Segment 52: Deadly Boss Mods

So now you’re raiding, or at least running instances. It doesn’t matter if you’re raiding old “vanilla WoW” dungeons or Baradin Hold, or anywhere in between; you want to do the best you can, whether you are the tank, a healer, or DPS. That means you need situational awareness, because while a mage doing the safety dance in Naxxramas may be low on the DPS charts, a dead mage…

Segment 50: Add-ons for Shaman

I have been informed that, during the per-class segments, I somehow contrived to miss the shaman. Let’s correct that right now.

The shaman is a hybrid support class, providing DPS via spellcasting or melee, or healing. In addition, the shaman can place totems to provide additional benefits to the party or deal additional damage to enemies.

To help your shaman in his chosen role, I’ve put together a…

Segment 47: Dungeon Tactics Add-ons

Cataclysm brought us an entirely new world, with entirely new ways to wipe in PuGs. But the most effective way to wipe is still the same – have someone who doesn’t know the boss tactics in your group. Fortunately, there are some add-ons that will allow you to quickly go over boss encounter tactics without needing Vent or TeamSpeak (here we link the infamous

Segment 46: PlayerScore

The single biggest complaint heard in World of Warcraft is about pick-up groups, usually called “pugs.” Why? Because players join pugs without the proper gear or experience to make a successful run. In the past, group leaders (now called “dungeon guides”) had two add-ons to help them determine the level of readiness a player might bring to his pug, GearScore and SkillScore. Individual players could use them to determine their own…

In my last post I talked about how I didn’t think that Heroics in Cataclysm were necessarily too difficult, but we as players needed more awareness and experience and gear.

Since then I’ve been making attempts at various Heroics, all with similar outcomes: we seldom finish the entire dungeon and it involves a lot of wiping along the way.

Have I decided to change my tune and say that yes they are in fact…

My goal for this blog post is to create a list of things that players can do in heroics to not only be better players, but also better people. If you have a tip to share, even a small one, please leave it in the comments section of this post.

There are obvious things we can do to be better players like–don’t stand in fire. But there are also some intangible things we can…

The discussions, conversations, and flat out raging over Cataclysm heroics continues on forums, twitter accounts and all across the internet. This is a topic that I’m going to touch on some more in the next episode of the podcast, but since it is on my mind, I thought I’d write a little about it.

The majority of what I’ve been seeing are players who are upset because dungeons and heroics are so hard right…