Five tips to minimize raiding downtime
by Adam Holisky 
Apr 27th 2008 at 1:00PM
I'm a rather avid raider, putting in a solid 20 hours a week on my Warrior. One of the major things about the time spent raiding is that it can be very precious. There is only so much time that 24 other people, plus appropriate class substitutions, can be available each week. It's critical that the time spent raiding is used well.Unfortunately, using raiding time well is about as much of a challenge as is downing Illidan. In preparation for this article, I've spent the past three weeks keeping track of the down time in raids. We raid Sunday through Thursday nights, from 7:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. We experience a downtime of about 51 minutes for each raid, which is about 20% of the time. Down time is defined as the time that my character is standing still, not attacking, not moving, and not being MDed to.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I'm not really sure.
Tip #1: Chain pulling
Personally, I do my best at the main tank to chain pull and push the trash through as fast as possible. This works out 99% of the time, however the 1% of the time it doesn't work out can grind the raid to a halt. Case and point: The trash to Supremus isn't too bad, and is a lot of packs where the MT, OT, and Pally tank each have some mobs to tank. There are also some ranged dragons that the Warlocks tank. These pulls can go very fast, and are very predictable. Pulling slowly we can do this in about 40 minutes, while chain pulling each group, we can push through in 15.
Tip #2: Fully self buffed, all the time
It doesn't take much to buff yourself. Every class has some buff they can apply to themselves, be it food buffs, spell buffs, or shouts. The key here is that you can find a minute or two to always buff at least yourself, if not others. Although, it might not always be possible to buff others as you're going along - and that's okay with most raid leaders for trash pulls.
Tip #3: Stay at the raid
While there will be moments when you aren't doing anything, don't contribute to it. If you miss a ready check because you were tabbed out and not paying attention, then you're bad. If you're busy playing with your cat instead of paying attention to the raid, then you're bad. If you're chatting it up in /tells and can't take a moment to click the "I'm ready" button, then you're bad. Don't be bad, be good. Stay in the raid and pay attention.
Tip #4: Do your business before our business
There really isn't any need to take a bio break in the first hour or so of raiding. Of course, there are going to be cases where it's necessary. God only knows the number of times that I've raided sick and have had to frequent the loo. But please, try to do your best to do this before you come online or start the raid. It makes it much easier on everyone.
Tip #5: Have your addons updated
Yes, Omen does update about every 30 minutes or so. And yes, sometimes it's going to be necessary to update an addon in the middle of the raid. But do your part and don't be that guy that always has to DC for five minutes right after the raid starts to update your addons. It's so easy with tools like WoWAceUpdater. Make it a point and work it into your routine to always update your addons before the raid starts, and you'll be golden.
There are a lot more that can be said on each of these subjects, and I'm sure that some of you, dear readers, will want to sound off and agree, disagree, or just generally lament. But one thing is for sure: we can all do our part to help minimize downtime.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Mukan Apr 27th 2008 1:42PM
I hate chain pulling and I have yet to see it doing any good. While it might speed things up a little it rises the chances of wiping on trash - which costs much more time than pulling a little bit slower but more controlled. Once in a while ppl die even on trash and then it's a horror if the tank keeps chain pulling because it's "just" one player down. That killed person cannot get resurrected properly as the whole raid is in combat all the time so the whole dps is slowing down and the concentration is lower too as the resurrecters usually try to get the dead one up quickly and not focus fully on healing of whatever they usually do.
Apart from this: I play this game for fun, not to win a race.
Gessilea Apr 27th 2008 1:55PM
I think this really depends on the quality of your group. I'm not saying at all that better groups chain pull and worse ones don't, but that better groups know when to chain pull and when not to. As a tank and/or raid leader, you have to find the right balance of speed and safety. Too fast, and yes, the raid can wipe. Too slow and it gets tedious. We've all been in groups with the leader who feels the need to explain what every single mob does before every single pull, makes sure everyone from the healers down to the warlocks has exactly 100% mana, and does a ready check each time. Those are the groups that spend four hours getting to Opera vs spending four hours getting to Prince, for example. Wiping isn't fun, but neither is falling asleep waiting for the pull.
Abraxxis Apr 27th 2008 4:48PM
While our guild is famous for wiping on trash and one-shotting bosses, we chain pull in a number of situations. The fact that we do so made the Hyjal waves easily bearable.
Having a good pulling rhythm, allowing some people to sit & drink, cycling our crowd control, gives a special feel to our operations. More than once, we have taken somebody on a trial run, and gone into chain pulling mode. At the end of the run, the trial ended up by telling us, "I love you guys."
Dave Apr 27th 2008 8:05PM
Chain pulling is what separates the talented people from the people who are better off not really raiding at all honestly. There's absolutely no reason a group (especially a 25-man) can't be able to chain pull any instance unless the trash pulls REALLY require everyone to be at full mana before starting it. Most don't.
More often than not, people will do their "Afk 5 min" or "brb" nonsense when people start drinking and stop pulling. They look at it as a good excuse to leave everyone hanging for a while, even though drinking only takes 30 seconds at most. Any time you can chop someone's excuse to get distracted, you're doing a good thing. Most people in this game seem to have the attention span of a cat. Give them an excuse to take their attention elsewhere and they will do it. Chain pulling gives most people no reason to think they're safe if they just decide to tab out and read a website for a couple mins or go to the bathroom despite being the only person out of 25 people who needs to do it.
A single 5 minute break every hour should work for most people. If everyone does it at once, it's a single disruption. If everyone does it whenever they feel like it, it's a cascaded disruption that affects everyone in a much more significant way.
Your raid leader and/or tanks should be able to pay enough attention to the mana of the rest of the raid and pull appropriately. It might be tricky for a week or so while people get used to the idea that a 4hr raid only needs to take 2hrs, but once you get the hang of it, I really don't see any way people can ever play the slow way. Of course this requires you to have a group that's cleared the content together at least once or twice so nobody needs their hand held and everything explained to them.
You get better at it the more you practice it. I've got a group that clears Kara in 2.5hrs max. It didn't start that way, but once you know how the trash pulls go, it's not like you should need to stop and drink after every pull.
But i totally understand that it's not for everyone. I work with people who are no better at their job today than 3 years ago when they started, because they feel no need to improve themselves. I think most people appreciate playing with experience people who are confident enough to chain pull an instance though, and you really should try it out.
dpak May 9th 2008 4:07PM
I play the game for fun too.
I do not find it fun if I dedicate my evening to a raid, and we dont get anywhere because others are not ready.
Wrong pet, wrong spec, wrong items, talking on phone, taking hours to get to the same spot, and not past it.
The is un-fun as it gets.
New content with my friends, the accomplishment, the laughter...that is fun. Even wiping while learning can be fun, if it is because of the learning curve, and not because someone cant remember to turn off their windows update.
Also, chain pulling helps create a climate of "not slacking"...and reduces all other time wasters (joking too much, whispering friends during combat, etc.).
We do not wipe while chain pulling, but we also have a rule of if the healing lead says "stop" we stop.
PB Apr 27th 2008 1:48PM
It's "case in point" not "case AND point".
Braille8011 Apr 27th 2008 2:03PM
@ Mukan:
What content are you in that the chain-pulling isn't doing you much good? Even in Kara and 5-mans, we've found chain-pilling to be helpful. Ever done a 45 min Heroic Shattered Halls? That's a lot of fun for 5-7 badges.
We once asked out MT to chain-pull faster in SSC and TK so we could get more bosses fit into our limited raid schedule (about 2 hrs a nighte, 4 nights a week).
Chain-pulling is fundamentally two things: Extra speed in the instance through the reduction of downtime, and practice in handling chaos for when you get to chaotic boss fights.
Now, if your tanks are chain-pulling without regard to ooc res'ing procedures, that's easily addressed. All of your ooc res'ers can easily start res'ing people the instant they're ooc, and as soon as everyone is alive and in the process of buffing, the next pull starts. This can take as little as 12 sec, which is still a huge time saver over waiting a minute or more between pulls.
Thoralf Apr 27th 2008 3:51PM
As I wrote: I don't play the game as a race. I play it for fun. And playing with a stop watch in my hand to make sure that the pull the next pull happens 10.1s after the last combat ended is no fun for me.
Tridus Apr 27th 2008 4:53PM
Chain pullings major advantage to me is to keep people awake. Trash can get very monotonous and boring, especially for healers.
Zali Apr 28th 2008 11:00AM
Not Druid healers. We're about the most active people in a raid. Every raid I run, I check recount and I am either the most active, or the second most active person in the run. I can see how a healer who is just spamming the MT with the same heal over and over might get bored, but when tossing heals at 9 or 24 other people, adding in the occiasional battle rez, minding hunters pets and warlocks minions, trying to set priorities, knowing who is healing the MT, who has the OT, making sure you can jump in if they go down, managing your mana, and.... well... I don't get bored at all.
There is a reason that Raid RX, the WOW Insider column that talks about raid healing, calls it Extreme Whack A Mole. My time in a raid is spent in not letting a single spell get delayed beyond the 1.5 second GCD because heaven forbid that 700 HP that my heal would have done were a half second to late on the tank.
That said, Chain Pulling might move things along, but all it does is cause me grief. Instead of using 10 mana pots in a night I use 30, when I could have just use mana biscuts for 15 seconds had the tank taken enough time to let the mana users top off. You do NOT want me yelling OOM on a trash pull any more than you want it on a boss.
You can have the best of both worlds though. A raid leader than I've run with a few times has a few basic rules. Everyone gets all the mana biscuts that they need. Every mana user is to make the very last thing they do on any pull is top off their mana. Then the next pull is done when he sees the mana topped off on everyone. We rarely have more than 20 seconds between pulls.
Zali Apr 28th 2008 11:00AM
Not Druid healers. We're about the most active people in a raid. Every raid I run, I check recount and I am either the most active, or the second most active person in the run. I can see how a healer who is just spamming the MT with the same heal over and over might get bored, but when tossing heals at 9 or 24 other people, adding in the occiasional battle rez, minding hunters pets and warlocks minions, trying to set priorities, knowing who is healing the MT, who has the OT, making sure you can jump in if they go down, managing your mana, and.... well... I don't get bored at all.
There is a reason that Raid RX, the WOW Insider column that talks about raid healing, calls it Extreme Whack A Mole. My time in a raid is spent in not letting a single spell get delayed beyond the 1.5 second GCD because heaven forbid that 700 HP that my heal would have done were a half second to late on the tank.
That said, Chain Pulling might move things along, but all it does is cause me grief. Instead of using 10 mana pots in a night I use 30, when I could have just use mana biscuts for 15 seconds had the tank taken enough time to let the mana users top off. You do NOT want me yelling OOM on a trash pull any more than you want it on a boss.
You can have the best of both worlds though. A raid leader than I've run with a few times has a few basic rules. Everyone gets all the mana biscuts that they need. Every mana user is to make the very last thing they do on any pull is top off their mana. Then the next pull is done when he sees the mana topped off on everyone. We rarely have more than 20 seconds between pulls.
Cynra Apr 28th 2008 11:23AM
Chain-pulling keeps peopel engaged. As others have noted, any time that you paused for longer than a few seconds is another opportunity for someone to stand up, announce an AFK, and put the game on hold (if it's a potentially significant person, such as a tank or integral CC).
The goal is to avoid as much down time as possible. The waiting game is tedious and annoying. I can't tell you how often I've sat there between pulls, twiddling my fingers, wondering why the hell we're waiting and not doing what I came there to do: down bosses and have fun.
Furthermore, I enjoy the challenge of chain-puilling. I currently raid as both a Beast Mastery hunter and healing hybrid priest and I enjoy having to have traps ready (if we're down CC that night) before the main tank pulls or having to practice being a mana efficient healer to manage the quick pulls. It's fun. It keeps the raid on its toes and it makes for more valuable time that could be better spent on boss attempts and hopefully a raid first! I raid for those moments, not sitting on the sidelines and wondering why we haven't done a pull in the last two minutes.
Also, waiting until all mana bars are full? Most trash pulls pre-Black Temple don't require that much preparation in my experience. I hesitate to mention it, but if you're running out of mana during trash pulls there may be an issue there. Either some of your healers are not playing a mana efficient game (which does happen; Flash Healing priests during trash fights are my bane as a healing leader) or you're shouldering more of the burden that you should. One single healer isn't usually going to make much of a difference in most trash fights. Having full mana bars are a luxery but not a requirement. As a druid, you probably have a significant amount of Spirit on your gear and have a OO5SR mana regen; take fifteen seconds or so to regen some of that valuable mana.
Though I readily admit there are pulls where you want everyone thinking and ready.
Braille8011 Apr 27th 2008 4:10PM
No one said anything about having a stop watch around. However, if you can pull the next set of mobs in 10-20 sec after the last one died, instead of 2-5 min after, you save almost an hour off your trash killing.
That means you have more time to devote to learning boss encounters and defeating them, and much less chance of running up against the trash respawn timers when in that learn-wipe-learn phase.
Particularly if your guild has a limited raid schedule, this becomes immensely helpful for progression.It's either spend the an hour on the trash for a boss, or spend 20 min on that same trash, then 40 min more learning the boss encounter.
TheClaw Apr 27th 2008 8:01PM
Thoralf: "As I wrote: I don't play the game as a race. I play it for fun."
Fair enough, but most people find constant action to actually be more fun than standing around for a minute in between fights waiting to make 100% sure everyone is 100% ready.
You just gotta hit the speed that's right for your raid - but I honestly believe that, for content that you've got on farm, that speed will be pretty damn fast, and it WILL feel like fun, not like "playing the game as a race".
Acaila Apr 27th 2008 8:56PM
Besides wiping and the delays associated (Rezing/Buffing etc) the biggest time sink in an instance is waiting around for loot after a boss is downed.
Sure in MC/BWL days you had to be near the corpse when it was looted, but that has not been the case for a long, long time. Yet people still feel they must stand around after a boss is dead and wait for loot to be distributed.
Make a dps class your Master Looter and have everyone else move on to the next trash pull. Those that want an item that dropped whisper the ML with their interest and they can then help out with the next trash pull.
Not spending 10mins per boss standing around waiting for loot will significantly speed up your raid time.
Eliminate Apr 27th 2008 10:17PM
Personally, one glaring omission from these tips is to distribute loot in a timely and efficient manner.
As a raid leader, I have always advocated that the raid prepare to pull in the next trash pack before a boss's loot is even linked to the raid. If you raid, you should have done your homework and figured out which loot off of which boss is most beneficial to your class/spec. That way you will not waste time number crunching during a raid to find out if that loot is a big of an upgrade as it seems.
Uninformed raiders believe that you have to be near the corpse in order to receive loot. In reality, if you were in for the kill, it can be ML'd anywhere in the instance.
Anyways, that was my 2 copper.
Mowgile Apr 28th 2008 3:34AM
We've finally trained our guild's main tank into chain pulling and it makes such a difference.
Poster #1 says: "I play this game for fun, not to win a race.". Well, I play this game for fun too, and I have a lot more fun when I'm playing than when I'm waiting.
IMO it's not the slacker DPS's "fault" that they're alt-tabbed, it's the tank/raidleader's "fault" for not pushing the pace to the point where the DPS feels like they can't be alt-tabbed. Obviously everyone has to pull their weight, but chain-pulling is self-reinforcing: less downtime = more attention = less downtime. In fact, we've found that an early trash wipe is quite good to get us nice and awake. You don't have to rush, you just have to not stop when it's not necessary.
Now, that's not to say that only the way I raid is correct. If you find yourself in a guild where everyone would rather spend four hours getting to curator with 10% of their attention on the game, instead of three hours clearing the instance with 100% of their attention on the game, that's ok. Not everyone has the same goals, and not everyone likes to play in the same way.
However, I don't have enough time to play this game. I'd really prefer that the time I *did* have was spent *not* standing around waiting on someone coming back from the loo.
Tenchan Apr 28th 2008 4:21AM
Sadly, Chain Pulling only works when you can have full trust in every single group member to know what to do. As a raid leader, it is far more important that you can make sure everyone is on the same page than getting through a place fast.
And #4 made me laugh. Nice one ;)
To #3, I can only say: word. So much word. My god, -so- much word.
matt Apr 28th 2008 9:25AM
lol no biobreaks for the first hour! What about people who are severely diabetic that play we have 3 in our raid team that would not be able to last an hour side effect of diabetes? Frequent urination.
beatphreek Apr 28th 2008 11:00AM
I'm pretty sure the OP wasn't suggesting that if you have people in your Raid that have a particular need, then you should ignore that need. Not every raid is going to have someone that has a situation like that (there are other conditions that could cause frequent urination too). I think a little judicious discretion is probably in order before you go reporting him as breeching the ADA.