Add-ons: Grid

I have been a long time Healbot user and proponent. Recently I got an email from a reader Nebelmond that inspired me to give Grid another try. Usually, I use an add-on for a while before I write a guide and review, while I have used grid for about 3 weeks now I think that Nebelmond (who is German) wrote an excellent druid specific walk-through in his email to me so I figured I’d just pass it along. Enjoy.

Grid (and its configuration) differs from other add-ons and that makes it hard getting used to it. But investing maybe 1h of your time trying to understand it will pay off many, many times over.

I use Grid in combination with Clique. Almost everything I do in a raid is done with click-casting. The big advantage of click-casting is the tremendous speed increase while healing. This might not be obvious at the first glance but not having to manually change the target to cast a spell on it will save a lot of time and makes you react much quicker.

First of all I would like to point you to a very good Grid introduction at wowinsider.com where they explained pretty much the main concepts of Grid and its configuration. See: http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/01/22/raid-rx-unkicking-butt-a-grid-story/

With all those basics in mind you should make a list what you would like to see in Grid. Imho, this step is very important because otherwise you will be overwhelmed with all the features and information it has to offer. My List looks like this, in a raid I want to see for each group/raid member:

• which class is it
• how much HP it has lost
• has it aggro

Karazhan: Opera Hall; Romulo and Julianne

Returning from Kansas I was certainly tempted to tackle the Oz event instead of Romulo and Julianne but a promise is a promise and I told you all that I would take on the star crossed lovers next.

Based on Shakespeare’s classic tragedy Romulo and Julianne is a three phase two boss couples fight, similair to the Scarlet Monastery Armory’s, High Inquisitor Whitemane and Scarlet Commander Mograine.

For this fight you will kill one boss, then the other boss, and then both bosses together. To add to the complexity of the situation in the last phase you have to kill them within 10 seconds of each other otherwise they will respawn with full health and in all likelihood you will die.

Phase the first: Julianne

During this first phase you may want to have your off tank pick up Julianne and drag her to stage right. This is for the sake of repetition because in phase three the off tank will be on Julianne and he will, wait for it, have to pull her to the right.

Goals: Now to Wrath

I know it has been a very long time since I posted. I haven’t raided in a while and it has dried up my pool of inspiration a bit, I don’t think I’m the only one who is feeling under inspired right now.

Blizzard is still struggling with the best way to handle expanding their biggest game. While the flood of “leaked” shiny new abilities and items may create buzz for their product, it has the (I hope) unintended effect of robbing player motivation for the game in it’s current state. Player burnout is on the rise again. The motivating effects of the Sunwell Content patch are no longer being felt by Mid-Level Raiding Guilds, the guilds working on the first in Mount Hyjal or Black Temple who are not likely to see the inside of Sunwell. These guilds whose players have experienced all of the Sunwell content they are likely to are facing serious problems with player motivation. Their Raiders have done their Dailies, earned their Exalted Reputation, and have farmed out Magister’s Terrace for their Pheonix drop, and now all they have to look forward to when they sit down for an evening is hard work and an uphill grind and all for what?

Before the release of The Burning Crusade, and after the last content patch many guilds faced a similar situation. There were shining new items on the horizon, and the greens players would be picking up on solo quests at level 61 were going to be better than anything the average Mid-Level Raider (AQ20, ZG, Onyxia) would see without putting in serious effort. Guilds who could have made it through AQ40 before the expansion stopped raiding altogether. Vanilla WoW was a lame duck. During this time the Buzz for The Burning Crusade was great, people were truly excited for it and in anticipation they walked away from the game…

To Add-on or Not to Add-on, is there even a question?

I’m a bit fired up about this topic so please excuse me if the tone is a bit rant-ish, I tried to keep it informative, maybe even inspirational. Thanks to Phaelia (My Hero) for helping me to solidify my arguments.

Last night I was running ZA (my favorite instance, NOT) and I started noticing that although there were three healers I was the only one casting heals on anyone besides the tanks, funny that doesn’t seem right. Druids aren’t exactly efficient raid healers. So nonchalantly and surprisingly friendly(for me) I ask the Paladin which add-ons he uses. “None, I don’t need them to heal.” WHAT!?!

“Really?” I say “I find that they help me quite a bit.” To which he replies “That’s cause you’re a N00b!” hmmm. At this point (third boss in ZA) in the raid I am doubling his healing done with 44% to his 22%, and doing it with less over-healing and less gear and I’m the noob. The Priest chimes in at this point to say that he doesn’t use any add-ons besides the guild required, Omen, and DBM. I’m befuddled. I’m out healing the Priest by 12% (he’s at 32% if you’re not good at math). Curious I check the Priest’s gear to see what he’s wearing to try to determine if he’s working to his potential or not and he’s in a mix of T5 and T6 and being out-healed by a Druid in T4 and welfare epics. So healing to his potential? No!

It’s sad to me that there are still people out there who WASTE their gear by not providing themselves with all the information that Blizzard has made available to them. They are at least as gimped as a raider who decides not to enchant, and sockets with green gems because they want to save money, Or who doesn’t use consumables because they don’t see a difference in their damage.

Karazhan: The Opera House; The Big Bad Wolf

Because I’ve been so busy lately this post lacks the usual explanation of the trash leading up to the boss. I’m Sorry. Never fear I intend to explain those pulls next week when I detail the Romulo and Julianne fight.

The Opera House is the last area of Karazhan that you will reach via the front door. The Opera House is unique in that the boss fight is a random selection from one of three fights, Romulo and Julianne, Wizard of Oz, and The Big Bad Wolf. Adding to the fun is the fact that you don’t know which fight you’ll be doing until it is too late to fully explain the strategy.
For the first installment of The Opera House sub series we’ll look at the simplest fight strategy wise, The Big Bad Wolf. Big Bad Wolf is a single Mob Tank and spank with one twist, periodically he will turn one member of the raid into Little Red Riding Hood. Reducing their armor to zero and making them as cute as a damn button. He will then chase that player around trying to hit them if he catches them he will kill them into two hits.

Abilities:

The Wolf only has three abilities two of which should have very little impact on the raid.

• Little Red Riding Hood: Cast on a random player other than top threat, this debuff turns the victim into Little Red Riding Hood, reduces your armor to zero, increases your run speed and makes you the sole object of the BBWs desire. In order to live you must run around the room right against the wall.
  Do Not Cut Corners if your track is shorter the Wolf Catches up. In order to give yourself a snowballs chance in hell of getting a way it is important to position the boss and tank Upstage Left (bottom right corner) and everyone else Upstage Right (bottom left).