Faster raids

[fhatee]

Lets open up some discussion about how we can make our raids go faster. There is a nice website http://www.stratfu.com/strats/RaidFast that gives some tips and some cool instructional videos. They have some interesting ideas. While I'm not saying we should try to clear Naxx in 1hour and 24 mins like they did, I would love to see more content in the limited time that we do raid together. Here are my suggestions for our raid leaders.

1. Our loot rules, written up by Pocky, are clear. However, 1 person tracking 25 people's loot, off-specs, default, ffa, takes time. If you're open to it, I suggest delegating some of the loot tracking. For instance, I would volunteer to track loot for plate. Simple tally marks on a napkin is pretty easy. I'm sure mail and healing leather is pretty easy too.

2. Would it be distracting to start trash after a boss kill asap? I know tex and salessa are busy and that takes out 2 tanks, but dont we usually have more? Often times half the raid is sitting around killing rats and climbing statues. How many healers and dps do you need for trash?

3. We're hurting for a warlock aren't we? Every time we roll with one, summoning late replacements is so much faster!

4. Can we prep for bosses earlier? Would it make sense to split up dead/live side teams on the way there instead of at the door? Same for kiting teams, decide kiting teams as soon as previous boss is down? Decide tanks and healers for 4 horsemen during trash? That might mean tex needs to delegate some decisions. dunno

[Daewen]

I just want to chime in on the first point. One thing is that I don't want people to get the idea that listed first means it's our slowest sticking point. (And I am not implying Joe/Fhatee is saying this; something had to be listed first). If anyone has that notion (that divvying loot is our speed problem), I'd like to introduce you to wipe-recovery on Patchwerk. Then Gluth. And Thaddius. Oh, and Four Horsemen.

Anyways, ever since the loot rules have been posted, and I added that not-quite-complete flowchart, there have been discussions about that system and improving it. But important points I want to make:

• The rules are the same (unless Dom breaks them) regardless of who's doing the job of tracking, so yes, we should be able to have others assist with the tracking.
• There are some things that I might suggest for speeding up the overall process, but I'm held up presenting it by that software that makes the pretty flowcharts. I'm using my own buggy development build, and the flowcharts aren't too pretty, and in fact right now reading tea leaves might work better. But I will get to presenting these ideas after I bounce them off some people in private. (because me presenting this stuff publicly would just cause short-term confusion).

[Logos]

Honestly the best way to increase our speed is to not wipe. Adding in Joe's suggestions would be easy and would shave off a few minutes here and there (which would add up to be sure! and I think we should do them), but the biggest delays are caused by unnecessary wipes. I agree that we should do the harder wings whenever we have a sufficient number. Plague/Spider can be done with 20 or less if it comes to that, but not military/construct. So Tuesday's should be spend on them I suppose.

LootMaster tank has to stop and divvy up loot, but our second or third tank (like Joe said) should take everyone who isn't gonna roll on any of the items on to the next pull. Of all the little things we can do, this one would save the most time.

[Camyu]

2. Would it be distracting to start trash after a boss kill asap? I know tex and salessa are busy and that takes out 2 tanks, but dont we usually have more? Often times half the raid is sitting around killing rats and climbing statues. How many healers and dps do you need for trash?

We did that last week. Nyrrin & Calycemett were pulling trash while Tex and Salessa were sorting out loot. Sometimes the expedited trash pulls were great. Sometimes Nyrrin & Calycemeet both pulled and we wiped to 6 giants or schools of rabid spiders. But overall, the expedited trash pulls worked great.

3. We're hurting for a warlock aren't we? Every time we roll with one, summoning late replacements is so much faster!

We also have had a warlock for about 2 weeks during most days we raided. So that was a good help.

4. Can we prep for bosses earlier? Would it make sense to split up dead/live side teams on the way there instead of at the door? Same for kiting teams, decide kiting teams as soon as previous boss is down? Decide tanks and healers for 4 horsemen during trash? That might mean tex needs to delegate some decisions. dunno

Has people's role been switching week after week? Like one week you're on kiting duties, next week you aren't? Have people been switching from dead/live side week after week? I am just wondering are there actually a lot of changes, or should we already know what our roles are.

[Werehamster]

The issue with predetermining roles beforehand is that our raid makeup is slightly different each time. Also, we don't want people doing the same thing every time, or they don't get experience with aspects of the fight that they might need (i.e. the back part of Four Horsemen or being on Add control for Arub'Nerak). I've noticed Dom trying to rotate out the tanks for the various fights, this is a good thing.

We can, however get most of the way for some of the fights. If we have general rules like "All ranged DPS goes to the right platform for Thaddius" then just have a quick rebalancing, it could save some time. Then again, that's pretty much what we're doing now, anyway.

[Texaporte]

We went a lot faster than usual yesterday once we got rolling - is everyone okay with the "ML stays behind, other tanks and DPS and such run ahead and deal with loot during the trash clearing" plan? We had some deaths due to some straggling, but I think it worked well - you don't need 3 tanks for trash... right?

[Norfolk]

It seemed to go pretty quick, the only part that sticks out as a little messy was a batch of spiders that left several dead, but I think that was just not being ready for the pace of the evening since it was pretty early on.

[Daewen]

Tanks running ahead to start trash pulls worked great- when the raid was following.

The only real issue with it is that we did need some breaks between pulls for people to look at the item being rolled on, listen for eligibility, make /rolls, etc. So, when some combination of people are checking what the loot item being offered is- POW! whirlwind mows through the group, tank goes down, half the raid left wondering who was pulling, the other half wondering why the first half wasn't ready in the first place.

It was just unexpected- though we want to not stop to do loots, we didn't explicitly say that's what was going on, nor emphasize it enough. And even if we do continue on right after the boss, we need some accommodation for people to cease mashing their buttons so as to type out "/roll" or "pass" or "I don't really need it, but I'll take it for my off-set instead of sharding it."

[hung]

this is especially true for items that a lot of people are eligible for. If all the healers are staying around the boss to /roll, that trash pull's not gonna go well.

[Byron]

Trash on the whole is much more intensive for healers then boss fights are. One or two strong raid healers not with the group and suddenly people start dropping like flies. Naxx trash especially puts out a lot of raid damage.

If you have everyone else but are missing half your DPS and a tank or two, trash will still probably be ok albeit long.
If you have everyone else but are missing half of your heals, you're going to be scraping bodies off the floor.