Before I begin, here's a shameless self-promotional link to my other blog, which is now listing development updates for a RPG I'm creating called Wrath of Gaia: http://www.wogroh.blogspot.com/.
That out of the way, I'm now going to talk a bit about how you can personally guarantee to make your raids or dungeons easier, requiring fewer pulls per boss kill. These tactics should be employed by your group's leader(s) for maximum effectiveness, but there is no reason standard members cannot use the following strategies (in such a case, it becomes that much more important that you communicate your information tactfully, so as not to step on anybody's toes). The concepts included within can even be applied to games other than World of Warcraft (though I will be using examples and terminology from that game to make the discussion easier). It's even only three steps long. Interested?
The following sections are going to assume you are going to have the appropriate number of players for the content you are attempting to do. Trying to complete PvE content with lower than the recommended number of players may cause certain fight mechanics to behave oddly, increasing the overall difficulty of the encounter and making evaluation that much more difficult.
That all said, let's get this running.
Step 0 - Determine Your Focus
This isn't really even a step, but it's worth mentioning before we get to the following parts.
Most groups tend to have a focus on dying the least amount of times possible (or spending the least amount of their time on the fight). The strategies contained below reflect that view.
That said, if the focus of your group is to experience new content for yourselves without spoilers - to be (unpleasantly) surprised by boss attacks/specialties, and to say, "Wow, that boss's attack really hurts! Now, how are we going to deal with it?" feel free to temporarily skip Step 1 below (I'm sure you'll be coming back to it if and when you decide you need to strategize). However, be sure that this view is shared by ALL members of your team - not just yourself. It's not a particularly common view.
On a side note, pay close attention midfight to see who in your group dies first. You'll want this information for Step 2.
Step 1 - Have a Plan (or Not)
Don't run into the fight blind, expecting to just shoot the baddie until he falls over dead. There's (almost) always going to be some special attack or mechanic that's going to mess you up if you don't know how to manage it.
Do your fight research. Understand what needs to be done, determine how you're going to accomplish it, and communicate the important parts that others need to know. Be direct, and try to focus on giving instructions out in relevant sections. For example, consider the following scattered, incomplete directions:
"Biggest thing we got to worry about on this fight is Sudden Death. Ranged players, stay spread out so that you guys don't have to move if you get hit with it. It will kill everyone near you if you're all grouped up. Melee, if you get targeted, run out of melee range. Stay away from the front of the boss, because he has a breath attack."
The problem with the above directions (although they may describe all of the fight mechanics), is that it's described in a poor order. Usually, fight strategies are much longer than this, and if you start with mechanics that only pertain to one group of players, other players tend to start tuning out your description, because it doesn't directly apply to them. For a specific example, when you address the melee, all they know is that if they get targeted (some of them might not even know by what, and may assume boss melee swings/aggro), they should run out of melee range. I can guarantee you that some of them will run out of melee range DIRECTLY ON TOP OF RANGED PEOPLE, because they missed the part where the mechanic kills any other players near you. Additionally, ranged players may attack from in front of the boss, and subsequently get killed by the breath attack, because they assume you're still talking to the melee players when you talk about not standing in front of the boss.
This is the sort of thing where usually if someone screws up, they learn, and you will not have that person doing that mistake again, but you still lose time having that person learn when the death(s) could have been avoided. If this happens multiple times for multiple people (especially for multiple mechanics), it can add hours onto the time you spend trying to defeat an encounter.
Below is a better pre-fight explanation for your team:
"Alright everyone. This boss does a frontal breath attack, so NOBODY stand in front of him at any time other than the tank. Also, he will mark players with a 'Sudden Death' debuff, that will kill any other players standing within 10 yards after 5 seconds, so if you get the debuff, move away from everyone else. Ranged, stay spread out so you aren't running all over the place. Melee, move out of melee range if you get the debuff so you don't gib the other melee."
As a closing note, in addition to keeping instructions organized and relevant like this, try to emphasize category words (such as 'everybody', 'nobody', 'melee', 'ranged', 'healers', 'tanks') by saying them slightly louder, or using caps, so that people who may be daydreaming get brought back to reality and hear what it is they're supposed to know.
Step 2 - Determining the Cause of Fail
Alright. You followed your plan of action (or lack thereof) and lost. The boss is laughing at your corpses and you're working on resurrecting your characters. Heal up and try again, right? Obviously someone messed up and now knows what they're supposed to be doing.
Hold up a minute.
In your group's defense, if you're the leader, chances are good they do NOT know what went wrong, and require someone else (probably you) to figure it out for them. So, let's run through the motions (as quickly as possible) of various scenarios that may have occurred.
I've found that the most useful information is usually obtained from the first people that die during the fight. If you have the option to quickly do so, after the fight, look at the players' death reports and determine what killed them. Problems tend to snowball after the first player dies, so that first death report contains some of the most valuable information. If you can't figure anything out from the information, talk with the player. See if they know what happened to them. They might have personally figured it out, and have adjusted their strategy, but if that information is relevant to all other (or to similar) players, you waste time by not sharing that information immediately, because everyone else would need to figure it out for themselves!
It is extremely important to keep in mind that a player dying does not automatically = their fault. "That melee guy got Sudden Death and ran up and hugged me." Additionally, someone may die from lack of healing, because the healers may be silenced by mind-controlled players, who should've used their silences on the boss immediately before the mind control happened so that their characters would not be able to silence your team's healers.
As you can see, the blame game can be traced a long way. In some ways, it pays to go back to your childhood days, where you kept asking "Why?" to everything.
Dead Guy: "I died."
You: "Why?"
Dead Guy: "I didn't get any healing."
You: "Why didn't the healers heal you?"
Healer: "We were silenced."
You: "Why?"
Mage: "I forgot to put Counterspell on cooldown before the mind-control."
Mage recognizes his problem, and that usually means he will fix it. Problem identified and solved. A lot of the time though, this won't be that easy.
As mentioned above, looking at the death reports for first deaths is a good start. Identify the ability that caused the most damage (not just the killing blow), and determine whether that damage can be lowered, avoided, or split better between different players. If it can, figure out how. If it cannot, figure out a better way to help block the damage (through shield-absorption effects or damage-reducing cooldowns), or a quicker way to heal it (healing cooldowns may be required here).
Consider the following when determining causes of death: missed interrupts, broken crowd-control effects, lag/disconnects, stacks of increased damage taken (or damage-over-time) debuffs, out-of-range for healing issues, boss's enrage timer, and emergency AFKs because the fishtank is on fire. Thankfully, a lot of these mechanics are not present on the same fight, so you're really only left with a couple to worry about at a given time.
I will go into a lot of these topics in much greater detail in upcoming posts.
Step 3 - Communicating What You Learned
It does the group no good if you keep everything you got from Step 2 to yourself, or if you assume that the others it is relevant to know about it already. You do not need to be overly vocal about your findings, saying in public chat, "Well Bob died because the healer couldn't heal him because our mage failed!" It's enough to send a whisper to the mage asking if he knows when to use his silence, and to check if he knows how to tell when the boss's mind-control move is about to happen.
Keeping spirits high is important to the group's success as well, so you should aim to minimize the alienation that occurs when someone is called out for screwing up.
And that's it! Knowledge in-hand and team prepared, you're ready to fight again, and die to something different. Good hunting!
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