A video guide to faster raiding
by Eliah Hecht 
Feb 20th 2009 at 1:00PM
This video is entitled "Pull! A Guide to Faster Raids," and it's been produced by Kyth, of Fusion (US-Turalyon H). Set to the backdrop of (part of) a Naxxramas speed run, the video presents some easy tips for raiding faster. It's mostly addressed towards raid leaders, but I certainly plan on bringing some of the concepts here forward in my next raid. You should watch the video - it's well made and fun - but here are some bullet points I've taken away from it:
- Pull fast. Have impatient pullers, have your plate DPS off-tank trash if need be, and don't wait for rebuffs if one or two people die (just do it on the fly).
- Loot fast. Whether you use /roll, DKP, or loot council, make someone in charge of it, and do it fast.
- Set high expectations. Initially, your raiders might have difficulty keeping up with an increased pace if they're not used to it, but within a night or two they'll get used to keeping moving all the time, and you'll have more fun because you won't be standing around constantly.
The last point above brings up an important issue: fun is essential. For most guilds, it's why we raid. Pushing your raiders to play at a better level shouldn't suck the fun out of raids, it doesn't mean you can't joke in vent; it means there's less of what we don't like in raids: waiting while people are AFK, endless ready checks before bosses, and so forth.
Part two of the video is embedded below (and part one above), or you can download the whole thing in high quality from Warcraft Movies (recommended). There's also a web page associated with the video, including links for recommended addons, more tips, a WWS for the speed run, and so on.
[Thanks to Kyth for making this, and for the tip]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Ray Feb 20th 2009 1:10PM
Good thing....Raid needs to go faster at times
vinniedcleaner Feb 20th 2009 7:26PM
speed raiding - activity pursued by those who need to fluff their epeens
sourmìlk Feb 22nd 2009 2:38PM
I disagree. I have a tight schedule, and if raids take way too long (7 hours in naxx10 last night) then I usually won't have time.
Tyler Feb 20th 2009 1:12PM
This is something that is fine to do when you have the instance on farm. Otherwise your setting up certain people for failure by not allowing mana regen or prepping.
Manatank Feb 20th 2009 1:19PM
Luckily Wrath started at farm status.
resonance Feb 20th 2009 1:33PM
If you can't handle a trash pull unbuffed and at 2/3 overall raid mana, you more than likely don't belong in the instance. It's called trash for a reason.
Tyler Ransom Feb 20th 2009 1:47PM
Well. In a 25 man you'd probably be fine with a decent group in most cases. I know my guild pulls without people all the time....However we basically have all of the raids on farm or near farm status. Now take a 10 man naxx run with one healer oom, 2 people dead, using some DK dps as a tank, and they pull a set of adds... There is a phail.
You're right a skilled guild wouldn't let this happen. But then again... Would a skilled guild really find any useful information that they didn't already know in this post?
Karilyn Feb 20th 2009 1:52PM
It's really true. Even with progression fights
Admittedly you don't move at nearly the speed they are doing in the video on progression fights, but the same concept holds true.
The sooner the trash gets dead, the sooner you can reach the boss. The sooner you reach the boss, the more attempts you will have to wipe on the boss to help your raid learn it before trash begins respawning and you have to start over again.
The key point to progression raiding is NOT farming old stuff. It's learning new content. The more time you spend on new content, and the less time you spend on old content, the better.
Remember. New content drops better loot than the content you've already cleared. The vast majority of time, less time you spend on farm content, the better.
Tyler Feb 20th 2009 1:58PM
@karilyn
"Remember. New content drops better loot than the content you've already cleared. "
Really... your right. I had forgotten that.
Just because its on farm, doesn't mean we run it every week. If we run naxx10 at all anymore, its like one of our tanks and a healer plus a bunch of the newer 80's. This week we've cleared EoE10, Naxx10, OS/VOA10, and we are going to clear naxx25 and everything else as well except EoE25. If everything new is clear, what do you expect someone to run? Kara?
toddcore Feb 20th 2009 3:01PM
@Tyler
First, it's kind of silly to say "This week we're going to clear all the easy content except for Malygos who we won't be attempting. What do you expect us to do, Kara?"
Secondly, one of the major pitfalls a lot of raiding guilds find themselves falling in to is farming easy content because some of their members can still find upgrades there. A mentality of "We can't do the next raid until everyone has every possible upgrade out of the old raid" can ensue.
A reminder that progression content doesn't only drop loot but drops new and better loot isn't a bad thing.
Tyler Ransom Feb 20th 2009 3:27PM
Well, i'm not saying we will continue to run an instance until we find every possible upgrade. We run it to get the undergeared members geared. Im most of the way to the Epic achievement and we have brought people wearing many blues into 25 man naxx and still downed all four wings with the exception to thaddius last week due to the fact that we were bringing people who didn't understand the charges with us. Newer raids dropping new gear is a great thing. I am misunderstanding where i'm apparently projecting that it isn't.
spockette Feb 20th 2009 1:20PM
This site is great. I recommend for all arcane mages to check out Kyth's post. I upped my dps by 1k or so last night thanks to his post.
Thanks man. Kudos to the pub.
Ekimus Feb 20th 2009 1:20PM
I agree with much of this. Most of the raid encounters have some sort of timing mechanic, and each trash pull is usually quick. It's the dead time that adds up. Generally, I'm comfortable pulling with 75% raid mana, and I think that's being generous. Also top off the tanks and melee dps, the healers and ranged shouldn't be taking too much damage in most trash encounters.
Lastly, this applies to heroics more than raids, use the damn rolling interface. Need if you need, and greed it for vendor trash if there is no DE.
ninjasuperspy Feb 20th 2009 1:33PM
Agreed x 9. I can't count how many heroics have come to a complete stop because on Boss #2 some guy wants to say "Is it OK if I roll on this?" Geez dude, this isn't Vietnam it is Heroic Nexus. The thing takes 30 minutes AT BEST. Just roll on the dang loot and let's GO.
Euripides Feb 20th 2009 2:28PM
Even in a raid, the only person not clearing trash 20 seconds after a boss is down should be the master looter. As long as he isn't the only tank, you can take the next group and figure out your loot while working.
LadyAjax Feb 20th 2009 1:32PM
This is rad! I'm a total newb and I can take all the tips I can get.
SimpleSurvival Feb 20th 2009 1:26PM
I wholeheartedly agree with this theory...
granted that starter content can be a pain in the ass... but most of the trash in naxx is trivial... I've heard of many guilds that accidentally cleared up to the first boss in heroic when they were going to run reg.
this policy doesn't work very well in some places (gargoyles in plague) but most everywhere else it works...
Typically, i only perform a ready check when we're about to do a boss... when someone doesn't say "ready" the simple reply is "when they say go" and we pull
trash, if i have a healer standing around me, i'll pull... my offtank is gettin pretty brave and started chain pulling with me. We clear trash up to patchwerk in no time flat... I don't think we even leave combat anymore
Manatank Feb 20th 2009 1:29PM
Lol, my guild accidentally did this our first time attempting Naxx10, and we only had 8 people (we were still waiting for some folks to level). We were in all blues, and it wasn't even a problem getting to Anub. He kicked the crap out of us a few times before we figured out we had it on heroic.
Shade Feb 20th 2009 1:33PM
Yeah - the trash pulling? Once you've got trash down, this is absolutely the way to go. Treat it like a race, from boss to boss. Fling innervates around if you have to - doesn't matter if they're down, it's just *trash*.
If you're going to go afk, /follow a healer. Or at least that's my tactic - healers are usually the absolute last to die in our raids, so following them is safe.
DON'T GO AFK RIGHT BEFORE A BOSS. If you gotta go, do it while the trash is going on - nobody's gotta wait for you just to clear some trash.
We use a DKP bid system for our looting, and our loot master has to post every item so people can bid. He used to do this one at a time, and it took forever - one night he figured out that he can post all four or five pieces of loot at once, and it'll still pull all the bids for the appropriate items, and faster, so he can just dole them all out at once.
Once you've got your badge, if you don't want any of the other loot, keep moving! No need to stand around watching other people get their crap when you could be gleefully stabbing more things in the butt.
That is all.
Cyrus Feb 20th 2009 1:51PM
For as long as I can remember, my guild's policy on looting was for the master looter to link an item into raid chat and post the dkp of everyone of the appropriate class/role, and people would have a few seconds to say "take" if they wanted it, and then they'd repeat for the next item that had dropped. But three weeks ago or so we tried to get the achievement for completing the arachnid wing in Naxxramas under the time limit and missed it by about 1:30, so the following week we tried a different loot method: link all items, everyone would say "take" followed by linking the item name, and the items go to whoever asked for them with the highest dkp. We completed the achievement with minutes to spare, and it's not even any harder to handle loot that way, really.