The reason why I bring this up is because as the Tanking Officer, I was asked to review the performance of our little team of three.  So before I could do these reviews, I had to figure out for myself what is our goal.  What do we, as tanks, need to achieve?

We need to aim to be exceptional.

Alright, exceptional is all well and good, but what does that even mean?

I’ve been fortunate to tank with excellent tanks in the past.  Noodlestein and Idkittens were tanks who could turn a complete mess of an attempt and somehow pull a victory even if 7 out of 10 players lay on the ground at the end.  I remember an example of Id’s quick thinking on our first Halfus heroic kill when we had lost all the healers in the last few percents and he activated Slate (not part of the plan) who stunned Halfus just long enough for us to pull a kill.

Those two guys, I would always assign them the toughest jobs because I knew they’d learn it faster than anyone else.  These examples and many others are to me what denotes an exceptional tank.  I often refer to players like these as people who make their class sing.  It’s sheer beauty to behold.  This should be any tank’s goal: To be the one that is always asked to do the toughest jobs.

A good tank will generate solid threat.  He/She will know the fights, know how and when to move the bosses and where to position them.  They will use their cooldowns and communicate well with their teammates.

Where an exceptional tank shines is in the small details that while sometimes not necessary will make the fights smoother and sometimes will change the tide of a battle.  They will be lightning quick on picking up those adds on Rhyolith.  Their dps will be high, contributing favourably to the teams goal of beating an enrage timer.  When not being the active tank, they will switch to berserker stance, drop righteous fury, switch to cat or frost/unholy to help with the new tank gain aggro while still hitting as hard as they can.  As a warrior, you can also intervene the tank you’re taunting off of to lower their threat, maximize their dps and mitigate some damage.  They will be able to kite a boss around a room so fast as to make the healers swear.

The list could go on.  For us, we made ourselves a list of things we wanted to improve.  For one, it was to practice his kiting and his movement as a whole.  He needed to learn not to back up or turn his back to a boss to kite him.  Turn 90 degrees and strafe.  Then go and learn to strafe and change direction while remaining in control at all times.

We all have things to work on.  Even great tanks have things they can improve and I think that is one big thing that separates the greats from the good.  They keep working at it.

As for me, you’ll excuse me but I need to go and tank some pugs.  Is there any better environment where chaos can break any time a hunter misfires?  Raiding feels very controlled in comparison, until it’s not.  And this is when, I hope, that this practice will help.  And maybe, one day, I’ll be closer to being considered an exceptional tank.

Apart from these wonderful and entertaining distractions, I’ve also been the honoured guest of the Double O podcast twice in the past couple of months.

The first podcast’s topic was Guild Leadership.  The other guest was my own fearless leader, Vidyala from Manalicious.

The second one was also about one of my favorite topics: Tanking.  Ophelie and Oestrus organized a round table with a tank from every class.

I had a lot of fun participating and I hope that you’ll be able to find some useful information other than the fact that I have a horrible accent.

• The tactical review of the fight
• The pull
• Generating threat
• Tools to help

Tactical review

The first thing that a tank needs to do for each encounter is assess the opposing group in terms of their composition. Are the mobs casters, melee or ranged?

The easiest by far to tank are melee creatures.  Just say hi to them (shooting/throwing something at them) and they’ll come towards you.  Charge one of them and the others will mass around you.  Like I said, very simple.  The second easiest is a caster.  Casters will try to fight you where they stand but this is where investing 2 points in the talent Gag Order is worth it.  Simply throw your weapon at them (Heroic throw) or go to them, pummel one of their cast and see them trying to melee you for the next few seconds.  The real threat is archers.  These cannot be interrupted, silenced, or anything.  You have two recourse then: Crowd Control or Line of Sight.

The next thing to see is the location of those mobs.  What are the obstacles that you could use to break line of sight? Are there patrols that come in the vicinity?

To tank is to do this analysis for every pull.  You need to quickly assess an encounter and put together a tactic for it.  Even a lowly trash encounter can easily overwhelm a group if the casters are left to target the healer, or worse, if a patrol joins the fray.

The Pull

Now this to me is the real fun part of tanking. As a warrior, you have the following tools to start a fight:

• Heroic Throw – Generates a good amount of threat and if talented, silences casters and forces them to come towards you.
• Shooting/Throwing – Generates a tiny amount of threat, mainly used to just get the mob’s attention. Very useful before having the talent Warbringer if you don’t fancy Stance dancing.
• Taunt – Ok, never ever use taunt to start a fight. The most uncertain time in a fight is right after the pull when your aggro is tenuous. This is when you might need your taunt to do what it’s meant for, taunt back from an overzealous dps.
• Charge/Heroic Leap – This is the trademark pull for the warrior.  Puts you in melee range right away so you can start building up aggro.
• Facepulling – Just move close enough, it will make them attack you. After the taunt pull, this is the worst way to pull as a warrior as you start the fight with almost no rage to work with.

See? Even the casters run during a Line of Sight pull. Voss is well hidden in the corner there after using Heroic Throw to pull. Technically, I should be turned towards them and not facing the corner...

Pulling by throwing your weapon, shooting, etc.

The simplest version of this pull is simply target a mob and shoot at it.  The melee mobs will come to you while the others start attacking from range which can create a mess very quickly. It works only with a group that’s all melee or with one caster if you use heroic throw and have the talent gag order to silence him and force him to run towards you.

Line of Sight pull

This is one of the best technique out there.  You shoot/throw something at a mob and then break line of sight by using the top of the stairs or a wall. The enemies will need to go up the stairs/go around that wall to get to you.  It groups them all up in one neat pile for you to AoE.  It works on all types of enemies, be they archers, casters or melee.  The one thing that makes this a success is for you to inform your group of your intentions so that there is no healing (unless the healer is behind the tank) and no dps until the enemies are where you need them to be.  Communication is always important when tanking, but in the case of the Line of Sight pull, it’s not even an option.

Note: Lara at Root and Branch has a great series of primers (Primer and Intermediate) about threat which include diagrams for Line of Sight pulls and a plethora of other useful information.  I strongly encourage you to go and give it a read!

Pulling with a charge

There are a few ways of doing this:

The classic charge – Pick a target, click charge.

The charge and turn charge. – This one is a bit more complicated. You basically jump up before the end of your charge and while in the air, you mouse turn 180 degrees.  You should now be behind your target, facing it. Your target will turn to face you and thus have its back to the melee dps running to join the fight.

Combining the styles

What truly will make you a pulling master is to combine the pulls mentioned above.  There’s the:

Throw a weapon/run away/charge

This technique uses a simple thrown weapon to grab the enemies’ attention. Then turn and run away, forcing even the caster and archers to run after you as you move out of their range.  Finally, turn back and charge them when they’re where you want them to be.

This works especially well when you cannot line of sight the enemies but do not want to fight them where they stand because of possible patrols.

Line of sight/charge

This one is very simple.  You line of sight the enemies but strafe away from the corner.  When the enemies turn the corner, charge in.  You have them where you wanted them and you got the rage bonus from the charge.  Simply awesome!

And here they are, all grouped up in range of all of your attacks. They'll stick to you until the end now.

Generating Threat

This one is pretty simple, most of what you do will generate threat, even using battle shout. How to generate the maximum amount of threat is fairly linear.

For a single target pull, Shield Slam.  Early and often. Revenge on cooldown, devastate to push your three sunders.  After that, I’d say it depends on your group.  I most often run with groups with incredible dps and so I need to keep generating threat as much as possible.  When you have a small cushion, you should use demoralizing shout and Thunderclap and keep those debuffs up.

For a multiple target pull, I most often thunderclap while still running, position the mobs quickly and then hit shockwave to lock them in place. I then apply rend and thunderclap again and spam cleave when the rage is available.  You should of course distribute shield slams, devastates and revenge while switching target to solidify your aggro, but cleave and thunderclap (especially if you are talented into blood and thunder) should be able to keep the group on you.

Tools to help with tanking

Vigilance – While technically it’s not a tool but one of your abilities, it’s very important to put it on the dps that seems to have more threat than the others.  It’s a free taunt and some vengeance when he gets hit, always useful.

Tidy Plates – It replaces the nameplates with its own custom version. It’s incredibly useful as you can configure it to show you which enemies is casting, about to run to a dps or is already hacking away at one of the other melee.  I would say that most raid tanks are now using this or something similar to it.

The green circle shows an enemy on which I have the primary aggro. The Yellow circle shows one where Vidyala had the most threat. It's an easy visual way to see if you have complete control of the group or if any enemies are slipping.

Omen or Skada – You need to know how much cushion you have on the next person on the threat scale.

A Heads-up Display – This one is optional but I personally love to have information about my enemy right in my field of view.  I know many tanks use IceHud but others prefer a cleaner interface.  The main thing to remember is you need to customize your interface to how you like to play and what challenges you are currently tackling.  You need to remember though that the tank needs to be able to react very quickly to additional mobs coming in battle, a patrol, etc.  And so whatever you do with your display, make sure that it’s clean enough for you to have an excellent view of the battle.

Conclusion

The only real way to get better at this is to practice a lot. Get some guildies to go with you or even go and solo lower level instances and practice.  Try out the line of sights, the pull and charge.

One thing I did not talk about today is the importance of crowd control.  I’ll keep that part for another post but try to get to know the different types of crowd control present in your group and use them.

Hope this little post can help out.  Have fun and good luck!

Wrath of the Lich King is where, to me, the protection warrior really came into its own.  Mind you, my experience with the game started only a few months before the end of the Burning Crusade and thus I cannot relate to prior versions.  I leveled this first character as a protection warrior teamed up with first a priest and then a mage.  Leveling was slow, the amount of damage I could generate was quite laughable as I was reminded of once when I went to PvP as Protection.  The tauren shaman just looked at me, proceeded to wipe out my colleagues and even took the time to laugh at me before leaving me, alive, unharmed but properly dishonoured.

The Wrath of the Lich King patch changed this dramatically.  No longer were we the indestructible peashooters of old.  We were now juggernauts of raw, unstoppable power!  Even raiding at the end of the expansion changed dramatically.  One did not have to respec to complete puny dailies; you could do it as a tank using tank skills, gather the enemies and grind them down using our impressive arsenal of tricks.  I leveled as protection in Wrath of the Lich King and the experience was completely different from my first 70 levels.

On our old server, a protection warrior was first to reach 80 and it was no surprise to me.  I was the first in our guild to achieve this new plateau.  I have been tanking every encounter available in this expansion since.  Some patches were quite disappointing, others were like candy.  Tank classes went up and down.  Through it all, the warrior remained a solid choice: never being the worst but also never the favourite.  In Cataclysm, the warrior has been strong while not really being on top except for a little while at the beginning when our cleave was simply devastating and has since been nerfed.

I have tried a few other classes in the meantime with only the Death Knight making it to 80 and going on to become a Kingslayer.  The DK was fun and each class has their strengths and weaknesses (yes, even pallies, my old nemesis).  They were interesting but they always seemed to be lacking something.  I’ll try to explain now what is so wonderful about the warrior with a specific focus on the protection warrior.

The Mobility

The warrior has unmatched mobility in the field.  The protection warrior (through the talent Warbringer) does not only have the ability to charge – it can also intercept an enemy or intervene back to a raid member.  I would suggest that this is really what defines a warrior tank.  They feel fast.  Suppose a patrol comes in behind your healer; just charge at them, thunderclap, and then intercept back to your original group.  The other tanking classes have tools to do something similar. Death Knights can put Death and Decay at a distance to get the attention of the new pack, and pallies can throw their shields.  Yes, any of those would work, but they could never feel as active as the warrior’s technique.

Our Tools

For many new players, the warrior feels overwhelming.  I use about 36 buttons to control all of my abilities.  When changing stances, it will add even more to the number.  It is a wonderful challenge to master them.  For me, the iconic raid instance showing the raw power of the warrior tank is Trial of the Crusader.  No one else could stun lock any mob like the warrior can.

The other fight in this instance that showcased the warrior’s abilities was the last fight against Anub’Arak.  No, the fun part of the fight was not fighting Anub himself.  It was fighting the adds – those giant ants that spawned on often opposite sides of the room.  Who better to pick those up than a warrior using his charge?  That same warrior could then control the adds and stop their shadow strike by stunning them with shockwave

Here are some of our tools:

• Shield Slam (Massive damage plus dispell on effect from the target)
• Concussion Blow (Nice little stun)
• Pummel (10 second interrupt. Can be talented to silence)
• Heroic Throw (talented to silence)
• Shockwave (Our best tool for stunning targets. Conal effect, unlimited number of targets, 4 seconds stun)
• Charge/intercept/intervene
• Intimidating Shout (Mass fear)
• Piercing Howl (Mass slow)
• Spell Reflection (Ask a mage or warlock how they like this one in PvP)
• Heroic Leap (A 45 yard charge including thunderclap)

Again, keeping track of them all is not the easiest.  The warrior even came with his own fear breaking ability.  Who can ask for more?

The Rage

Now this will sound bizarre for most as the rage is one of the things warriors complain about the most.  The tank starts a fight with nothing to fuel his abilities?  Yes, it can be as bad as it sounds.  Having a pack of new enemies charging your group as you stand there, not enough rage to thunderclap, no range to charge, berserker rage on cooldown, shouts on cooldown…  No, not fun at all.  This also makes the warriors a rather poor off-tank when he’s not receiving damage.  No damage means little rage and so your dps is very limited (It is much better in Cataclysm with the advent of Vengeance and getting extra rage when hitting something that is not targeting you).  But the warrior is also the only tank who actually becomes stronger as a fight goes on.  Once that rage bar is close to full, heroic strikes come in and its aggro generation is quite remarkable.  To me, the rage that many consider an issue, is actually another great challenge, a tactical puzzle to figure out for each fight.

Other reasons

I could go on and on about other reasons why the warrior is the best class out there but I think the main reason is it’s a very active and complex playstyle.  It’s definitely not for everyone.  I raid with some tanks who actually have the time to chat while tanking.  To a warrior, this is almost impossible to fathom as every global cooldown is important which is probably a reason why protection warriors seem to have a reputation as being all business.  Or it could just be me.

Halfus is harder to explain than he is to kill.  Select a drake killing order, kill the drakes, beat the enrage timer, …, profit!

Basic Instructions

Each week, you will have a different set of 3 drakes to deal with (inactive drakes have a stun-animation over their head). Each drake gives Halfus an ability, and when released, will apply a unique debuff to Halfus before attacking you.  You have choose which order to release the drakes in.

Releasing each drake also causes Halfus to take more damage.  Since the fight has a tight enrage timer, you will always want to release all three drakes.  The fight proceeds like this:

• Engage Halfus.  Immediately release your first drake.  Burn it down ASAP.
• Release and burn the second drake.
• Release and tank the third drake.  DPS focuses on Halfus now.
• Below 50% health, Halfus periodically chain-stuns the raid. If Shadow Nova is in play, someone must always break the last stun and interrupt it.

Continue reading for more specifics…

Detailed Instructions

General Tips

Some groups like to release two drakes at once.  It’s not necessary, but it does help if you’re having enrage timer issues.  Our first kill was done with one drake at a time.

If you do want to double up, know that drakes hit significantly harder than Halfus.  Tanking two drakes at once is dicey in relevant gear.  Tanking Halfus + one drake is easy - doubly so if you’ve released Nether Scion - unless you have the stacking healing debuff.  In 25 man, using a 3rd tank is also viable.

Do not kill the third drake – it gains you nothing, and it’s wasted DPS time on Halfus.

Sometimes your kill order will have you running all the way across the room.  Have a raid member release the next drake earlier than you otherwise would, and tricks/MD it over to you.  Your goal is to waste as little time as possible between drakes, preferably none at all.

The raid damage from the proto behemoth is heal-able, but you don’t want to have to heal through it for too long.

Slate Dragon’s stun is helpful, but not critical.  He should usually be released last.

I’m still of two minds about the expansion but one thing I’m definitely clear about is that the Protection Warrior is OP; and no, not just the players in this case.

I remember back before Cataclysm came out, patch 4.03 nerfed us by a good huge percentage.  We were not happy with the change but there had been reports that with proper gear, we were outdpsing our DPS in raid instances on the beta.  So the nerf came and made our levelling rather slow.  My first instances were not the most enjoyable either.  Threat was a bit of an issue and our damage was low.  The Death Knights in our group were doing much better at the time especially with their overpowered self healing.

Oh how things have changed! The warrior, like a fine wine or our almost limitless rage bar, gets better with age and mostly, with better gear.  I believe my gear is now about iLevel 350 and the difference is enough to make our guild dps have rage bars of their own.

I’ll give you a couple of examples:

- In Bastion of Twilight.  The first trash pull, I did 21k dps, leading the raid in damage done.

- On our Valiona kill, I was doing 11k dps.  40% of that damage was heroic strike.

- I would rarely use Inner Rage and instead kept the rage to be able to spam Cleave and Heroic Strike.

A nerf was most definitely needed and it’s coming with 4.0.6.  Here are the current patch notes:

Warriors

• Charge now shares diminishing returns with stun effects.
• Cleave damage has been reduced by 20%.
• Hamstring now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
• Heroic Strike damage has been reduced by 20%.
• Inner Rage has been redesigned. It now reduces the cooldown on Heroic Strike and Cleave by 50% (to 1.5 second) for the next 15 seconds. 1-minute cooldown. It still cannot be used during Deadly Calm. This ability was originally designed to help warriors with rage capping, but the Heroic Strike and rage normalization changes seem to have solved that problem on their own. This new design will still allow warriors to burn off excess rage faster, at their discretion.
• Slam cast time is now affected by haste.

• Talent Specializations
  
• Arms
  • Juggernaut no longer increases the cooldown on Charge, but instead increases the duration of the Charge stun by 2 seconds. In addition, Charge is usable in all stances, however, the talent now causes Charge and Intercept to share a cooldown.
  • Lambs to the Slaughter: Instead of granting 10/20/30% damage to the next Mortal Strike, Overpower, or Execute, it now grants a 10% buff to any Mortal Strike, Overpower, Slam, or Execute that stacks 1/2/3 times.
  • War Academy no longer buffs Heroic Strike or Cleave. It now buffs Mortal Strike, Raging Blow, Devastate, Victory Rush and Slam.
• Fury
  • Bloodthirst damage has been increased by approximately 30%.
  • Raging Blow weapon damage percent (at level 80+) has been increased from 110% to 145%.
  • Unshackled Fury (Mastery) now grants 5.6% benefit per mastery point, up from 4.7%.
• Protection
  • Charge’s stun continues to not trigger diminishing returns for Protection warriors who have the Warbringer talent.
• Glyphs
  • Glyph of Rapid Charge has been changed from a 7% reduction to Charge’s cooldown, to 1 second off of the cooldown. This change is primarily to clarify the exact cooldown reduction this glyph provides.

At first glance, I think this looks good.  Reducing the damage by 20% and further reducing it by removing the buff from War Academy seems to be the correct way to go.  We’ll need to see the results from the PTR but I think this should bring our damage back in line with the other tanks.

I also like the changes to War Academy which will now buff Devastate and Victory Rush.  It might be time to see if Impending Victory is worth its cost.

The only change I’m dubious about is the change to Inner Rage.  Granted that I was rarely using it now, just reducing the cooldown on Heroic Strike and Cleave, meh.  Will it be enough?  One thing for sure, Heroic Strike and Cleave are staying on my mouse wheel!

Add management is the hardest part of this fight – master that and you win.

Basic Instructions

Phase 1

• Dodge flame pillars. If you stack all but one player up with the melee dps, that player can control flame pillar placement.
• Snare, kite, and optionally kill the groups of worms. AOE snares are your friend.
• Run out of half-the-room fire breaths.  If stacking on the melee, return to your original position once the breath is over.

Transition

• Magmaw will chew on the tank – heal through it.
• Two (25 man: 3) melee dps should ‘board’ his head (it’s a vehicle) as soon as possible and throw chains (the vehicle’s only ability) at the spike on the ground in front of him. Do this until you are kicked out of the vehicle and enter phase 2.

Phase 2

• Dps Magmaw’s head as fast as possible.  Save all cooldowns, including Heroism, for this phase.
• Switch tanks when he returns to phase 1 – the chew-toy will have an armor debuff.

Continue reading for more specifics…

Detailed Instructions

Phase 1

• Flame pillars are preceded by a small patch of fire on the ground.  It can be hard to see under healing circles and groups of people.  Using a single player as pillar bait helps immensely with this.
• Worms spawn immediately after each flame pillar, in the same spot as the pillar.
• Worms obey normal threat rules and chase their target.  If they reach you, they apply a dot and spawn another worm – don’t let this happen.
• Snare the worms as soon as they spawn.  One ranged dps (or a frost dk) should be responsible for the snare, establishing and holding threat, and kiting.
• 10 man raids should kill the worms, as kiting removes 1/5th of your dps.  In 25 man, permanently kiting all worms as they spawn is much more viable.
• Melee dps may help on worms once initial threat is established by the kiter, provided they never pull aggro.  Use Tricks/Misdirect on the kiter to help with this.

Transition

• Tanks can still hit Magmaw’s head while being chewed on.  Good for generating rage for cooldowns, Death Strike, and Word of Glory heals.
• Both players on his head should throw chains as soon/often as possible.  If one player throws too slowly, you may not enter phase 2.
• If you are killing worms, ensure that they are dead by phase 2.

Phase 2

• Phase 2 contains no incoming damage, unless someone gets hit by a worm.  DPS can ignore threat, and healers can regen mana.
• The transition back to phase 1 resets threat.

Voss and I firmly believe that no encounter should be talked about for more than 10 minutes at a time, ever. Talk briefly, try it, learn, repeat.  With the raid boss posts, I hope to give you enough information to get through the first ‘talk briefly.’

Also, as before, if you have suggestions, leave comments! Occasionally I run heroics as DPS just to see what other tanks are doing. I’m just as eager to see what other guilds are doing.

How to win 

(in one paragraph)

This fight consists of 4 constructs, which rotate out such that you’re fighting 2 at any given time. On their own, each one is simple. You win by learning how to avoid or mitigate their individual abilities while adapting to different pairings.

Basic Instructions

• Only two constructs will be up at any given time. DPS must switch to new targets when they spawn (except when Arcanotron is active).
• Toxitron – Kill adds without letting them reach raid members. Don’t stand in poison clouds, but do position the active DPS target in them.
• Arcanotron – Interrupt his nuke. Pull him out of blue puddles. DPS/healers should stand in blue puddles. Spell steal/purge his 50% shield, and leave interrupters on him.
• Electron – Players with the lightning debuff should not stand near anyone. Spread out to mitigate chain lightning.
• Magmatron – Heal through raid damage. Run out of the Big Red Line. If you are the Big Red Line’s target, help out by pointing it somewhere convenient.

Continue reading for more specifics…

Detailed Instructions

Rotation

• Each construct has an energy bar which starts at 100% and slowly drops. For the sake of discussion, we’ll name the first one Adam.
• At 50% energy, Adam will put up a damage shield for 10 seconds, and Bob (the next construct) will activate with 100% energy. DPS should switch to Bob.
• At 0% energy, Adam will deactivate. A new construct, Charlie, will activate. Bob will cast his damage shield, forcing DPS to switch to Charlie.
• This cycle repeats until the end of the fight. You will always have two constructs up at a time – one being actively dps’d, and one being tanked.
• Pets must be manually redirected to new targets – otherwise they will break damage shields, which can wipe your raid.

Toxitron

• Drops poison clouds which increase damage taken. Position the DPS target in the clouds, and keep your raid out of the clouds.
• Spawns adds that chase people and explode on impact. Kill them before this happens. Players in melee range of Toxitron will not be targeted by the adds.
• His damage shield, when hit, gives you a stack of a dot, and increases your damage done. You can deliberately hit the shield if you want to, but it is not necessary.

Electron

• Causes one raid member to damage nearby raid members. Don’t stand near the afflicted person.
• Casts chain lightning. Spread out.
• Do not hit his damage shield, ever.

Magmatron

• Heal through his raid damage. Stand directly behind him for less damage (unconfirmed).
• He’ll target a raid member with a big red tracer beam – standing in the tracer is bad. The target and the raid should move accordingly. The target cannot avoid the damage, and will need extra heals.
• Do not hit his damage shield, ever.

Arcanotron

• Creates blue circles that buff you and restore mana – drag the construct out. DPS and healers should move in.
• Nukes random targets – interrupt Arcane Annihilator.
• Spell steal or purge his damage shield, and leave interrupters on him until he deactivates. This is the only exception to the target-switching cycle.

A project has:

• A start (We start at 6pm)
• An end (We end at 9pm)
• A specified scope (What is going to be accomplished, the goal)
• A plan (The order and actions that need to be done to accomplish the goal and who is in charge of doing them)
• Resources (your great group of DPSers, Outstanding Tanks and Miraculous Healers)
• Communication (Call this in vent, healers using addons to see when someone needs special attention, etc.)
• Constraints (We need 2 tanks and three healers for this fight, this one cannot have more than 2 melee dps)
• Assumptions/Expectations
• Lessons Learned (A review of the project’s results with an emphasis on what was done well and what can we do better.  I’ll go more into details about this in another post.)

This is a very high level view of a project and as you can see, there’s a lot of similarities with projects done within a business.  Each of these parts is essential to a good project but the one that kills projects more often than not is Assumptions/Expectations.

Going into a project or a raid, every member of your team will have assumptions and so will you as the raid leader.  When those assumptions are not written out clearly for everyone to understand, you will find that your assumptions and those of your team members can vary wildly.

You may assume that when you send out an invitation to your team for a raid on Wednesday at 6pm and say “Be ready”, that it covers it all.  “Being ready” is very vague.  To ensure a fast paced and enjoyable raid, try to be as clear as you can and ask for feedback or questions so you can dissipate as many assumptions as possible prior to the actual raid.

Here is a quick checklist that we use at BT:

• Be on time – It’s a question of respect towards your teammates.  If you are not there 5 minutes before first pull, you will be replaced.  If you are going to be late, please let us know on the board ahead of raid time.
• Have enough flasks, food and consumables for the whole 3 hours of raiding.
• Have every piece of gear properly gemmed and enchanted.
• Review the strategies of the raid’s planned fights.

To help your members, give them the information they need to “Be Ready”.

Tonight, we’ll focus on Ominitron and then Magmaw.  Zierlyn, you will be using your offspec and help heal this one.  Idkittens, you’ll be kiting the adds on Magmaw, etc.

There are other assumptions that should be communicated to your team whether it’s in your raiding FAQ or in your invites.

• Don’t AFK outside of the planned hourly break.  If it’s needed, then tell your raid leader.
• Have vent configured and working.
• Have your PC in working order (I remember one of our members’ whose laptop had to be shutdown after overheating so much it melted a counter top).
• Make sure that you are free of other obligations during raid time.  By signing up, you’re committing to these three hours with your team.
• When the raid leader calls a wipe, stop healing, die quickly and then regroup as fast as possible for another attempt.

I know seeing lists like these may worry some people and make them think “It’s a game, relax.”  I agree, it’s a fun game and we’re playing it with other people.  These 9/24 other people have made the commitment to do all of these things and have a good time together.  By being late, stealth afking, showing up without the proper gear and needing to port back, you’re showing a lack of respect to them.  Your time is not more important than your teammates’.

As a raid leader, you need to make sure your people have clear expectations of what’s expected out of them and what they can expect out of you and the other raiders.  This is one small thing that will lead to smoother, more enjoyable and thus more successful raids.

Cataclysm happened a bit more than a week ago and strangely enough, it is leaving me feeling of two minds about it.  I find the world to be superbly done.  The quests have never been better.  The humour found in many of them, the raw emotions of some of the NPCs make for a delight of a time.

Now, for people who know me, these above comments will sound very strange.  I hate levelling.  I do not alt.  I do not quest.  I have levelled a total of two characters to max level in 31 months and one of them is a DK.  I have never enjoyed this part of the game and yet this time, I feel like I want to achieve loremaster of Cataclysm.

If I strongly disliked the above, I completely and truly loved tanking.  Whether it was in instances or in raids, I never really felt as happy in this world as when I was getting my face smashed in.  Somehow, this too feels like it is changing.

I have run every single instance on normal and a few of the heroics.  The instancing world has changed.  Gone are the days of the heroic quickie.  These new instances take a long long time to finish.  I actually don’t mind it being harder even though they do feel harder than they did when I started heroics in BC.  Trash does matter and I love the challenge.  I’m using shield wall on most pulls where we can’t CC enough mobs and I’m truly enjoying this.

What I do not enjoy is the sheer length of them.  I loved in Wrath that I could, even at the beginning, start an instance and be done within 45 minutes to an hour.  Now, it feels like I might have a much harder time doing even a heroic daily on week nights.  The longest instance in Wrath was Old Kingdom which even at the beginning would take about an hour on heroic.  Even that long instance would allow you to have time to do your jewelcrafting daily, some other dailies, some mining, etc.  It allowed you to do other things in the game than just instancing and raiding.

Let’s compare this with Halls of Origination or as I like to call it now, HoO Crap.  Even on normal, it will take an hour easy.  Now the instance is beautiful, the fights are different and challenging.  But why does it have to be so damn long?

I like that trash matters again and I don’t think that there’s too much or too little of it.  The problem is when each trash pack can take 2-3 minutes compared to the 30 seconds of Wrath, it lengthens the instance quite a bit.

I’m guessing that by giving even the weakest of trash so many hit points, they’re future proofing the instances which won’t become a zerg fest even when the DPS reach 20k on average.  But now?

I try to play about two hours at most on non raid nights.  At this point, I’m having a hard time fitting in a heroic run without risking running late and not sleeping enough.  The challenge is great.  The time sink is not.