Raiding Plan For the New Year

So this is a bit late in being posted, but between the end of school, the holidays, comp troubles, and work, I am just now getting around to this. There's a lot to go over, so I'll just get right to it.

First things first, I want to announce that I am stepping back from raid leading in WoW for Natural Order. I've been NO's raid leader for about a year and a half now, maybe longer, and it's been a great run. When I recently took a forced two-week hiatus to wrap up my thesis and deal with a busted power supply, my intention was to come back and get right back into the swing of raid leading. But I find that my heart isn't quite as in it as it used to be. I'm also horribly out of the loop as far as the new raids go, and I feel that a raid leader needs to be more prepared than her raiders when it comes to understanding encounters, being able to strategize, etc.

I spoke with Holy and Sethunya, and have asked them if they would like to step in and take over raid leading in WoW for the forseeable future. They've both agreed to, so they will be the ones responsible for putting raids on the calendar, catherding, explaining encounters, etc. They can also designate other people to help with those duties as necessary. I want to stress that I am not leaving raiding altogether. I still plan to be at WoW raids on Tues-Thurs as much as RL will allow. I also want to stress that there are still other officers participating in raiding who will be present to lend a hand and support raiding efforts. But I think I am ready for a break in duties, plus I feel that this is a good time for a change. :)

I also want to add that a change in raid leading doesn't mean a change in raid policy. Our policy is still to provide an inclusive raiding experience. That said, success in the instance does necessitate setting some minimum standards. This shouldn't be anything new since we have done this with previous tiers. I realize these are a bit late, since we've been raiding Dragon Soul as a guild for several weeks now, however I think they are necessary, and based on research and experience, I think they are reasonable. Also, big thanks to Seth and Avel for helping come up with these standards.

Dragon Soul Minimum Standards for Raiding

MINIMUM item level of about 372 for the first 4 bosses, and 378 for the remaining bosses. 372 is the minimum iLvL for LFR, so this is not an unreasonable benchmark to meet. The remaining bosses in Dragon Soul are a gear check however, so the standard is a bit higher. Both standards are easy to reach if you are wearing a mixture of gear from the new heroics, crafted epics, gear from Firelands, and Justive/Valor gear. **NOTE** My philosophy is Skill>Gear, and if a person is able to meet performance standards even though they don't meet the iLvL requirement (ie. your iLvL is 376, but you can do 28k DPS), than that's not a reason to sit them from raids. However if your performance isn't where it needs to be, and your gear level is below where it should be, you'll be asked to improve your gear. Just like Firelands was, Dragon Soul is a gear check as much as a skill check.

Gear gemmed, enchanted, and reforged. There is absolutely no excuse not to have your gear in top condition regardless of its item level. If you aren't sure what kind of gems or enchants you should be using, then ask or do some research. Ask someone else you think is knowledgable in your class. Visit sites like  http://www.wowreforge.com  or http://www.askmrrobot.com/ and take assessment of your gear each time you acquire a new piece. Take time to read up on your class at sites like Elitist Jerks, Tankspot, etc. and see what people are suggesting for stat weights, rotations, gear choices, etc.

Also, no PvP gear. I know that a really easy way to up your iLvL is to sneak a few pieces of PvP gear into your raiding set, but I'm telling you - don't do it. I don't care how good their stats are; PvP gear is not itemized appropriately for PvE. PvP gear stacks stamina, which you won't really need to stack (even as a tank) and has resilience, which is a wasted stat for raiding. Get gear from the heroics instead.

DPS - After doing some research, we've concluded that DPS in Dragon Soul for the first 4 bosses needs to at or above 18k. This is consistent DPS, not burst DPS, which means that you should be able to maintain a steady DPS of 18k. For comparison's sake, most dps in Firelands were performing around 18k-20k toward the end of the tier, so this should not be an unreachable goal. If you aren't doing about 18k DPS on average, then you may need to do some adjusting. For the remaining 4 bosses, the DPS requirement is a bit tougher. You need to be able to do about 26k DPS. Again this is consistent DPS, not burst DPS. Fights like Ultraxion especially require that every DPS in raid be able to pull off this amount. Even one person doing slightly less is enough to hold back the fight from progressing, unfortunately. So if you can't do 26k DPS, it may be time to re-examine rotations, ability prioritizations, cooldown usage, gear, etc.

Healers - It's hard to measure healing performance, since HPS is going to vary widely depending on the class you play. If you can't comfortably heal the HoT heroics without worrying about running out of mana or not being able to heal people than you probably don't have the HPS to do Dragon Soul. For comparison's sake, Seth has noted that she does 12-21k HPS depending on the fights. So a 13K HPS is a pretty good standard to go by for raiding especially since how they make the raids more difficult is by creating more raid damage, plus some fights give you a buff to your healing so obviously in these fights your HPS will be a lot higher. Also, be able to manage your mana. If you're still drinking after every other pull in a heroic, then mana management on fights that can last 6-10 minutes is going to be an issue.

Raid awareness - if you find yourself regularly having trouble moving even when Deadly Boss Mobs is yelling at you to do so, then that's something that needs to be worked on before you head into Dragon Soul. Every time a raid member gets caught taking damage that they didn't need to take, that's healing that has to be switched to them and taken off the tank. Any time two people fail to stand together when they get frost tombed on Hagara, that's more DPS that has to get spent on breaking people out of tombs, instead of being able to get back to dps'ing the boss. We're not asking people to be top 100 quality, but we are asking for people to show some basic raid awareness.

Beyond the above standards, the advice/info in this thread is still useful, so I recommend reading it if you haven't already.

Thanks, and see you at raid! :)