted, was that the members rarely used voice chat. Most of the run is silent, with only the essential mechanics being called out.!

 

lol, you're clearly not watching the right stream. Twitch is below, can't get us to shut up.