Raiding with non-raiders: The Beginning
Posted 04-04-2009 at 02:14 PM by Krazen
Hello all, I've decided to start a new series of blogs about how I've been taking a group of non-raiders that have interest in endgame and getting them "in the game". With any luck, it'll help you in getting the friends/family players motivated. 
My description of a non-raider:
A player who plays extremely casual. By this, I mean someone who logs in on an off-regular basis and has no real goals besides leveling a toon. They may occasionally pug a Vault or a heroic, but they typically turtle into a comfort zone group of just friends.
When I went to a guild with mainly friends in it, I knew that I wanted to lead raids for them, because these are all my friends that ARE interested in the content, but have a hard time understanding coordination, understanding raid structure, and understanding that WoW gold is, in fact, fake money.
Here's what I did for these three issues, before we talked about going in somewhere.
Issue #1: Coordination
Our first big raid night consisted of a raid group for Vault and Sartharion. Easy raids, yes. The dps looked something like this.
Top 5 spots: 1700 - 1900
Bottom 5: 1400 and down.
This isn't remarkable on bosses with an enrage timer such as Sarth or Archavon, but it worked. We mixed and matched for a run to Noth, solely because, in my opinion, Heigan is the best fight to test coordination on. Here's how it went after we made it to Heigan.
Run 1 = Melee wiped before the Safety Dance minus myself. Ranged wiped during the first Safety Dance except one healer. One tank, one healer left. We considered endurance beating Heigan, but that would trash my desire to buff coordination.
Run 2 = Same result, but this time a fury warrior survived until the SD, and a hunter survived the first SD.
We continued this trend for 2 more wipes, and then I halted the raid and had an open forum discussion on how we can alter things. People had some great ideas, and we decided to save it for this week. Since then, they've been much better about jumping in on heroics and have had less issues.
I'll be discussing Raid Structure issues later on, as work is pulling me away. If you guys have any suggestions or would like me to elaborate any further, I would happily do so!
Thanks for reading, and all the best,
Krazen
My description of a non-raider:
A player who plays extremely casual. By this, I mean someone who logs in on an off-regular basis and has no real goals besides leveling a toon. They may occasionally pug a Vault or a heroic, but they typically turtle into a comfort zone group of just friends.
When I went to a guild with mainly friends in it, I knew that I wanted to lead raids for them, because these are all my friends that ARE interested in the content, but have a hard time understanding coordination, understanding raid structure, and understanding that WoW gold is, in fact, fake money.
Here's what I did for these three issues, before we talked about going in somewhere.
Issue #1: Coordination
Our first big raid night consisted of a raid group for Vault and Sartharion. Easy raids, yes. The dps looked something like this.
Top 5 spots: 1700 - 1900
Bottom 5: 1400 and down.
This isn't remarkable on bosses with an enrage timer such as Sarth or Archavon, but it worked. We mixed and matched for a run to Noth, solely because, in my opinion, Heigan is the best fight to test coordination on. Here's how it went after we made it to Heigan.
Run 1 = Melee wiped before the Safety Dance minus myself. Ranged wiped during the first Safety Dance except one healer. One tank, one healer left. We considered endurance beating Heigan, but that would trash my desire to buff coordination.
Run 2 = Same result, but this time a fury warrior survived until the SD, and a hunter survived the first SD.
We continued this trend for 2 more wipes, and then I halted the raid and had an open forum discussion on how we can alter things. People had some great ideas, and we decided to save it for this week. Since then, they've been much better about jumping in on heroics and have had less issues.
I'll be discussing Raid Structure issues later on, as work is pulling me away. If you guys have any suggestions or would like me to elaborate any further, I would happily do so!
Thanks for reading, and all the best,
Krazen
Total Comments 5
Comments
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I think this is excellent. Put some work into it, and add a pro-tips section, IE: "If it falls from the sky, or comes from underneath you, it's probably bad. Move."
Get out of the fire people...Posted 04-04-2009 at 02:55 PM by Glomgore 
- We use Engineering flares to mark the safe spots where people should be running to and standing on.
ps. Have those flares also on your actionbar so you can re-apply them in mid-fight, cause with your dps you'll probably need toPosted 04-04-2009 at 03:54 PM by Garbid -
for Heigan
"Move to where you just saw green stuff come out"Posted 04-04-2009 at 09:27 PM by Dhalphir -
I did a kz pug back in TBC on my dad' mage, while he watched. Today hes a top raider, and plays more or less all the time.
And my mom hates me for that
Posted 04-04-2009 at 11:36 PM by Pesko - Remind them that this is more about coordination and getting those nasty diseases off. If they do 1k dps, Heigan will still die if everyone stays alive. Also, lag can be a killer, so if anyone is having any issues with it, make sure they turn down their graphics. I've done this fight from 3 perspectives, ranged dps, healer, and melee dps. As melee, I would obviously do better damage if I could stay behind Heigan, but I do better overall damage if I manage to stay alive, so I don't worry that much about front vs back attacks.
BTW, good job on getting them through Noth.Posted 04-06-2009 at 07:30 AM by nefaisrien
