Ready Check: How to explain a fight
by Michael Gray 
Mar 25th 2011 at 7:00PM
Sure, you hope everyone in your raid has read strategies and watched videos before each boss fight. But even if your folks have taken this critical step, that doesn't mean they really understand the material. Here's why: Some of the boss fights in Cataclysm are confusing as heck. We'll use the Omnotron Defense System as an example here.
Essentially, the Omnotron Defense System is a relatively simple council fight. Two robots are up at a time. Each one pops a shield periodically, timed according to when the new Tron has become active. Aside from that, it's fairly easy: Don't stand in stuff, kill the robots. You have to be ready to heal through Incineration Security Measures, because it does damage to the entire raid. Be ready to kill the slimes spawned by Poison Protocol.
Of course, that's a simplification. You also need to get away from the raid when Acquiring Target takes place or if you get hit with Lightning Conductor. There are poison clouds the tank should put the boss in without being in it himself. And so on.
Omnotron's a cluster of ducks -- and trying to explain it all to someone who's new to the fight makes the thing sound like a hot mess of chaos and impossibility. It can be difficult to keep all the elements straight in your head, especially if you're simply going by lists of abilities.
Once you've seen the fight a few times, though, it gets a lot easier. All of the boss's abilities are clean and obvious; you can't miss them. There are literally neon lights flashing above your head that will make sure you know things are about to happen.
The challenge for a raid leader is how to introduce all these elements to a raid group and organize the dynamics mentally for both himself and his raid members. Simply reading a list of abilities won't get the job done. In a sense, the raid leader's job is to interpret information from strategies and videos into actionable, messageable information for the raid.
A few things at a time
Try and break down the fight for your raid into a few elements at a time. There's been study after study saying that the human brain can only remember a few "things" at a time until those "things" become ingrained reflex.Using Omnotron as an example, I'd start with these three essential things:
- Kill the latest robot to become active.
- Do not hit robots with shields up.
- If you get Lightning Conductor or the Read Beam of Death, get clear of the raid.
Layer slowly
It might surprise you how often focusing on a few things at a time can lead you to success, even though you might not be highlighting every raid dynamic. That being said, a complicated fight like Omnotron usually needs a little more explanation than just "kill that, avoid shields, get away."
- Kill the adds spawned from Poison Protocol; kite them if you need.
- Interrupt Arcanotron's Arcane Annihilator.
- Spread out to avoid the chain lightning from Electrical Discharge.
Discuss what went wrong
We learn by doing, moreso than from reading or watching. An eidetic memory doesn't necessarily comprehend and interpret the information from rote. The best way to learn is to tackle a concept, discuss it, analyze it; this technique promotes understanding instead of simple repetition. You'll get more mileage from understanding than from simple reflex.
After each wipe, take a few minutes and discuss what happened. Does anyone have any particular feelings about what went down? Healers especially may have important input for your team.
Taking the time for a quick team discussion will make sure you get to improve your strategy. More importantly, it'll help promote understanding of the fight among your team. That understanding will go further to advancing your progression than simply reacting to a shopping list of boss abilities.
It takes some time
The downside of these tips is that they take time. If you're only talking about three raid abilities at a time, you're probably going to wipe while you learn all the boss attacks. If you're taking the time to discuss what went wrong, that's more time you're spending.
In my opinion, the time is worth it. Raiding should be fun and not simply full of frustration. If your raid members can't even make sense of your explanations, the raid will become annoying very quickly.
Ready Check shares all the strategies and inside information you need to take your raiding to the next level. Be sure to look up our strategy guides to Cataclysm's 5-man instances, and for more healer-centric advice, visit Raid Rx.
Filed under: Ready Check (Raiding)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Necromann Mar 25th 2011 7:20PM
That moonkin picture = win.
Narayana Mar 25th 2011 7:23PM
This is a great post. I have long lamented how poorly most people describe fights in this game. Most people don't give nearly enough, usually boiling the boss down to one or two mechanics. Other people give WAY too much.
Sunaseni Mar 25th 2011 7:28PM
I go by the route of breaking the fight down into manageable chunks to help with learning, and "if there's something you don't recognize, improvise". To use a different example, Lich King. The fight has like 20 different things to watch out for if explaining all at once. I just explained the key points of each phase, such that if you screw up, the raid WILL wipe. Small optimizations such as "use so and so to defend against such and such" may be brought up down the line, but it's not something I pile on with the explanations, in order to KISS.
The key thing when explaining is not to overwhelm. Overwhelmed players are keeping track of 20 different things instead of compartmentalizing the fight to the four or five CURRENT relevant abilities. Layer all the abilities at once, and they'll be looking out for abilities that can't come at the current time, and are slow to react to current abilities.
When worse comes to worse, hope that your raiders can improvise. Good improvisation when a fight goes horribly, horrible wrong (for example, Atramedes not properly fixating on a target during the air phase) can save the group from a wipe night.
snuf42 Mar 25th 2011 7:32PM
Watching guide videos, reading strats and listening to fight explanations are good preparation but until everyone has the fight memorized I find calling out the effects during the fight to work best. It's pretty easy for someone to space out on an effect and screw it up. Small things like forgetting to move pets off the shielded robot in Omnomnomotron can have disastrous results. For fights with phase changes it helps to call out the change and what to expect, for example "Toxitron active remember to DPS slimes when they spawn."
You can take the hardline approach and expect everyone to remember everything, but I find that correcting problems mid-fight reduces the number of wipes and lowers the frustration level.
In the event of a wipe we generally do a quick post-mortem and figure out what went wrong. Did someone not understand an effect? Did someone just screw up? Also accepting mistakes and getting people comfortable acknowledging that they messed up keeps things mellow and focused on doing better the next attempt rather than dwelling on a wipe.
Groth Mar 25th 2011 7:34PM
"We learn by doing, moreso than from reading or watching." Um, not always. Some people find that just jumping in cold (or with a verbal briefing) will confuse them, stress them out, and actually they then learn less.
There are people who will want to see as many videos as possible prior to a fight so that there are no suprises. There are others who will want to know exactly what boss abilities do prior to even seeing the boss. Some people prefer to have a checklist ready before the fight. Only some people will want to just have a go and see what happens.
As a raid leader, you need to try and cater to Activists, Reflectors, Theorists and Pragmatists (to give them their titles).
This is often really helped by putting up information on forums prior to a first raid, so that learning styles with more lead up time have the time to research.
Going through what went well and what didn't after wipes/kills is a great way of ensuring that people go through the entire cycle and actually learn, rather than just moving on and/or repeating mistakes.
Terrapod Mar 25th 2011 8:52PM
Whats a Read beam of death. Is that when the Reading Rainbow goes horribly wrong????
Rai Mar 25th 2011 10:10PM
If you concentrate too hard on trying to read it, your eyeballs explode.
...and so does the rest of the raid.
Prissa Mar 25th 2011 10:42PM
I like to work on a need-to-know basis. If there is a melee dps in the group who needs a lot of help understanding, there's no point telling them about the boss's 'kill the tank' move, or the pool of mana returning liquid. As they become more comfortable with what they need to know, they can become more aware of things that other people need to know and then they can assist in any way they can.
I remember trying to explain Blood Prince Council in ICC, I said something along the lines of 'every boss has an Attack 1 and Attack 2. When he becomes the target, Attack 2 becomes 2.5 where it's the same but buffed in some way.' This helped everyone wrap their head around what they were trying to avoid because the list of 10 abilities came down to like 5 or something with only very small changes to remember.
Jacintah Mar 26th 2011 12:42AM
Random question - in that picture you have numbers popping out showing health, mana, action etc. What is this add-on called? I have been trying to find it!
Vicki Mar 26th 2011 5:49AM
Thats the regular Wow interface lol. But Mik's Scrolling Battle Text might be what you're looking for
Mort Mar 26th 2011 5:53AM
That's probably something like Mik's Scrolling Battle Text.
msah-wow Mar 26th 2011 6:45AM
Key point for raid leaders when explaining a fight: who are you explaining it too?
Actually, the fight is generally much simpler if you say "listen up tanks, this is for you", and give tank specific instructions, then "healers, what you need to know is...", and "deeps, this is just pew pew, except remember to stand in the blue circle, it buffs you, and when he casts wibble, all dps must switch to the foobar IMMEDIATELY".
Otherwise people (especially non-tanks) have their heads filled up with confusing extraneous information.
Scorfula Mar 26th 2011 8:40AM
When I explain boss fights to my raid group I take the line that they all already watched the video I previously asked them to watch, but in case I have drafted in a raider who was not expecting to be present, my explanations always avoid spurting out damage numbers or boss ability names if possible. If I tell you the name of every single boss ability and what they're called, what are you really absorbing from this explanation, how to deal with the abilities, or what they are? I also agree with the people above about specific tactics for specific groups. Don't waste time telling people who don't need to know about certain mechanics about those mechanics. I'm healing lead for my raid and I hold my healing strategy discussion in party chat, away from the eyes of the rest of the raid.
Using the Omonotron example it would have been along the lines of 'Always be attacking the newest boss, don't stand in green stuff, do stand in blue stuff, spread out if electron is up, interrupt anything that's interruptable, if you get an add, run away, otherwise kill the adds asap, red beam means get the hell away.'
I think if you have anyone in your raid who doesn't have much raiding experience you're probably going to have to go into a little more detail about exactly where to go and how to handle things, for example explaining that 'spread out' means your healers have priority and if you're near one, you need to move your arse now. Or when the big AoE hits, group up in the good healing circles if you're ranged.
But anyone who's raided before and has that raid common sense shouldn't really struggle with a quick simplified explanation.
The fact of the matter is that you can have a fight explained to you and watch the video over and over again, but you never REALLY get it until you do it, so the best way to learn the fight is just to get stuck in. Also if you're just starting out in a fight it can be helpful to have someone call out the important events 5-10 seconds before they happen. This used to be me, but the healing is so intense now that we gave the job to our MT as he mostly just stands there kind of bored.
Bob Mar 26th 2011 9:55AM
Working on learning/teaching that fight at present, I very much object to the depiction of 'relatively simple'. In some ways, that fight is actually harder than LK:
1) When all three healers get slimes.
2) When the 'stand in the circle' boss is adjacent to the 'spread out' boss.
3) Slime on a tank
4) Etc
The synergy between the two bosses up that are up is just plain evil in certain combinations. With LK the fight always, always, always goes the same way. The phases are clear with complex but unchanging instructions for everyone in the raid. Never once did he start dropping defiles in Phase 1, or go back to diseases during Phase 3. Omnotron does.
It's a Cata thing, and I get that, but that fight needs some cleanup. The could AT A MINIMUM set the order of the bosses on normal mode to something fixed, preferably with the two nastiest never up at the same time.
Until they do, we'll just grind Valor until we outgear it. But it sucks.
Sky Mar 27th 2011 2:34AM
Is this a joke post? Omnotron is one of the easiest bosses in Cata if your group has the coordination. This fight is hardly a gear check and even pugs in my realm consistently one shot this boss. As long as everyone is doing what they are supposed to do this fight should be easy. If you can't beat Omnotron, you probably won't come close to beating Maloriak, Atramedes and Chimaeron. Halfus Wyrmbreaker is harder than this fight if I'm completely honest with you
Bob Mar 28th 2011 7:24PM
@Sky
Relative difficulty is irrelevant. It's still 'harder' than LK. The end.
vonos82 Mar 27th 2011 4:47AM
Bob:
Explain the fight by rules instead by raid. If you do so, every member have to watch just their job, priorities.
Main tank: Taunt the new boss immediatly! Position the boss in the green cloud! Do not stand in the green cloud! Pull the boss out of the blue cycle! If you get poison bomb, run!
Off tank: Taunt the former boss off the main tank! See main tank's orders!
Melee: Interrupt Arcanotron! If you get poison bomb, run! If you don't, help damaging them! If you get raidmark X, run out of melee group! If you see a red beam, get out of it!
Ranged: If you get poison bomb, run! If you don't, help damaging them! If you get raidmark X, run out of ranged/healers! If you see a red beam, get out of it! If you get a raidmark Skull, stay! Stand in the blue cycle, if Electron isn't active!
Healers: See ranged's orders! Big heals into the raidmark Skull. AoE heals if Magmatron is active!